Finishing Up!

Jan5

I have had a crabby and annoying day for much of the day, which is not the frame of mind I envisioned being in when writing this post! I originally set out to write about what a nice time I’ve been having the last couple of days, sooooo….going to just write and perhaps I’ll recapture some of the peace and sense of harmony that was prompting me to write in the first place!

On Sunday, I had a very delightful time spontaneously working on the birth altar I planned to make. When I say spontaneous, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t know I was going to do it—I knew I was, someday—just that I suddenly started working on it and basically didn’t quit until I was finished and it came together in a perfect way for me. I felt so good and content after making it. Inspired by that experience, I then wrote down a list of my fears about the birth (this was also on my to-do-before-actual-birthing-day list) and then did a Hypnobabies “fear release” session after that. And, then I burned them all up in the kitchen sink. More good feelings!

Also on Sunday, while the kids were at my parents’ house, I worked in the bedroom getting all of the baby’s clothes sorted and into the right boxes as well as assembling my special tub of birth supplies so that everything is easily available in one place and no one has to ask me for anything—I even put a box of raspberry leaf tea in, which could also easily just stay in the cupboard where it usually lives, but it is right there with everything else now. While I was doing this, Mark worked on sorting out his own clothes and decluttering the closet. We also decluttered some of the “hot spots” on our kitchen counters that attract random piles of nothing important. So, more good feelings about that!

The next morning, I woke up before the kids and did the Hypnobabies “visualize your perfect birth” exercise (not a CD, my imagination). It suggested spending about 5 minutes and I spent almost 20 minutes—since I am having some strange “death” fears about this birth, I went ahead and carried the visualization through to my being 89 and then to the baby being 89 ;-D Maybe this was excessive, but I felt good about it—ending the visualization with just the initial “hi, baby!” moment didn’t feel like enough to me! So, then I felt really positive and complete about that 🙂 I also finished my birth altar that morning—I put a glaze over the images, took pictures, etc. I also listened to the pregnancy and birth affirmations from Hypnobabies while I did some of my other work. Later, we went on a nature exploration walk in the woods to enjoy the nice weather and when we came back, I read some of my kids’ homebirth books to them—Welcome with Love, Runa’s Birth, and We’re Having a Homebirth. They are excited and want to be there when the baby is born, but I’m strongly leaning toward only having them present if they happen to wake up. I don’t know that I want them woken up if they’re not ready (I realized this for sure after Z mentioned how he is going to be “screaming” when the baby is born. Um. No, thanks on that).

Then, on Tuesday, I had some more belly pictures taken. It is fun to be “special” and get my pictures taken 🙂 I love all of the ones I’ve seen so far from this shoot, but these two are really good!

Today, I had my first prenatal appointment with my midwife at our own house. I’ve spent the entire pregnancy not being able to picture her in our home and so, now, I can—because she’s actually been here. I hadn’t really realized before that she hasn’t really ever met Mark or my mom, other than very short introductions about 6 years ago! She seems to think I will have the baby early—baby’s head is very low (which I can feel, for sure!) and she said my amniotic fluid has decreased. She also thinks baby is on the small side, but I think I will fool people once again. I only measure 33 weeks, which is kind of funny, because I wonder what I would look like measuring 40 weeks—I guess pretty extreme! I have been having a lot of pre-birthing waves (trying out my Hypnobabies words!). I always do, but they’ve definitely increased in frequency to about every 15-20 minutes throughout the day. I also reminded her that I don’t expect to call her until near the end, because what I want from her is immediate postpartum help—I like being almost alone during my birthing time (more Hypnobabies words. I like this one especially—it isn’t “labor” it is my “birthing time.” :))

After the midwife left, my mom stayed and we went through my box of birth supplies so she knows what is where. I also made sure she knows how to use my camera because she is on picture-duty. I also showed Mark and my mom the things I learned about neonatal resuscitation at the training I attended last month and we practiced with my resuscitation bag so that we all know how to do “positive pressure ventilation” and chest compressions on a newborn now. I know this might seem kind of over the top, but I find it very empowering to know how to do these things now—they always seemed “mysterious” and specialized before—and it doesn’t make me feel like I’m planning for a “worst case,” but that I’ve completely resolved any fear I had about things I wouldn’t know how to do for my own baby if I was giving birth alone! We’ve been talking about needing to do this since the end of Dec., so it felt very good to get everything all squared away in this manner.

