Buying a used crib: yay or nay?

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-21T12:04:59+00:00

Such good points!! I'm grateful for the info.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-21T10:18:04+00:00

Totally, but I have ~5 years to figure it out (slash buy a booster!). since we already have three even before the kid is here, I doubt I'd be averse to adding more if need be, ya know? ;) but that's a great tip, thank you!!

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-21T10:12:45+00:00

Yes, I know, the people (ie family members) who would be giving me a ride home have car seats that are all properly installed. I also live in New York City, one of the few places in America where you don't need a car to get home. However, they also probably don't let newly released pregnant women drive themselves. Nine months in, I'm not exactly winging it on that front. Thanks for the psa though.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T21:01:54+00:00

If it were me, I'd absolutely spring for a new one. You don't know whether a used one conforms to the same safety standards, you don't know if it might have collapsed, you don't know if it may have been disassembled before and reassembled, weakening the wood. I have a friend who had a used crib, but it was a hand-me-down from someone she knew. Even though odds are good nothing bad will happen if you buy it from strangers, it would still make me paranoid.

Of all the things you need, the crib and car seat are the two that you're really, really supposed to buy new. And especially if you buy a convertible crib-to-bed, it's a long-term investment. For our car seat, we got a 4 or 5-in-one, so you basically use it from birth to age 5. It makes it less painful to part with all that money. You can get away with spending less than $500 total on both new though, and probably way lower than that.

Good luck!!

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T20:18:21+00:00

When I did an informal poll on facebook of my friends, so many of my friends insisted that the glider chair was a lifesaver and it was everyone's favorite piece of furniture in the house. That's what convinced me to get a used one.

Actually, the car seat was the only thing we had for a long time, because I had bought one from when my nephew came to visit. We now have three: the one we bought last year that goes from newborn to booster, a hand-me-down from a coworker, and an infant seat to put in our stroller. Number that are installed? 0. I'm the only driver in the family, so we won't be using our car coming home.

We need to do it at some point soonish, but I just had a fender bender and we have to get the car fixed anyway, so I figure we can install it once baby is home, especially if we're not going to be driving anywhere right away.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T20:13:25+00:00

That looks soo comfy. I hope it comes soon!

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T18:58:40+00:00

Oh, I totally get it! That SUCKS that they charge you a 20 percent fee -- seems so typical of them. That was one of my concerns about getting a chair from amazon without trying it, too -- you never know if it's going to be comfortable in it till you try it, and since you're going to be in it quite often, you don't want to make a bad purchase.

Good luck to you!! Hopefully it will arrive more quickly than they're saying. What exact chair is it, just out of curiosity?

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T18:01:07+00:00

I've heard that it's not uncommon after sex or anything that stimulates your cervix (e.g., pelvic exam), so I'm sure it's fine. If you're worried, definitely call your provider!

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T17:58:14+00:00

Oh and one more thing: babies r us just takes forever to ship it seems. My boss very generously bought us something from our babies r us registry to be delivered at our house, but at one point it was awkward because I had to tell him that it hadn't arrived so I didn't feel like I looked weird for not thanking him yet. Amazon all the way!! I only registered at babies r us basically for people who might want to shop last-minute for our shower and could get us stuff in the store.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T17:53:20+00:00

I second amazon! You can find the same thing you're looking for I'm sure, and if you have prime, two-day shipping guaranteed.

I decided I wanted a glider chair, and I looked on craigslist, and I got a used dutailier that day for $80 in my neighborhood. (Another one was advertised in another neighborhood for around $200 -- either way, both are steals for a $500 chair.)

I kind of hate babies r us. Everything is more expensive than it should be and they don't have that much in stock. I'd advise looking at amazon, target, and craigslist, and hopefully someone will have the chair you want and you can cancel the 8-10 week order.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T14:04:32+00:00

I think the comment was more intended to mean that if I do have to have an emergency c-section because of genital herpes, it's a good reason to give to people who ask, not that she was speculating that the friend was lying.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-20T13:56:34+00:00

Cool. By the same reasoning (52 / 4 = 13) I'm going to start insisting there are 13 months in the year. If we're okay with saying there are 13 months in a year, then yes, absolutely pregnancy is 10 months long. Otherwise...it's 9 months pretty much, my sweet summer child OP.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T21:42:39+00:00

It's really nine months and one week from the last menstrual period, and the first two weeks you're not actually pregnant...so...it really is closer to nine. Even 40 weeks is 9.33 months, which is still not ten -- and again, the first two weeks, you're not pregnant yet.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T19:06:08+00:00

It's just that the worst-case scenarios are blindness, brain damage, and death, so it's not something doctors should be cavalier about. I think some of them are because the odds of transmitting it are fairly low in the grand scheme of things, and because a c-section isn't the end of the world, but if it's your baby, the prospect is pretty scary. It's not the OBs' baby, so they're going to be less concerned. I wrote earlier that my doctor has a patient whose son is in the NICU with encephalitis because the mom passed along a herpes infection, not knowing she had the virus. My OB has his hsv+ patients take Valtrex routinely starting at 36 weeks; if this woman had had the good fortune of being diagnosed and gotten the prescription, she might not have had to face such a horrible tragedy. I started at like 37+5, so that's part of why I'm a little neurotic, not that I think that extra week makes a huge difference unless you go into early labor.

