Month: January 2006

In honour of what I was doing exactly two years ago today (all. day. long), and because you responded so favourably to our infertility and IVF stories, and because it’s my blog and I’ve decided to yammer and really there’s not point in resisting, you might as well sit back, grab a coffee and let me tell you the excruciatingly long story of how Simon Francis came reluctantly into this world. (And yes, I promise that all the sentences won’t run on quite so long as this one.)

While Simon may have favoured surprise in making his presence known to us, he was obstinately opposed to the idea of actually coming out and meeting us. After a pleasantly uneventful pregnancy, marred only by six months of low-level nausea and one unfortunate barfing-at-the-bus stop incident, I was more than ready to divest myself of what was becoming an alarmingly large baby.

After previously birthing a nine-pound baby, and hearing throughout my pregnancy about this one’s “healthy” size, I was getting a little skittish on the idea that I might be gestating an elephant calf. As my due date came and went, I was referred to the high-risk obstetrical unit for monitoring, and after each ultrasound, would ask the technician for her estimate on the baby’s size. Each time, she would hedge and tell me that they could only guess within a pound or two either way, but eventually she took pity on me and said that her estimate was for nine or ten pounds.

This caused me considerable distress. Ten pounds plus two pounds of leeway was (takes off socks and shoes to count) potentially TWELVE POUNDS of baby. I began to rethink my vehement opposition to induction and ‘convenience’ c-sections and in fact pleaded with the obstetrician to induce me. And each time I was patted gently on the head and told that the earliest they would intervene was 10 days post-term, as long as the baby was otherwise healthy.

And he was. And so we waited. And waited. And waited.

On the eighth day post term, I realized mid-morning that I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt the baby move. He was so large and so tightly packed into my womb that I’m sure I could have felt him so much as blinking his eyelashes, so when neither drinking orange juice nor squishing him with my entire body weight (both tactics I used shamelessly to motivate him into movement throughout my pregnancy) elicited a response, we checked with the nurses and they advised me to come into the labour and delivery ward for monitoring. After several hours of angsting, an hour of frenzied preparation, and 20 minutes of driving, we were about a half a kilometre from the hospital when the baby commenced a series of lazy rolls. Closer to the hospital than home, and hoping they would take pity on me, we went in anyway, and were sent home within the hour. “Be patient,” they told us. You know me pretty well by now. You think I was good with the concept of “be patient”?

The next evening, the L&D administrator called me and told me that barring a baby rush in the next 24 hours, I could come in the next morning at 8 am to begin the induction. I was sure that Simon would take this as his cue, and that in overhearing this phone conversation he would finally take some initiative to make his own way into the world.

I was wrong. When we showed up on the fourth floor of the Civic hospital campus the next morning for an outpatient induction, I hadn’t had a single contraction, not a single twinge. When the resident obstetrician checked my cervix and found it “unfavourble”, I felt a little bit like I did when I failed my first drivers’ test. No dilation, no effacement. The baby was at ‘minus three’ station – in other words, somewhere up near my solar plexus. She gave me a dose of cervidal (I’ll save you the visual of how she dosed me) and within minutes I was having mild but detectable and regular contractions.

The nurse told us we had an hour to wait before the next exam, so we went for breakfast in the hospital cafeteria. (We hadn’t formally been admitted into the hospital yet, and wouldn’t be until labour was measurably and officially in progress.) After a few serious contractions, I felt like a bowling ball had dropped into my pelvis, and I was having trouble not walking in the bowlegged manner of a career cowboy. Either the baby had dropped, or he had become so large he had begun producing his own gravitational force. Flush with the excitement of actual contractions, I was crushed to find out on my next exam that my cervix was still closed. Closed! Not even dilated one centimetre.

