Breastfeeding: it's hard, Part 2

As I indicated in my previous blog post, part of what caused me to struggle with the early weeks of breastfeeding was that Ruth was a tiny baby, and a slow gainer. She was born at 6 lbs, 5 oz, then dropped to 5 lbs, 12 oz before we left the hospital (a very interesting conversation took place on my Facebook wall about trying to breastfeed premies). This was an okay amount of weight loss, the max that was considered normal, so Ruth was ready to come home with us two days after her birth. Then it took her nearly three weeks to get back up to her birth weight.

At 11 weeks out, looking back at those early pictures I can understand why people were worried about her weight. She was all skin and bones, no fat whatsoever. Having very little experience with babies, I didn't know any different.

This is where I'm extremely grateful our pediatrician (who's actually a nurse practitioner) gave me the appropriate referral to a lactation consultant rather than insist that we go straight to supplementing with formula. A lactation consultant visited Ruth and I three times at home before things really picked up. I was instructed to take fenugreek (a galactagogue--a substance that increases milk production), and also to pump to increase my milk supply. Every ounce I pumped was to be fed to Ruth after she finished nursing from me. I was also told to let Ruth go no more than three hours at night without feeding (early on she was inclined to sleep slightly longer at night), and she was to wear a hat as much as possible (so she wouldn't burn extra calories trying to keep warm). We did everything we could to boost my milk production and ever so slowly she gained back the ounces.

In the meantime, while Ruth remained below her birth weight, I was in a near constant state of anxiety. Why wasn't my baby gaining fast enough? She was producing plenty of wet and dirty diapers (the best marker for whether a breastfed baby is consuming enough besides weight gain), and she seemed happy, but that wasn't enough. Tears emerged during more than one hour plus night feed because I felt I was failing to provide Ruth with what she needed. If we had extra pumped milk Andrew often offered to take over the feed, but I rarely consented.

Ruth is now up to 9 lbs (as of Saturday), putting her firmly in the bottom first to second percentile. She's happy, she's healthy, and we love her.

Here's where I kind of go against medical opinion/advice. Pediatricians seem to want all babies (I'm talking full-term babies) to gain an ounce a day, but after listening to other mothers I feel like this goal simply isn't practical (in terms of the stress parents go through trying to get their infants to gain that much).

It isn't, in fact, even possible.

According to the WHO growth curves (girls, boys) the baby gaining an ounce a day is growing on the fiftieth percentile curve, which means not every baby can gain that much (because not every baby is ON the mean). Some, at the top of the curve will gain more, some at the bottom, like Ruth, will only gain around two-thirds of an ounce a day, and that's just fine. So why physicians get all antsy over a baby gaining at a slower, but healthy rate is beyond me. It only makes parents anxious, possibly pushing them to supplement with formula when they don't need to.

I noticed one other thing when looking at the methods for how the WHO growth curves were developed. The research team used data from a variety of populations (US, Norway, Brazil, Oman, Ghana, and India), which is good, but right there in the second paragraph it says that greater than or equal to 20% of woman followed the WHO guidelines for feeding. Greater than or equal to 20%...that's a lot of room there. And when they say the WHO feeding guidelines, I believe they mean the one that says that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of life. So, if possibly as little at 20% of children were breastfed exclusively for 6 months in some of the sample populations, might that mean that these growth curves aren't necessarily accurate for breastfed babies?

I don't know, I'm just guessing here. Certainly, exclusively breastfed babies can be on the ninety-ninth percentile, but perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising if they aren't.

Well, that's all my thoughts on breastfeeding. It IS getting better. Ruth's growing, and I plan to keep it up for several months to come. I'll try to find something other than my baby to talk about in my next blog post. Snow, perhaps? It's a rather popular topic here in the Boston area (NOT!).

Ciao,

Andrea

Breastfeeding: it's hard, Part 1

So after saying in my last post that I wouldn't be turning this space into a mommy blog, I'm immediately following up with a post on breastfeeding. Being Canadian, I'm inclined to apologize about this, but as a new mom who wants to share a challenging experience, I won't. To contain the size of this post I'll split it into two: 1) the challenge of the actual act of breastfeeding; and 2) the challenge of the outcome of breastfeeding, the baby's weight gain.

