Twomonthababy!

Babies. I highly recommend them.

My little Tan Tan is two months old today. As I snuggle him, two quotes often flit through my mind. The first when I nuzzle his head: “…his softly furred scalp.” The second when I experience those moments of amazement and delight in him and the desire to carefully preserve exactly what this sweetness is like in this very moment: “…the last baby trails his sweet scent like a soft flag of surrender.”

Today, I looked them up so I could use them in this post and behold they both come from the same author and the exact same passage of The Poisonwood Bible.

“A mother’s body remembers her babies–the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It’s the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can’t dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. . . . That’s how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are–rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

I know I already used them in a past post about Alaina (don’t judge!).

I guess another bonus of a bonus baby is that you get to have the sweetness of a “last baby” twice! I remember writing after I had Alaina that I finally felt about her the way I always imagined feeling about motherhood. It isn’t that I didn’t feel the deep love and attachment with my older boys, I definitely did. And, I had lots of moments of delight and cherishment with them as well, but I just don’t remember consciously enjoying their babyness so very much. I really very much enjoy the babyness of this new last baby.

We haven’t weighed him since seven weeks and he was a little over 12lbs then. Is certifiably adorbs. Is first baby to have smiled at me while nursing and awake at this young. Seems extra smiley in general for a baby this age, actually. And, has been successfully peeing in potty when I remember to take him. I haven’t exactly been taking off with EC this time around, but suddenly decided it was time to try. Here is a video of his heart-melting goos.

Showing off my Dragonfire trifle on Hobbit Day!

He seems even more mama-focused than my other babies. I pretty much still hold him 22 hours a day. He likes to smile at and look at other people and can sometimes be held by them while sleeping, but his limit on being carried around by most others is about five minutes. Sometimes with my mom he lasts longer than that if she can get him out of the kid-chaos-zone and into a quiet room and lay him down to talk with him one-on-one. I keep exclaiming about this to Mark, as in—“couldn’t you hold our other kids longer than five minutes at a time?”—when I remember that Tanner is the only baby for whom Mark has been home. I guess I didn’t notice how mama-fied the other babies was, because I was the only adult home with them during the days of their babyhoods. I did envision that with two parents home all the time, baby-care would be distributed more between us than with prior babies, but so far it isn’t working out that way. Its okay though, because…softly furred scalp.

Also, and perhaps this plays a part in the delight in the babyness of the baby, when you have multiple kids, sitting down and snuggling the baby feels like a break. It feels like delicious respite. It feels like vacation. When you have one baby and you hold it all the time and are on so constantly, sitting down with the baby feels like that is “all” you do. I remember wishing to be free to be a complete human again. Now, with three other complete-human kids needing things, sitting down with the baby does not feel like the ongoing work that it once may have felt.

He does like to sit on a knee and pump his legs with enthusiasm!

Some things also haven’t changed. As I posted to Facebook recently, this week I was on the elliptical while Tanner slept. I started talking about how I was looking forward to my oatmeal for breakfast and how I was fantasizing about eating it. Then I started laughing and telling the kids about how when Lann was a baby I used to wait all morning to eat my oatmeal, until he went down for his morning nap. I would walk around getting weaker and headachy and sort of depressed and imagining my bowl and how good it would be. “How sad is that?!”

Then, the realization: Oops! I guess nothing has really changed in 11 years!

(Except my oatmeal has lots more chocolate chips now…)

Here is a picture of Tanner “opening” his first gift on the Winter Solstice:

And, here is a picture of how I got my paper grading work done this session:

I knocked them out too! I really wanted to be drinking Nutella cocoa, making Christmas decorations, and brainstorming awesome biz plans for 2015 and not doing any grading at all, but I also tried to hold appreciation and gratitude for this work that I can do from my kitchen table with my baby listening to my heartbeat at the very same time.

(You might not be able to tell in the pic, but I also had an earbud in one ear because I was listening to Red Tent facilitator training recordings at the same time too! That’s how I roll. Later, I listened to audiobooks at 1.5 speed while grading. There may be nothing better than being able to read a book AND do something else at the same time. Dream come true!)

I also asked Mark to take a picture of some of my favorite accomplishments of 2014. Baby, M.Div degree, and finishing the facilitation of a year-long Rise Up curriculum with my women’s circle:

And, here are a couple of more pix from Christmas, including my cute new doll (Alaina got one too) in her crocheted boho vest made by my talented mom as well as lovely new handmade wine goblets. Also, the boys in their made-by-my-mom beard hats and Alaina in her princess hat and my brother in his Cthulu hat (which was too awesome not to include!):

We also got to experience more cousin power on Christmas!

Onemonthababy!

Nov30

Unbelievably, Tanner is one month old already! He has already changed so much. Version 3WO included these upgrades:

…now with limited smiling action, wakey-eyes action, head control action, and 10.5lbs. Oh, and no longer restrained by any hair.

Now, even more upgraded one month version exhibits ability to ride around perched on hip facing outward. Head turning to look at all the things. Nursing while also tipping head back to peek over side of arm. Leg pumping action when seeing the mama or sitting on knee to watch siblings play. Tiny attempts to say, “ah goo!” and one surreal episode of saying, “Hi” to Lann in clear, tiny voice that I would have thought I’d imagined except for Lann then staring at me with startled eyes and then we both laughed hysterically.

Likes looking at ceiling fans and Christmas lights. Seems to seriously dislike car, though has only been on two outings in entire life so far. Has very specific spot on my chest on which he likes to nestle: head right on heart, body curved against my left arm. Kicks, twists, grunts and unches to reach specific spot and then conks out. Sleeps great (not alone ever). Has chubby legs and double chin. Weighs a tiny bit less than eleven pounds already. Has small amount of returning blonde fuzz hair. Also has blond eyelashes! Spends lots of time in the Boba and it is working good. Time is passing very quickly. He already bears little resemblance to the baby I gathered into my arms just one month ago. I cannot believe how fleeting the tiny newborn days are. There is no way to capture it, the only thing to do is live it.

I am doing well too. Went for walk on nice day today. Feel pretty good stamina wise and body-healing wise. Very happy. Grateful not to have clock ticking on Mark going back to work! (Feel a little ticky myself about teaching face to face again in January.) Has been interesting to actually watch myself “come back” from having my world be the size of my bed. It is like I really could see myself “returning” gradually. Thanks to excellent postpartum care, The Return has been easy, really.

I worried I might have to work hard to love this baby. Shouldn’t have worried! I love him muchly! Feels like my Best Baby Ever. I’ve mentioned several times that I am surprised by how normal and unsurprising it feels to have another baby…

I am surprised by how unsurprising it is to have a baby again. I know it is weird to talk about myself in the third person (is it a writer thing? Or, a person who collects dolls thing?!) but I told Mark the other day, “I’d put away the Molly with a Baby. But, after Tanner was born, I got her back out again and I still like her.”

