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DVD Review: Pilates Pregnancy

Mar21

PILATES PREGNANCY WORKOUTS ($14.99)
Distributed by BayView Entertainment (and available for purchase online at Amazon.com).
www.mauipilates.net

Reviewed by Molly, Talk Birth

While I’ve maintained a yoga practice for over ten years, practiced yoga throughout all of my pregnancies, and I’m Certified Prenatal Fitness Educator (ICEA), I have no experience with Pilates. So, when the opportunity came up to review a prenatal Pilates DVD, I was happy for the opportunity to broaden my horizons! Pilates Pregnancy Workouts is a basic workout DVD that is both easy to follow (even for those unfamiliar with Pilates) and sufficiently challenging. I was surprised by how effectively strengthening the workouts were, while appearing on the surface to be very gentle and simple! While this is a prenatal program, there is no mention of the applicability of the exercises to labor or birth and only a tiny handful of references to the baby.

In addition to the gorgeous ocean setting, a highlight of the Pilates Pregnancy Workouts DVD are the manageable, short segments—you can choose a workout that is 6-10 minutes. We can almost always find time in the day for six minutes! You can also choose to watch the entire exercise series as one continuous practice of about an hour. Also handy is the option of voiceover narration or nature sounds for once you’re familiar with the program.

Some exercises from Pilates Pregnancy Workouts are familiar from yoga practice, but the overall style and form is different and it would be great to include both in one’s prenatal exercise program! This DVD is a worthwhile addition to the prenatal exercise resources of pregnant women as well as doulas, midwives, or childbirth educators.

Tuesday Tidbits: Gift from the Sea (Communication Overwhelm)

Mar19
March 2013 061

Couldn’t resist putting this photo with this post, since she’s holding little shells. We found them in the river gravel we had delivered for our greenhouse :)

The Amethyst Network Board decided to experiment with choosing a “book of the month” to discuss, comment upon, and share during the  month. For March, we chose Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I have had the book on my to-read shelf for years and a few days ago, it literally popped off the shelf and into my hands. I’d like to offer a series of short posts based on the book, sharing quotes that I enjoy as well as associated personal experiences or thoughts.

The first quote that caught my eye was this one immediately following a section about the many exhausting demands on a mother’s time and attention:

For life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication. It involves not only family demands, but community demands, national demands, international demands on the good citizen, through social and cultural pressures, through newspapers, magazines, radio programs, political drives, charitable appeals, and so on. My mind reels in it, What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us. We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now!

This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace, it destroys the soul. And this is not only true of my life. I am forced to conclude, it is the life of millions of women in America. I stress America, because today, the American woman more than any other has the privilege of choosing such a life.

Woman in large parts of the civilized world has been forced back by war, by poverty, by collapse, by the sheer struggle to survive, into a smaller circle of immediate time and space, immediate family life, immediate problems of existence. The American woman is still relatively free to choose the wider life…

This almost made me laugh because it was written in 1955, but I feel like she might really be talking about Facebook! ;-) It actually made me feel good to know that this feeling of fragmentation I describe sometimes and the sense of everything and everybody wanting a piece of me all the time, isn’t a new feature of being a woman and mother, and it also isn’t the “fault” of technology. Perhaps it is a feature of caring a lot.

It also reminded me of the quote I keep taped to my laptop:

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. –Thomas Merton

Women’s (Birth) History Month

Mar18

…we  need to grasp an honest understanding of birthing history – one that tells HERstory not HIStory.  Because birth is about Women.  It is a woman’s story. And we need to also understand why and how this herstory compels women to make the choices they make surrounding birth in the present day.

People become the product of the culture that feeds them.

It takes an immense amount of work to deconstruct cultural lies. Especially ones as insidious as the ones that we, as birthing women, have been fed for more than a century. We need to stop blaming women for their place in this System. Women are victims and by-products (not accomplices) of medicalized birth.

via That Joke Never Gets Old. Or Good

March 2013 039In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve been considering the women in (recent) history who have changed the climate surrounding pregnancy and birth. While I’m sure Ina May Gaskin’s name would probably spring to the lips of most birth activists considering the theme, I felt like taking a quick look at the many other classic authors who have had a profound influence on my own ideas about birth. This thought, coupled with the fact that for some time I’ve wanted to write a post about “older birth books” that are still excellent reads today, has brought me to the present moment: a list of my favorite “old” birth books and the lovely women who wrote them. When I first started out in birthwork, I wanted to read “new” stuff—stuff that was “up to date” and “current.” After I read almost all of the “new” books, I started to cast my eye around for more and guess what I discovered? No surprise to many of you, but many of those “out of date” books with the retro-looking covers are still just as good and just as relevant as they were 20-30 years ago. Since medical information and science/evidence changes fairly rapidly and a pregnancy and childbirth 101 type book from 30 years IS more often than not completely inappropriate today, I had made the mistake of thinking ALL “old” birth books would be similarly irrelevant. Instead, many have a power and passion that is not easy to come by in any decade and that rouses the activism spirit, or stirs the heart, or challenges the psyche just as effectively today. Here are some of my recommendations (and of course, Spiritual Midwifery remains a good choice too, I just want to add some less usual recommendations!):

