pregnancy

gDiapers.com Crashes as Preggo Women Pursue the “New Baby Bundle!”

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What started out as a laid back quest to find the best reusable diapers that would fit our lifestyle, ended in a frenetic feeding frenzy to purchase them today.

I credit Jason with having discovered gDiapers in one of my pregnancy magazines a couple of months ago, and after falling in love, I set out to educate myself on what we would need for our little one to get started. Alas, the “new baby bundle.” Outfitted with 12 tiny gPants (for newborns), six little gPants in gender neutral colors, and one case of gRefills, this bundle is only available via gDiapers’ website and retails for $149.99. Sure other retailers carry gDiapers, but they don’t carry the precious new baby bundle, whose main attraction is the tough-to-get tiny gPant for newborns.

Delighted to purchase a bundle for us to get started, I was met with a message in red that said, “Sorry, but we are currently sold out of the new baby bundle. Click here to be notified when they are back.” Even though there was a lot of time left in my pregnancy for me to purchase them, my heart sank and I regrettably filled out the form to be notified. This was a couple of months ago.

Today at 2:30pm, I received an email from Kelli McKee at gDiapers alerting me that at 1:00pm (PST) the new baby bundle would be back in stock and ready for purchase, but that there was still a very limited stock. Yikes! I had an hour and a half until I could pull the trigger. “Should I go food shopping before, or after?” Dinner would have to wait. I did not want to miss the 4:00 door opener. And apparently, I was not the only one.

I checked in with gDiaper’s Facebook page, of which there are nearly 14,000 fans, and noticed a post from gDiapers at noon that said, “Before Dec of 2009 we only sold three sizes: sm, med, and lg. No tiny g’s just yet. So for 4 years folks (including parents on the gTeam) started their babies in small. And guess what? Diapers.com has an amazing deal on size small everyday g’s and sweet bundle (and individual pants, too!). Check it out.”

“Oh no, they are already trying to create diversion,” I thought. This is going to be war. And sure enough, at 4:00 my time and 1:00 PST, their website crashed. Thinking it would be temporary I refreshed the page frantically to no avail. Thanks to Facebook, though, I was able to stay apprised of what was going on. Almost immediately, fans (myself included) began to post to their wall that they were having problems. Then came the first update by gDiapers an hour later: “We’re experiencing technical difficulties because so many people are logging in to our shop at the same time. Please bear with us. We’re working through this as quickly as possible.” That update received almost 60 comments – some humorous, some annoyed, some sympathetic – within minutes. Sounds crazy, I know, but let’s not forget that the majority of customers are desperate pregnant women with wild and raging hormones!

So after several status updates and pleas by gDiapers staff to layoff the refresh button, I went food shopping. I mean a pregnant woman’s gotta eat, right?! Upon coming home I checked their Facebook page and saw that several users were rejoicing in the fact that they were finally able to buy their bundle. And so, at 5:51pm, nearly two hours after the gDiapers new baby bundle feeding frenzy began, I was able to buy ours!

It does sort of bring to question why there is such little supply for such high demand for the tiny gPants. As one Facebook fan by the name of Tammy suggested to me, “perhaps gdiapers is afraid of going too big too fast. making mass quantities of terrible products might not be worth it to them. in keeping it small, perhaps they’re able to do better quality control.” Point taken, but when there is overwhelming demand and clearly not enough supply, isn’t that when you want to uh, I don’t know, get big-ger? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want them to sell out to Procter & Gamble, but create the supply to meet the demand already!

At last glance, gDiapers staff posted a YouTube video to let us know that they were indeed hard at work to resolve the website crash. Aren’t they happy that this didn’t happen on a Friday!

25 Weeks Prego…

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So here I am at 25 weeks pregnant, and I can say that I finally and officially “feel” pregnant. Running has become more difficult, trips to the bathroom occur every half hour and people stare at my belly as I walk down the street. According to my midwife, my weight gain and size is “on point,” but perhaps most noticeable this week was that at 25 weeks on the dot on Sunday morning, I woke up with my arm draped across my stomach and could actually feel you moving from the outside. So of course I called for your daddy who came darting into the room, placed his hand on my belly, waited patiently and there you were… saying hello to him for the very first time. It makes the whole experience even that much more exciting now that he can be in on the fun!

Took A Spill

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I took a spill yesterday while running in the new Brooklyn Bridge Park by the waterfront in DUMBO. Thankfully, my belly was spared but my knees were not! I guess it’s true what they say about your balance being off while preggers.

OUCH!

No lectures please, I feel like ass enough on my own. I was scared for a second about the bambino but as soon as I knew that part of my body was fine I got myself together and continued running. The more awkward part was making my way home with a burgeoning belly and blood dripping down my leg. The stares were interesting. One woman stopped me and offered me a crumpled up – if not used – tissue from her purse. It was a nice gesture, but seriously? I’m not eight! I’m a grown, pregnant woman who took a little spill! I’ll live, as will my baby.

Lesson learned: Watch my footing more carefully from now on. Especially while I run.

