Tuesday Tidbits: Bragging Rights

Feb26

“Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead…that I’d finally found my sport.” –Joyce Maynard

“Our body-wisdom knows how to birth a baby. What is required of the woman who births naturally is for her to surrender to this body-wisdom. You can’t think your way through a birth, and you can’t fake it.” –Leslie McIntyre

This week I particularly enjoyed a saucy post by my friend, colleague, and doula, Summer. Titled Bragging Rights, she talks about her own experience birthing a very large baby (nearly 12 pounds! I enjoy bragging about her baby too!) and whether or not she really “deserves” bragging rights on birthing a big baby. I absolutely love her concluding thoughts on the topic:

“…Frankly, I think all mothers get bragging rights on their babies births. Birth is awesome and amazing and power-full. Every mother must face it. Sure, she may face it differently than me, but it IS a labyrinth we all go through. This is the way of life. So, mothers, brag away. Brag about whatever part of your labor and baby’s birth made you feel empowered….find that piece, even if it’s just a tiny moment, and cling to it. Shout it from the rooftops!…”

What a great idea that all mothers deserve “bragging rights.” What are your bragging rights moments from your births, however they unfolded?

I immediately thought of one for each of mine, reflecting that each birth does hold a key moment for me, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about that birth, a moment of being power-full.

First birth: my moment was arriving at the birth center fully dilated after having worried I was “only two centimeters.”

Second birth: having a two-hour labor—it was a train ride and I DID IT. Wow!

Third birth (miscarriage): coaching myself through labor and being brave enough and strong enough to open and let go of my little non-living baby.

Fourth birth : catching my own baby! By myself! With my own two hands! And, she was ALIVE!

“…the stories I see of birth in the media don’t reflect the intense emotions, the physical power, or the immense impact of the experience itself. Women screaming, fathers fumbling about, doctors doing most of the heroic work–these images don’t do justice to my experience. I felt empowered, strong, heroic in my efforts to bring my daughter into the world yet, I am painfully aware how little others see the heroism in my birth experience.“ –Amy Hudock (essay in Literary Mama)

“...if you want to know where a woman’s true power lies, look to those primal experiences we’ve been taught to fear…the very same experiences the culture has taught us to distance ourselves from as much as possible, often by medicalizing them so that we are barely conscious of them anymore. Labor and birth rank right up there as experiences that put women in touch with their feminine power…” –Christiane Northrup

Family Mandala Project

Jan18

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, my family participates in a work-party co-op with four other families who live within the same 20 mile stretch of highway. We alternate houses every other weekend and work on each other’s household projects (for example, tomorrow we are building interior walls at a straw bale house as well as plastering the inside of the exterior, bale walls. Earlier this month, the men put underpinning on the bottom of a family’s mobile home to weather proof it for the winter, while the women made soup and muffins, finished our family mandala project, and had a birthday party—including rocking homemade Creeper pinatas—for one of the kids inside). Each family gets about 5 turns at their own house per year and goes to another family’s house about 20 times. While we’re not perfect, I really feel like this work party has been one of richest blessings of the past year for our family collectively. I hope to write more about it for an article someday, because we’ve created something pretty rewarding that seems fairly unique. At the beginning of December, we decided to invite the members of our work party co-op over for a winter solstice/New Year family ritual. We wanted to have a family project to do together and Mark and I came up with the idea of creating a family crest or mandala. My dad made a wooden circle for each family and each family designed their own “family symbol” to put in the center. Then, at our next work party we each added our family symbol to every other family’s circle—so, the end result was each family’s personal symbol in the middle, flanked by the mini-version symbol of each other family…

Perhaps a picture will illustrate this better…

See what I mean now? 🙂

For my own family’s symbol, it was important to me to communicate that we each have our own paths (labyrinth) and our own unique gifts (tiny personal symbol each), but that together we make a beautiful whole. We had some debate with the kids about what personal symbol to include for them. It was important to me that it be something they genuinely wanted to include and not my idealized conception of what it should look like (i.e. a peaceful waterfall or something!). Lann, of course, wanted a Creeper head and Zander opted for a “Wolfgang” head. Wolfgang is Z’s kind of alter ego/imaginary friend/invented character. Wolfgang is awesome. He doesn’t feature as prominently in Zander’s narratives as he used to, but he was really important for a while there. My favorite Wolfgang story is this: “When Wolfgang rides an airplane, he stands on the wings. And, when he jumps off, he lands standing up on a skateboard. Rolling in lava…” So, that little brown devilish looking face is supposed to kind of capture Wolfgang. The rainbow is for Alaina, the gem is for Mark, the footprints are for Noah, and the seated mountain pose goddess is for me. The four other work party family’s mandalas surround ours (on on theirs, ours surrounds theirs).