  • Transformation through Birth by Claudia Panuthos (also known for writing another great resource: Ended Beginnings: Healing Childbearing Losses). Written in 1984, this book “goes beyond” the scope of traditional birth books and really gets into some deep topics and insightful ideas. Previously written about here.
  • Special Delivery by Rahima Baldwin (another good, less well-known one from her is Pregnant Feelings, explored in depth in this post). Revised in 1986, this book is one of my favorite homebirth resource books. Though some segments are in fact, “outdated,” I still find this to be one of the very best (“old” or new!) resource books for women planning to give birth at home.
  • Open Season by Nancy Wainer (Cohen) in 1991 (how can 1991 be called “old”? Well, it is over 20 years ago and considering that many women giving birth today were born after that date, it IS old!). Nancy has a lot of FIRE and I love it. Some people have been known to call her “angry” or “bitter.” I call her…amazing. Her writing lights you up and calls you to action. She has incredible passion, fire, brightness, drive, and enthusiasm. One of her articles in Midwifery Today that is available online is also well worth the read: VBAC and Choice. And, I use some of her quotes in this post.
  • Birth Book by Raven Lang. This is the original counterculture birth book written in 1972 at the launch of what would become the modern movement to return birth to the hands of women.
  • Childbirth with Insight written in 1983 by Elizabeth Noble, is another one of the birth books that I say “goes beyond.” As a childbirth education, I especially benefited from her exploration of some of the failings of traditional approaches to childbirth education.
  • Lots of older books from Sheila Kitzinger are very good also. I particularly enjoy The Experience of Childbirth and Giving Birth: How it Really Feels.
  • My last recommendation for the moment is Mothering the New Mother by Sally Placksin (revised in 2000, which again sounds reasonably recent, but in reality is thirteen years ago–how is that possible?). It is classic must-read for doulas as well as any other birth companions. It is wonderful and I wish I would have read it before my own first child was born.

There are many more excellent books out there, both modern and “herstorical,” but I’ll leave you with these treasures for now. I’m grateful for each of these birth activists whose words and spirits helped deepen and refine my own passion for birth.

“I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.” –Ruth Benedict

—
(Adapted from a post originally made at CfM several years ago.)

Non-Advice Books for Mothers

Mar14

Mothering can involve a complicated and multileveled emotional terrain. What often speaks most clearly and helpfully to mothers is often other women’s stories and experiences, NOT “advice,” prescriptions, promises, or admonishments.

I’ve noticed two types of “attachment parenting” mothers—those who discovered AP after having their baby or child(ren) and those who chose attachment parenting in advance, sometimes way in advance. While of course a host of factors are involved, both internal and external, I’ve also noticed that those who discovered, feel more content and are less likely to be hard on themselves about their AP-”failures.” If you discover something, you have an ideal to live up to. If what you start with is the ideal, essentially the only way to go is down! I’m one of the latter bunch, having envisioned my attachment parenting perfection and bliss for at least three years prior to actually giving birth to my first baby. After my first son’s birth, I dove into more and more and more parenting books, trying to make sense of my new life. And, to me totally honest, Dr. Sears books started to drive me out of my frickin mind, even though I agreed with the guy about almost everything. I still recommend him, I met him in real life in 2007 and consider him an excellent resource, however tMarch 2013 078he subtext I perceived in his books was: “do it the right way and you’ll always be happy and baby will never cry” and that was really, really hard on me as a vulnerable, sensitive new mother of a pretty cranky baby. So, I practically collapsed with relief when one of the birth center doctors suggested reading the book Misconceptions by Naomi Wolf. After this, I became obsessed with what is somewhat dismissively referred to as “the momoir”—memoirs of motherhood written by real women. Loved them. Lived by them. Learned from them. They “heard” me when I really, really needed to be heard.

Recently, a lovely friend and first-time mom on Facebook remarked that she needed to stop reading “advice” books about motherhood and try something else (though, still interested in reading about motherhood). Her comment reminded me so much of myself and I swooped in, ironically, with “advice” about other books to read. As I thought about books to suggests, the piles upon piles of books that I devoured came back to me in a rush. This morning, I went through my bookshelf and made a list of those that were influential enough to make the cut and be kept, versus being resold or passed along in the giveaway box. It is a big list! And, it is only a fraction of what I actually read. What was also really interesting for me to realize was that I haven’t read a book like this in ages, there are probably dozens more now! I still have several unread on shelf, but I no longer feel as if I need them in the same “lifeline” way in which I combed the library shelves with my first baby in his little sling.

