Why does Hong Kong get to march in and compete under it's own name....while Taiwan STILL has to go by the name of "Chinese Taipei" and have to carry some made up Olympic flag?  Just let us be Taiwan for once.  Even Palestine got to be its own country and fly its own flag...and it's not even technically a country.

Last night was the first of 6 child birthing classes that we will be taking.  There were 16 couples there!!!  And of course all the females were checking each other out.  People came all dolled up with their hair done and wearing their best maternity clothes.  I was like oh brother.  I went in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt (and not even a maternity one, so it was all stretched to the max). 

Yesterday was just an intro to the course, a review of anatomy and physiology....and yes, we saw that video!  We also got to see the Labor & Delivery unit and one of the L&D rooms, which was cool.  It wasn't too bad...fairly warm looking for a hospital room with mahagony walls....and of course the TV (the second thing I looked for after the epidural pump!).  I hope they have cable.  We cancelled our cable since we don't watch TV all that often and I've been missing my Bravo TV!

When we first started, we had the anatomy & physiology lecture about what happens during pregnancy and delivery.  The RN leading the class passed around these rubber models of babies at various stages of pregnancy.  They were really freaky looking.  The 30 week one looked huge!!!  PB thought the 20 week one was the 30 week one...so when she announced the 30 week one, he was like WHAT? How could the baby be that big?  And then the RN goes, "usually at this point (30 weeks), the baby weighs 2-3 pounds".  puhahahaha.  not ours.

Then we watched THE video, which i guess was shot like in the 70's hahahaha.  PB kept asking, "why aren't they wearing gloves?"  But it wasn't bad...I feel like I've seen something like that before...maybe from pics in our textbooks from school.  Or maybe from watching too much TLC and that one reality MD series about ob/gyn's.  There was this one guy sitting in front of us, who's wife had announced earlier that he's pretty squeamish with hospital stuff.   He covered his eyes with his hand through the whole video.  Like for real covered his eyes, like kids do when they watch a scary movie.  And occassionally, he would peek through his fingers, but if it got too gruesome, he would close them again.  And then right after the video, he left the room.  He didn't even go with us to see the L&D unit...he waited downstairs in the hospital lobby for his wife since she went.  I was like, oh boy...

Before the video, the RN handed out these blank pieces of paper and she wanted each couple to complete the sentence, "childbirth is _______________".  After the video, the RN starts reading everyone's answers outloud to see how we felt about the experience.  These were the majority of the answers, "beautiful", "a miracle", "an adventure", "the beginning of new life", "exciting", etc...you get the gist.  Literally, everyone's answer sounded like that.  Then she reads OUR answer...."LONG" (and I wrote it in capital letters too).  Ours was sort of towards the middle of the pack, so we thought, there must be SOMEONE else in the room with an answer like ours.  NOPE.  The rest were all the same "great", "joyous"....etc.  HAHAHAHAHA. Then the RN goes, "well, i'm glad most of you have a positive outlook on the childbirth process".  hahahahahaha.  Whatever.  i guess we're the only realistic ones.  We'll see how joyous they are when they're having contractions.  We assumed she meant the physical process of childbirth itself since that's what our lecture was on and what the video was going to show.  We were cracking up so hard in the back, people must've thought we were crazy. 

So the one co-worker who just had his baby was telling us that his delivery bill came out to almost $20,000.  His wife had a relatively complication-free birth and the typical 48 hour hospital stay.  She did need pitcocin since her water broke before the contractions began, and she got an epidural.  He said the one ibuprofen she asked for was like $20!!!!  The already moms in the room just nodded knowingly.  The rest of us were like WHAT?!!!!  We had no idea the costs behind delivering the baby (myself included...I thought it was like a few thousand at most).  Luckily, after insurance, he was left to pay $8...which he felt should have been waived since it's such a negligible amount relative to the total.  hahahaha.  Can you imagine the costs with a C-section?!!!!  I wonder if it's double that amount?

On a totally different subject.... Someone at work posted up a CNN article about a Japanese man, employed at Toyota, who died from being overworked.  (The article mentioned several others Toyota employees who have gotten sick/died from being overworked).  They even had a term for it, kaboshi? (i think).  Anyhow, the funny thing is that our pharmacy runs based off of Toyota work principles.  No joke.  We have Toyota consultants come in regularly to analyze our workflow and suggest how to make things more efficient.  We even have japanese terms for certain efficiency systems that we have set up.  But yeah...everyone thought it was pretty ironic....

Sigh...finally, finished day 7 of 7 days straight. I hate when they schedule me that way.  It was supposed to be 8 days straight, but i got someone to switch with me since I have to go to my very first birthing class tomorrow!  I hope they don't show videos of the real thing...that's the last thing I want to watch.

I am ravenous these days.  At my last visit, I gained a LOT hahahaha....the MD was like, um...a little high on the weight gain these past few weeks.  Oh well, whatever, I don't care, especially since I still look small (thank you small bones).  Before it was too little, now it's too much.  I don't actually care how much I gain (unless of course it's harming the baby).  Now I try to eat only when I'm hungry...but that's ALL the time.  Pre-pregnancy, I would be hungry every 3-4 hours, but could last 5 hours if I really had to.  Now it's like every 2-3 hours and not more than 3 hours.  And I don't mean just feeling hungry, I mean STARVING like I haven't eating for half a day.  So I have to be prepared and bring good snacks, otherwise I end up eating things like chips and fries (guilty and guilty). But the baby grows incredibly fast the last few months, so if Baby Bear wants food, Baby Bear gets food...otherwise he gets mad and starts kicking Mama Bear .  Papa Bear says he has sympathy pains and gets hungry more and eats more now too...hahahaha.

Oh, but PB was in NYC this past weekend for a bball tourney, so I asked him to pick up some of those sponge cake bao's (the cone shaped ones).  Those are my FAVORITE.  So he came home with a bag of sponge cake scraps.  I was like what is that?!!  Apparently, he went with his mom to go fruit/veggie shopping and she took him to a bakery where they make those sponge cake and cream cakes shaped in a roll.  And I guess they keep all the leftover sponge cake scraps and sell them in bags!!!!!  ghetto.  But sooo yummy anyway.

oh yeah, found out someone else at work is preggo.  That makes 6 of us within 6 months. hahahaha.  We are one fertile pharmacy!

After two shower and the generosity of friends and family members, we have accumulated a LOT of baby stuff.  More than we currently have room for.  The baby's room is a mess now.  I guess we should start re-organizing stuff.  UGH...i hate re-organizing.  We were notified by PB's aunt that she bought us four costco sized boxes of newborn diapers and wipes.  I'm not exactly sure how big the costco sized boxes of diapers are, but it can't be a small box!!!  And we already have 3 costco sized boxes of wipes thanks to Yach and well, ourselves.  We've always been wipes users...even pre-baby.  PB is Mr. Clean and never thinks his hands are clean enough...so we already have wipes everywhere.  I tested out a diaper just to see how well they work...they are AMAZING!  You can pour so much liquid in there!  And it turns to gel instantly and the surface is still dry! 

We're also starting to archive our wedding stuff.  I got my wedclean.com box to ship my dress out for cleaning and preservation.  I never though I would get attached to my dress...but I just couldn't sell it.  PB bought these huge photo albums for us to store our wedding pics in.  Most of the wedding thank you's are distributed (there were some that came back in the mail...stinking post office).

We start our child birth and child care class next week.  Although, I feel like I've been prepped by the one guy who just had his baby a few weeks ago.  He's already told everyone EXACTLY what it's like, down to how to massage the breast to get the milk to flow (he demonstrated on his own man boob).

*see protected*