Footnotes

Someone Turns One (Spoiler Alert: It's Fiona!).

2010-08-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

My littlest baby was born a year ago today. It's pretty unbelievable.

We had a little party for her this weekend, with some of our friends. We made it nice and colorful. And sweet.

My mother-in-law fabricated an amazing rainbow-layered cake, complete with candy ribbons and a licorice monogram.

It was a rainy day, the light was horrible, and these pictures don't even come close to doing it justice.

She even made Fiona her own personal rainbow-layered cupcake, which I offered her through gritted teeth (she is still a baby, after all).

Fiona tasted it curiously, but wasn't nearly as enthusiastic as I thought she might be. See, still a baby!

I requested that our guests not bring traditional presents (we're simplifying, remember?), but asked that they instead bring a letter, picture, or other contribution to a Birthday Time Capsule for Fiona to open on her 12th birthday--to remind 12-year-old-her of how loved she has always been. It was really fun to see some of the things people contributed--lots of letters and children's artwork, but also a "TeenBop" (or some such thing) magazine, a pack of "silly bands," and a couple mix-CDs.

I had our party guests sign the outside of the box, as a record of who was there. I'm waiting on a few last-minute contributions that people have said are coming, after which we'll seal it up with packaging tape and put it away for 11 years.

I made her a little birthday banner, and a "1" t-shirt to wear on her special day.

It was a nice afternoon with our friends, and a wonderful way to celebrate this little girl whom we love so much. She is our third child, our second daughter, and yet she is something so entirely her own, so different from her big brother and sister, and as she unfolds before us we are more and more enamored of her every day.

Sweet, one-year-old, baby perfection.

New Neighbors.

2010-08-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

Remember my fancy new bike? I forgot to mention that it came in an equally fancy box.

This week, we've had friends over to play.

I was thinking about how I would keep them all busy. With these particular friends, my kids have a sort of ongoing game of "house," which they seem to pick up immediately each time they are reunited (which is often).

So it struck me as the perfect time to pull out The Box, which I had been saving for a rainy day. Except not. Because, you know, rain and cardboard.

They got right to work.

Fiona helped.

I cut out the doors and windows as they drew them.

They added two mailboxes--one for boys' mail and one for girls' mail (naturally).

Soon, the new neighbors could be seen moving in.

With their butler.

They had a great time, their game of house was underway in no time, and they spent most of the afternoon decorating the inside of the house with crayons. And the next day, when those friends came back over for the day, they got right back to ~~work~~ play in the new house.

Long Walk.

2010-08-16T05:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend I participated in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day For the Cure event in Michigan. I didn't get a ton of pictures because my camera is a tad unwieldy and I didn't want to carry it, but I took a few pictures around camp and at the cheering stations where Joel and the kids were often waiting. If you're not familiar with the 3-Day, it's a 60 mile walk, spread over the course of 3 days (surprise!) to benefit the Susan G. Komen For the Cure Foundation. The fundraising requirements were a little daunting (each participant has to raise a minimum of $2300), but with roughly 1900 participants, the Michigan 3-Day event raised over $5.4 million, the bulk of which will be used to fund breast cancer research.

1 in 8 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer; it's a disease that seems to find its way into nearly everyone's life, in one capacity or another. For me, that moment came nearly 10 years ago, when my mother was diagnosed. After surgery and radiation, she was deemed to be in remission and now, almost 10 years later, she's had no recurrences. In part, I walked to honor and to celebrate her. But, of course, not everyone's breast cancer story ends so well. And when I think about the girls and women in my life who mean so much to me, my reasons to walk are innumerable.

The walk itself was a really great experience. With so many (~1900) participants, it was really moving to have glimpses into other people's reasons for walking. Many wore buttons or t-shirts that named their inspiration for walking--mothers, sisters, friends, daughters, aunts, et cetera. I heard snippets of conversations by some women who had been receiving chemotherapy as recently as 6 months ago for their own breast cancer.

The actual walking aspect of the walk was sort of pleasantly grueling, if that's possible. Sore muscles and blisters were par for the course, the heat was almost unbearable at times (it was in the 90s and extremely humid all three days), and the monotony of walking between 16 and 22 miles a day was often taxing. But in those most difficult moments, when muscles were burning, and blisters were stinging, and conversation had lapsed, there was time and occasion for really important reflection, I think.

Walking this year, while Fiona is still so little, was a little tricky but, with (lots of) Joel's help, we pulled it off. The camp where I would be staying was located a little more than an hour from home, so we got Joel and the kids a hotel room in the area for the weekend, and he brought them to see me relatively frequently so Fiona could nurse. This worked perfectly well during the day, but the first night was pretty rough for Fiona, who has begun waking to nurse once or twice again recently, so the second night I stayed at the hotel with Joel and the kids and they just returned me to the camp at 6:30 the next morning so I could begin the final day's walk.

Sam, Lucie and Fiona, waiting for walkers to pass them on the course so they could spray them with cool water. Well, that's what Sam and Lucie were doing. Fiona was just waiting for me to come along and nurse her.

A quick nursing-break on Day Three.

The community support around the event was absolutely incredible to me. People decorated their lawns, sat on their porches cheering, turned on their sprinklers, and handed out all sorts of thoughtful "goodies" to the walkers--bottles of water, pieces of gum or candy, granola bars, frozen grapes, fruit cups, Mardi Gras necklaces, stickers...you name it. It was like a parade, except that the spectators were the ones to throw "candy." Some spectators set up little tables with pain relievers, band-aids, moleskin, sunscreen, et cetera for walkers to stop and use. Many kids (my own included!) had spray bottles full of cold water that they would offer to squirt at the walkers as they passed by. My personal favorites were the "dunk tanks" of ice water that people set out for walkers to dunk a bandana or washcloth in to cool themselves off and the baggies of ice that some people handed us to carry with us. I really can't overemphasize how hot it was.

Me, about to cross the finish. I was every bit as happy as I looked.

The first couple of days were relatively smooth from my point-of-view--I walked into camp (after walking 22 miles each day) in the evening feeling tired, for sure, but good. The third day--which was, incidentally, the shortest walk, at only a little over 16 miles) started out equally well, but by 11-or-12 miles, the heat was getting to me, my feet were absolutely burning, and I was ready to be finished. For me, the last 4-5 miles were really quite difficult. One of my teammates compared it to childbirth--that moment where you feel like you can't do this, but you know you not only can, but that you will (like it or not) and that, in all likelihood, you'll be glad you did. Not a horrible analogy, actually.

I am glad I did it. I'll almost certainly do it again--maybe next year (anyone want to walk with me? Will travel!), maybe in a couple years. But the cause is important, and the event is fantastic, and I look forward to participating again in the future.

I walk in honor of those who have fought and won, in memory of those who have lost (and have been lost), and in the hope that my children might one day not fight at all, because this battle will have already been won.

Blueberry Picking (with Friends)

2010-08-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

Project: Simplify. (Part Two, Rhythm)

2010-08-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

So simplifying our environment, though still a work in progress, wasn't that hard to do. Like I said, it had been on our minds for a while, it was aesthetically pleasing (less clutter!) and practical (less stuff to clean up!), and it yielded immediate results. (Yesterday, I stepped outside and heard a casual, "Hey, Mom," from Sam. Except it was coming from a tree; from really high up in a tree. And you know why? Because I got rid of the Leapster, and the Tinker Toys, and the train tracks, and the play food, and the Mighty Beans, and I bored him right out of the house and up a tree. Way up a tree. And I never saw him look so proud of a Mr. Potato Head or pleased with a plastic light saber, and so I think perhaps we did the right thing.)

