All Baby, All the Time

It does feel a little like that. For instance, I don't know if there's a room in our house right now (except the dogs' room; they won't have it) that doesn't have a stash of baby stuff, either prominently displayed or stuck in a corner. At the moment, I'm sitting at our kitchen table and heaped in front of me are beautiful baby gift bags full of cloth diapers waiting to go in the wash. In our living room, you'd find bags that hold the motley collection of: a Pregnancy Scrapbook, a few baby onesies, a mobile my friend Elizabeth gave us and a second car seat base. The den remains covered up in strollers, car seats, a first car seat base, gift bags, more baby clothes, and some older-age items (in the sense Baby won't need these for several months) we still haven't found places for like the Bumbo Seat and the Baby Einstein Musical Motion Activity Jumper. I'm not entirely sure what developmental skills come from this last one, but I'm betting it has something to do with NASA.

So, for the sake of taking the blog where our home seems to be headed, I've added some new links on the sidebar. These are all resources we've used in our efforts for a natural, family-based childbirth. Our Bradley Method Birth classes, which despite the cost I joked about earlier, I would highly, highly recommend, the Lisa Ross Birth Center here in Knoxville, where Baby will make his or her grand entrance, how to find a La Leche League in your area and more info on cloth diapers from a reliable and non-biased source (that is, they're biased towards cloth diapers but not on types or brands).

The funny thing is, before Baby, we weren't the least bit crunchy. We ate meat revved up on steroids, we drank milk full of hormones, we never considered what types of cleansers we sprayed on the surfaces of our home and I thought epidurals seemed a grand idea, right behind scheduled C-sections. I'd say the closest thing to natural living we had was a fondness for Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. And then- as the old saying goes- the stick turned blue and suddenly I was a lot more aware of what we put in and on and around our bodies. From foods, to personal hygiene, to home sanitizers and dog food. Yep, even the dogs have gone granola with their Nutro Ultra Dog Food and Paul Newman's Organic Peanut Butter Dog Treats.

Not to say we've done this all at one time or that everything is now completely organic. Oh no. I'd say we're about fifty to sixty percent there most of the time and I feel good about that. If that's as far as we ever get, I'll be fine with it. It does take more money, time, and effort, so we pick and choose what we can do and stay easy about the rest.

Also we've gotten a lot of help from our friends. Preggers Tip: If you're up the pole, as our Irish friends say, and thinking about cloth diapers- register for them! There are tons of great online stores with registries and you might be lucky, like us, and discover you even have local stores selling cloth diaper products- other than BRU, I mean. We've been fantastically overwhelmed by them and have very little left to get.

But these are my pregnancy resources thus far and, overall, I've been nothing but thrilled. I like the fact The Hubba and I have made aware, conscious decisions about how we want to do this, even in the face of some gentle criticism. I love knowing how much thought and time we've put into Baby B's arrival and presence here.

And now I've just gotten too preachy for my own good. If it helps, as I write, I'm drinking a delicious Pineapple-Orange Juice from Tropicana, full of sugar and probably not a real pineapple or orange in sight. And it's given me just a touch of heartburn.

Have a lurrrvely weekend!