July 26th, 2010
So… Our Basement Flooded… Awesome.
Thank you, Global Warming, for raining down 190 billion gallons of water on the Chicagoland area, backing up all the sewer systems, and flooding our basement for the first time in decades.
Saturday we had a Yard Sale planned. So Friday we took all the stuff we DIDN’T want, and put it in the upstairs living room so we could haul it out early in the AM on Saturday morning. All the stuff we DID want – you know, like our furniture, the kids favorite toys, the expensive ceramic heater, etc – all stayed in the finished basement.
At 8:00 am, the Hyphenated Husband woke me up screaming “WE’VE GOT WATER! THE BASEMENT IS FLOODED!!!”
I run downstairs with nary an item of clothing on, with slept-in-contact lenses blurring my vision, just in time to catch my husband barreling past me with his arms full of our guitars. The next thing he grabbed were the amplifiers. Funny where our priorities are even four years after we stopped being musicians.
I couldn’t do anything but stand there in shock. All I could do was stare at the water and hold my hands over my mouth. Instead of looking at my basement floor, I’m looking at half a foot of watery sewage. I rushed to get clothes on, but instead I paced in circles because I couldn’t concentrate long enough to remember where I keep my underwear. Then I dialed my dad’s number and bawled while I asked him to come help us do something… anything.
As if the sewer water wasn't bad enough, that's also the litter box freely floating in that sludge water.
Not really knowing what else to do exactly, I posted a desperate message on Facebook. Then I cried a little. Then my husband held me and said it was all gonna be okay. Somehow I found some clothes and threw those on. Then we called the landlord.
The landlord tells us to get a pump to get the water out, and that his insurance won’t cover anything. We call State Farm to find out if our renter’s insurance covers anything, but it won’t cover floods either. Everything on that floor is gone forever, with no way to replace it. Our $1000 entertainment center that we just finished paying off is trashed. The couches are gone. Electronics are done for.
Notice the keyboard submerged in water. Yeah - that doesn't work anymore.
We called to get a pump but there were none available in the area. Everyone was having the same problem we were, so they put us on a wait-list for one. In the meantime, all we could do was wait, so we decided to run and look at some new apartments. Our lease is up in August anyway, and I took this as a sign from the universe that it is time to downsize. When we moved into this house three years ago I was making nearly $50,000 a year. I left that job last fall, and I do NOT make that kind of money any more. Financially speaking, living here is just stupid anyway.
By the time we came home from apartment shopping, the water was pumped out, but left was a layer of sewage and debris. Awesome. I started cleaning up that night, and then Sunday, while I held the Yard Sale, HH and my dad pulled everything out of the basement and threw it all away.
So now… I don’t know what. All we can do is recover. Our neighbors got four FEET of water, so I should be thanking my lucky stars that it didn’t turn out any worse for us. The timing on this is as terrible as it could possibly be, as I explained last week, but is there EVER really a good time for this? I’m trying not to whine. Trying to remember that Americans have lost everything, including their lives, in some recent floods, so by comparison we got off scott-free.
I also have the benefit of knowing some amazing Mama-owned businesses who bought up a little advertising on my blog to help us recover from this small disaster. Thank you to MamaPear Designs, THING-A-MA-SLING, and Support for Special Needs for jumping in and helping a mother out. If that isn’t a good enough reason to support their businesses, then I don’t know what is.
If you or your business need some advertising, now is the time. I’m putting all ad placements on sale this week, BOGOF. Buy 1 month get one month free OR buy 3 months get 3 months free! That’s an awesome deal. I’m very nice to the businesses who advertise on my blog, and advertising (right now especially) is a really nice thing to do for me. See how that works out well for everyone? 
Ughgh. Floods. YOU SUCK.
July 21st, 2010
No Sleep ‘Till Manhattan
There’s nothing more privileged and self indulgent than writing a whole post about how painfully busy you are. Being busy is a good problem to have, especially if the busy is work/career related.
But this blog is my place for catharsis. This is the one place I can whine when my husband can’t stand hearing me whine anymore. So I’m going to whine now about how I’ve taken on too much, and how the stress is probably causing my intestines to develop cancerous cells as we speak.