With our home environment well-on-its-way, we tackled the part of this whole simplification process that scared me the most: Routine.

We're just...not schedule people. Here are some questions to which I have historically had to make up answers on the spot:

What time do your kids go to bed? What time do your kids get up? When do your kids take their bath? What time does the baby nap? How frequently does she nurse? What time do you eat dinner?

The true answers to those questions are: Whenever, whenever, when they're dirty, whenever, when she wants to, whenever. I typically answered a little more indirectly: "Last night they were up pretty late," "Lucie always wakes up early; the other two like to sleep in a bit," "Before bed, usually, or whenever they hear me about to get in the bath," "It changes," "Which one?" and "Six?"

We're not schedule people. And I'll admit, it's mostly me. I just like to find some more compelling reason to do a given thing than because it's that time. I like to eat when I'm hungry, and sleep when I'm tired. And I like my kids to do the same. And sometimes, this is a really good thing. People often ask how I can tolerate being on-call for births, and I think, "No, how do you tolerate getting up at the same time every day, to go to the same place, with the same people, to do the same job, for the same number of hours, just to come home at the same time, to eat-shower-sleep so you can do it all again tomorrow?"

The problem is, there are five of us here. And it turns out, we don't all get tired at the same time. Or hungry. And it looks like Sam is going to start kindergarten in a few weeks. It starts at the same time every morning. And it's an early time.

So when I opened to the chapter of Simplicity Parenting on routines and schedules, I paused. And I took a deep breath. And I decided to just hear him out, so to speak.

It turns out--surprise, surprise--that Payne thinks routine (he uses the word "rhythm" which, I agree, is favorable) is really fantastic for kids. That predictability helps cut down on resistance. I knew I had to start putting my kids to bed at some particular time, but Payne takes it a lot further. He suggests incorporating ~~monotony~~ rhythm into every aspect of your (and your child's) day. He goes so far as to suggest a meal-schedule in which the day of the week determines what's for dinner. Ridiculous. And, yet, we decided to give it a try.

We started while we were up north. With two available parents, it was a lot easier to tackle the ~~children, put them in bed and sit on them until they finally lost consciousness~~ task of guiding our heretofore scheduleless children into a new routine--one that would no doubt feel rigid. And unnatural. And one that they were bound to resist.

We began with bedtime. My kids were used to going to bed sometime between 10:00 and 11:00, so I reached into the sky and pulled out a ridiculously arbitrary time, 7:30, and declared it "bedtime." In case you're reading this from Alaska, or Jupiter, I will mention: 7:30 in July in Michigan looks an awful lot like day time. It's been getting dark around 10 lately. So a 7:30 bedtime was sort of setting ourselves up for failure. Still, at 7:00 or so, we told the kids it was time to brush their teeth and get their pajamas on, and they looked at us like it was some sort of joke they just didn't quite get, and they got in bed, and I sat down to read Harry Potter to them at about 7:15. By 7:30, Lucie was asleep. I read for about 45-60 minutes to Sam, and then told him goodnight and left the room. And he went to sleep. And the next morning, they were up between 6:45 and 7:00 (and I rolled out of bed shortly after). And that night, we did it again. And it worked. And again. And again. And several weeks later, my kids are in bed by 8:00 every night, sleeping away in broad daylight. And they sleep until a bit after 7:00, which is about

when they'll need to wake up this fall in order for us to get Sam to kindergarten by 8:25, and Lucie to preschool by 8:35.

And now I'm going to say exactly what you think I'm going to say: It's been a really wonderful change. Joel and I now sometimes have whole conversations where we say all the words and don't have to spell anything (which is weird, but I'm sure we'll get used to it). We play board games. We make salsa out of our CSA veggies--way too spicy for the kids, but it doesn't matter, because we don't have to share with them. We drink smoothies. Or sometimes, I go hang out with friends, all by myself. Or sometimes, and this is really crazy, we go to bed sort of...at a "reasonable" hour.

At first, we just focussed on the "big" kids, but we're slowly working Fiona into the routine, as well. And it's working.

Bedtime was the biggest (and most frightening) change to our routine that we made, and the one with which we've had the most success, but it isn't the only change we've made (or are working on). We've been trying to incorporate a bit more "rhythm" or routine into the rest of our days, too.

One thing that we're trying (with varying degrees of success) is Payne's suggestion of eating the same (general) thing for a given night of the week. So, for instance, eating soup (any kind of soup!) on Tuesday, or fish on Friday. Here's what we're shooting for (and like I said, I'm not *always* successful):

Monday--Pasta

Tuesday--Soup

Wednesday--Fish or Chicken

Thursday--Supper Club

Friday--Pizza

I left the weekends alone, because I knew they would be the time when it was most difficult for us to stay consistent. The problem I've found is that, for example, when friends invited us over for an impromptu dinner of enchiladas on Tuesday, I just couldn't say, "Oooh, no-can-do! It's Soup Night!" because (a) we like spending time with our friends, (b) if our friends caught wind of "Soup Night" we might not have any friends and (c) enchiladas are delicious.

It is sort of a fun idea, though, and it actually makes meal planning more fun for me. Just as I enjoy the challenge of trying to use whatever vegetables we receive from our CSA in a given week, it's sort of fun to look for a new soup recipe for soup night, or to come up with a creative pasta dish. And the pizza night, which probably sounds like the biggest cop-out ever, is actually really fun as well--using our fresh veggies to make interesting pizzas (while allowing ourselves the freedom, I'll admit, of going out for pizza if we just don't feel like it) is lots of fun.

When CSA pepper explosion meets Pizza Night, you get pizza-that-will-burn-your-lips-off.

Payne says that mealtimes (and bedtime) are some of the biggest points-of-conflict with small children, and that these mealtime routines (and others) can help to alleviate some of that stress. Actually, for us, mealtime doesn't typically cause a lot of grief, and so the pay-off of adapting this meal schedule is pretty minimal, and I suspect it won't stick for long, or that we'll never be terribly consistent with it. Nonetheless, it's been fun to try, and I'll think we'll keep with it for a while.

Payne makes some other interesting suggestions, some of which we may try at some point. One suggestion he made was that there be some sort of ritual that precedes mealtime, such as a prayer, a poem, a song, et cetera. We're not a praying family, a pre-meal song feels embarrassing to even think about, and Joel might jump ship on this whole experiment if I asked him to refrain from eating while I read poetry to the family. But Payne mentioned that his family began observing a period of silence before they ate--beginning with just 10-15 seconds, and gradually working up to a minute or so. That sounds sort of nice (actually, if my kids eyes were open and they were silent for 60 consecutive seconds, I would probably assume I'd gone deaf), and perhaps we'll eventually try that.

Payne also suggested similar sing-songy rituals around other daily activities: hand washing, room cleaning, hair brushing, et cetera. It's not for me, but I see its merit. Sort of. I'm just never going to sing "brush, brush, brush your teeth" or whatever. But if you want to try it, do! I'd be interested to hear how it goes for you, and I totally wouldn't make fun of you! (One of those statements is true.)

And even though changing bedtime was just one of many ideas we got from Simplicity Parenting, that one change set into motion a sort of domino effect in our house. Most notably, we're getting up earlier. And not just Lucie (who has always gotten up early); all of us. Which means that Lucie is (a) getting more sleep and (b) being a little better...received...in the morning. This results in a much nicer Lucie who, although still prone to the occasional outburst (she is three, after all) is seeming altogether more stable than she was a month ago. We're eating dinner at a more consistent time, since we know that it needs to happen before teeth can be brushed, and baths taken, and PJs donned--and all of this needs to happen by a particular time. A bedtime. And, like I said, this means more time for Joel and I to be adults. Which is pretty great.

