personal

Naming Our First Born

March 16, 2011 By Reedu 8 Comments

I can’t remember the exact moment me and my husband Jason decided we wanted the sex of our first child to be a surprise. With friends and family heavily weighing in about our decision, I do remember feeling great relief though that we both felt so strongly about it.

To my friends’ and family’s credit they were simply surprised that I wanted to be surprised. After all, I still shake the presents under the Christmas tree with my name on them!

While I was pregnant I got used to the same four questions: “How are you feeling? Do you know what you’re having? Have you picked out names? Are you sharing the names?”

I generally felt wonderful throughout my pregnancy and we were firm in that we didn’t want to know what we were having. But the name questions, they felt invasive to me.

For starters we hadn’t yet agreed on names, especially for a boy. We also didn’t want to hear people’s opinions on the names we had chosen. Say we were considering the name Lonnie, someone might have said “Ugh, I had an Uncle Lonnie who had an LSD habit.” Right. That would really make me want to name my kid Lonnie then.

I did exactly that to a friend of mine who was due a few months before me. She and her husband also wanted to be surprised but shared the names they had picked. Matthew and Reese. I made a comment then how Matthew seemed like an odd choice since the couple had a close friend named Matt. She fell silent after I said that, and well, could I really blame her? I had just done to her what I was trying to avoid having done to me!

But the plain truth was that we believed that our child would bring it’s own name into the world. Or we at least wanted to meet this little person inside of me before saying ‘yes, he is a Harry,’ or ‘yes, she is a Sally.’ That’s not to say though that we didn’t have some front runners, we did.

In talking about names we knew we didn’t want our baby’s name to be as common as my husband’s name, Jason or as different as my name, Reedu, but some place in between.

My brother-in-law suggested we name the baby 'Pomegranate.'

I was more than half way through my pregnancy when we were thousands of feet in the air on a Virgin America flight out to San Fransisco to see my brother get married. I was listening to NPR and the reporter’s name was Milo Miles. I leaned across the isle to where Jason was sitting (a great compromise by the way for two people who hate the middle seat), and said, “What do you think of the name Milo?” He flashed a big grin at me and his blue eyes beamed the answer back. It was the first male name we had agreed on.

I went into labor on a Sunday and gave birth on Monday. The Friday before Jason had presented me with another name that I liked a lot. We went into the delivery room with two strong contenders, but still open to the fact that the baby would bring it’s own name.

In the moments after our son was born there was a ton of commotion and excitement in the room. My mom was bouncing around like a kid in a candy shop while my husband was crying with joy and my midwife Beverly was helping me get started with breastfeeding.

What seemed like a half hour passed before Beverly quipped, “So what’s this kid’s name?!”

Jason looked at me then, quite like the way he looked at me on the Virgin America flight out to California, and we agreed it would be Milo. Accept we would spell it M-y-l-o in honor of our moniker for one another, “my love.”

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How did you arrive at the name(s) of your baby? Did you share it with friends and family, why or why not? Please share with me, I’d love to hear!

Filed Under: Babies, Featured Tagged With: personal, pregnancy

Good-bye Kitty Good-bye

March 13, 2011 By Reedu 5 Comments

We said good-bye to Kitty on Friday. Though both our cats are seniors, Kitty was the oldest of the two. She was the cuddliest of the two, the bossiest of the two and in the end, the most difficult of the two.

Kitty & Bug

My head has been a big pile of empty mush. I’m happy one minute, sad and confused the next. Below is an attempt at jotting down some of the thoughts that are moving like a freight train through my head.

I think about how I discovered Kitty and Bug, by chance. I think about the many homes they had until they landed me. I think about how my parents thought I was crazy for taking in two cats who were seniors. I think about my life with them being as old as my relationship with my husband, Jason. I think about how Jason, in the beginning, thought I was making a rash decision. I think about how Jason, in the end, had a harder time with the decision to put Kitty down.

I think about how the cats, once the center of attention and affection, got pushed down the totem pole when we rescued our dog, Ella, and then again, when our son Mylo joined us this past summer. I think about how Kitty liked to sleep in my underwear drawer. I think about how Jason called her my sapphic lover because of this. I think about how she used to groom herself in the morning sun on the balcony in our old apartment. I think about how she stopped grooming herself months ago. I think about our traumatic trips to the vet. I think about the time she knocked over a can of Pounce, pried it open with her paws and devoured the entire thing. I think about how, declawed and all, she stood up to every rescue pitbull who passed through our home.

Kitty with prey-driven Lucy at left and her sister Ella on the right.