After we got home from the work party, I decided to embellish the white space around ours:

When we came up with this idea, I originally envisioned them eventually hanging over the front door of each family…

It doesn’t actually work for each family to do that, but it did for us…

After we hung it up, as I looked at it I said, “hey, this as a whole is our work party symbol!” Each family is unique and beautiful on their own, but when we join together, we create something bigger and more lovely than we could on our own. That basic truth is what underlies the whole functioning of work party and it is cool to see it symbolically represented above the door. I look forward to having these families come over during the year and add more of their handprints to our walls…

The Amethyst Network December Blog Circle: Holidays After Loss

Dec8

I’m a founding member of the miscarriage support organization, The Amethyst Network. We’ve been hard at work over the past month restructuring our website, clarifying our vision, and expanding our offerings:

As part of our efforts at sharing stories and creating healing circles, we are launching blog circles here at TAN. Each month we will post a brief message introducing the theme for the month, and inviting you to participate in the circle. All you need to do is put your name and link into the Mr Linky widget at the end of this post, and your blog post can be included in the circle. Posts are welcomed throughout the month (and beyond if you write something later and want to share). We hope you will participate!

The theme of the December Blog Circle is Holidays After Loss.

To participate in the blog circle, I immediately looked up an old blog post from the Christmas season in 2009. I experienced my first miscarriage in early November and so when I hit the holidays that year, my loss was very fresh and raw and I remember countless moments of sitting with family members having “happy” celebrations and feeling at the desperate edge of tears the entire time, but trying to be good spirited for my other kids and also not “ruin” the holidays for everyone else.

This is what I wrote…

Missed

Posted on December 21, 2009

…I no longer have the feeling that I “should” be pregnant. It feels “normal” to not be pregnant now, whereas a couple of weeks ago I felt the loss of the physical experience keenly—that embodied connection—and I still “felt pregnant” for about three weeks or so following my miscarriage. I would have to keep reminding myself, “I’m NOT pregnant.” Now, I feel “normally” not-pregnant and I actually feel really good in my body and pretty good in my life. There has been a shift from “I SHOULD be x number of weeks pregnant” to “I WOULD have been x number of weeks pregnant.”

Today, I would have been 21 weeks pregnant and it has been a hard day for me. Our family has a tradition of having a winter solstice party each year. We host at our house (my mom then hosts Christmas) and it is a nice time. We use the occasion to reflect on the past year and the things we’ve accomplished and then set goals for the year to come—things we’d like to “bring into the light” as it were. We also give our immediate family gifts to each other on this day.

Anyway, I just really missed the baby today and also missed the pregnant-self. I felt really strongly how I would have been really looking pregnant by now and the baby would have been making himself well-known to others around me with kicks and rolls and so forth. I can’t describe it in words, I just really FELT it today. The non. The closed door. The two boys instead of three. It started when I opened up my set of Growing Uterus charts and The Birth Atlas from Childbirth Connection. I’ve always wanted them and I ordered them a couple of months ago when they had a wonderful deal. When they arrived, I had Mark put them away for Christmas. I didn’t think it would bother me to open them. I am still interested in birth, birthwork, and childbirth education. I’ve been reading other birth books and not having any “issues” with them, but opening the charts and seeing the point at which my own pregnancy and baby and hopes and dreams and plans arrested, was really difficult. The “cut off”/stopped/ended road point was right there in black and white and I had a strong and unexpected reaction to that. Later in the afternoon we went outside to go for a walk and also to place Noah’s memorial plaque. Standing there looking at it, I just MISSED him. And, I missed the experience of “would’ve” been 21 weeks pregnant–with my hand on my full belly, feeling my baby from within and outside, and having that communion and connection with him. I felt at the edge of tears for most of the rest of the day and just “down” and distressed feeling. I thought it would help me to write about it, but I’m not finding the words easily. I can’t explain or describe what it was I felt today.

As I mentioned, we use today as a time to reflect on our plans for the coming year. In past years, we’ve also each shared a wish for the coming year while lighting candles (the whole “even in the darkness, new light comes again” type of metaphor). In the past, I feel like people have tired of having to take turns saying too many things (we do the goal sharing and reflecting on whether we accomplished last year’s goal and some other things), so this year I just shared a little prayer—feeling like it summed up nicely what we each would wish for in the coming year:

Make me strong in spirit,
Courageous in action,
Gentle of heart,

Let me act in wisdom,
Conquer my fear and doubt,
Discover my own hidden gifts,

Meet others with compassion,
Be a source of healing energies,
And face each day with hope and joy.

