Kerstin Baker-Ash

Winter in Toronto

It's freezing. With a sick baby and weather that makes polar bears shiver, we stayed indoors today. It was quite relaxing watching the ferries to Toronto Island casually break through the thin layer of ice on the inner harbor of Lake Ontario as they made their way to the Toronto Islands. I took a video, uploaded it and posted it likely before the ferry made it to the other side. This technology thing is kinda cool, eh?

 

Shot on a Flip Mino HD (bought in April 2009), edited with iMovie '11 and song loop composed in Garage Band '11.

Hanukkah Tidbits Across the Web

It's that time of year again, where we celebrate the Festival of Lights with lots and lots of delicious, oily food. A time of year when we again say, "they tried to kill us, they didn't, let's eat" and when the internet offers up little tidbits to help us celebrate Hanukkah that much more.

Google celebrates with little Stars of David:

And of course, the viral hit "Candlelight" from the Yeshiva University Maccabeats:

 

The Globe and Mail offers up a new take on traditional Hanukkah fare, while Search Engine Roundtable redecorates with a splash of dreidels and golden Stars of David. And if the overwhelming amount of Hanukkah-inspired themes and articles isn't enough, CAPTCHA boxes are even getting in on the spirit:

Happy Hanukkah!

The Working Mother

With the move over and things finally starting to settle down in Toronto, I'm left both cherishing my last week of maternity leave and looking forward to the new challenges ahead. So it's a bit clichéd, but it's my blog and I get to be philosophical when I want to be.

I've always been of two minds about returning to work. From the moment I saw the little blue line appear on the pregnancy test, I knew I wanted to take loads of time off to be with my little bundle. I didn't factor in the exhaustion of pregnancy or the heavy duty commute and the toll it took on my body. In the UK, I got fantastic maternity benefits, and was able to start my maternity leave at the end of October 2009. I used my nearly three months pre-baby to rest and relax and prepare to become a mother. Sure, it wasn't all rosy - especially when my aforementioned bundle was more than reluctant to meet and greet the world - but I really enjoyed my "me" time. 

When my daughter was born, it was a whirlwind of emotions. I did get the baby blues - nothing serious, but it was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before and it was gone in about two weeks - and my life became about her needs. I re-prioritized everything, and I loved it. Life is and was diaper changes and poosplosions and breastfeeding and learning how to collapse the damned stroller and sleep deprivation and baby cuddles and first everythings and more love than I ever could have imagined possible. My daughter is, in my no-holds-barred-very-biased opinion, the most awesome little creature and smarter than I could have imagined. 

But this post isn't about gushing about my fantastic daughter - it's about trying to reconcile her needs with my needs and our family's needs.

We moved to Toronto to make working work. I was not going to go back and work in London. It made no sense to put her in daycare for twelve hours a day while we would endure a pushy, hellish commute only to spend five minutes with our daughter before she had to go to bed. In Toronto, I am hoping to work hard to make a work-life balance realistic and manageable for both my family and my new employer (more on that in a later post).

So, it's with excitement, trepidation and sheer exuberance that I return to work - missing my baby terribly but knowing she's having a great time with friends and cherishing the time I do have with her that much more.

Privacy and Blogs

My husband and I have been discussing this at length recently, given our impending change in circumstances from a married couple to parents in just about three months (!). What level of information will we give out about our new bundle of joy? The gender? The name? The details of the birth? 

We want to keep the baby as private as possible to protect our child. We won't be revealing the name in public, or linking to a newly bought domain name just for Baby Ash. Sure, we'll tell you if the bundle was pink or blue and maybe post a single picture from the hospital (babies faces tend to change rather rapidly, we're told), but apart from that I'll be keeping mum (aren't I punny?) on his/her details.

Why? Call me an over-protective mother if you like, but there are some things that I believe don't belong in the public domain unless both parents agree that it's in the best interests of the child. My husband does not operate much in the online space - he's as clued up as an actuary can be about search engine marketing, but prefers to keep his life, family and thoughts private. On the other side of the spectrum, I post about a lot of things my husband wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, but we meet in the middle when it comes to our kid.

