Book Review: Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life

Jan14

Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life
By Marian Leonard Tompson, Melissa Clark Vickers
Paperback, 176 pages
Published June 19th 2011 by Hale Publishing

Reviewed by Molly Remer

Passionate Journey by La Leche League International co-founder Marian Tompson is the story of a young mother who became known worldwide and was even referred to as “The High Priestess of Breastfeeding Mothers.” Written in a light and casual tone, many of Marian’s stories are familiar if you’ve read The LLL Love Story, Seven Voices, One Dream, or The Revolutionaries Wore Pearls. While theoretically a personal memoir from one Founder, rather than a history of LLL, because Marian’s personal history is intimately entwined with the organization’s history, the end result is very similar to existing books about LLLI.

The writing style is simplistic and ironically often fairly dispassionate in tone, perhaps due to having a co-writer for a first person memoir. Chronology jumps are occasionally confusing.

Several anecdotes made me laugh aloud and read them to my husband–such as a medical intern rushing to the physician after witnessing one of Marian’s three natural hospital births and exclaiming, “oh, doctor! How did you do it?” As a birth activist and feminist, I’m fascinated by the radical courage required at the time to support and promote home birth and breastfeeding. While LLLI has always been a “single purpose” organization, it has also always recognized something that seems to escape the notice of many professionals and consumers: that normal, undisturbed breastfeeding begins with normal, undisturbed birth. Tompson notes: “…having a baby at home is at least as safe as a hospital birth, and in most situations home birth is safer. New sciences and new research are helping us understand why giving birth in your own bed, surrounded by people who care for you, where you feel supported and can celebrate the birth, rather than just endure it, changes both the experience and the outcome.” Tompson had her first home birth in 1955 and went on to have three more children at home. Her daughters carried on her legacy, one of them returning to the family home to give birth to her own daughter. The Tompson family home was also the site of multiple family weddings as well as the almost unheard of home funeral for husband Tom in 1981. In a nice touch, reflective paragraphs from each of Marian’s seven children close the book.

An inspirational story of the twists and turns of an ordinary life with an extraordinary global impact, Passionate Journey reminded me of the deep importance and transformative influence of providing support and encouragement to women who wish to breastfeed.

via Goodreads | Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life by Marian Leonard Tompson – Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists.

Review & Giveaway: KidsBlanks by Zoey

Jan10

The giveaway is now closed. Alison G was the winner!

I’m excited to have a double feature today—a quick review AND a giveaway in one! I recently received some products from KidsBlanks to review. KidsBlanks by Zoey is a wholesale baby and toddler clothing company selling blank baby clothes that parents (or other talented family members!) can then embroider, applique, dye, stencil, and so forth to customize the clothes for their own children. I received a cute little summer dress and a diaper cover. While I have not yet embellished them (while that is a neat idea, they also stand alone and are wearable as is), I tried them out on Alaina this morning. Both items are in 12-24 month size and seem true-to-size with a good amount of room in the diaper cover to accommodate a cloth diaper. The items are 100% cotton and are a nice weight—not heavy or stiff, but not lightweight or cheap either, a nice soft texture and mid-weight.

We tried diaper cover LG2980 in brown and dress LG5050PD in pink polka dot. Check them out in action:

Now, it is your turn! KidsBlanks is offering one special winner $25 worth of products from their website (since they are a wholesaler, this is actually worth $50 retail). The winner will be able to pick any products marked LG or CS on the website (the majority of the products on the site). To enter, just leave a comment below! I will draw the winner randomly next Tuesday.

2011 Blog Year in Review

Jan6

The dawn of 2011 saw me preparing to meet my new baby girl. I was given a beautiful blessingway (and attended several others during the year). Then, I gave birth to her magical, tiny self on January 19. As the year passed, she got bigger and bigger and bigger:

Three Month a-Baby!
Six Months
Eightmonthababy!
Nine Months
Ten Months Old!
Elevenmonthababy!