(Abby Willowroot)

—

That year, I bought a special ornament for our tree with Noah’s name and birthdate and also the words, Born at Home. As I’ve shared several times, it is very important to me to have miscarriages acknowledged as birth events and it really, really mattered to me to have a homebirth specific ornament to recognize my baby. This year, it hangs on the tree next to our new family ornament for 2012.

In 2010, when I got maternity photos taken, I made sure to include Noah’s angel bear in several of the photos to acknowledge his presence and place as a member of the family. And again, in 2011, I also included the bear in a photo session with me and the kiddos.

This year when we got our family pictures taken, I made sure to wear my baby-in-my-heart pendant, so that Noah, still, was there with us in the pictures as part of our family.

In September, my friend’s baby Tossie died at 36 weeks. To honor Tossie’s memory, she’s started a blog to help other loss mamas: Tossie’s Tree & Painted Rocks. One of the first rocks she painted was for my own little Noah. She took a picture of it at sunrise by her own baby’s special tree and it is lovely!

The other posts in this month’s blog circle so far are:

Hope and the Holidays ~ Bainne Mama

Thankgiving After A Loss ~ Bainne Mamai

Special Ornaments ~ Mindful Serenity

Michele–Holidays After Loss (this post was especially good, very poignant, and from it I went to a variety of other interesting posts on her blog. Michele also runs Mending Hearts Bellies which focuses on childbirth education and doula support for post-loss families).
Holidays After Loss: Spirit Babies Ceremony

Taking it to the body… (part 1)

Dec4

The following is excerpted from one of my lessons in my recently finished Ecofeminism course.

In Mara Keller’s essay in the ecofeminist anthology Reweaving the World, she explains that in our cells remember an ancient era of mother-centered life. As I observe in my own children’s relationship to me as their mother, this seems extremely logical to me. Keller writes: “The renewal I long for is a return of a reverence for Mother Earth and her abundant forces of creations; an affirmation of the sacredness of sexuality and enduring human love; and the belief in the inevitability of death and the immortality of the soul” (p. 51). Mother Earth is abundant and fertile and awe-inspiring, she can also be wild and unpredictable and dangerous and is deserving of reverence and respect.

Chellis Glendinning in The Politics of Women’s Spirituality sums up the consequences of patriarchy perfectly:

“When women are faced each day with enforced cesarean deliveries, birth control that maims and kills them, and doctors who think them dirty, when we encounter rape, violence in the streets, job discrimination, sexual slavery around the world, pollution and nuclear madness, we realize that reclaiming the integrative ways of our ancestors must involve our healing powers on all fronts—from the medical to the social to the environmental to the political to the psychological to the spiritual. Healing the divisions that were imposed during the patriarchal era is the survival issue of our time and our planet. A world that systematically sickens its women cannot survive.” [emphasis mine]

Returning to Reweaving the World, in a similar line of thought, Paula Allen states that “a society based on body hate destroys itself and causes harm to all of Grandmother’s grandchildren” (p. 53). I honestly think that many, many children enter the world in an atmosphere of body hate (this can be true regardless of birthing environment). I read an article recently by the famous French obstetrician Michel Odent who explains that the human species may actually be losing the capacity to give birth on its own. Odent sums up the sobering conclusion of current research with this chilling observation: “after just 3 or 4 generations of highly technological childbirth, it seems very possible that our human oxytocin system is weakening. In other words, our capacity to give birth is weakening…” What will it mean for society if our human women can no longer successfully carry and bear new members of the species without significant technological assistance?!

So, planetary healing may actually rest in body respect and love. Allen explains that rejoicing in our bodies is how we show our respect to the planet. We can heal our bodies…”our own dear body, our own dear flesh. For the body is not the dwelling place of the spirit, it is the spirit. It is not a tomb, it is life itself” (p. 56). Allen asks the reader to consider how often we deny the urgings of our bodies. I ask this of women also—how often do you respond to the first cue from your body to use the bathroom? Usually, we resist several times—sometimes even hours—before finally going. If this basic, daily function we each experience multiple times a day is a time in which to deny and ignore our bodies’ messages, how do we expect women to then speak up for themselves in birth? To ask for what they need and to follow the instinctive dance of their birthing bodies? These same questions can be expanded to other areas of our lives as well of course…

Allen also has a refreshing perspective that now is not the time for tranquility. So often in New Age writings and Western-adapted Buddhist and Zen types of thought we see admonishments towards calmness, serenity, peace, and so forth and in the non-attachment and “I create my own reality” and “there is no reality but the present moment.” I appreciate this call for action and for passion, rather than a stilling of the emotions.