So far, so good.

Happy Pizza Night, Everyone!

When Life Throws You Cucumbers...

2010-08-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

This week's basket of veggies.

It turns out, a local farm share is not only the most practical gift ever, it's also a lot of fun. Every Wednesday, we make a stop out at the farm and watch as our basket is filled with a variety of fresh-things: cantaloupe, corn, tomatoes, leeks, eggplant, green beans, cabbage, squash, onions, kale, all sorts of peppers, broccoli, radishes...it's always a bit of a surprise.

Some of it doesn't require much creativity to "use"--we're always happy to cut up a cantaloupe, or to slice a cucumber and eat it with salt and pepper or hummus. (In fact, most of the green beans don't even get cooked, because Lucie and I have a fondness for raw green beans.)

At other times, though, I feel like I'm on an episode of The Iron Chef, trying to come up with as many cabbage (or broccoli, or eggplant, or whatever) recipes as I can. I've made Eggplant Paremsan, more salsa than you might imagine we could eat (and yet, it's gone), and lots of soup.

This Cajun Corn Soup used leeks, peppers and corn from our CSA.

Perhaps our favorite new recipe, I've made three batches of Asparagus Soup in two weeks.

Tonight's episode featured cucumbers. Between what we hadn't finished from last week's (eight!) cucumbers and what we received this week (six more!)--plus a kind and generous midwifery client with a thriving garden sent me home with a bag of veggies (including two cucumbers) after her prenatal Friday--we had nine cucumbers when the day started.

Seriously, I could only ask the kids to eat just *so many* cucumbers before I came up with something a little more interesting.

In keeping with my soup theme, I sought out a recipe for Chilled Cucumber Soup. I used to wait tables at a little cafe in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and we served this really delicious Cucumber Soup in the summer that I've always thought I should make. That knocked out two cucumbers. I remembered a recipe I had for a cucumber salsa that you serve over salmon, so I dug that out as well, using another two cucumbers.

A cucumberful dinner of Salmon with Spicy Cucumber Salsa, and Chilled Cucumber Soup. Tasty, nutritious, and I learned all about "The World" while I ate.

The spicy salsa turned out to be a bit too spicy for the kids (which I suspected it would be, so I served Sam's and Lucie's on the side, and didn't give Fiona any at all), so they didn't eat more than a couple bites each, but they polished their fish off nonetheless.

Not quite ready to tackle the entire *world,* Fiona studied more local geography while she ate.

The soup turned out okay, but it wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it being at the cafe. It was met with enthusiasm at first, followed by a little bewilderment, and eventually a reminder on how to politely say, "Thanks for making this, but it's not my favorite," which they said, with varying levels of conviction.
In the end, not our favorite meal ever, but it wasn't bad, it included a handful of new flavors and, most importantly, we're down to just 5 cucumbers.

At least *someone* thought the Cucumber Soup was pretty delicious.

Project: Simplify. (Part One, Environment)

2010-07-24T19:53:00.001-07:00

Shortly before we left for our trip up north, I started a book that's been sitting around for a couple months now, just waiting for me to eventually take the time to sit down and read it. It's called Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross. I was hoping that our time away would afford me the opportunity to (a) read the book, in its entirety, in chunks of more-than-3-pages-at-a-time, (b) turn it over a bit and (c) spend a lot of time talking it over with Joel who, for all his good intentions, just isn't much of a reader.

And did it ever.

See, the basic premise of this book is that our children are being overwhelmed by too much--Payne says, "too much stuff, too many choices, too much information and too fast"--and that, by simplifying our lifestyles (environment, schedules, even our food), we allow our kids (and ourselves!) to actually live more fully, develop more naturally. We waste time and money trying to fix the problems that we've created by wasting so much time and money in the first place.

The idea of simplifying our home and our lives wasn't brand-new to me; it's a process we began several months ago. But I got all sorts of useful ideas from this book, as well as exploring some aspects of simplification that hadn't occurred to me. I want to share the changes we've made/are making, but I can already tell I'm on the brink of a verbal explosion (it's what happens when I get really excited about something), so I'm going to break it down into several different posts, and just address it one area at a time. I'll begin (as, in fact, we did) with our environment.

Much of this book was sort of an affirmation of the way we've been headed for a while now, especially where simplifying the environment goes. Many months ago, I was sitting in a living room littered with toys, feeling frustrated by my kids' seeming unwillingness to clean up after themselves and overwhelmed by the state of our house in general. Looking at the mess, I saw it through my kids' eyes and thought, it's really not reasonable to expect them to clean all of this up. While I've always kept their toys well organized, there was just too much. So I decided to start getting rid of toys until the kids could handle taking care of what they had.

I didn't want it to feel punitive to the kids, like, "You didn't clean up your toys, so I'm going to take them away," so I worked mostly after they were in bed. The criteria I used for sorting what stayed and what went was basically (1) how much does it get used right now, and how "well," (2) how much do my kids love this particular toy, (3) how "good" a toy is it. One night, I loaded up all the toys I wanted to get rid of into opaque plastic tubs, and put them in the garage: Toy Purgatory, if you will. This is the place where toys go to wait and see if anyone asks for them, looks for them, or otherwise makes me regret having weeded them out. They stayed out there for a week or two before I began getting rid of them (and, for the record, not a single toy was asked after).

The change in the house was compelling--the toys that remained were played with more, and "better," and were cleaned up afterwards. It was so compelling, in fact, that I did it again a couple months later. And then again a month or so after that. All told, I reduced the number of toys in the house by...70%, maybe? I don't know--but a lot. I also weeded through books, games, puzzles and DVDs.

I didn't hear a single complaint from my kids. In fact, all I heard from my kids was the sound of them playing even more with the toys that were left.

Next, I started on clothes. I actually don't own a ton of clothes (if you know me, you're probably not surprised), but I still weeded out a few things, and several pair of shoes. But my kids have plenty of clothes, so I focused a lot of my attention there. My goal was to move all the clothes into locations that were more convenient for dressing and for putting away.

In our bedroom, we have a double closet, with ample hanging space, and two dressers. My goal was to fit all our family's clothes in one place. I began by storing all of my kids out-of-season clothing in tubs in the basement--stuff I thought would still fit in the fall, but that was too warm for summer. Then I sorted out anything that was outgrown (if it was Lucie's, it got stored away for Fiona, otherwise it went in the "get rid of" pile). Next I sorted out things that were ugly, impractical, or just plain superfluous. When I was finished, each kid's clothes occupied a single drawer in a normal-sized dresser, with hanging space in the closet for the girls' dresses and a couple of Sam's shirts.

We still have a ways to go, but eliminating so much of the stuff in our house has been a really good step toward simplifying our lives at home.

A toddler serves as a wonderful reminder that children do not need us to entertain them. The world around them really is entertainment enough.

Oh, and if you're wondering where all of this stuff went: I sold it or I gave it away. First I sold the nice stuff online (we take relatively good care of our things, so I was able to sell things for decent prices--enough, in fact, to buy a super-sweet bike). Then, I started having garage sales for charity. I'm part of a team, with 5 of my friends, who will be walking in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day For the Cure event in a few weeks, and the fundraising requirements were pretty intimidating ($2300 per participant, which is $13,800 as a team). We held several HUGE garage sales--full of all my stuff, and lots of stuff from everyone else, as well as a few generous "stuff donations" from friends and family--and raised nearly $3000 towards our goal. If I saw something special and knew someone who would love it, I held it out and gave it to them. Whatever was left at the end of the garage sales, I donated.