There are a couple of people we've taken a cue from when it comes to posting online about the baby. We're nowhere near as well known as them online, but they've given us three different approaches to acknowledging their children in their public blogs. 

First, there's Michele Henry from the Toronto Star, who blogged about her pregnancy and is now blogging about her son on Pregnant Pause. She mentions him by name frequently (although I suspect the kid has a different last name from her, otherwise he'd be Hudson Henry...) and has posted a photo of him on the blog (he's more than adorable, by the way). The blog is informative, hilarious and an extremely good read for anyone (I've been reading it throughout my pregnancy), but I wonder if we'd be as comfortable as she is posting photos and details of the baby online.

In the middle part of the spectrum, there's Hadassah Milner. A warmer, kinder person you couldn't find, and she's been documenting her life for a while, including her four boys and her husband on In the Pink. While she frequently acknowledges the men in her life, she uses pseudonyms and grazes over their neighborhood (Montreal is a pretty big city) in an effort to share as much of her life as she's comfortable with. Crucially, she never posts photos of her kids on her blog - something I agree with (while acknowledging that everyone has their own personal opinion on).

At the very private part of the spectrum, there's Barry Schwartz - a guru in the SEM industry and new father to a baby girl, blogging on Cartoon Barry. That's all you know about the kid, apart from references to her gender and when she was born, and a photo of him holding a bundle with hair at the hospital. This is the route we think we'll be going with - people know we have a son or daughter, when he or she was born, but no names, no pseudonyms and no photos apart from the requisite hospital shot.

We'd prefer to use walled gardens, like Facebook or iWeb, which we can password protect for our baby. This isn't to say we don't want to show the world just how gorgeous and amazing he or she is, we just want to control how much exposure the baby has until our kid is 18 and can decide for himself or herself just how much information they want publicized about themselves online.

The pictures here are of two people (myself at the top, my husband on the left) who are well over the age of 18 now, and who have consented to publish some information and photographs of themselves online. We want to give the same decision to our child about how they want to be known online, and inform them of the potential dangers of exposing yourself to people who might not have the greatest social filter in what is and isn't appropriate.

What do you think? What is your advice to two new parents? Are we being too overprotective of the baby, jumping to conclusions about nasties on the web and wanting to keep the child private? Or, are we doing the right thing by controlling the exposure our child has to the outside world before he or she can make an informed decision themselves?

My NHS Sponsored Vacation

I've been away for a little while. Nowhere exotic, just unfortunately on a National Health Service sponsored getaway for one on a maternity unit in Hertfordshire. My usual long-windedness isn't called for here: I'm okay. The baby is okay. I'm still very pregnant, the baby is still using my bladder during what I can only assume is fetal soccer practice, and I'm no longer experiencing the level of discomfort I was two weeks ago.

It's been said that when you're pregnant, you don't mess around with anything. You have a pain? See a doctor. You have a funny feeling? Call your midwife. In this country, as I was very pleased to find out, they take anything pregnant seriously. I showed up at the hospital on Thursday night with quite squirmy pains and a bit of a temperature. I said the magic word (pregnant, more than 20 weeks) and instead of waiting in the normal ER (A&E) I was whisked to the maternity unit. I didn't wait long at all for midwives to strap Walt and I up to a monitor, take my blood pressure and a multitude of colored tubes of blood (the squeamish need not apply, it would seem). 

The only drawback to the process is that the intake area for emergency cases in the maternity A&E is that it's within the labor and delivery suites, so my husband and I were treated to the melodies of two women in the very late stages of labor. I had earlier expressed a desire to try to go natural with the anesthetist in my last appointment. I've changed my mind. Drugs are good. Drugs are very, very good. Hearing primal screams emanating from my own body isn't appealing to me, and I really don't feel like scaring the pants off my newborn before it even has pants. I know pain relief is a very personal decision for every woman (and everyone and their neighbor has an opinion on it), but I was fortunate enough to experience both sides of the coin at the hospital. Hey, here's a good idea - want to scare teenage girls into abstinence or safe sex? Take them to a labor ward.