And, finally, returning to the body theme, during a recent women’s retreat one of the guests brought us each a card that reads: “Trust yourself. Take it to the body. She always knows.” I loved this and will explain more in part 2…

Strong, Strong…

Nov21

I woke up this morning with this quote running through my head and thinking of a pregnant friend of mine. Since her story is not mine to tell, suffice to say, she had a long and winding road to reach this point and this evening she gave birth at home after having had a cesarean with her first baby! Yay! I’m so excited for her and for their whole family. One part of me just knew she could do it and the other part of me still worried that I was being falsely optimistic. It has happened to me before—that I supported and encouraged and hoped with the mother and despite all those hopes and dreams and wonderful, careful, thoughtful plans, the birth still didn’t go as planned. I also believe that all births are acts of courage and that mothers, whether they push out their babies or not, have the capacity to dig deep and discover strength beyond anything they previously knew. However, just, yay. I’m so happy and excited and relieved for this friend of mine 🙂 The sculpture in the picture is the birth art piece I made after I actually gave birth to my last baby. She captures the pose in which I caught my daughter. My previous photo with this quote was of the pre-birth sculpture I’d made to address my pushing-the-baby-out fears:

Still figuring out the pictures with words app that I got. I love my nature spots in the woods as backgrounds, but they’re too busy and make choosing a text color that actually works almost impossible!

“Childbirth is power in its purest and most natural form–it is wild and uncontrollable and takes us on a journey of surrender. Birth is about so much more than babies being born. It is about a mother finding her inner strength at her most vulnerable and powerful moment, which begins her unique and lifelong journey of mothering that child.”

–Brianna Kauer (in Midwifery Today, issue 103)

And, speaking of thankful birthy goodness, Thanksgiving is tomorrow and that reminded me of an earlier post about the rest and be thankful stage!

I also would like to mention that I have a Talk Birth topic on ScoopIt now. I primarily started it so that it could handily feed into my Talk Birth Facebook, while still leaving a more useable record for me to go back to/repost (things just kind of disappear off the page on Facebook and it can be hard to remember what the heck I’ve shared there if I then want to do a blog post about it). I was introduced to ScoopIt via LinkedIn when I started following a really well-curated topic about E-Learning and Online Teaching. There are very, very few birth-related topics on ScoopIt, so start curating one! It is fun and easy and, as I said, really handy for feeding content into your Facebook page or other media (I experimented yesterday with sending a post directly to WordPress and that worked too!)

I’m also thankful for several days at home to spend with my family and without a long to-do list. I have one final paper to grade tonight and then my calendar is pretty deliciously blank for the next four days! We can really use this. I need a stillpoint, a rest, and some time to spend on the fun things I want to do like wallow in piles of books and make fabulous new sculptures and go sit out in the woods and…and…and…

Thankful for all these people too! And, also thankful for fab new pictures from recent photo session with my friend 🙂

Guest Post: Don’t Touch Me… Don’t Even Look At Me

Nov9

This guest post is the first in my blog break festival. The festival continues through December, so please check it out and consider submitting a post! Also, don’t forget to enter my birth jewelry giveaway. This post falls into the Motherful category…

Don’t Touch Me… Don’t Even Look At Me.

by Veronica of Mormon Monkey Mama

Being a monkey mama isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes. My kids still cry. I still have to discipline and direct my 3-year-old. Yesterday was especially difficult. Squirrel Monkey, 3 years (SM) is getting sick and Owl Monkey, 5.5 months (OM) is still sick. When SM is feeling sick, she is very testy. So, yesterday, she kept doing things she knew she shouldn’t to get my attention, acting out her physical feelings. She didn’t want to eat anything I gave her, she was whiny, and she mostly wanted to watch TV all day. So by the time my husband, Gorillaman, got home, I. Was. DONE. But I can’t be done. I have a nursling. And though that is often very zen… it wasn’t yesterday.

We put the girls to bed at 8:00. That never happens here. SM is usually up until 9:00 or 9:30. She went to bed easily. But OM, who usually goes to sleep pretty easily, was fussy because she couldn’t breathe.

