Here’s one for reference:

The color is Benjamin Moore “Crystal Blue” which is a like a pale robin’s egg blue.  We chose to use the low VOC aura paint which is like $50 a gallon. Then, because it would negate the whole purpose of using the aura paint if we didn’t, we had to also buy the aura white paint for the ceiling. 

We also got the 8-drawer hemnes dresser at Ikea, I hope it doesn’t make the room feel too small once we get the crib in there!

Its big enough that it should hold all of Jasper’s clothes and we can use the smaller top drawers for diaper changing stuff.. or we may put in some shelves above it for the diaper stuff. We’ll see.

I’m also going to go ahead and order the crib. It’s on my registry, but I’m afraid that by the time my shower comes around it may be out of stock and then we’ll be screwed.

Now onto the Stroller! 

On the way back from Ikea we had JUST enough time before they closed to stop at Buy Buy Baby and check out the Uppababy Vista Stroller.

I had read alot of good things about this stroller but wasn’t convinced I’d like it more than the bugaboo. It weighs about 5 lbs more than the frog and so I was skeptical. 

But, it was love at first sight and I was easily able to pick up the stroller even with one hand, so the weight (25 lbs including frame and seat or bassinet) is not an issue.

It retails for $65o, which means that for us (because I can get 20% off anything sold at BRU) it will actually be MORE expensive than the frog, but I still think it’s worth it. The main advantages that I see over the frog are:

1) The undercarriage basket is HUGE. Much better than the bug.
2) The bassinet is really cushy and the matress in it has all sorts of nift features like the shell can be zipped out to wash and it’s reversable so that it’s mesh for hot weather and foam for cold.
3) It folds with the seat on. This is a big one for me.. once Jasper has outgrown the basinett, no need to take off the seat ever again.
4) It comes iwth more accessories like a mosquito/Sun mesh sheild thing and a rain cover.
5) It has all wheel suspension which the Chameleon does, but the Frog does not.
6) It has rubber tires that can’t get flats.
7) It has no axis bar to kick accidentally between the two back wheels.
8) The handle telescopes up which the Chameleon does but the Frog does not.
9) It is useable up to 40lbs so should last a bit longer.

The only feature it doesn’t have that the bugs do is that the handle position is not reversable. The seat is, but you don’t have the choice of having either the smaller or larger wheels facing out. Not sure how much of a downside this is given that MOST other strollers don’t do this.

New for the Vista in 2008 are a cup holder attachment and slimmer wheel base (24 instead of a really wide 26.5) so even though you can find some deals on the 2007 model online, I think it’s worth it to get the ‘08 version.

We only saw the red in person:

But the green is quite nice too:

and I personally love the orange, but Jeff liked the red better:

Father-to-be Eric Discher wrote a really thorough review of the Uppababy Vista on his blog. It’s a little hard to read because he’s having problems with the paragraphs working on his blog, but there’s lots of good info there.

And if you’re still not convinced, check out this little youtube video:

I think the elephant is my favorite, but unless he makes an early appearance Jasper will be a Leo, so the Lion seems most fitting:

Giraffe, Alligator and Lion available at Sprout Home. Elephant and others available at Romp.com

Let’s face it, registering for baby stuff is NOT like registering for wedding gifts. Registering for wedding gifts is like going to a fun theme park, you know what your favorite rides are, you’ve been there before and you’ve been looking forward to this visit for a while.

In contrast, registering for baby stuff is like going to a country where everyone has three heads and you don’t speak the language.  I need a whoosiboppybumboswaddle what??

This is where having girlfriends who have just become new moms is absolutely priceless. My friend Tracy (Gemma’s mommy) actually just logged into my BRU registry and added everything she thought I should have, and she even picked colors I like to boot! Doesn’t get any better than that. And if there’s something I’m not sure about I can always delete or change it.  (She lives a little over an hour away from me, otherwise we would have made a fun afternoon out of it in person.)

Now..where to register?

Obviously Babies R Us has a pretty big corner on this market. But, they certainly don’t have everything. For example a Graco Snugride in Red, or the baby mod crib that I decided on from Walmart.. or the fancy stroller you can only get at amazon.com. Clearly you don’t want to give your guests a list of 10 stores you are registered at..

That’s where Amazing Registry comes in!

