Everyday Life

Categories Pregnancy

So much for the grand plan

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I shop a lot of used stores and most trips are not particularly memorable. I go in, I browse the racks, I try on dozens of articles of clothing and purchase less than 10% of what I try on (yes, I calculated that once – I think I purchased 9 of 140 or so items tried on.)

But this trip was memorable because I found this gorgeous shirt.

It was a lovely teal satin button down shirt. The moment I put it on, I felt like a queen.

It. fit. my bust. When I spread my arms wide, the buttons in front didn’t gape. I was sold. It was sold to me.

I got it home and put it on and discovered what I hadn’t noticed in my wonder in the dressing room.

The front was at least ten inches longer than the back.

Yep, I’d just bought a maternity blouse.

I wore it anyway, long tailed bodice tucked into a skirt or slacks. I couldn’t pass up something that fit my bust so beautifully.

But alas, somewhere along the line, I lost contact with that lovely shirt – either I gave it away or… I don’t know what happened to it.

While we were in the pregnancy planning stage, I took a look at my wardrobe and decided that we didn’t need to budget too much for maternity clothing. I wear mostly dresses and skirts with knit shirts – and most of my dresses have extra give around the waist.

I figured I could wear pretty much everything I already own for the first trimester, gradually decreasing my options down to the jersey knit dresses by the second trimester. Then I can make myself a belly band and buy some bigger t-shirts to go with my elastic waist skirts for the third trimester.

What I didn’t count on was the non-belly changes.

I’d been holding off buying bras, expecting that my breasts would be changing as the end of pregnancy drew near. It didn’t seem appropriate to buy new bras if I knew I was going to have to buy still more in different sizes within a few months. So I was making do with majorly stretched out brassieres.

Then I got pregnant. Within a week of finding out, my breasts were so tender I knew I couldn’t hold out any longer. I needed better support.

I went to get fitted and walked out stunned. Two cup sizes in the first month of pregnancy. What on earth! I wasn’t expecting that until the third trimester when my body’d be ramping up for breastfeeding.

My grand plan for not purchasing maternity clothes started to fade as I tried on one dress after another before finally finding one that didn’t squish my breasts into a giant sausage extending from shoulder to navel.

My new plan is to make myself a knit maxi dress that I’ll just wear every single day for the rest of pregnancy.

Did you have any surprising body changes during pregnancy? What did you do wardrobe-wise while you were pregnant?

Categories Everyday Life

I’m a desert dweller (almost)

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Have you ever heard of a food desert?

The term refers to areas where access to fresh food is scarce.

I learned about food deserts in school and acknowledged that such places theoretically exist, where people (especially those without access to reliable transportation) have a hard time purchasing fresh foods – especially fresh fruits and vegetables.

I thought of Lincoln’s downtown, where there are few grocery stores and where many of the residents (okay, my context is almost entirely based on being a student and employee at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln) don’t have cars.

Surprisingly, when I looked at the USDAs data (check out your location here), I discover that Lincoln’s downtown is NOT a food dessert, but where I grew up IS.

This despite the fact that I spent my childhood and certainly my teenage years walking or riding my bicycle to the Walmart Supercenter or Super Saver (the most amazing grocery store EVER) that were less than 2 miles away. Huh.

Then again, the criterion for limited access in urban areas is that a large (>33%) proportion of the population is not within 1 mile of a grocery store. So I qualified. I hoofed it 1.5 and 1.8 miles respectively to Walmart or SuperSaver.

Oh, and I just forgot, there were a couple of HyVees too. One at 1.4 miles and one at 1.6 miles or so. Yep, I guess I was in a food desert. Strangely enough, I felt like I had the best access to food I’ve ever experienced in my life. Imagine that.

Wichita Food Deserts
I live and work towards the center of this map, right next to or on the green “food deserts”. The red squares are the supermarket complexes nearby.

Now that I’m in Wichita, I’m one street away from a food dessert.