But creating an ideal environment, especially for our kids, wasn't *just* about eliminating things. I actually *added* some things to the house, too. The biggest change was in our basement. Previously, our finished basement housed (in addition to a guest bed and our laundry room) a "TV room" and a "play room." The TV room had a large entertainment center with a TV/DVD player (we don't have cable or other TV service) and a bunch of DVDs, a couch and a bean bag. The play room had a couple of shelves that were full of bins, which were full of toys. The basement was getting almost no use, except when Joel's parents would visit and sleep in the guest bed for a couple nights. We never went down there to watch movies. Ever. The kids almost never went down there to play (they had plenty of toys elsewhere). When we had friends over, with their kids, all the kids would often go down to the basement to play, but they mostly ran around playing active games (yet were always sure to dump every single bin of toys out in the course of their play, so there was always an enormous mess to clean up when they left).

So we decided to make the space more suited to our needs, and to the use it was already getting. First, we emptied the "TV room" out entirely. The couch went in the smaller "play room," the entertainment center went in our bedroom. It kept the TV out of our "living space" (we may eventually get rid of the TV altogether, but we've always insisted that it at least be out of sight, not in the middle of our living space, just begging the kids to beg the adults to turn it on. Just too much begging), gave us some extra storage in our room and, most importantly, left the largest room in the basement totally empty. Then we got rid of nearly all the toys that were in the "play room." Then we got a slide, a swing, a ladder, and rings, and set up a veritable jungle gym in the basement. There's nothing to clean up, the space is getting used, and during a long Michigan winter, my kids and their friends have an appropriate place to burn off a little energy.

The new basement playspace, viewed from the stairs.

Another view.

The results of these changes to our environment have been pretty amazing. My kids are playing more, playing better, getting lost in their play--sometimes together, sometimes by themselves--more often. They go outside without prompting more. They imagine more, create more, invent more--and all from less.

I'm seeing a lot more of this sort of play from my kids these days--heading outside to make their own fun out of what they find.

Long before I had even heard of Simplicity Parenting, I realized that we had accumulated far too much stuff and that most of it needed to go. The process, for me, was easy and pleasurable. And the results were the fuel I needed to begin making some other changes to our lifestyle that wouldn't come nearly as easily or naturally to us.

Not My Favorite.

2010-07-23T06:28:00.001-07:00

I still intend to post my favorite thing(s) about our trip up north, but I just have a second, so I thought I'd post one of my not favorite things first:

This is the the piece of beach glass that Lucie was referring to when she approached me up north, looking a little panicked but otherwise perfectly normal, saying, "Mom, that rock went too far into my nose, and now I can't get it out." I said, "You put a ROCK in your NOSE?" She nodded.

Fortunately, my brother-in-law was sitting there, and was casually like, "Oh, just plug your other nostril and blow your nose, HARD." I was afraid she would *sniff* instead of blowing, so I instructed her to take a deep breath with her mouth, then close her mouth and (while I held the other nostril shut) BLOW. After one blow it was "crowning," and the second delivered it entirely.

So proud.

Home Again.

2010-07-18T22:03:00.001-07:00

We just returned from a week in northern Michigan. We spent the week catching frogs, collecting rocks along the shore of Lake Michigan, playing in the sand, walking, swimming, reading, and generally relaxing.
On our way home, I asked the kids to each name their three favorite things about our trip. Sam's were:

1. Catching Frogs.

2. Going to the beach.

3. Harry Potter. I've recently begun reading Harry Potter aloud to him, and during our trip we finished the first book, drew pictures of his favorite scenes, put together a 550-piece puzzle of Hogwart's Castle (which I've had since I was in COLLEGE, just waiting for a good opportunity to put it together). All of this culminated with us letting him stay up to watch the first film in the Harry Potter series on our last night there. He was riveted and responded with absolutely all the enthusiasm I might have hoped for.

Lucie's favorites included:

1. Catching frogs.

2. Going to the beach.

3. "Playing with my bracelets." I'm almost ashamed to publish this. A month-or-so ago, my mom got Lucie and her cousins some of these little silicone bracelets that form shapes when you take them off (animals, fairies, sea creatures as well as licensed characters from "Toy Story," et cetera. Lucie, whom we have occasionally been known to half-jokingly refer to as "our little hoarder" loves these bracelets. And she actually does play with them; in addition to taking them off (both wrists and both ankles--can you see them in the photo below, or is it too small?) and counting them, sorting them, and replacing them, she can often be found creating little shapey-bracelet dialogues between them. Yeah. Anyway. So. It made her top 3.

I had three favorites, too--and intended to write about them. But it's late, I'm sleepy, and tomorrow is that dreaded Day After Vacation--the day when, after a week of luxurious two-parents-home-all-day living, I am reminded of what it is like to be outnumber 3-to-1. So I'll save my top three for another day, but I will tell you this much: they do not include catching frogs or going to the beach.

Christmas in July.

2010-07-07T20:52:00.001-07:00

Last December, as my mother was stressing herself out over holiday preparations, overdoing it as usual as she shopped, wrapped, and cooked for her five children, their respective partners and collective 17 children, she called me, exasperated, looking for gift ideas for my family. My mom is a lot of things--thoughtful, generous, well-meaning, kind...and highly impractical. So I may have emitted a little sigh when she added, "I want to give everyone practical gifts this year," as though she thought I might suggest getting Joel diamond-encrusted cufflinks.

Well, good thing for her, "Practical" is my middle name. Well, Elizabeth is my middle name. But I'm a practical girl. And so I suggested one gift for our whole family-of-five, that she didn't have to (indeed could not!) wrap and that we could all use: Vegetables.

What's more practical than vegetables?

I suggested a CSA to a local farm. Now, every Wednesday during the months of July, August and September, I get to stop by the farm for a basket full of locally grown goodies. Today was my first pick-up, and I came home with radishes, sweet corn, leeks, green beans, cucumbers and greens.

In addition to feeding our family, our basket of vegetables will require me to seek out some new recipes and use vegetables that we don't often eat. And that's just good, plain fun. Good, plain, practical fun.

So. Anyone have a good leek recipe to share?

Ten Months. One Week. And Three Days.

2010-07-03T06:31:00.000-07:00

I'm always impressed when people post those photo-rich blog updates on their babies' development at regular, monthly intervals. In particularly optimistic moments, I envision posting such updates myself--always beginning on the 23rd of *next* month, mind you. But something always gets between me and those lovely posts--occasionally it's a technical difficulty, sometimes it's time. But usually it's that busy baby about whom I would so love to post an update.

So here's the lowdown on our youngest, who is celebrating her 315th day today.

She's walking. I hesitate to say that, because she's sort of in that gray area between "taking steps" and "walking." She took her first steps shortly after she turned 9 months (remember that fabulous update I posted? No? Huh.), and since then has been growing her gross motor repertoire to include such skills as taking-many-steps-in-a-row and standing-up-for-5-minutes-at-a-time, standing-up-in-the-middle-of-the-room and my personal favorite, going-from-standing-to-squatting-and-back-to-standing. But when she crossed the line, in my mind, to Walking Baby, was when she seemed to begin thinking of herself as bipedal, walking more than she crawls, getting back up when she falls down. Which she still does a lot.

