Online Baby Shower

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Its an Online Baby Shower for Baby H2. You're Invited!

Her birth is only days (or weeks, hopefully!) away.  So let's do an online shower today!

This afternoon my mom and sister are making a baby shower for Baby H2 (name is still up in the air, but definitely closer than during previous weeks!) at my cousin Katherine's house in my hometown.

I have a lot of online friends that I only know through blogging or through a few website forums, friends who were In Real Life Friends before jobs or school or life made us move apart and now we communicate online exclusively, friends and family who read this blog but were celebrating other occasions during this time slot, and also, hopefully, strangers I don't know who are interested in helping celebrate this baby through donating to the charity I chose for her infancy.

The shower, which I wrote about here and here and here, is important to me as a rite of passage as a mom and important to me on a different level - on the level that is both global and intensely personal at the heart level.

I am accepting donations for my daughter in behalf of the wonderful organization called Sonrise Baby Home in Jinja, Uganda.

This orphanage was started by a woman who is a few years younger than me who saw a need in her culture to care for orphaned, abandoned, or under-cared for babies and toddlers.  She just saw a need, prayed, and DID something about it!  How inspiring.  I want my daughter to be this brave and this altruistic.

She keeps a blog to let others know about this need.  So blogging, loving of children, and this diaper drive are basically all I have in common with her!

I want to raise awareness for Sonrise Baby Home, and thus, hopefully raise enough concern to motivate YOU (or your friends, if you send them a link to this blog post!) to help these babies in Uganda.

Sonrise Baby Home doesn't get a beautiful shower tomorrow with cupcakes and giggling relatives.  I do! My baby does!  It doesn't seem fair that these kids need so much, while so many kids in America don't need much, but get doted on with elaborate and wonderful parties.

These babies need proper nutrition.  They need love.  They need supervision and guidance and education.  They need so much!

I am asking you to click over to the Sonrise Baby Home website to learn more about these kids.  Then I'd like you to consider donating to help the organization.

There are two ways you can donate.  One is through PayPal (so easy!) through their website.  You can see specifically what the costs are to run the orphanage and fund a part of their expenses.

Sonrise Ministries, Inc is a legally recognized, 501c3 non-profit organization and your donations are 100% tax deductible.

(So paranoid people like my mother in law... I think you are totally fine and safe! I looked it up and spoke with people on the phone about it! Its no scam!)Another way you can donate is through collecting cloth diapers for them.  If you read my blog, you know I am a big cloth diaper advocate.  Actually, because of our lifestyle, cloth diapering is a CHOICE I made for my family.  For these babies, cloth isn't a choice, its a necessity.  Cloth or nothing. 

These babies need cloth diapers. 

You can donate cloth you already have (contact me).

Or, what would be so much EASIER and definitely affordable ($1.50 buys a diaper for a Sonrise Baby!), is to click to the website called Go Green Baby Co.  They have a donations page for these babies!  You can donate by adding the diapers to your shopping cart and paying for them like you can pay for anything else online.

Here's what my shopping cart looked like... and I am excited to click a higher number for quantities ordered after some friends and family send the cash they've pledged for this purpose!

 You can buy an entire dozen diapers for the babies, if you'd like. FYI... my son used about 15 infant sized prefolds per DAY during his first 3-4 months of life.  Now as an 20 month old, he would use 5-9 of the premium sized prefolds during a typical day.

If you are interested further in the lives of these babies, check out the Sonrise Baby Home Facebook page. 

Here's a photo of some of the children wearing their diapers.  SO CUTE.

These kids are wearing cloth diapers WITHOUT waterproof covers, unlike most kids in America.  They are also wearing hand washed and sun dried diapers, unlike most kids in America.

I included this photo, too, because we have the same Primo baby bath tub and a similar Moses basket that our daughter will be using in the next month or so!  I can just picture her older brother leaning over to bother her, just like the little one is doing to another baby in this photo above!



On behalf of my Baby H2, I really encourage you to think of making a donation in behalf of a very lucky American child instead of just checking out the Babies R Us registry their parents made for them.  Baby presents are great and definitely have their place in our culture, as does gift giving as a sign of love, but how awesome it would be for a parent to receive a letter from you saying that you gave to a needy baby on their lovely child's behalf.  You can always skip the $4 baby shower card and postage and give that to a needy baby, right?

Please, if you have thoughts about this, don't hesitate to email me.  And please, post comments indicating if you did send this post along to others or if you were motivated to help because this is something I want to include in my daughter's baby book! 

Thanks so much for coming to Baby H2's online baby shower!  Please feel free also to leave any comments, as if this is a guest book at a for real baby shower.  Sorry, I couldn't find a way to get you a virtual pink napkin or shower game trinket!