We took lots of pictures to try to chronicle the sweet, perfect texture of our lives with her in it. I continued to make lots of birth art. I also published several of my originally-in-print articles in blog post format:

Birth Lessons from a Chicken
Nursing Johnny Depp
The Rhythm of Our Lives
The Value of Sharing Story
Listening Well Enough
Mindful Mama: Presence and Perfectionism in Parenting
Listening to my baby…even when we disagreed!
Planning for Postpartum
The Spot

I made slight revisions to the two posts that consistently get a high number of hits each week and didn’t make any changes to the post about good foods to eat during labor that continues to top my blog’s personal charts:

How do I know I’m really in labor?
In-Utero Practice Breathing
Good Foods to Eat in Labor

In addition to some of my articles-turned-posts, several new posts that I wrote in 2011 received a lot of attention, thanks to Facebook shares, and a guest post about alcohol and breastfeeding was enormously popular for the two weeks between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

I just want to grind my corn!
Affordable Fetal Model
Active Birth in the Hospital
Guest Post: Alcohol and Breastmilk

My final post of 2011 also received quite a few hits via Facebook in the last few days, but has not received any comments on the post itself (only FB!):

The Illusion of Choice

I spoke my truth in several other posts that I felt pleased with, but that did not get a lot of airtime via other sites:

What Really Scares Me: Social Attitudes Towards Women
Asking the right questions…
“You’ll Miss This…”
Surrender?
Birthing the Mother-Writer (or: Playing My Music, or: Postpartum Feelings, Part 1)
Milk, Money, & Madness
The “Almost Died…” Remark
Fatherbaby
The Ragged Self

I also started to write a little about homeschooling.

I feel like I spent a lot of 2011 in a writer’s prayer—trying to tell about it—trying to preserve in time these high, sweet, clear, delicious, beautiful notes that composed my year with my new baby.

Imaginary Future Children

Dec29

My brother graduated from college earlier this year and recently got his ultimate dream job in a nearby state. This is the realization of a plan and vision he’s held for himself since he was a very small child. It is pretty exciting for the whole family! Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was talking to my husband about it and we were reminiscing about when we were young and launching our lives. Thinking about my brother, I was feeling a little wistful and a little tied down, thinking about how we’re never planning to move anywhere else and so forth and musing about whether we’ve made a mistake by settling so permanently in one home and location, are we missing out on “adventure,” etc. I also said, “remember what it was like to make decisions without having to think about our kids?” After a pause, we realized that we did not remember and that was because, while our children at one point didn’t physically exist, making decisions about our lives as adults has still always included them. And, then I was struck with a wave of memories of how the choices we made as a very young couple were based on the then-hypothetical nature of our future children and what we wanted for them. When I was finishing my BA in psychology, one of the top issues on my mind was where to go to graduate school. I felt a pull towards PhD programs in psychology and I felt like that is what many people were expecting of me, but I also knew in my heart that there was no way I could manage a practice as a psychologist while also having children. I didn’t want to spend that much time in school and then feel torn being pursuing my career and taking care of my children. So, I decided to work on my MSW, theorizing that the more flexible nature of the work and the less expensive nature of the degree would be more compatible with family life. (I was 18 while making this decision.)

Then, when I was getting ready to graduate from graduate school and Mark was finishing his bachelor’s degree we had a conversation about how it was “now or never” in terms of what we were going to do—I told him that now was the time when we had the MOST freedom and flexibility with our choices and if we felt like we wanted to live in a different part of the country, etc., NOW was the time to do it, before we had a family to uproot. We talked at length and looked for jobs and apartments in a variety of different states. Finally, we concluded that we wanted our children to be raised near their grandparents and not in a different state where they would see them once or twice a year. (I was now 21 and would not actually have any children for three more years.)

No way could I keep these people apart!

We realized that many towns and places are much the same as any other and why not settle where we were certain the grandparents would remain. I also knew that I wanted to be close to my own mom so she could help me with my babies! So, we bought land one mile from where my parents live before I even got pregnant with our first baby. Post-graduate school I was offered a full-time job at an organization that I adored the year before I planned to get pregnant and I turned it down, knowing that I wouldn’t want to be working full-time while having a baby.
Any more future babies out there?

