Childbirth and Costa Rica

This article in salon about the rise in C-sections totally confirms my suspicions about my own induction.  We live in such a litigious culture that everyone is just trying to CYA and c-sections are risk reducers.  Public education is no different from medicine in that regard and it sucks.  Before I was induced, we asked about leaving the hospital and giving it a few more days since the baby was not stressed and my protein levels were barely outside of the normal range.  The doctor sort of coldly told us that we were free to do what we wanted, but we'd have to sign a form acknowledging that we were acting against medical advice (!!).  Which, as a first-time parent, was terrifying.  We were so mad about that and knew that they had a protocol for everything that erred on the uber-conservative side.  I do think that Kaiser seems better than other offices, though, after hearing about how much insanely unnecessary monitoring goes on elsewhere.  Check-ups every week?  Daily non-stress tests for two weeks before the due date?  It's unbelievable that of the 5 people who gave birth within the same year as me at my school, 3 were c-sections.  Anyway, my desire to become a duola or nurse midwife intensifies when I read articles about childbirth.

Costa Rica!  It was so incredibly hot there that Natan and I immediately started planning a cool-weather vacation for the summer of 2014.  We are not humid-tolerant people.
We learned that dealing with extreme weather makes life really hard--you are constantly trying to plan a day and navigate life with a constraint (heat).  Life seems much easier in the bay area, where the weather makes walking to food and recreation a non-issue.

I have many pictures, so I'm going to start with ones we took on a beautiful hike along the Rio Celeste which is in Tenorio, CR.  I should say that getting there was one of the most stressful things we've ever done--hours upon hours traveling at 20 mph on a rough/rocky road. 

We stayed in an ecolodge, which was very awesome--built entirely from recycled materials that originated in CR and utilizing solar heated water.  It included all meals, which were fresh, fancy and cooked on demand.  It was run by French-Canadian expats and had lots of European tourists.  We met only one other American family during our three days there, from Minnesota (which is now on the top of my list of "affordable places to look into living").

 The views from the lodge.

Our main activity in Tenorio was hiking the Rio Celeste.  This hike was muddy and the hardest thing I've ever done--hot and physically challenging.  We got there around 7 am to take advantage of the slightly (maybe 2 degrees) cooler morning.  We walked for 4 hours, went back to our ecolodge for lunch and totally crashed.  My legs hurt so bad that I had to take advil.

It was really hot, and we pretty much did the equivalent of a four hour intensive Bikram yoga session.

 Bubbling, sulfurous hot springs.

This walk is tourist-friendly because at the end, you come to the origin of the river, where two rivers merge, and through the beauty of chemistry, become blue (I'm unclear on what reaction is happening, but the blue color means it must involve a copper compound (information I know solely by virtue of teaching the best chemistry curriculum ever designed)).

We saw the famous Costa Rican frogs, which are tiny and colorful.  Our ecolodge had a frog pond and we went out at night to see who turned up. 

 

There was a big cane toad, which is NOT invasive in Costa Rica and therefore not a target for stomping (as it is in Florida, Hawaii and Australia, and I'm sure many other places).  I guess it's a little awkward when tourists show up and try to kill native species.

Ode to Chicago

 We have our first rain of the fall in SJC (it’s a bit early, I think), the baby is sleeping and I woke up from parallel napping thinking about Chicago.  I read a quote on the internet about how Chicago is just a northern outpost of Mississippi, it’s been shaped so much by the great migration.  I never in a million years thought I’d ever even entertain the thought of moving back, but since our summer visit, that thought has crept in (rest assured, I’m 98% sure that it will never be acted upon.  I can never forget the dirt and misery of the winter).  But what a great city, that place.  Granted, we visited during unusually cool and beautiful weather, but it allowed us to walk around the city not feeling miserable and enjoy the hustle and bustle of downtown.

We stayed in the Hotel Palomar our first night, which has complimentary animal print robes!  As the sun went down, it rained and we camped out in front of the window, looking at the city in awe like some sort of rural rubes.  (Theo slept in the bathtub, because hotel rooms with babies are hard--they go to bed so early!)

 

We went to the pinnacles of civic life—museums (the art institute and the field museum).  The biggest difference we noticed was the entire rerouting of Lake Shore Drive to make it easy to walk between all of the museums (previously this was not possible—you had to get on LSD in order to go from one place to another).  

We ate pizza at Pizzeria Due (and were disappointed to realize that Chicago style pizza in the bay area is now superior to its progenitor).  Look at the building right across the street!  It's so beautiful and is now a Macy's?

We visited Millennium Park (which was completed after we left, so new to us) and saw the bean, lots of hot dog stands and the amazing pig sculptures by Jun Kaneko (who also designed the Magic Flute set at the SF opera we saw last year.  SYNERGY).  Natan spent lot of time at the Marc Chagall mosaic in the First National Bank Plaza.  

We talked about how many people were out and about just living in their city—eating, playing, visiting--a model of urban life that is rare in the US, but common in Europe.  It reminded us of our favorite city ever (of course that is Vienna) and made us want to visit again, soon!*

 CHICAGO 4EVA.

*this post completely ignores the gang wars, poverty, atrocious racial history, recent school closings, Rahm Emanuel, the legacy of the Daleys and all other human impacts on those actually living in Chicago and is purely from the perspective of a privileged white vacationer.