Before I go further, I don't mean this blog to be a resource for how to deal with breastfeeding difficulties. If you're looking for help, two online resources I've found useful are: Kelly Mom and Le Leche League. Rather, I hope that by sharing my experience, others might feel reassured that what they're going through isn't all that uncommon.

I knew breastfeeding wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Prenatally (and maybe even postpartum while I was still in the hospital), people want to talk about how a newborn, when placed on it's mothers chest immediately after birth, will wiggle it's way up to it's mother's breast and latch on. I don't doubt that this is true. I had Ruth nursing while we were still in the delivery room; however, getting her to actually breastfeed effectively afterwards was quite another matter.

I recall thinking during the second night on the postpartum ward, after I don't know how many hours into a feed, exhausted and probably in tears (Ruth was likely crying too)--"I completely understand why women give up so quickly and switch to formula. This is hard."

So, what makes the physical act of breastfeeding hard?

First, this is a whole new sensation to get used to. You need to get the latch just right, because if you don't, it's going to hurt and you're going to destroy your nipples. When I was in the hospital one of the nurses asked if the latch felt 'pinchy' (bad) or 'pully' (good) and my answer was I didn't know. I understood why there was a difference, but having never breastfeed a baby before, I didn't know which one I was experiencing. The in-hospital lactation consultant spent a lot of time with me trying to figure out what position would work to improve Ruth's latch (not football, and definitely not side-lying), and we tried a breast shield--it felt awkward too. I'm not sure I felt terribly confident heading home and facing the first night without a nurse on call.

Beyond getting the latch right there's also the fact that a tiny human is repeatedly compressing your breast, which can leave one feeling a little 'sensational.' My breasts felt tingly, and raw (at this point I'm used to it). Let's just say I was glad we didn't have any visitors at home since it considerably lowered the dress code standards around our apartment.

The second issue I had is, Ruth is a small baby, and was even smaller when she was born (6 lbs, 5oz). Now, I'm not large-chested, but there's still a lot of tissue to get in a tiny mouth (this probably didn't help with latching). Feeding in the first several weeks could take an hour or more--every feed. I was told in breastfeeding classes that babies should get the bulk of the milk in about 15 minutes of sucking, and anything after that was non-nutritive. This didn't appear to be the case with Ruth. If tried to let her feed for only 15 minutes on each side she wouldn't be full and I'd be feeding her again in short order.

It's both exhausting and boring to be feeding a baby for more than an hour. Exhausting because you're not sleeping much, and boring because you're stuck in your bed, on your couch, wherever, waiting for your baby to fill up their stomach. I didn't want to spend my days watching TV shows or movies (not that I haven't done some of that), so we purchased a touch screen laptop for me to use while nursing--I've typed most of this blog post one handed. There's not much you can do to speed a baby up either. You can do breast compressions to make it easier for your baby to get your milk, and you can try a few techniques to help increase your milk supply (again making it easier for your baby to feed). I've been taking fenugreek, and pumping after each feed (a rather unawesome experience in and of itself).

At first, getting in the pumps was difficult. I'd put Ruth in her baby recliner right in front of me, but often she'd be crying within minutes, so I'd have to pick her up. If you've ever used a breast pump, you know they're rather awkward, so I'd be trying to calm my baby, possibly feeding her milk I'd already collected, while connected to the pump. One particularly bad afternoon I had to call Andrew and ask him to come home early--I was distressed over our tiny, slow to gain daughter, and my seeming inability to feed her sufficiently. I wanted to be a successful breastfeeding mother, and in those early weeks the idea of having to supplement with formula was an upsetting possibility.

Still, for the first 6-7 weeks Ruth took over an hour to feed, and talking to other mothers, this doesn't seem so uncommon with newborns as it felt at first. Several friends have told me their children were slow eaters, and many women at the new parent support group I attend seem to have had a similar experience. I would guess in many of these cases the babies were fairly small, like Ruth--but that's purely speculative on my part. Furthering my surmise, I would say it seems like small babies just need a little extra time to sort themselves out.