In two weeks I fly off to the Big Apple for BlogHer where I will spend days on end schmoozing and networking and trying to be on my very, very best behavior in order to trick people into thinking I’m totally cool. And before I leave to go do that, I’m opening my own brick ‘n’ mortar business. What??? Is she NUTS?!!?
Yes. In case you’re just tuning in. I am completely insane.
Because all the while that I’ve been working on preparing for BlogHer AND trying to open a real business with rent and commercial utility bills and tax ID numbers and licenses, I’ve also been working on my childbirth educator certification.
Oh wait. I’m not done yet.
While doing all that, I’ve also been attending births as a doula. I started out taking on births just to complete the requirements for my childbirth educator certification, and before I knew it, I was taking on far more births than I actually needed for the requirements. In the last month I’ve helped three mamas meet their babies, and I’ve got two more moms on deck in the next few weeks. Tomorrow, I’m interviewing for another mom due in a month. As it turns out, I don’t suck at this doula stuff, and I’m actually really enjoying it. It’s insanely fulfilling. So, because I’m a multi-tasking junkie, I also decided to go after my doula certification this fall, on top of everything else that I’m doing, which includes returning for my Senior year at Loyola next month. August is going to be completely out of control.
Did I mention I have two children who are in the most defiant stages possible right now? Send Help.
I don’t know how I do all this to myself. I think that I just see an opportunity and say “Yes! Yes! I must take that on because THAT will finally fulfill me!” And here’s where I end up.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m so happy about everything that’s happening. Honestly, it could not have worked out any better. One of the reasons I’ve taken on so much is because everything just happens to be falling in my lap so easily. I got a full sponsorship from FuzziBunz to go to BlogHer, and people seem to be coming out of the woodwork to help me make Birthing Babes a great success. Every time I turn around, people are offering me ways to help make my dreams come true, greasing the wheels on Steam Engine Gina.
How can a girl turn any of this down? I can’t. And I won’t. It’s just not in my nature. So while the stress eats away at my intestines, please don’t judge me for how much I’ve taken on, and please don’t roll your eyes when I ask you to pat me on the head and tell me it’s all gonna be okay.
I just need to get myself to New York. I just need to get through BlogHer. And then I will sleep for a solid day in the lovely Manhattan hotel room that I’ve worked so hard to earn.
And if you’re in the Chicago area – pretty please come to the Birthing Babes Open House on Sunday, August 1st. You can meet all the instructors, enter to win some amazing prizes (seriously, people have been so very generous to us), and get 10% off any class you register for that day. Having a full house that day would definitely ease some of my New Business jitters.
Please, and thank you.
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Now you can tell me about how busy you are – because ALL moms are busy, even if they aren’t opening childbirth studios and flying to New York to play with other bloggers. Tell me what’s happening in your worlds because God Knows I haven’t had the time or mental space to keep up with anybody else.
July 9th, 2010
Changing The World, One Little Moment at a Time
As part of my childbirth educator certification process, I’ve had to attend some hospital classes to fulfill my observation hours. Per the requirements, I sat in on a Breastfeeding class and a Newborn Care Class. Luckily my local hospital has a slew of these classes, and the director had no problem letting me crash two of them. (On a side-note, she couldn’t get her head around the fact that I was certifying as a childbirth educator, and kept insisting that I was a nursing student. I stopped bothering to correct her because it didn’t matter to me what she called me as long as I was able to take the class for free.)
The first up was the Breastfeeding class, and I figured that since it was in a hospital, I’d be doing a lot of face-palming while I was there. In my area, hospitals are notoriously misinformed about breastfeeding, and it’s not uncommon to find the L&D nurses, OBs, and pediatricians who give moms terrible breastfeeding advice. Booby-Traps Galore. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine just delivered and the on-call pediatrician told her that the newborn baby should sleep 6 hours and that she probably needed to formula feed for the first few days. Thankfully her sister-in-law called me early in the morning and got a name of a good lactation consultant so we could try to undo the damage that Ped had just done.
But to my surprise and delight, the hospital I was taking this class at actually has a pretty strong lactation support program, and employs 5 full time IBCLC’s who are there 7 days a week. They also run a free weekly breastfeeding support group for moms who’ve delivered at that hospital, which is pretty great. The instructor actually told the moms that there might be a lot of misinformation about breastfeeding floating around on the L&D floor, but they could always have an LC paged who could help them with whatever nursing struggles, and I was happy to hear that.
