Archive | 2011

Giveaway: Aloe Cadabra

Apr19

This giveaway is now closed. Kelly D. was the winner!

As a breastfeeding counselor and a childbirth educator, I get occasional questions from new mothers about what to use as an “all natural” personal lubricant. So, my attention was caught when I received an email from the company, Aloe Cadabra. They note the following:

New moms have a lot of things to juggle – care for a newborn, altered sleep patterns, returning to work, etc.  As women navigate their new routines and new “normal” life, many struggle with one piece of this pie – resuming sexual intimacy with their partners.  With pregnancy and childbirth affecting the hormonal balance of a woman’s body, many new moms face challenges in their postnatal sexual health.  A pilot study carried out by St George’s Hospital Medical School in London reports that 3 months after delivery, 39% of women experience vaginal dryness.

As a result, many women turn to mainstream personal lubricant products found at a local drugstore to help bring the spark back to the post-baby bedroom.  If these personal products are on the shelves, then they must be safe to use, right?  Wrong – these readily available products contain the same ingredients found in antifreeze, food preservatives and cleaning solutions – obviously bad for both your body and the environment.

Aloe Cadabra has developed an all-natural, certified organic product made from 95% organic aloe and enriched with Vitamin E.  This first and only plant-based intimate moisturizer is pH balanced for a women’s body, anti-bacterial, anti-microbial and anti-fungal.  Aloe Cadabra is fully absorbed into the skin as it is used, so there is no gooey, sticky mess, and it’s compatible with condoms.

Parents are wisely cautious and educate themselves on products that come in contact with their baby’s body…Doesn’t a mom deserve the same caution?

One reader can win a bottle of Aloe Cadabra simply by leaving a comment on this giveaway! I will close the giveaway next Tuesday at 6:00 p.m.

Kiva Woman with Womb Labyrinth

Apr14

Today, a friend told me that she searched google images for “womb labyrinth” and mine were some of the first images to come up. I thought that was kind of fun and decided to post another labyrinth drawing I did a couple of years ago. She was posted on my now defunct birth art blog (need to move some of that content over here!) and I think she deserves a post here as well. Inspired by Birthing from Within, of course, this “kiva woman” (based on the BfW cover image) is contemplating her upcoming birth journey:

Kiva Woman & Womb Labyrinth

She’s approaching her “threshold moment” and getting ready to enter the “laborinth” of birth. Her baby is waiting for her in the center. I have several friends who are preparing to enter their own “laborinths” and I hope their birth paths are filled with beauty, peace, and power…

ICAN Conference Thoughts

Apr13

This past weekend, I attended the ICAN conference in St. Louis. I was really excited that the conference was in my own back yard (well, two hours from my back yard). I enjoyed seeing lots of people that I know from Friends of Missouri Midwives as well as other friends and contacts from other organizations. And, I got to meet some people in real life (like Jill from the Unnecesarean), who I previously only “knew” online. I also bought myself a pretty awesome new ring from the MANA booth (and a t-shirt and a bumper sticker!).

In addition to these things, highlights of the conference for me were:

  • Hearing Pam England speak and getting to meet her after so many years of being a fan of Birthing from Within. I will write another post soon about her “9 Birth Story Gates” presentation. It was very good.
  • Taking Amy Swagman’s birth art workshop (Amy is the Mandala Journey artist and was someone else that I enjoyed meeting in person after only “knowing” online). I will write about this soon as well.
  • Seeing the amazing breech birth videos shared by Gail Tully of Spinning Babies in her presentation about breech birth.
  • Connecting with another mother during the sand tray art therapy workshop presented by Maria Carella. Though our birth experiences were different, our “processing” of them during the workshop was amazingly similar. More about this later too.