So, here are my tips and suggestions on non-advice-based books for mothers. In general, I vote ixnay on any kind of “how to” mothering/parenting books. I vote yes on parenting memoirs, books about self-nurturing and mother-care, and sociopolitical commentary on motherhood. Disclaimer: a lot of the books on my list are written by “mainstream” authors, many of whom are pretty critical, sometimes very harshly, of attachment parenting. I find that some of these books create a lot of polarization with regard to Amazon reviews. At the risk of sounding very snobby myself, I would suggest that you are unlikely to enjoy these books if you are any of the following:

  • Unable or unwilling to engage intellectually with topics surrounding motherhood/parenthood.
  • Uninterested in the larger social, cultural, and political context surrounding individual mothers and their parenting “choices.”
  • Dismissive of the role that sociopolitical influences have on the lives and experiences of individual women.
  • Unable or unwilling to allow other women to define their own experiences and to recognize that not everyone experiences things the same way, and that that is fine, even desirable.
  • Fond of describing maternal honesty as “whining” and prefer “suck it up” approaches to sometimes painful explorations of complex feelings.

Before I list my books, make sure to check out Brain, Child magazine! I DO still read and devour this and feel as if it “saved me” multiple times during the first three years of parenting. And, make sure to check out my What Kind of Mother Are You Quiz, based on a memoir called Inconsolable.

These books may include links to prior posts/reviews about them. A lot of them are a blend of memoir and sociopolitical commentary—I classified them according to my perception of their primary emphasis. For all book reviews I’ve ever posted on my site, see this page.

Memoirs:

  • Let the Baby Drive by Lu Hanessian. This is one of my very favorites. Nourishing and enriching and relevant. May have a small tinge of “do it my way.”
  • Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott. This is a classic. A memoir of the author’s first year with her son. She is a single parent and so the book addresses some of the challenges involved with parenting solo. This book is incredibly funny at times.
  • Callie’s Tally by Betsy Howie. Very, very funny, though not particularly “AP” (so if you’re looking for that, read Let the Baby Drive instead). This book chronicles how much money the author has spent on her daughter during her first year of life.
  • A Better Woman by Susan Johnson this one is an often painful to read memoir of a woman’s experience with an obstetrical fistula
  • Fruitful by Anne Roiphe (also addressed in prior post: Motherhood, Feminism, and More). This is a good look at the tensions between feminism and motherhood and navigating new identities
  • Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! A tale of mothering three sons.
  • The Blue Jay’s Dance by Louise Erdrich. Very lyrical, mild book. (Quoted or written about in these prior posts)
  • Dispatches from a Not-So Perfect Life–by a frequent contributor to Brain, Child magazine.
  • Inconsolable: How I Threw My Mental Health Out with the Diapers–memoir of a journey through severe postpartum depression. Darkly funny. Critical of attachment parenting, but in a manner in which I can identify.
  • Growing Seasons by Annie Spiegelman. This memoir is by a “sandwich generation” mother, caring for a toddler and for her own ailing mother.

Anthologies:

  • Mothers Who Think—collection of essays from writers for Salon.
  • The Bitch in the House–not all about parenting, about marriage, work, etc. Often angry.
  • Toddler–stories about parenting toddlers by one of the former editors of Brain, Child.
  • Beyond One–-collection of essays about adding a second child. I loved it. A friend I lent it to thought it was “horribly depressing.”
  • Real Moms—a surprising gem from MOPS. While I find many of their books too “surface” in emphasis and also very mainstream-Christian-mom directed, this one is great. One of my favorites.
  • The Fruits of Labor–about parenting at all stages of life. Some are tragic. This is more literary memoir than “tell all” memoir.