The contractions, mild but frequent, continued every two minutes or so throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, when the resident announced that I was “fingertip” dilated – but nothing more. Entirely sick of walking the hospital corridors, we decided to take our show on the road. What with it being the last day of January, we were loath to walk around and enjoy the minus 15-before-windchill out-of-doors, so Beloved and I trundled ourselves to the nearest mall to kill some time. Because if you’ve gotta kill some time while you’re in labour, the mall is better than the hospital pharmacy for both selection and ambiance.

I don’t really remember too much of that part of the afternoon, to tell you the truth. I remember it was crowded because they were having a sidewalk sale, and I felt bad coming to a sudden stop in front of people as each contraction came on. I remember thoroughly enjoying a coconut pineapple Orange Julius. And I remember calling Nancy, who was faithfully keeping the rest of my friends informed of our progress, and leaving a message with her very patient husband, telling him I was in “induction hell”. I didn’t buy anything, or even do any serious browsing, because it just didn’t seem right to be using the fitting rooms while waiting for my water to break.

When we returned to the hospital around 4 pm, the staff took pity on us despite (or rather, because of) the rather uninspiring results of six hours of useless contractions, we were finally admitted to the L&D ward. By that time, my contractions had once again become irregular and barely uncomfortable, and I was getting annoyed with both my lazy baby and my enabling plumbing. If you don’t just squeeze him out of there, I told my uterus, he’s going to stay there forever. He’ll be twenty and taking his high-school equivalency exam via correspondence course in there, if you don’t step up now and kick him out while you have the chance. My uterus, drunk on cervidal and having been stretched to its limits – theoretically and literally, was not listening.

Dinnertime found me in the Jacuzzi tub, eating a ham sandwich and orange Jell-o, with barely noticable contractions. Nice life if you can get it. I’d’ve been perfectly content, if it weren’t for the 300-pound baby I couldn’t wait to pass.

The nurse assigned to us was a treasure. Her name was Jamie and I liked her instantly. She neither patronized me nor let me get away with anything, and I felt like we were attacking the problem of my stubborn baby like a business case that could be managed. We decided to let my body try its own thing for a while longer before starting a pitocin drip, and everyone was convinced that once things started to move, they would really move. It was just getting the process kick-started that was the problem. The baby was so high up in my cervix that we couldn’t even rupture my membranes, due to the risk of the cord prolapsing.

Beloved and I walked endless loops of the fourth floor, and even ventured down to the main floor of the hospital for a change of scenery. We walked so much that eventually Beloved asked, in a very tentative voice, if we might rest in the room for a while because between the mall walking and the hospital pacing, his feet were starting to hurt. So I sat in the room and bounced on a medicine ball for a while.

If you ever think you’re having a bad day, just thank whatever deity you worship that you are not a nine-months-plus-10-days pregnant woman trying to force a baby the size of a Toyota out against his will by spending an hour bouncing on a medicine ball after 12 hours of unsuccessful induction intervention.

The worst part was hearing the successful labours of other women on the ward. Because if labour is ever going to end, it first needs to start. I never thought I’d lay my head down and cry for jealousy of women screaming in agony. “Why can’t I have contractions like that?” I wept in the general direction of poor Beloved.

To my utter dismay, after 12 hours of regular albeit easy contractions and 4 cm of dilation, the contractions petered out to nothing early in the evening. We gave up on my body’s own plans for the evening, and called for the pitocin drip. Jamie ordered an epidural at the same time, still convinced that things would happen quickly. I was less optimistic.

The pitocin drip has a scale that starts at eight and moves up in increments of two to a maximum of 20 units. They started me at the minimum, and my mild contractions resumed.

Finally, shortly before 11 pm the anaesthesiologist arrives to begin the epidural. He is young and goodlooking, and I trust him because of this and because his name is Ben. After administering the epidural, he and Jamie leave me to stew in my own hormones yet again.