Somewhere around the 7th week of Ruth's life she started to pick up her game. Her feeds dropped to more along the lines of 45 minutes, which makes a huge difference. And she seems to 'practicing eating' after some feeds by sticking out her tongue and sucking on her lips (it's really rather cute).

And people say by 6 months she'll be finishing a feed in 5-10 minutes. That will be amazing.

These are my thoughts on the act of breastfeeding--still a pretty long post as it turns out. When I write next I'll discuss the anxiety of having a slow eating baby who is also slow to gaun her birth weight back.

Ciao,

Andrea

My first post-baby post

It's been 9 weeks, Yup. Nine weeks since my daughter, Ruth Moira Milne, was born.

I think *knock on wood* I am coming out (or already out) of the newborn baby haze of sleep deprivation. Part of this is owing to Ruth's mainly content, cheerful disposition *knock on wood again*, but also, 9 weeks out, I think I'm starting to understand my daughter's cues a little better, which helps to keep her happy.

But let me back up a bit.

Ruth entered our lives on November 26th, 2014 at 5:46 p.m.. My labour was about as uneventful as my pregnancy, which is to say I noticed my first contraction around 4:00 a.m., laboured for 12 hours at home, spending the last 2 in the hospital. Andrew and I took a couple of walks throughout the day, I spent part of the morning on the couch reading Harry Potter, I tried to stay as relaxed as possible considering what was happening.

Ruth is beautiful--but then, what parent doesn't think that of their offspring? She has blue eyes (as many babies do), but I can't quite tell what her hair colour is. In some lights I think she might turn out to be a redhead, in others I think she'll be a brunette. Slightly more people think Ruth looks like me rather than Andrew, although how anyone can tell at this point I don't know. Photo evidence from when I was a baby suggests at the very least that she has the same face shape as me, but her hairline (a widow's peak) is more like her father's.

Presently, I do not intend to post pictures of Ruth here or on Twitter. You need to know me personally to have the chance to decide for yourself who my daughter looks most like.

I also do not intend to turn this space into a 'mommy blog,' but I may occasionally write about some of my experiences/observations of parenthood. After all, being a parent to a little girl is consuming my life right now. I definitely have a few thoughts to share about breastfeeding, we'll  see if anything else comes to mind in the coming weeks.

Ciao,

Andrea

Not every pregnancy is nine months of nausea and discomfort

I don't mean this blog post as a boast. I only want to encourage any woman out there who are considering becoming pregnant, but have only ever heard horror stories of how their mother, sister, aunt, cousin, friend, or whomever, spent their entire pregnancy feeling miserable.

I'm beginning my 39th week, and I've felt nothing but completely normal. I can only guess why I feel so well, and I prefer to think it's not because I'm lucky. I prefer to think it's because I'm doing something right. This is all anecdotal, of course, an N of 1 doesn't equal irrefutable proof, but I hope it might be inspiring to others.

Three months along and heading up Mount Monadnock one muddy, spring day.

First, let's talk a little about food. Andrew and I eat a fairly balanced and varied diet. Generally, we follow Michael Pollan's advice of: eat food, mostly vegetables, not too much. When we go grocery shopping, the contents our of cart tend to be at least 50% fruits and vegetables, and we stay out of the centre aisles were the highly proceeded foods are. We're not vegetarians, but we don't eat meat every day, and even when we do, we tend to limit our intake to the recommended serving sizes of 4 oz (or roughly the size of a deck of cards). Further, as much as I love to bake, we don't eat desert with every dinner, usually just on weekends.

