Chemical Free Papi

Take Action against corruption! Check out my rap about Citizens United.

I’m wondering why my daughter, when born, won’t have the same skills to hit the ground running like other baby animals. Wouldn’t that be awesome? She can immediately start paying us back for all the organic food, doctor visits, prenatal yoga classes, paraben-free lotions, and alcohol-free vacations we’ve spent on! Well, I guess she saved us money on the alcohol.

Baby sea turtles know they have to make it to the sea, and quickly. It’s a matter of life and death. Behind all the cuteness, these baby animals are introduced to the world with an adventurous, solutions oriented, and go-getter approach to hitting the waves. Why won’t my daughter know how to crawl and find a job as soon as my wife gives birth to her? Imagine, I cut the cord, she showers, obviously, slips on the interview outfit we’ve picked out, and off she goes! A job, which is the open ocean in my metaphor, is also critical for survival. I guess the difference is instinct.

It’s true that our brains will develop light-years beyond a baby sea turtle’s. Amongst other things, we’ll learn; to love, to hate, to not care, to think critically, how to save the planet, how to destroy the planet, and even how to compare baby girls to baby sea turtles. The latter is an advanced skill which comes after learning how to use, at least, 43% of your brain like Lucy.

Baby sea turtles learn how to eat, take dumps, swim, mate, and hide. That’s it. The only human that has achieved this level of living is Donald Trump. Well, in his defense, he also knows how to viciously offend everyone, so we’ll categorize him as a “sea turtle plus.”

Just found out that baby humans are born earlier than other animals. According to Scientific American, “a human fetus would have to undergo a gestation period of 18 to 21 months instead of the usual nine to be born at a neurological and cognitive development stage comparable to that of a chimpanzee newborn.” Maybe that’s what separates us from other animals, in the long run.

My baby girl’s brain will be incredibly vulnerable to external stimuli, after she’s born, and just as vulnerable to toxic chemicals, when she’s in the womb. So even though, she won’t be ready for life immediately like a baby sea turtle is, keeping her away from toxic crap may give her the boost she needs to be all she can be! Just not a princess, I don’t want her to be a Disney princess!

Last weekend, as I poured myself a cup of lukewarm water from our gallon Brita Filter Water Pitcher, I thought to myself, “why is this container plastic?”

It struck me. I was under the impression my Brita filter was filtering out all the nasty chemicals from the tap water. In all honesty, it was doing that, but then it deposited the filtered water into a plastic vessel. The water just sat there absorbing the BPA, BPS (the unregulated chemical that replaces BPS in many products because “then they can claim “BPA Free”), and whatever other nasty, toxic, cancer-causing chemicals made the plastic, well plastic.

There was no filter in the spout pouring the filtered-from-the-tap-then-exposed-to-plastic water into my glass. Huh? It’s complicated.

My wife drinks this water on a daily basis. About 8 cups a day. Considering she’s 20 weeks pregnant, she doesn’t miss a glass. That’s 8 cups a day and 56 cups a week-  adding up to 1120 cups total in pregnancy time. Needless to say, what wifey drinks, baby drinks.

Easy fix! I would just replace the Brita. I gleefully took a trip to my favorite store, Bed, Bath, & Beyond (BB&B)! Home of the strange and beautiful Dyson Fan! Surely, the Mecca-for everything-affluent-families’-need-for-their-homes has what I need. I’m like Frank the Tank, a day at BB&B, is a big day! I get there, make my way to the water pitcher section and find... plastic galore! Pure, Zero Water, Brita, and other brands BB&B carries, had zero water filter glass pitchers. I’m now at a loss. Going to BB&B and not finding what you need is like watching a Keanu Reeves movie and not finding horrible-acting.

Google!

I got home and googled what I was looking for. There were a couple of water filtering glass pitchers like the Soma Pitcher, but it also contained plastic. Not to the extent of the others, but it has a coffee-filterish, cone-like filter-holder that will inevitably dip itself into your filtered water. A plus, in the filtering world, is that water is usually cold or room temperature. This is light years better than hot or boiling water coming into contact with plastic. Still, nothing is good enough for baby girl. I can’t help but think that the passage of time does make a difference, in reference to water exposed to plastic. I would have to filter the water and drink it immediately to reduce my exposure. Nothing is easy.

Binchotan Time!

Two days away from our 19-week pregnancy anniversary! Is that how you say it? The baby is the size of a “juicy and sweet mango,” according to WhatToExpect.com.

One week ago, while speaking with my employer’s bookkeeper, my Apple Watch started ringing (welcome to the future people!). It was my wife. I didn’t think it was an emergency because she would’ve called 18 times in a row, so I would just call her back in a few. Little did I know, our doctor was on the phone with the gender results from one of the many precautionary blood tests “geriatric pregnancy” patients have to endure. We’re both 37 and that’s the technical term. Fun! We opted to find out the gender after many highly civilized discussions. I insisted, compromised, coerced, and threatened until I finally wore my wife down. She gave in just to shut me up. I knew that would happen. Ashamed, I am. Anyways, back to the call. So, I finally returned my wife’s call and the doctor, who warned that we would both have to be on the phone before she would reveal the gender, was no longer available. I guess she didn’t want to get caught up in another “why did he/she know first” couples debacle. Luckily, our doctor agreed to send a secured email with the news including strict instructions that both parties must be present. My wife and I agreed to meet halfway between our jobs in Downtown Oakland for the reading. We only work about 9 blocks from each other, so it took an eternity, I mean about 7 minutes, to meet. We read the email together and it read, “IT’S A GIRL!!!!” We couldn’t believe it! It was one of my happiest and most surprising moments to date. I immediately became a feminist. Images of Rosie the Riveter and me punching a future boyfriend square in the face, expectedly, popped up in my head.

We were so sure that it was going to be a boy that we had the name “Nicolás Mateo” ready to go. Nope. I remember telling my wife that there was a 10% chance it would be a girl, since we referred to it as a “he/him” the entire time. Why? My parents, her parents, friends’ parents, all had boys first. It was inevitable. We couldn’t agree on a girl name to save our lives. We hugged, kissed, and as we parted, our warm hands rolled down each other’s arms until they made contact and we could only feel the last molecule at the tip of each other’s fingers like the Creation of Adam, and went back to work. Vomit. Um, yeah our married life is a romantic comedy. The elation of having a little girl accompanied me the entire five blocks to work. I couldn’t stop cheesin’. I was ecstatic!

A couple of hours later, I had some downtime at work and decided to Google: “What having a daughter means to a new dad.” The first thing I read was “when you have a son, you only have to worry about one penis. When you have a daughter, you have to worry about all of the penises.” Not a very “Pride” accurate 2015 post, but I got the horrible point. I was, initially, only worried about my baby girl’s exposure to toxic chemicals!