Every 20 minutes or so, Jamie boosts up the level of pitocin, and although contractions are steady, they are not painful and certainly do not have the anticipated effect of popping the baby out like a cork. Baby is still minus 3 station, and the epidural is very patchy, seeming to take only on my lower legs. Unless I find a way to deliver the baby from my ankles, I might be in trouble. Finally, Dr Ben the anaesthesiologist is called again, and he begins to mix special “cocktails” to properly anaesthetize me. He pokes me with a toothpick several times, and tells me I have a remarkably high tolerance for pain. I tell him not that high and ask him to keep working on his cocktails!

Dr Ben, my new best friend, comes and goes through the course of the night, completely perplexed as to why his cocktails are not working. We finally seem to hit on the right combination, and although I don’t seem to be completely frozen, I can feel the pressure of the regular contractions without feeling the pain from them. Dr Ben tells me that in the 400 to 500 epidurals he has done, mine is by far the most challenging. I am oddly pleased to at least be excelling at something this long night.

Finally, some time in the early hours before dawn, and more than 20 sleepless hours after the induction began, I feel a noticable change in the intensity of the contractions. Just as I am reporting this to Jamie, there is a gush of nether fluid. She tests it, but the traitorous strip tells her it is not amniotic fluid. A few moments later, there is a thud inside my uterus so sudden and so sharp that I jump and gasp in surprise and ask Jamie what has happened. She checks me, but I am still only 5 cm dilated, and she steps out to take a coffee break. Within minutes, my contractions ratchet up and my water breaks in earnest.

The contractions come on so suddenly that I am taken completely off guard and am unprepared to deal with them; all the breathing techniques and diversionary tactics I have learned go out the window in my sheer panic and I realize just how inadequate the epidural is. I beg for Jamie, my human security blanket, and Dr Ben.

Jaimie returns and cups my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her and get at least somewhat of a grip on my composure.

Jamie checks the monitors and tells Beloved to press the call button. My heart nearly stops at the tone in her voice when she calls for assistance; the baby’s heart has decelerated significantly, down from 140s to low 60s, Beloved later tells me. The room is suddenly full of people, including Dr Ben and the OB on call, handful of extra nurses, plus the resident who had been following me since I showed up for induction oh so many years hours ago. Still lying on my side and still feeling the totality of every contraction, which now seems like just one big, never-ending contraction, I thrust my right arm in the air at the pinnacle of each contraction. I have no idea why, but the gesture is mildly comforting. She checks me yet again, and finds I have dilated the last 5 cm in less than 20 minutes, and gives me permission to start pushing.

Fact of the matter is, her ‘permission’ is a little anticlimactic, because the Toyota-sized baby is now in charge and on his way out whether it’s convenient for us or not. After nine-months-plus-10-days of waiting and almost 24 hours of medical intervention, he is finally enticed out of the womb. It takes two pushes to get myself focused, and with three more pushes Simon barrels out, his arm raised over his head in much the same way I held my own arm up at the peak of every contraction.

He is born at 5:59 am on February 1, 2004. He weighs an even 10 lbs, and is portly and lovely and starving from his first breath. Two years later, he is perpetually portly and lovely and hungry.

(Hey, if you thought the retelling was long, be thankful you didn’t have to endure it in real time!)

It was a bad weekend for icons of Canadian culture.

First, on Friday it was announced that the Hudson’s Bay Company is being sold to an American businessman. The history of Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Company are irrevocably intertwined, and the idea of this titan of Canadian culture and history being owned by American interests is deeply disturbing (with apologies to my dear American friends.)

So why does it matter that HBC has fallen to foreign ownership? First, because one of the first things I remember learning about in elementary school was the role of HBC in the formation of Canada – the fur trade, Rupert’s Lands, coureurs du bois, Native people, British and French power struggles and remote northern outposts. It all became more tangible and comprehensible when I could tie it somehow to the big Bay department store downtown, back in the 1970s when department stores and downtown were both places of significance.

And more importantly, because given the choice between The Bay or Sears, or between WalMart and the HBC-owned Zellers, I always tried to support the Canadian company. If HBC ownership falls to American interests, there isn’t a Canadian equivalent left to choose.