So, how does this play into my pregnancy? Well, I haven't changed the way I eat since becoming pregnant. I still eat lots of veg, limit my meat intake, and since I don't ordinarily eat most of the things that were on the list of band foods (i.e. processed deli meats, sushi, etc.) I didn't have to worry about cutting things out of my diet. Although I used to claim that if I was ever pregnant I would eat ice cream everyday, I've done no such thing. The old adage of 'eating for two,' simply isn't true--or at least, you're not eating for two adult humans. You're eating for yourself and an unborn infant, which of the recommendations I've seen suggests around 300 calories more a day at most. That's eating an extra bagel (nothing on top), around 2-2.5 servings (2-2.5 ounces) of crackers or pretzels, 3-4 large apples, 2-2.5 bananas, or about 1/2 cup of most ice creams.

Between 4.5-5 months, at a beach near Gloucester, MA on a beautiful day in August.

Fortunately, I've experienced neither strange food cravings, nor morning sickness. The former, I again attribute to a varied diet. I assume because I regularly consume different foods, I should be getting all the different nutrients my body needs and so I'm not craving anything to make up for it.

As for morning sickness, truthfully, I threw up once, and I'm pretty sure it was because I had a smallish dinner the night before, then waited wait too long to eat breakfast the next morning. Also, I do occasionally experience mild nausea in the morning. In these cases I'll munch on a few crackers or half of a Clif bar while I prepare for my regular breakfast (oatmeal with Bran Buds mixed in) and I'm fine. The precise cause of morning sickness is unknown, but there is some suggestion that it might be linked with blood glucose levels, which tend to be lowest first thing in the morning. Of course, morning sickness is a misnomer, and can occur at any time of the day. As I said, the cause isn't fully understood.

Almost 6 months pregnant, hiking and camping at Pilsbury State park over Labour Day.

Now the other reason why I think I've fared so well during my pregnancy: exercise. I haven't stopped. I've had to modify things, especially during the last two months, but I haven't taken the attitude of, I'm pregnant, therefore I must sit still and let my baby gestate. Rather, I've remained as active as possible.

I'm still running, although again, I've had to make some modifications. First, my gear. I wear a belly support strap specifically made for pregnant women (the Fit Splint), then I wear snug fitting Lululemon shorts that I used to wear for aerials over top of that, then I wear leggings. It's a lot of layers, but it seems to keep my belly secure. I also don't run continuously over our 5 km (3 mile) route. We run 5 minutes, then walk for around 4 minutes, so that I can have time to recoup, sip some water, catch my breath, etc. The biggest thing with running (as it's actually my least favourite exercise) is that I'm keeping up my cardiovascular capacity for as long as possible.

Seven and half months pregnant and still in the air. My belly makes a funny conical shape when I tense my abs.

And I haven't stopped going to aerials. Granted, I haven't done a horizontally rotating drop (ones that tend to wrap around the stomach) for almost 5 months, and I haven't done a forward rotational drop for close to 3 months, but I've kept going. I've also seen my stamina tapper off over the last several weeks, but I try to remind myself that I am hauling an extra 20lbs or so around in the air with me. The most important part of keeping going with aerials is maintaining my strength in the hopes that once Root is born I'll be able to get back to where I was faster. I mean, I'm not going to be able to jump straight back into advanced classes, but it won't be like I took my entire pregnancy off and my muscles have gone completely flaccid either.

The last thing I think might have helped me to continue to feel so good is the high volume of water I drink. Water, in general, keeps the body hydrated, but in a pregnant woman there are even more demands as amniotic fluid develops and blood volume increases. My midwife told me right from the get-go that I should try to consume as much as 3 litres of water a day, and I think I'm pretty close to managing that most of the time. It likely helped that pre-pregnancy I probably drank between 1.5-2 litres of water daily, meaning I didn't have to make many modifications with my normal lifestyle to accomplish the desired water consumption.

So, in sum--and if I had to guess--I would surmise that my pregnancy has gone so well because I've continued to live as normal a life as possible by eating well and remaining active. I can't promise that this will work for everyone, or anyone who isn't me, but maybe it will give other women hope, that pregnancy isn't nine months of misery.

