Until yesterday I wasn’t quite convinced that we would ever get our house in working order. But suddenly the office desk had miraculously moved to the bedroom (through the work of T and a nice guy who works downstairs. The future nursery was devoid of boxes and furniture and was painted it a wonderful shade of light grass green. Then the furniture delivery men were setting up a gorgeous crib in our condo, and throwing the pillow on the upholstered glider, and we were placing our nice simple, light but smooth “Moonlight Slumber” mattress on baby’s crib and suddenly it all came to life when we put up the crib bedding.
We are debating at this point if we will really need to have a bassinet. It would be great for convenience and baby care purposes, but we have the option of moving furniture around in the bedroom to keep the crib next to the bed anyway, and then that’s one piece of furniture less for us to accumulate in our space-limited place. So it’s a valid concern. Would love to hear from people regarding their experiences with cribs/bassinets. Baby Bargains says you don’t reallly *need* a bassinet but I do like the idea of an Arm’s Reach for those early days, especially since I could cart it around the condo if I really wanted to.
The weekend has been a busy one for us, though. Both T and I have been at our wits’ ends at points but we had an especially productive <i>yesterday</i> in which we got most of the boxes organized moved, and emptied. Currently we have, well, much less left at least. And we went to the Birth Center’s Mother Infant Assessment class taught by Nurse Katie who did my lactation consultation earlier this week. She is a truly fantastic teacher and had tons of useful information even for a pediatrician just out of residency. I love how her class had three major topics – Infant assessment and care during the early days (which I am of generally familiar with), Taking care of oneself/mom (which I am decidedly UN-familiar with), and the onerous topic of deciding whether to circumcise a child.
I agree with Katie and with most people out there (and with the AAP) that circumcision is definitely NOT a necessary procedure. It is most often a cosmetic one that is best decided according to one’s cultural traditions and whether they would want to have the procedure once they grew up. She guided us through the rather brutal appearing nature of the procedure itself, but any mom and dad should know that this is short-lived and should not be the deciding factor, given that other painful things – such as immunization – are also a part of caring for children. Her presentation also included a slideshow through the controversial and decidedly fascinating history of circumcision and all of the ways in which members of the medical community have tried to “medicalize” the procedure in the past. One thing I loved, however, was her stressing the importance of including dads in this decision. I know that T appreciates being part of this decision-making process. Given that I am not a man and have not gone through childhood and adulthood I think it best to get his opinion on the subject! So the moral of the story, moms, is make sure that you and dad come to an agreement together on this!! I will spare the audience of our decision, but know that it was a decision made jointly.