He is here, where he belongs. The easiest thing about having a new baby has been the actual new baby! He is a precious treasure and I feel lucky to have him. And, I feel just as happy and excited to have him as I felt to have Alaina. I didn’t know if that would be true or not and I’m really glad that it is!

Zander says that Tanner’s first word is going to be “brodacious.”

Zander theorizes that Tanner’s first word will be “brodacious.”

In non-Tanner news, the kids made cracker houses with friends yesterday and we enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner with our work party.

And, I’ve accepted that if I’m going to keep blogging at all during the upcoming year (which includes lots of writing projects already, like my dissertation, book revisions, and new book ideas), I have to learn how to do short-ish posts using my phone instead of counting on having any computer time to do so. This one, except for picture gallery formatting, was completed on my phone. Hence, the staccato tone!

Moods of Motherhood: Co-Creating at Home

Nov28

Today’s post is part of the Moods of Motherhood blogging carnival celebrating the launch of the second edition of Moods of Motherhood: the inner journey of mothering by Amazon bestselling author, Lucy H. Pearce (published by Womancraft Publishing).

Today over 40 mothers around the world reflect on the internal journey of motherhood: raw, honest and uncut. To see a list of the other contributors and to win your own copy visit Dreaming Aloud.net

I work at home in two capacities: I teach online as a faculty member for a college and I co-create Brigid’s Grove with my husband. I also teach outside of the home once a week at a branch of the same college that is located on a military base about 40 minutes away from our house. All my preparation, grading, students emails, etc. for the in-seat class also take place at home. Beginning in July 2013, my husband took a significant leap into being a “free-range human” and now works at home with me. This was a leap because my teaching is on a contract basis and I make 1/3 of the money that he made when he was working full-time, but, I only have to leave the house for seven hours a week, leaving two parents home full-time the rest of the week with our homeschooled kids.

Shortly before Tanner was born, I posted the following on Facebook:

I heard back from the [campus] yesterday and they approved my proposal to teach my January class as a modified hybrid, which means I’ll be able to leave at 8:00 and get out the back gate (saves me 30 minutes drive time!) to get back home to my baby, rather than having to drag him + caregiver to class with me til 10:00 the way I did with Alaina!

(Of course, it also means I’ll have hours of extra online posts/grading about controversial topics, but I can nurse a baby and diplomatically moderate discussions simultaneously…)

I’d also like to take a minute to be grateful that, even though we’re a bit on the edge financially over the next couple of months, that we have the opportunity and ability to *do this*–have two parents home full-time, except for that one night to the [campus] for me each week! Lucky! (And, with some hearty dashes of good planning and creative other multiple streams of income.)

I got a comment that gave me some pause for consideration: “living the dream. We’d love to be able to do what you are doing.” While I want to be thankful that we are in a position to make this choice, I also want to acknowledge that it isn’t always “shiny” or dreamlike! Nor did it come from only “luck,” since I want to be clear that our current household financial structure would be unlikely to work if we lived in a more expensive geographic region OR if we had household debt (Something we avoided, yes, luckily, in thanks to my grandma for a debt-free college and graduate school education, but also thanks to our own financial management and good savings habits that allowed us to pay cash for our land and to build our own home using only money we saved from Mark’s work as a computer programmer, rather than having a loan.)

So…when Lucy Pearce asked for contributions for a blog carnival celebrating the release of her second edition of the book Moods of Motherhood, I knew that I wanted to write about the moods of self-employment and co-creating a business with my husband…

The in-the-flow mood:

We light our intention candles (yes, really!) and set up a mini-altar on the floor with items of significance to us. Cups of tea or hot cider are in our hands. Our kids are at my parents’ house, leaving us to have two hours on our own to talk shop and brainstorm ideas. We lay out our Amazing Year planner and many colored markers and review our biz goals for the month, goal-set for the following month, and the ideas start to flow. We feel in perfect synchronicity. Our collective creative energy is humming, our ideas are bubbling forth effortlessly, we are literally on the “same page.” One idea bounces off another, notes fly fast and furiously in our “book of amazing possibilities” (again, yes, really, this is written on the top of the first page of the notebook in which we brainstorm our ideas), and it feels like something alive, this process of co-creation. It feels vibrant. It feels limitless. It feels sacred.

In the pause between note taking and idea flowing, we hold hands and just sit there for a moment enjoying each other’s company. And, at that very moment, our eyes meet in the thrill of hearing the etsy app make its cha-chiiiing sound notifying us of a sale in a way that feels just like the universe is acknowledging and blessing the success of our work together…

The real-life-sucks-sometimes mood:

We accidentally sleep until 9:30. The kids eat Hot Pockets for breakfast. We argue over who gets to take a shower first. I feel dragged down in molasses by the vastly different energy levels we possess—I’m a morning person who immediately wants to hop up and get moving. Mark and our kids are not. Mark claims to be getting ready to pack orders and yet he is really looking at Imgur or sorting through Magic cards. I claim to be starting my grades for the week, but instead I fiddle around on Facebook and then speak snappily with a light dash of martyrdom. I slip into “lecture mode” about what a better job we could be doing with our house, our lives, our parenting. The kids whine and bicker. I suddenly decide that they should do excellent homeschooling work immediately, even though we’d all rather be doing something else. I try to submit my grades for the week, while also having eight other windows and/or documents open on my computer for things I’d also like to work on, while simultaneously attempting to answer questions about their worksheets. The kids bounce from parent-to-parent with their questions while Mark tries to pack up the night’s orders for mailing and Alaina sits on the floor saying, “why is nobody playing with me?” in a plaintive tone.

In my multi-tasking frenzy, I suddenly decide to add our online banking to the open windows on my computer and see, unfortunately, that we are behind $500 in our bank account and I won’t get paid for another three weeks…

Here are some things that make working together from home difficult:

Score-keeping. I was terrible at this when Mark worked full-time and I am still pretty terrible at it. By this I mean mentally keeping track of who has spent more hours doing what, who has had more time alone, who has come up with more ideas for dinner, and who has done more of what with the kids.

Different styles/types/routines/schedules/patterns. Part of this comes from personality, part comes from how we each spent the prior ten years working. I spent the ten years prior to 2013 as the primary at-home parent, with the scattered focus, multitasking, and “mother-sized jobs” that that role requires. I became very used to having to snatch at free moments to work frenziedly, accomplishing a great many tasks in a small window of time, because I don’t know when my next chance is coming. Mark spent those ten years (as well as many before that in other workplaces and in the public school system) with a structured existence in which starting and ending times for work activities were clearly defined and the impetus for tasks/goal-setting comes from external forces rather than being self-directed by the individual. We continue to approach our days at home together with similar, somewhat discordant, habits.

