Thanks for welcoming our celebrity blogger, Lisa Loeb.
Currently expecting her second child in June, the musician, 44, and husband Roey Hershkovitz are already parents to daughter Lyla Rose, 2½.
In addition to her number one single “Stay (I Missed You),” Loeb also had hits with “Do You Sleep” and “I Do.” In the years since, she’s recorded two children’s albums, written a kids book, done voiceovers, developed an eyewear line and started the nonprofit Camp Lisa Foundation.
She can be found on Facebook and on Twitter @lisaloeb.
In her most recent blog, Loeb writes about her baby shower and the trip to the hospital that turned out to be a false alarm.
 Me, my mom Gail and my sister Debbie at my shower – Frances Iacuzzi |
I almost had the baby! Almost, or so I thought. Since my first child came three and a half weeks early, I’m open to the possibility of this baby coming any day. The other night, after lots of crazy contractions coming every five minutes or so, my husband and I decided to head to the hospital.
Of course, we hadn’t fully packed our bags yet, and so we rushed to load everything we needed into the car including my pillow, some clean clothes for the baby, books, DVD’s like Bye, Bye Birdie, Annie Hall, and Office Space (even though during my daughter’s labor I couldn’t imagine watching anything), makeup (not sure what I’m thinking), mini packets of almond butter and pretzels (they say to bring snacks), and a million other things.
We raced to the hospital, using the contraction-timing app my husband found online, but by the time we got into the hospital and hooked up to some monitors, the contractions started slowing down. So the decision was made to go home. No baby yet, but yay (!), now we have our bags packed and have successfully done a dress rehearsal of our trip to the hospital.
Another sweet baby event happened too: my very close friends, sister and sister-in-law gave me a beautiful, intimate shower at the restaurant Simon L.A.! My mom Gail came, and my sister Debbie — who’s also a mom of a 2-year-old — left her busy schedule of making music and developing TV projects in Dallas to celebrate with me.
We ate mini crab cakes and endive salad, roasted chicken and fish wraps, fresh chips and guacamole and pizza, and even though we were stuffed from lunch, no one could resist the comfort food dessert platter.
It included fresh baked peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, regular and chocolate rice crispy treats, mini vanilla milkshakes, mini sno-balls, cupcakes, caramel popcorn with peanuts, and enormous bowls of cotton candy! I brought some of that home for my daughter, who’s only heard of cotton candy in Dolly Parton’s kid’s book I Am a Rainbow.
Otherwise, everyone asks how I feel … well, honestly, I’m so tired. Seriously. It’s like getting jet-lag randomly, and I feel the baby’s head just getting lower and lower.
It’s the cave-woman/biological reality kicking in — if I were an animal, I think I’d be a fat cat laying on the bottom of a dark closet looking up longingly at my owner’s face, waiting for the birthing day. But I’m a working mom instead. I’m doing what I can to slow down but I still want to drop my daughter off on school days, finish up working on my next record and continue designing for my eyewear line.
All that with the weekly doctor’s appointments in another part of town, it starts to add up. The doula that I’m working with told me that it’d be a good time to start resting. I do take a nap part of the time while my daughter naps, but I was wondering what “resting” means exactly.
I thought going to the drug store to pick up a prescription or checking out a carpet for my new baby’s room was more like “resting,” but it turns out she means putting my feet up (which are starting to look a little sausage-toe-ish), and reading a magazine or watching TV and keeping quiet. Off my feet.
I laughed out loud. Is it because I don’t know how or can’t find the time? Does anyone actually do that unless it’s at the insistence of the doctor, officially called “bed rest”?
Talking about not resting — for my birthday in March, my husband gave me tickets to see Roger Waters performing Pink Floyd’s The Wall with him, and I was so excited to go! We’re still trying to fit in date nights, although with me being so tired, sometimes it’s more like date late afternoons.
In the middle of May — less than a month before the false labor event — we went to a really nice dinner in downtown Los Angeles, where we had the best corn soup ever. (I know, sounds like a funny thing to comment on, but it was so, well … corny.)
We thought it would be more convenient to leave our car at the restaurant valet and take a cab a few miles to the arena to avoid concert parking. Oops! The traffic ended up being so extreme that we got out of the cab, walked to the venue and then around it a few times to find our tickets and our seats.
I was having some unusual nerve-y feelings from the pressure of the baby on my legs, which meant a very long, slow walk through a very crowded (and poorly lit) outdoor coliseum, which reminded me of a 1970′s rock concert. Eventually I had to be the party pooper since it was hours past my bedtime, and we went home. I love The Wall, but I think a super pregnant woman wasn’t necessarily supposed to be there…
Has anyone else ever been to a place where they shouldn’t at the end of their pregnancy? I’d love for you to tell me about it!!
The next time you hear from me, I’ll be a mom of two! In the meantime, follow me @lisaloeb.
– Lisa Loeb