Yesterday, I was sitting in the living room playing with Alaina and waxing eloquent about her fundamental awesomeness. The boys were playing in the living room too and I said, “I think I HAVE to have one more baby so Alaina has someone to play with! She’s going to really want me to have a friend for her.” Lann said, “But mom, what if you have a…” and I said, “it won’t matter if the baby is a boy. Boys and girls can play together just fine! It is great to have two boys and it would be fun to have two girls, but the other baby doesn’t have to be a girl. Alaina will be happy to have a boy to play with too.” He started to say something again and I went on and on about why do people think children have to be segregated by gender, blah, blah and then he said, “MOM! I’m not talking about what if the baby is a BOY, I was trying to say, what if it is a MISCARRIAGE!” And, I was quiet for a moment before saying, “I know. I worry about that too.” It was a sobering moment. I’ve talked and thought at length about how I’d like to end my childbearing years on this high, happy note, rather than possibly begin a new loss journey. (I do recognize that it is bizarre to make decisions about our family’s future based on fear, rather than love.) Just as when I was a teenager and twenty-something, today I continue to make decisions based on my present-day children and my hypothetical future children, including the possibility of experiencing further pregnancy losses.

Today as I was snuggling Alaina in the morning—she was popping up and staring at me and then flopping on top of me and snuggling her head into my shoulder over and over—and I was smelling her and feeling her strong, wiggly, vibrant little form and I thought, “you healed me.” If I hadn’t had her, I know I would have carried a permanent wound and a permanent place of sadness in my soul surrounding my childbearing years. She fixed it.

Thankful for place

Returning to my notion of being “permanent, this is an excerpt from one of my essays for my Ecology and the Sacred course.

I was interested by the explanation [in our class text] about how we typically, “tell the story of our cultural lives and our interactions with other people…” While I definitely share this tendency, I do also feel deeply rooted to my natural place—the land on which I live and on which I grew up. My parents homesteaded their property in the 1970’s and I was born at home and spent my entire childhood on the same piece of land on which I was born, playing in the woods. They are very connected to their land and literally their blood, sweat, and tears have gone into their “place” in the natural world.

Eight years ago, my husband and I bought a parcel of my parents’ property and built our own home there. We live on a different road than my parents, but are still only one mile from where I was born, and our property is bordered by theirs on two sides. My husband and I have now invested a lot of time and energy into this piece of land, now our blood, and sweat, and tears are part of this piece of land and we feel permanent in this location. We do not—indeed, cannot—envision ever moving and living anywhere else. Sometimes my husband and I talk about whether this sense of permanence is binding or restrictive—i.e. what about the sense of possibility, about being able to “start over” anywhere—but we’ve concluded that rootedness has a great deal of personal value to us and we wouldn’t want to trade our roots for “wings.” While this isn’t quite the same as a natural history of place, I do feel that my own identity and social story includes an interwoven, personally important element of natural place. This part of the country is where I belong and I am invested in it…

While some people lament the “foolishness” of their youth, looking back at my own young adult years, I’m surprised at my own youthful perceptiveness and foresight about what choices would best suit the needs of my then-imaginary children and family. I’m curious to know what life choices did you make as an inexperienced young adult that have continued to serve you well?

The boys playing in our place last year–not hypothetical children anymore!

Front of house

Back deck. See why I love it here?

Magic of Mothering

Dec28

Nursing baby A at two weeks old

(The first part of this post is an excerpt from an assignment in one of the classes I’m taking)

“Remember, when Keplet postulated that the moon effected the tides on earth, Galileo dismissed the hypothesis as ‘occult fancy.’ It involved action at a distance, and, therefore, violated the ‘solid laws of nature’ of that time. Now these laws of nature (as they were understood by classical physics only a century ago) have already been transcended; this progression should gently hint to us that many of the solid laws of our day are beliefs that obscure the otherwise obvious” (Passmore, 168).

I have long been wary of the phrase, “we used to think, but now we know…” usually stated with great conviction and little room for debate.

