Had a strange problem today that took a couple hours to resolve.

I originally experienced it when I tried to add a new Web Content Form, once I selected the master page, Visual Studio 2008 would lockup.  Anywhere I clicked would return a windows beep.  If I moved other applications over the window, only the tab that contained the new page would not get repainted.

I also experienced it when opening an ASPX file and clicking the design view tab Visual Studio 2008 would lock or freeze. 

I could only kill the devenv.exe process. 

A little searching turned up some strange results and I finally stumbled across a couple posts that seemed to be intelligent. (post 1 | post 2).

I regurgitating it here in case those go linkdead.

The gist is that the Office 2010 install somehow fubared some shared components.  Personally, I only experienced pain when I installed Visio 2010 and not the Office 2010 install I did a few months ago.

Run the Office 2007 Setup file located here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE12\Office Setup Controller\Setup.exe

Now click ‘Repair’.

It ran a few minutes.  Run Visual Studio and fixed.

We, mostly Heidi, decided early on to use a midwife for birth instead of an doctor.  Partly because right before Heidi became pregnant, her insurance changed and she needed to switch doctors, and partly because we had caught a story here and there about using a midwife for birth instead of a traditional doctor.

The term first conjured images of medieval times to my mind.  Then I read up and became less ignorant about the subject.  My understanding is basically you approach birth with the thought that the body will take care of itself whereas with a doctor, you approach it more from the idea that birth needs constant maintenance and intervention.

Using a midwife has been very pleasant so far.  A team of midwifes work out of the hosptial, OHSU (wikipedia).  We don’t see the same one each time, but they are very pleasant and during the visit I’m constantly surprised at how genuinely interested they seem to be in the experience of being pregnant.  Asking Heidi tons of questions and spending quite a bit of time during the appointment with you in contrast to a doctor’s visit where they rush in and rush out.

That’s been my experience so far anyway.

To this point, I’ve imagined in my mind the actual birth.  Heidi would be on the hospital bed, feet in the stirrups, doctor hovering over screaming push.  When I came to think on it, I mentioned to Heidi that this seems silly, didn’t cavewomen like squat or something and let gravity help?

Then we watched this movie, the Business of Being Born, just this last week based on the recommendation of some friends. (Netflix)

And I got to see babies being born this time for real and not in a movie.

Here’s some interesting things I saw:

• So it looks like midwives prefer you to give birth standing/squatting, sometimes in water.
• There’s a cocktail of hormones that get released at birth bonding the mother and infant – a biological process.
• Doctor-based intervention usually starts with shot to induce labor (PIT – something), then a shot to numb the pain (the spinal one), which relaxes the woman so they give more of the first shot to re-induce labor, then back to the  shot to numb the pain and back and forth and on and on into a vicious cycle…  which leads to…
• 1 in 3 babies, in the U.S. today are caesarian section births.
• Physician convenience is a leading cause of caesarian section – a large number of babies are born at 4PM (“it’s getting late time to go home”) and 10PM (“it’s getting late, I need to go to bed”).
• Hooking up to an intravenous, IV, allows easier administration of the shots mentioned above.  In a typical hospital pregnancy you are hooked up first thing thereby making it less of an obstacle when later proposed.

It’s worth a watch even from a historical perspective just to see how births in the US have evolved over the past 100 years.

Update (2010.08.18): Just heard from the midwife today at Heidi's appointment that The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published an article back on 2010.07.21 that states:

The cesarean delivery rate in the US increased dramatically over the past four decades, from 5% in 1970 to over 31% in 2007. 

So from 1 in 20 to 1 in 3 over 40 years.  Link to the article.

Just finished the 6th and final book in the Codex Alera series written by Jim Butcher.  My old man recommended them to me and they were fantastic.  My personal favorite was book 3.  If you are a fan of fantasy novels, war movies and especially of ancient roman history, then you’ll love these.

I really enjoyed the strategy and tactics and life of being in a Legion.  The magic is not too over the top.  It would be cool if they made these into a series of movies.

The Codex Alera Series on Amazon.

Codex Alera on Wikipedia.

I was going to just send this in an email to my wife but I thought perhaps some of you may not have seen it.

Very interesting eh?

After finding out that we are having a boy, I was very happy.  I know that healthy baby > baby gender, and we certainly went through all the genetic counseling and screening to ensure that our child is healthy.  I also understand that all that is based on percentages, nothing is guaranteed and something can still go wrong and that I am doing little to nothing as far a ‘work’ is concerned.  Heidi is doing all the ‘work’ at this point and her body is going through some amazing changes in such a short time period.

But I can’t help but feel like Tom Hanks in Cast Away when he built his fire.

Its not often I get the chance to pound my chest and act like a caveman.