Ciao,

Andrea

Alas poor Smart Car, we knew you well

If I was better versed in Shakespeare, or at least feeling more witty (I've been hampered with a cold for over a week now), I might try to craft some play on the line from Hamlet or compose a ridiculous ode to our Smart, but just now I can't whip my brains up to that sort of effort. Instead, I shall tell you, dear readers, what it was like to drive a Smart car for six years.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, perhaps in hindsight, purchasing a Smart car wasn't the smartest of decisions. We could never offer rides to friends if Andrew and I were going somewhere together (although we always said in an emergency we could fit someone in the back); and cargo space is limited. However, at the time Andrew and I were DINKs (duel income, no kids), and Ks weren't even a glimmer on our horizon, so we bought the car we wanted.

The 2008 Smart had some notable improvements over its 2006 predecessor, such as a 70 horsepower engine (double the original 35 horses). Having driven the 2006 a couple of times, I can say it was a vast improvement. In the older model you literally had to put the pedal to the floor to go anywhere, not so for the 2008. The interior had an upgrade as well making it more attractive and comfortable. Additionally, by the 2008 model, the Smart was no longer available in diesel (not that this was of much concern for me).

The Pros:
So, some pluses for the Smart? Well, one of the obvious was parking. We could fit into spots that no other vehicle could even consider maneuvering into--we also rarely needed to perform a 'proper' parallel park. Its size was a definite plus after we moved to the Boston area as parking spots can be hard to come by. Not to mention, in recent years, mall parking lots have started to mark out prime spots for small cars/hybrids/electrics, which although wasn't strictly necessary (I mean, we aren't disabled in anyway, we just drove a small car), I often made use of anyway. Linked closely with the parking benefit, you always knew where the Smart ended. There was no long nose to have to worry about bumping into things with, which made it easy to maneuver.

The other great advantage of the Smart was millage. In general, we don't drive much, so we could often go a month (or at least 3 weeks) between fill-ups, but that doesn't really indicate much. I think Andrew calculated that we could get around 45 miles per gallon, or  20 kilometers per litre (the tank capacity was around 8 gallons/30 liters). We've only had the Fit for a month, but so far we're not coming close to that sort of fuel economy.

Camping--before we headed off to hike the Jasper Skyline.

Camping--this summer on our way to Mount Monadnock.

Camping--this summer on our way home from Pillsbury State Park.

The Cons:
Okay, so lets go with the glaring con first, cargo space. There isn't a lot, although as you can see from the pictures, we often managed to fit more than one might have expected into the back. Really, your biggest enemy was long items. Cross-county skies, for examples, aren't very bulky, but they're long, so we'd have to nestle the tip of them down in the passenger-side leg area, and they'd stretch the length of the car. We were able to fit a plastic folding table in the car once (sorry, no picture). We had to slide it in along it's side in between the front seats, and as I commented to Andrew as we drove it home, he could have been naked over on his side of the car, and I never would have known.

The time we fit a cube freezer in the Smart.

The car with the cube freezer from the back.

The Christmas tree was 2/3 as long as the car.

There's a clear breaking point where the car shifts gears at around the 30 kpm mark. It actually accelerates pretty well up to that point, then you get a little kick back as the car hits the gear-shift. I don't recall any noticeable hiccups after that as you accelerate up to whatever cruising speed you were aiming for.

Hands down, the biggest problem we had with the Smart was the muffler--although from my understanding this isn't necessarily a problem unique to Smart cars, but just to small cars in general that are driven in cold, snowy climates. Shortly after our last camping trip I was out running errands when I noticed that our car sounded like a crotch-rocket-type motorbike. I suspected it was our muffler, and once we got around to hoping the car up on a curb it was clear, there was a hole. The most likely cause of this hole was due to snow getting caught in the muffler (and Heaven knows Edmonton does a terrible job of clearing its streets in the winter), the snow melting when we drove the car, then freezing again once we'd stopped. As one might imagine, such a cycle would not be good for metal objects. It was quite the hassle fix, which I won't get into, unless I can convince Andrew to write a blog post about the day-long marathon he and a friend spent fixing it (he was gone one Sunday from 9:30 am to nearly 9:00 pm).