Body Wisdom

As Passmore goes on to note, “It is important to make a distinction between ‘progress in science’ and its explanatory power. This power for explanation depends upon the kind of question being asked. History shows that the questions change with changing beliefs/values in both time and space, periods and cultures.” It is exciting to me to consider how much we just don’t know and yet, the world keeps on spinning along, with or without our “knowing” all the facts. I think about this with regard to birth and breastfeeding. How many generations of women have pushed out their babies and fed them at the breast without knowing the exact mechanics of reproduction even, let alone milk production. There are all kinds of historical myths and “rules” about breastmilk and breastfeeding and even ten years ago we used to think the inner structure of the breast was completely different than what we think it is like now. Guess what? Our breasts still made milk and we still fed our babies, whether or not we knew exactly how the milk was being produced and delivered. Body knowledge, in this case, definitely still trumped scientific knowledge. I love that feeling when I snuggle down to nurse my own baby—my body is producing milk for her regardless of my conscious knowledge of the patterns or processes. And, guess what, humans cannot improve upon it. The body continues to do what the human mind and hand cannot replicate in a lab. And, has done so for millennia. I couldn’t make this milk myself using my brain and hands and yet day in and day out I do make it for her, using the literal blood and breath of my body, approximately 32 ounces of milk every single day for the last eleven months. That is beautiful.

The protective impact of a mama

And, on a somewhat related note, several years ago when I read Birth Book, I marked a section about “imprinting” in it (I think it has been fairly well established that there isn’t really human “imprinting” after birth, but when this book was written it was still one of the ideas). Anyway, there was a section about research done with baby goats done to look at the ability of a mother to protect her offspring from environmental stress. They separated twin goats and put some in rooms alone and the others in rooms with their mothers. The only difference in the room was the presence of the mother. An artificial stress environment was created involving turning off the lights every two minutes and shocking the baby goats on the legs. After the babies were conditioned like this, they were tested again two years later. This time all the babies (now adult goats) were in rooms alone and were again “treated” to the lights off and shock routine. The goats who had been with their mothers during the early experience showed no evidence of abnormal behavior in the stressful environment. The ones who had not been with their mothers did show “definite neurotic behavior.” Somehow, the presence of the mother alone served to protect the baby goats from the traumatic influences and keep them from being “psychologically” disturbed in adulthood.

Except for feeling sorry for the baby goats, I thought this information was SO COOL. How magic are mothers that just by being there we can help our babies–even if there is still something stressful going on, our simple presence helps our babies not be stressed by it and continue to feel safe. Magic!

Birth stress?

The goat research was included in the book because of the idea that birth may be a stressful environment for a baby and if the continuity of motherbaby is maintained after birth (immediate skin-to-skin contact and opportunity for breastfeeding), the baby does not become stressed or “neurotic.” But…if the continuity for mother and baby is broken by separation (baby whisked away for weighing or whatever), both mother and baby are stressed by this and it may have an impact on their future relationship and behavior. The book also talks about how the sound of the baby’s first cry has a sort of “imprinting” effect on the mother in that her uterus immediately begins to contract and involute after hearing her baby’s first cry, whereas mothers who are immediately separated from their babies and do not make contact with them have a higher likelihood of postpartum hemorrhage (I have no idea if this has been debunked or not since the book was written in 1972, but it was an interesting idea to read about).

Mothering is magic. Seriously.

Guest Post: Alcohol and Breastmilk

Dec23

Just in time for the holiday season, a note to clarify the issue of nursing moms drinking alcohol.

Your milk alcohol level will be exactly the same as your blood alcohol level. So if you’ve had a couple of drinks and hit the legal limit, your milk has about the same alcohol content as fresh fruit juice or a non-alcoholic beer–.08%ish. Alcohol does not concentrate in the milk, and as your liver clears it from your blood, the milk alcohol level will also drop. There is no need to pump and dump for a healthy baby! If you are concerned about even very minimal amounts of alcohol in the baby’s system, nurse before you go out, and time your drinking so that you give your liver time to metabolize it before the baby would want to nurse again.

The takeaway message: Long before you have enough alcohol in your milk for your baby to even notice, you would be so hammered that you would hardly remember you even had a baby. The concern for occasional drinkers is not really alcohol being passed to the baby, but mom and dad remaining sober enough to care for the baby–and that’s a really big deal where co-sleeping is concerned! Safely sleeping with a baby means being stone cold sober. Period.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a great New Year to everyone!

Please note that I’m really only talking about moms who have a drink now and then, not habitual heavy drinkers. We just don’t know what effect continuous long-term exposure to alcohol might have on a baby.

Lynn Carter is an IBCLC in Kirksville, Missouri.

Guest Post: 8 Toddler Pitfalls to Avoid on Christmas Morning

Dec23

Regardless of your nostalgic, Christmas-morning-frenzy memories, you’ll quickly learn that a no-holds-barred approach doesn’t go over well with your toddler — especially on the most anticipated morning of the year. Don’t wing it Christmas morning. Get a game plan together now so that your entire family can enjoy the holidays without going into meltdown mode.

