Changing of the Guard

We all remember the big controversy back in 1999. Oh, you don't? Well, then let me remind you. It was the Women's World Cup final and it had come down to penalty shots. Brandi scored the winning shot for the USA and immediately stripped off her shirt to reveal the infamous Nike sports bra. Apparently that was the first time a women had ever gone in public with a sports bra because that event was talked about forever and is still remembered today.

Fast forward now to 2008 Beijing Olympics. The women's USA team was playing Brazil in the final for the gold medal. After a gruelling match the USA win it 1-0 and in the midst of the celebration it happens again. Natasha Kai rips off her shirt to once again reveal her sports bra. Only this time it is not a classy, black, poster worthy sports bra that the marketing companies love with the easy-to-see Nike logo. Rather, it is a pink one with white swirls on it...and to make things even worse, there is no brand logo to be seen! How can a marketer ever use that for any type of advertising!!

Take a look at the two photos...the first one being Brandi and the second one being Natasha.















I write this post not to show you pictures of girls in sports bras (just go outside on a hot day to see that) but rather how the image seems to have changed over the years. The first photo is a white girl, well built, classy sports bra with obvious branding, long hair. Basically your poster child for the all around athletic girl (which she basically became with that shot!). The second picture is of a girl (not sure if Caucasian or not...she is from Hawaii so maybe just really tanned), tattoos everywhere (there are even more tattoos of writing on the other side of her torso that you can't see in this photo), with a pink and white swirly bra with no branding.

I'm just speculating here, but I don't think if that second shot would have happened back in 1999 it would have even been popular. Back then tattoos really weren't that popular and I think people would have looked at her as a little weird. Does wearing a non-branded sports bra show how disassociated the younger generation is with brands? I'm sure she would have worn that bra on purpose knowing that she would most likely take off her shirt if they win. I just find it interesting how times have changed and the images and acceptance of certain things have changed over the last 10 years.

What do you think? Am I reading too much into this? Do you think our accepted image of people has changed in the last 10 years?

(Oh, and if you want to know what happened to Brandi's Nike sports bra...it's in her drawer with all the other sports bras she wears)

Breastfeeding Does What?!?!

As mentioned in the previous post, I attended a breastfeeding class. I thought this class was going to be about training Shiela on how to breastfeed and what to do. Apparently they do that in the 2nd class, but this first class felt similar to what I imagine the Communist do to brainwash people and teach them their propaganda. This entire class was basically about why breastfeeding is so awesome and why formula is so bad and wrong. And just like on Corner Gas when the townspeople spit every time they say the name of the nearby town they hate, the teacher got everyone to spit when someone said the word 'formula'. Sure am glad I'm not the janitor in that place!

Now I'm all for breastfeeding, but I think they were pushing it a little too far. They handed out their list of 101 Reasons to Breastfeed. I started to glance through it and suddenly burst out laughing when reading some of them. I think they were stretching it pretty thin to come up with a top 101. Here are some of the sketchy ones:

1) Breastfeeding means fewer cow-induced global greenhouse gasses
2) Cow's milk is designed for baby cows (although we all drink it!)
3) Breastfeeding helps reduce cruelty to farm animals (no Mr. Farmer, please don't massage my breasts any more...please!!!)
4) Suckling optimizes hand-to-eye coordination (last time I looked the baby used their mouth to get the milk, not their hand)
5) Breastfed babies have sweeter smelling diapers (that's good because I'm sure I'll be smelling each diaper to take in the wonderful sweet aroma of crap caused by the breastmilk)
6) Breastfeeding is what breasts were designed for (hmm..let's poll 100 men and see what they think!)

So as you can see, the list maybe should have been shortened to like 50 or so,as in my eyes going to 101 made it lose a lot of credibility. The 2nd class is this week where they actually teach us how to breastfeed. I wonder if there's a class on how to mix baby formula? (spit)

The Things I Do For Love

When it comes to sports there is very little that will make me miss a game. I am very dedicated and always want to be there. I look forward to the games in great anticipation and missing one is very hard on me.

So when Shiela told me that the breast feeding class was during a soccer game, I quickly grabbed the pamphlet and analyzed it trying to make the dates on there change so there would be no conflict with soccer. I gave it the best evil eye I could but to no avail.