She likes her dad a whole lot. Shortly after Fiona was born, Joel commented on how much more comfortable he felt with a baby now and jokingly (wait, I think he was joking) referred to Sam and Lucie as his "warm-up" children. And while all three of our children are quite attached to their father, Fiona seemed to see Joel as 100%-her-parent a lot earlier than the other two. No doubt this is more a commentary on Joel and me than on Fiona. Joel's confidence in parenting a baby has clearly grown with each of our children, and my borderline-narcissistic belief that I am the only person in the world who can possibly care for these babies adequately has dwindled considerably.

She still has one blonde eyebrow/eye lashes.

She says a few words--"mama" and "dada," "hi" (or "hey"). And, when her kisses turn to bites (or attempted bites), as they often to, and I frantically exclaim, "No biting! No biting! Give me kisses! Kisses!" She often responds, laughing maniacally, "Bi-bi-bi-bi-bi!"

She loves to clap her hands--a skill she acquired early, at 5 months or so, but one of which she has not tired. She also loves to bang objects together--rocks, blocks, toys...anything that rewards her with a clack-clack-clack.

This girl loves to sleep. It's at this point that I should confess: I am not, indeed have almost never been a sleep-deprived mother. (Or, rather, I cannot attribute my sleep deprivation directly to the kids. But that's another story.) Fiona appears to have inherited the sleep-in gene (a dominant trait, no doubt, although Joel and I appear to carry a pesky recessive Early Bird gene, as evidenced by our middle child's tendency to rise at dawn, hours before anyone else in this house is inclined to wake. Oh. But that's that other story, isn't it?) As such, my eldest and youngest can often be found snuggled up together, fast asleep, long after I have begrudgingly followed Lucie out of bed.

This girl is loved. By many, but especially by her big brother and sister. They still ask to "hold her" several times a day (she humors them with decreasing frequency and duration). They love to include her in their play, and she (generally) relishes her involvement. Sam loves to hold her hands and help her walk around the house (although he's worked himself right out of a job; see above), and Lucie is always bringing me the tiniest bits (much tinier than necessary) of food and asks if she can share them with Fiona, so happy to finally be allowed to share with her sister.

So that's our girl. 10 Months, 1 Week, 3 Days.

Ta-Da!

2010-06-17T20:45:00.000-07:00

Okay--remember that I stipulated that promised photos would not necessarily be *good* photos. They are not.

But our big, big box arrived yesterday, and we couldn't be more excited!

That's right--it's a sweet new bicycle-built-for-four (five, really!), by Madsen Cycles. Basically, it's a longtail cargo bike with a big bucket on the back for hauling things. Or as many as four small people.

We weren't sure if Fiona would require some other sort of seat, besides the bench seats with seatbelts, so we ordered a front-mount infant/toddler seat just for her. But we rode about 7-or-so miles yesterday with her in the bucket with the big kids (Joel rode behind me on his bike so he could keep an eye on her) and she did really great, so I think we're actually going to send the seat back.

We deliberated over this purchase for quite some time. In fact, about 18 months ago, we had purchased a different bike (well, actually it was a conversion kit for one of our bikes), but we sent it back when it didn't fit my bike as nicely as I had hoped. We also considered a couple other bikes and had, for some time, settled on this bike (which I still rather love). But, in the end, we decided to sacrifice a little convenience and a bit of style (because, let's be honest: behind this lovely blue paint job is a plastic bucket attached to the back of a cruiser) for what amounted to a rather large savings (not only was the Madsen cheaper in the first place, we bought a "scratched" model for a $300 discount, and it shipped for free--fully assembled and ready-to-ride. Which we did).

So I couldn't be happier. (Well, I could, but...see above.) I have a few modifications to make (the saddle, for example, must go--I can barely walk today), but I'm giddy with excitement as I anticipate all the miles we'll travel while the car stays home.

So give me a couple weeks to ride, and I'll report back with a more thorough review. In the meantime, though, this is me:

Long Time No Blog...

2010-06-16T06:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I've never been a particularly faithful blogger, so I doubt that my you (my audience of, what? Three?) have been terribly surprised or devastated by my absence of late, but I have been *meaning* to blog for some time. My computer is partially to blame--or, rather, the way I've totally overloaded my hard drive with photographs is to blame, rather. For weeks, little warnings have been appearing on my screen, telling me that my hard drive just can't take it any more. So I'd delete a few pictures, upload a few more, promise myself I'd take care of it soon, and then forget about it. But it's finally caught up to me, and so my camera is burgeoning with photos waiting for a home, and our Apple Time Capsule--that's 2 Terabytes of wireless storage for my enormous photo and music libraries that will leave both overburdened Macs feeling light-as-a-feather and super-fast. Until then, though, no new photos for me.

I'll be posting photos soon, though, because a wireless hard drive isn't the only big delivery I'm anticipating these days. In fact, the freight company contacted me this morning to make sure I'd be home between 10 and 2 to receive the *big* big purchase we recently made. Are you (all three of you) on the edge of your seats? I promise photos--maybe not *good* ones, but photos--in the next 48 hours. And an update shortly after that. Seriously. For real.

Do Not Look Behind the Curtain...

2010-05-06T16:14:00.000-07:00

Sam BEFORE:

And Sam AFTER:

It must be (nearly) summer!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (About Fiona):

2010-05-01T16:29:00.001-07:00

We recently spent a beautiful day outside at my sister's little farm, catching frogs and holding baby chicks and generally just loving every minute of the beautiful weather. Not surprisingly, I took a whole bunch of pictures. As I was looking over them today, I was struck some of the sweet details of my baby's face with which I've become so familiar over the past eight months. So I pulled a few of, not necessarily my *favorite* pictures, but the ones in which you might be able to see a few of my favorite things.

1. These blue eyes. I remembered lamenting to Joel (okay, it may not have been an all-out *lament,* but I certainly mentioned it) that with his blue eyes and my blue eyes, the range of possibilities for our children's eye colors was not particularly broad. But as it turned out, our three blue-eyed babies' eyes turned out quite distinct from each others.

2. This mohawk. A few months ago, Fiona reached a peak in her baby-baldness. Even then, this line of hair down the center of her head remained. Now that she's beginning to grow a bit more hair, the mohawk is less pronounced, but it still has a head start on the rest of her hair, and stands out as such.

3. Tiny (and not so) teeth. I'm a sucker for tiny little baby teeth. But if you look *closely* enough, you'll see one of her GIGANTIC new top teeth peaking out from behind her upper lip. I love this baby's tiny (and not so) teeth.

4. But perhaps my favorite little detail is her eyebrows and lashes. I'm not sure this picture does it justice, but perhaps you can see that her left eyebrow and lashes are darkish brown (a shade similar to her hair), while her right eyebrow and lashes are an almost-white shade of blonde. The photo sort of makes it look like it's just lighting. It's not.

All together, these little bits and pieces compose a face that I just never tire of looking at.

We Shall Call This Post: "Lack of Supervision."

2010-04-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

Why Thursdays are the Best Days...

2010-04-15T14:02:00.001-07:00

A few months ago, Thursday was an unexceptional day in our lives. It's proximity to Friday was its only saving grace. But then, in January, some friends decided to anoint Thursdays with a little thing that has come to be known as Supper Club. The idea is pretty simple: We all sup together on Thursdays. The location varies, but each family hosts once a month, or slightly less frequently. The host generally provides the main course, and everyone else brings something to go with is. Sometimes the meal is theme-driven--we had a sushi night, an Italian night, Mexican night, Salad Bar night, Middle Eastern night, et cetera. Other times the "theme" is not really a theme at all. Like, "Pizza." But when Thursday rolls around, we know that tonight we will eat with friends, stay out a little too late (after all, it's almost Friday, which is almost Saturday), sit around talking with grown-ups while the kids do their kid-thing (no doubt as welcoming of the break from the adults as the adults may be for the break from their...energy). It's a good thing.