However, the class was not without its face-palm moments. For starters, the IBCLC began her introduction to the class by saying “Oh, don’t worry, we’re not like those La Leche League people.” Face-palm. And then she went on to say “And you should only use the lanolin we give you – don’t use any of that “Angel Mama Baby-whatever-they-call-it… who knows WHAT they put in that stuff!” Face-palm some more.
I knew it wasn’t my place to say anything in this class, so I politely listened while she made those uninformed comments, and tried really hard to enjoy the good, evidence-based, pro-mother, pro-baby, pro-breastfeeding information she was giving out. There was far more of the latter than the former, so I walked away from the class without too many bruises on my forehead.
Then came the baby-care class. Different instructor – same hospital. Here’s where I’ll tell you that between those two instructors, they had 8 children – and not a single vaginal birth. 8 cesareans. Ladies & Gentlemen, this is the world we now live in.
The second instructor had also formula-fed her three children. She discussed breastfeeding as in “Yeah, that’s the best thing to do, but now I’m going to address you as though you’re all going to formula-feed your babies.” She also said “Oh, any nurse on the floor can help you breastfeed – you don’t need to call the Lactation Consultant.” And again, I sat idly by, listening, face-palming, but doing what I came there to do, which was observe.
Then she said something that was so factually inaccurate that I nearly leapt out of my seat. When discussing babywash, she pointed out to the class that she was sending them all home with a sample of Johnson & Johnson’s baby wash because, as she said, that was the “best stuff on the market.” Okay, that’s not the part that made me leap - it was what came next.
She then brought up CosmeticsDatabase.com – the place where you can type in the name of just about any shampoo, lotion, or other bodycare product and find out exactly how toxic it is. So here is where cognitive dissonance is causing me a mild headache. I’m trying to reconcile how exactly she thinks that Johnson & Johnson is the “best on the market” when she clearly knows about CosmeticsDatabase, which rates it as one of THE MOST TOXIC. Then, I get my answer.
Next she tells the class “Yes, just type in the name of the product you’re looking for, and it will tell you how toxic it is – 0 is the most toxic, and 10 is the least toxic.”
I swear, I truly think that a little piece of my brain exploded. Her statement to the class was 100% factually inaccurate. This is not my opinion, or my interpretation, or my bias — it is a matter of absolutely fact that her statement was false. On CosmeticsDatabase.com, 0 is the LEAST toxic, and 10 is the MOST toxic.
Try to imagine my whole face flushing, my heart starts racing, knowing that I cannot raise my hand, interrupt her, and correct her. In any other class, I would have done exactly that. But in this class it was absolutely not my place. So my mind swirled for 10 minutes trying to come up with what I could do to set her straight. Finally, she called a break, and I decided that I was going to take her aside and ask her if I had heard her incorrectly.
So I did just that. I said “I’m sorry, I think I misheard you – did you say that 0 was the worst rating on CosmeticsDatabase?” to which she replied “Yep, that’s right!” And I just – in my most welcoming, professional, and polite voice said “No, actually, it’s the opposite.”
Here’s where I’m thinking she’s going to deck me, but she didn’t. She gasped and recoiled and said “What?? It is?!” and then I launched into everything I knew about that website and their safety ratings, and how Johnson & Johnson had broken my son into hives. She responded by saying that her director had given all the instructors at the hospital the information about CosmeticsDatabase, so they were all giving out the wrong information, without ever having looked at the site to see for themselves.
Then, very luckily, I also remembered that their sister hospital is one of the few hospitals in the entire country to actually use Earth Mama Angel Baby products INSTEAD of the toxic stuff. So I brought that up and said “Yes, and guess what! Your Sister Hospital B uses EMAB, and this is why…” She was fascinated, and then seemed deeply disturbed that her hospital wasn’t doing the same as Hospital B. She started recounting tales of her own children breaking out in rashes, and wondered if that Johnson’s stuff may have been the cause. Then she wrote down the Earth Mama Angel Baby website, and said that she’d talk to the director to see if they could get Hospital B to send over some of their Earth Mama Angel Baby stock.
