Tuesday Tidbits: Pregnant Woman

Jun10

I’ve got a whole collection of thoughts rolling around and wanting to be shared! Tonight is my teaching night, however, so I have to boil it down.

First of all, I’m 20 weeks pregnant already! I can hardly believe it, though I also feel as if I’ve been pregnant for a “long time” too. I remain in a state of being both constantly aware of being pregnant and constantly in something like disbelief or “denial.” I feel surprised when I see myself in the mirror and in my head I still feel distanced from the idea of being pregnant and the identity of Pregnant Woman. It still feels somehow “far away,” like that chapter of my life is still closed for me mentally.

This picture was taken at the St. Louis Renaissance Festival on Sunday, one day before 20 weeks. I wasn’t sure my pretty Holy Clothing dress would actually still fit, but it did!

One of the reasons I decided to hire a midwife for this pregnancy was because I feel like I need to bring it back into the front of my mind and to give time and attention to this experience. I need some time to focus on being pregnant and on my new baby and have interaction with someone who cares about exactly that. I need someone to pay attention to me as Pregnant Woman and to care about me in that way that midwives do so well.

I finally added a couple of items to my Amazon wish list for new baby boy as well. I’m intrigued by this Nesting Days carrier and also by the new Ergobaby Four Position 360 Baby Carrier.

(Yes, I do still have Alaina’s Ergo, but apparently I think maybe each baby needs its own new baby carrier!)

With regard to Pregnant Woman, I took the leap and signed up for the online Sacred Pregnancy retreat training in August. I’ve thought about it several times and now feels like the right time for me—I hope to benefit from it both personally and professionally.

Signing up for this training represents another moment of Leonie Dawson‘s #AmazingYear workbook 100 Things list, ftw. I had it on my list as a tentative, but it has now become a reality.

Speaking of the Amazing Year workbook, I’m gearing up to give two presentations at the La Leche League of Missouri Conference coming up this week. I’m doing a session on the amazing year and my first continuing education eligible session on active birth/pelvic mobility. I’ve been working hard on preparing for both sessions as well as getting all of our booth stuff ready, since we’ll be having a Brigid’s Grove booth at the conference too. (Mark will be working at it while I attend sessions.) My LLL Group also has a sales table in the boutique for which I am providing most of the items and we also got silent auction donations ready over the weekend.

Back to the Renaissance Festival where some dear friends were working as pirates, I received this lovely surprise birthday gift.

It is perfect for my Red Tent plans for August!

Speaking of the Red Tent, I enjoyed watching this video again today and thinking about my plans and wishes for this event:

And, surfacing from celebration and shifting to the pain women experience as part of the childbearing year, I appreciated two powerful articles this morning. The first was about a backlash to the backlash with regard to traumatic birth:

If we want to reduce the prevalence of traumatic birth experiences, we’re going to have to confront some common expectations, narratives, and perceptions around childbirth to help shape women’s beliefs and emotionally prepare them for the realities of childbirth. Childbirth is often glamorized as a spiritual journey, but physically, it is called labor for a reason. Sure, it can be a transcendent experience for many women, but it can also be a challenging ordeal involving blood, sweat, and tears, among other bodily fluids. Without adding any other stressful or complicating circumstances, childbirth already has all the necessary ingredients to be bewildering, frightening, and emotionally exhausting. And yet, because of the subjective nature of experience, two mothers can have the same events happen during birth, and one can emerge merely rattled while the other emerges with PTSD.

A good place to start with recalibrating beliefs and expectations of childbirth is with the image of an ideal birth with little pain, no complications or medical interventions, dim lights, and soft music. It’s a lovely and inspiring conception of birth, but we should also acknowledge that absolute perfection is rarely a reality. Most births don’t have complications but some do, and it is unfortunate when women feel they or their births are failures for failing to meet their preconceived notions of success. Women should strive for a birth that is manageable and meaningful, but without a sense of entitlement that it must be fast, painless, and stoic. Holding unrealistic expectations of childbirth can set women up for disappointment…

via Recalibrating Our Expectations of Childbirth | Cara Paiuk.

(Just a note that the conclusion of this otherwise powerful piece felt a little forced and a little too close to “at least you have a healthy baby” for my taste.)

And, then there was this essay about a cesarean picture on Facebook that was reported as “violent”:

This is motherhood. Raw and uncut. Refuse to be silent, show up and stand out, rip off the covers and be seen. This is the motherhood behind closed doors. This is the warriors path and these women are foot soldiers on the battlefield to make miracles and bring fragile lives onto this Earthen soil. Don’t let anyone tell you your birth wasn’t beautiful, that that your moment of utter transcendence wasn’t real. Never believe for a moment that you, too, did not emerge a butterfly…

via A Slightly Twisted Fairy Tale » The warrior with a scar.

