My Top 10 Favorite Mommy Sites

1. Five Minutes For Mom

2. Dooce

3. Alpha Mom

4. Mama Om

5. sweet fine day

6. Barely Domestic

7. mama hearts baby

8. petitelephant

9. mom 101

10. mamapedia

Ecstatic Childbirth… Not

Well, Slap me Susan I’ll be darned! I swear to God hubby & I were the most gung ho couple on the planet before falling head first into that whole baby thing. It all began with our lighthearted adventures into the carefully crafted world of speed baby making. Being in my mid-thirties, I decided that we could not afford to lose any second so I got the whole baby making kit going: hubby’s semen analysis; check. basal body temperature thermometer; check. ovulation predictor kit; check. online fertility chart monitoring; check. Sex was renamed as BD for Baby Dance, and cervical fluid was painstakingly monitored and recorded. We got pregnant right away. And after 42+ weeks of a very challenging, sickly pregnancy, our 5-day overdue daughter was finally ready to come out.

I said I wanted to go natural (and still do, btw…). We took all the prenatal classes we could get our hands on, became sucked into hypnobirthing, with promises of a calmer, even serene baby. After laboring twelve hours at home, on the birthing ball and in the bathtub, my water broke and it was time to head to the hospital. There, my midwife told me I was 10 cm+2 dilated and ready to push my daughter out. Our luggage was full of everything we thought we’d need: tons of food, new age music, massagers and soothing oils… the works. But now it looked like I wasn’t going to use any of it. As a matter of fact, we had to rush so much that my husband did not even get a chance to get our luggage out of the car. The baby was coming! And she kept on coming for three and a half hours of pushing hard, real hard. See, that was the thing about hypnobirthing, perhaps one of the most seductive things about it: there was to be no pushing. Instead, the books recommended to just “breathe the baby out.” So I was extremely surprised when my midwife said that I would, indeed, HAVE TO push. HARD.

Hypnobirthing did help me breathe more consciously and therefore relax more into the whole process. I was able to do my entire labor at home, and did not need any pain medication of any kind (although it DID hurt). I kept telling myself I could handle it. And I did. But it was not ecstatic, painless, or peaceful. My daughter is not a calm baby, let alone “serene.” And the fact that hubby was an active labor partner did not remotely make the experience a romantic one. As a matter of fact, the only time he attempted to massage my shoulders, my response apparently was “Do not touch me ever ever again!” There was also blood, fluids, and other unmentionable things. I don’t know how I ever entertained the idea to possibly have close friends attend, or even to videotape the whole birth. After reading the so very entertaining Time’s article, Afterbirth: It’s What’s For Dinner, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1908194,00.html, we decided to save the placenta in a cooler, to have it encapsulated, or made pills out of for good health, but then we did not get a chance to get it home on time and eventually let it spoil in that very same cooler, placenta and overripe bananas, if I remember correctly.

So there. My daughter’s birth was not peaceful, serene, romantic, or ecstatic, and things did not go as expected, but in the end, it all turned out ok. I delivered a beautiful, healthy baby girl who, like many babies, is colicky, cries a lot, and wants to feed around the clock. I would have loved for her birth or our lives after that to be ecstatic and serene. Instead, we are your typical, garden-variety, happy, overwhelmed, smitten, sleep-deprived, grateful, marveling at any of her tiny milestone, parents. What more could we want?

What about you? Was is anything at all like what you had envisioned? I’d love to hear you share your birth stories!

The Best Banana Bread Recipe

I just stumbled upon the most moist, delicious banana bread recipe, as often is, by chance… I used the “big book” (Cooks Illustrated) but I was missing yogurt so I used buttermilk, brown sugar instead of granulated, and salted butter instead of sweet. The result is one of the best banana breads I have ever eaten. Here goes:

Dry ingredients:

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup brown sugar

Wet ingredients:

3 large, ripe bananas, well mashed

3/4 stick of salted butter, melted & cooled

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/4 cup buttermilk

Simply mix all dry ingredients together. Then all wet ingredients together. Incorporate the wet batter to the dry mix, mixing just until dry ingredients are fully incorporated to the wet batter. Do not over-mix or the bread will be too dense. Pour the batter into a greased and floured non-stick loaf pan. Bake in pre-heated 350 oven for 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes up clean. Let it cool on a rack 5-10 minutes and eat soon!

Try it out and share your impressions!

10 Things I Want to Achieve by January 2010

1. Learn how to drive

2. Lose the baby weight

3. Teach my daughter to love books

4. Look for one solution to one problem daily and fix it!

5. Spend more time with my husband and family

6. Spend more time with my friends

7. Renovate our home

8. Manage finances better

9. Eat healthier

10.  Exercise daily

Library Hour

I finally got to get out of the house, on a brisk fall morning. I found out there is a toddler library hour and even though Maya is only 9 weeks, I wasn’t going to miss it. I need to see people, after one month stranded in the big, red house. I need intelligent conversation, camaraderie, some good laughs… I’ve always thought of myself as solitary, but I must now admit that this is just too much. I need to talk and listen to others share their stories.

Library hour was quite fun. I met a couple of friendly mothers that I’d love to become friends with. I have to make sure to show up again next week to make connections. Maya actually seems to enjoy it. She didn’t even cry for the whole time, and simply looked around and listened to songs attentively. So cute.

Fall is beautiful in the Hudson Valley. The leaves are starting to turn and I’m in awe. Perhaps once I make new friends and learn how to drive, I’ll be glad I moved here.

Into the Unknown…

So much has changed in my life in the past few months that I don’t even know where to start:

I stopped working, for the first time in my life, bought a home with my husband, moved out of the city, had a baby. Family has come and gone for the birth of our adorable daughter, and now… quiet.

I am home alone, I do not know how to drive yet, I know no one where I am, and the isolation is killing me… My husband comes home so late every night to pay for our mortgage and bills. Still sore from the delivery of my baby girl, I pretty much feel stranded in my own, new (albeit unrenovated) 1924 colonial… God, what have I gotten myself into?

This morning, I was just thinking, as my in-laws’ taxi cab disappeared at the end of the road, heading for the airport, that I must reinvent myself if I am to be happy and fulfilled here. If only I knew where to even start.