Switching From An OB/GYN To A Midwife

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Me and my husband Jason didn’t know a whole lot about the birthing process when we got pregnant. So when we found out we were expecting, at about five weeks along, I looked up local OB/GYN’s in our Brooklyn neighborhood. I wasn’t working at the time so finding a local doctor close to my home was important to me. I found and met Dr. Scott Postell, an attending at Long Island College Hospital, which was a five minute walk from our apartment.

We began prenatal care with Dr. Postell but thanks to a woman I met and became friendly with in prenatal yoga class, I learned about midwives, doulas and liberal birth plans. She lent me The Business of Being Born, a documentary about how giving birth has gone from being a natural process to a catastrophic medical process in America. I had heard of midwifery before but assumed it was a phenomenon of the past, and common only in other countries. Unfortunately, I was right.

The documentary was an eye-opener and because I was considered “low risk,” it got us thinking seriously about a birth plan. We decided a liberal birth experience with minimal-to-no-intervention is what we wanted. We didn’t want to have a home birth (it felt responsible to be in a hospital) as many of the women portrayed in Ricki Lake’s documentary did, but we did want to bring our child into the world with a midwife.

I was 20 weeks pregnant when we severed our relationship with our OB/GYN before finding a midwife. Looking back, it was a terribly naive thing to do. I guess we thought finding a midwife would be as easy as finding a doctor, but we were wrong. Because I was already halfway though my pregnancy, it proved no easy feat.

Midwives take patients based on their due dates, so we needed to find one that not only had space in her calendar in August, but one that would accept our insurance and preferably have privileges to deliver at LICH, the hospital closest to our home. Phone call after phone call to midwife after midwife we were being turned away — until we got a call back from Beverly Woodard of Fruition Midwifery.

Beverly not only took GHI but also had privileges at LICH and space in her schedule for us. The only downside was that her office was in Chelsea, a short subway ride away. Gone was my office-within-walking-distance-requirement, but beggars cannot be choosers!

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. “Wait, what? Don’t midwives advocate for natural birth?” They absolutely do. But Beverly’s point was that first-time expectant parents shouldn’t rule out all birthing options, including drugs.

So I kept the option of having or needing drugs on the table, but it was important for me to avoid having a Cesarean birth if it was not medically necessary. One thing was for sure: Beverly would not scoff at me if it turned out I needed either of these interventions. Luckily we had found ourselves a midwife!

Has anyone else found themselves changing health care professionals during their pregnancy? If so, did the switch turn out to be a good one?

20 Weeks Prego…

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…and seven pounds gained. We went for our second trimester testing and you look normal. Ten little fingers and ten little toes with a steady heartbeat and spine and an alien-like face! We spoke to Dr. P about transferring over to a midwife. He wasn’t thrilled to say the least, and since there is only three midwives to choose from that have privileges at LICH, who knows, we might not even get in and may wind up staying with him. In any case, I think he got a sense of what kind of birth plan we are after – one with minimal intervention – and I have to say, it was nice to hear I am on course to have a low risk birth.

Finding An OB/GYN In Brooklyn

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I have lived in Brooklyn 10 years but would go back to Long Island where I grew up, for that once per year dreaded gynecological exam. I figured my commute east for these office visits would bite me in the ass some day, but there a million things more comforting than having to find a new gynecologist.

Good times at the gyno

So when I found out I was pregnant, the first thing I did was look up doctors who were close by where I lived. I knew there would be many appointments in my future and I wasn’t working, so being in walking distance of the doctor’s office was important to me.

That’s when I met Dr. Scott Postell at Long Island College Hospital. After some further testing confirmed my pregnancy, he fed me his credentials and shpeel on the thousands of babies he’s delivered and assured me that a merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center would not hinder my birthing plans. He spoke in layman’s terms often, but he had a personable quality that made me more at ease about exposing my vajayjay. Plus, the walk to his office was only five minutes from my home.

We were fortunate to have a hospital in our neighborhood and thus it felt it was only right to have our baby in the community we loved and lived in for so many years. It was decided. We would have our baby with Dr. Postell at LICH. All of a sudden I was having visions of walking (or waddling) myself to the emergency room when I went into labor!

Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, NY

Of course I made this decision before I did my homework and combed the web for reviews. Turns out the message boards were ripe with negativity about giving birth at LICH. One woman wrote in the comments to an article about births being down at LICH that she wouldn’t let her dog give birth there. Well if you read this blog then you know how I feel about people who think their life has greater value than that of an animal’s.

But there were also comments from moms who had great things to say about giving birth at LICH. Like the woman who was in labor 65 hours (yikes!) and called labor and delivery at LICH “top rate.” Hopefully I can second that motion. The top rate comment, NOT the 65 hour labor!

Quickening

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I woke up from a nap on the couch Friday night, and as I made my way towards the bathroom to get ready for bed I felt it. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I didn’t know what it was at first and described it to my husband Jason as a swooshing sensation through my lower abdomen. Forgetting for a moment that I am pregnant, I told him that I felt possessed, like something was inside of me. He reminded me that something was in fact inside of me! What can I say, I was drowsy.

