Silicon Valley Baby

Getting a move on!

A slightly eventful couple of days.

We had childbirth class #3 (out of 4) last night. Much of the class was about different choices available for pain management. SiliMommy doesn't have any "If I don't have natural childbirth, I'm not fulfilled in my womanhood" hangups, and so she'll probably just get the epidural when the time comes. I think she's pretty eager to minimize the pain as effectively as possible without endangering the little one.

The instructor took great pains to let us guys know that our spouses/partners are likely to shower us with verbal abuse...

This time, the expectant mothers simulated pain by squeezing an ice cube as hard as they could. I didn't think this sounded too painful, frankly--maybe a little cold--but then I tried it myself. Boy, did it hurt! It feels like you're abrading the hell out of your hand, even though there's no friction taking place, since the ice cube isn't moving. (The instructor said that guys never find this painful, but whatever...if this makes me less of a man, then so be it. It really hurt!)

In other news, this is shaping up to be the first major shopping/preparation weekend. I just went on a small shopping spree at target.com, buying some of the essentials on our checklist. Target's really cool because my credit card offers 6x (!) points back on Target purchases. That's not shabby at all!

(NB: Consumer Reports has a good, no-frills checklist of newborn essentials, which I think is very helpful. All of the parents I know say that it's easy to go crazy wasting money on all kinds of shit you don't need for the baby, so a trustworthy list is good to have.)

SiliMommy also wants to buy the stuff that she'll be taking to the hospital with her when the time comes: basically the stuff that she'll be packing into her overnight bag.

And, tomorrow, it's off (again) to the baby furniture store, hopefully to pick out a crib and stuff. For the rest of the weekend, we (I)'ll be starting to clear out the second bedroom, as it begins its transformation from home office/storage wasteland to nursery. (I'd attempted to begin the transformation a month ago, and immediately broke my ankle.)

I've also really gotta figure out what to do about a stroller, already. A couple of friends of mine--parents of small children, themselves--have made the point that too elaborate/big/heavy a stroller is going to be very burdensome: the fact that we live on the second floor will make schlepping a heavy stroller a chore, and neither of us has a huge car...I suspect that whatever stroller we end up buying is going to live in one of our cars. I see little point to carrying it upstairs/downstairs all the time when it's really exclusively for downstairs (i.e., outside of our home) use.

In other news, the need to start spending all this money finally got me off my butt to catch up on several months' worth of bookkeeping, and to finally file my expense report for my June trip to Japan. This is the time to clear the financial decks: It's really either now or never.

And still other news, I had a follow-up with the orthopaedist yesterday. He proclaimed himself pleased with my progress, and told me that I should (must) wean myself off the walking boot over the next two weeks. So I'm getting around increasingly well, and with less and less pain.

At any rate, that's pretty much all the news that's fit to print for now. Next update as events warrant!

posted by SiliDaddy @ 1:07 AM