I digress. The diagnosis from the registrar (a head-ish doctor, I'm still getting used to British medical terms) and the surgical consultant was suspected appendicitis, but since the senior consultant surgeon wasn't in until the morning, I was taken up to one of the maternity wards to stay overnight for observation. The staff on the ward were very kind and helpful, letting my husband back in at 1am to give me some pajamas and my phone charger (you know, the essentials). I felt like a bit of a fraud; at exactly 24 weeks I was much, much smaller than the other women on the ward who were waiting for their time to be induced because they were overdue. 

Usually, appendicitis presents as a raised white blood cell count (check) and severe abdominal cramping (check), but diagnosis is hard in pregnancy as at my stage. The baby was essentially blocking any view of the organs around the uterus, rendering a definitive diagnostic ultrasound out. Bloods were taken twice a day, doctors and midwives came in on rounds regularly. I have been pretty militant about not taking even the smallest dose of paracetamol while I've been pregnant, but the pain got to a point where I needed to ask. 

They seemed very willing to prescribe analgesics, to my slight dismay. I don't want to pretend I'm a medical expert, I'm not. I can read, I'm fairly well educated and can navigate my way around the FDA website. I was prescribed Temazepam to sleep and codeine for the pain, the former being Pregnancy Category X from the FDA. Sure, the doctor said she prescribes it all the time in the ward, but I remained quite unconvinced. In the States, they say that taking Temazepam "will cause birth defects in an unborn baby." Um. Yeah. No thank you. Honestly, I was very put off by the doctors' assurances that it was completely safe in pregnancy - when I challenged her on it she said, "well, that's the States." Okay then. Despite all its myriad flaws, I trust that if something is classified as a no-go for pregnant women in the States, they're not third world enough to be taken with a grain of salt in the UK. I didn't end up taking the Temazepam.

So, my white blood cell count was climbing, and with the doctors less and less sure that I was suffering from appendicitis, they were scratching their heads. The head surgical consultant for the hospital came in on Saturday and pronounced me absolutely clear of appendicitis - it turns out that the baby, again during what I can only assume was fetal soccer practice, tore my right ligament that connects the uterus to the pelvic bone, or something along those lines. Thanks, baby! There was still the oddly increasing WBC though. Now comes the fun part.

We've heard in the news recently (especially in the UK) that bugs and germs love to take up residence in hospital wards. Put a bunch of immuno-suppressed women (as we "pregnants" are) in a ward together, and you have a pressure cooker of viruses from other wards or our visitors (we're limited to one - not at a time, just one period - for the duration of your stay). Despite having isolation rooms for such eventualities, the geniuses at the hospital deemed it safe enough for the two women in isolation to not have their own bathroom facilities. So it didn't really matter that they were isolated from us for the day - they used the same bathrooms we did. I've been relatively diligent since getting pregnant about being a total germaphobe, but I still managed to pick up a rather nasty pregnant version of gastroenteritis. 

The virus knocked me for six (i.e. it was really, really bad) and the consultant obstetrician gave me a choice of being put in isolation or isolate myself in my home à la swine flu. Given the quality of food (disgusting) and being away from my husband, I chose to get sprung. Fast. I was in my own bed (or my own bathroom, at least) for Saturday night, and didn't feel at all well for very nearly seven days. I missed going to services for Yom Kippur, but had no problem fasting; anything I ate wasn't processed by my body for any nutritional value.

Some key learnings from my stay in the hospital:

• Fight your corner - the majority of women in the ward were below the age of 25 (I was twelve and fourteen years older than the youngest two, respectively) and there is a perception in some regional hospitals of the education level of patients. If you don't want to take something in pregnancy, don't. You have the right of refusal.
• Bring your own food - while I applaud the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust for offering both Halal and Kosher meals, the food on any menu was beyond unpalatable. By Friday afternoon, I had assembled a range of non-perishable foodstuffs brought in by my fantastic husband. I'll be packing similar food in my hospital bag for January. And while I'm on the subject, what's with the tea trolley? They don't offer decaf. In a maternity ward. You know. Women who shouldn't be having that much caffeine. Idiotic.
• If something hurts, tell them - I had an IV drip inserted into my arm. I still have a very pretty bruise (photos available on request), because I waited for 24 hours to ask them to take it out. It wasn't comfortable at all, I didn't get used to it, and it turns out I have an allergy to plaster (i.e. the adhesive used in band-aids). Tell them, and go back to point 1 - fight your corner.
• Wash before and after everything - it's time to get your OCD on. Buy some hand sanitizer; do not use it sparingly.
• Laptops, Books and DVDs - if they're lax, and they were in my ward, you could watch television in bed, listen to music (with headphones) and basically work from the (dis)comfort of your hospital bed if you so chose. Not having any entertainment for nearly 24 hours was brutal, so if you know you're going in, pack some funny movies and the latest Dan Brown in advance.

I didn't have a horrible time in hospital - I know it could've been much worse. I was reduced, at the end of visiting hours, to a blubbering, pregnant mess, but it wasn't unbearable. The care from the doctors, nurses and midwives was great overall, and while I wouldn't recommend eating in a hospital if you can avoid it, it's not going to kill you. The best part about it? No problems with the baby, and a relatively clean bill of health. That's the only bill I got, thanks to subsidized health care. 

Score one for Obamacare.

Shana Tova!

 

It's once again that time of year, the time where we gorge ourselves on sweet things, and try our hardest to enter into a diabetic coma of honey, chocolate and sugar. Of course Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, celebrates more than just food. Rosh Hashanah is the creation of humankind in the world, the time when deeds of all humanity are reviewed and evaluated.

One of the more famous food traditions is the honey cake, second only perhaps to dipping apples in honey. Everyone has their own favorite, handed down many generations, borrowed from friends and family or found in the back of a dusty cookbook (or the dusty internet). I've found that our little recipe turns out beautiful, moist and compliment-worthy cakes - as promised, here it is.

שנה טובה ומתוקה - shana tova umetukah - may you all be inscribed and sealed for a sweet and happy new year. If you haven't found a High Holiday service yet, it's not too late thanks to the great folks at Chabad. Try Chabad's free service finder to find a service near you.

Honey Cake Recipe

2 cups honey (I use Jellybush or Manuka)

3/4 cups vegetable oil

1 cup very strong coffee or espresso, fresh (i.e. not chilled)

3 1/2 cups plain flour

3 eggs

1 teaspoon fresh chopped cilantro/coriander (the extra color is great)

2 teaspoons ginger

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons freshly grated cinnamon

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup extra honey (I use Manuka here as it's part of the glaze)

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons unsalted butter (or margarine, if you want to make the cake parve)

Preheat the oven to 175 C, and use butter or margarine to line the bottom of a large cake pan (I use two large loaf pans). Then, in a small pan, add the oil, coffee, vanilla and honey and heat - do not allow the mixture to boil - until it is thoroughly combined. You can then remove it from the heat to cool, or add to the rest of the mixture straight away.

In a very large mixing bowl, blend together the flour, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cilantro, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Then, in a medium-sized mixing bowl, add the eggs and sugar and beat with a mixer on medium speed for five minutes or until the mixture has achieved a pale yellow colour and thick consistency. Pour the honey mixture into the egg mixture and blend until thoroughly combined. Add the egg and honey mixture into the flour mixture, and blend until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into the cake pan/loaf tins and bake for 45 - 55 minutes, covering the pan with tin foil about 30 minutes in or when the top appears to brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, add the remaining honey, sugar and butter/margarine to a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring constantly. Pour the glaze over the honey cake evenly and allow to harden - I usually poke little holes in the cake with a skewer so that the honey oozes down into the cake and hardens.

