Cousin Bellies!

40+ weeks and 25 weeks!

“…This is really my prayer for society. Whole women make happier mothers. Happier mothers make happier babies. Happier babies grow into healthier children and adults, and thus we see how the care a woman receives after birth sows the seeds for a healthier society.”

–Aviva Jill Romm (Natural Health After Birth, p. 5)

My mom and I were honored to be invited to attend the birth of my sister-in-law and brother’s first baby. After some planning and back-and-forthing and due-date-passing, this week we made the decision to head to their house several hours away to wait for the baby’s arrival. I know from experience that being the “watched pot” isn’t very fun and so we had to weigh that possibility with the concern about not making it in time or of having to have a stressed out drive in the middle of the night. Plus, my mom had tickets to see Paul McCartney in Kansas C July 2014 109 ity on Wednesday night. So, on Tuesday night after my class, we headed out to become ladies in waiting! (and Paul was excellent, apparently!) It has been really nice to spend time visiting with my brother and sister-in-law and we got some fresh new cousin-belly pictures together! I didn’t know how fun it would be to be pregnant at the same time as a relative. I never have been before! When we go places together, we’re quite adorable. 🙂 Last night we went to dinner at a wonderful Italian buffet and had some eggplant parmesan. (The crêpe station lady also noticed and commented on our matching moonstone goddess necklaces.)

On the way to the buffet, we stopped at a natural foods store to get some liquid chlorophyll for after the birth. As we browsed around, I realized I should take the opportunity to buy a few things for myself as well. Prices were up to 50% cheaper than the prices I found online and October is not as far away as it might seem! So, I got some chlorophyll, raspberry leaf tea, arnica, and Afterease tincture for myself too. I still feel something of a sense of unreality or disconnection about my own pregnancy, even though I’m gradually getting closer and closer and doing all the “right” things. Buying supplies and thinking about my own plans for postpartum (I recently read it referred to as planning for a “sitting moon” time, which I like, since “babymoon” has been somewhat appropriated to mean pre-baby-vacation time rather than postpartum, as I use it) brought it closer to reality for me. Spending some time away from the rest of my kids and just on my own with female relatives in pregnancy-birthy-postpartum mode has also been really helpful, I think. And, even though I’m older than I have been before, I’m still really good at being pregnant…

I’m very much looking forward to meeting this little nephew!

(prayer flag from mother blessing ceremony for a different friend)

Women, Birthing, and Boundaries

Jul11

“Birth doula work is not about double hip squeezes. It isn’t about birth plans. Birth doulaing at its heart is a spiritual path that will rip away your narcissism and your selfishness. It will restructure your values and strengthen your compassion and empathy for all people through pain and humility. It is about learning how to BE in the presence of conflict and the human experience of living at its most raw and gut wrenching…”

–Amy Gililand

Watch out! Bookshelf reduction mission in full swing!

Mark has become embroiled in many land and garden improvement projects in the last couple of months. Now that it is hot outside again, he has switched some of this attention to interior home improvement projects as well, one of which is building a new little countertop onto the half-wall between our kitchen and dining area (saw is presently squealing in my ear as I type) and one of which is painting some of the walls in our house. Wall-painting necessitated bookshelf moving, which necessitated book removal, which prompted me to go on a massive book decluttering and downsizing mission. As I’ve mentioned, I am thoroughly in the mood to wrap up, wind down, finish up. I feel a powerful, powerful call to finish all kinds of things so I can fully greet my baby in October. So, this bookshelf downsizing played right into my current mood. One of the books that didn’t make my “keep it” list was The Feminine Face of God, a classic feminist spirituality book by Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins (now in a giveaway box near you, so if you’re interested and you’re local, let me know and it is now yours!). This isn’t because I don’t like the book, it is because I don’t feel as if I will need to return it to again. In evaluating and reducing my book collection, I find odds and ends I’d marked to write about or remember. Rather than storing the whole book, it makes sense to me to save the one or two pages I’d marked instead and let the book move on to enrich new lives. From The Feminine Face of God, I’d saved this quote about women and permeable boundaries:

Women have permeable boundaries. Perhaps it is the experience of our bodies in touch with the bodies of others that makes it hard for us to close down our psyches. Perhaps it is genetic. Or both. Or something else. But our bodies feel the irrevocable connection of the tides with our cycles of monthly bleeding. And in lovemaking we can be penetrated and receive another. And with pregnancy we carry another for nine full moons, more or less. When we separate from that other, we can feed it from our own body. And later the cycles that tie us to the moon and tides stop. And all this is true whether we give birth or not, have sex of not. The possibility is what creates the openness, and this openness is a precious gift (p. 183).

The distinct flavor of experience which comes with the gift shapes how we perceive reality, how we act, how we create, and what we value. And more than anything else women value relationships. We blend and weave and combine and sustain all kinds of relationships, and this work, this webmaking, not only shapes our lives but makes us profoundly vulnerable to the needs of others.

This is why, to me, attachment is at the core of the mothering life. (As opposed to the “detachment” often espoused by pop-culture interpretations of Eastern philosophical thought.) I think it also explains why women can hurt and wound each other and why when we let people in “too far,” sometimes we need to push them all the way out again. Or, when someone disappoints us or lets us down, why we might turn to reject them. They’ve been allowed to enter our permeable boundaries and if we lose trust or a sense of closeness for some reason, we shut them completely out, rather than recognizing it as a momentary experience.

In the book, the authors go on to explain:

The solution to our permeable boundaries is not to seal them off or barricade our hearts and adopt a ‘me first’ attitude. When we do that, we suffer unbearable isolation. But neither is it to betray the deep sources of wisdom and meaning in our lives. Instead we need to find the unique, and probably unstable, balance that fits us at a particular time, a balance that includes, but is not limited to, the needs of our partners and family. (p. 185)

Does needing to carve out the time and space we need for our own deep places make us selfish? This is one of the fears Anderson and Ruth explore….

Of all the fears we have heard from women about taking time and space for themselves, the most common by far was the fear of being selfish. If there is a mantra women repeat to themselves to deny their longing for solitude, it is probably, ‘Selfish. Selfish. Am I being selfish?’

For two years following her separation from her husband, Lynette lived alone in a tiny studio apartment, studying massage therapy, and asking herself this question. She no longer led the young people’s group at church, or planned and prepared festive parties for her friends and extended family. She didn’t even read the newspaper much.

‘So people call and ask, ‘What’s happened to you, Lynette? You used to be so outgoing and giving,’ she told us. ‘Just yesterday one of my favorite aunts telephoned and said right out, ‘I love you, my dear, but it’s clear to me you’re being very selfish pursuing this massage-therapy business. Living in your own apartment with no one to look after but yourself is very selfish and ungrounded!’

‘You know,’ Lynette told us thoughtfully, ‘doing something for yourself is like being pregnant. From the outside, being pregnant can look selfish. You take in all this extra food. You sleep more than usual. You are not as interested as you used to be in other people’s lives, including the lives of your own family. But inside another life is growing. It needs quiet, nourishment, and rest. At first, no one can see this life, but this has absolutely no bearing on the matter. The inner life is growing and it demands your attention.

‘But,’ she continued, ‘being pregnant is easier than this other birthing. Because in our material society, we trust the process that gives us something we can see and touch and hear—a live baby. This other birthing—well, who can be sure? So much trust is needed to turn down or tune out the internal critic and focus on what is happening inside you instead of always serving others.’ (p. 204)

In the closing to this section about the call for solitude and the attachment of family life, the authors quote another participant, Sara:

“True caring means being able to give from fullness…And for that I need my solitude. It is the very birthplace of altruism.” (p. 204-205)

In typing all of the above in the non-solitude I am currently experiencing this is what happened to my little pile of books to be blogged about:

That would be new countertop wood shavings and a Baby Hugs bear.