Different energy levels. Being the “driver.” Related to the above, I have spent my entire life being essentially self-directed and self-motivated. I’m not sure how much of this is personality, birth-order, or environment (me: type-A-ish, oldest child, homeschooled. Mark = laidback, youngest child, public schooled). I have tons of energy pretty much all of the time. I am constantly popping with ideas and bubbling with “steam” for projects. I rarely settle down and relax. Productivity is my middle name and my default mode. I never drink anything caffeinated, I always get at least eight hours of sleep, and I’m always buzzing around doing stuff. I wake up in the morning with one million ideas of things I’d like to do that day and I want to start immediately, if not sooner. I think I exhaust people and I can be wearing and controlling. Mark works in focused spurts of concentration. He is slow to start in the morning and I rarely, if ever, have seen him “buzz” about anything. He takes his time. He stops to rest. He is stable and calm and methodical. He lets ideas percolate and form. He doesn’t need to talk about everything. He watches videos to learn things and after he has let information soak in, he tackles new and complicated tasks with complete focus and usually total success. He is patient and if something fails, he will learn more about it and try again. He is rarely, if ever, critical of himself or of me (I am self-critical enough for both of us, plus). He is also very used to working in environments where he does not have to be particularly self-motivated and, again, whether it be personality-based or environmental/socialization, this often puts me in the position of family “driver.” Sometimes this feels fine, sometimes I am completely sick of the role of household manager and motivator.

Never being “off.” Still related to both of the preceding two points, as someone who is used to working from home around and between my small children, I never feel like I’m off. There is always something more to do. Mark works until he is finished and then stops, even if there is something else that could be done. At home, together, all the time, neither one of us truly ever gets to be off. Kids keep needing things, dinner needs to be fixed, and I keep coming up with one more thing to “finish” before bedtime. When your life and work are entwined so deeply, there is no clear distinction between “work time” and “home time” (or family time). This is something we want to work on differentiating more firmly in the coming year.

Haphazardness. We do not have a clearly structured daily schedule which leads to a feeling of haphazard effort and randomness through the day. (Also on list for coming year.)

Introverted personalities. We are both introverts. When Mark was at work all day, he worked on his own much of the time. When I was at home with kids, I still had two hours a day on my own each day while my kids visit their grandparents. Now, neither one of us actually ever has time alone. I wrote about this in a past post:

I’ve been reflecting a lot recently on the household navigation of being an introvert mama with now having my also-introvert husband home full-time. Turns out that both parents home doesn’t magically extend the hours in a day actually seems to shorten them and it means both parents end up feeling pretty maxed out by kids and in need of somewhere quiet to recharge! I love having a “free-range” husband and I’m blown away by our joint creativity, which is an energy we’ve never experienced before at this level in our 19 year relationship because he was always at work all week and we had to squeeze everything else in around the edges. I also notice these interesting facts about having us both home all of the time: the house is way messier, we consistently stay up “too late” and sleep “too late,” it seems harder than ever to cook/figure out meals, we have less time to spend on homeschooling !!, we still don’t feel like we have enough time to talk to each other, I seem to have less time to write and focus on writing, I feel like I give my kids less attention than I did when I was the only at-home parent because I now have Mark to pay attention to too and I really like him, it is perhaps harder than ever to get the TWO HOURS I desperately need, I feel as if I have less time to focus on my teaching work, we argue more over household and parental responsibilities, we laugh way more and have more fun with each other and with our kids and we do more spontaneous, relaxed and fun stuff with our kids. It has been an interesting experience!

via Tuesday Tidbits: Birth Art, Retreat, and Free-Range Husbands | Talk Birth.

Homeschooling. Neither one of us really thrives in the role of homeschooling parent. We homeschool because we can’t really envision another alternative that is good for our kids, not because we uber-love homeschooling and are amazing at it. It often feels like a bit of a competition for who can not be the one to do the homeschooling with the kids that day. I have never felt like I thrived in the role and so sometimes it feels good—or like, “I told you so”—to now share the responsibility (and the failures). It is hard to work with multiple ages of kids at the same time. It is hard to be patient. It is hard to do stuff that is boring because we feel like we should maintain a minimum standard of official “schoolwork” each week. Our kids can be very frustrating, obtuse (perhaps deliberately), and are often extremely distracted and appear to be purposely driving us crazy. Homeschooling also means that working from home must always be done around the edges of family, again making there be no distinction between home time and work time. We often feel only partially present and often feel preoccupied and distracted, since there is never a break! We are also in near constant contact with all members of our family all day every day and this can wear. The total immersion the lives of our kids can be exhausting, diminishes the “cherishment factor,” and leads to a sensation of oversaturation with our kids (and them with us!). Somehow we still never feel like we have enough time with each other though, again because, like our business, our relationship has to fit in the edges around very energetic and noisy children.

Here are some things that make working together from home work:

Goal-setting and regular review. We have a biz meeting a minimum of once a month. This is incredibly important in helping us stay on track and focused.

Looking outward together in same direction. Our motto from the time I was 16 and he was 18. This has been a guidepost in our marriage, lives, and now our business.

Capitalizing on each other’s strengths/having complementary strengths. In addition to the differences I’ve referenced in the list above, we have complementary strengths that make us work extremely well together and in a way that often feels effortless. I am good at communicating with others, with writing, and with keeping up with tasks. I write all of our etsy listings, I answer all emails/messages from customers, and I do all social media work, as well as lots of other tasks. This does not feel like a chore for me, it does not feel “unfair” (nor do I scorekeep over it). Mark does all order fulfillment, packaging, and shipping as well as the hand-finishing of everything we make. He also is the one who learns the new skills we need to move forward—I may make the original sculptures, but they wouldn’t go anywhere without his willingness to handle hot metal, study how to make molds and then go for it, and learn the chemistry of resin-casting. When we wrote our Womanrunes book, I joked that if Mark was in charge of it, it would have had an excellent cover and great images, but no text. If I was in charge of it, it would have been a Word document with good text, but nothing else.

Appreciating one another and enjoying each other’s company. Not much else to say about this one. We like each other a lot. We have been together for 19 years. We have a symbiosis and a relationship that works and works well.

Shared focus/mutual benefit. In the years that Mark worked outside of the home, there was often a sensation of competing for “free time.” When we are working on projects together, there is no sense of “competition” when project is a shared one. When he goes to pour new goddesses, it feels like working together. When I make new sculptures, it feels like working together.

Self-direction/self-motivation. As referenced, a lot of this still feels like it comes from me, but it does really help our business and our lives move forward.

Financial management skills and mutually compatible simple living goals and strategies. We decided a long time ago (way pre-kids) what is important to us and we naturally and easily continue to make good financial decisions that are in harmony with one another. We drive crappy used cars, have only used furniture, don’t have credit card or other debt, etc. This only works when both people are completely on board with the goals and purposes of living consciously within a fairly frugal simple living framework and spending accordingly.

Grandparents!!!!! A factor beyond personal control, having my generous, loving, connected, supportive parents one mile away cannot be undervalued. Our kids go to visit them for two hours (or a little more) every day except for Thursday. How much of a gift is this? Invaluable. And, lucky.