So I'm off to cut up some fruit, my contribution to tonight's Supper Club, the "theme" of which is: It's So Nice Out; Let's Eat Outside.

Do You Know What Today Is?

2010-03-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

When I alluded to this little magnetic-calendar-on-the-kitchen-wall project of mine, I didn't think it would be a full MONTH before I'd be posting photos of my finished product. But, alas...

This project is the first in a series that could be entitled, "Let's Quit Worrying That We'll One Day Want to Sell the House and That Our Non-Neutral Decorating Choices Will Be a Turn-Off to a Potential Buyer and Instead Live in Our House--Because It Is Just That, Our House--and Make Choices That Work For Us, Today, Right Now, and That Make Our House Feel Like Our House." To save time, space, and capital letters, though, I've made the executive decision to entitle this series of projects: untitled.

But here it is:

The part you don't see, because it would be incredibly boring, is that I began by priming this entire wall with magnetic paint--with which I swore I would coat every surface in our house after I discovered it a month or so ago, and which I now swear I will never again use for as long as I live. It's fine, it works, it's cool. But enough is enough. So I primed this wall with two cans of magnetic paint, and then I re-painted the wall the robin's egg blue color of our kitchen (that's not the actual paint name, but...I think it probably should be). We had just enough paint left over from the original paint job in the kitchen to cover it. Phew! So, once it was primed, repainted, and dried, I drew this grid on the wall, where my calendar would be. I went with 5-inch squares for each day, and made six rows of squares, so that on those pesky occasions on which a month starts on, say, a Saturday, I wouldn't run out of squares.

Then I started painting the squares, color-by-color. I did it free-hand, although I had hoped maybe I'd be able to tape it off and do it that way. My wall is textured (apparently, the previous owners of this house felt about wall-texturizer like I did about magnetic primer, except that they stuck to their initial resolve a little better than I, because I swear they put one-texture-or-another on nearly every wall in this house, and it drives me NUTS), so painting tape seems never to "seal" to the wall adequately (although, I must say I've tried it on non-textured walls, too, and I am of the opinion that painter's tape is a really great idea in THEORY that doesn't actually work at all, anywhere, ever, so we stopped taping anything off years ago).

The nice thing about this project is that I was painting with a tiny little brush out of tiny little cans, and on a surface that was out-of-reach of my kids. So I could paint a square here-or-there if I wanted to, and it wasn't the big commitment that painting a whole room is, with trays and rollers and keeping the kids away and whatever. I could pry open one of my tiny little cans and paint a square while waiting for a pot of water to boil, then close it up, rinse my brush, and walk away from it. Nonetheless, the painting process took me more than two weeks to complete.

But I did eventually complete it, and this is how it looked (minus the magnets) for another week or two, while I meant-to-get-around-to making the little number magnets.

Which I did eventually get around to making. I used these little half-marbles (I'm sure they have a name, but...?) and some old magazines. I flipped through the magazines to find all the numbers, 1-31, then glued the numbers to the back of the "half-marbles" and added a magnet to the back. I plan to make some more magnets--I made a little breastfeeding symbol magnet to mark La Leche League meetings, but I plan to make some more holiday, birthday, dentist...whatever...magnets.

The s-m-t-w-t-f-s were the final touch to the calendar itself. I had big plans to make some, but I came across these in a local toy store and thought they were just too easy to pass up. If they look a little crooked, don't panic. I stuck them on with magnets, just like everything else, so I can straighten them out later. And never mind the quality of any of these pictures. I was feeling sort of through with this project, and I wasn't in the mood to put much effort into photographing a wall, so...sorry.

Anyway, here's the more-or-less finished product. I have a couple other little additions to make to the wall--making those extra magnets, mounting a couple GIGANTIC metal clothespins that my mother-in-law gave me years ago, et cetera, adding some little hooks for our keys, et cetera. But you get the idea.

Oh, and in addition to everything being magnetic (so little notes can be stuck to their corresponding days), I had planned to make-my-own chalkboard paint for this project. But then my niece came over and colored with chalk all over my wall and I thought, "Huh. That looks just fine." Then I wiped it off and thought, "Huh, that wiped off just fine." So we also keep a cup of chalk nearby and can write appointments or notes directly on the wall, and it wipes up just like a chalkboard, except maybe a little cleaner!

Stay tuned for photos of the second project in our untitled series, which is nearly-complete, in which we turn our lots-of-adult-appeal finished basement into a veritable jungle gym for our kids, in a project that is sure to have my mother shaking her head in disapproval.

The Moral of the Story Is: Don't Brush Your Teeth, Just Get Out the Door.

2010-02-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

I stayed up late last night, lying in bed, having a really good conversation with my husband. Finally we decided we should get some sleep. At 2:47 a.m., I looked at the clock one last time before dozing off. Twelve minutes later, my phone was ringing, and I was off to a birth.

Having not been in bed long, my teeth were freshly brushed, so I needed only to pull on my jeans, put on a bra, grab my coat and head out the door. And that's all I did (okay, I grabbed a piece of gum)--this client lives about 45 minutes away from me, her last baby was born in a hospital triage, and the roads were icy.

The drive there was a delicate balance between driving fast enough to get there quickly, but slow enough to get there safely. As I pulled into the apartment complex, my preceptor called to ask where I was. I told her I was in the parking lot and she said, "Good--run right up there; she's pushing and I'm not there yet."

So I hurried inside and was met by a noisy, excited group of women. Our client's husband was out of town and her mother-in-law and a few friends and family members were there to support her during her labor. Her 5-and-7-year-olds were literally jumping up and down with excitement as the 5-year-old repeatedly exclaimed, "The baby is coming! The baby is coming!"

I hurried to the back bedroom where our client was working through contractions on her hands and knees. She told me she thought the baby was coming and I could see (once I persuaded her that it was really time to take off her sweatpants) that she was right--the baby's head was crowning. From where I was sitting, I had a clear view of the apartment door, and I looked up at it several times in an effort to will my preceptor through it.

The woman exclaimed that she had to push and I realized I needed to take my attention *off* the front door and put it all on her. I reassured her that it was okay to push. As the head was born to the eyebrows, then the nose, my mind was sort of racing through complications that could possibly arise and how I would need to respond--like I was cramming for some sort of test. But I took a deep breath and, like the teacher telling the class to close their books and take out a #2 pencil, I told myself: Stop. Stop anticipating and just respond. The baby's head was born, he quickly restituted, and was born into my waiting hands. I passed him through his mother's legs and into her arms and took a moment to enjoy just how okay he was, she was, I was.

A beautiful baby boy (who was "supposed" to be a girl, according to a 20-week ultrasound) let out a reassuring little cry. Shortly thereafter, my preceptor arrived.

And, really, if I hadn't made it, it would have been just fine (I consider getting this mother to remove her sweatpants to be my primary contribution to her smooth and lovely birth). But I did make it, and I'm really glad I did.

A Sticky Weekend Project...

