Järistyksiä

..and what have you done? Extra points to those who know where the line is from (who doesn't, really?). It's not quite Christmas anymore, but it certainly seems like the new year has just begun. We've been home for not quite a month yet, and everything's back to normal. You know, it's sunny and nice, flowers on our porch are blooming, the tomato plants we grew in our living room (really, tomatoes) still yield a few red'uns here and there - and then I stop and longingly think of long, dark nights, sleety rain, dead trees and plants... ahh to be back in Finland again!

Other than that: end-of-the-year stress morphed instantly into beginning-of-the-year stress. It has taken me three weeks to catch up with work at work (Asian Art Museum, for those of you that don't know), I have a thesis meeting in three hours (and two months to submit a first version), and we've finally begun to realize there'll be three of us in about three months. The time it takes to figure out everything as a first-time parent is amazing. Luckily, this is California (read: progressive hippie-land), and giving birth is one of those things that folks here pay attention to. The more natural the better is the general theme, and that suits me just fine.

The flipside is, there are so many options and possible preferences to choose from that it's dizzying to figure out what WE want. The hospitals give one an option to tailor the birth experience (!) quite extensively. Our problem is that neither of us ever really researched child birth before or had strong opinions for or against anything - so now that we're supposed to express our preferences we're kind of clueless. Pain medication? What kind? Or none? Do you have a midwife? Or a doula? Who is your pediatrician? Nursing preferences? Diaper preferences? Oh and don't forget to bring your favourite music to the birthing room!

I'm getting stressed out just thinking about trying to pick music that I'd like to listen to during labour. How would I know what that situation calls for? PJ Harvey? Bach? Freakin' Enya? Let alone then all the other, somewhat more serious questions that need answers.

And yes, we will be taking classes to learn more - but you can just guess how many different types of classes there were available and how long it took to pick some that would (hopefully) be the most useful. We skipped the 'Birth and Meditation' as well a 'Birthing Yoga' and picked things like 'Managing Labor Pain'. It just seemed more like our kinda' thang.

So that's what's happened with my January. Oh and we went on a wonderful birhtday trip but I'm going to have to leave that for another post.