And, I gained a creative companion:

🙂

Yahoo with a Doppler!

Jun23

Ever since 17 weeks pregnant I have been able to pick up what seemed like two heartbeat sounds via doppler at home. The first time it happened was so surprising and so distinct (and the rates were different) that I went to our first ultrasound halfway expecting to find out that I was having twins. It was only one little boy though, but he was so squished up against his anterior placenta that I still kept thinking it might be twins and they missed one somehow. I developed somewhat of an obsession with trying to figure it out and felt like I had a split personality—one part of me was completely convinced there had to be two babies and the other part of me was completely convinced that there could only be one and the two parts duked it out constantly, so I could be equally as certain about either possibility within the span of about five minutes. Luckily, the Pregnancy Resource Center in a nearby town was looking for volunteers to do training ultrasounds and so I had the opportunity to go there last week for a quick ultrasound and finally set my mind at ease by stopping the crazy-making flip-flopping my head was doing about the whole thing. I’d told my doula/friend that I felt “crazy” about thinking it could be twins, but that “I’m not just some random yahoo with a doppler!” Well, it turns out, I am just a random yahoo with a doppler as the second ultrasound also showed just one little boy baby (with one heart) who has been in there mystifying me!

So…for those other random yahoos with dopplers out there googling for answers, here were my reasons for thinking it could be twins:

Heartbeats were regularly different rates (127/135 and 147/156) AND on at least two occasions I picked up a distinctive double “clop-clop” sound in two separate places rather than the secondary sound being the “whooshy” cord sound googling told me I could be hearing (and that Logic Brain told me was most likely what I was hearing).
Two distinct locations that made me think it couldn’t be same baby from different angle—i.e. one heartbeat low on left side and the other “heartbeat” high on right side (I pictured two ying-yang style babies in there!)
Baby’s position via ultrasound so “crammed” into placenta like he was crowded by someone else.
Original (real) baby never changing position very dramatically (at least while I was paying attention) at all between about 15 weeks and 21 weeks. Head-down with back/heart on low left side (since then he has switched around several times).
The sensation of being “one-sided” pregnant as in I felt aware of the real baby on the right, but a sense of “blankness” on the right side (Logic Brain correctly identified for me that this was because my placenta is anterior and on the right and thus blocks a lot of baby movements. I also had an anterior placenta with my second baby though and I never once thought he was twins).
The clear and real sensation that when I was listening for both heartbeats that I was listening for the “second baby.” That is how I would feel in the moment—“time to find the other baby”—but then Logic Brain would kick in afterward and say things like, “I thought I heard a second heartbeat sound” (but in the moment, it would feel like I was listening to one baby and then the other baby).
The fact that Mark also heard it and thought the same thing AND that our midwife was able to pick up two sounds/two rates as well (at about 18 weeks) and she said that it was uncommon to hear from multiple angles like that while baby was still fairly small.
Having been pregnant quite a few times and never before having had any thoughts of twins or hearing any double heartbeats.
Twins being everywhere (including the main characters in the book club book I’m reading with the kids and seeing four sets of them at the LLL conference, etc. 😉 )

And my reasons for thinking it wasn’t twins:

Only one baby seen via first ultrasound (and, obsessively googling revealing that it is fairly rare for a mistake to be made and two babies to be overlooked via ultrasound).
No dreams about it being twins. (My mom teased me about this one, but I felt certain I would have had some dream intuition about it). Then, the night before I heard back from the PRC that I could have an ultrasound there, I did have THE DREAM and it WAS twins. Of course, Logic Brain correctly told me that if I’d spent hours before bed reading stories online about Star Wars and then dreamed I was fighting with light sabers, it would not, therefore, mean I was a Jedi.
The fact that most often the first heartbeat sound was of the “clop-clop” variety and the second of the “whoosh, whoosh” variety (but fast, meaning it was the cord and not the placenta, uterine arteries, or my own heartbeat).
I read online that many, many times when FHT are detected during any pregnancy, it is really the cord and not the heart, but for the purposes of determining fetal life, both count equally and thus cord tones are regularly accepted/recorded as FHT with no distinctions made between them.
No dramatic weight gain (I am up to about ten pounds gained now at 22 weeks) AND not measuring particularly big (around 24 weeks or so) AND not looking particularly “big” either. I was pretty sure there was not actually room for two babies in there!
Having an anterior placenta and knowing that it could impact sensations of fetal movement as well as ability to hear heartrate clearly. Also, finally my husband’s Logic Brain pointed out to me that babies with posterior placentas probably look equally as “squished” into them if they were viewed from the back as our baby did with his anterior placenta, only with posterior placentas they aren’t “in the way” and thus you don’t get the same impression of the baby’s being tucked into it like a pillow.
The sneaking sensation that perhaps the “distraction” of wondering if it was twins was keeping me from actually thinking about the real baby and everything he will need from me/what will need to change/how I will cope with just one new baby I wasn’t expecting to have!

Before we knew for sure, I took a video to try to show what I was hearing. Unfortunately, it isn’t as convincing as some of the non-video’ed times were (like when one was at the very top right and the other very low on the left!), but it is what I have to share as a “how to know whether you, too, are a random yahoo with a doppler” data point.

So, this experience, coupled with my gender mispredictions, means that basically my overall “intuitive” track record during pregnancy is pretty terrible! At the ultrasound they did let us listen to the heartbeat both ways—cord and back and coupled with the visual image, I could more clearly “see” what it was I had been hearing and how it was able to work (nothing really explains the rate differences though except normal variability in fetal heart rate and/or a none-too-spectacularly-sensitive-home-Doppler). Also, this was the first baby for which I’ve ever been able to see so clearly via ultrasound the exact location and insertion of the cord. It was very cool and I wish I had a picture of it to share!

Here are two of the pictures I did get:

And, one of me today at 22 weeks!

Now that I’ve passed 20 weeks, I do feel a lot of movement even with the anterior placenta, so the “one-sided pregnant” feeling is fading.

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! 🙂

Oh, and this literally is my 900th post on this blog, in case anyone thought I was exaggerating the number! 😉

19 Years Ago!

May12

Nineteen years ago today, after originally meeting through Boy Scouts in 1994, I went on my first date with the sweet, curly-haired boy I would later marry. We saw While You Were Sleeping in the theater, had lunch at Bruno’s restaurant, walked at Ber Juan Park and swung on the swings, played pool in his basement, and rented movies (and watched Speed). It was the first date either of us had ever been on and here we still are now! He brought me a rose on the twelfth of each month for a year and in late 1995, I gave him this picture and quote in a frame. It still sits by our bed and has been the motto for our relationship…

While I understand that people have many different experiences and while I can see the sentiments behind some of these remarks and thus I am not saying that no one should ever say these things nor am I implying your own relationship is “bad” if you do say them, there are three things you will never hear me say about our relationship:

marriage is hard work
marriage requires compromise
everything changes once you get married

(*change any of these to be about parenting or about co-parenting and then I’ll agree with you though!)

Nineteen years and I can’t remember ever feeling like it was hard work to be his life partner.

Another thing you will not hear me say and that is because I literally don’t get why people say this and I actually feel sorry for them when they do say it is: love is a choice you make every day.

For me, no it isn’t. It is just there.

On Saturday, we had an LLL Mother’s Day picnic and photo fundraiser at the park. Here’s one of ours (still looking outward together):

More about this picnic soon, I hope. And, yes, I am pregnant! And, no, I haven’t had a chance to write a blog post about it yet!