I thanked her for her time, and walked away feeling like I had made a real difference. The universe put me in that class to stop the flow of that bad information. It may be a teeny-tiny, possibly insignificant moment, but I know that it changed what those students heard that day because when the class came back, she corrected herself to them.
I’ve been meaning to tell this story for a few weeks, but then tonight I saw an awesome post by The Marketing Mama detailing how she was able to get a mall to change their restroom sign to something less problematic for nursing mothers. That post made me realize that so many of us really want to make a difference, and we do hold that power if we only just speak up a little. It may be a small thing to some people, but changing a symbol on a sign, or correcting the information being given out in a baby care class, does go a long way to shifting attitudes.
Next time you’re wondering whether your voice can make a difference, just remember this:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead.
May 28th, 2010
And Maybe I Could Be a Better Hostess…
On the heels of my post the other day about blog commenting etiquette, the sequel to that post should really be me pointing out the shortcomings in my blog management.
A year or two ago, when I would get a comment, I would reply to it. I replied to just about every one of them. I was so thrilled to have someone on my blog, interacting with me, complimenting me, or even questioning me. Back in those days, I felt like a post had blown up when there were 15 comments on it, and I was grateful for every person who took the time to hit “Submit.”
But things have changed since then. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still grateful for the commentors, and I’m still thrilled that people take the time to hit “Submit.” The quality of my commentors, I feel, has become so much richer in the last 12 months. The quantity of them has also multiplied greatly.
But things have changed for me personally in that time. During the last year I spent at my corporate job, I had a lot of “free” time on my hands. I can say this now that I don’t work there anymore, but I spent a WHOLE LOT of company time updating my blog and replying to commentors. I was also pumping breastmilk 3 times a day back then, and for the hours a day I spent in the Mother’s Room, I was always pumping hands-free so I could type away. If I wasn’t doing my homework in the Mother’s Room, I was most certainly plugging away on TheFeministBreeder.com. For a solid 8 hours, 5 days a week, I worked free of almost all interruptions aside from the occasional co-worker drive-by, or the meetings I couldn’t get out of attending. I had mentally checked out of that place, and wouldn’t allow the stress of a totally meaningless job invade my mind anymore. Looking back, I’m surprised I made it there as long as I did.
But the combination of being home with two little kids, and the increase in blog traffic, contributed to the slow deterioration of my interaction with my commentors. I no longer have the time to respond to everyone, and I’m sure that annoys people.
I know that I have personally quit following blogs when the author never takes the time to respond to me. It may seem juvenile, but if she never responds, I wonder if she hates me and wishes I’d stop leaving her comments. And I really hope that none of my tribe ever feels that way.
Most of the time, I’m reading my blog comments on my iPhone while the children are running around the house. The comments always make me chuckle, or warm my heart, or make me feel connected to someone. So many times, I’ll think “That was the most awesome comment ever!” but rarely do I come back to tell the commentor that. I don’t mean to be an asshole – I swear. Life just takes over, I get distracted, and then I forget. Or, I take for granted that that person already knows what a great comment it was, and don’t think it needs a response.
But if I were the commentor, it would bum me out. I know how it feels to try to engage someone and not have them respond. So, in the future, I’m going to consider comment management part and parcel of having this blog. I need to stay on top of it, so that’s what I’ll do. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to respond to everyone, but I’ll do my best.
How do you feel about getting a response from your blog hostess? Does it annoy you when she doesn’t reciprocate, or do you not care one way or the other?
April 30th, 2010
For My Birthday, Please Take My Survey…
Dear Super Awesome TFB Readers,
In lieu of all the sports cars, diamonds, and European vacations I’m sure you planned on buying me for my birthday on Monday, I’m asking my readers to please take this brief survey about your interests instead. It’s completely anonymous, and only asks about some basic demographics and what types of parenting topics you take an interest in, whether or not you currently practice them.
This will assist me a great deal when looking at potential sponsors, and help me gauge interest in certain articles or content. So send the cars back to the dealership, and put the diamonds on Craigslist – all I need is a few minutes of your time.
If you have any questions/comments about the survey, please don’t hesitate to leave me a note below. Thanks in advance!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FQLWG8P