I think about how difficult life had become since she became hyperthyroid. I think about the senility and the incessant howling in the middle of the night. I think about the baby gate we bought to lock her in the living room overnight. I think about how frustrated I had become with her these last few months. I think about how she went to sleep behind my head on top of my pillows her last night, seemingly unaware that a vet would be coming to our home to take her life the next morning. I think about how I didn’t sleep at all that night.

Cuddling together in 6C-North.

I think about how much I’ve missed her. The old her.

Happier and healthier days in 5G-South.

I think about how our family is one less, now, and how life will be easier without her. And of course I think about how that makes me feel riddled with guilt.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: animal rescue, personal

My Unexpected Relationship With Breastfeeding

March 4, 2011 By Reedu 13 Comments

I feel compelled to write something about my unexpected relationship with breastfeeding. Just this week I read a great, balanced post about breastfeeding on a mommy blog I like, and then today, one of Hollywood’s newest moms, Kourtney Kardashian, blogged that she just stopped nursing her 15 month old son.

I was about eight weeks pregnant when my family began asking if I would be breastfeeding my baby. I say “asking,” but really it was more like telling. They were quick to advise me about the health benefits of breastfeeding and about the bonding, too. I told them that I hadn’t given it much thought, and that I’d need to do my own research.

The truth is that I can’t stand being told what to do. The other truth is that I was scared of breastfeeding. It was one thing to squeeze out a baby the size of a watermelon and it was a whole other thing to put my breasts to work, too. And if I were to be really honest, I was terrified I would fail at it. I was more fearful of failing at breastfeeding then I was of giving birth, but now that I have done both, I can say that I should have feared the latter, more.

Soon after I gave birth to a healthy baby boy we named Mylo, my midwife introduced him to my breasts and we fumbled quite a bit. I was in awe of what just happened, of what just came out of me and I remember wanting to be on my Blackberry more than I wanted to breastfeed. And because Mylo was exhausted from the whole birthing experience I turned him over to his father while I got to work fielding calls, emails, texts and Facebook. What a mistake that was.

While my son did suckle a little bit during his first couple of hours of life, it was not enough. The doctors on the maternity ward informed me the next day that his bilirubin level was dangerously high and that we would have to spend another night.

So while the first night in the hospital was exciting because my husband roomed in with the baby and me, the second night was just me and a cast iron, industrial size hospital breast pump machine. Jason went home to our menagerie and Mylo spent the night in the NICU under the lights. The indescribable high I felt from labor, birth and the fact that this incredible little person had just entered my life was gone, and a cold hard reality about my new found responsibilities had set in.

I woke every two hours to pump my breasts only to fill the NICU bottles with droplets of my colostrum. My nipples were the size of my big toes and I was in pain. At the behest of the NICU nurse I mixed my colostrum with formula to help Mylo’s bilirubin level go down. By the next day it had gone down a little and we were reluctantly discharged.

Breastfeeding my son in the hospital on day two of his life.

Only I am to blame for how breastfeeding began and believe me, I feel great regret about it. But I also think I have redeemed myself. After the bilirubin setback, I made breastfeeding a priority for at least six months.

When we got home from the hospital I walked around the apartment in an ugly nursing bra feeding Mylo almost every hour until my milk came in on the fourth day. I kept a journal. I fed him until he dozed off and until I dozed off. Eat, sleep, feed. That’s all I did. I had new found respect for our four-legged friends.

But breastfeeding did not come without its challenges. The first few weeks of breastfeeding were met with mind-numbing headaches almost the instant as my son began to suckle. My midwife thought I was dehydrated (but I was and always have been a BIG water drinker). I didn’t know how I could possibly continue until Mylo’s pediatrician and my lactation consultant confirmed it was a common hormone-related side effect that would work itself out. Three weeks into breastfeeding the headaches were gone for good.

After my painful experience with the hospital pump, I feared my Medela Swing Breast Pump and put off using it for weeks. (Little did I know that it was 1,000 times gentler than the hospital pump.) Then there was the bucket loads of spit-up to manage and the reflux that Mylo was diagnosed with.

After Mylo’s two-month appointment with the pediatrician I proclaimed to my husband, “two months down, four months to go!” But the challenges that accompany breastfeeding have a way of working themselves out. The pain goes away, you find a rhythm, the baby’s stomach matures and the reflux goes away, the spit up becomes less, and, dare I say… you grow to love it. I sure did.

It also helped that I found comfort and friendship in an army of new moms in my Brooklyn neighborhood who were struggling with nursing issues of their own. I have breastfed Mylo in public with 20 or more women at a time, in movie theaters, in my car, in dressing rooms, at restaurants and even in bars.