So the mother abuse began…

FACTS:

*Baby toes are like a velociraptor‘s. I have bruises on the insides of my legs from OM taking her big toes and digging them into anything she comes in contact with. Most of the time, especially when we are nursing lying down, that is my leg, groin, or stomach, as she writhes around being frustrated about her inability to breathe easily.

*It’s especially uncomfortable, verging on vomit-inducingly painful, when the baby goes from nursing peacefully to clamp-and-twist in 0.2 seconds. It’s even worse when you have a recurrent plugged duct because of said baby’s latch. I know from experience… a lot of it.

*Babies have unbelievably strong fingers… the better to pinch you with. I have bruises on the insides of my arms and the tops of my breasts from aggravated little fingers that find purchase and CLAMP DOWN! Hand wrangling should be a class for pregnant moms.

*Toddlers/preschoolers have sharper elbows than the coffee table corners we protected them from a couple of years before.

My normally sweet and gentle Owl Monkey has become a baby badger. Ow. Add that to the bone crushing antics of a testing toddler, well, is it any surprise why I avoid any sense of intimacy on a day like yesterday? By the end of the day, when I have been poked, prodded, pinched, and pummeled by tiny hands, feet, and toothless gums, I don’t want to be touched. By anyone. I don’t even want to hold hands. My lucky poor husband, who has been away from his doting family all day, wants to come home and have some sort of physical closeness, even if it’s just to sit together on the couch and watch our show. It’s not fair that our jobs give us seriously different needs. But such is life so we both make sacrifices. So sometimes I snuggle, though it makes me feel like crawling out of my skin. And sometimes he takes a cold shower. 😉 Such is this life of parental bliss. And bliss it is. For just as you think you can’t handle any more, your 3-year-old crawls into your arms again and needs you to snuggle her to sleep. Your 5.5 month old flashes that gummy, milky grin. And suddenly your heart is full again, the bruises don’t matter, and you hug your husband that much closer knowing that only the two of you truly understand…

It’s all worth it.

Veronica is a semi-crunchy stay-at-home mom to two girls and a sweet English Bulldog boy. She is passionate about breastfeeding, gentle parenting, co-sleeping, and babywearing. She spends her days chasing her 3.5 year old with her 23 lb 9 month old on her back! She hopes to encourage and support other LDS (Mormon) moms as they embrace the mommying counterculture and parent instinctively.

Originally published on Friday, July 13, 2012 at Mormon Monkey Mama

Ceremony Preparations!

Nov3

My brother got married at my parents’ house early last month and it involved a surprisingly huge amount of work and preparation even though it was a small wedding. Now, we’re getting ready for an overnight women’s retreat at the same location and it feels like almost the same amount of prep work! I’ve been planning and facilitating quarterly women’s spirituality retreats locally for two years. Early this year, we decided to have a special “SageWoman” ceremony in the fall to honor our Queen/Crone members of the circle. It will be similar to a coming of age ceremony for a maiden or a mother blessing ceremony for a pregnant woman. My own mother has already been celebrated multiple times, but the other four honorees have never had a blessingway ceremony—not for coming of age or for pregnancy. (Side note regarding my own mom: she has already been a part of a group ceremony like this for wise women and then through two blessingways during her own pregnancies–I’m one of the only people I know whose mom who was also given blessingways during her pregnancies. I think sometimes the current generation feels like they “invented” them, but there were plenty of awesome women who paved the way to ritually acknowledging the power of the transition to motherhood. In fact, I feel like in many ways, it was my mom who “brought back” the mother blessing to my own circle of friends when she hosted a ceremony for me during my own first pregnancy. Before that, the local women were no longer holding the kinds of ceremonies they’d held during the 80’s.)

We’re having an overnight retreat and planning to have a nighttime ceremony of awesomeness with candlelight and a fire and the deep tones of my new community drum. That’s right, after being totally entranced by the large powwow/community drums at the Goddess festival I attended in Kansas in Sept, I spent way too much money and bought one of my own! We’ve often tried drumming as a group, but just can’t quite get it going. The community drum is going to change all that by involving multiple people on the same drum. Plus, we learned cool chants! I’ve been drumming and singing with my husband since the powwow drum arrived. There is something about the deep sound and the rhythm and the energy of drumming together on the same drum that makes you feel like you are great and could take this show on the road! (I’m not really musically skilled at all, quite the opposite, but the community drum changes that feel of arthymic tone-deafness into awesomeness.)