Kids that like each other. Also a factor beyond personal control, having sons that are best friends with each other and who therefore get to play together all day long and enjoy each other’s company is invaluable in creating a home atmosphere that is conducive to a rewarding, home-based life.

We’ve still got a lot to work on! We also have a lot of amazing goals for 2015 and look forward to carrying them out together.

We’re also still working on this…

I envision a life of seamless integration, where there need not even be a notion of “life/work” balance, because it is all just life and living. A life in which children are welcome in workplaces and in which work can be accomplished while in childspaces. A life in which I can grind my corn with my children nearby and not feel I need apologize for doing so or explain myself to anyone.

via I just want to grind my corn! | Talk Birth.

Mica pigments we use for color, while goddess prototype wait in the background.

Somewhat hapahazardly snagging a moment to pour some new goddesses!

Taking pictures for etsy and nursing at same time!

Finished work!

Somewhat related past posts:

Releasing Our Butterflies

Homeschooling Today Part 2 of 2

Imaginary Future Children

Tuesday Tidbits: Blogging, Busyness, and Life Part 2

Happy Father’s Day!

I just want to grind my corn!

Illinois Trip

Sep8

Last Wednesday, we got up at 4:00 in the morning to leave for a trip to the Chicago area to visit Mark’s family. We haven’t seen them since 2011 and it was high time for a visit! We originally planned a longer (and more expensive) trip in July that included some sight-seeing (and American Girl shopping), but ended up re-scheduling that trip due to my being in Kansas for my nephew’s birth and because we’d made some foolish decisions in choosing the July dates for the trip in terms of the end of my school session with paper grading work, etc. Luckily, I’d gotten 100% refundable train tickets in July and all of our other reservations were easily cancelled too. This revised trip was solely for visiting relatives rather than rolling a mini-vacation into it. It turns out that train travel in September was only $250 for all five of us, rather than the $450 we’d paid in July! (Good to know for future travel dates.) We took Amtrak from St. Louis to Chicago and then walked to the Metra station which took us to Mark’s family’s town in the Chicago-area suburbs. We opted to travel with backpacks only to make the walk and the train ride easier and it was a good choice that proved we could do backpack-only travel (we actually packed more than we needed and could have traveled even lighter!). I did end up buying a heavy sculpture at a cool store (Ginger Blossom) and things like new shoes for the boys at a $5 Below store and thus having to borrow a duffel to take home, however (this was optional though and I could have chosen not to buy them or shipped them to myself instead). We hadn’t realized when booking the trip that the Metra connection back to Chicago on a Sunday morning didn’t start until after we were supposed to be at Union Station and so we ended up needing my father-in-law drive us to the city on Sunday morning, which was a hassle for him and I felt bad for making him have to do it! However, in general, we are big fans of train travel and I’d recommend it to people with little kids (and husbands with back problems that make long drives really, really hard on him). I always feel very capable and adult when I successfully pull off a trip—especially when it includes walking with three kids for a mile in downtown Chicago!

The kids got to meet two cousins for the first time—Mark’s sister’s son and Mark’s cousin’s little daughter. It was funny to see how much our little nephew looked like Lann when he was little! And, he has the same face shape and smile Mark had when he was a little boy. No one took any pictures that had me in it, so it looks like I wasn’t even there! This is one of those in-lieu-of-scrapbooking posts and so below is a brief gallery of pictures from the trip. If you click one, it will open up larger and you can see the captions.

The train to Chicago had very deluxe seats and Alaina had fun looking out of the window and eating snacks.

Boys enjoyed their Lego Club magazines.

Say what you will about kids and technology, but I think it is exceedingly useful. Alaina and I read all kinds of weird, free kids books I’d downloaded into my Kindle app on my ipad. Heck of a lot simpler and more streamlined than filling one of our backpacks with books!

Heading downtown to the Metra station. We were so capable! 😉

Crashed out at Grandma’s house at last.

We loved this out-of-the-way shop called Ginger Blossom. This metal t-rex sculpture was a big hit.

Looking at a fountain and more metal animals. I wish I’d taken a picture of the lion and the horses.

I was very captivated by these cool sculptures in the barn. Couldn’t transport one though the price was very right.

Ginger Blossom was super fascinating. The barn was crammed with things, including this interesting looking temple sort of thing upstairs.

We went to an antique store where I was amused to see this Spike cut out. The tag on him reads, “no way for sale.”

The only evidence of our Golden Corral buffet adventures is this accidentally taken picture. They had cotton candy in the dessert bar, made by request. The kids said it was the best buffet of all time.

Cousin time!

Little familiar face showing Zander a youtube video.

The day before we left we went to Veteran’s Acres park, which was very nice.

Running after “brubbers” on our walk around the lake.

Apparently most of the pictures I took are of people walking away from me…

Some very, very cool willow trees around the lake.

The train home had very small and non-deluxe seats, it was only one story instead of two AND the seats faced backwards all the way home resulting in a stomachache and headache for me, because it was just plain *weird* to have to ride like that for SIX freaking hours.

Today Alaina wanted to work on her Hello Kitty sand bottles from her aunt. She was very diligent.

And, she was conveniently wearing a coordinated Hello Kitty dress already!

I am leaving again in ten days to go to Kansas for the Gaea Goddess Gathering. I really don’t like the revved up/gotta catch up feeling of getting home from a trip (and getting ready to leave on another one). Today I have been snappy, irritable, and tense and my mind is racing with various to-dos. It is hard to feel fast-forwarded through the first part of September, when there are so many things to take care of at home, for my classes, and inventory to prepare for my booth at GGG.

I’m 33 weeks pregnant today and feeling kind of physically “weighted down.” I don’t know how much I actually weigh anymore because I kind of don’t want to check! It is hard to get up and down and I keep sleeping on my back involuntarily and waking up with a seized up feeling in my sacrum as well as round ligament pain. I feel like I’m having trouble eating enough of the right foods at the right times. It is something that I neglect until I am low-blood-sugared out and crabby and headachy. I have this issue when I’m not pregnant too, but I feel like this pregnancy has been the most difficult for me in terms of getting enough to eat at the appropriate time, rather than when I’m desperate and kind of freaking out. I have loads of practice contractions, I swear every 15-20 minutes all day long, and the baby has been doing short stints of practice breathing as well as lots of bumping and jumping. I still occasionally feel like it could possibly be twins (why do I continue to have this weird neurosis, I wonder?), because of a couple of things that feel unusual about his movements—like hiccups being in two different places or dramatic movements/”rolling” limbs sort of sensations—as well as how lumbering I feel in general. Only one baby though!

I miss my Sacred Pregnancy class, because it was the thing I was doing to connect to the baby and to being pregnant. Now, I’m back to feeling more like he is a “deadline” than a new person! It is unbelievable how many things there are still left to do and take care of before he is born. Today, I found myself ordering birthday presents, planning Lann’s 11th birthday party and trying to squeeze the party in somehow between my GGG trip, my mother blessing ceremony, and my aunt, cousin, brother, and sister-in-law’s visit at the end of the month. These are all good things, but I kind of just want to run away into the woods and sit on a rock. Other than our fall women’s retreat, the end of my classes, and a work party at our house, I have most of October blocked out as rest time and primarily unscheduled for anything much else. I have had to work hard to maintain this boundary and say no to other potential scheduled activities in October-December. And, handily, I’m almost completely done with Christmas shopping already!