Second, there were rumblings in the media this weekend about the possibility that Tim Hortons would be setting up its most distantly remote franchise ever – in Kandahar, Afghanistan. There are more than 2,000 Canadian peacekeeping troops stationed there, and while American soldiers can have their Pizza Hut, Burger King or Subway fix, Canada’s most popular coffee shop is reluctant to make the same move.

Timmy’s head office says that while it would be logistically feasible to set up a coffee and doughnut vending trailer on the base, they are reluctant to do so, citing concerns about quality control. While Timmy’s has a reputation for being generous to our overseas troops, ensuring each deployed soldier gets a gift package at Christmas, this seems like a great way for the company to show their support of the peacekeepers.

I don’t know how I’d get through a morning in my quiet little world with out a Timmy’s coffee (extra large, three milks) to start my day. For those who risk their lives in the name of a more peaceful world, a double-double and a chocolate dip doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Simon is looking at a Wiggles reel on the viewmaster.

Simon: I see Wiggles!

Beloved: Yes, and they’re in stereo.

Tristan, from the next room: No, they’re in Aus-tra-li-a.

Less than an hour later, we’re getting the boys ready for bed. Simon walks into the closet and pulls the door closed behind him.

Me: Oh no! Where’s Simon?

Simon, muffled: Inna closet.

Via Nancy and Phantom Scribbler, this very cool bloggy word cloud:

The larger and darker the font, the more frequently it is mentioned. You can make one yourself and even have a T-shirt made up here.

I can see you asking yourself right now, “She isn’t going to try to milk a third day of posts out of this TV thing, is she?”

Did you even have to ask?

I mean, these may indeed be blog’s glory days. Not that I spend a lot of time obsessing over my stats (only with days that end in “y”), but yesterday I got about 70 more hits than my previous best-ever day back in December, in the thick of the heady “plot to take down Rick Mercer” blog award days. So let’s stretch this out for just one more day.

Oh, and if you didn’t catch the broadcast yesterday, Andrea has a 26 MB download of the 10 minutes of interview footage on her blog. (I’m sure there are probably some sort of bandwidth issues that should compell me to host the download on my own site and offer it here, rather than leaching off of Andrea’s resources, but I have no idea how to do it. Andrea???)

I got a note from a lovely woman named Christie, who watched the broadcast from Williamston (Hi Christie!) and she was asking me a few general questions about blogging, which made me think that now would be a good time to link to the article I wrote back in the summer for our employee newsletter on the Wonderful World of Weblogs. It’s a beginner’s introduction to the world of blogs and blogging.

You know what else I noticed after the fact? The Eat, Shrink and Be Merry cookbook that Leanne gave us has been autographed by the author, Janet Podleski. Isn’t that cool? Now, in addition to my autographed Canadian literature collection, I can add this to the book Ann has autographed for me and have an autographed non-fiction collection, too! (Hey, a collection can have two books. It’s a start!)

Okay, one more quick story, and then I’ll try to get over myself and let this go. My dad made me a copy of the interview and gave it to me at dinner, and since Beloved FORGOT (!) to watch it, we watched it together with the boys last night. There’s one transition where Dan the camera man zooms in on Emma sitting at the table and colouring, and Tristan, who has been only half paying attention to this point, perks up and says, “Hey, who’s that pretty girl colouring?” in a funny little voice about half an octave above his normal speaking voice.

Andrea, I think we’re going to have to talk. The men in my family have always shown a predeliction for older women!

Wow, this must be my lucky day!!

As if the whole TV thing weren’t enough to feed my ego for a month or so, Sarah Gilbert picked today of all days to run my answers to her questions about defining feminism on Blogging Baby. I had, quite frankly, almost forgotten about this. Way back at the end of November, Sarah wrote a piece in response to Linda Hirshman’s ridiculous article opining that college-educated women who choose to stay home are somehow destroying feminism. She asked for women to share their thoughts and stories, and I had a few thoughts on the subject.