I have one grocery store complex (Walmart Neighborhood Marketplace and Dillons) at 2 miles (an easy enough biking distance); another complex (Walmart Neighborhood Marketplace, Dillons, and ALDI) at 3.2 miles (for me, still a decent biking distance); and a third with all three stores at 3.9 miles. I struggle to come up with the store that’s within 1 mile of the majority of my census tract – but we’re still definitely not deprived.

So, I’m almost a desert dweller, officially. In reality, I’m not so sure.

Categories Work

Where’s baby’s bottle?

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I keep a doll in my office to demonstrate breastfeeding. I keep it behind my desk because it’s really there for demo, not for children to play with. But that doesn’t stop children from wanting to play with it.

Generally, I let the children play.

One child, however, had a serious question: “Where’s this baby’s bottle?”

My breastfed baby doll

I told her that this baby didn’t have a bottle, that this baby was breastfed.

At first, mom tried to find something else in my office to take the place of a bottle. Could her daughter use the banana from the puzzle as the baby’s bottle?

She tried, but the banana just didn’t quite work.

Mommy realized that she’d just about missed a teachable moment.

“That baby doesn’t use a bottle. She gets milk from her mommy.”

Child’s eyes got wide – her mind was blown.

Milk from mommy? What a novel thought.

Small steps towards normalizing normal.

Categories Everyday Life, Health

How to take “as needed” painkillers

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Typically, when you get a bottle of painkillers after some sort of operation, the instructions will read something like “Take 1 to 2 every 4 to 6 hours as needed for pain.”

If you’re anything like me, you don’t like to take more meds than necessary, especially not painkillers – so you struggle with figuring out how exactly to take “as needed” meds.

Your temptation may be to go as long as absolutely possible between taking meds – resulting in excrutiating, hard to control pain. I’ve been there and done that. It’s not good – and it actually doesn’t help you take less, because you have to take more at that point to control the now-out-of-control pain.

I’ve had a couple of surgeries – a septoplasty and a wisdom tooth extraction – where I tried holding out longer than I should have and ended up with more pain than I should have. My sister, the Physician Assistant, told me to NOT wait until the pain was bad to take my painkillers. “That’s less effective,” she told me, “You need to keep your blood levels of the painkiller high enough to control the pain.” Foolishly, I didn’t listen.

After my second wisdom tooth extraction a couple months ago (they’re all out now!), I finally figured out how to take those “as needed” painkillers.

The instructions on my pill bottle were to take one or two every 4-6 hours as needed for pain.

I took one pill as soon as I got home from the oral surgeon’s office, and jotted down the time and the number of pills I took. As soon as I felt pain returning (4 hours later), I took another and jotted it down. 4 hours later, I felt the pain returning, so I took another and jotted down the time. So far, I was taking one every 4 hours.

But my situation changed overnight and it took 6 hours to start feeling more pain. I took one pill and jotted down the time. It was another 6 hours before I needed more. Then ten hours. Then 13 hours. Then 4. Then 6. And so on and so forth.

I took 13 pain pills in a total of 112 hours. That’s one every 8.5 hours on average. I never experienced any side effects of the painkillers, I never felt excrutiating pain, and I had no problem at all not taking them once my pain was gone.

Success.

Moral of the story: Take your painkillers when you have pain. Write down the time you take them and the amount you take so that you don’t exceed the maximum dose (in my case, 2 every 4 hours-which I didn’t even get close to reaching, much less exceeding.)

There you go.

Categories Marriage

Married…Unbelievable

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After 14 months of marriage, I still pinch myself on a weekly basis.

Is this real? Am I really married? It’s hard to believe that after 14+ years of hoping and dreaming, I’m now married.

Marriage if everything I’d hoped for and not at all what I expected. Or maybe the other way around. Or maybe neither and both.

All my dreams of marriage couldn’t come close to the reality of sharing life with my husband – sharing our minds, our hearts, our bodies. I couldn’t have grasped the wonderful mundane of sharing our days, discussing the news, reading his papers, laughing at Facebook videos of our nephews and nieces.