Time to pick back up our work on new and ongoing projects and also getting inventory prepared for our upcoming booth…

Sacred Pregnancy Week 4: Honoring, Sealing, & Postpartum Care

Sep1

“I am the strength of all women who have ever birthed a baby and I am ready to join that tribe.”

–Anni Daulter (Sacred Pregnancy)

Me to my husband last night: “so, I know I might look like I’m just dancing around with flowers in my hair, but I’m really getting certified.”

Yesterday, I finished the last assignments for my Sacred Pregnancy class. While I primarily took this class for personal reasons and am glad I did because I truly think it was the absolute BEST thing I could have done for myself to get ready for Tanner, to spend some time focused on my pregnancy, and to get ready for another mindful birth and postpartum experience. I have also completed all the work needed to be a Certified Sacred Pregnancy Mini-Retreat Instructor. On October 1st, I start the Sacred Postpartum training program—again with a dual purpose of personal enrichment and professional development.

I completed some of the activities out-of-order and finished the silk painting and honoring crown from week 3 in conjunction with the postpartum and “sealing” work of week 4.

I chose to use my drumstick as my stick around which to wrap my silk, since the drum is one way I express myself. Bringing the words painted on the silk into my drumming seemed like a logical companion. My silk power was bold fearlessness! Zander and Alaina also worked on small pieces of silk with me.

I’d delayed making the flower crown I thought because I’d told myself that I’ve already had several flower crowns at different ceremonies and so making another one for “no reason” felt kind of redundant. However, after I finished my second silk painting, I looked behind me and saw some wildflowers and I realized I did want to make a crown and I wanted to be with real flowers and not artificial. I’d been going to do artificial since I have some and thought then I could at least check it off the list. I don’t like fake flowers though, I like real ones. As soon as I realized that there were enough wildflowers scattered around the yard that I could make a real one, I got excited about the idea. My daughter helped me find and cut the flowers and then we put it together. And, then took some picture with my new silk and the crown together.

“The first few months after a baby comes can be a lot like floating in a jar of honey—very sweet and golden, but very sticky too.” –American College of Nurse-Midwives

I love the idea of a post-birth sealing ceremony SO much. This is similar to a mother blessing, but it is held postpartum to help “seal” the birth experience and welcome the baby and the mother into motherhood (or mother of however-many-children-hood). Absolutely wonderful. I also love the song Standing on the Edge from the Sacred Pregnancy CD. I identify with it so much as I prepare for my next birth as well as to welcome a new baby who I wasn’t expecting to have. As I’ve noted often in recent blog posts, I’m working very hard to wrap up a variety of projects so that I can cocoon with my new baby and give him and me the time and space I know we will need after birth. I have gotten better and better at taking care of myself postpartum, in asking for what I need, and getting very, very clear with my support people about what is most important to me.

We actually made the flax pillows for the sealing ceremony at the beginning of the week and then used them on Sunday (Alaina and I made the PPD tincture together the same day as the pillows). My husband tucked me in with the flax pillows and scarf and draped the silk painting across me as well. I lit my pregnancy candles and listened to Standing at the Edge. I spoke aloud the things I celebrate myself for–all the projects and children I have given birth to.

As I was setting up my wrap and pillows, my almost-11-year-old son had said he’d like to do it too. So, after my own sealing experience, each of my kids in turn got sealed in the scarf with the flax pillows. And, then they went and got my husband and we sealed him too! For each, I offered a blessing: “I’m glad you were born. I’m glad you are my son/daughter/husband. I love you. Thank you.” I placed my hands on different parts of their bodies as I spoke and then ended with kiss on the forehead. They all loved it and were very calm and contemplative. I think it was good for all of us and was, in its way, a “sealing” of their births and our relationship.

While I always have had a mother blessing ceremony before the baby’s birth, this time I’m going to make sure to do a postpartum sealing ceremony as well. The birth I actually sealed most consciously was the second trimester birth-death of my third son. On my due date with him, which also happened to be my birthday, I did a ceremony outside by our little labyrinth and the tree where we buried him. I spoke aloud, “I am not pregnant anymore,” and took time to hold and honor the powerful, honorable, birth and release I’d given him.

I’ve written a lot about my own postpartum thoughts, experiences, and feelings and they are grouped under the appropriate category on my blog here.

I also want to share a picture of my new mother-of-four goddess pendant! This pendant, too, has been part of my personal emotional preparation to integrate the new baby into my maternal identity. It took a long time for us to get the cast right for this sculpt and I’m so happy to have it to wear now.

August 2014 073

The Sacred Pregnancy online retreat training experience was a very positive one. Lots of personal benefit as well as professional development! I’m so glad I decided to go for it!

Past posts in this series:

Sacred Pregnancy Week 1, Part 1: Sacred Space

Sacred Pregnancy, Week 1, Part 2: Connecting

Sacred Pregnancy Week 3, Part 1: Fears & Forgiveness

Sacred Pregnancy Week 3, Part 2: Empowerment and Self-Care

Magic House Day Trip

Aug22

This is one of those posts that is in lieu of keeping a scrapbook!

As one of their prizes for the summer reading program at the library, the kids got free tickets to Magic House, a children’s museum in St. Louis,. In an unusual stroke of convenience, three of our St. Louis area friends (two of which have Magic House memberships already) were all available to meet us there on the same day at the same time (when does this ever happen without major machinations?!). And, the kids’ best friends from our own town were also able to go and met us there. It is a chaotic, loud, and crazy place to meet if you think you are going to get any quality friend visiting in, but it was a lot of fun for everyone and I’m still a little in shock that it worked out so well to meet everyone! I’ve never been there before (our kids went with Mark a couple of years ago), so I staggered around in kind of a sensory overload daze looking at everything. Thank goodness my friends were familiar with the place and could steer me around when I stood still for too long. I expected that our families would end up getting separated from each other at some points–too many people to coordinate all walking around together–but I didn’t expect to divide by age more than family. So, I ended up following Alaina around to the sections she wanted to go to with my two friends who also have little children and Mark ended up taking the boys around to the parts they wanted to go to with our two friends that have bigger children and sometimes we all overlapped!

Because I was mostly with Alaina, I don’t have many pictures of the boys doing cool stuff, but here is a gallery of the few pictures I did get from our expedition:

Ready for fun!

Giant bubbles captured everyone’s attention early on.

Pulley experiment (sitting backwards for photo op)

This part of the Sid the Science Kid house captivated Alain for much longer than it did me!

Alaina’s favorite part of the Children’s Village was this car repair shop.

She was very diligent and worked hard.

Replacing muffler.

Ice cream shop!