The bambino is the size of this delicious apple. Yum.

When I looked it up on Dr. Google I found out what I felt is called quickening. American Pregnancy Association describes quickening, or flutters, as the first fetal movements. Wow, is this very surreal or what?!

Laid Off While Preggers

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Yes, it’s true. But it wasn’t personal and it wasn’t performance-based either.

In 2007 I left a prosperous job at Goldman Sachs to join an Internet start-up. Goldman was intense to say the least and I wasn’t happy. What’s more, I wasn’t writing. I spent $35,000 on a graduate education in journalism and I was writing little more than truncated, abbreviated emails while on the job.

Joining the new company meant taking a bit of a pay cut with no opportunity for a year-end bonus — something that allowed me to build a considerable savings after two years at Goldman. But it was ok. I was happy to do it and eager to see what lay ahead.

The new job was fun, flexible and fast. We had fun on AND off the job, my hours were flexible with a good amount of time spent working from home, and I forged friendships fast. We traveled to conferences in exotic places as far away as Monte Carlo and as close to home as Boca Raton.

The dream team.

My boss was an entrepreneur who dabbled in many different ventures. The one that generated the most revenue was in financial securities lending. He branched out into the media world in 2008 and was operating in the red by the following year. In May 2009 I was reduced to half-time. The adjusted salary meant I had to scale back on my lifestyle a bit but it also freed me up to explore other passions. The change wound up being a very liberating one and around that time, we began talking about starting a family.

I stopped taking the pill in late September. By November I was pregnant. The following month I got my first pay check in the mail rather than direct deposit. I remember my husband telling me it was a sign that I would be let go. I told him he was crazy. In January I was indirectly informed that my job with the production company, along with dozens of others, had been terminated. Jason was not crazy after all. He knew exactly what he was talking about.

These two will always be in my life. Of that I am sure.

I was almost three months pregnant at the time and had not yet shared the news with anyone other than family. When people close to me learned that I had been terminated from my job, they encouraged me to seek recourse and take action. But that was silly. I was working from home at that point and my boss didn’t have a clue that I was pregnant. It was nothing I did or didn’t do. The company simply did not survive the credit crisis.

Working with the Internet start-up allowed me to get back to my roots in writing. It was the birthplace of many wonderful friendships. It was a great ride and I have absolutely no regrets about taking that job. Pregnancy hormones aside, I even wrote my boss an email thanking him for the opportunity. If there is one thing I have learned in the business world it’s to never burn your bridges. It may be cliche, but it’s true.

A Family Grows In Brooklyn

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I found out I was pregnant after the hustle and bustle of the first winter holiday. It was the week after Thanksgiving, family had left town, our apartment was clean and it was just the two of us again. And the menagerie of course.

In spring 2009 Jason and I decided over dinner at our favorite Mexican spot in the neighborhood that we would enjoy the coming summer, go away with friends in September to Puerto Rico as planned, and then get off the pill when we returned. Fit in a trip to California the following month and we hoped to be pregnant by the early part of 2010.

Feeling no pain in Napa Valley.

In October I was on high alert every time we got… well, you know. But October came and went and so did my period. As we thought: “it’s going to take some time after all.” My mom was in her late 20’s and had trouble conceiving her first. We were in our 30’s. Between our age, genetics and our excessive use of modern technology, we were convinced getting pregnant wouldn’t be easy.

But we were wrong. While conceiving was very much on my mind in October, when it didn’t happen, I had cast it aside. We went into the holiday season, lead by Jason’s birthday the week before Thanksgiving, with our usual celebratory force. We are both downright lovers of good wine, so perhaps “celebrating” is an understatement. Thanks to my sister-in-law who likes to make sure my glass is always full, I spent a good part of Thanksgiving Day hungover.

It was Wednesday, December 2nd and I was going potty when it occurred to me that I hadn’t gotten my period. I was due but wasn’t that alarmed because I was only off the pill a month at that point. But my underwear was bone dry. There was not a hint of discharge. It was for this reason alone that I knew something was different. So I shared my suspicion with Jason and he laughed it off. Mind you HE was the one who sat me down at dinner in May to ask when we would start trying.

I told him I thought I should take a pregnancy test and he told me to wait another week. Another week? “Was he nuts?” If I was pregnant I should know so that I could stop drinking. If I wasn’t pregnant I wasn’t going to marginalize myself from socializing. After all, we had plans that coming Saturday with good, wine swirling friends! He relented. I peed on a stick and sure enough it was positive. My hands were shaking and I threw it in the sink as if it possessed a magic power that would turn me into a frog. Jason was in disbelief. Literally. He made me pee on a second stick. That too, was positive.

I was in shock. I was in awe. I was out of my mind excited. I just could not believe it. I immediately called my brother on the phone and told one of my closest friends when I bumped into her on the street walking our dogs. (The same friend we went to Puerto Rico with and were due to have dinner with that coming Saturday).

When the shock and awe began to settle in, I made an appointment with an OB/GYN in the neighborhood to have it confirmed. And confirmed it was, I am due August 8th!