Sociopolitical commentary and analysis: March 2013 090

  • What Mothers Do (appears in Motherful) by Naomi Stadlen. I love this book! It takes a close look at how women mother and how skillfully they do so (so that on the outside it looks like they are doing “nothing”). This is not a “how to” book, but a book that tries to look below the surface and explore concepts that are very difficult to verbalize/articulate. She strives to put into words/give us language to describe what is it that mothers do all day–their often invisible contributions to life. Contributions that are often invisible even to ourselves. This is a very affirming and unique book. This is one of my top picks for tender new mothers. There may be some subtext about doing it “right” though.
  • Of Woman Born (included in this post: Motherhood, Feminism, and More). This is a classic sociological and personal exploration of the role, meaning, and cultural valuation (or devaluation) of mothers. This was my first exposure to the notion of motherhood as institution rather than simply as role/relationship.
  • Price of Motherhood  by Ann Crittenden. Emphasis on economics, but very interesting analysis of multiple cultural, political, and social influences on mothers.
  • The Motherhood Manifesto—by Moms Rising. Showed me there is an actual “mother’s movement” afoot!
  • Paradox of Natural Mothering—academic in tone. I really enjoy this book. Lots of food for thought. It is a little uncomfortable to read too because she is so spot-on in her analysis of mothers like me. It is strange to feel “under the microscope.” The author herself is a “quasi-natural mother,” so the analysis isn’t harsh criticism, but it is a critical look at the “cult” (my word, not hers) of natural mothering and has a LOT of excellent discussion about feminism and natural mothering. She says–and I completely agree–that natural mothering represents the intersection of three ideological frameworks: voluntary simplicity, attachment parenting, and cultural feminism.
  • The Mask of Motherhood
  • Misconceptions by Naomi Wolf. As I mentioned, this was the first book that I ever read about a woman’s postpartum experience. It was suggested to me by the doctor at the birth center when I expressed some teary frustrations about adjusting to my new life and wondering if I would ever get “back to normal.” This book is on the “angry” side–it is not a nurturing and tender read and she is critical of things I value (like LLL). I did not identify with the author’s birth experiences or feelings about birth (I felt tremendous during birth and powerful, empowered, triumphant, and confident) and her conclusions seems mis-drawn, i.e. her birth was terrible, ergo, birth itself is terrible and those who tell you otherwise are lying, but her postpartum feelings closely match my own (weak, wounded, invisible, etc.)
  • Perfect Madness by Judith Warner. Included in this post: I just want to grind my corn! Fairly harshly critical of attachment parenting. takes potshots at LLL.
  • The Mother Knot by Jane Lazarre (included in: OBs and Normal)
  • Big Purple Mommy—about creativity and motherhood and still nurturing one’s creative self.
  • The Mother Trip (included in this post: Small Stone Birth Activism)–this one is written by Ariel Gore, original founder of the awesome zine, Hip Mama.
  • The Mother Dance by Harriet Lerner. This one focuses on the psychology of women primarily.

Mother nurturing/validating: March 2013 068

  • 25 Ways to Joy & Inner Peace for Mothers
  • The Tao of Motherhood
  • The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood
  • Mother Nurture by Rick & Jan Hanson. This book is phenomenal. Very comprehensive. It addresses mothers of children from birth to age 5, so even if you are several years past the early postpartum weeks, this book has much to offer to you! One of the focus areas is on “Depleted Mother Syndrome” and addresses coping with it via all areas (body, mind, social/relational).
  • Mothering the New Mother–classic postpartum doula book! Highly recommended.
  • This isn’t what I expected—postpartum depression recovery.
    After the Baby’s Birth by Robin Lim. This book is very holistic in approach and is one of my very favorite postpartum reads. It offers such gems as, “you’re postpartum for the rest of your life” (which some people have said they feel like is depressing, but I find a tremendously empowering statement!) and “when the tears flow, so does the milk” (with regard to the third day postpartum). It does have a large section on Ayurvedic cooking, which, personally, I don’t connect with, so be aware that that section is in there and depending on your belief system, might make perfect sense to you, or might seem inapplicable like it feels to me.
  • Mothers Guide to Self-Renewal

Novels/Others:

  • I Don’t Know How She Does It—fiction about an employed mother and the juggling act with which she tried to balance work and family.
  • Motherhood Confidential–this one is pretty weird. I almost didn’t include it and I also don’t know whether it is fiction or not. It is billed as “chicken soup for the spleen” and as an “anti-advice” book. I like the recommendation to scrape off the “dogma-doo” of parenting. It is about two best friends, one who becomes an attachment parenting homeschooling mother and the other who is a “detachment parent” and how rocky their relationship becomes.
  • Three Shoes, One Sock, and No Hairbrush by Rebecca Abrams. Primarily about adding a second child.

Children’s Birth Art Gifts

Mar11

I’m not the only birth artist in the house! Last month, while I worked on my own sculptures, Zander worked and worked and created one of the best gifts I’ve ever received:

February 2013 051

This is the Goddess of Everything, he told me: “See that pink stone in her belly, mom? That is the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.” She has a lot of detail. A snake on one shoulder, a bird on the other, a moonstone, and hearts. I love her! The boys then went on to create more gifts for me over the course of a couple of days. I love them all, but the one above is something pretty special!