It can be a bit buggy at times, but the concept is pure genius. Create an account, tell it which stores out of the 10 or so it is compatible with (including Amazon, Target, Walmart, BRU, Land of Nod, PBK , Babycenter etc.) you have a registry with and it will automatically fetch those registries and list all the items on one convenient page with a customizable URL that you can give to your guests.

There was one other “metaregistry” like this one that I looked at, but you weren’t actually registering with each of the stores like you would normally. The downside to that is that you want your guests to be able to shop in store and also you want to get that completion coupon of course! (Speaking of which, I fudged my due date up a month to get those a month early, I wonder if everyone will be alarmed?)

So to me, Amazing Registry was the clear winner.  Try it, I think you’ll like it!

Bitch OB: Just take some iron twice a day.

Me: ok, any specific dosage?

Bitch OB: nope, just take it twice a day.

Me: Huhhh??

Bitch OB: Yeah well, there are so many different kinds and formulations that it’s impossible for me to say how much you should take.

Thanks for nothing lady! Could you be any LESS helpful??? How bout a recommendation, or a scrip for god’s sake? The irony of her saying to stay off the internet when she dispenses so freely of NON information.

The good news is that I switched my next appointment (May 14) from her to the one OB I like, the first one I saw at that practice who seems like the only through one. I’ll ask her about the repeat blood tests and also why she thinks my liver functions were so elevated.

God these people are taking years off my life!

On to happier things, like my friend Sara’s shower this weekend..

I got to hang with my two favorite little girls:

Baby Gemma with Mom Tracey

Baby Daphne on Auntie Amy’s lap

I must say that just GETTING to the shower was a huge struggle. I was the designated gift buyer for the gifts that me, Sarah and Tracey went in on because I live in suburbia, have a car, don’t yet have a baby and also get 10% off at Babies R Us.

My trip to BRU was rather eye opening. We bought Sara a diaper bag, a bumbo seat and a boppy off her registry. NONE of which could be wrapped in a reasonable way. The Bumbo seat came in an octagonal box. Have you ever tried to wrap anything that comes in an octagonal box?? I didn’t think so. The boppy is half moon shaped, soft and also very large. BRU didn’t have a gift box big enough for the diaper bag, so it was just a big PITA. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I just was buying one gift, because then I would have gotten one gift bag, but the large gift bags they have there are $6. I didn’t want to spend close to $20 on gift bags alone!

Oh, and did I mention that they don’t have baby shower cards at my BRU? WTF?

Then, I hit a ton of traffic heading into NYC. Then, I had a hard time parking near St. Marks (no surprise there) and finally finally found a spot with two hour meter parking, but it was .25 for 10 minutes. I have a ton of quarters in my car, but had taken Jeff’s car in, so had to put in the ones I had and walk in to the shower and declare “I need everyone’s quarters! (oh, and sorry I’m late)”

Wow, it seems like I can’t stop ranting lately. Sorry.

The good news is that we started painting the nursery Sunday! Hopefully we’ll finish up this week and I can post pics. Though it won’t be so exciting because the only nursery item we have is the glider. More on nursery items later..

I finally called in to see if they had my blood work results back.  After the usual bumbling fumbling of my name etc, they couldn’t find them so said they would call me back.

A while later the doc himself calls (wow, that’s a first!) and tells me that my blood tests show I’m anemic, and there are many viruses that can cause anemia, so I need to be tested again in two weeks.

“Viruses like pregnancy?” I ask (half joking).

“Your not pregnant!” He proceeds to tell me.  Uh ok. You’ve just confirmed every suspicion I’ve ever had about doctors NEVER reading patients’ charts.

Glad we have that cleared up.

I go on to tell him that I had come back anemic from the first trimester blood tests and that my OB had told me they’d “check it again later in pregnancy.” On a side note, I get more and more pissed that at my last OB visit they didn’t mention that as a possible reason for my extreme fatigue. (See two paragraphs up about never reading patients’ charts.)

I ask him specifically about the CMV results. He says they are “high for CMV” but that it looks like an old infection. He aslo says I’m high for Epstein Barr, but also an old infection. 

I mention to him that I’m very concerned about the CMV results, that its quite bad for the baby if the mother does contract a primary CMV infection during pregnancy.

“I don’t know anything about that” he says.

Even more reason my stupid OBs office should have taken care of this to begin with. GRRRR.

So bottom line is we know that I’m anemic (no surprise there given previous test results) and that I have antibodies for both epstein barr and CMV. I will have repeat testing done, which from what I read is really the only way to know if what you have is an “accute” infection.

