Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Getting Ready for a New Baby

Our new baby will probably look something like this, but she'll plump up quickly.


Jillian has had two steroid shots twenty-four hours apart to prepare the new baby's lungs, as the doctor said she's dilated to about two centimeters, though she isn't feeling any contractions.  If she were actually one of those rare people you see on TLC  who dilate to ten centimeters without feeling any contractions, she'd presumably give birth naturally, as the problem with her little preemies isn't cephalopelvic disproportion; it's that her lung capacity isn't really sufficient for a normal labor and delivery. She says she would never be so lucky, though.                  

She and her husband are well-educated in terms of the risks involved with steroid injections for preemies, but it's still clearly the recommended and common sensical  practice. Some doctors even recommended a second two-injection course a week later if the mother is still pregnant, but Uncle Scott doesn't think research supports the risks outweighing the benefits of the second course of injections, so Jillian won't have another course unless the pregnancy goes at leasr another three weeks, which is highly unlikely. I'm still sticking with my July 8 preduction, which is one week from today.

The nanny asked me to get out my violin and play for Andrew today. She thinks live music is good for babies and young children. I told her Uncle Scott plays violin as well, but she answered, "I've heard him. He doesn't play the way you do." Such is true, but he's only been playing for about two years. He's not really bad. He just doesn't sound like a violin major.

I have to stand up or sit on a high stool or Andrew will grab at my violin or bow, and I'm not about to let an eight-month-old baby have access to my violin or bow. Once he figures out he can't reach, he gives up trying and does the baby dance where the kid rocks back and forth from one foot to the other, usually with a fairly rigid body. He's somewhat rhythmic. He likes jigs the best. I've noticed that there's a natural sequence to baby dancing. First they rock back and forth, either on their feet or on their hands and knees if they're not yet standng stably. Next, they learn to spin slowly to the music, usually with their hands above their heads, fingers touching, sort of like  ballerinas. The next stage is to jump up and down, almost like the new wave stuff of the very late seventies and early eighties. After that, they begin to develop some of their own moves.

When Andrew gets bored with that, which isn't all that quickly, Nanny Helen picks him up and dances ballroom-style with him, which he loves.

Andrew likes piano music, too, but he naturally dances more with violin music. He loves it when his daddy plays guitar or piano and sings to him. He doesn't sing along, though. If I play piano and sing to him, he will join in. Maybe it's because a female voice is higher and easier for him to attempt to match. I really don't know. He sings along when his mother sings to him, too. Maybe it's just that Scott is so much better than we are that Andrew would rather listen than mess up the sound, where there's not that much he can do to make it sound worse if it's Jillian or I singing. I should test my hypothesis by having my mom sing to him, because she has a high voice but she's actually good. If he sang along with her, it would refute my theory that Jillian and I are so bad that he knows his singing could do nothing to interfere with the quality.

I'm working on a slightly unusual blog series about TV series and their influences on me in growing up. I'm still not sure exacrtly where it's going. I'll probably post the first very late tonight. It may seem somewhat out there (what else is new in terms of my posts seeming out there?) but I think it is ultimately going to tie together.



8 comments:

  1. Many good vibes for Jillian and the new baby. Andrew sounds like he's going to be musical!

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    1. Jillian is the only member of her family who isn't really musical, and scott and his family are all very musical 9except for his mom, and most of her family is). the odds are in his favor of being musical, and he also has that early exposure that's really key. part of your musicality is genetic, but you were also around a lot of singing and playing by your parents. Both nature and nurture play a role.

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  2. Test your hypothesis by having your mom sing to him! Also just to give you some competition, I predict July 11 as the birth date. I know what effect television and movies have had on me. Many TV shows and Disney films have a happy ending. So I look as life as having a happy ending.

    The body dies but the ultimate cause of this is birth. So the question is, is a person their body or something more. Socrates taught that the immortal soul is the most important thing in life. Have a nice July 4th, my darling Alexis. I wrote that to see how it sounded.

    I do not see this on Wikipedia but I read that Venessa Carlton's mother played music to her everyday while she was still in her womb. It does say "Her interest in music began at an early age. At the age of 2, she visited Disneyland Park and played 'It's a Small World' on the piano when she came home. Her mother then began to tutor her.[7][8] She was introduced to classical music from a young age."

    Her hit: A Thousand Miles
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwkej79U3ek

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    1. I could pick out simple tunes on the piano by the time I turned two. I could put harmonies with them by the tme i was four. My mom couldn't teach Matthew to play piano because he didn't catch onto it very quickly and it frustrated her, so I taught him. We were six, and already through the early stages before my mom even noticed he was learning. He now plays competently,, and i've been his only teacher.

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    2. I wonder if your mother played piano while she was pregnant with you. If you become pregnant someday (I am not trying to rush you) you can try playing piano everyday. They say that playing classical music to a fetus makes them smarter. Who says this? Scientific American says:

      "The phrase "Mozart Effect" conjures an image of a pregnant woman who, sporting headphones over her belly, is convinced that playing classical music to her unborn child will improve the tyke's intelligence. But is there science to back up this idea, which has spawned a cottage industry of books, CDs and videos?

      A short paper published in Nature in 1993 unwittingly introduced the supposed Mozart effect to the masses. Psychologist Frances Rauscher's study involved 36 college kids who listened to either 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata in D-major, a relaxation track or silence before performing several spatial reasoning tasks. In one test—determining what a paper folded several times over and then cut might look like when unfolded—students who had listened to Mozart seemed to show significant improvement in their performance (by about eight to nine spatial IQ points)."

      So they are just guessing with fetuses but I do not think that it would hurt.

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    3. I wonder if your mother played piano while she was pregnant with you. If you become pregnant someday (I am not trying to rush you) you can try playing piano everyday. They say that playing classical music to a fetus makes them smarter. Who says this? Scientific American says:

      "The phrase "Mozart Effect" conjures an image of a pregnant woman who, sporting headphones over her belly, is convinced that playing classical music to her unborn child will improve the tyke's intelligence. But is there science to back up this idea, which has spawned a cottage industry of books, CDs and videos?

      A short paper published in Nature in 1993 unwittingly introduced the supposed Mozart effect to the masses. Psychologist Frances Rauscher's study involved 36 college kids who listened to either 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata in D-major, a relaxation track or silence before performing several spatial reasoning tasks. In one test—determining what a paper folded several times over and then cut might look like when unfolded—students who had listened to Mozart seemed to show significant improvement in their performance (by about eight to nine spatial IQ points)."

      So they are just guessing with fetuses but I do not think that it would hurt.

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  3. Here is a movie scene from "White Chicks" making fun of the above song. The 2 blonde women on it are really 2 black male cops in disguise.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixxKKPkxz5o

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