The main reason I wanted to post tonight though was to share my experience in visiting the “Our Voices” room at the conference. This room is a safe, quiet place—a place of silence—in which women can go to to contribute their feelings about their cesareans to the wall displays. They can take their contributions home with them when they leave, or leave them up to be re-installed in the next Our Voices room at the next conference. Every wall in the room, plus the doors and several tables, was covered with women’s words and feelings about their cesarean experiences, subsequent births, VBAC, etc. It is difficult to put into words how potent of an experience visiting this room was. I was not expecting to be moved to tears by it, but I was. It was extraordinary. And, painful. There were other women in the room crying and crying as they composed their additions to the wall, as well as other women walking quietly through and looking and reading. I originally intended to add to the wall—I was told that it was not necessary to have had a cesarean myself in order to add something—but after seeing the room and the women in it, I did not feel “worthy” (so to speak!) of adding to it. It wasn’t my space. It was something I was privileged to witness, but I did not feel it was appropriate to add my own words to these women’s pain and expressive space. I felt like anything I could say would be trite somehow, almost insulting, to the depth of feeling expressed on the walls. Sometimes you really do have to have “been there” in order to fully recognize the experience of another. And, while I can certainly empathize and feel deep compassion, cesarean birth has not been my own personal journey and it just felt like it would be rude almost, to claim enough understanding of it to write on this wall.

This experience also taught me that I am not meant to start an ICAN chapter. I really think our area could use one and I love the work that ICAN does and I had signed up to start a chapter (before coming to my senses and realizing that I am overcommitted to too many projects/organizations right now as it is), but after visiting the Our Voices room, I realized that I am not the appropriate person to lead one. I just can’t really get it even though I can “see” other women and honor their experiences.

I’ve noted before that I feel like my experiences with pregnancy loss opened my heart more fully to the full range of birth loss (which  includes many women’s feelings about their cesareans) and birth/pregnancy trauma. Before loss, I only saw the “pretty” side of birth. Well, not pretty, exactly, but the empowering and triumphant and exciting side. After my birth-miscarriage, my world was opened to the wider world of birth experiences and feelings. I feel like there are—somewhat surprising—parallels between pregnancy loss and  the loss of a vaginal birth women experience with cesarean, but it is also different and the Our Voices room at the conference was a sacred space for those with cesarean experiences. It was both humbling and moving to hear their voices in this way.

There are pictures of the room and the contributions at the ICAN Conference Facebook page.

Handouts for Birth Booths

Apr11

A frequent topic on email lists for birth professionals is good handouts/resources for booths at maternity or baby fairs. Rather  than making copies of materials or creating my own handouts (reinventing the wheel in a less-professional looking way!),  I am a fan of using glossy, professionally printed, but still very low cost stuff for tables and also a fan of materials that address good maternity care in general. My top faves for having on a booth or as handouts are:

Happy Birth Dance

Apr4

“Birth is a creative process, not a surgical procedure. I picture dancers on a stage. Once, doing a pirouette, a woman sustained a cervical fracture as result of a fall; she is not paralyzed. We try to make the stage safer, to have the dancers better prepared. But can a dancer wear a collar around her neck, just in case she falls? The presence of the collar will inhibit her free motion. We cannot say to her, ‘this will be entirely natural except for the brace on your neck, just in case.’ It cannot be ‘as if’ it is not there because we know that creative movement and creative expression cannot exist with those constraints. The dancer cannot dance with the brace on. In the same way the birthing woman cannot ‘dance’ with a brace on. The straps around her abdomen, the wires coming from her vagina, change her birth.” –Dr. Michelle Harrison

Present from my husband after my daughter's birth

I woke up this morning thinking about this quote. I’ve shared it on my blog before, but that was in 2008 and so it has been lost in the shuffle of other posts (and many, many quotes!) since then. My ongoing thought process actually didn’t have much to do with the quote, though my recent labor pictures post illustrates the idea of freedom of movement throughout labor according to my own body’s messages, rather than assisted with anything else.  However, thinking of dancing and birth made me think of the pendant my husband gave me following the birth of our daughter. He actually gave it to me for Christmas first, but since he gave me four other pendants for presents, I gave this one back to him and told him to save it for a post-baby present! Given how I then felt after birthing her, it felt like a perfect present. I love how this exuberant goddess is dancing for joy. And, how her upswept arms form a heart-like shape. I was so happy to have MY BABY. When I wear this pendant, I remember that feeling of relief and happiness after giving birth to her. Every night when I look down and see her there in my arms I feel lucky and also this continued sense of surprise, almost, to have her here with me. It all seems so magic.