It is thankfulness-every-day month on Facebook and on Nov. first I shared the following:

Today I’m thankful for a husband that has spent hours and hours this week helping me make presents for MY friends (including a trip to the store today to fix a problem), staying up too late to do so (1:00 a.m. two [three] nights in a row), and patiently persevering when I said I was ready to quit! And, I’m also thankful for a dad and a good friend who spent hours this morning setting up a tipi for us to have a ceremony in this weekend. I guess behind every great women-only ritual are several helpful and awesome men 🙂

And then yesterday, my dad made a beautiful drum stand using native hardwoods (I made the drumstick in the pic, but Mark made four others for us. See what I mean about the awesome, helpful men?! And, unlike popular stereotypes, this is proof that it is possible to be both a feminist and love and appreciate your menfolk :))

Since words and ritual creation are my thing, I’ve been working hard creating what I hope will be a beautiful and meaningful ceremony. I will have the ritual outline to share and pictures of the aforementioned gifts I’ve been slaving over after they’ve actually been presented to my friends. Here are two of the readings I’ve chosen to use:

Womanspirit Rising
(an opening. Call and response)

We have come from years of pondering

Silently and alone
As we nurtured our children.

We have come from long, slow generations of women

Who knew their minds
And would not settle

We have come from the ages of pre-history,
Out of the civilizations of Mycenae and Minos
Of Lesbos and Crete.

Of the Olemecs and the Druids
Of Mesopotamia and China

We have come through the ages

Bearing the children,
Nurturing the community
In search of ourselves

We have come to know that

The rising of the womanspirit
Means the rising of humanity

Now we are discovering and re-discovering ourselves

And creating and re-creating
Our depths and our heights…

And our womanspirit is rising
And rising again…

Blessed Be.

—
*From a Unitarian Universalist Women’s meeting in Albuquerque, NM. Reprinted in the book Readings for Women’s Programs
—

Womanspirit Rising
(a closing. Call and response)

We come to stay forever

Our womanspirit is rising
Deepening
Converging

We rejoice in it and in one another

We who are many are also one
We who are one are also many

On behalf of our Sisters around the globe

We give thanks.

On behalf of our Sisters who have gone before us.

We give thanks.

On behalf of our Sisters yet to be born

We give thanks.

We are the past.

And we are the future.

We are the here

And we are the now

We are one, we are Sisters

And our womanspirit is rising
And rising again.

We rejoice in our Sisterhood.

Blessed be.

—
*From a Unitarian Universalist Women’s meeting in Albuquerque, NM . Reprinted in the book Readings for Women’s Programs

Eleven Years Ago…

Nov3

In 2000, while working on my block field placement (internship) in graduate school, I met a woman who would become my best friend and a profoundly influential part of my life. We shared a lot of formative life experiences of early adulthood together and I accompanied her to the hospital for the births of two of her children and she came to the birth center with me when my oldest son was born. While my own mother had all four of her children at home and so homebirth and natural birth were parts of my life history, I didn’t really begin to focus on birth as an issue until I was married and in my early 20’s. At this point, I was most influenced by the newsgroup misc.kids.pregnancy. So, I became both deeply interested in natural birth and also very invested in my friend’s birth plans and her ideas about birth. As her pregnancy progressed, she hired a doula that I came across at a street fair and took birth classes from her at the birth center in which I would later have my first baby.

After Maggie was born, I was more involved in her life than I have ever been involved with a baby that was not related to me and in a way that I’ve never been able to be involved again. Without any children of my own at the time, I was able to be present for my friend in a way in which I now see, few friends are able to be for each other, since most women who connect during their childbearing years are intensely embroiled in the needs of their own children and families. Looking back, I see I was like the best postpartum doula ever, without knowing that is what I was being at the time (and, I was free, and did it for a year! :)) After bringing over dinner every night for the first week, for the following year I then I went over to my friend’s house every morning and took care of the baby while my friend ate her breakfast, took care of herself, and went for a run. Then, we would walk in the neighborhood together for about an hour, talking about our lives, dreams, and plans.

Last year, that magical baby that had such a profound influence on my life and on my birthwork in the world turned TEN! I could hardly believe it. At that time, I asked my friend for permission to post the birth story I had written in my journal the morning after her baby’s birth. My friend granted me permission, but then several days passed and since it wasn’t the baby’s birthday any more, the story sat in my drafts folder for…another year. And, now, that magical, wonderful baby is ELEVEN! Here is her birth story, through my naïve, pre-maternal eyes…

Maggie’s Birth

With my little friend, 2002

Journal Entry, 11/3/01. 12:22 p.m.