The cesarean post reminded me of some of my own previous posts about Cesarean Courage. And, the piece about recalibrating childbirth reminded me of these two articles, the first about the strength found in our most shadowy “what’s ifs” and darkest places:

I’ve also come to realize that despite the many amazing and wonderful, profound and magical things about birth, the experience of giving birth is very likely to take some kind of toll on a woman—whether her body, mind, or emotions. There is usually some type of “price” to be paid for each and every birth and sometimes the price is very high. This is, I guess, what qualifies, birth as such an intense, initiatory rite for women. It is most definitely a transformative event and transformation does not usually come without some degree of challenge. Something to be triumphed over or overcome, but something that also leaves permanent marks. Sometimes those marks are literal and sometimes they are emotional and sometimes they are truly beautiful, but we all earn some of them, somewhere along the line. And, I also think that by glossing over the marks, the figurative or literal scars birth can leave on us, and talking about only the positive side we can deny or hide the full impact of our journeys. What if it was okay to share our scars with each other? Not in a fear-mongering or “horror story” manner, but in honesty, depth, and truth—what if we let other women see the full range of our courage?

via What If…She’s Stronger than She Knows… | Talk Birth.

And, the second about the many possibilities for birth regret:

I’ve come to realize that just as each woman has moments of triumph in birth, almost every woman, even those with the most blissful birth stories to share, have birth regrets of some kind of another. And, we may often look at subsequent births as an opportunity to “fix” whatever it was that went “wrong” with the birth that came before it. While it may seem to some that most mother swap “horror stories” more often than tales of exhilaration, I’ve noticed that those who are particularly passionate about birth, may withhold or hurry past their own birth regret moments, perhaps out of a desire not to tarnish the blissful birth image, a desire not to lose crunchy points, or a desire not to contribute to the climate of doubt already potently swirling around pregnant women…

via Birth Regrets? | Talk Birth.

Last night, I enjoyed looking at photos from a very interesting art exhibit called Mama that explores birth as a creative process…

The artist has a beautiful etsy shop as well in which she sells her “mamamore” sculptures:

I’m currently looking into ways to reproduce some of my own sculptures, so that I can make them more readily available to women without burning myself out in the process. Here is a photo of a recent batch that mostly headed to Canada for a shop there, with a few extras that went on etsy (and a few are prototypes for possible casting in resin).

May we celebrate pregnancy, birth, and motherhood in all of its unfolding mystery—both the power and the pain.

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!

The WHO Code: Why Should We Care?

May23

“Knowledge serves no purpose if it is not spread around. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, an entrenched ignorance is kept in place through a culture created and maintained by commercial interests.” – Gabrielle Palmer, The Politics of Breastfeeding

The international WHO Code of marketing breastmilk substitutes reached its 33rd anniversary this week. This means that for 33 years the United States has failed to live up to international standards AND for 33 years infant formula corporations have successfully ignored the WHO Code. In addition, they have convinced over half of U.S. hospitals to serve as marketing shills for their products—distributing their marketing materials—-samples, coupons, booklets, and other ads-—in health care settings in a manner that is well-established to undermine women’s breastfeeding success and to have a negative impact on infant health. Quite simply, getting breastfeeding “advice” from a formula company in a form of a cute little booklet with a happy baby on the front is like getting nutrition “advice” from McDonald’s. It is not neutral or benign and it does not have the interests of mom and baby at heart, it is a skillful marketing tactic, nothing else. I have long repeated the Ban the Bags catchphrase: Doctors’ offices and hospitals should market health and nothing else. To be clear, I would consider all medication-sponsored posters, etc. to fall in same category, not just formula. Refusing to honor the WHO Code isn’t actually illegal, however. The US voted against the proposal in the first place—on the original signing of the Code there were 118 votes for the Code, one against (the United States!), and 3 abstentions. Eventually more than 160 countries participated in the WHO Code. When the United States did accept it, they adopted it as guidelines to distribute to large manufacturers. Providers should follow it, but they can actually can do what they want. UNICEF has a state of the code chart that breaks down which country does what with the Code. US is under the no action category along with a small handful of other countries that includes Somalia and Kazakhstan.

This issue is a systemic problem and it goes WAY beyond just the individual mom and her baby! Breastfeeding or not breastfeeding is actually a political and public health issue in the US, not simply a “personal choice.” Personal choice is the language American people and formula manufacturers love to use and it is a very, very successful manner of appealing the individualist nature of our culture, but in this case it is actually code for, “let huge multibillion dollar corporations exploit women at will and our health care providers will even help them do it!”