I liked the pizzeria best!

Waterworks

We almost missed our chance for any kind of friend pic (I thought everyone had left without me!), but in the oval office we at least got one picture of three of us (out of five friends and two husbands!)

Final stop at the bubble place again!

After using our free tickets for Magic House, we then took a quick trip to Hobby Lobby (despite wishing to boycott, they were right on our way and we had things we needed to get!) and unashamedly went through the line as five separate transactions thus getting five 40% off coupon purchases. The kids have never been to an IHOP and there was one right there, so we decided to go there for dinner before leaving the city. Handily, kids eat free at IHOP from 4-10. I had no idea, so that was a nice surprise! However, the power went out shortly after we placed our order and resultant delay in getting our food meant that we got five dinners, plus bonus plates of toast, happy face pancake, and lemonades for the road for $7 total. I think this was officially the cheapest little day trip we’ve ever been on! (The waitress said the lemonades were because we were the only people who were nice to her about the wait.)

Me to kids while waiting at IHOP as they were getting antsy and writhing around: “this is what is called a public place.”

Alaina, loudly: “no, this is called a BUTT place.”

Apparently, many of hours of fun at Magic House do not contribute to beautifully behaved three-year-olds, because after this incident, she also peeked over at other diners and stuck her tongue out at them when they waved nicely to her. At least she was useful in getting 40% off by going through the line with her little handful of money at Hobby Lobby. 😉

Eight is Great! (again!)

Jun4

Last week as we were getting home from our family mini-vacation to Lake of the Ozarks, Zander turned 8! The phrase “eight is great” flitted across my mind and I had a deja vu moment—didn’t I just have an eight year old and just write an 8-is-great post?! No…that post was almost three years ago, my second kid is eight now, even though it seems like that “should” somehow still be the age of my oldest kid!

On our trip, Zander was the only one to catch a fish. His first catfish!

(yes, he is also wearing Pinkie Pie socks)

At home or out with friends, Zander is our wildest kid. He can be very outrageous and unpredictable and impulsive and I often don’t know what is going to randomly come flying out of his mouth. At home, he can be volatile and fly off the handle, have meltdowns, and experience “rage fits” (much better on a dye-free diet, but still happens sometimes). In public places or high stimulation environments though, he is the calmest and most centered and most adaptable of our kids. He is watchful and polite and friendly and is a real trouper. He is the last of the kids to complain or whine or ask to go home/do something different. He trucks along, taking in the sights and noises and doesn’t complain. He was the only one willing to even entertain the notion of fishing quietly on a rocky hillside with Mark for hours. Even though Zander is the most difficult to get to focus while at home, Lann lost patience with fishing after about ten minutes and started to bug about finding a Target to go to, while Zander was extremely focused and alert and dedicated to his post.

It is hard to write about a middle kid without comparing him to the other kids in the family OR defining him in relationship to them. I can’t really twist my thoughts around right now to make myself NOT do that though, so this post just is what it is. Zander is a great little brother. As a big brother to Alaina he is less great and they clash a lot and he tends to pick at her and bug her on purpose. As a little brother to Lann, he is amazing. He is loyal and helpful and committed and adaptable and cooperative. He is probably a better brother to Lann than Lann is a brother to him. He is the one will to compromise or make changes and try the hardest to get along. He is also brave and funny. He is the bravest kid. The one who will go into the dark room to turn on the light, who will introduce himself (and siblings) to strangers, who will run to get us if something is needed. He is also amazingly creative and interesting. As he gets older and matures, his temperament has mellowed somewhat, while still retaining his good qualities. He reminds me a lot of my own brother, who was a very high-energy kid and was often very difficult to get along with, but who ended up being a really great man.

Visiting the castle at Ha Ha Tonka state park.

For Zander’s birthday party this year he wanted a dinosaur theme. We had just gotten back from our trip and were totally beat. The last thing I wanted to do was have a party. However, it wasn’t his fault that he was born on Memorial Day Weekend and that we often have something else to do at that time of year! (Last year on his birthday we were on our way to Fresno for my grandma’s memorial service.)

I had a vision for a “dino dig” cake and I got really into it and exhaustively documented the process (saying, “if I’m going to go to all this trouble on this cake, I need to get a blog post out of the deal!)

: First, we pressed little dinos into the bottom layer of cake (which was from scratch chocolate cake!) and then layering on crumbled graham crackers.

: We added some sprinkle bones…

: and then chocolate chips and cocoa powder.

: We then put the other layer on top.

: And pressed cocoa pebble type cereal and candy bones in it (these got totally squishy and undentifiable and weird).

: I was obsessed with including a molasses tarpit and Lann made white chocolate bones to scatter around.

: Dinosaur nest made with chocolate rocks and root beer hard candy.

: Tarpit. I was proud of it!

: Finished cake! Not too impressive on the surface, but a labor of love!

: Grandma Carla sent a new dinosaur set and it made great table decor.

: Cut into. The layer effect kind of disappeared after all the work it actually required!

Mark spent a long time using his formidable fabrication skills to construct a big T-Rex head out of a cardboard box. (It has some craft foam accents too, but otherwise just cardboard from old boxes. I was impressed!)

After the guests arrived, Mark, dressed in some safari gear, radioed in a distress call. The kids went out into their field with their costumes on and discovered a trail mowed through the field along with some abandoned equipment and…dinosaur eggs.

At the end, they found a baby t-rex guarding a box of goodies!

Along the trail, they also found a cast-off rucksack containing a bag of geodes. They each got to crack one open. Some were cool and others were not.

We also had volcano punch to go with our cake (cherry/grape juice, clear soda, and vanilla ice cream). I just made this up and it worked pretty well.

Can’t wait to share many more birthdays with this guy!

Eight is great!

Opening Up…

Jun3

Sacred Body
Sacred Space
Sacred Womb

Holding
enfolding
protecting
nourishing.

Spinning cells into soul
into body
into breath
into life.

Unfurling without conscious control or effort.
Dancing together in the incredible might of creation…

Last month, one of the blogs I write for was doing a round robin topic on what makes a family. Though I missed my chance to officially participate I still have something to say about the topic anyway! For me, the question of what makes a family boils down to opening up to make room. In February of this year I found out I was pregnant again, even though we’d made what felt like a very firm decision not to have any more children. We’ve never experienced an unexpected pregnancy before. I’m a “planner” by nature and my children have all been very planned out (I even went for a “preconception” health care appointment before conceiving our first baby!) After my initial feelings of surprise and some degree of distress and even sadness, I was really amazed to see how very soon I started to feel space opening up in my mind, heart, body, and family for a new person. And, I thought, isn’t this the very essence of family? Opening up. I spent my childhood with three siblings, but geographically isolated from other family members and so almost all of our holidays were spent as just us, the immediate family. It used to make my mom feel sad not to have a houseful of company for Thanksgiving. However, then, even as the residents of the actual family house decreased as we grew up and moved away, our family opened and expanded to include more members (and more schedules!). I got married in 1998 and our family boundary expanded to include my husband. We then had our first baby in 2003 and the family opened up to receive a first grandchild and then later the spouses of my siblings and two more grandchildren from me. My brother and his wife are having their first baby in July and again our now-extended family expands to create room and joyfully anticipates his arrival. And, with my own new baby boy due in October, we again open and welcome with love.