International Women’s Day: Prayer for Mothers

Mar8

nursingmamas

This week marked my eighth anniversary as a breastfeeding counselor.  When I began, I didn’t how long I’d keep doing it and I’ve had a lot of discouraging rough patches with dwindling group membership in which I felt like giving up, but now I suspect I might end up as a “lifer.” When I started this work I had one little 18 month old boy. Now, that little boy is closing in on TEN this year! I’ve logged over 1200 contacts since my accreditation. I’ve learned so much from the mothers I’ve worked with and I continue learning new things all the time.

This month as I sat in the circle at our mother-to-mother breastfeeding support group meeting, I looked around at all the beautiful mothers in that room. I reflected on each of their journeys and how much each one has been through in her life, to come to this time and this place, and tears filled my eyes. They are all so amazing. And, my simple, fervent prayer for them in that moment was that they could know that. Know that on a deep, incontrovertible level. I tried to tell them then, in that moment. How much they mean to me, how incredible they are, how I see them. How I hope they will celebrate their own capacities and marvel at their own skills. How I see their countless, beautiful, unrecognized, invisible motherful actions. How when I see them struggling in the door with toddlers and diaper bags and organic produce that they’re sharing with each other, I see heroines. They may look and feel “mundane” from the outside, but from where I’m sitting, they shine with a power and potency that takes my breath away. Moderating toddler disputes over swordplay, wiping noses, changing diapers, soothing tears, murmuring words, moving baby from breast to shoulder to floor and back to breast without even seeming consciously aware of how gorgeously they are both parenting and personing in that very moment, speaking their truths, offering what they have to give, reaching out to one another, and nursing, nursing, nursing. Giving their bodies over to their babies again and again in a tender, invisible majesty. In this room is a symphony of sustenance. An embodied maternal dance of being.

So, today on International Women’s Day, when I visited the woods behind my house, I offered up this…

Prayer for Mothers: March 2013 057

I offer a prayer for all mothers
may you breathe deep down into your belly
may you tip your face to the sky
let your shoulders soften
your forehead smooth
your eyes close gently
your lips part

And may you take a deep cleansing breath
from your feet on the earth
all the way up through your legs
hips
belly
chest
shoulders
and throat

And with this breath
honor your own capacities
marvel at your own resources
notice your strengths
celebrate your successes
listen to your own wisdom
recognize your own heart.

Take a moment to see
really see
how often you act with great courage
how often you act with deep love
and how much of your life’s energy
spirals and spins around your children.

See your worth
hear your value
sing your body’s power
and potency
dance your dreams
recognize within yourself
that which you do so well
so invisibly
and with such love.

Fill your body with this breath
expand your heart with this message
you are such a good mother.

Never Read the Comments

Mar8

I try to keep a simple maxim in mind with regard to reading or watching things on the internet: Never Read the Comments. This doesn’t apply to the comments on interesting personal, birth, or spirituality blogs that I read regularly—those comments usually contribute to the discussion and are interesting to consider. I’m talking about anything remotely “viral,” most things from the mainstream media, anything that is part of the natural parenting movement that has become picked up on by the mainstream media, most things about celebrities (particularly if they are making a homebirth or attachment parenting-oriented choice), most things about women’s health or about feminism, and anything that is controversial, particularly if I feel deeply about one side or another of the controversy. If I do read the comments, I often feel despairing about both the future and nature of humankind. It also creates a deep frustration and sadness that then has no real outlet. In my human services classes, I always teach that our first and deepest value to respect the “inherent dignity and worth of each human being.” I live by this. I persist in this belief even when I encounter those who challenge the notion. It is what I return to over and over again when my faith in people is shaken.

I also sometimes share with my classes that the quickest way to start questioning that value is to read comments left on YouTube videos. ;)

Yesterday, I shared some pictures that six-year-old Zander drew in what I’m thinking of as his Never… series of drawing. Today, when I once again yelled, “WHY do I read the comments?!” he said he would draw me a picture and he did…

20130308-114844.jpg

Birth Regrets?

Mar8

March 2013 034“I usually talk in my classes about how ‘this’ is the only chance you’re going to get to birth this baby. Sure you may go on to have other babies, but you only get *THIS* chance to birth *THIS* baby. I also share with moms that because of this fact, the significance of this birth is infinitely greater than the significance of this birth is to your nurse, OB, midwife, etc.” – Louise Delaney

As I was writing my post last week about “bragging rights” in birth, I was also considering the role of birth regret. I’ve come to realize that just as each woman has moments of triumph in birth, almost every woman, even those with the most blissful birth stories to share, have birth regrets of some kind of another. And, we may often look at subsequent births as an opportunity to “fix” whatever it was that went “wrong” with the birth that came before it. While it may seem to some that most mother swap “horror stories” more often than tales of exhilaration, I’ve noticed that those who are particularly passionate about birth, may withhold or hurry past their own birth regret moments, perhaps out of a desire not to tarnish the blissful birth image, a desire not to lose crunchy points, or a desire not to contribute to the climate of doubt already potently swirling around pregnant women. I’ve already acknowledged all of my own moments of birth regret, but never all in the same post…so, here they are…

