Delights & Shadows

I am baking cookies and fish at the same time, and the smell that just hit my nose when I opened the oven was so bizarre.

Now that I’m on the subject of responsible food choices

The other day mamaguru told me about a report she saw on CNN about a documentary focused on child slaves in West Africa harvesting cocoa for chocolate production.

The filmmaker says this about which chocolate are brands are linked to child slavery: “All the major companies globally source cocoa from West Africa. So pretty much any famous brand you can think of uses cocoa from Ivory Coast. Very few chocolate companies can trace where exactly their cocoa comes from and whether child slavery has been used in its production. As an example, Nestle told CNN that they can only trace 20 percent of their cocoa supply (that is why they have sent a team to investigate their supply chain). Only a few Fair Trade chocolate brands can confidently say that no trafficked children are used on their farms.”

There are many big, awful issues that are difficult to tackle. This, however, isn’t one, because our choices as consumers directly affect the issue.

If you’re interested in a baby step, visit mamaguru’s facebook page dedicated to Boycotting Chocolate for Valentine’s Day.

I ate three lunches today

#pregnancy

A note to Babytwo

With my history of recurrent miscarriage, I held my breath when the pregnancy test in October was positive. We’d decided to try without the medications that, I believe, kept your brother in place.

I don’t know when I started breathing again, but I’m doing it now. In and out.

I am amazed at my body’s ability to keep this going on its own, and I wonder about the randomness of it all. It’s like those stories about women who struggle with infertility and adopt a child, only to become pregnant afterwards.

All of this also leads me to wonder if it’s random at all. Maybe the difficulties of that and the ease of this are us getting the exact children we were meant to have.

I’ll never know. Or maybe I will. Or maybe it only matters what I believe.

You, baby girl, have hung in there. We moved across the country, living here and there in-between. My stress, no matter how I attempted to relieve it, was high. You’ve been through it all with us, and I sit here now, on a Thursday afternoon in January, while your brother sleeps, and I feel the popping of your movements within me, and I believe in you.