My parents’ house at Thanksgiving is pretty full and pretty busy now!

Body opens
heart opens
hands open to receive

Birth mama
birth goddess
she’s finding her way
she’s finding her way…

via Birth as Initiation.

St. Louis Adventure!

May25

My intuition was wrong again and our new baby is a BOY! I am not really surprised, because my track record is terrible at intuitively perceiving the sex of the baby. With Lann, I was pretty sure he was a girl and was very surprised to find out at the ultrasound that he was a boy. With Zander, I knew he was a boy. We didn’t have any ultrasounds with him (a fact that, though it gives me “crunchy points,” I do actually have a tiny bit of regret about), but I had seven vivid dreams in which he was a boy and I was so right that it makes me forget or overlook my terrible track record on “knowing” in advance. With Noah, I was pretty sure he was a girl and I still sometimes wonder if he really was (genital differentiation can still be indistinct at that point of gestation). With Alaina, I was positive she was a boy, and was surprised to learn she was not. So…as I referenced in my earlier post, my feeling that new baby was a girl, should have been instant confirmation that he was, in fact, the boyest of boys! Also, looking back, I had these intuitive clues as well:

first ever pregnancy dream was that he was a boy. Of course, in this dream I also kept him “warm” after birth in a turkey roasting pan covered with boiling hot greasy turkey skin!
second pregnancy dream was of being shown an ultrasound picture and being told it was a boy. Right after that, they showed me another picture and it was a girl though (something that made me wonder about twins in real life, especially when I then heard two distinct heartbeats with the doppler on Tuesday—one on the left side at 154 and one on the right side at 135. My uterus also measures over 20 weeks at this point. However, actual ultrasound only showed one baby, though I did once again hear “two heartbeats” yesterday. Not sure what is going on there).
the night before the ultrasound, I had a very vivid, realistic dream of being in the ultrasound room and clearly seeing the baby was a boy.
at the women’s festival we went to in March when I was about 8 weeks pregnant, we did a “star power” meditation which included a small section about seeing your aura. I saw my own (white) and then at the same time, saw a small blue aura in my belly. I dismissed it because we don’t really “do” the color thing or try to gender label colors and you will probably never hear me use the phrase “team blue.” However, it did make me wonder!

I am going to be honest that I did feel a little disappointed at first, but the disappointment was not over the fact of having a boy, the disappointment was over losing the idea of the sister for Alaina and the “balance” of a second daughter in our family. There is a difference between being disappointed over having a boy and being disappointed not to have a girl. Does that make sense? The set of brothers we have in the family is so great, that I was hoping to repeat that experience for Alaina. However, it will also be fun to still have the brothers, our rainbow girl, and then the “baby” of the family—each one has its own special place then. Plus, the new baby boy will be a most excellent cousin-friend for my brother and sister-in-law’s upcoming baby boy and that will be fun—this baby is the only one of my kids who has the chance to be close in age to a cousin! So, that is nicely convenient. (Of course, boys and girls can also be friends, I know that.) I also realized as I feeling sad about no baby sister joining the family, that we didn’t intend to have any more kids anyway—so, Alaina was always going to be sisterless and a one girl family was totally fine with us all—so regardless of sex, this little baby is our “bonus” 🙂 I’m looking forward to seeing what he is like!

Wanted a belly pic before we left. 17w3d. Baby measured at 18w)

Little profile. Placenta is anterior, which I’d already figured out, and baby was really wedged up against it interestingly.

The tech did a couple of 3D images too, even though we only requested 2D. This is his little face snuggled up into the placenta.

After the ultrasound appointment, we headed across St. Louis to City Museum for a field trip with our homeschool group. It was great, exhausting fun! Unfortunately, my phone was at 18% battery and then 0%, so these are the only pictures I ended up with! (mouse over for captions)

I love finding goddesses in plain sight!

Sitting on a mammoth trunk.

The stairs up to the 10 story slide.

Lann suffered an injury!

Dragons!

Going on the train!

One of the cool things about City Museum is things like this—while the train is going around, other kids can climb under the set and into this “cage” kind of thing to watch.

Alaina and her friends volunteered to be in the finale of the clown show. I like how her little hand is raised with everybody else.

The “no skate” skate park. This is one of my kids’ favorite parts of the museum.

Another goddess in plain sight greeting us at the museum’s entrance.

After City Museum, we went to the Galleria to go to Build-a-Bear, because I’d seen online that they have big My Little Ponies and I wanted to surprise the kids with getting to make one. $100 later…but, it was fun!

We then met my friend Kate and her kids for dinner and had a nice catch-up chat, though the visit wasn’t long enough and the setting wasn’t ideal for catching up! We got home at about 10:00, after having left at 8:00 that morning. Whew! Bonus from all the time in the car is that we did come up with a potential name for baby boy. Not 100% on it though, because it ends with a “er” sound which doesn’t go so great with our last name. We already disregarded that for Zander’s name though, so why not do it again!

While not totally related, but still on the topic of family and kids, we have a new baby kitty too. After a brief stint as Rainbow Dash, her name is now Scootaloo:

And, my lovely roses are blooming and wild daisies too!

New Baby!

May20

While we were originally going to wait until after our ultrasound appointment on May 22 to officially Facebook-and-blog announce my pregnancy, when I visited my sister-in-law and brother in Kansas when I was 15 weeks along, we took some cute “cousins meet” pictures and decided to toss one of them on Facebook after all 🙂

This is my 900th post on my blog and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity for a pregnancy update. I’ve been saving little notes of things I want to say and so forth, but time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin and now I’m 17 weeks pregnant and still have written anything about it!

I’m due October 27th. We actually weren’t planning to have any more children, but now we are, and it is amazing to me how quickly the family opens up to make room for a new person. The kids are very excited and we plan to find out whether the new baby is a sister or a brother on May 22nd. I was surprised to learn how many “scars” I retain from my past pregnancy losses and I find myself more anxious than I’d like to feel every day about the baby. This anxiety increased exponentially as I drew closer and closer to the point in pregnancy to when we lost our tiny son Noah in 2009. After I passed 15 weeks, I did, in fact, breathe easier, but there are still multiple times a day in which I think things like, “what if it’s heart stopped since yesterday?!” I thought since I did have a post-loss successful pregnancy AND because this pregnancy was a surprise that I’d feel more casual or relaxed about it instead of daily having, “I hope the baby is still alive!” thoughts, but apparently this is just what pregnancy feels like for me now.