A little over a month ago I wrote a post in which I called breastfeeding a 2 1/2 year old “strange.” While I know that is definitely not for me, I do regret saying what I did as I know I offended many women. It was shortsighted of me to put an end date on nursing my son. For someone who didn’t even know if I wanted to breastfeed at all, I have not only passed my six month goal, but I have not set a new one.

People always have something to say about how long is too long or not long enough to breastfeed. I was one of them. But I have learned that this is a personal decision that is best left up to the baby and their mommy, as I have decided to leave it up to my son and me.

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I would be delighted to hear about other mother’s struggles and/or fears about breastfeeding and how they overcame them.

Filed Under: Babies, Featured Tagged With: breastfeeding, personal

Pregnant 1, Trying 2

February 28, 2011 By Reedu 7 Comments

My husband Jason and I were out for a rare night with friends on Saturday when we found out that one of the couples who was there are newly pregnant. They are expecting their third child while the woman’s sister and good friend (who were also there with their husbands) are both trying to conceive. The latter is even going the IVF route.

It wasn’t announced that night for a few reasons. One, we were there to celebrate someone’s birthday. Two, she is only five weeks along, and three, the woman who is pregnant was trying to take her sister and friend’s feelings into consideration.

But when you mix joyous news with alcohol it’s bound to not stay a secret for too long.

The drinks continued to flow throughout the night and the news eventually got out. And as I suspected, the sister of the woman who is pregnant was more hurt that she didn’t know. Of course that’s not to say there are not jealousy pangs going on behind closed doors, I am sure there are. In both respects, I can’t blame her.

It was considerate of my friend to be mindful of her sister and friend’s feelings who are trying to conceive but it was more awkward when she was trying to squelch her news then if she had just come out with it.

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I have no idea why some people are so lucky and for others it takes a bit more work. It is without question, unfair, but is there any real way to spare someone’s feelings?

Tell me your thoughts on the subject matter in the comments.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: personal, pregnancy

Why I Love Parenthood

February 23, 2011 By Reedu 2 Comments

While I do love being a parent, what I’m actually talking about is the NBC TV show on Tuesday nights.

I remember when I saw the first preview for Parenthood last year. I was still watching The Biggest Loser then and the fact that the one hour drama began when TBL ended worked in my favor. A couple of other things worked in my favor then, too. It was PM (pre-Mylo) and I was pregnant with little else going on in my life. I had oodles and oodles of time to watch obese people work out and get hooked on a one hour family drama.

The first reason why I love Parenthood: Peter Krause. He’s Hollywood’s second most underserved actor. (The first one is Michael Keaton.)

Peter Krause as Adam Braverman on NBC's Parenthood.

Although Peter is handsome, it has nothing to do with that. He plays his characters with a kind of purpose and effectiveness that makes it feel like he’s right next to me in my living room. I felt that way about him in his most notable role as Nate Fisher in Six Feet Under and now again, as Adam Braverman in Parenthood.

The second reason why I love this family drama is just that. It’s family drama. The Braverman’s are volatile yet loving. The fact that someone is always yelling at someone else in the show speaks to me. It’s how my family was and still is, so I suppose that I find comfort in this kind of messy menage.

The third reason why I love Parenthood is they show men cry. Think about it, other than The Bachelor, The Biggest Loser and other reality shows, when do you see men cry on TV?

The fourth reason why I love Parenthood is because they’ve broached vegetarianism in the latest episode of this wonderful show. And they did so beautifully.

Sydney, the daughter of one of the Braverman daughters decided to go veg in last night’s episode. With the number of U.S. adult vegetarians at 7.3 million, or 3.2 percent of the population as reported by the Vegetarian Times Magazine in 2008, it’s any wonder why more shows don’t incorporate this healthy, ethical and emerging way of life.

I’ve always been a big fan of animal welfare issues that are positively portrayed in mainstream media. So the fact that Parenthood had 5.5 million viewers on February 22nd – and that’s NOT including DVRs – had terrific potential to effect the public.

And finally, the fifth reason why I love Parenthood is because it was one of our motivating forces behind getting TiVo. After recently becoming a mom, I no longer have the luxury of watching TV late at night or watching my shows uninterrupted. While The Biggest Loser got the cut, the Braverman’s are here to stay!

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Do you watch Parenthood? Do you love it like I do – why or why not?

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: personal

Giving With Kiva

February 22, 2011 By Reedu 6 Comments

This past Christmas my brother and his wife gave my husband Jason and me a microloan gift to help global entrepreneurs on Kiva.org. If you’re not familiar with what Kiva is, here’s what they say on their website. “Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.”