Thanks, Sarah, not only for the podium, but for sharing my rant. And thank you especially for rebutting Hirshman’s argument in the first place, and opening this conversation. It’s definitely a topic worth examining.

Just got back from taping and watching the CJOH news at noon segment. It was SO MUCH fun! I mean, even if it weren’t being filmed for TV broadcast, I could have sat around and chewed the fat with Andrea (and her gorgeous daughters) and Robyn and the ridiculously charismatic Leanne Cusack and the patient and friendly Dan the camera man all day long. Nicest people in the city of Ottawa, IMHO.

Got the day off to a rolicking start by realizing after I had left the house and pulled into traffic that I had no idea where I was going, so back to the house, wade through the snowdrifts and soak my cuffs again, crank up the laptop and find Andrea’s address. Then I got to her neighbourhood, and they’re doing snow removal on her street, so I have to go around and make a loop and find my way in through the back way, but I’m stuck behind the plow and miss her house and have to do an 800-point-turn between 2-metre-icebanks to get turned around, and then drive through a 20 cm windrow of frozen slush just to get into her driveway. By this point my blood pressure is already about double normal and I’m endlessly grateful that Andrea suggested we meet a bit early to chat and warm up (or, in my case, decompress) before the camera crew arrives.

But as soon as I start chatting with Andrea, whom I’ve met before, and Robyn, who is instantly likeable, I know it’s going to be good. Unfortunately, Kristina was so sick she couldn’t make it. We sit for a few minutes in Andrea’s lovely dining room, and discuss her very cool appearance this very week in none other than Reader’s Digest. I mean, you might call me a media slut, but I’ve got a lot to learn from Andrea – she’s a goddess!!

Dan the charming camera man arrives just a few minutes before Leanne. Leanne walks in bearing gifts (chocolate chip cookies, bless her generous heart), and her charisma is so strong that you feel like you are her best friend within two minute of meeting her. She introduces herself and makes a passing reference to how cute Tristan and Simon are, and I am completely in love with her. She obviously has my number – admire my boys and I’m yours forever! I have a moment of panic when I realize that a famous person has been reading my blog. Duh! She’s doing a segment on blogs, of COURSE she’s been to blog.

(Hi, Leanne!!)

Within 20 words, we’re all best friends. It’s just like that – I imagine that most people she interviews feel this way, but she is such a likeable person and so easy to talk to that I feel like we’ve all been girlfriends for years. We get to talking about Greta and Janet Podleski’s cookbooks, and it turns out Janet is not only a friend of Leanne’s, but that Leanne has a trunk load of their latest cookbook Eat, Shrink and Be Merry in the trunk of her car, so she gives us all one. (Unsolicted plug: If you haven’t read LooneySpoons or Crazy Plates or this one – you must try them! They’re my favourite only cookbooks!)

Where was I? Oh yes, basking in the glow of laughter and great conversation. So we do eventually get around to filming the segments, and thanks to Leanne’s easygoing nature and Andrea’s wonderful sense of humour and Robyn’s technical support and the adorable blond girls wandering in and out of the picture, it’s a huge amount of fun. At one point, Leanne is in the middle of saying something into the camera, and (sorry, I can’t remember if it was Emma or Sarah) one of the girls tugs on Leanne’s leg to show her the picture she’s just drawn. Leanne just bends over and thanks her for the picture, right on camera – it’s such a lovely moment it almost wrecks my mascara.

Leanne recognizes us for the attention-whores that we are, and makes sure that our blog addresses are mentioned in the clip, appear on-screen AND are linked to us from the CJOH Web site. So, if you are visiting for the first time as a result of today’s broadcast, hello and welcome!! Clear off a chair and make yourself at home, and drop me a note in the comment box or send me an e-mail (danicanada @ gmail . com) to let me know you were here. If you have any questions about blogs or blogging, feel free to ask.