First birth: This birth was great and very empowering, but I also learned a lot of things I’d like to do differently the next time. Maybe “regret” is too strong a word, but there were things I definitely knew I wanted to change for next time. I regretted feeling pushed into several things I wouldn’t have chosen on my own, such as giving birth in a semi-sitting position rather than on hands and knees. I wished I hadn’t had quite so many people around me at the birth and I wished I would have just stayed home, rather than driving to a birth center. I regretting not asking to squat after the placenta to help the “sequestered clots” come out and possibly avoid the manual extraction I experienced which was pretty awful (I swear my uterus actually twinges when writing/thinking about it). I regretted having a pitocin shot after the birth, because I still don’t think I actually needed it and it bothered me for a long time that I couldn’t figure out whether or not I’d really needed it. I was also pretty physically and emotionally traumatized by the labial/clitoral tearing I experienced and desperately wanted to fix that next time! Interestingly, most of these regrets were clearly connected to other people and to events in the immediate postpartum period, rather than anything to do with the labor or birth process itself.

Second birth: With this birth, I see very clearly how I deliberately made choices to “fix” the things that nagged at me from my first birth. I gave birth at home, I had very few people present, I gave birth on hands and knees. I was extremely distraught to tear again in the same unfortunate and traumatic way. I’d been totally convinced before the birth that it was all related to positioning and I could fix it, next time. I regretted getting up and showering, etc. so soon after the birth and I wished for more postpartum care (noticing a theme here…). I wished I hadn’t almost fainted several times and still recall the feeling of my head snapping back as I almost went under. That said, I felt the proudest and most exhilarated after this birth.

Third birth: Aside from the obvious of wishing my baby had been born alive, I “fixed” some things from prior births in that I stayed down after the birth to keep myself from fainting. I regretted drinking Emergen-C after the birth. I regretted not being better informed about coping physically with a miscarriage. And, I wished I’d been better able to assess blood loss. I also wished I’d had an attendant of some kind, particularly for immediate postpartum care. I still feel traumatized from the memory of what felt like extreme blood loss during this birth. This was the most physically demanding experience of my life. Not just my birth life, my whole life.

Fourth birth: My biggest regret from this birth was having tried to use a hypnosis for birth program while in labor. I feel as if there were some pre-birth benefits from using the program, but it was not a match for the way I labor and birth and I actually feel as if using it had a negative impact both on my ability to clearly remember and to focus my energy. I did still tear in the same place and in what seems like some new ways as well. I never want to tear like that again. I hate it. I’ve reached my physical and emotional limit with experiencing that type of tearing and I feel like I still have some negative lasting effects. I also think I had some nerve damage that continued until about six months ago. What I “fixed” this time was having a living baby and rediscovering that I could in fact do this and there was nothing wrong with me. I loved that I caught my own baby. (Best. Moment. Ever.) I also had the immediate postpartum care I’ve finally learned I really, really need. I consumed a small piece of placenta postpartum, I drank chlorophyll (and not vitamin C), when I went to the bathroom and did not look down, so I didn’t get all fainty and woozy from seeing the blood, and my doula encapsulated the placenta and I loved it.

It is interesting to me to look at these feelings and situations in the same place. With my last birth, I finally “fixed” the postpartum and blood loss issues that haunted me, but I created new things to fix by experimenting with hypnosis rather than the active birth, birth warrior, Birthing from Within type of experience that truly suits me. I guess I will never fix the tearing situation (I still want to write about that someday!). I also notice how impacted I was and still am by the two births that involved major blood loss. This came up for me very viscerally in reading the current Midwifery Today issue about hemorrhage. While the topic is important and the issue is really informative and useful, I actually had to put it down by page nine because my uterus was hurting/twinging so much (low back too). I really don’t think it was only my imagination either. (This is one reason my work with birth is never going to actually include becoming a midwife!)

I’m curious to know…do you have birth regrets? Or, things that you used subsequent births to fix, overcome, or cope with? Do you see any patterns to your birth experiences like I see in mine?

The other thing this exercise brought up for me is the important of preparing for the birth you want during this birth. This baby is only born once. This birth only happens once. I have clients tell me sometimes while still pregnant with their first baby, “well, next time, I’ll try XYZ…” Don’t wait for next time, do it this time!

