watch this

I love everything about this video- the artwork, the vocalist (Sufjan Stevens, a favorite), the classic hymn.  It's so beautiful all together.  I just wanted to share!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1bSlS6OWTs

Unborn baby grabs surgeon

Here is a forwarded email that I received from Annette today- I had seen it before and thought it was amazing, but today the photo made me cry it was so beautiful.  I just had to share.

                 A picture began circulating in November. It should be 'The Picture of the Year,' or perhaps, 'Picture of the Decade.' It won't be. In fact, unless you obtained a copy of the US paper which published it, you probably would never have seen it.                  The picture is that of a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by a surgeon named Joseph Bruner.                  The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother's womb. Little Samuel's mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta . She knew of Dr Bruner's remarkable surgical procedure. Practicing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.                  During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr Bruner completed the surgery on Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, but fully developed hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon's finger. Dr Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant during the procedure he was just frozen, totally immobile.                  The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity. The editors titled the picture 'Hand of Hope.' The text explaining the picture begins, 'The tiny hand of 21-week-old fetus Samuel Alexander Armas emerges from the mother's uterus to grasp the finger of Dr Joseph Bruner as if thanking the doctor for the gift of life.'                  Little Samuel 's mother said they 'wept for days' when they saw the picture. She said, 'The photo reminds us pregnancy isn't about disability or an illness, it's about a little person.'  Samuel was born in perfect health, the operation 100 percent successful.

Coming this fall...

It seems I have good company also pregnant and due this fall- two beluga whales at the Shedd Aquarium!  I took special interest when I saw the headline.  I immediately wanted to know how long a beluga whale is pregnant.  As it turns out, the female belugas have a gestation period of 14.5 months.  If my whole pregnancy was like my second trimester has been, I would be fine with that.  My patience would be wearing thin, waiting excitedly to meet our little one for such a long time, but I could do it.  If my whole 14.5 months was like my first trimester, I don't think I would physically or emotionally make it through more than one pregnancy.  Thank goodness for feeling better.  Even if my third trimester is rough, I'll be able to find peace in the knowing that I'm due after 9.5 months- much easier than 14.5. 

25 weeks, 1 day

Here's a picture of me today. I can't find the charger for my camera
battery, so forgive the mirror shot, please!

Summer at 25 weeks!

Here I am, 1 day short of 25 weeks.  The belly just keeps growing!

And here's Tyler with Mico- who also just keeps growing!

We spent the weekend relaxing in Bloomington.  Sunday's weather was beautiful and we spent the day outside around the pool.

Right now I'm watching the TV show Birth Day on TLC.  It is an episode on macrosomia (babies weighing over 4000 grams- so BIG babies!).  Two moms are both expecting babies weighing at least 9 pounds, and one is trying to give birth without an epidural.   I just heard, "Some women are simply predisposed to having larger babies."  Scary!....   And so is the application of the internal fetal monitor that I just watched.  I will do whatever I can to avoid that.  I'm going to go do some stretches and watch the rest of this.  Hopefully it will be more encouraging than terrifying!

Scary statistic

According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, pregnant women who get swine flu are at least four times as likely to be hospitalized as other people with the virus, a new study says. Here's the Chicago Tribune article: Study: Pregnant women with swine flu more than 4 times as likely to be hospitalized. I still think that the vaccine is scarier than the flu, but this is the closest I've ever been to getting a flu shot.

What's in YOUR water?

Amounts vary depending on who is dishing out the advice, but pregnant women are told to drink 2-4 liters of water per day.  Since contractions can be brought on by dehydration, it’s especially important to drink enough water.  Now that I’m putting this much water in my body, I’m suddenly concerned with the source of my water.    I have a safe (BPA- and aluminum-free) water bottle made out of stainless steel in which I store my water (I ditched my aluminum Sigg water bottle recently in favor of the Steel Works Sigg here).  But what about the water that goes in my safe water bottle- is it as safe as it can get?

At home, I filter water with a Pur water filter that I fill with City of Chicago tap water.   Although Chicago water meets or exceeds all safety standards, a July 14 Chicago Tribune article about safety tests conducted on Chicago water claims that  “according to results posted on the city's Web site, the tests found small amounts of the sex hormones testosterone and progesterone; gemfibrozil, a prescription cholesterol-fighting drug; ibuprofen, an over-the-counter painkiller, and DEET, the active ingredient in bug spray.

The tests also found caffeine, nicotine and cotinine, a nicotine byproduct, all of which researchers consider to be indicators of pharmaceuticals from human waste.”  That’s scary! 

So what about tap water at work?  I could just fill up my water bottle there, right?  But the water smells and tastes more like chlorine than the Chicago tap water does, and it’s sourced from Lake Michigan, too, so it can’t be much better- and it obviously had plenty of chlorine in it, which some studies link to formation of carcinogenic compounds.  Not to mention that the chlorine makes it taste horrible.

At work, we also have a Hinkley water cooler- a solution? Not quite.  Besides the environmental costs of bottling and transporting water, there's a health catch, too.  The 5 gallon water bottles going into the cooler are made with #7 plastic, the same number as water bottles containing dangerous BPA.  While their website doesn't say that the bottles contain BPA, it does present an argument that BPA is safe according to the FDA.  Pretty ridiculous.  

Once I realized that the Hinkley bottled water at work is bottled in plastic containing BPA, I started to wonder about that plastic Pur water filter sitting in my fridge.  Is it safe?  According to the Consumer Research website, both Pur and Brita filters do not contain BPA.  Phew!  When I went to check the Pur website for myself, I actually found a great surprise- according to Pur, a Pur water pitcher is able to remove 96% of pharmaceuticals from tap water.  That's fantastic!

I'm now counting on my filtered tap water to be the safest option since it is supposedly BPA-free and lower in pharmaceuticals.  But what a research project getting to that conclusion!  Who knew pregnancy would turn me into an investigative journalist?  

Bottoms up!