The Unexpected:
I could comment again on how we were frequently able to get more into the car than one might imagine, but how about the fact that it actually has more head and leg space than one would expect. Andrew is about 6 feet tall, which certainly doesn't qualify him as giant, but it also means he's not short and he had spare space both above his head and beyond his toes. You also sit surprisingly high up in the Smart, so we never felt like we were inside a small car when we drove. Finally, despite the havoc the winter weather wrought on the muffler, the Smart handled snow conditions well. I don't think we ever felt unsafe in the car regardless of the weather, or where we were driving (ie city streets v. highway).

The Annoying:
Almost immediately after getting the Smart I noticed that the adjectives people would use to talk about what it must be like to drive around in a Smart car were not the same as what you might use if you were driving around in a van or truck. People would say things like: 'You can tootle around town.' Tootle? (Zip around was another one.) Imagine how an owner of a F-150 would respond to being told that they could tootle around in the truck.

Similarly, you get a lot of people asking things like: 'Is it safe?', 'Can you take it out on the highway?' Um, yes, and yes. It wouldn't be available in North America (never mind that the Smart is made by Mercedes) if it wasn't safe. It isn't a Tata, which from what I've heard is pretty much a death trap on wheels. And sure, the Smart's top speed is only 160 kph, but that's still sufficient to drive it on the highway. I mean, we drove the Smart across Canada and it was perfectly fine (never mind that we only had to stop for gas once a day).

The kitten, looking out the back of the car as we drove across Canada (we were, of course, stopped when I took this picture).

Finally, people (especially children) stare and point at the Smart. Yes, even years (8 years, I think) after they first appeared on the North American market many people still seemed react as though they've never seen a Smart car before. I never really minded this and I'm actually a little sad that our new car won't attract the same attention the Smart did--but at least the Fit is bright yellow.

So those are my thoughts on driving and owning a Smart car. We did know it well, and we'll miss it, a little bit too.

Ciao,

Andrea

One last getaway: Squam Lake, New Hampshire

Upon writing this I've realized that we've been to New Hampshire 4 times since May. I find this surprising since, when we lived in Edmonton, we didn't even make it to the Rockies once a year. I suppose the difference is that the most northern part of New Hampshire we've driven to is only a 2 hours away, compared to the roughly 3.5 hours it took to get from Edmonton to Jasper. At any rate, we went to New Hampshire for the fourth time last weekend, to the small town of Holderness on Squam Lake.

We stayed in a pretty little B&B called the Squam Lake Inn, which reminded me very much (from the exterior anyway) of Green Gables. As we were out of the peak season it was fairly quiet in the Inn and I think there may have been only one other couple in residence on Sunday night. We stayed in the 'Bennet Cove' room, which was probably one of the smaller rooms, but the bed was comfy and that was the most we were concerned with. The breakfasts at the Inn were fresh cooked each morning, and varied from a cider french-toast-type-thing and bacon to a vegetarian omelette and Vermont sausage. Yum.

The Squam Lake Inn, we were in the room on the end.

We arrived late Saturday afternoon (check in wasn't until 3:00 pm), walked about for a little bit before heading out for dinner at the local pub called Walter's Basin. The pub reminded me a great deal of the Castle on King (where I worked for a short period) in atmosphere and style of dinning. Had it been summer we could have gazed the Lake while we ate, but being late in the fall the sun was mostly down by the time we were seated.

The weather on Sunday was a bit dodgy, but we still managed to have a good time. We made a little circuit from Holderness, to a slightly bigger, close by town called Meredith. There we stopped at a cluster of shops (mostly 'stuff shops'), but it was a pleasant way to kill part of the morning, especially as it rained. After that we continued to the Castle on the Cloud (cue a young girl singing wistfully about her imaginary sanctuary, if you wish). Before visiting the castle--mansion, really--we ate at the carriage house restaurant, which really used to be the carriage house for the mansion. The tables were set up inside the old horse stalls. After that we took a trolly car up to the house and toured around.