2010-02-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

I've had the "painting itch" lately--have been wanting to change things up a bit. We recently moved a bookshelf from Sam's room down to our living room, which left a bit of a mess on one of his walls (where it was attached), so I knew I needed to touch that up a bit and I thought, why not change the color? I proposed this to Joel, who responded rather quickly, "Susan, please. No." He offered that we could begin a project on any other room, but not Sam's. He then reminded me that, when we painted Sam's room (our very first painting project when we moved into the house about 5.5 years ago, before Sam was born), we painted the ceiling, the interior of the closet (which didn't have a door at that time), the walls, plus all the trim/molding in the room and closet (Sam's is the only room in the house with crown molding). Oh. Yeah. And none of us particularly dislikes the deep blue in his room (though we since realized that it was probably a little too dark for that room; with only one window it doesn't get as much natural light as other bedrooms do). So I acquiesced to his request that we not change the color in Sam's room, but I *did* find a way to change things up a little bit.

Sam also celebrated his fifth birthday a couple weeks ago, and my sister gave him a really cool wooden mosaic "puzzle" with little magnets on the back. Sam also has a set of kids' "Magnetic Poetry" that was given to him several months ago, and I've been meaning to put a magnetic board in his room, now that he's reading well enough to actually play with those. So it occurred to me that, as long as I was going to be patching and re-painting his wall (in the same color it already was, which is super-boring), I could make the project fun (and change things up a bit) with magnetic paint.
Here's the very, very cool mosaic puzzle that inspired the project.

Since a "before" picture would be redundant (it doesn't actually look any different now than it did "before"), here's a "during" photo. This is the magnetic paint. We used two cans, which translated into roughly a million coats.

Here it is, finished and covered with magnetic poetry and my--err, Sam's--new favorite toy. The wall looks incredibly bare without the bookshelf (which previously took up a good portion of the wall) so we're going to need to come up with something else to do there, but I'm happy with how this turned out.

I did make one error that I feel obliged to disclose, in case you're thinking of magnetizing a wall of your own. As you can see from this angle, the magnetic primer is visible beneath the blue--especially along the top border. If I had it to do over again, I'd do one of a few things: (1) Buy one more can of magnetic paint and go all the way to the ceiling, (2) sand the edge of the magnetic section in an effort to sort of "fade" from primed-to-not, or (3) at least make that top edge a straight, clean edge.

Overall, though, I think it turned out nicely and I think it's pretty cool. So cool, in fact, that I've already magnetic-primed a wall in my kitchen/dining room for a magnetic/chalk calendar idea I've been kicking around for a while. This project might get back-burnered this weekend in favor of a more pressing project (more on *that* later), but I'll be sure to put up some pictures when I wrap it up. For now, though, there's a baby grabbing at my keyboard--repeatedly turning on CAPS lock while I type--who appears to want my attention...

My Baby Has Weaned.

2010-02-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I think it's safe to say that the baby has officially weaned.

Oh, not this baby. She's just getting started.

Not this baby, either. She's going to be nursing for a while yet.

This baby. This one right here.

When Sam was born five (!) years ago, I committed to breastfeeding him exclusively for his first six months, and to continue to nurse him until he turned one. One. He's five now. How did that happen? Well...naturally.

As Sam's first birthday approached, I began to realize that neither he nor I was going to be ready to quit nursing any time soon. At that time, I knew a few people who had nursed a little later (18 months or so), and recalled a cousin who nursed her children into early childhood (until 4, 5, 6 years). The latter was often the talk of family gatherings (the child she was nursing was only a few years younger than I, but I remember hearing my parents talk about it after family reunions and such, "Can you believe she's still nursing that kid?") I remember telling Joel, "I don't think I'll probably wean Sam until he's closer to 18 months; he's just not ready." Joel agreed.

But I knew then that 18 months was no less arbitrary a deadline than 12, and so I began to do some reading on the subject. The first, and perhaps most pivotal, book I read was Dr. Katherine Dettwyler's Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives. In it, she explores breastfeeding practices in several different cultures and in other, non-human primates. Paying special attention to the !Kung people of southern Africa, as well as observing the nursing/weaning practices of other mammals (primates in particular), Dettwyler proposed a set of "weaning readiness markers" such as eruption of the first permanent molars (5-6 years), six times the length of gestation (4.5 years), quadrupling birth weight (usually ~4 years), reaching 1/3 of adult weight (~5-7 years), halfway to sexual maturity (6-7 years), immune system maturity (~6 years).

It made sense to me. While I didn't (and don't) think that you could apply any rigid rubric to breastfeeding/weaning age, I was struck by the complete lack of evidence to support a 12 month (or 18 month, or 24 month) weaning age. I decided then that Sam would simply nurse until he was ready to...not.

(Sam, nursing at Red River Gorge in Kentucky, at five months. This photo was taken just minutes after I, ahem, showed-his-dad-how-it-is-done on a nice sport climbing route.)

I read everything I could get my hands on on the subject, familiarized myself with the research, in preparation for the confrontations I imagined I might encounter as my nursing baby grew into a toddler and then into a child. And it's funny--as I imagined the unsupportive looks or comments I might receive, I thought of my cousin nursing her children and the way my family talked about them, and I really drew a lot of courage from that example, and had a new admiration for my cousin, doing what was best for her child despite the lack of support from family, friends and public. I was determined to do the same. But what I found was that, as Sam grew older and bigger and I was seen nursing him in parks and restaurants and museums, I was met *not* with confrontation, but with warm smiles and occasional curiosity (mostly from other children). Soon I started to notice other children Sam's age (or older) who were nursing. As I unabashedly nursed my son, or talked about nursing him, more and more full-term nursing mothers came out of the woodwork. Soon, I thought nothing of nursing Sam when he needed it.

(That mess of stripes is Sam and Lucie, tandem nursing on Mother's Day, 2007.)

I've frequently received inquiries from friends and acquaintances who see me as an "experienced" mother, looking for advice on weaning. And, until very recently, I've had to tell them: that is one thing we haven't done yet!

But over the course of the past six months or so, Sam has asked to nurse less and less. A few months before Fiona was born, he was nursing once every week or two. Soon that tapered off to once every 2-3 weeks. Then once a month. Several times I thought, "this is it," but a month would go by and, almost like clockwork, he would ask to nurse.

But now, this time, I think it's really it. He last nursed nearly 7 weeks ago (on New Year's Day--easy to remember!), and he hasn't mentioned it since. And, for the first time, I heard him tell his little sister, "I don't nurse any more, but when I used to nurse..."

I thought this would be bittersweet and I suppose, in some regards, it is. But it's weighted rather heavily on the "sweet" side, as it feels really great to have reached this milestone with my son in a way that I feel honored his needs and my intuition above societal expectation or cultural norm.

Still Got It...

2010-02-12T13:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I placed a phone call to our insurance agent to talk about our car insurance, and he asked if either my husband or I had a college degree. I told him that yes, we both had college degrees, and he said, "Well, then, you're eligible for a $102/year discount!" I'm curious why this is--are college-educated individuals statistically less likely to be in accidents?--and even more curious why, after doing business with this man for nearly 7 years, he's only now thinking to ask us if we have college degrees.

But I digress.

I do have a college degree, and let me tell you how I got it: Not by planning ahead. Not by being prepared. I got by on my uncanny ability to estimate with down-to-the-minute accuracy just how long I could put off beginning a given project, and my knack for putting the axe to the grindstone, so to speak, when the time had really come.

And, this morning, I gave it another go. Turns out, it's like riding a bike...

Sam's preschool class had a Valentine's Day party today. Joel and I are saving money to buy a really fantastic bicycle (another post, another day), so I didn't want to spend any money on these valentines, so I wanted to make them out of things we already had in the house. That way, we could kill two birds with one stone (my, this post is wrought with metaphor), making valentines for free, and taking more "stuff" out of the house (another goal of late).