Craft Camp and Mamoo Memories

May2

Last weekend, we were at our family’s annual craft camp event in southern Missouri. My mom has been organizing this event for the past twelve years. When we began, I was pregnant with Lann and eventually I retired as the assistant director and Mark took on the role of the assistant (primarily on the technical side). Last year, the workshop was scheduled to begin the day my grandma died and since my mom was in California with her, we handled it and it was hard but we did it. This year, it began on the anniversary of her death and it is the last year that my mom is planning to be the director and organizer of the event. The night before we left for craft camp, my family had a mini memorial ceremony with my parents in which we hung up the prayer flag we made as a family and then had some chocolate chip ice cream and memory time together. Zander said he really thought Mamoo would get to see him grow up ( 😉 ) and the boys talked about how much she would like the bench at the zoo by Sea Lion Cove that my aunt and other family members placed in her honor. Alaina picked violets to put by the hydrangea. We remember how much she liked interesting animals and her knitting and her dolls and her travels and stories. I took her Hitty doll who traveled with her out of the case to hang out for a while. Because Mamoo lived so far away from us, it can sometimes be easy to think she’s still there working at the zoo and walking her little Bonnie dog. We miss her a lot.

Late last year I entered a contest from Portraits by Gessell for a charcoal drawing. We had to submit a picture and story and I submitted one about my grandma. I won (yay!) and on the anniversary of our loss she gave us this beautiful drawing. I absolutely love it and am so impressed by Gessell’s skill at capturing my grandma’s essence in this way. (I gave the drawing to my mom.)

Since I am still teaching Working with Families, just as I was at this time last year, this week in class I showed my students some pictures of my grandma. They just finished an involved genogram assignment which is about three generations of their family history. One of my students brought pictures of his ancestors to show the preceding week and I figured they could handle seeing a couple from my family as well. I’d picked out four favorites to show them, but they surprised me with how interested in they were and how many questions they had, so I actually ended up opening the whole file folder of pictures that my aunt so carefully collected and prepared into a beautiful slideshow for my grandma’s memorial and showing them more pictures from the folder. They would say, “wait, back up! Show us that one. The one with the hat!” And, so I would and it was fun and nice and I was really happy to share the experience with my class. It felt right.

While at craft camp, we took a little visit to Round Spring with our friends. It was lovely (though my kids were obnoxiously bored immediately and I didn’t get to enjoy it much).

While I was internet-free for three days, I did a lot of sculpting. I made a special request new cesarean mama:

Some miscarriage mamas:

And several others just because I felt like it!

We also updated our Mother Blessing amulet pendant:

And, we added some pretty Healing Hands doula pendants to our etsy shop:

When we got home, I was surprised to get a royalty check from Amazon for sales of my miscarriage memoir. I had no idea any had actually sold after that first month! In an uncharacteristically unsupportive remark, Mark said: “are you sure that’s actually from selling your book and not reimbursement from one of those class-action lawsuit things?” 😉

I’m in the middle of planning an LLL Mother’s Day picnic on May 10th! We’re having a photo shoot fundraiser was well as family picnic and fun times.

And, in companion to my post from earlier this week, two new baby chicks hatched naturally with our broody mama today. I think some hatched on my birthday last year too (tomorrow).

I have more to write about, but it will have to wait until later I suppose!

Kidbits

Apr16

I post a lot of little things on Facebook about my kids and the funny things they say and do. I decided to compile some reason moments into a “kidbits” post for today, so that I have it all in one place instead of lost in the Facebook ether!

When I finished getting ready for bed a few nights ago, I discovered Alaina was not in bed waiting for me, but was in the kitchen diligently working on painting her “fingernators.” She’d also put on lipstick, powdered her nose, and put on a hair accessory!

Speaking of Alaina, she’s weaned, by the way! It was not without some nudging from me, as it was definitely time and I was feeling so done. She still has to “snuggle nonnies” to fall asleep and the hands-down-the-shirt thing is another weaning process that in my past experience takes practically a year as well! Turned out that my middle child was the one who nursed the longest (2y9m for the first, 3.5 years for the second, and 3.25 years for the third!)