Once we were finished at Castle on the Cloud we decided to visit the Sandwich Creamery. It was a fun little side trip where you went from driving on a secondary highway, to a still paved, but much smaller road, to a gravel road, to a smaller gravel road that went down a very steep hill. No doubt the inhabitants of the Sandwich Creamery get snowed-in in the winter. We only spent 15 minutes at the Creamery, but it was a neat little place to stop. Payment for their goods (ice cream, cheese, and eggs) was on the honour system. We picked up some cheddar, looked at the sheep and cattle for a few minutes then headed back to the Inn.

The little shop at the Creamery.

Monday morning we grabbed breakfast, then set off for home. It was a short trip, but it was nice to get away even if it was only for 48 hours. Both Andrew and I agreed we really need to take a proper vacation where we can relax and rejuvenate, but it's going to have to wait until the spring. Of course at that point we'll have a little one with us, which will make vacationing a very different experience, but I'm hopeful we can manage--after all, lots of people manage to have lives (fun ones, even) after they have children, so we should be able to too.

Ciao,

Andrea

Andrea and Andrew, and the epic search for a new car

Andrew and I started our search for a new car several months ago. I can't say we've been continuously researching and testing new cars weekly since May, but it's definitely been at the back of our minds all this time. As much as we loved our Smart (and I will do another post about it) it simply does not baby. Back seats, and at least some stowing capacity are required.

We started by checking out the Chevy Spark. We went to the Best Chevy dealership, which we'd actually heard discussed on Under the Influence (Mike O'Rielly, CBC), as a place with exemplary customer service. We headed out one fine Saturday afternoon, drove the Spark around and talked to a sales representative. We liked the Spark. It was cute, still fairly compact, seemed comfy to drive, and was relatively inexpensive. We knew we weren't ready to purchase just yet, but put the car down as a definite maybe.

Then we started to worry, the Spark only has four seats, and the trunk space...well, we'd actually be able to get less in the trunk than we could in the Smart (assuming at least one of the back seats were occupied by a human and couldn't flatten them). We thought we better try another car for comparison.

The next on our list was the Ford Fiesta. Well, you readers might remember what happened there.

After that we decided we would try a Honda Fit based on recommendations from a friend, some of the key pointers being that Hondas tend to be sturdy, dependable cars that hold their value better than other vehicles. Also, Andrew's sister and brother-in-law purchased a Fit when they had their son, so we knew it could handle the extra space required for travelling with an infant.

Mistakenly, we went to test drive a Fit at one of the big car dealerships in town owned by Herb Chambers. Although their billboard ads are rather clever, we received terrible service. Where to start? Well, even though I called ahead and made an appointment, the person we were supposed to see wasn't there. Their offices were bland and depressing, with no music playing and limited windows, which made it extra oppressive when we were left waiting at our salesperson's desk. Two different sales people talked to us, both of whom took the exact same information from us. Even though we stated upfront that we weren't interested in buying that day, they tried to pressure us into a sale (and then continued to call me for weeks afterward). All told, that visit took us close to 2 hours, and it sucked.

That's not to say we weren't interested in the Fit.

We held off on our car search for a few weeks mid-summer as we waited to hear the results of an interview Andrew had attended back in Canada. Unfortunately that position fell through, so at the end of August we resumed searched for a car, determined to get something ordered. This time we opted to go to Honda North Danvers based on good Internet reviews, and guessing that a place outside the city might be have better customer service and fewer high-pressure sales tactics. We visited the dealership on a rainy Wednesday evening at the end of August, and met with an unassuming and soft spoken salesperson by the name of Nagi. We discussed what we were interested in a vehicle, and got our name on the waiting list for a Honda Fit (there were several people already ahead of us).

Six weeks passed.

Due to some minor car troubles of our own, we allowed the time to pass without following up with Honda North, but once the Smart was running smoothly again we thought it was time to find out when we might expect to see a Fit with our name on it. Originally we'd hoped to purchase a car with a standard transmission (both Andrew and I learned on standards), but as there still wasn't one available (the beginning of October), we were happy to take what was available. So, on Saturday afternoon (October 11th) we drove out to the dealership, expecting to finally purchase a new car.

Sadly, we were wrong.

