Wired Momma

I’m sure you’ve noticed how the media loves a mom-turns-millionaire through invention story. We see it all the time. In fact, I think there’s even a word for moms who invent things – mompreneurs. Or something ridiculous like that.

Apparently there’s a reason for the old saying “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Right?

OK – so since having had my darling daughter, I’ve thought of things I’d like to invent if I had the time, means, or slightest bit of understanding in how to go about doing it. I have one idea that I actually think is pretty good.  Naturally I fantasize about executing said idea and making millions and quitting my job and being featured in the Today Show in a fabulous Nanette Lapore suit.

And then it dawned on me the other day, yet another idea that I believe would be helpful to all the driving women out there. Probably just the driving public. Definitely dazed and confused working moms with a million things on their minds.

Let me first paint the picture – set the scene, if you will.

KT friends know that, well, I’m always late. I try. I really do try. I have the best of intentions but the bottom line is, I’m late. This personal problem has only gotten worse since my daughter entered my life and well, it’s even worse now that she’s potty trained because that adds another 10-15 minutes to departure time……pee pee on the potty….”mas pee pee, read book? one more time? pee pee more, wash hands, go get cookie!”..and so it goes.  

That said, I am also pretty much always late to work, even though I’m not bringing my daughter with me every day. I figure any working mom who gets to the office before noon ought to get a medal.  Sadly I don’t think the higher-up’s really agree with that.

One of the downsides to always being late to work is finding a parking spot in the parking garage. Because I arrive at a slightly different time each day, I can never secure the same spot. I like one of the key spots that allows me to pull forward and then reverse straight back without having to make any tight turns or worry about hitting a pole.

I swear, poles tend to just jump out at me in parking garages.

Because the spot that I prefer is also preferred by others, it’s not always free when I arrive, so I must find another spot. This means, each evening when I am racing to my car to get home to darling daughter, I have to add some extra time in to remember where in the hell I parked the car.

You got it.

That person wandering aimlessly in a garage, looking dazed and confused, or raising the blood pressure of creepy slow stalker drivers at the mall garages at Christmas time – because I end up three rows over from where they think I’m headed – that’s me.

And admit it, it’s you too. Don’t tell me that you’ve never completely forgotten where you parked and had to walk around for a second or two (or five) to find your spot.

The good news is I always know which floor I’ve parked on, it’s just where on that level, is the problem.

So my invention – if I were an electrical engineer – I’d invent a GPS of sorts to affix to my key chain and once I enter the correct floor of my parking garage, perhaps it could ding or ring (a pleasant tone..or even better…be wirelessly connected to my favorite gossip blog and start reading off breaking celebrity news) to help point me in the direction of my vehicle, thereby avoiding the confusing tour of the garage floor, and saving precious time so I can get home sooner!

Isn’t this brilliant? A parking spot locator GPS! It’s just what we’ve all been waiting for! Am I a great mom-preneur or what?

Sadly, until I can determine how to get that gadget built and sold, I’m going to be that person wandering around, wondering where in the hell I parked my car, pretty much every evening.

And in the meantime, to catch up on all the latest celebrity fashion from last night’s SAG awards or continue wondering if Angie is pregnant in that mumu she wore, check out my fav celeb gossip site:

http://popsugar.com/gallery/217561

Enrolling your little one in fun classes is always a tricky path to get started on. I don’t know about you but I figured my baby was ready for a class around 8 months. I was so excited! I searched and searched and finally determined the perfect class – some music class relatively convenient to my house. I quickly enrolled the two of us in a session for every Saturday from late summer until Thanksgiving.

What great bonding, I thought! How fun to see what she’ll be like in music class and meet other babies! I really couldn’t wait.

But then we started going. And I realized that it’s a hassle to get to a class every single Saturday for so many weeks in a row, especially as a full-time working parent. I’ve got a lot of things to squeeze into one small weekend and eating up half the morning going to and from a class wasn’t always stress free. Then there was the reality of the fact that sometimes my baby just wasn’t in the mood for class or that half the class would be sick as hell, coughing and sneezing all over her, or just the difficulty in timing it with naps and getting her packed up and out the door to get anywhere on time. Before I get into how birthday parties and weekend visitors and other things eat into your ability to have a perfect attendance after you paid a bunch of money for this class.

Again, this common theme of nothing is at it seems.

But even after that experience, I still struggle with classes. Which classes should I enroll her in, how many is too many, which ones will she find fun before I cough up the cash?

