Several blogs I check out regularly (including BoingBoing and DaddyTypes) point to this posting at Debris.com telling the woeful tale of a company which has insinuated itself into the hospital L&D process, and seem to generally take advantage of a very hectic time in new parents lives by sucking your personally identifiable info (PII). They promise a ‘free’ portrait of your new child – but that’s essentially in exchange for becoming fodder for Growing Family’s list sales efforts. Growing Family’s privacy policy – you know, the one you don’t read ’cause your in freaking LABOR – gives them the right to share your private information with anyone.
Growing Family will use your information from time to time to promote additional products, services, rewards and special offers from Growing Family Network and its select Network Partners.
As Debris.com so appropriately notes – ‘My point is not that Growing Family was deceitful. My point is that, to my dismay, caveat emptor begins at birth.
We’re getting tired of waiting. So we headed up to Smyrna for dinner tonight to see if Scalini’s Eggplant Parmesan has its desired effect. We’re registered there now – so if Baby Trotz comes along by 6:50 p.m. on Monday night, Amy and I get a free dinner, a Scalini’s t-shirt for the baby, and our photo immortalized on the wall, right beside clippings from People, Southern Living and other area newspapers. The food was not bad at all, and the portions huge. Amy (obviously) had the Eggplant Parm, and I had the Veal Marsala. But the whole thing may actually revolve around the fluffy rolls they serve, literally doused with warm olive oil that has about four garlic cloves chopped up and sauteed. Homer says ‘Mmmmmmmmmmm garlic!’ (so do Joey & Amy). More reports to follow…..
So we are +1 and counting, and we’d really like to get this thing going. So, based on what we’ve heard, we decided to try making some eggplant for dinner last night. We made a simple roast of the eggplant with lots of garlic, but it didn’t seem to help. I think we may need to go the traditional parmesan route to get the correct effect. These rumours are all over the web – that eggplant is one way of naturally helping labor get moving. This page points out that it’s probably not the eggplant – more likely the basil and oregano. Most of these stories apparently stem from a restaurant right in our backyard – Scalini’s in Smyrna, Georgia. To date, more than 300 of the pregnant women customers who ordered their eggplant have given birth within 48 hours, and the restaurant dubs them the “eggplant babies.” If it doesn’t work in two days, the moms-to-be get a gift certificate for another meal. Their walls are covered with photos of these moms and their babies. I think we may need to head up there on Saturday night! Here is the recipe: Continue reading Eggplant, Do Your Thing!→
For the ‘this is not going to happen to us, right?’ category, CNN.com reports this morning on a woman who gave birth in her car at a gas station, then went on to drive herself to the hospital. Due to a mixup with the dispatch officers, police pulled the car over and ordered the mother out at gunpoint. When they saw the baby still attached by the umbilical cord, they got her to the hospital. Yikes!
And on a more personal note – no news on Baby Trotz. Today was to be the day, but no activity yet. A big storm blew threw Atlanta this morning, and we hoped that either (a) the powerful thunder brings on labor or (b) the lower atmospheric pressure helps things along. Or we can wait until tomorrow, when Amy’s cousin Miriam was born!