The first birth is the pivotal birth. Every birth experience that follows builds on that one. Our choices now are choices for the NEXT birth. The first birth doesn’t have to be either perfect or awful and earth shattering to make us think. We don’t have to choose differently than the first birth; but it’s the first one that gives us a place to begin experiencing not just birth but ourselves as mothers, women, people. We may not all have ground shaking, earth thundering thoughts but we have them. The experience belongs to us. We choose what to do with it. Choosing to do nothing different is still an influenced choice ~ made on that experience…

…What will YOU do to have a first birth that leaves you with few regrets or changes for your NEXT birth? Why not have the birth of your choosing, rooted in truth and your ability to know yourself and your baby now?…

via The Home Birth Experience: The First Birth is HERstory | Real women. Real options. Real birth..

These types of triumphs and regrets produce both birth professionals dedicated to helping others and also mothers who become so hurt and disillusioned with birth that they may actively reject the “natural birth” movement.

March 2013 049

Kids: Hilariously Awesome & Awesomely Horrible

Mar7

Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh at Zander’s creativity and dramatic style or to take him to therapy! Today, he showed me this drawing titled, “Never Camp Outside.” It is both kind of genius and disturbing…

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Never Camp Outside

Other features in the series: Never Box a Bear, Never Dive into a Volcano, and Never Sleep in the Street…

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Never Dive into a Volcano

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Never Box a Bear
(yes, that would be a headless guy with blood spurts)

My kids are all pretty sensitive to violence in the media and we avoid exposing them to violent TV shows/games as much as possible, but their own brains come up with a lot of horrible stuff—if it comes from them, they’re okay with it and enjoying grossing people out. If it comes from outside of them, their tolerance is a lot lower (example: just today they watched a Good Luck Charlie episode and had to hide their eyes when Charlie was almost breaking a glass reindeer).

When we had a lot of snow days recently the boys got all into getting embellished (with washable markers) for a movie project! Pretty creepy!

A friend on Facebook commented that I was a “cool mom” for letting them draw all over themselves like this and my response was, cool or crazy or lazy or a combination of all three.

When it was Alaina’s turn to get embellished via washable markers (“beware a tiny girl with a blue marker,” Lann was heard to say), she then did some work on my cheeks too…
February 2013 126
Later, I was making pumpkin cookies in the kitchen and waxing eloquent to Mark about human trafficking and the roots in patriarchal religious structures and then looked in the bathroom mirror and saw my face was still decorated…sort of reduced the oomph behind my impassioned soapbox!

Speaking of Alaina, this month she learned how to say her own name. Instead of calling herself baby or “me,” when asked she’ll say, “Lainey” often accompanied by, “me tiny.” Last week, she described herself as strong and funny (true), and she petted my face and said, “Mama, pretty!” (Lest I become too conceited, I recall her also describing Daddy’s 1956 tractor as “pretty” recently). She also says both “thank you” AND “no thank you” and also “love ya! And, she loves squeezing into a box outside with her favorite kitty, Gizmo:

Zander’s drawings made me think I should do my own series. First up for me, based on some of today’s experiences, would be:

Never Read the Comments

(on any articles online about things that I care about and on YouTube videos whether I care about them or not)

Never Buy “Delicious” Fish Oil Capsules for Kids

(unless you like throwing away $17, five years later)

Never Trust “Tastes Exactly Like” Recipes from Pinterest

(banana ice cream…cauliflower pizza crust…garbanzo bean cookie dough…I’m always instantly intrigued, however, if you don’t have dietary restrictions that prohibit the “real” versions of these things, don’t bother experimenting with them. Your family will thank you.)

 

Tuesday Tidbits: Story Power

Mar5

“The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.” ― Anna Quindlen February 2013 138

This week, almost ten years after I actually had my first experience with my first baby practice breathing in the womb, I received yet another comment from a mother worried that the practice breathing movements she was feeling were really her baby having seizures. This reminds me of both the power of personal stories and of the power of the internet. I didn’t know ten years ago that my voice would still be able to reach off the page and touch another mother’s life today. That feels good! I also like that this long-lasting post is just my little story. It isn’t a scientific article, it isn’t written in a professional tone, or  written with detached objectivity, it is just me telling my story about something that happened and what I learned from it. And, that speaks to other mothers in an irreplaceable way. Since the post now has 130 comments on it, it has become a story-house, so to speak of woman after woman’s stories of this experience and so each woman who comes for the initial story can then benefit from the voices of many other mothers, all in the same place.