And then the peer pressure. Suddenly on the playground you realize everyone else has had their kid in ballet and swimming for months. Should you have enrolled darling daughter in ballet? What if she is missing out on a great talent because I was too lazy and cheap to enroll her? Why is everyone else doing it and what does it say about me?

In those exposed moments, I have to dig deep within myself to find my perspective. I am a believer in there is a point to everything and less is more.

Sure, I struggled with whether or not to enroll my daughter in both swimming and ballet as the winter sessions were starting a few months ago. Until I focused on having to get her out of a wet swimming suit, dried off, dressed again and then get that head of hair dried before taking her outside, so as to prevent a cold, and then I realized I wasn’t charging down that path. What a freaking pain. Bath time is hard enough – I’d have to be a freaking masochist to want to face that battle twice a day.

And as for ballet, the sky high price of that class just seemed so outrageous to me for a two-year old who barely follows instruction on a good day, I just couldn’t justify it. Maybe when she’s four, but not now.

But that still doesn’t mean I didn’t struggle with it when hearing what others were doing.

Why do we fall victim to this? It’s just hard not to get caught up in it, I think. But I just have to stand firm. I keep reminding myself to view the world from the eyes of a two-year old. Those eyes are really different than mine and they get tired a lot faster. Down time and quiet time to balance out the chaos of school during the week – is more important to her than being carted off to yet another class, I decided.

But I think it’s a bigger picture issue. I worried that if I fell into the habit of over-booking and over-scheduling her at the age of two, what in the world is her life going to be like by the time she’s 12? This is where the whole “there’s a point to everything” reasoning enters my brain.

So in those moments of panic on the playground when I’m the only mom not taking my kid to some class, less is more, is what I tell myself. I truly believe less is more.

Those of you who know me well, know that I get to the gym very early in the mornings. So this morning, as I was pulling out of my driveway at o-dark-thirty, and wondering how in the hell it could be quite so cold, I noticed the moon. I hope some of you also saw the moon either last night or this morning. It was one of the most beautiful full moons I’ve ever seen. So big and bright and just glistening there – it immediately lifted my spirits. If only I didn’t have to keep my eyes on the road, I wouldn’t have been able to stop looking at the moon.

My great mood lasted only until I got to the gym and started watching the news. First, the local news was depressing enough and then the anchors busted out with how today is branded the most depressing day of the year. I’m sure there’s some bullshit reasons why that’s the case, something about it being three weeks into a cold month and no holidays to lift our spirits, everyone’s fat from over-eating, everyone’s given up their New Year’s Resolutions by now (ah ha! yet another reason to not make any – then you have nothing to feel bad about today) and the credit card bills from the holidays should be arriving this week (I’m definitely going to be feeling bad when that one drops through the mail slot. Any chance I can hide it from my husband??)

So, I was starting to come off the high from the bright glistening full moon, and then a segment came on about caffeine and pregnancy and miscarriages. Unfortunately, we all know someone who has experienced the pain of a miscarriage. I feel like I always hear the comment that it’s only the people who get pregnant the first time they try, that we all hear about – but who is actually talking about the frequency of miscarriage?

The thing is, in my circle of friends, though I hear this same comment, I feel like everyone is pretty open about miscarriages, the emotions that come with it, and her experience with it. I hope this is the case for everyone, not just KT’s BFFs, because it’s something that is so common and beyond our control.

That being said, everyone is always struggling with balancing what they can and cannot do when pregnant and handling caffeine is always one of them. So Kaiser just came out with this study of 1,000 women in San Francisco and the miscarriage rate among this group during the first three months of pregnancy.

Here is the finding: http://madelynfernstrom.ivillage.com/health/2008/01/caffeine_and_miscarriages.html?par=today,wb

“Those women with the highest caffeine intake (more than 200mg per day, daily) had double the number of miscarriages as those women who did not consume caffeine at all. 25 women out of 100 miscarried in the high caffeine group, compared with 12 in the 0mg caffeine ingestion group.”

So, if you haven’t heard this news by now, you might be wondering what 200mg amounts to? Sadly, not much coffee, read on: 

 ”What does 200mg of caffeine look like? it’s two small cups of coffee, four cups of tea, or five cans of soda. “

I must admit, I didn’t realize that two cups of small coffee is equivalent to five cans of soda. That’s actually really nasty. I mean – who in the world drinks 5 cans of soda in one day? But me, I definitely enjoy more than two cups of “small” coffee in the morning.