Into the Next Decade

 

It might be a bit misleading, I realize that now. Along with my first (and hopefully last, for a year at least!) 30th birthday card, my work bought a very delectable carrot cake and jelly-filled cupcakes (having lived in the UK for three years, I still can't bring myself to call them fairy cakes). I also got my first present from the baby, a kids' cookbook - the baby is half Baker, after all. A pregnancy massage, gift certificates for Harrod's and Laura Ashley and more Paula Deen cookbooks rounded out a great haul; the best gift I got was a relaxing day, a lovely walk in the park and dinner with my mom and stepdad at my favorite restaurant.

I'm pretty darned excited for my 30th year, even though in spirit and reality, I'm still in my 20s.

The Mommy Blog

Three decades ago tomorrow, my parents were called mother and father for the first time. In a little over three months, my husband and I are expecting to experience that life-changing event for the first time ourselves.

It's not the most secret of secrets; I'm pretty darned big already and still have a while to go. Our little swimmer is flopping around, kicking like a rugby player or ballerina, and it's pretty tall for it's age (not entirely surprising - I'm 5'10 and my husband is 6'3). I like to think that the baby is knitting itself a comfy sweater for the amount of times it's using my bladder as a pincushion, but maybe it's just practicing precision synchronized swimming.

Ridiculous cravings seem like a figment of Ally McBeal's imagination; my most "bizarre" requests have included sausages and mash, orange juice and scones. Whatever gender this kid is (yes, we know, but we're keeping it a surprise until the big reveal in January), it takes after it's father like a clone. I tried introducing some Mexican food a couple of weeks ago, but the baby was having none of it, expressing displeasure all night long by rolling around like a hamster in a wheel.

It's such a strange and wonderful feeling knowing that you're growing another human being inside of you. My world is "Walt's" (the fetal moniker for our little one) world, and it reacts to everything around it - sounds, tastes, touch. Feeling the baby kick for the first time was pretty amazing, a reaction to music gets it dancing inside, and hearing Daddy's voice at the end of the day gets the baby so very excited. That a fetus is so reactive to external stimuli is so amazing - we're so in awe of creation, of the potential for such an amazing life, that it almost seems surreal because it's so miraculous.

My plans for work are to keep in the loop; our industry moves so quickly, and keeping up is essential. I'm pretty sure I won't be blogging on such a regular basis post-January, but I'm hoping that the time off I have before Walt is born will let me get organized and set up for industry news during nap times.

We both can't wait to meet our little Walt in January (sometime around the 16th). In the meantime, we're enjoying dinners out, couple time and road trips on a whim. I'm not quite sure I'll be live tweeting the labor - I think that might be a bit difficult - but I'll keep everyone posted on our little bundle of joy (and what color that bundle is).

I'm Back - And My First Google Streetview "Find"

Not so much with a vengeance this time, but a quiet, September-like whimper. With the holidays upon us (not the Jingle Bell kind), I'll share some of my favorite new year recipes (I cooked up a storm this weekend), some new things going on in my world and also a couple of SEM tips and tricks (I'm trying to keep the blog somewhat SEM-y, you know).

First, I thought I'd kick off the month with "the man that Google didn't erase" - a lovely photo of a man on Streetview whose hands, rather than his face, are blurred to mask identity (perhaps he's a famous hand model?). The unfortunate gentleman appears opposite 42 Eversholt Street (near Euston Station) in what looks akin to an early morning hangover nap:

Curiously, he's photographed across the road from a table dancing venue - perhaps the reason for his early morning stupor?

Offline for a While...

August has run away from me and taken my senses, mind and ability to concentrate along with it. I know what President Obama feels like - you plan for a slow news month, and then BAM! everything just gets piled on top of you. Not that I mind being busy - far from it. Things have to give, though - if I'm going to continue staying relatively sane and guiltless.

I'm going off blogging for two weeks or so, up until the next Bank Holiday (the UK's earlier version of Labor Day). On Thursday, we'll be driving up to Manchester to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday and the wedding of my husband's cousin Greg to Zoë. It's nice to see extended family - my aunt (dad's sister) and uncle are currently visiting us for a couple of weeks and it's nice to have a bit of "home" away from Canada.

Work is going really well, but when work is going really well, it usually means there's a lot of it. I haven't really had any guest bloggers on this, but hey, if you're interested, let me know. 

See you in September.