The Toronto Public Library has put together their First and Best Kids Books of 2007. You can find it here:
http://kidsspace.torontopubliclibrary.ca/genCategory17398.html
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Birth Story
I've been telling people that I had Grace at home and recounting my birth story. I've had two moms-to-be tell me - thank me actually - for telling them about my positive experience. And it occurred to me: people rarely hear about positive birth experiences. It's always about the episiotomies, the forceps, the c-sections, the hours of pushing, the "failure to progress", and of course, THE PAIN.
The truth is: I don't think I could have had a more positive birth experience. Grace's birth was so oddly textbook, that it wasn't textbook. My water broke just after dinner at 7:15. I started my contractions at about 8:15 - just in time for Jesse to put Audrey to bed. I laboured for a couple of hours before calling Chris, my midwife, at 11:00 when my contractions were about two to five minutes apart. She came over at 11:45. I went from 4cm to 7cm in an hour and a half ("good" progress is usually one cm an hour). And then sometime around 2:45am, I got that urge to push. Chris asked me to hold off partly because she had to call her backup.
I think that lasted all of 30 minutes, because by 3:30, I definitely couldn't "hold off" any longer. By 3:50 I was definitely in stage two labour. Tia, my backup midwife, barely made it in time to see the shoulders birthed.
Grace was born by 4:11am.
All without pain medication, at home and with my previous delivery being a c-section (yes, the dreaded "VBAC").
The truth is: I don't think I could have had a more positive birth experience. Grace's birth was so oddly textbook, that it wasn't textbook. My water broke just after dinner at 7:15. I started my contractions at about 8:15 - just in time for Jesse to put Audrey to bed. I laboured for a couple of hours before calling Chris, my midwife, at 11:00 when my contractions were about two to five minutes apart. She came over at 11:45. I went from 4cm to 7cm in an hour and a half ("good" progress is usually one cm an hour). And then sometime around 2:45am, I got that urge to push. Chris asked me to hold off partly because she had to call her backup.
I think that lasted all of 30 minutes, because by 3:30, I definitely couldn't "hold off" any longer. By 3:50 I was definitely in stage two labour. Tia, my backup midwife, barely made it in time to see the shoulders birthed.
Grace was born by 4:11am.
All without pain medication, at home and with my previous delivery being a c-section (yes, the dreaded "VBAC").
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Vimeo
I've found a new addiction in Vimeo. I've finally found a way to share video with the fam in Vancouver without all the challenges of YouTube, which I found to be very user unfriendly for some of the novices I wanted to share videos with.
What I like best is that I can easily share video and hide the contents by password-protecting them. People don't have to become members to view hidden videos; they can just view them if they have the appropriate authentication rights. They've used AJAX pretty well: I can update details of the video while the video uploads. And I find the interface very clean and easy to use - both for administrators and people who simply want to view videos.
I wish that there were a faster way to upload the videos themselves - maybe via FTP or some desktop widget that would batch upload the videos. Right now, it's a bit of a pain to do them one at a time.
Check out the fruits of my labour here:
http://www.vimeo.com/christinekids
What I like best is that I can easily share video and hide the contents by password-protecting them. People don't have to become members to view hidden videos; they can just view them if they have the appropriate authentication rights. They've used AJAX pretty well: I can update details of the video while the video uploads. And I find the interface very clean and easy to use - both for administrators and people who simply want to view videos.
I wish that there were a faster way to upload the videos themselves - maybe via FTP or some desktop widget that would batch upload the videos. Right now, it's a bit of a pain to do them one at a time.
Check out the fruits of my labour here:
http://www.vimeo.com/christinekids
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