And as if all that weren’t enough, while we were wrapping up, Leanne asked us if we’d be interested in doing an in-studio blogger panel, answering calls from the television audience. That high-pitched shrieking noise you heard around 11:52 this morning? Yah, that was me. I think she took it as a reluctant yes.

By the time Leanne and Dan went off to file the tape, it was almost noon so Robyn, Andrea, the girls and I settled down on the couch to watch ourselves. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, all in all. Andrea will be sending me a digital copy of it soon, so either I’ll miraculously figure out a way to stream it here, or (much more likely), you can go over to her place and watch it.

Things I learned about watching myself on TV:
– I have to learn to think with my eyes open instead of fluttering my eyelids every time I open my mouth.
– My hair is too flat and I really need to learn how to put on makeup one of these days.
– My voice is much deeper out in the universe than it sounds in my head.

You know what the funniest part is? I called home after the first 4 minute segment to see what the boys thought, and Beloved HAD FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT IT!! He had to stop the Wiggles DVD and flip it over to the right channel to catch the second 5 minute segment. Sheesh, so much for the fan club at home!! (smooch, I love you muchly anyway…) I called back on my way out from Andrea’s, and I guess Tristan said when he saw it, “I miss mommy. Can we go to her work to see her?”

I’ve missed a bunch of details, I’m sure, but I’ll post them as they come to me. You’ll have to excuse the overt fawning over Leanne and Andrea and Robyn, but I’m completely infatuated with all of them now. Thanks, my (new) friends, for such a lovely morning. And the TV thing was cool, too!

Yesterday, I traveled to Kingston and back for a conference. The conference was actually three days long, but between family obligations and that thing that’s happening this morning – what was it again? Oh yeah, I’m going to be on TV!!!!! Ahem – well, it was just too much for me to attend all three days, but Kingston is only two hours away by train.

I love the train, I really do. I guess Tristan comes by his obsession honestly. You get a totally different view of the world from the train. Houses face the road, not the train tracks, so the view from the train seems very intimate – it’s almost like peeking into lit windows at night. And there’s something about riding the train in the dark that makes you feel dissociated from the rest of the world – you can just sit and ride and think (or read, or snooze, or – god forbid – work.)

The conference itself was great, too. It was one of those days where you feel like your world is a little bigger than you realized, and you feel a little bit more connected to the rest of the world.

Perspective – that’s the word I’m looking for. Even someone as change-averse as me needs to step out of the everyday routine for a while and take a look around. The trick is in doing something with the perspective, not just prairie-dogging up for a bit and then going back to doing the same old thing.

I realized recently that I’ve become so used to being busy and overworked that I cram something into every moment of every day – and more than one thing, if I can multi-task. Then one day I forgot to bring a book to read on the bus on the way home, and they were out of the free daily paper with the soduko puzzle, and so I just sat there for the entire 35 minute ride and stared out the window – and I realized that I can’t remember the last time I did that. I just sat, and thought. Pondered. Considered. I didn’t have any relevations, except that maybe I need to just sit and stare off into space more often. It felt surprisingly good!

End of January resolution: more slacking. I’ll put it on my calendar.

It’s no secret that my eldest son is a bit of a picky eater. Preschoolers are notoriously fussy eaters, and as long as nobody tells Simon the omnivore that, it’s all good.

What might qualify as a little more quirky is Tristan’s predilection for food shaped like the alphabet. It’s beginning to look like a bit of an obsession.

It started innocuously enough with letter pretzels. I was looking for an alternative to the ubiquitous goldfish, and aside from the salt, these pretzels are a reasonably healthy little snack. They are also Tristan’s absolute favourite food on the planet, and have been for close to three years.