Returned home this morning at 7:15 after being at the birth of Kate & Dave’s baby girl, Maggie. I’m very tired, but I wanted to write a little bit anyway. We went to the hospital at 1:30 p.m. on Friday (11/2) after Kate’s water broke. She was still 2 centimeters at 9:00 p.m., so they started pitocin. At 12:00 a.m. the doulas arrived and Kate was 3-4 centimeters dilated. The doulas were absolutely wonderful at soothing and guiding her. At 1:15 a.m. she was 7 centimeters (!) and at a tiny bit after 2:00 a.m. she began pushing. Then, she pushed for almost four hours before Maggie was born at 5:51 a.m. (8lbs 10z).

It was really hard to watch and not be able to do anything for her. I can’t imagine what it would have felt like as her husband—someone that close in. She did a wonderful, wonderful job. No pain medication at all, even with the pitocin. She only asked about pain meds once (before the doulas got there). I felt completely in awe of her strength and power. She was so brave and so strong and so tough. Powerful woman stuff. I couldn’t believe that she pushed for four hours. I do not think I could have done it. The baby was worth it though—boy is she cute and pink and making me want to have one too!

I can’t really describe what this experience meant to me or how powerful it was. It was beautiful and strong. Kate is an amazing woman and I am awed by her bravery. She and Dave are so happy with their precious little bundle. I got to hold her too, when she was less than 30 minutes old and Kate was being stitched up (bad tear). I didn’t feel like much help to Kate, but being present mean a lot to me and I hope the fact that I was there meant something to her too. I’m so encouraged to see that a hospital birth can be pulled off so well.

Life is wonderful. Welcome, baby girl!

—

Happy Birth-Day to you both today, Maggie and Kate! You hold a deep and special place in my heart. You both changed my life forever.

The dualism of blogging (and life)

Sep28

Yesterday, I found myself involved in two different conversations about blogging. In the first, I exclaimed to my friend, “do you have any idea how many things I want to blog about that I don’t?! I need a blog for, ‘the things I don’t blog about.'” In the second, some other friends said to me, “you’re just so open on your blog, I don’t think I can be that open.” We then went on to discuss the various crazy people we have known who we do not wish to have access to information about us or to know things about our lives. I’ve been writing this blog since 2007 and had another blog before that. While I have had people read and comment that I sometimes wish were not following my writing and while I’ve had a handful of negative/insulted comments, for all these years I’ve never had an actual bad experience with blogging. Sometimes I think it is the tone I maintain here—I rarely write prescriptively (i.e. here’s what YOU SHOULD DO) and I rarely write inflammatorily (i.e. why are some people such IDIOTS about this?!) and I rarely write controversially (i.e. down with circumcision!). I also consciously choose not to write in what I refer to as a “putting out fires” style. You may notice that when there is some new outrage in the birth or breastfeeding community, I rarely address it here. I’d rather focus on building something new and on what I can offer in terms of information, experience, or idea than to debunk, criticize, or expose. And, I don’t actually have time to keep up with all the drama even if I wanted to. I barely have time to keep up with my own life on my own little patch of the earth! I do occasionally reflect that this probably limits my site traffic in some ways—particularly when I choose to ignore something obnoxious that crosses my email box and later another blogger writes a witty exposé of the same subject and it goes viral throughout Facebookworldland—though I try not to compare myself to other bloggers or to have too much stats envy.

And, periodically, I get lovely emails like one from last week saying, “I love your energy and gentle voice.” 🙂 And, periodically, things happen and I see remarks on twitter referring to something I’ve written as, “I dislike the tone of it and its intention to demonise the health service.” 😦 The latter just happened last night in response to the publication of my What to Expect When You Go to the Hospital for a Natural Childbirth as an informational leaflet in conjunction with Women’s Health in Women’s Hands’ publication of Woman-Centered Childbirth in full text online. Twitter is too character limited for me to respond to the critique in full, so I said I’d write a follow-up blog post to explain. A different organization (Women’s Health in Women’s Hands) converted one of my posts into this flier and it does not include my initial disclaimer expressing my trepidation about being perceived as “hospital-bashing” (it shouldn’t include that, because it is flier now, not a rambling blog post!). The article is NOT meant to hospital bash, it is meant to prepare and plan appropriately. I wrote it because I was tired of how betrayed my clients were when they planned beautiful, natural hospital births and then experienced many things on the list in my article. There is also a companion article and series of tips (I think on the back side of the tweeted leaflet as a matter of fact) about how to cope/navigate–the information is not meant to discourage, but to realistically prepare. Have a homebirth is NOT one of the tips, because this isn’t a home vs hospital article! Whew! See…too many words for Twitter, that’s why I rarely use it except FB auto-tweeting stuff.