And, in a beautiful full-circle experience, the original author of that “miscarriages are labor, miscarriages are birth” quote I’ve used so many times since 2009 and that meant so much to me, found my website this week and left a comment with an update about her own life:

“I am so pleased that my words brought you comfort during a painful time of your life. My miscarriages shaped my life profoundly, as did my experiences as a miscarriage/stillbirth doula. Happily, after many years of infertility, I did give birth to living children, and am now a happy grandmother. The older I get, the more I realize that those little souls who spent their entire lives within me brought me incredible gifts. I am a much better person because they existed…”

Her story and her “old” words reached off the page to me and touched me deeply at a time when I desperately needed them and they’ve gone on and on from there to help many other women.

A lot of other things about stories have been popping off the page at me…

I got a e-newsletter from one of my favorite writers, Jen Loudon, and she was doing an interview with Justine Musk. About said interview with Justine, Jen says:

She writes powerfully about the intersections of so many things I care about: being a creative woman and a feminist, the power of shaping our own stories, the sacred obligation to “connect with your gifts and search for that sweet spot where they cross with the call of the times,” truth, and even thigh-high boots…

And, speaking of feminism and all that good stuff, I followed an internet rabbit trail that started with First the egg’s link to a post at blue milk about slacker moms and white privilege (really good observations, by the way, that behavior reflecting questionable judgement exhibited by a white, middle class mother is way more likely to be blown off or viewed as a funny story than the same story about a poor and/or not-white mother) and eventually landed me at this post about “mothers you hate.” Nestled midway through the article was this interesting observation:

“…The militant mother feels strongly about what happens to her body during birth – and to her baby’s – and she wants women to know about their options. She’s also readily marginalised by powerful institutions. In pro-choice circles we otherwise call the women fighting for rights like these ‘activists’. As a feminist, it concerns me that we’re so intolerant towards birth activism when abortion activism is core to our understanding of bodily autonomy. The activist mother’s beliefs are dismissed as inflexibility, but I’ve had just as many mothers recommend an epidural to me as I’ve had women recommend drug-free births, and they all did so with equal enthusiasm…”

Thinking about mothers and how they interact and how they experience themselves and their lives, my eyes then snapped to this quote in a longer book review:

“…In a sharp observation early in the book, Smyth comments that ‘the role of mother is not immediately intelligible to those who find themselves inhabiting it’ (p. 4). This is certainly borne out in the confessional writing and memoirs of young (feminist) women, who try to make sense of their experiences as a new mother. They write of a crisis of selfhood, feeling undifferentiated in ‘a primordial soup of femaleness’ (Wolf 2001) and of experiencing a gendered, embodied and relational self for the first time (Stephens 2012)…”

Returning to the power of personal stories (but also reminding us not layer our own unresolved personal stories on top of another mother’s grief), I read this very strong, powerful article about miscarriage:

“…I am grieving my enormous loss while simultaneously feeling more at home in my body than ever before. No one seems to want to hear this. No one seems to believe me. Ironically, it wasn’t until I began sharing my story of my daughter emerging from me at 15 weeks that I began to feel sprinkles of shame. Why would I be ashamed of chromosomes gone wrong? How would I have any control over this? Magical thinking and long stored up dark reserves seep out as women experience reproductive hardships. They think they must have done something to “deserve” this, had to have been “unlucky”, and chase every possible line of thinking imaginable to connect the dots. There are no dots here. Miscarriage isn’t about pregnancy ambivalence or anxiety, prior abortions or outbursts of venomous anger, feelings of sadness or anything else that you can seemingly control.

Miscarriage is simpler than all of that. It is loss of life that wasn’t sustainable.

I have fantasies of shouting this from rooftops and tweeting random cryptic notes containing the facts about pregnancy loss in the hopes of galvanizing women’s perceptions of themselves. I daydream about pleading with women not to blame their beautiful bodies for their reproductive devastations. I wish I could dare every woman who has at some point or another wondered if they were somehow the root cause of a reproductive disappointment to turn that question on its head. “What if you are not the reason that this happened to you? What if it just is?” I can’t help but wonder if this would [elicit] more anger, more grief, more relief, and/or more hope. Or maybe something else completely. I am confident that it would engender less competitiveness, less perfectionistic strivings, and more self-love…”

One of my own unresolved bits about my own losses that gets layered on top of (or in the way of listening to) other women’s stories is the WHY of my own losses. I don’t know for certain that Noah’s birth at almost 15 weeks was actually because his life wasn’t sustainable. I continue to have the lingering fear that it was really the UTI I had at the time (the first of my life) that killed him. My gut says that his lifespan only extended that far and was genetically programmed to end at that point, but there is a little part of me that still wonders, what if my body killed him. Ditto with my early miscarriage, my fear is that my hormone levels were low and because I got pregnant again “too soon,” my body couldn’t sustain what might have under different body-circumstances been a perfectly viable baby.

What stories have touched your own life this week? How have your stories helped another mother?

“We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.” — Richard Rhodes

I am a Story Woman