It only took me about two years for me to figure out, Hey – if he likes letter pretzels, maybe he’ll like letter shaped pasta, too. And so I bought a can of Alphaghetti, and he gobbled the entire bowl down. (I searched high and low for a link to Alphaghetties, but apparently everyone’s favourite neon orange letter pasta doesn’t exist on the Interweb.) And Nancy, you will be so proud to hear that I didn’t even wash the tomato sauce off of them first. I’ve come a long way – and gone through a lot of washcloths- from the days when I used to suck the tomato sauce off the ravioli bits before giving it to my toddlers.

Somewhere along the way, we added ‘letter cookies’ to his list of favourite foods. ‘Letter cookies’ is what Tristan – and now Simon – calls the Loblaw’s knockoff version of Oreo cookies, called Eat the Middle First. (Letter cookies because, well, they have letters on them.)

Last month, in a stunning cognitive leap, I rediscovered Alpha-Bits cereal. Of course, Tristan adores them. He wants them first thing in the morning as a dry snack, and he wants them again with milk for breakfast. And he must tell me all the letters that every single spoon-or-handful contains.

So now that I’ve discovered a theme that is working for us, do you have any suggestions? It would probably be a good idea for me to invest in some letter-shaped cookie cutters. Think those things would cut through a steak, or a piece of chicken? Anybody know where I can get letter-shaped carrots, or broccoli?

(Edited on January 27 to add: if you’ve ever had a picky eater, you MUST peek over at Nancy’s blog for a few suggestions on how to make an ordinary lunch extraordinary. I’m not sure whether I feel incredibly inadequate or extremely excited to have a bunch of great new ideas. I’ll let you know whether they pass the “Eww, I’m not eating THAT!” picky preschooler test.)

I’ve been itching to tell you about this, but I didn’t want to ‘scoop’ Andrea on her own story.

About a week and a half ago, I got an e-mail from the endlessly creative and witty Andrea from the Fishbowl. She had been contacted by CJOH TV, and was asked to be interviewed about blogging on their highly rated noon-hour news show. Andrea decided out of the kindness of her generous heart to share the joy, and asked other Ottawa bloggers Kristina and Robyn to appear with her on the segment. Oh yah, and she asked one other blogger to join her, too. Can you guess who?

ME!!!!!

(insert pause for Dani to do the “I’m gonna be on TV” dance here)
(keep pausing – it’s a long and embarrassing dance)
(almost there)
(watch out for the limbo and the ‘spinning on her head like a breakdancer’ finale)
(okay, phew, we can move on now)

Andrea has a few more details on her post this morning. It will be filmed Thursday (January 26) morning, and air some time during the noonhour broadcast. We’ll actually be interviewed by co-host Leanne Cusack, whom I had the opportunity to meet a couple of years back at the North Gore farmers market, and whom I can say is one of the nicest, most friendly and engaging people I have ever met. And I’m not just saying that so she’ll make me look good on TV!

Did I mention I’m going to be on TV? Did I mention BLOG is going to be on TV?

I’ve been on the news (as opposed to IN the news) twice before. Back in May 2001, just when Beloved and I were starting our first IVF cycle, we were interviewed by CBC Newsworld for a segment on infertility and IVF, and in particular the health risks of IVF. A little less than a year later, another reporter from the same network called us and said they were doing a segment on the ‘rights’ of frozen embryos and what to do with surplus embryos from IVF to juxtapose with a piece on adoption rights. The reporter was delighted to find out she had called me by sheer concidence on my due date and I was exactly 9 months pregnant with my IVF baby – it added a great visual impact to their story!

(Poor Beloved. Even before I discovered blogging as a way of sharing our most intimate details with random passers-by, I managed to find ways to drag him cringing and flinching into the spotlight.)

So the rest of the week will be consumed with ironing out important details like what to wear (I’ve already been told that striped turtlenecks are strictly forbidden) and what to say. In her post, Andrea cleverly asked for any tips and pointers, and I will do the same.

Any thoughts on how to look less nervous, smarter, thinner, funnier and not borderline neurotic on TV?