There are certainly some things that are better than I expected, some things that are worse – and some that are just different.

I (foolishly) expected that being married would make me content. I learned that my heart is an idol factory. It moves quickly from marriage to babies to quitting my job to be a full-time homemaker as potential saviors. Contentment continues to require work.

I expected marriage would include fighting. Everyone tells us that. When they hear that we haven’t yet fought, they tell us to just wait – that first one will be a doozy. I begin to not believe them. Daniel and I argue, we disagree, we both get emotional and hurt one another. But we haven’t fought. At least not the way people describe marital fights. Instead we talk through things, we learn to forgive, we keep short accounts by the grace of God. Maybe it’s our personalities, maybe (probably) it’s purely grace – but I pray this will always be true of our marriage.

I expected Daniel would be the stereotypical man: he wouldn’t really care what I got him for Christmas (’cause all he really wants is sex anyway), he wouldn’t care how I decorated the house, he wouldn’t really want to know every detail of my day and my thoughts. These and dozens of other stereotypes, I internalized without realizing it – and discovered that I was dead wrong. Daniel is picky about gifts and aesthetics. He wants to know every detail of my thoughts and feelings. He doesn’t have an “empty place” in his head where he retreats such that he honestly answers “Nothing” when I ask him what he’s thinking.

I thought having a husband for a head would mean that my only struggle would be submitting. Things would be easy because I could let my husband make decisions and he could be strong for me when I was falling apart. This turned out to be only partially true. Yes, Daniel is frequently strong for me when I am falling apart, reminding me of truth when my head is clouded. Yes, some decisions Daniel makes easily, which means I don’t have to make them. But I also have to be strong – I am my husband’s helper when he is confused or overwhelmed or anxious. Decision making is more often a joint venture, in which I need to help Daniel research and clarify issues – in which I need to learn how to communicate both my thoughts and my feelings, as well as how strongly or not strongly I think/feel them. Yes, marriage has lightened the load in some ways – but in other ways, it has made strength and good decision making more necessary rather than less.

I’m sure if I were to think more, I could come up with dozens of ways marriage has been different than I expected – but, for now, the biggest one is the crazy weird weekly wonder that I’m actually married. It really is unbelievable.

What surprised you about marriage?

Categories B3RD, Everyday Life

Trying times

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Warning: This post is about trying to conceive and I do refer to sex in my treatment of the topic. If this is something you’re uncomfortable with or that will be unhealthy for you, feel free to skip it.

At my preconception visit, both the medical assistant and the doctor gave a decent bit of advice for the trying time.

From the medical assistant: “I got one of those ovulation kits and took it for a month so I knew what day I ovulated. Then we saved it up for when I ovulated the next month – we had a baby on our first try.”

From the doctor: “Relax. Have fun. Call me if you don’t conceive after six months of trying.”

Now, it might appear that these are contradictory messages. Yet, I think both contain wisdom.

It’s worthwhile to get to know your body before you conceive. Knowledge is power – and making sure that you’re trying when you’re capable of conceiving can certainly help the process along.

That said, I think there are tons better ways than using an ovulation kit from the drugstore. If you have used either natural family planning (NFP) or fertility awareness methods (FAM) of birth control, you’re already familiar with your times of peak fertility based on signals like basal body temperature or cervical mucous. All you need to do is look over your past charts and figure out on what day of your cycle your peak fertility is at. Easy peasy.

If you haven’t been using NFP or FAM, do a little research and start logging your fertility signs now. Even if all you’re doing is checking your cervical mucous (a zero-cost activity), you can get a pretty good idea of when you’re fertile. Just swipe your vagina with a clean piece of tissue before going to the bathroom and then stretch that mucous between your two fingers. Is it stretchy and egg-whitey? There’s a good chance you’re approaching or at peak fertility. Is it nonexistant or just a little creamy? You’re unlikely to conceive just now.