Each time we visited a dealership we asked about the trade-in value of the Smart, making it clear each time that the car was purchased in Canada, and the speedometer and odometer only read in kilometers. Best Chevy said they could give ups $4,000 with the possibility of negotiation, Herb Chambers tried to offer only $2,500, but when we said we'd been offered $4,500 they quickly retracted their offer and said they could give us more (another reason we didn't like them), and Honda North also said they could give us around $4,000, again with the possibility of negotiation. Ideally, we would have liked something closer to $5,000 (after all, the car only as 50,000 km on it), but for the convenience of not having to try to sell the car ourselves (for which we would have had to get it back to Canada) we were willing to take it.

On Saturday, Honda North said they could give us a maximum of $2,500. What? But that's not what you said last time. Perhaps now that our trade-in and purchase were at hand they actually took a closer look at the car and realized what we meant by saying the car was Canadian. We wanted more for our car and felt we couldn't go through with the deal, and we left the dealership shortly there after. For the drive home, and much of the remaining evening we bounced around ideas of how we could sell the Smart and still get the Honda Fit we'd been hoping for. Could we get the car back to Canada? Could we just sell it here in Massachusetts (which we understood to be illegal)? Could we do without a car altogether when there were other options like Zip Car?

This was also when that 20/20 hindsight came into focus:
Maybe we should have investigated getting our car switched over to Imperial measurements as soon as we moved to the US.
Maybe we should have sold the Smart before we left Edmonton.
Maybe we should have never purchased a 2-seater car in the first place.
Should have, would have, could have, all too late.

Our bad car mood continued over to Sunday. Eventually we decided we should go back to Best Chevy (hoping they could still give us the $4,000 they'd originally quoted us) and investigate the Sonic (the step up from the Spark). The decision to go back to a Chevy was partly made because we could get last year's model, but also because we hoped we could negotiate a better deal than what we'd get with Honda. So, first thing on Monday (Columbus Day in the US) we headed off to the dealer, hoping by the time we returned home we would be driving a new car.

When we arrived at Best Chevy we were quickly put into a 2014 Sonic (I called ahead) and we took it for a short test drive. It probably drove as well as any other car we'd tried, and it fit our baby seat (which we'd decided to bring along). It was nice enough, but we'd definitely be settling. The console and the interior were much nicer on the Fit; however, with the pending arrival of Root we had to get a new car and soon. So, once we returned to the dealership we entered into negotiation for purchasing the Sonic--or rather Andrew did, and I sat beside him and nodded. Considering we made no attempt to haggle for the Smart, I think Andrew did a pretty good job. He got them to honour the lower price advertised by another dealership, and when the trade-in value for the Smart was offer (the same abysmal offer made by Honda North) he got them to agree to the upper range value of $2,500. I put my signature down on the first set of documents to get things rolling.

Then the crazy thing happened.

Can you guess?

Don't worry, I'll tell you.

Honda North called us. The GM had reviewed sales that hadn't gone through over the weekend and they were willing to offer us more for the Smart. Still not quiet as much as we would have liked, but better. After a series of quick phone calls and back of the envelop calculations we determined that the final price of the Fit would be $500 less than the Sonic. So we backed out of the deal. As I said, we would have been settling with the Sonic, the Fit was the car we wanted.

I felt terrible. I know, we're talking about car sales. It's a big business, lots of money changes hands, dealerships make and lose sales all the time, and on more valuable vehicles than what we were looking at. Still, I felt really bad after having gone through the hassles of trying to get a better price, etc. The salesperson was polite as I think anyone could have been under the circumstances as we packed up, and left. And for anyone in the Boston area, let me clear the people at Best Chevy did nothing wrong, they're a good dealership. The Sonic just wasn't for us.

We grabbed some lunch before headed off to North Honda, and that's more or less the end of the story. A couple of hours later we drove home with our new 2015 Honda Fit. Hopefully we won't have to go through the car buying process again for another six or eight years.

We tried to take a selfie with the car...it didn't quite work.

Our new, very yellow car.

Ciao,

Andrea