While the WHO code has no legal teeth in the US (it IS law in some other countries, but it was written in terms that allow national governments to make their own decisions about how/if to enforce or participate in it). It is still VERY important for health care providers and US distributors and marketers to be aware that their actions are out of sync with international guidelines and that they are in violation of international standards.

…breastfeeding, like all aspects of women’s lives, occurs in a context, a context that involves a variety of “circles of support” or lack thereof. Women don’t “fail” at breastfeeding because of personal flaws, society fails breastfeeding women and their babies every day through things like minimal maternity leave, no pumping rooms in workplaces, formula advertising and “gifts” in hospitals, formula company sponsorship of research and materials for doctors, the sexualization of breasts and objectification of women’s bodies, and so on and so forth. According to Milk, Money, and Madness (1995), “…infant formula sales comprise up to 50% of the total profits of Abbott Labs, an enormous pharmaceutical concern.” (p. 164) And the US government is the largest buyer of formula, paying for approximately 50% of all formula sold in the nation…

via Breastfeeding as an Ecofeminist Issue | Talk Birth.

These past posts take a look at the systemic context surrounding breastfeeding women and how it impacts their “personal choices.”

Breastfeeding as an Ecofeminist Issue

Preventing Culturally Induced Lactation Failure

A Bias Toward Breastfeeding?

Tuesday Tidbits: Breastfeeding Research

Wednesday Tidbits: World Breastfeeding Week!

Controversies in Breastfeeding

The Impact of Birth on Breastfeeding

100 Things List!

May21

As part of Leonie Dawson’s Amazing Year workbook, I wrote a list of 100 things to do in 2014. My blog has been fairly quiet lately, but that doesn’t actually mean I have been! A lot of the energy previously used for blogging has been diverted into other exciting projects on my 100 Things list. 🙂 I finished my second free gift offering for newsletter subscribers at Brigid’s Grove (if you aren’t signed up yet, fill in your email on the right hand side of the screen at the BG website and you will receive the free book within 24 hours). This freebie is a 56 page book of earth-based poetry. Most of the poems were originally published on my other blog, but there are several released only in this book (so far).

We’re also offering a spring giveaway of one of our new healing hands pendants AND also a 10% off discount code for our etsy shop (2014SPRING10OFF).

“…Medicine Woman reminds you

to sleep when you’re tired

to eat when you’re hungry

to drink when you’re thirsty

and to dance

just because.

Medicine Woman

let her bind up your wounds

apply balm to your soul

and hold you

against her shoulder

when you need to cry.

Medicine Woman

Earth healer

she’s ready to embrace you…”

via Amethyst Healing Hands Pendant by BrigidsGrove.

Even more exciting from a personal perspective is that I actually finished writing my thesis. Yes, after all my many days of joking, “Oops! I didn’t write my thesis today!” I suddenly really did write it. I had more done than I thought and all I needed was some class-free, focused writing time (my spring school session ended this past Saturday) to get it to a finished position. It might be a first draft if significant revisions are requested/needed (the format is somewhat non-traditional), but I’m hopeful it might be a last draft too! I’ve been working on my D.Min since 2011. I realized last year that I had almost the right credits to do an M.Div first (since my existing master’s degree is in social work instead, I had to take a LOT of M.Div classes as part of the D.Min program), I just had to add a thesis and a couple of classes to the work I’d already done. So, I call it a “pitstop,” because I don’t really need to do it and I’m actually working on something else, but…here I go! I also found out recently that I really only have three D.Min classes and my dissertation left. I’m giving it at least another year on the dissertation though. When I started the thesis idea, I had more like eight classes left, so it seemed like further away and “might as well.” After two partial starts and two different prospectuses submitted, I switched gears again and I actually used my Earthprayer book above as the basic frame or structure for the thesis. I’d been attempting to work with a 400-page document and then I realized it was way too much. The Earthprayer book had ended up being a distillation of some basic themes from my year in the woods experiment and I thought, “ah ha! I’ve accidentally been working on my thesis without knowing it!” I developed it with articles and essays and my theory and process of theapoesis and magically I produced 84 pages and 26,000 words! (My thesis handbook says it should be 80 pages and 25,000 words. Go, me!)

I also booked an official screening of the Red Tent Movie: Things We Don’t Talk About. It will be held in Rolla on August 2nd in conjunction with Rolla Birth Network’s annual MamaFest celebration and it is the first ever screening of this film in Missouri! Before I booked it, a friend surprised me with this lovely little Red Moon painting and said it was for me to use in my eventual Red Tent. I felt motivated after getting it and booked the screening the next morning.

After doing this and apparently feeling the freedom of being off of work for the next two weeks, I took advantage of a full moon special and somewhat impulsively decided to sign up for the Chrysalis Woman circle leader program! This was on my Leonie Dawson 100 Things list with a question mark. Now, it is a question mark no more because I signed up and paid…hope it was a good idea! I’ve only downloaded the manuals and listened to the first week’s materials so far, but I really like it. It feels very thorough and comprehensive and feels like a good value for the discounted price it was being offered for. I’m still a little surprised at myself that I did it though!