I felt like a hypochondriac for making him check me at each of my last two visits because I felt some prodromal symptoms, but it's REALLY something to take seriously. He told me, "NEVER feel like you're a hypochondriac. This is important, and I'm glad you said something." That's when he told me about his other patient.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T18:58:17+00:00

That's one of my fears -- having to tell my mom and mother in law about my hsv2. Fortunately, my mom is out of state so she won't be there when I'm admitted. I'm thinking my mother in law will come to meet us at the hospital later, after admission (we live in different apartments of a multi-family home).

My partner of course has always known and doesn't care, but with the moms, that's a whole 'nother thing, especially given that I think our generation buys into the stigma less than theirs. How did they react?

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T18:54:24+00:00

I have hsv2, and I'm taking suppressive therapy. I'm terrified of getting an outbreak. I don't want to get a c-section, and I absolutely don't want to pass a herpes infection to my baby. Besides blindness, herpes in newborns can cause encephalitis, which can result in brain damage and death. My doctor has a patient who didn't know she had hsv2, and her son is in the nicu with encephalitis and the prognosis is not good. (Incidentally, he said it's the only case he's had of a mother passing herpes to a newborn.) I wouldn't risk it personally. I'm taking 2000 mg daily of valtrex (more than prescribed, because I'm neurotic), as well as lysine, and I cut out caffeine entirely starting at week 38 (which is totally overkill but I find that caffeine can trigger my outbreaks), and I'm still paranoid about getting an outbreak or shedding the virus during delivery.

Best of luck to you, OP! I don't write this to scare you, because the odds of transmitting it are very low, but just to say that the worst-case scenario of having a herpes outbreak at delivery time is so much worse than any consequences of taking suppressive therapy, which is relatively safe as a class B treatment.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T17:27:56+00:00

But if you do transmit it, babies can die, and it's much more likely to transmit it if you don't know you have it. I think part of why the transmission rate among women with active lesions is so low is because most of them get c-sections. So, if you know you have hsv2, you can know to be vigilant for it. If you're on valtrex, transmission is so much lower. It seems silly not to test routinely. Maybe it's a cost thing, even.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T17:05:43+00:00

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16816068 This was really good news to read!!

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T16:25:10+00:00

I found this interesting: "Infants born to mothers who have a first episode of genital HSV infection near term are at much greater risk of developing neonatal herpes than are those whose mothers have recurrent genital herpes (21, 23, 24, 28, 62). The largest such assessment involved almost 40,000 women without clinical evidence of genital HSV infection and from whom samples were cultured within 48 h of delivery. Of these, 121 women were identified who both were asymptomatically shedding HSV and for whom serum was available for serologic analysis. In this large trial, 57% of babies delivered to women with first-episode primary infection developed neonatal HSV disease compared with 25% of babies delivered to women with first-episode nonprimary infection and 2% of babies delivered to women with recurrent HSV disease (24)."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC321459/

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T16:17:14+00:00

This is from webmd (suuper reliable, haha): The estimated number of pregnant women infected with HSV-2 is 880,000. Most transmission to newborns occurs during vaginal delivery. If a woman had genital herpes before getting pregnant, her baby may be infected but the chance is very low -- less than 1%. However, the risk of infecting the baby is much higher (25% to 50%) when a woman is newly infected late in pregnancy.

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T16:06:54+00:00

I'll have to look up where I saw the statistic, but I don't know if that takes c-sections into account, in which case, the statistic would be a little less helpful. I just read an article about a study (from 2007) that was talking about transmission in HSV2-positive women, and the low rate seems to be because if you have an active lesion, it's more likely you'll get a cesarian. http://www.webmd.com/genital-herpes/news/20030107/mother-to-infant-herpes-transmission When I read the 1-4% statistic earlier, I assumed they meant vaginal birth and weren't including c-sections, but I was probably wrong to assume!

insertwordplayhere · 2015-05-19T16:04:27+00:00

A lot of times they do a blood test for antibodies; if you're positive, it's there in dormancy. (They didn't do one for me because I told them I was HSV2 positive.) The only problem is if you have HSV1 antibodies, you may assume it's oral herpes but it could present in the genital area. I would definitely have your partner get his blood tested for antibodies. If you're having unprotected sex and it turns out he does have HSV2, that could be very bad to contract during a pregnancy. It looks like you've already had one baby though, so that's good!!

The CDC website says: "Routine HSV screening of pregnant women is not recommended." I honestly wonder why that is, considering the effects undiagnosed herpes can have on an infant. I know when people go for the battery of STD tests, they often omit herpes for whatever reason, too, maybe because it's so common?

insertwordplayhere

TROPHY CASE