I was talking to my husband about this last night (well, quietly croaking, since I’ve had laryngitis for several days) while on our nightly walk. We’d noticed that Noah’s tulip tree actually bloomed! I told him I hadn’t been sure it would actually survive (clear parallels here), but look, now here we are and look at this baby who is here with us while the flowers bloom. We looked quietly for a minute and then I said, “remember how we almost decided not to try again?” I feel like it was brave to try again. I was brave.

 

Noah's tree bloomed!

 

 

Birth Strength

Apr1

“Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don’t know how strong until we are pushing out our babies. We are too often treated like babies having babies when we should be in training, like acolytes, novices to high priestesshood, like serious applicants for the space program.” –Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance

This is one of my favorite quotes to share at blessingways. The Blue Jay’s Dance is a memoir of the writer’s first year with her third baby (sixth child). She isn’t particularly a birth advocate, the book is a general mothering memoir, but at one point she says the above and I love it. Though, I should note that I think there are all kinds of strengths to be found in birth—not just in pushing out a baby. One can experience “terrible strength” in coping with an unexpected cesarean also. And, of course, womanpower can also be found in other non-birth experiences. When I shared the quote on Facebook, some people commented that they hated it or that it was offensive. I have been surprised by how very personally some of the  birth quotes I post on Facebook are taken. There have been several occasions where I’ve felt so upset about it that I thought maybe I should never post quotes ever again! (now who’s taking something too personally? ;)). Then, I realized a strong personal reaction is normal, because birth is such a strong and personal issue, so now I try to be extra mindful of the subtexts that might be perceived in a quote (regardless of original intent) and clarify that below the quote. I truly think the intent in this one is of the potential to discover our own hidden strength via birth, not to say that birth is the only powerful experience available to women. I know that I draw on my “birth strength” in other important moments in my life. I also realized after the miscarriage-birth of my third son that the strength found in birth is present in women, period. It is woman strength and it rises up during birth, but it is always there.

During a recent women’s retreat we reflected on sources of personal power and how we feel when we are standing in our personal power (this question comes from a fabulous book, A Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal). When I first considered this question, I was somewhat sad to discover that the only instances of personal power I could come up with from giving birth—it would be nice to have piles of personal power experiences! More reflection revealed that I also feel like I’m standing in my personal power when I teach. Not a sense of “power over,” but in power with. More freshly, I’ve realized that I find personal power in Goddess spirituality/images and ideas of the Divine Feminine. And, I also experience personal power when I am alone. I feel most whole and authentic when I am just by myself. I like quiet space in my own head in which to think and I also enjoy my own company 🙂

“A woman meets herself in childbirth” –Cynthia Caillagh

Each time I gave birth I realized I was a pretty amazing person with inherent worth and value. The woman that I met in birth was very strong and very capable and very focused. And, she is me.

I hope my baby girl grows up standing in her own personal power and having a profound sense of her own worth.

Baby's First Bindi--taken at a recent blessingway for my good friend

Labor Pictures

Mar28

I’ve mentioned before that I was disappointed not to have any birth pictures from my last baby. What I do have is quite a few labor pictures and I want to share them in a post since labor pictures don’t often get as much “glory” as birth pictures 🙂 I didn’t have any birth pictures with my first son either, though we have several immediately after as was my preference at the time. I have two labor pictures with him, this one, taken in fairly early labor:

Trying to decide whether or not this is it!

Then, my mom took this one of me after I got out of the shower. I was going to try to go to bed, because the birth center staff seemed pretty sure I wasn’t really in labor and should just get some rest. This picture was taken about 5-6 hours before he was born:

With my second son, my mom took a great series of birth pictures as he was emerging. They’re really good and step by step as he comes out—however, the angle is a very direct “rear view” that I don’t feel comfortable putting on the internet! With that birth, there is only one picture from the actual labor (and, it is a nice active labor picture that isn’t too graphic and it has actually been printed in several publications):

About 30 minutes before giving birth to second baby

I like how you can see all of my older son’s playdoh creations in the foreground. That’s homebirth for you!

With my daughter, my mom took a series of labor pictures and while I’m sad not to have birth pictures too, I like the story that these pictures tell:

Taken during the morning of birthing day–wanted one last “belly picture” of pregnancy.

Spent a lot of time on the ball with Mark at my side

My birth nest is all ready! (on floor outside bathroom) Notice that my birth altar is set up nearby.

More time on the ball…

Proving I can still smile one hour before she is born! (+ advertising my alma mater)

Accidentally got trapped on floor in horrible and painful position.