I read a post from Elisabeth Esther a few days ago about being all blogged out and I realized this feels true for me too. I’ve been diverting a lot of my writing AND creating energy this year into other projects that I feel really good about and my blog-time is simply falling lower and lower on my priority list.

I also read this post from The Minimalists:

It was Henry David Thoreau who famously said, “It is not enough to be busy. The question is: what are we busy about?” And if I were to append his quandary, I’d say, “It is not enough to be busy. The question is: what are we focused on?”

You see, there is a vast delta between being busy and being focused. The former involves the typical tropes of productivity—anything to keep our hands moving, to keep going, to keep the conveyer belt in motion. It is no coincidence that we refer to mundane tasks as “busywork.” Busywork works well for factories and robots and fascism, but not so great for anyone who’s attempting to do something meaningful with their waking hours.

Being focused, on the other hand, involves attention, awareness, and intentionality. In my case, people sometimes mistake my focused time for busyness. That’s because being completely focused apes many of the same surface characteristics as being busy: namely, the majority of my time is occupied.

via Not Busy, Focused | The Minimalists.

This helped me understand why I bristle I little bit when I am described as “busy” or people say that I’m “too busy,” or whatever little cracks people tend to make about being an “overachiever,” or whatever. While I sometimes feel too busy or overloaded or stretched too thin, etc. it doesn’t feel like busy work or “filling time,” it feels like being focused and enjoying lots of projects/being firmly and passionately devoted to quite a few things at once.

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! 😉

Breastfeeding as an Ecofeminist Issue: Collage Project

May15

Since January I’ve been working with an independent study student from Prescott College on a self-designed course called Breastfeeding and Ecofeminism. Her class ended this month and her final project was a collage making the connection between the world body and the female body and reflecting the idea that how we treat women and their bodies as a culture is mirrored by our global treatment of the planet (and, conversely, if we change how women’s bodies our treated, our treatment of the planet will also change). As she worked on her collage, she also made a series of digital collage images for use on social media (see above), using quotes from her reading for the course.

“Governments and commercial companies will ‘invest’ billions in expensive new technology: roads, bridges, airports, dams or power generation plants, ‘for the good of society’. They may even ‘invest’ in schools and hospitals, but the crucial primary investment in the emotional, physical and mental health of all humans, which breastfeeding and mothering provide, is invisible.”

—Gabrielle Palmer (The Politics of Breastfeeding, p. 333)

As my student remarked, this is an atrocity. AND, it is one that is largely “invisible” to the average person.

I also find this quote relevant from The Politics of Women’s Spirituality:

“Human life is valuable and sacred when it is the freely given gift of the Mother—through the human mother. To bear new life is a grave responsibility, requiring a deep commitment—one which no one can force on another. To coerce a woman by force or fear or guilt or law or economic pressure to bear an unwanted child is the height of immorality…If they were genuinely concerned with life, they would be protesting the spraying of our forests and fields with pesticides known to cause birth defects. They would be working to shut down nuclear power plants and dismantle nuclear weapons, to avert the threat of widespread genetic damage which may plague wanted children for generations to come…” (p. 420).

For one of her digital images, she chose one of my favorite quotes from Reweaving the World in an article that touches on birth as an ecofeminist issue:

Here are some photos of her final collage project:

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!

International Day of the Midwife!

May5

International Day of the Midwife is today and Virtual International Day of the Midwife has a free online conference! The lineup of presentations is really rich. Check it out here.

In celebration of this day, we’re offering a 10% off code good for use on any of the items in our etsy shop! Use 2014SPRING10OFF. 🙂

“It’s hard to describe if you’ve never been there, but to watch a woman access her full power as a woman to give birth is awe-inspiring, and I never get tired of being witness to it. It’s an honor to watch that transformation take place.” ~ Julie Bates, CNM

I’ve been blessed with care, love, and attention from midwives for many years. They’re irreplaceable and the model of care cannot be beat.

Here is a quote I shared on Facebook yesterday from midwifery legend, Ina May Gaskin:

At the end of April, Marsden Wagner passed away. An OB and outspoken birth rights activist as well as author of Born in the USA and participant in many documentary films about maternity care, Wagner was an incredible asset to birthing women and midwifery in the U.S. He will be missed.

“Humanizing birth means understanding that the woman giving birth is a human being, not a machine and not just a container for making babies. Showing women—half of all people—that they are inferior and inadequate by taking away their power to give birth is a tragedy for all society.” –Marsden Wagner, MD