Does that mean you should follow the medical assistant’s advice and “save it up” for when you’re fertile? I don’t necessarily think so. You should try to have sex during your fertile window – but it’s valuable to remember that sex isn’t JUST for procreation (even if that’s what you’re focusing on at the moment.) Here’s where my doctor’s sage advice comes in. Relax. Have fun.

Don’t turn sex into a baby-making exercise. Yeah, be sure you aren’t choosing your fertile week of the month to abstain; but otherwise choose to let sex be about loving and enjoying your spouse.

So, what’s the six month thing?

My doctor advised me to give him a call if Daniel and I haven’t conceived within six months of starting to try. Having difficulty conceiving after a prolonged period of “unprotected” sex can be a sign of infertility – and it’s always worthwhile, if one is having difficulty conceiving, to check out possible causes. Because I am nearing my 30th birthday (and therefore have only 5 years in which to get pregnant before I enter my gynecologically “elderly” years), my doctor recommended looking into things after six months of trying without conceiving. It is important to note that I will not be considered to be infertile at this point. Infertility is defined as not conceiving after 12 months of regular unprotected sex. For the younger woman, doctors will probably recommend trying for the full year before investigating for possible causes of infertility.

If you’ve been tracking your fertility with NFP or FAM, you’ve been collecting valuable data that can be used by your doctor to evaluate possible causes for difficulties conceiving – which is just another reason to NOT abandon your careful tracking during the trying times (and another reason to start tracking if you haven’t been already.)

In summary: Find out when you’re fertile. Relax. Have Fun. Call your doctor if you don’t conceive within six months to a year of trying.

Categories Everyday Life

Our patriotic neighbor

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We have a neighbor who is very patriotic.

I’ve never met him but there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that he’s committed to the USA.

It’s the red, white, and blue you see.

Yes, a flag flies proudly from the flagpole in his yard – but plenty of people have a flag flying in their yards.

The Stars and Stripes hangs beside no ordinary house. This is a red, white, and blue house.

And in front of this house lies a flower bed planted with red, white, and blue flowers.

A few days ago, I drove home from work and saw my patriotic neighbor doing some yard work dressed (you guessed it) in red, white, and blue.

Now that’s patriotism.

Categories Work

I make my own

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Occasionally, I get really curious about my clients. Not a professional curiosity, a personal curiosity.

Like when one of my clients told me she makes her own herbal tea.

I knew that I should be asking her about what herbs they contain for professional reasons, so I can ensure that what she’s drinking is safe for her and baby. But what I really wanted to know was what herbs she uses…for personal reasons.

I’m a huge fan of herbal tea (actually tisanes and not tea at all). I’d love to make my own blends. But I just haven’t gotten around to it.

So when she said “I make my own herbal tea”, I said “Really? Tell me what you use.”

“The tea bag from the natural foods store and water.”

*Facepalm*

I really will make my own one of these days. I will not be using the tea bag from the natural foods store.

Categories WIC, Work

Literally Lying

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Names and other details have been changed to comply with HIPAA; otherwise, this story is closely based on a true story :-)

“Are you going to get Shirley some new food?” she asked.

I agreed that yes I was–I would be back in a few minutes.

I returned with checks in hand, delivered them to Sherry and Shirley’s mom, and wished the family a good day.

“She said she was going to get Shirley some new food.” Sherry told her mom.

Mom explained. “She did. She gave me checks, which are sort of like money so I can get Shirley her food. Now we have to go to the grocery store to get the food.”

“Can I tell her something?” Sherry asked her mother.

When Mom said yes, Sherry turned to me. “You said that you were going to give Shirley some new food.”

I tried to explain while Mom laughed, “Sherry, you take this so literally.”

Finally, I realized that the abstractness of a check was beyond Sherry’s 3 year old mind. “I’m sorry, Sherry. I should have been more clear. I was going to get checks so your mom could buy Shirley some new food.”

As Sherry and her family left, I heard mom trying to explain again while Sherry continued to insist: “But she said she was going to get Shirley some new food.”

There’s never a boring moment when you’re working with kids.

Have you ever unintentionally “lied” to a child?