Healthy, healthy, healthy!

That's what this week's baby doctor appointment showed.  Still really normal (good for even a non-pregnant woman) blood pressure, awesome amounts of amniotic fluid, wonderful "practice breathing" respiratory motions, great muscle tone and movement frequency, normal heart accelerations and decelerations... this kid is doing so well during the BioPhysical Profiles and Non Stress Tests we have done each week. 

My terrible respiratory affliction and pregnancy asthma are pretty much under control, too.  The coughing and hacking are nearly gone and have allowed my rib and connective tissue around the fractured rib to heal nicely.  Besides frequent contractions (that do not alarm my doc) and just fatigue from carrying all the baby in my middle, I am super healthy. 

She's probably a little larger than the 35 week estimate of six pounds, nine ounces, and during her ultrasound this week, she was in a hurdler pose, with one leg kicking high and straight out and the other tucked up behind her bEhind.  She had a dramatic pose of one palm on her forehead.  (Images yet to be scanned!)

34 Weeks!

Oh Baby H2, you are really gearing up for the world!  Or my body is just gearing up to have you meet the world soon!  Its been contraction city for the last few weeks.  This weekend some were OWCH painful.  I had to stop in Michael's craft store today and just pause until it finished because I could not walk or function.

Those things aside, I wanted to tell you I don't really call you Baby H2.  This week I called you baby E______, the name your dad thinks is so beautiful and was his first response to my name question for you, and this weekend we called you baby A____________, which is a pretty but sort of difficult to spell name.  Maybe we'll call you a different name each week until we figure out what sticks or what we like to hear come off our tongues.

I wrote to a very popular baby name website about your name, seeing as we don't have one yet and the spelling of your last name isn't too easy.  I mentioned that I prefer longer, frillier names, while your dad prefers short and sweet names.  We also don't want to name you a name just because it is popular or trendy.  We don't want to name you an unpopular name just to be different, either.  So, most likely your name will not be as follows:

(the data for 2010 is released in May, so we have to go on the year your brother was born, and interestingly, he was on the #7 spot! so we might actually pick a name that we think isn't too trendy but it is trendy for 2011.  hope you are okay with this!)

32 Weeks... Almost 33.

And although many people, especially strangers who see it fit to share openly, tell me that I look so small for this far in pregnancy, I need to tell you, I do not feel the same way.

I've got a more compact, tight bundle of pregnancy in my front right now.  My dear girl is constantly doing jumping jacks and getting hiccups and fidgeting.

I am pretty sick now with a sinus infection and bronchitis, so I bet she is getting a lot of disrupted sleep due to coughing and my whining about feeling so pitiful.

In previous weeks I felt totally okay with an early delivery baby.  Right now though, the thought of that scares me.  My house needs a good cleaning, as in, getting the winter gunk out.  My body needs a good healing (also getting the winter gunk out).  I want this baby's arrival to be peaceful for me, and feeling stress about getting her sick or getting the gunk off the baseboards and etc. do not make for a peaceful welcome home experience!

In other news, I have decided that I feel much more okay having a baby shower in some sort of format for this pregnancy than any other.  I feel so safe in this pregnancy and have a new realization that it is something that should be commemorated with a rite of passage like a special party.  I do not expect presents or whatever, but I do want to listen to and enjoy the company of others who already love this baby, too.

Practicing For You.

Daniel needs some practice in gentleness. That is why I got him this doll. He is enjoying looking at its belly button and facial features, but isn't very interested in it that much. You will be much more fascinating, I am sure! This summer perhaps we'll have a similar photo of you propped up on the couch with him during his afternoon drink and TV time.

Us at 30 Weeks

(and your brother playing in the sink at 18.5 months)

Contraction City.

That's what you and I are enduring these days, babe.

Its really uncomfortable for me, as if I am wearing the tightest belt ever at my rib cage and as if my abdomen was made of some type of firm basketball (not a foursquare ball... a really old, well played with, no tread left- bball).

But you've got to be uncomfortable, too, what with all that kicking and rolling and jabbing you are doing to escape and find a more spacious place to rest in this often shrinking space you're living in.

You are only 4 lbs and 31 weeks into gestation, so its unfair to wish you out of the nest already, but wow, I think I am reconsidering the idea of totally unscheduled birthing activities for you. Therefore, we might be meeting sooner (either because you've made the choice or my pelvic floor has!) based on the idea of Dr. Grant thinking 38 weeks gestation is a totally fine length of time.

So.... maximum two months until our discomfort is over.  HOOOray.