1. Decide on a number of sweet treats allowed.
With the font of sucrose flowing throughout the holidays, be a sugar-monitor fiend and make sure other house visitors know your rules. If you have a struggle with, ahem, I-want-to-be-the-favorite grandmothers, get it out in the open first rather than commencing a power struggle on Christmas. According to the American Heart Association, children should limit their intake to about 4 teaspoons of added sugar each day.

2. Get to bed early the night before.
While establishing family traditions for Christmas takes precedence over toddler routine, make your plans reasonable for the younger crowd. Try to wrap up Christmas Eve activities early and give plenty of down time before going to sleep. Junior needs good rest to enjoy the following morning. He won’t get it if he stays up until 10:00 with out-of-town visitors.

3. Limit gift opening to a small number.
Three is good. This will be the hardest part of your holiday experience. Regardless of your convictions, the gift-giving fever kicks in at Toys ‘R Us and you go crazy buying, wrapping–and still more buying–several days ahead of Christmas. Even this late in the season you can nab holiday coupons from sites like CouponSherpa.com for one or two special gifts — open them earlier in the week rather than all at once on Christmas morning.

4. Wrap up the morning with quiet time and a nap.
After opening a few presents and enjoying time with visiting family, give your toddler plenty of time to decompress alone in a quiet space. Review the fun times of the morning with her and read a special book to help calm her down. Be on the lookout for overstimulation — nasty meltdowns, hyperactivity, and avoiding eye contact should be a red flag to flee the scene and recover.

5. Plan a Christmas morning activity.
In the throngs of gift-wrap thrashing, laughing and emotion, kids with a typically predictable routine can become stressed out by the absence of normal. If your toddler is particularly sensitive to big events, make sure you have a small, soothing activity planned — like watercolor Christmas trees or lacing boards of holiday characters — to keep your little one anchored.

6. Space out opening gifts throughout the morning.
You’ll probably feel enormous pressure for your kid to open every gift, respond with enthusiasm and then give a huge, grateful “thank you” to the recipient. It just won’t happen if you rush through the gift opening. Some moms, like Mae at What To Expect, prefer to open one gift every other day for the week leading up to Christmas–a godsend when winter storms hit and the family is stuck indoors. Bare in mind that your preschooler will enjoy his offerings much more if he has time in between opening to play with the goodies.

7. Construct all disassembled toys the night before.
Most parents learn this the hard way after their first Christmas with kids. Kids don’t want to open up a box, especially the preschool crowd. They will either get frustrated while you sweat over a screwdriver and instructions written in Mandarin or lose complete interest. Skip the $5.99 for wrapping paper and tie a simple bow on your ready-to-play toys. Start putting them together now so you aren’t up past midnight, bleary eyed with a wrench, on Christmas Eve.

8. Don’t barrage your kids with posed pictures.
Get candid with these fantastic tips from Photography Blog! A surefire way to send your toddler into defiance is demanding he smile in a picture with his hand-knitted sweater. Even though Aunt Jean may get a little ticked off that she can’t see Junior with her woven creation Christmas morning, it’s not worth the struggle. Opt instead for unposed, spontaneous smiles.

Photo by Karen Orozco

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Ashley Grimaldo comes from a long line of penny pinchers and enjoys blogging on money-saving tips and advice for frugal-minded parents. She lives with her husband and three children in Bryan, Texas. Ashley has been featured among such media outlets as Redbook, The Chicago Tribune, Time.com, and CBS News-Houston.

For all media inquiries, please contact Ashley Grimaldo at ashley@kinoliinc.com.

Elevenmonthababy!

Dec19

I can hardly believe I’ve spent 11 months now with this baby girl in my arms! She’s got nine teeth now and seems to say (to the very carefully observing and possibly imaginative ear): kitty, dolly, cookie, book, egg, up, na na, mama, daddy, brother, Baba, baby, boo, and something that indicates “I see people I know in that picture” as well as a “go that way” directive sound and maybe says, “get” or “got.” Does baby signs for nurse, eat, and all done. Is into EVERYTHING, stays up til midnight, only goes down for nap in the Ergo, eats toilet paper, loves dolls, and is unbelievably adorable!