So, which is it? Am I authentic and open, or keeping my mouth shut all the time?! Maybe both. What I know is there is a lot I don’t write about. I don’t write because I’m too scared, or too sensitive, or too fearful, or too self-righteous, or too busy, or too annoyed, or too scattered, or too embarrassed. I don’t write things because I have relatives who read this or friends who read this and I’d rather not share some things with some people. And, which is it? Do I have nice energy and a gentle voice or am I a strident hospital-basher out to demonize and victimize?!

And, I started to reflect that I guess I am all these things and how people experience me and my writing is in part up to me and in part up to them. Just like in real life. I can be gentle, kind, and nurturing. I can be critical, judgmental, and harsh. I can be helpful and I can be selfish. I can be patient and impatient. I can be friendly, I can be preoccupied. I can be energetic and enthusiastic and upbeat and I can be exhausted and defeated. I can be a fabulous, fun mother and I can be a distracted and grouchy mother. I can be funny and I can take myself too seriously. Different people, relationships, and environments bring out different expressions of who I am. Sometimes I really like myself a lot. I like who I am, I like how I move through the world, and I’m impressed with my own capacities. I have great ideas and solid values and principles and the ability to articulate those in writing. Sometimes I actually hate myself. I see only the bad parts and I wish I could just be better. I feel hypocritical and over aware of inconsistencies in my own thoughts/beliefs and my expression of my values in the world. I often want to be better than I am, but in rare moments of grace and self-compassion, I realize that I’m pretty good already. And, in some moments of self-righteousness and superiority, I actually feel better than some people in some areas/some ways!

There are two things that I know for sure. I never wish to diminish another woman and to make her feel judged as unworthy or “less than” for her birth or mothering choices. And, at the same time, I never wish to lie to another woman either in an effort to prevent her from feeling those things…

Blogging does only convey a slice of the “real me,” but I also find it an authentic slice, an authentic form of expression, and a real experience of who I am, just not all of who I am. Ever. I can be both more and less than what speaks to you from these many, many pages of blog posts. More in that I am more complicated and think deeper and with more intensity than most people will ever know and less in that I’m multidimensional and flawed and real, not just words on a screen from one moment in time.

Yesterday..taking my kids to the theater and taking a moment to point out the “hidden” Goddess right in the middle of town. Today, sitting on the bed in the dim light while Alaina naps, typing feverishly and feeling utterly swamped with the one million things I’d like to do with my life…

Homemade Extracts

Sep11

Every other weekend we get together with four other families who all live in the same 20-mile, rural region and we have a “work party.” In an admittedly sexist division of labor usually the men work on the large, house-building type project and the women work together on a cooking project or some other type of project, while also taking care of the children and preparing lunch and dinner for the whole crew (our families together total over 20 people and so it is actually a lot of work to feed that many people for an entire day!). I could write a long post about the many wonderful things we’ve gained from this work party experience, but it will have to wait for another day. We just celebrated our one year anniversary and it has been amazing what a positive influence the work party experience has been on the lives of everyone in our family.

During the last work party at our own house during which the men worked on Mark’s greenhouse project, the women gathered in my kitchen to make a variety of homemade extracts. Our main goal was to make vanilla extract to be ready for the holiday season, but we also made orange and lemon extract, mint extract, and flavored vinegar.

We bought our vanilla beans from Amazon. They were $25 at the time there for 1/2 lbs (about 50 beans), which was much better than the $9 per 3 beans from the bulk spice company (looks like the same ones are $27 now). They were pliable and easy to work with.

I followed the general ideas from these two websites about how to make your own extracts, but took the even lazier approach and decided to make the extract right in the vodka bottle! My share of the beans was about 11 beans. I slit them all lengthwise, separated the sides a bit with my fingers and dropped them into a 1.75 liter bottle of 80 proof vodka. Voila! It started to turn a lovely golden color almost right away and then deepened to a dark brown. We’ve tasted it and it tastes like…vanilla! I’m continuing to let it steep though, since there are conflicting reports about whether to let it sit for 6 weeks or 6 months.

Think we’ll have enough vanilla to last us a while?!

For the lemon and orange extracts I used about a 1/2 cup of peel and 1 c. of vodka. I loosely based it on the recipe from this site. We did the mint extract the same way. I used mint from my yard.

We also experimented with flavored vinegar based on information from this handout. I used strawberries in apple cider vinegar. I plan to use it for salad dressing, but haven’t tried it yet. It retained a lovely red color!