No bumps here

Despite several requests to see "the bump," I regret to inform you that it is a spectacle that will have to be witnessed in person. Mostly because in the past 4 months, I've only been photographed with my camera about 3 times. In one of those, you can't see my belly, and in the other two, I was wearing a doo-rag which makes my slightly swollen face look even more inflated. Until it occurs to someone to take the camera from my hands and make sure I am included in our family photos (in a presentable state), you will just have to imagine I am there. And imagine the belly while you're at it.

(really, how gorgeous is my man?!)

I don't know how I could have tolerated this pregnancy without discovering the magic of chiropractic care. I have always been a skeptic but when this particular doctor subbed in for our Sunday School teacher a few weeks ago, I thought Danny might benefit. Little did I know I would end up being the one on the table! The sciatic pain (pinched nerve in the hip) that had been plaguing me for a month is gone. And I have at least doubled my endurance for standing and walking. I'm due for another crackin. I must be an unusual cracker because the doctor always looks a bit disconcerted when he's done with me. It's awfully awkward getting pressed that way! But being able to cook and pick up after the kids and take Noemie to pee at the department store.... it's worth it.

We picked up a business card there for a pediatrician. This "maximized living", holistic medical
care trend is really fascinating! I'm not one given to conspiracy theories but by the time you're done with one or two of these doctors, you will have the deepest distrust of the AMA, ACS, FDA, the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare industry as a whole. The US spends significantly more money on healthcare than any other nation in the world, and we have the highest rates of cancer and heart disease in the world. Could it be that something in the way healthcare is done here is contributing to instead of combating disease? I could talk about this for hours.

We attended a "meet and greet" with the pediatrician last Tuesday where he reiterated my granola-mom convictions that the Hep B vaccine should ordinarily be withheld from newborns, that medications (even non-prescriptions) always be given as a last resort, and that a kid's doctor should always be a phone call away, even at 10pm on a Friday (which will inevitably be when you need him most). It was such a far cry from my experiences with Pediatric Associates where we had to wait almost an hour in a room PACKED with sniffling coughing, slimy children, to see the doctor for 5 hurried minutes, and to be treated as if my input was inferior and unwelcome.

Despite intense and fabulous planning on my part, the best of my plans for the past two weeks have come to inglorious nothingness. Danny decided the weather was insufficiently pleasant for our Typhoon Lagoon excursion last Wednesday. A last-minute decision to participate in a car auction bumped poor Noemie's birthday-at-the-Seaquarium plans out the window, and we had no vehicle to show for it in the end. Our Youth Fair plans for Monday fizzled out with the rain and on Tuesday I plum forgot Dominic's swim lesson. So maybe we'll go to the planetarium on Friday. Or maybe not. And maybe we'll make it to my mom's potluck on Easter. But the statistics are against me. I'm pretty intent on getting to that chiropractor's office this afternoon, though, I tell you what.

Noemie eats cake (for probably the first time ever) on her birthday.