Today I chose someone to lend the microloan gift to and I must say, it felt a little like playing God. Sort of how it feels when I am at the pound choosing a cat or dog to save and invite into my rescue. Ok, maybe not as extreme, but still.

I started my search for the right candidate to lend to by filtering out the men. As a woman who understands how difficult the business world can be, I wanted to lend to a woman. I was also interested in lending to a woman in Palestine, my father’s country. Jason had previously made his microloan gift to a Palestinian man looking to build his computer business.

I have to tell you that after reading the bios of the five or so Palestinian women who were seeking loans, I was not impressed. They were looking to raise money for their husbands’ business, not their own. What’s more, where there should be a photo of the woman, is a photo of their husband with a note that says she is conservative and does not want her picture on the Internet. I respect that she may not want her face plastered all over the web, but I’m not down with the third world, old school, sexist divide that appears evident in request for the loans from the woman for the man. In the end, I was disappointed that I couldn’t help out a woman from my father’s country.

I wound up choosing Kokoe Homefa Messan from Togo, a little West African country near Nigeria, where I was born. And like me, she is married with one child. Her work involves buying second-hand clothing to sell in an open-air market. If you didn’t already know this fun fact about me, I am a huge fan of flea markets and of buying from consignment shops.

In the end, supporting Koke’s used clothing business didn’t just feel good, it felt right.

Koke Homefa Messan sells second-hand clothing in the market of Lomé in Togo.

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Have you given with Kiva and were you also in pursuit of a connection with the person you wanted to lend to?

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: personal

Teaching Manners to Children Other than Your Own

February 21, 2011 By Reedu 2 Comments

Growing up, manners were no small joke in our household. Lessons learned that I used to find embarrassing I am grateful for today. I was taught to not only say hello to the parent of a friend I was calling on the telephone but announce who I was. Friends who called me on the phone and gave the usual, “Is Reedu there?” were answered by my mom with a “Yes,” and a dial tone.

Something else they ingrained in our youthful psyche is to always respect our elders. That not only meant holding open doors, we were also taught to offer up our seat as well. Respect for my elders became more finely tuned years later when I began volunteering with hospice and Alzheimer’s patients in New York City.

While I am grateful that my friends’ parents found me polite and respectful, and that elderly people have had visions of me settling down with their grandsons, I don’t know that I would have taken lightly to such discipline being enforced by anyone other than my folks.

So you could imagine my horror, (not necessarily surprise) when me and my mom were exiting Chipotle today and she snapped at two kids who didn’t hold open the door for me and the monstrosity of a baby stroller that I was pushing.

The kids were 12, maybe 13 years old and were walking in through the first set of double doors as we happened to be walking out of the second set of double doors. They changed their young, adolescent minds at the last second and turned out the door they just came through with the glass making a notable thud against the front tire of my baby jogger.

It was not purposeful so I didn’t think much of it, especially when I saw a package of “bang snaps” in their hands. But my mom thought a whole lot of it and let them know. She marched up to them and cracked, “You don’t close a door on a baby carriage!” Bang. Snap.

Should manners be taught by non-parents?

Up until that point they stood on the busy Brooklyn sidewalk giggling and frantically trying to open the package of bang snaps as if they were about to pull off the prank of all pranks on a friend who was following close behind. But now they stood there dazed and confused, looking around for a baby stroller. (Mind you I was I was halfway down the block at this point.)

Part of me knows that my mom was merely trying to protect me and stick up for me, which I appreciate, as I would certainly do the same for my children. But at the same time, I took issue with the fact that she felt the need to discipline somebody else’s children. I’m not sure I would want a perfect stranger scolding my son should he get caught up in an innocent pubescent moment. And there will be many of them, I am sure.

Maybe it was the zen mood that comes with a satisfying meal at my favorite fast food joint, maybe it was the kids’ look on their faces as they facetiously negotiated the bang snaps, or maybe it was the fact that children today are hopeless. In any case, I didn’t think it was a big deal. I also didn’t think it warranted a lesson from my mom.

My thinking is that kids who purposely close doors on women with baby carriages, or on their elders’ for that matter, will have many of life’s doors close on them. What’s that saying… what goes around comes around?

How do you feel about other people, or even strangers for that matter, teaching manners to your children?