At first I felt very shocked to be pregnant and I was upset about assorted things like these:

older than I’d like to be (35! Isn’t that “advanced maternal age”? Sheesh!)
weigh more than I ever have starting out a pregnancy (though, now at 17 weeks I’ve only gained two pounds, so this one wasn’t so bad after all)
bigger age gaps between kids than I want—in my own family of origin I didn’t really like having my siblings be nine and eleven years younger than me, it felt like a generational gap that has been hard for us to bridge in adulthood (though, now that my brother and his wife are having a baby and I am having one after them, we actually have a lot of life cycle stuff in common at last after all!). Now, Lann will be eleven before this baby is born and technically will be older than this baby than I am than my youngest sister.
on the same note, having watched my parents parent as “older” parents I noticed that it dragged on for a really, really long time—and their time having teenagers and having grandchildren overlapped in a way that seemed like it would be kind of not the funnest. I had my first baby when I was 24 and had been married for 5 years already, but my teenage siblings were still at home, so my parents went from having their own kids at home to having little grandchildren chaotically stumbling through the house to visit without ever having a “down time” where they were truly on their own. However, I also realize that after you have kids, you will never really ever be on your own again. Kids still seem to need their parents pretty much forever. I still need mine. My mom still needs her mom (even though she is gone now). Not in a sense of dependency, but in a sense of relationship.
feeling really quite done with parenting small children and ready to move on to having only bigger kids
not wanting to experience a clitoral tear again—I really, really feel like I’ve paid a pretty high body price for my existing kids and I felt like I was pretty done sacrificing that part of my body!
feeling very “distant” and far away from pregnancy/birth. I’d mentally closed that chapter of my life already.
having given away my maternity clothes and a lot of my baby stuff already
being a little embarrassed to have had a “surprise”—that is just not ME to have a surprise baby. My other kids were uber-planned-out tiny people!
not wanting to start over with toting a baby + caregiver to class with me while I teach
worried about being the primary wage-earner now that we took the leap into Mark being home with the rest of us (though our etsy shop has gratifyingly become a viable second income!). I won’t be able to teach in the fall session when the baby is due and then I always have an unpaid month off from Dec-Jan, which means we’re looking at an October-February period of relying only on me teaching a single online class for our primary source of income?! Yikes! Better start sculpting more birth art, pronto, Molly dear!

However, then these things happened too:

months before knowing I was pregnant Alaina started talking about her little sister “Lily.” AND, the boys started to say, “we think you should have another baby after all, mom!”
I watched the kids running up the driveway flying a kite (I have had previous driveway revelations!) and suddenly realized our family looked very small and like someone was missing.
a friend experienced a traumatic miscarriage at 11 weeks. I was just a little behind her in pregnancy at the time and immediately after I read her story, I went to the bathroom and there was some blood (not much and just brownish). While I now think it may actually have been “sympathy” spotting OR somehow a stored body-memory from my own miscarriages (or, just a coincidence), I knew in that moment that I want my new baby so much. I wasn’t upset about being pregnant after all, I really, really want this baby to join us.

Returning to the scars of pregnancy loss, for whatever reason from 4-15 weeks of this pregnancy, it was truly like my pregnancy with Noah was the only other pregnancy experience I could remember. It was weird. AND, what was also weird was how many overlapping “re-do” moments I experienced:

At 13 weeks I started to have symptoms of a UTI (same thing happened with Alaina at 13 weeks). My first ever UTI was during my pregnancy with Noah and what sent me to the doctor to find out he had no heartbeat. I have never stopped wondering if that UTI is why my baby died.

At 14w2d with this pregnancy I had a consultation with a prospective midwife. At 14w2d with Noah I had a midwife consultation too (and felt “scarred” from that experience too as it was a pretty unpleasant consultation AND I started to have a headache/cramping right after it). This midwife was very nice and we had a delightful consultation and a quick bond.

On May 1st, I went to the paint-your-own pottery place for my birthday because I really wanted to paint a “water bearer” figure I saw there earlier this year. As I painted with my friend, I realized I might not be going to finish it before they closed. I clearly remembered that the last time I painted anything there I was pregnant with Noah and talking with friends about pregnancy and birth. I didn’t finish that day and after he died, I could NEVER go back into that place to finish painting my plate (they sold it to different owners and it moved to a different building, so now I can go back, but not without remembering). Another friend went back and finished it for me (I will never forget that either. I don’t know sometimes if people realize how small, unusual, helpful things like that can have a big impact on a grieving mama). I use the plate, but I never forgot. This time I couldn’t not finish. It would be like a horrible déjà vu. I painted and painted, my friend wanted to leave (long drive, but she rode with me and thus was trapped!), we passed closing time, but I was almost done. So, I apologized to my friend and to the store owner and I stayed and finished it anyway. (My poor friend!) There was NO way I was going to leave that store without finishing my project…again.
On my birthday this year I was 14w5d pregnant. My miscarriage with Noah happened at 14w5d AND I was due on my birthday (2010 though).

For my birthday dinner, my mom made stroganoff (at my request) and it was only after I was sitting there happily eating it that I realized that is what I’d asked her to make after Noah too.

And, in one other weird overlap, his pregnancy and this current one are the only two I’ve ever been sick with. WHY?! This bothered me for weeks. Oh well, it has passed now and I’m still pregnant this time and the baby still has a very good heartbeat. I have an anterior placenta this time, so I don’t feel as much movement as I usually do by this time with other pregnancies, so I’m still relying on “life status updates” from my trusty Doppler. (I don’t even feel like apologizing or rationalizing my use of it. I’m desperately glad I have one. No regrets.)

(This may be the weirdest, illogical, many-thoughts-pregnancy-update post ever!)

Another thing I’m not interested in rationalizing or justifying is that I really, really like finding out the sex of the baby before birth. I am SO looking forward to our ultrasound this week. I can’t wait! I’m almost obsessed with it. In six pregnancies, I’ve only ever been right in my intuition about the sex once (I was really, really right though!). So, since this time I feel like it is a girl, I’m expecting it probably really is a boy (so, wait! Is that my “intuition,” which would really mean this IS a girl? LOL! ). Alaina is 100% certain it is a girl. She actually gets kind of mad when I say it might be a boy. She’s been saying it was a girl since before she knew I was actually pregnant (and, yes, if it is a girl, “Lily” is in the running for her name! It wasn’t on my radar before Alaina started saying it). Right before I found out I was pregnant, I went down to my place in the woods. I was upset with life in general—my kids were driving me NUTS, I was NOT having a good day. I was kind of talk-ranting to myself, including a mention of how nice it was that we weren’t going to have any more kids because I was SO DANG DONE. And…then I knew. I’m pregnant. I looked up and my eyes met the eyes of a raccoon sitting in the tree. Too weird. I’ve never before come eye to eye with a raccoon in the woods before! We stared and stared at each other. After I broke eye contact, I thought, I’m totally pregnant and it is totally a girl. I went inside and took an expired pregnancy test and it was positive (I bought a real one and took it in the movie theater bathroom at The Lego Movie a couple of days later). Here we go! 🙂