What I also heard on the news but isn’t explained in the above link is this: Caffeine constricts the blood flow to the placenta – thus making it not a good thing to digest for pregnant women.

In the interest of full disclosure, personally, when I was pregnant with my darling daughter, I basically cut out all caffeine the day we first started trying to get pregnant and I stayed completely caffeine free until I was through my first trimester. I’ll never forget the day that I was reunited with some caffeinated tea on that 13th week of pregnancy, it felt so good. We were long lost buddies, me and caffeine. From that point on, I probably had a cup of caffeine a day or every other day, for the remainder of my pregnancy.

Imagine my surprise when no one warned me that discipline with caffeine would persist for as long as I was breastfeeding. Talk about a buzz kill.

And speaking of buzz kills, by the time I was done working out, I was totally over the joy of the moon. From now on, maybe I’ll stick with watching E! instead of any news.

So to end this entry on this most depressing day of the year, I offer you this link, a predictor of your child’s height at the age of 18 brought to you by our friends at BabyCenter.com. I question its accuracy because it’s predicting my daughter will be 5ft. 11 inches by the time she’s 18….and that seems kind of extreme:

http://parentcenter.babycenter.com/child-height-predictor?pe=eiU70g&scid=mbtw_post26m:20080114:0:0:0

The due date is like the holy grail for the first time preggo. The first time you hear those words coming from doc’s mouth, it’s like the all-consuming date for the next 10 months. It is the date that so many live for, the wonderful date you can meet your baby!

The thing is, there’s so much psychology and neurosis behind this particular date that it has yet to stop fascinating me. I’ve found there are two tracks of first time preggos. Like with brides, there’s the pack of brides who only want an all white bouquet and there’s the pack of brides that want a vibrant color bouquet to pop off their dress.

There is the first time preggo who longs for that date, who absolutely cannot wait for that date, who holds that date up as the end-all, be-all date, and if that date comes and goes and they are still preggo, they are devastated.

Then there is the other preggo who just isn’t that into the date and figures baby will come when baby will come. By my count, there are very few first time preggos like this……but some of them are out there. What I’m beginning to notice, however, is that the reality check and wisdom you gain from having one child, puts the majority of second time preggos in this camp.

I only come at the due date from the experience I had, which was, I never made it because I had my baby 4 weeks early and my water came gushing out one cold November Saturday evening right around dinner time, to everyone’s surprise. So, I have no idea what it feels like to have your due date come and go – but I can tell you this – I longed to know what that felt like at the time and I still hope for that whenever there is a next time.

What I observed about sonograms and due dates is this – it’s not an exact science. The docs might state things with absolute certainty but this is the mystery and power of pregnancy and growing a child inside of you. Things happen on baby’s terms and baby’s schedule – so it seems like a due date is best considered an estimation…and if you’re lucky enough to still have that baby inside when that day comes and goes, then that’s the best case scenario because it means baby is happy and getting really fat inside. And what happens with big fat babies when they enter this world? It means they can eat more food….which in turn means they can sleep for longer…and just as the due date was once the holy grail for a preggo, sleeping at night quickly becomes the holy grail while the due date gets tossed and forgotten like the placenta.

And so, imagine my surprise and sheer delight upon hearing of a little trick my friend used recently. She is now pregnant with her second child. Her first child was induced at 42 weeks and that process still took almost three days because that baby was so happy inside, she just didn’t want to come out.

This particular friend was thrilled to have gone past her due date and actually pushed her docs to let her go past 41 weeks. She couldn’t see the logic in forcing the baby out if baby was happy and healthy inside and she was being put at no risk. Furthermore, she wasn’t dilated or effaced at all and she said “You can squeeze a green tomato all you want but it doesn’t mean any juice is gonna come out.”

Ha ha. Loved that.

So anyhow, moving on to her second pregnancy. When she went in for that first OB appointment, she actually fibbed on the first date of her last period, deliberately telling the docs it was 4 days later than it actually was. She wanted a later due date, she wants to keep that baby in as long as possible. I LOVE this approach! How ingenious, I sat there thinking! I asked her if the docs have tried to shift her due date after several sonograms, and each has noted that she seems to be a bit further along than her due date suggests, but then they move on and leave it as is.

It was so refreshing to hear this story. I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, as long as mommy and baby are healthy, why the big rush to get that kid out? I just don’t get it.