Really the only things left I’d like to get done now before she is born are the belly cast and my blessingway and to crochet one more hat for her! (Of course, I have non-birth/non-baby things in abundance that I’d also like to get done—double checking the exam questions for my online class, finalizing the FoMM newsletter, submitting two articles, finalizing some the blog posts in my drafts folder, etc., etc., etc. , <sob>), but right now my mind is on the specifically getting-ready-for-baby to-dos and I’ve done ’em! Go, me!

More Birth Art!

Nov22

On Saturday, I became inspired to create some new birth art and worked on it rather than the other work that was on my list.

I wanted to make a “womb labyrinth” finger labyrinth and after some experimentation and a LOT of time, I made this one, using a drawing I previously created as my model:

This was my original drawing from 2007 on which I based the clay design:

Since I had the polymer clay out, I couldn’t resist making another one of my birth goddess sculptures. This one I colored using gold pigment and she looks very royal. I feel like making these sculptures has helped me integrate “pregnant woman” back into my identity and I really like this one in particular:

And, here is a picture of the two together—a nice day’s work if I do say so myself 🙂 And, more consistent with my “savoring” and self-care goals than some of the other things that I had on my list for the day (but hey, write two book reviews was on there and I did that too!)

On Sunday, my inspiration continued and I made another womb labyrinth that I like better than the first one:

I also experimented and made a different type that turned out pretty neat too:

Giveaway: Great Gals Book/Journal

Nov17

This giveaway is now closed. The winners were Jodi and enjoybirth!

GREAT GALS: Inspired Ideas for Living a Kick-Ass Life by cartoonist Summer Pierre is a creative and fun combination of journal prompts, journal pages, quick quizzes, inspirational quotes, black and white art, and mini-bios of dozens of amazing women, both past and present. You can use the book for journaling, doodling, exploring your creativity and your thoughts, but you can also use it for a quick dose of women’s wisdom and inspiration. The women profiled range from Cyndi Lauper to Lucille Ball to Emily Dickinson to Ani DiFranco to Julia Child making this book just plain awesome. As the press info notes, this is NOT “your typical inspirational women’s journal”—the goal is empowerment and honest, assertive self-exploration. It would make a fun holiday gift for any woman, young or old, who is interested in living a powerful life.

Luckily for you, I am able to offer TWO copies of Great Gals as a giveaway this month! To enter, just leave a comment telling me which woman in the world—past or present—you find the most inspirational. I will draw winners via random number generator next Wednesday at 9:00. For an extra entry, you can share this giveaway via Facebook and then post a separate comment letting me know you did so.

You can watch a trailer for Great Gals here and you can check in with the author/illustrator via her website.

Kids & Plans

Nov16

My kids have always had fairly high touch needs and since they’ve been sick recently that been even more clingy/touchy than usual. Their preferred state would be to hang out like this for much of the day:

They of course wiggle and pinch each other’s noses, etc. and do not lie there quietly, but their preferred location is still actually to be ON my body…

This has been kind of exhausting lately as well as almost literally suffocating. I enjoy snuggling with my kids, but they often manage to do it in the least nurturing way possible! I’ve been getting a little stressed thinking about the addition of someone else’s attention needs to the family—this is a good thing though, really. Before, I used to not really be sure I was actually going to have a living baby at the end of this pregnancy, so I didn’t give a huge amount of thought to integrating her into our lives (it was the “if” thing). The pendulum has been shifting for some time from “if” to WHEN, and now that I’ve hit 30 weeks, I feel even more confident every day that someone new will indeed be joining our family in January. Thus, the time for getting realistic and practical and planning ahead for the changes she will bring is NOW…

So, I had a semi-neurotic freak-out this evening about how I will possibly manage to split my attention any further, etc., etc. It was a long, tiring day in general and my mood-odometer was on “depleted.” After some talking with my husband, I regained much of my equilibrium and we made some plans for making some more changes around the house (like his putting the kids to bed more often—things like that). I am still having “can’t say no” issues and spent more time today thinking about/doing something I should have said no to as well as NOT doing things that I “really want to do…” Same old, same old. Do I really need to write another post about it?! 😉 No.