The closer I get to having a baby, the nearer to the floor I get (hands and knees is right for me)

Switched into ridiculous too-small PJ shirt right before pushing.

She’s here! Closest thing to a birth picture that we got.

First nursing

Birth Story Wordle

Mar22

I’ve done Wordle images before using the text of this blog, but I didn’t realize that you could make one using only one particular post. A couple of nights ago when I was up late with the baby, I made one using Alaina’s short birth story! I made it the day before her two month birthday—I also took her out to show her the supermoon 🙂 I like it—I find it meaningful that my husband’s name is the second largest word after the word “birth.” I also find it significant that the word baby is above the word birth, since for me this time, the baby ranked above the birth in my emotional experience of birthing. In an ultimate reckoning, The baby is always more important than the birth, of course, but my feelings about the two are usually interlocked and go hand and hand and I believe that birth has inherent value as an experience—this time I felt exhilirated about the baby and then secondarily had separate feelings about the experience of birth.

Rapturous Acts

Mar21

I had included this quote in my recent update post, but decided it edit that one for length and give this its own post.  From the book, The Blue Jay’s Dance: Growing, bearing, mothering, or fathering, supporting, and at last letting go…are powerful and mundane creative acts that rapturously suck up whole chunks of life. –Louise Erdrich

I went to a retreat yesterday and one of my friends said of her own baby that, “I am his everything.” That is an excellent description of that mother-baby unity that I touched on in my last post. With Alaina right now, I am everything she needs. I am her habitat. I am her gauge for the world around her and also for her own self—I’ve pointed out to the boys before how if she gets startled and her arms go out, she immediately searches for my eyes, looking for my signal (calmness) that everything is fine and the startle is unnecessary. She uses me and my responses to her to understand the world (and herself). If she gets fussy when someone else is holding her, as soon as I take her back, she rides along happily peeking over my shoulder—balance of her world restored. Her eyes follow me when I am walking around. I feel like I have savored all of my babies, but I feel more intensely aware this time around how short this time period is—this time of complete symbiosis and dependence. I also remember feeling more confused by my first baby and I remember worrying and worrying about, “what if he cries?” I think I thought he might cry and I’d never be able to calm him back down or something? I’m not really sure what that was about, but I remember feeling like crying = bad mother. With Alaina, I am 100% confident that she will not keep crying (duh). I mentioned before that she doesn’t cry much, but last night she had a fussy spell after our second day in a row being away from home all day, and I had no doubt at all that her trust in me to care for her would calm the fussy (and it did). Oh, and, she also laughed at me for the first time last night! It is amazing to be someone’s whole world and it just feels extra special this time around. This morning when I was playing with her and she was smiling with her whole body (love that), I felt like our connection is so pure and basic that it feels almost holy. I have to confess that she makes me feel like having another baby—how can I not do this again?! I’m still pretty certain we won’t have any more children, but I surprise myself by frequent thoughts about maybe ONE more…

My boys still think I’m pretty awesome and prefer being with me to pretty much anything else (they do adore their grandpa and he is their most fun person to hang out with), but they really like me a whole bunch and I still have the power to make their worlds “right” as well. I enjoy their company and their wild, funny, enthusiastic, creative, complicated personalities and I feel like they are the treasures of my heart. I also feel like my love for them is deeper in a way (or more developed, maybe?) than it was when they were babies, because we are so invested in each other. I know them so well and we’ve had so much life together, I can’t imagine not having them. I can still remember not having Alaina and I can remember how I thought I may never get to have another baby ever again and I’m really enjoying this very uncomplicated, unconditional, sweet, sacred love of and for a little baby again.

I am currently reading and very much enjoying a book called She Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World and the author critiques the foundations of modern philosophy as being based on independence from others as the goal/highest state  as well as critiquing spiritual traditions that see attachment as a flaw and a state to be transcended (the book is based on process philosophy instead). She describes an anecdote how a fellow student wrote a paper making a case for “the existence of other minds” and no one else in her class other than her seemed to find it bizarre. She discusses Descartes and his “I think, therefore I am” conclusion as inherently flawed saying that before Descartes could articulate this thought, “he reached out his hand for his mother.” It is relationship, not thought that forms our basis for life and our experience of reality.