Given how I currently feel about both my OB and this primary care doc, I’m not sure I trust EITHER of them to make the definitive diagnosis of primary vs. old infection because:

A) They have both proven to slightly incompetant

B) These diagnoses are pretty hard to make to begin with and

C) None of the docs in my OB practice or Primary care practice are Dr. House. I mean they barely seem to have a grasp of their own area of “expertise” let alone virology or immunology!

I’m not sure anyone will correctly be able to interpret my blood results, but obviously I’ll have the repeat test done in a few weeks.

About 2-3 weeks ago, I had a really bad sore throat.  I thought I was getting the flu and was grateful that I wasn’t in my first trimester when a temparature can be really bad for baby..

Strangely though, unlike the usual sore throat > sneezing > stuffy nose> congestion > cough progression that I have always had for any cold or flu, the soreness completely disappeared two days later. The only symptom I was left with was fatigue that hasn’t gone away.

Fast forward to a week ago when I feel that I have a slightly swollen gland on the left side of my neck.  I didn’t think much of it until it got so big and so sore that you can see it bulging if I just tilt my head a bit and so sore that it hurts when I turn my head.

Due to all of the moving around and switching of health plans we’ve done in the past couple of years I don’t really have a primary care doc. (I had one picked out who’s name was on my insurance card, but I’ve never seen him. )

Last Saturday, the gland became large enough that I realized I really need medical attention in case it is some sort of infection. I called the primary listed on my card – he’s not accepting new Aetna patients. I had an appointment scheduled to see my OB on Wednesday, but didn’t want to wait that long. Knowing that my OB appointments are like 2 minutes long, I thought maybe they could squeeze me in Monday instead of Wednesday…

I call the receptionist and she says “swollen gland? That’s not pregnancy related. Call your primary care doc or go to a clinic.”

Bitch.

So I call Aetna, the only urgent care clinic that accepts Aetna is in NJ.  Off to Jersey I go. A negative rapid strepp test later the doc tells me to start antibiotics (just in case even though he thinks its probably viral.) He says hell call with the results of a more thourough throat culture (which turned out to also be negative.)

Two days later on Wednesday, I have my OB appointment. The doc says “wow, that’s big” and that he’s not worried about the baby, but that I really needed follow up care because “that thing is the size of a golf ball.”  To his credit, he did offer to help me get an appointment with a primary if I couldn’t find one to see me soon.

I did end up being able to get an appointment at the office of a doctor I’d seen once about 10 years ago. Other than being a little wacky, he at least took the issue seriously and ordered a CBC, thyroid tests, mono and CMV titer. I went to quest this morning and had the blood drawn.

My dad calls me this afternoon and says he thinks I probably have CMV, its super common and I’ve had all the symptoms.  He said he was sure the baby was protected though because isn’t that what the “umbilical cord” is there for? (Dad, I think you mean placenta.)

I of course google CMV during pregnancy. Wow, I wish I hadn’t.

According to CDC, CMV infection occurs in about 1 in 150 babies born in the United States, some of whom develop hearing or vision loss, mental disability or other problems. It is the leading infectious cause of birth defects and developmental disabilities in the United States, according to the CDC.

1 in 150! And yet, I bet your OB never talked to you about CMV (according to MSNBC, 40% of OBs don’t). Even though its probably 10 times more likely than say Downs, which is something they routinely recommend screenings for.

Needless to say, I am terrified.

I called the doctor that ordered the bloodtest and asked the receptionist how long the results would take. She said usually about a week for bloodwork from quest. A week of sleepless nights.. so I called my OBs office, a little ticked off that the OB never told me (even though I had the symptoms) that there was a potential (however small) of having something that could be bad for my baby to see if maybe they would re order the test stat.

I start crying on the phone with the receptionist, so she puts the doctor on call on (who I’ve never seen.)

In a pretty bitchy way she tells me that it’s so rare that I shouldn’t worry about it because there is no treatment for it anyway and that I should just stay off the internet. Funny, because everything I’ve read says its NOT really that rare and that OBs are the ones that maybe should get ON the internet. Besides which, telling an expectant mom not to worry about her unborn child is really quite futile, and in my opinion, shows a complete lack of compassion and sense of reality. Thanks for nothing.

