Milk Run

Last night, the power went out in half of our apartment. D tried resetting the circuit, but it didn't work. The half without electricity: the living room, tv room, and kitchen. We called the landlord and left a voice mail. We tried turning a bunch of stuff of and re-resetting the circuits. We called the landlord again. Nothing.
I was already getting ready for bed when D said, "What should we do about the milk in the freezer?"
Shit.
Shitshitshitshitshit.
I had two months' worth of frozen breastmilk stored in there. It would almost certainly thaw overnight. What to do, what to do?

Well, since half of our apartment still had electricity, we considered running an extension cord and plugging in the fridge to an outlet with some juice. We rejected this notion, because we feared it would overload the only circuit left, and we needed that one for the air conditioner.

We had to find another freezer.

So I called my friends Max* & Shut_In_w/Cats, to see if we could borrow a little freezer space for our baby's frozen food. He said to come right over. We packed up three full converted-tissue-boxes worth of milk into an empty diaper bag, and I ran to the car, and hastened to their abode, where Max cleared a whole freezer shelf for me.

Our friends are our heroes!! Our power's back, but we're not going to ask to retrieve the milk until we've had power for at least 24 hours.
Ferrying frozen breastmilk is one of the odder local errands I've had to run.

*Max? Really? When did we come up with that pseudonym? I think it's short for Max Power, right?

Brita Filter Plastics

I called Brita the other day to find out about the plastics they use in their water filtration systems, and I posted what I found out over in the comment section at ZRecs.

Here's what I wrote:

I called the company, and Brita lids and filters are made from #4, polypropylene, which most sources consider safe.The containers themselves are made of a #7 called "SAN": styrene acrylonitrile. The Brita lady I spoke with specifically promised that there is no BPA in any of their plastic.

Unremarkable = Perfection

Yesterday was the kind of Saturday I'd been looking forward to for ages. Beautiful weather, no plans, just us. Before Belle, this kind of day generally went somewhat wasted: we might get out on some kind of trip, but ultimately it felt to me like we just weren't fulfilling the potential of the day.

Now, with a baby, the potential of a day is very different. Instead of feeling like there's so much I should get done, I felt like everything we do accomplish is a victory, and everything we do is layered with a kind of significance, because we're doing it with Belle as well. Mostly, we had a quiet day at home. Our big outing was to take Belle on a little 1-mile hike in the Baby Bjorn, and once we had gotten her to sleep at night, we tried cooking a new recipe for dinner.

Sure, we didn't hike Mt. Monadnock or camp out overnight or throw a party, but it was perfect to me the way it was. This is precisely the kind of day I was looking forward to having once we became parents, and I have not been disappointed.

Losing my cool about spit-up

(Reprinted from an email to my new-mom group)

I have a question that I never thought to ask in class, but after yet another debacle this morning, I would love some advice about what to do to contain/control Belle's spit-ups after a feeding. It seems like no matter how clever I think I'm being, or how big a cloth I use to cover her, me, and the area in-between, she always ends up getting spit-up on my back, in my bra, in my lap, down my side, down her front and past her bib, or on the chair. Sometimes she'll spit up while leaning on my shoulder, sometimes when she's held sitting or standing facing me. I hate the idea of having to run to the kitchen after every breast just so the spit-up can land on the linoleum; does anyone have any suggestions? I had a particularly bad time of it this morning, with spit-up so copious my husband had to take her so I could strip and shower. It's not that there's so much volume, it's just that it ends up covering so much surface area!

Plastic Paranoia the Third

I guess there have finally been enough official studies about the problems with BPA in plastic, because even the folks who write the Baby Bargains book are putting BPA bottles on their shit list. (For those readers who don't have kids, Baby Bargains is THE go-to book for reviews and recommendations on baby gear. I think many people would consider it an essential reference for setting up their baby registries and their baby's rooms.)
Here's a link to the blog post over at the Baby Bargains blog. I didn't know they HAD a blog, but you can be sure I added it to my RSS collection. The bottom of the article has links to the Z Recommends article I've mentioned before. Since this plastics issue has become so mainstream, I think I may finally mention it to the women in my new moms group. Our class is over, so it's going to be an email. Oh, well. I have questions for them about spit-up containment techniques anyway.

Chick Flicks, George Clooney, ....and Optimus Prime?

I live in a great neighborhood for being a new mom. I can walk into town, where there's a maternity center with new mom classes and breastfeeding supplies and clothing, and I can take an even longer walk to get to the local movie house where they have a "parent movie" every Monday afternoon. I'm subscribed to the email where I can vote on what the next week's movie will be, and I had a bit of a laugh when i saw the options for next week. To give some perspective, the last 5 weeks, the movies have been: Evening, Ocean's Thirteen (twice), and Waitress (twice).
Here's the latest selection:
Once, Rescue Dawn, Shrek the 3rd, Surf's Up, Transformers.
It's great that they give us a full selection of what they can offer, but I think it's probably unnecessary to include Transformers, no?
Well, having said that, I'm sure I'll be proven wrong and it will end up being this Monday's movie. If that happens, I'll post an update, and we'll all have a good laugh.

8/19 UPDATE:
"Once" beat out Shrek at 36% to 34%. Transformers did come in third at 15%.

More Plastic Paranoia

So, the plastic in baby bottles leaches chemicals, and the plastic in sippy cups is not suggested either. But I haven't seen many articles address the plastic ingestion that must happen with teething toys. Then I saw this post on GoodyBlog, which points out that silver rattles, which most of us think of as ornamental keepsakes, are terrific for teething because the silver is nice and cold, and the handle is small for easy gripping. When I was at my parents' this weekend, I asked my mom if she had any silver rattles from when I was little or from when she was little. She did indeed have the very rattle - a barbell-shaped little thing that has a musical clang to its rattling that my sister and I both used to grow in our teeth. The balls on the ends of the rattle have little dents from the workout we gave it.

I'm really excited about having my daughter teethe on the same rattle that I used. I will probably have to introduce some plastics at some point, but I may call the company to find out what kind of plastic it is before I let Belle stick anything in her mouth.

Don't dip your chips in that.

D, Belle and I went on a long-weekend's journey to visit our parents this past weekend. It was the first time for traveling with Belle out-of-state, and she did a great job. She slept a lot in the car, and when she wasn't sleeping, she was contentedly watching the world go by. Each set of parents had their friends over while we visited, and Belle was a charming hostess at both soirees. She smiled, she looked people in the eye, she even fell asleep in a few people's arms.
Unfortunately, I had some kind of stomach bug during the trip, which made an already tiring excursion even more draining. Worse, Belle seemed to pick it up from me yesterday, and in the evening she had what D called a "guacamole poop".
We are both doing much better today, and I have to get cracking on yet another batch of thank-you notes for all the lovely gifts we received. I have discovered that the only way to not feel like I'm always writing thank-you notes is to write them as soon as possible, so there's no time for them to prey on my mind.