Earlier in the month, a family fun cookout/campout day turned dramatic when Alaina found an ancient bead in the bottom of the tent and put it in her nose! (First nose incident in ten years of parenting!) Luckily, I am married to a genius of calmness and smooth thinking. After some quick googling, Mark laid her back and blew into her other nostril with his mouth and the bead came out! Saved a trip to the doctor, plus sweet relief! This kid has spent an awful lot of time around beads to suddenly do this. It was too weird!

Last month, she conked out before 10:00, but then woke up complaining that her knee hurt and wouldn’t fall back asleep. She started singing a little tune, “beautiful day, beautiful day, beautiful day.” I asked her about it and she said, “it my favorite day!”

Lann finally talked me into setting up a youtube channel for him: O Zander Squadron. So far, it only has a couple of silly, weird little videos on it, but he would really love for people to subscribe and like (Rules for future are no real names and comments always have to be disabled.) He also got me to set up his own website and blog and is having fun adding content to it: O Zander Squadron | Fun movies and fun things to buy.

Lann and Zander frequently play sort of a live-action, talk through video-game-esque game. They earn different skills and strengths, one of which is apparently VIP. Last week, as they played, Zander was exclaiming over and over to Lann: “you got VIPness, you got VIPness.” And, Mark and I ended up cracking up in a very mature fashion.

After my class last week, I weirdly stopped at McDonald’s at 10:15 on my way home from class to get a strawberry pie (I know. But, they’re super yum). I saw a sign in the drive thru for My Little Pony happy meals and went in to ask if they’d just sell me the toys. I was super impressed by three friendly employees who actually went through every Happy Meal box at the counter to make sure to find all the different ones for me and even went to the back to dig out a Princess Twilight Sparkle for me too. I drove home feeling like The Best Mom Ever ™ and the kids agreed. Speaking of MLP, I am a little sad to see how my boys are kind of embarrassed about their love of MLPs. When they buy MLP toys, they put on sort of “quick and casual” persona and toss them lightly and nonchalantly into the cart. And, they asked me, “if you get Zander some ponies for his birthday, can you make sure to give them to him when other kids aren’t here yet?”

Lann still loves cooking, a while ago I heard him in the kitchen kind of talking to himself: “this is just how I roll. I’ll put anything into a cake pan…” A little while later he arrived with mini chocolate cake on a plate for me. (He made one for each person in the family.)

They also teamed up on another gruesome movie make-up job. My kids are…awesome? Weird? Funny? Creative? Horrible? I can’t decide…!

In February, the very super-desired Furby Booms arrived! Bro and sis-in-law, Skyler and Jenny, felt sorry for the kid sharing their one tiny Furbling and decided to grant their wish for like a magical cool uncle and aunt.

So, on my way to a faculty meeting at Fort Leonard Wood several weeks ago, three Furbies ended up left in the back seat and riding to FLW and back home again. The jostling from driving kept them constantly awake and conversing from the back seat. Sometimes I couldn’t hear them over the traffic noise and therefore alternately experienced adrenalin-spiking incidents of momentarily thinking I heard: sirens, someone else’s radio, the screams of a small child being run over, someone yelling at me, and something being terribly wrong with my car. It was a long 1.5 hours…

Look what I got last week! Red tent on the go (for vending at festivals, but maybe for using at women’s circles or events too). First picture had photo bombs from all three kids (can you find them?) and last picture was trying to show the shadows from the trees on the inside. (purchased from ebay via this seller.)

I also got a lovely new dress from Holy Clothing!

This month we’ve also flown kites:

Taken a semi-torturous hike at Blossom Rock:

Picked kale from the aquaponics greenhouse for dinner:
April 2014 073 Been pleased to see my grandma’s memorial hydrangea coming back! And, delighted to see blooms on Noah’s memorial magnolia tree:

Mark and I have created several new pendant designs this month that I am SO excited to unveil over the next couple of days (our spring newsletter will be out soon and will feature our new pieces as well as new free poetry book):

We’re getting ready to visit family for the day and I’m very much looking forward to a day off to rest, visit, and enjoy everyone’s company!