My little heart is all aflutter because of her obsession with dollies. If she’s going to be a fan, she’s definitely in the right house!

She practices standing up often, but no steps yet.

Here is a standing video (she’d been practicing over and over when we took this at 11:30 one evening–she had been clapping and cheering for herself every time, but that cuteness disappeared when the video was on!)

And, here is an adorable one of “walking” using a push toy:

I mentioned the staying up til midnight–this is what I see…

I mentioned the toilet paper eating (also at midnight):

And, there’s mouse-eating that happens too. She hopped out of bed of her own accord and stood on my laptop looking like this:

That is another skill this month–can climb out of bed by backing off edge semi-carefully.

She’s fabulous, truly!

The potty strike seems to be waning—has been sleeping dry all night and pottying in morning. Also pottying successfully for all recent poops. She is on the move all of the time and is quite a bit harder to take care of than she used to be! Has destroyed the Christmas tree twice this month—luckily, she wasn’t hurt either time, but there was a shower of broken glass and the second time the tree itself was broken beyond repair. So, my husband cut the top of it off and made a stand for it and now we have a pretty-sad looking tiny, tabletop tree.

I’m on break from teaching and looking forward to three weeks of time off and holiday fun! I’m scheduled for three classes next session (luckily, all the same class, which should make prep time significantly easier). So far, one is very low on registrations though so I may not end up teaching that one and that’s more than okay. I’m nervous about driving in January-February weather and I also really only feel comfortable trying to leave her home for one night per week (that’s right, the time with my mom coming with me is drawing to a close—I don’t feel like I can have a walking [presumably] baby hanging out in the building and my mom, while still gamely trekking out with us, is pretty tired of having to come with me. It isn’t really about proximity for nursing, it is about not being separated from my baby for long, and I’ve very grateful that she’s been willing to keep coming with me for so many months so that we could be together.)

Last Minute Gift Idea: Rescue Gifts

Dec15

I received a press release recently with a neat last-minute gift idea that has relevance to birth activism—a symbolic gift of a safe birth kit for a mother in the developing world (I investigated a little and the organization is a legitimate humanitarian organization.) Here is the information:

Rescue Gifts help refugees and others who have been impacted by war and natural disaster. Holiday shoppers can choose a gift that inspires them and dedicate it in honor of a special person in their lives. The International Rescue Committee will send gift recipients a beautiful acknowledgement card with the gift giver’s personalized message.

There’s a perfect gift for everyone:

For a mom: A Safe Delivery ($24) can ensure critical supplies for the safe birth of a child in a crisis zone.

For a spouse: Emergency Food ($68) can deliver a month’s supply of vitamin-rich therapeutic food for at least 50 malnourished children in places wracked by food shortages or famine.

For the foodie or friend with a green thumb: A Community Garden ($60) can provide tools and seeds to refugees who have been resettled in the United States, so that they can grow their own fresh, healthy food in an IRC community garden.

For a teacher: A Year of School ($52) can supply the tuition, books and other materials for one year of a child’s schooling in a country recovering from war.

Shoppers who spend $75 or more will receive a fashionable organic cotton “Rescue” T-shirt designed and donated by Threads for Thought, or they can opt to have it sent as a gift.

Rashida Jones, IRC Voice and star of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” is promoting the Clean Water Rescue Gift and giving it to her friends this year. She says, “At an IRC refugee camp in Thailand, I saw that the ready availability of water transforms lives. I am buying this gift for my friends this holiday season.”

Parks & Recreation is one of my favorites TV shows, so it is fun to have that connection too. Of course, I inquired as to what exactly a “safe delivery kit” entails, because I do not want to inadvertently be promoting non-evidence based Western medical care practices in countries relying heavily on traditional midwives. I was told that, “as such, the Safe Delivery Rescue Gift represents the typical amount of money needed for the IRC to provide supplies and assistance necessary for a safe delivery. However, Safe Delivery Rescue Gift donations will be used where and when most needed in our wide-ranging humanitarian work in more than 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities. The IRC does provide and support pre and post natal care for new and expectant mothers and their babies. This includes training and equipping midwives like the ones in Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand, although midwifery is not the only childbirth model that the IRC supports.”

