First, a recipe.
Every year, my cousins and I offer to cook my grandparents dinner as their Christmas gift (believe it or not, they love hanging out with us!) This year, it was my turn to provide the salad. As I typically do these days, I just Googled the ingredients I had in the house, and came up with the following;
Beet Salad
baby spinach (I used Organic Spring Mix)
apples
oranges
beets (I used canned)
slivered almonds
balsamic vinaigrette dressing or raspberry vinaigrette
ummmm, delicious! and so easy (clearly) ! Best thing? You can substitute for whatever you might have in your pantry. For example, I made some at home the following evening, but was out of apples, so made the same salad, but skipped the almonds and substituted peaches for apples. Still delicious!
Next, HILARIOUS website find!
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| courtesy of www.damnyouautocorrect.com |
If you haven't already, check out www.damnyyouautocorrect.com. OMG Hilarious! My husband and I can't stop reading and laughing :)
Now, for some real Sunday Surf.
A recent post from Mama Eve discussed our birth expectations. I loved this one because it resonated with me after the two totally opposite births of my now toddler and baby A. Both were scheduled C sections, so with my first, I kind of disregarded the whole 'birth plan' idea. But after him coming a day early, and more things (errors between doctors offices, hospitals, nurses, etc) that went terribly terribly wrong... I realized (much later, with retrospect) I needed a birth plan.
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| my son the day he was born, finally being transported to the NICU several hours from me :( |
My son was born with spontaneous bilateral pneumothorax, more commonly described as- 2 collapsed lungs. I could go on for days describing the plethora of things that went awry the day of my son's birth- but I'll spare you all the ridiculous details and will just say that as I sat there, a new mom without my baby- and then many months later when the hormones and chaos settled; that if I EVER did this thing called childbirth again- I was going to be more prepared.
* I feel I need to enter a disclaimer here- I was without my baby for almost a full 48 hours, followed by spending about 6 days (so 8 days total for my 'Babushka') in the NICU. While this was all awful at the time, I feel fortunate that since my son was sent home, he has been a happy and healthy boy. I am forever thankful every moment I have him in my arms, as I know (firsthand having spent those days in the NICU) that many parents, are not so lucky.
So regardless of if I felt it would go exactly as I planned, I wanted to feel more in control next time. So in my opinion, it is so worth having some kind of explanation and expectation of how you would like your baby's birth to go. Do I think those with the lists of specifics that are 5 pages long are ridiculous? Yes :)
But I was glad, 7 months ago, that I had made some type of birth plan with my doctor (a new doctor, by the way). We had discussed what we would do if 'a' happened, or what if 'b' happened, etc. And it made the whole childbirth process, scheduled C section and all, a much more pleasant (as pleasant as major abdominal surgery can be) experience.
Granted, I think there is a certain degree of confidence and preparedness with your second child versus your first. And I also think I had learned plenty of things I knew I did NOT want after having such a horrendous first birth experience. So using that information, and discussing various scenarios in detail with my (new) doctor, my husband and I investigated and found a hospital that fit our needs (with a NICU on site- just in case) and decided on a tentative birth plan together.
This time, it certainly worked to our advantage. Everything went 'as planned' :) And we went home with a happy, healthy baby.
So did you have expectations for your child(s) birth? And how did your actual experience compare to your expectations?
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