Defeated but willing to give it one more try to get the order changed to stat I call the primary care docs office again. This time, I ask to speak to the doctor who I saw yesterday. They take down my name and number and say the doctor on call will call me back.

Some other person calls who can’t even spell CMV (clearly not a doc, but I can hear the doc in the background).  I guess she mistakenly tells the doc its mono I want stat? Because the doc (I think it was the doc) gets on the phone and says don’t worry, I don’t think of mono when I think of mental disabilities and babies. No, NOT mono, CMV! Oh she says, I mean yes CMV. Ok, clearly she hasn’t done her homework either.  She does tell me that the results can’t be ordered stat because its a culture anyway, and that it should be around 3 days or so.  Again I get the “don’t worry about a disease you probably don’t have” lecture. Its too beautiful a weekend she says.

Clearly she’s never been a mom, or pregnant. Or if she has, she has amnesia.

If you are still with me, you may be wondering why I’m posting this.  It’s partly because

A) I am upset and hormonal and needed to get that off my chest

B) I am half hoping that if I write about it, the test won’t come back positive for primary exposure

C) Because if you interact with children on a regular basis (daycare worker, or mom!) and are pregnant, you really need to know about CMV and its dangers and take extra precautions. Because if your OB is anything like mine, you won’t hear it from them.

Links:

http://www.wearsthebaby.com/cmv.htm

http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/cytomegalovirusinfection.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22827257/

Available only at Toys R Us, these new line natural wood toys are made from replenishable materials that are chemical-free and eco-friendly (they bear the Forest Stewardship Council seal of certification.) The toys are simply decorated with the old-school wood-burning technique:

Natural Wood Fire Engine $19.99 

 28 piece Alphabet Blocks Set (in pull car) $14.99

They remind me a lot of the toys that I grew up with at Waldorf School, except those were only available at small expensive boutique stores that imported mostly from Europe.  Green has certainly gone mainstream (have you heard Walmart’s new slogan?), which means more choice for parents – Never a bad thing!

What do you all think?

One of my favorite features is the “nursery tours” in which they feature a different reader’s nursery and the reader details where they got each item etc.  like this one that features two items I’d been eyeing from walmart for quite some time, the Baby Mod ParkLane crib and dresser and the orchard bedding set:

It was also really interesting to see the bedding set in this room, because the colors are so much more lovely and subdued than in the picture up on the Walmart site:

Dontcha think?

The crazy thing is, the set is on clearance now for $39 from Walmart… so I bought them! Yes, I still want my Migi Pinwheel, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have an extra set right? The colors in this set obviously look great with the bluish/aquaish walls I have planned, so I just decided to get them. The shipping was only .97 cents, so that didn’t hurt either.

Ohdedoh is currently running a “Now You see it Now You Don’t” series of organization and storage tips that has given me some great ideas. One of my favorites so far is Sylvie’s storage baskets which is a colorful, cute and cheap way to hide baby’s toys:

On a side note, I LOVE those window treatments. I haven’t been able to find tie up shades like that with a blue ribbon, so far I’ve only seen these from Pottery Barn with a white ribbon that will fit our narrow (26″) window panels:

But they don’t look as flowy and beautiful as the ones in Sylvie’s room. If you’ve seen something like that please let me know!

Its our 2 year anniversary today, and we’re doing it up right with a little trip to a Castle.  Luckily we have one right in our backyard in Westchester appropriately called “Castle on the Hudson.”

Its the sort of extravagant thing we never ever do, but since our first year anniversary consisted of a take out dinner we figured we are due for the splurge. At least my condition is an excellent excuse to forgo the Wine Pairing with Tasting menu (at $176 a person!) without looking cheap and choose instead the oh-so economical regular tasting menu (a more reasonable? $100 per person.)

Its jacket required for gentlemen, which clearly means I have to dress up too. None of my target-swimwear-as-maternity-clothes purchases will do for this occasion I’m afraid… What to wear??

Baby only started moving so that I could feel him consistently at around 19-20 weeks around the same time we had the big U/S.  Jeff had left town for a long business trip right after that, so I had hoped that by the time he got back he’d feel the wee one moving around in there.

After a few days and several attempts where baby was simply NOT cooperating, last night Jeff was finally at the right place on my belly at the right time because he felt a strong kick! It was so  exciting for both of us, I loved how his eyes lit up as if he’d realized concretely for the first time that yes, there really is a baby in there..