So, back to the “plans” part of my subject today, I’ve collected quite an assortment of certifications in my 5.5 years in birth work and you would think I would not need another (I don’t think I ever even mentioned that I finished my ICEA Prenatal Fitness Educator certification two months ago!). I occasionally toy with the notion of sitting for the IBCLC exam—the criteria keep changing and each year I think that maybe I should do it. But, then I realize that I’m not really interested in professional LC work. I’ll stick to my mother-to-mother support and don’t need to go further. I have also briefly wondered if I’ve heard a “call” to midwifery (it seems like many doulas and CBE’s have “midwife” as the eventual destination in their birthwork path), but then quickly remembered that I have serious “blood” issues and doubt I could actually handle the nitty-gritty of midwifery. So, I’ve concluded that birth educator really is the right place for me. However, I’ve been feeling dissatisfied with over a year with my outlet for this work—something has been missing for me and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but I think (as I have previously written) it is to go deeper. When I read information about Birthing from Within trainings or re-read the book (6 times so far) or read Pam’s blog, I know somewhere deep in my heart that I am meant for Birthing from Within. And, some day, I am actually going to manage to attend a training. I’ve had it in my heart since I was pregnant with Lann in 2003, but so many things always made more “sense” or were more “convenient,” so I always did those instead. It will probably take another three years or so before I can actually do it, but I’m really going to do it eventually. Just felt like making note of that commitment to myself in a public way!

And, continuing with my sort of rambling, not that on-topic way, Mark got his faceting machine recently and faceted one of the quartz crystals that we collected on our recent trip to AR:

I was pretty impressed! He is really good at saying, “I think I’d like to try that” and then reading about it, getting some equipment and doing it (whatever it is) with pretty pro results 🙂

More About Self-Care

Nov15

I recently shared a little about my desire to step up my self-care/self-nurturing at this point in my life and some time ago I shared a guest post from Renée Trudeau about balanced living and saying no (I need to re-read this!). I greatly enjoy Renée’s free monthly self-care teleclasses based on her book, The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal–-somehow, they always contain exactly what it is I need to hear at that moment. Anyway, I’m pleased to have another guest post to share from Renée today.

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Self-Care: My Best Friend

by Renée Trudeau

Recently, I spoke to a wonderful group of about fifty women in their 30s-50s from the National Charity League about the Power of Self-Care. It’s a really cool group of mothers and daughters who work together to support their communities through various social service projects.

When I asked how many women in the room were familiar with the concept of self-care (read more from my newsletter on this topic), only one woman raised her hand.

As much as I want to believe that this concept—which has been popularized by self-care advocates Jennifer Louden, and Cheryl Richardson in the 80s and 90s—has become mainstream, I was reminded that we still have a long way to go before people believe that it’s not only our birthright to nurture and nourish ourselves, it’s our responsibility to do so.

When I was first introduced to the concept of self-care: taking time to fill my cup first, before helping others, it seemed strange and foreign. Almost like something else to put on my “to do” list. But as I started to slow down and practice more self-acceptance, release a lot of my controlling behavior and perfectionism, begin to really listen to my body and spirit and enjoy spending time with my sweet self, my life began to change radically.

I felt like I had come home. Like this was *really* the way we are supposed to live.

I now realize that being open to and ultimately, embracing self-care was the single biggest thing I have ever done to positively and profoundly change my life.

And the journey keeps shifting and changing. You don’t “get it” and you’re done. It keeps evolving and unfolding. And the more you love and accept yourself, the more in touch with your physical/emotional/spiritual needs you become.

I often have moments in my life when I pause and realize how drastically different my days are now than they were ten years ago (before self-care).

I used to push myself really hard. I used to barrel through to-do lists (I was a master at efficiency and took pride at how much I used to be able to get done—anyone relate?). I was way too focused on “doing” and not very focused on “being.”

The other day, I had a challenging day emotionally and a lot on my plate. Realizing this, I went to a noon yoga class instead of an intense early morning weights class. I made sure I ate foods that made me feel great. I let some things go, so I could take a short rest before my speaking engagement last night. And, since I didn’t have much time to prepare before this event, I allowed myself to deliver a ‘good is good enough” speech, knowing that there wouldn’t be much time to prepare for the talk (which by the way, received rave reviews).

During stressful times—like the current economic crisis our nation is experiencing—it’s more important than ever to take time to nurture ourselves. (Read my latest Career Management Newsletter on tips on navigating your career/life during uncertain times.)

I received two calls from national companies recently to speak to their employees about balance/self-renewal.
I think we’re all starting to get that when our environment and things around us get really crazy, we have nowhere else to go, but within.

Baby steps. I’ve been working on my self-care practice for 9 years. And, I still have a long way to go.

BIO:
Renée Peterson Trudeau is a nationally-recognized life balance expert/coach. Trudeau’s work has been featured in US News and World Report, Working Mother, American Way, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping and numerous business publications and consumer media. Trudeau is the author of the award-winning The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life. Thousands of women around the U.S./Canada are starting and joining Personal Renewal Groups based on the Guide, as a way to enhance balance and well-being in their lives. Learn about her next free Live Inside Out teleclass or her upcoming self-renewal retreats at www.ReneeTrudeau.com/calendar.