In her habitat ("the maternal nest")


I’m getting ready to start teaching in-seat again at the end of this week. I’m getting nervous about it, because we’re not really ready for separation yet, even for short times. The class is 5 hours and since I’m the teacher, I can give breaks when I need to. My husband is going to stay in town with all the kids—I know this sounds slightly crazy, but I have to know she can get to me if she needs me AND we also always have a Wal-Mart list, so he’s going to do that each week (the boys love to go to WM with him, because he has a tendency to say yes to new toys, candy, and weird food for dinner). The class only lasts 8 weeks and one week is a midterm and one a final, which usually means dismissal a bit early those nights. I guess it is a little strange to be worried about it, because many mothers go back to work when their babies are 6 weeks old and for 40 hours at a time. I’m getting all concerned about only working 5 hours once a week! (with a baby lurking in the parking lot with my husband!) But, still, it is on my mind…a LOT.

I’m going to remain on leave from teaching birth classes and I’m also strongly considering not resuming breastfeeding support group meetings—just stick with phone/email help and no in-person group for a while. I do have another project brewing, but I’m not going to write about it until I know if it is going to work out or not!

Unity

Mar18

I keep wanting to write an update post about Alaina and never finding enough moments in one day in which to do it—I joked the other day about, “instead of taking care of your sweet little self, I want to write a blog post about taking care of your sweet little self!” ;-D Overall, I’m surprised by how easy she is to take care of. I love having a baby again—I’m surprised I ever found it hard to take care of a baby! Her needs are very simple and easy to meet and it just isn’t very complicated to figure her out. Older kids are a different story altogether! Though, taking care of her while taking care of my other kids adds a different level of challenge and isn’t itself actually easy. But, caring for her when considered on its own is very easy and natural and good. I was concerned about “starting over” and taking care of a baby all over again and I’m pleased to discover anew how much I love having a baby.

She does have an interesting habit of being awake until about 1:00 a.m. every night. Not sure what is up with that and keep puzzling over changing the pattern. With my first baby, I remember remarking that at night I felt in “perfect harmony” with him, but during the day I found him somewhat confusing (and also kind of fussy/unsettled). With Alaina, I feel in perfect daytime harmony with her, but the night is the confusing time. It is also hard to write about her without comparing her to my other babies—I’d like to consider each child on their own, rather than using the others as a yardstick, but I also think it is a natural thing to do. I feel like she is my happiest baby yet. I’d worried she would be an anxious or difficult baby, because of all the fear I “marinated” her in during pregnancy, but she is a happy little soul. She is also incredibly quiet. It is weird, actually, sometimes I look down at her and she’s just riding along quietly and I get kind of a start, like, “oh, you’re still here!” She does not really ever cry—just occasionally commentary type “wahs” of protest or alert or notice. I remember the boys becoming unsettled more easily and also being harder to calm down. For example, yesterday she was asleep when we got home from the park. I hurried to bring in my stuff and when I got back out to the car she was awake and crying pretty hard—I was horrified and ran to scoop her up. The second I picked her up, she made not another peep. I know for a fact that my other babies would have kept on crying for a couple of moments just for emphasis, as well as just taken a little more conscious effort for me to calm them back down. She smiles a lot and enjoys watching her big brothers play.

While the feeling isn’t as intense as it was when she was first born (she is two months old tomorrow!), I continue to marvel at her every day—“HOW did you get here, you amazing little thing?” I feel almost startled that she is here with us, happy and whole and engaging with the world around her. I don’t remember having quite the same sense of miracle about the boys. Sense of magic, yes, but the sense of surprise and/or disbelief about their existence, no.

Aren't they cuties?

I think she looks remarkably like my oldest in this picture, but in baby pictures at the same age and to my eyes in person, she doesn’t look so much like him.

I am enjoying experiencing the symbiosis of the nursing relationship again. I sat nursing her a couple of days ago and remembered a quote from the book The Blue Jay’s Dance by Louise Erdrich in which she is talking about male writers from the nineteenth century and their longing for an experience of oneness and seeking the mystery of an epiphany. She says:

“Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn’t understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies.”

I am currently reading three different books about spirituality and one of them has this focus on  “oneness”—I was reading it while nursing her and that quote popped into mind.