If you’re looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer for a humanitarian minded friend or family member, or for a birth activist buddy, you might find the right gift at Rescue Gifts!

The Ongoing Crisis of Abundance

Dec7

In March, I lamented to my husband, “you can’t imagine the amount of things I think of doing each day and then have to let go of.” What is weird—and that I also told him then—is that many of those ideas only occur to me on that day and are not really that important. Very often, these are not life priorities—they are just things that pop up and catch my attention and I think, “I could do that!” So, things like blog carnivals at interesting and popular blogs (I could write an entry–I have tons of ideas regarding that theme!), legislative alerts from worthy causes (I should write a letter and help with this!), interesting articles and posts (I could read that, it would only take a minute!), contests to enter (I’d like to win that, I should enter!), volunteer roles (wow! Sounds so interesting, I’d love to do it!), trainings or conferences to attend (I should register!), neat homeschooling projects (hey, maybe next time the baby sleeps, I can start this with the kids!), a new book that catches my eye (I should order that!), great recipes (I could make that for dinner!) good quotes to share on Facebook, I could write an article about this!, or about that!, someone has a question I could answer, here’s a neat article (I want to share this with others!), ooh! More free books to put onto my Kindle, art ideas, journal entries, etc., etc. It never stops! And, these are usually in addition to my ongoing projects, ideas, commitments, responsibilities, laundry, meal preparation, things other people want from me and so forth. Oh, and did anyone comment on my Facebook status? ;-D

Too much?

Sometimes I think I just like and care about TOO MANY things. All of these things splinter my attention in a million ways however, and also leave me with a persistent sensation of, “well, I didn’t get everything done today.” I continue to try to make sure to unsubscribe from email lists and blog subscriptions to cut down on this immediacy sensation that a constant influx of new information and ideas promotes. As I told my husband, “if I didn’t get that newsletter, or click on that article, or open that email, I would never have known about all those things I could have gotten done today.” Plus, there is always a new batch tomorrow! And, then I get a little depressed thinking why the rush to get things done and to finish? So I can die with a clear to-do list?! Come on!

Though actually, this is different than having “too many things to do”—because many of the things are new each day—it is part of managing the information flow into my life, I think. Some time ago I read this free book from Zen Habits and it was very helpful in its recommendations of how to sort through all of the clamor and focusing, but I think I’ve let go of those zen habits again in the last couple of months and need to try to re-read the book (but, OOPS, I’ve just turned that into another to-do!). I worked very hard before Alaina was born to trim away the extraneous so that I could focus intensively on her, but new and interesting things, ideas, and opportunities continue to emerge to take the place of what I trimmed away.

I want to remember my conditions of enoughness and to also make a new priorities/goals sheet so that when the baby naps, I know what’s at the top, rather than getting distracted. When each day ends, I continue to find I feel as if I have somehow failed. And, that I have let someone, some thing, or myself down.

When I was originally planning to share these thoughts so many months ago, I also remembered a poem I wrote when my first son was a toddler. I don’t have a toddler now…two kids and a baby instead…but the feeling of ideas building, cresting, and falling away is still familiar and my closing thought still a good reminder!

Vision

I cannot shake the feeling
That my life does not look
The way I want it to.
Each day, new big ideas build in me
And crest in a wave of vision
That finally breaks upon the shore
Of daily life with a toddler.

Reality.
Bound by the demands of everyday
Instead of grand and bold.

You’ll See It When You Believe It
Do I believe it?
Is this my journey?
Humbling
To watch the death of ego.

Be here now.
Am I?
Is it possible that where I am
And what I’m doing
Is exactly where I’m supposed to be?

—

And, then I remembered this quote from The Life Organizer by Jennifer Louden:

“Would a weight lift off my shoulders if I realized that it’s normal to feel pulled between choices, that it’s normal to want to do more than I have time or energy for, and that it’s normal to have to choose between two equally wonderful things, that it’s actually a sign I’m a fascinating, amazing person?”

That’s right. I’m a fascinating and amazing person. And, so are these three:

Choose wisely, Molly dear. Choose wisely!

I always say that I want to live well and wisely my one wild and precious life and to me that means making conscious decisions every day to pull my actions into alignment with my values. It is an ongoing process. I live in a rich and fascinating world. I can do it!