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Brooklyn, personal

Ryno

February 17, 2011 By Reedu Leave a Comment

Timmy Ryniker 1978 – 1996

I looked around at all those young shocked faces. They had discovered that death could reach into their midst, youth did not shelter them, and they were confused. They had loved him, shared in fun, mischief, adventures. Now they shared the same anguish and stood together, like a flock of frightened birds, contemplating their memories and their loss. This experience would forever live with them, and make them grow, make them better, wiser.

-Kuki Gallmann

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: personal

Our Midwife, Beverly Woodard CNM

February 16, 2011 By Reedu 4 Comments

This post has been a long time coming. It’s about our midwife and has been brewing in my mind and in my heart for some time now.

Last March when I was halfway through my pregnancy, we ended our prenatal care with our OB/GYN and set out to find a midwife. My husband Jason and I had just seen The Business of Being Born which was an eye opener for us since we were new to everything regarding birth and babies.

We first met Beverly Woodard of Fruition Midwifery at her office in Chelsea on March 30, 2010. She was the only one of a half dozen women I had called who was willing to take me into her practice. I write about our decision to switch from an OB/GYN to a midwife in an earlier post, here.

Before I met Beverly my impression of a midwife was someone who was was warm, maternal and perhaps a bit crunchy. Beverly was anything but that. She was a whippersnapper. She was autocratic, and she took great pleasure in shooting down our fanciful, liberal hopes for a drug-free birth. She was also impeccably groomed.

The months that followed in the rest of my pregnancy I would come to question our decision to leave our OB/GYN for a midwife. Beverly’s care was top notch, but we were not gelling the way I had hoped. When I brought my mom along to my 34 week appointment to meet Beverly, she said she understood how I felt but that one thing was for certain: Beverly knew her babies.

And so I kept this mantra in my head for the next six weeks and it helped. At my 38 week appointment Beverly advised me to buy some castor oil from Duane Reade and to drink it if my water broke but contractions did not follow. This was the first of many signs that Beverly was in fact fully supportive of my plans for a natural birth.

My labor and delivery was long and arduous, but also all-natural. I say the following with not one iota of uncertainty: I would not have had the labor and birth that I did had it not been for Beverly. I have written in length about my son’s birth story, here.

I labored for 30 hours from start to finish. Beverly provided phone support via text earlier in the day when I was very functional and then over the phone with Jason later on at night when I had moved from the latent phase of labor to the active phase of labor.

Beverly was also very supportive in the hospital. She staved off interventions such as an epidural, excessive fetal heart monitoring, internals and more. She held me from behind and swayed with me when I was at my worst. She patted my forehead with a damp washcloth. She told stories to distract me from the pain. I was wrong all along. Beverly was in fact extremely maternal.

At 9:00 am on Monday, August 9th, after six hours of blood, sweat, tears and other bodily fluids, Beverly even let me deliver my own baby! How selfless. Here’s a woman who’s job it was to present me with my baby and instead, presented me with my crowning moment in life.

With our midwife Beverly Woodard who is not just magnificent and maternal but modest, too. We had to beg her to pose in this family photo with us.

Later that day, when the endorphins and excitement of the arrival of our son began to settle in, my husband said it best: “If you were going into battle, Beverly is just the kind of person you would want next to you in the trenches.” I could not have agreed more. Beverly is not just the person who delivered our first born. She is a part of our family now, and I cannot wait to go into battle with her again. Let’s just hope it won’t be for a couple of more years.

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What about you, do you have a lot of love for the medical professional who helped bring your children into the world? Why or why not?

Filed Under: Babies Tagged With: natural birth, personal

Granna’s Lentil Soup

February 15, 2011 By Reedu Leave a Comment

My mom makes the best lentil soup ever. She makes a lot of things well but her lentil soup has turned me into a sort of lentil soup snob. The recipe, which happens to be 100% vegan, is quite simple from what I understand. It has four ingredients: water, lentils, salt and onions. The most labor intensive part is the mincing and sauteeing of the onions. And since onions make my eyes tear and my hair smell, I’ve never bothered to make it.

But it may be time to learn because not only do I love my mom’s lentil soup, but my husband Jason is a big fan, and, well, so now is our son! Mylo had his first taste of his granna’s lentil soup today and the child could not get enough. He delighted in every slurp and moaned in between spoonfuls while his dad would go back to the bowl and reload. And as you can see from the below photo, he sported the brown remnants of each bite with pride!

Granna, it's delish!

I watched adoringly from the side as this was all going on. But I was also quick to finish every last lentil in my bowl aware that Jason was frustrated by what started out as HIS bowl of soup, had quickly become our 6 month old’s. And, well, if you know Jason and how well he does NOT share food, then you would have gotten a real kick out of it, too.