Therefore, tonight I will miss my soccer game so I can go learn how to breast feed. In all honesty, I'm fine with it and want to support Shiela, so attending this is not really a big deal. Besides, I should probably learn a few things to so that when I use my man boob (just like in Meet the Fockers) to feed the baby when Shiela is not around, I know what to do!

Knock Knock Ginger

Ever played that game when you were a kid where you ran up to someone's house (usually late at night), rang their doorbell and then ran like the wind to go hide and watch some sleepy eyed guy answer his door in his boxers (hopefully he was wearing at least that!) wondering who is there at 2:00am? Of course I would never do this to anyone (stop laughing), but the other night someone played a similar game like that on us.

It was 1:00am in the morning and I am soundly sleeping, dreaming of dribbling past the defense in soccer and scoring yet another awesome goal (just like reality of course!) when I suddenly get woken up with an elbow. "Are you awake?" Shiela asks. I quickly think what an odd question because obviously I am now, but I politely reply "Yes". "I think I am having contractions," she tells me. Being the easy going person I am, I glance at the clock and decide that whatever it is it can wait until morning. And back to sleep I go.

A few minutes later I am woken up again with the same question. "Ok, let's time the contractions I say." I start my watch and realize that the contractions are 2 minutes apart. Now in the pre-natal classes we took they told us that when the contractions get to 5 minutes or less we should go to the hospital. However, it is 1:00am, I'm half asleep and I see that the contractions are 2 minutes apart. The problem is that the pre-natal classes made it sound like it would take a while...you know, start at 10 min apart and then slowly work it's way down to 5 minutes. They don't mention that they might just start at 2 minutes! After trying to think about this through all the fog still lingering in my brain, we decide to go to the hospital.

I grab the keys, open the door and start to walk to the car. "You might want more than just underwear on," Shiela calls after me. I glance down and quickly sprint back inside throwing a glance at all the windows in the houses around ours wondering who was all looking. Finally, we were in the car and at the hospital. We were put right through to Antepartum. After a few questions and looks it sounds like they are going to send us home and we just need one more person to check. The doctor comes in, checks the cervix and says Shiela is 3cm dilated already. I'm drifting off to sleep in the chair beside the bed during all this, but when I hear the words "You're going to have this baby now" I quickly perked right up. Did I fail to mention that this baby was currently six weeks pre-mature.

Fully awake now I carry all our stuff to the Labour and Delivery section of the hospital. I walk into the room and tell the nurse there must be a mistake. This room we are in wasn't a hospital room, it was a mini nursey! The best part was the extremely comfortable LAZY-BOY chair that fully reclined into an almost bed position. I quickly sit down, kick back the recliner right to the bed position and start to relax. Shiela lay down in the bed, they strapped her full of wires and then continued to check on her throughout the night.

At 6:30am I wake up to a slight beeping. Nothing big, just the monitor wasn't reading properly. I tell Shiela to press the call button and a nurse comes in to fix things while I drift back to sleep. The next thing I know there is a loud alarm going off in the room, I bolt awake and watch as 6 nurses come crashing through the door of our room all yelling things and moving quickly. I did what I could to help...got out of the way! I watched as they flipped Shiela over, strapped on the oxygen mask, and played with all the monitors. I felt a little left out so I just decided to randomly yell things out like "What's just fell out" and "Is that suppose to look like that?" Finally things calmed down and everyone was just talking at a dull roar. Apparently the monitor was not getting the babies heartbeat and so the nurse hit the panic button and all hell broke loose. Better that than not doing anything so I was fine with it. After that ordeal Shiela was totally fine (she was fine and calm the entire time) and so I went back to sleep.

The next 30 hours or more were a blurr. Shiela wasn't really progressing so we just kicked around the room, played some crib and I would occasionally yell close to the monitor on her belly once in a while to make the needle on the computer jump really high and confuse the nurses when they came in to check on her status. Finally, after around 40 hours in the hospital we went home as Shiela had stopped having contractions and everything was back to normal.

And so the saga continues and we continue to wait. Probably a good thing...we didn't have the baby room ready yet anyway!