Working on Valentine's Day Project #1 this morning. Sam, Lucie, and my nephew Luca (who stayed with us last night) wanted to get in on the action, so I stripped them of their shirts and they set to work (on their own projects). Fiona just kept us company. And, for 10 points, can you spot someone new in this photo?

When we went to bed last night, Sam had zero valentines. And when we left for school this afternoon (there's a reason he doesn't go to morning preschool), he had not one but two valentines to give to each of his 22 classmates. And both were made entirely out of things we already had in the house.

We had a lot of these little "peg people" left over from Lucie's christmas present (we painted a bunch of these for her in a variety of motifs), and plenty of paint. So I made "Robot Love" for Sam's preschool class.

Project number two involved a lot of crayon peeling-and-melting, and a quick rifle through the recycling bin produced the "cards" that we stuck them on.

In the last moments before he walked out the door, Sam scrawled his name on 22 cards.

Finished products.

A job well-procrastinated, if I do say so myself.

A Little Off the Top...

2010-02-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

This is my friend Kate. She's a doula, a childbirth educator, a massage therapist, unschooling mom, neat birth-zine editor, and all-around pretty cool person.

Isn't her hair lovely?

Next month, she'll shave it all off to raise money for childhood cancer research and to show her support for kids who suffer from cancer, many of whom lose their hair after undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

Kate started a blog to record her fundraising progress, and to share her perspective on what she's doing. Check it out, send a donation if you feel so inclined (there's a link on her blog), and pass her website along to others you think might like to help out. She's nearly halfway to her fundraising goal of $3,000, but I suspect she could exceed that goal by a longshot with a little good ol' fashioned internet-based networking.

It's not really my birthday.

2010-02-10T21:30:00.000-08:00

I'm 29 today, but I realized about 5 years ago that this isn't actually my birthday. My birthdays are February 7, and November 23, and August 23. Today rightfully belongs to my mom.

Joel asked me what I might like for my birthday, and I assured him that we needed *less* stuff, not more (although what he had in mind was a trash can--which I'm mostly sure he did not intend as a metaphor--because we are always hanging a garbage bag from a drawer handle in the kitchen and we've been meaning to get one since we moved back into our house a *year* ago). Plus, we're in the process of saving for a rather large purchase, so we've been trying to spend as little as possible on other things lately (and it's going splendidly, I might add).

But I had plans to hang out with a couple friends last night, and Sam was invited to spend the night with his cousin at my sister's house, so Joel was home with just Lucie (who went to sleep at an uncharacteristically early 7:30), so Joel set to work on my birthday present--and it was a pretty fantastic gift.

First of all, he hung two more instrument mounts for me, so that both my guitars, my banjo and my mandolin could all hang on the wall--putting them conveniently out of the (immediate) reach of a certain few children, and keeping them visible for me (and everyone else) to enjoy. He even hung a photo that I'd been meaning to hang (but hadn't gotten around to it), and put a hook on the wall so Sam could hang his new ukulele (our birthday gift to him; his birthday was just a few days ago) in the corner with the other strings.

Our "music corner" before, as seen behind Fiona's napping-place.

After--doesn't that look better?

Sam and Lucie, when Lucie was about 2 weeks old. That was our old piano.

My sister gave me an equally thoughtful gift. Like I said, Sam stayed there last night, but then she called while Joel was home having lunch today to invite Lucie to come join them (Joel drives right by her house on his way to-and-from work). So Lucie went to her cousins' house, and Fiona and I had the afternoon to ourselves, which was such a pleasure. I realized that I have (or take?) very little time to just sit with Fiona or play with her--she has a big brother and sister who do that, and I'm nearly always busy doing something around the house. I break often to nurse her, and she often accompanies me in my busy-ness by riding on my back in a mei tai or Ergo carrier, but it's not that often that I just sit on the floor and play with her. But today I did, and it was really so lovely that I'll be sure to make a little time to do so in the future.

Fiona's first lesson. She's self-taught, actually.

The bigger kids stayed with my sister all evening, so that Joel (and Fiona) and I could enjoy a delicious dinner of falafel and hummus and lentil soup at one of our favorite restaurants.

Overall, it was a lovely day--even if it isn't rightfully mine.

Current Reads...

2010-01-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to put together a post about our Christmas--a trip to West Virginia, a new tradition and lots of old ones, and photos of all the homemade-goodness that was exchanged--but I've been far too busy making Christmas gifts, and celebrating with family and friends, and driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike--you know, stuff like that--to post anything at all.
This week was back-to-it week; Joel had to go back to work, Sam is back to preschool, and I'm back to having to get out of bed early in the morning. It's pretty rough. We're ready for the weekend.
With the exception of one little scarf I knit on our drive home, I'm on a little post-holiday craft-hiatus. But some very thoughtful gifts from some very kind people have kept me busy these past couple weeks, so I thought I'd share:

When my father-in-law saw me reading this Christmas afternoon, he remarked, "Five years and three kids-worth of breastfeeding, and you still need a book to tell you how?" Funny guy. No, I don't. But I'm always looking for good resources to recommend to new breastfeeding moms, and really, if Ina May Gaskin writes a book, I'll likely read it. So far, so good.

These next two were particularly exciting to open up on Christmas morning, because I actually didn't hint at all that I would like them, but Joel had noticed me leafing through The Urban Homestead at the bookstore, and recommended it and others like it to his sister as potential gift-ideas for me. I'm super-excited about both of them. I sort of like the way the first one reads better, and it has handy little tutorials on things like building a worm compost bin and what-not. Very cool, both of them.

These last two are fun, too, and full of crafty ideas--some of which I can do with the kids, and others that I must do in their absence. Anyway, I'm excited about them.

Three is a Magic Number.

2009-12-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

23 November 2006--minutes after Lucie was born.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago (!) my Lucie turned three. It's unbelievable, really. I haven't known a quicker three years. Joel still regularly refers to Fiona by her big sister's name, and I'm inclined to think this is why: it doesn't seem like three years have passed us by since Lucie was the chunky little baby in our arms and in our bed. (And, to be sure, Lucie still spends a significant amount of time in both our arms and our bed...she's just less chunky and not such a baby.)

Lucie at about 2 months.

Lucie's third year was a deeply important one, since it was the year that we made her a big sister (and a middle child). This alliance of new-big-sisterhood and just-turned-three-ness has proven to be a challenge, but I retain just enough hope to keep getting out of bed in the morning.
It's been a big year in other ways, too, and we've had fun watching Lucie grow up, if just a little bit, this year. This past spring she was magically able to pedal her brother's tricycle that she couldn't ride the previous summer, and one day I noticed she was rather proficiently dressing herself in the mornings. We're continually noticing (bittersweetly) as Lucieism after Lucieism is replaced by standard English (she no longer says, "I can't know" when she means "I don't know," and she no longer pronounces her full name "Lucie-na-na," but she still calls her sister "Fona"--a habit of which we are all trying to break ourselves.)
She's getting big in a lot of ways; she talks about wanting to go to school and bestows the title of "best friend," alternatingly, on her big brother, baby sister, parents, grandparents, and an array of friends, acquaintances and strangers-on-the-street, as she sees fit. She has an opinion about almost everything.

Lucie and I in San Francisco, a couple weeks before her first birthday.

The last few months have been a little rough. I've often felt like she is losing this sweet, innocent part of herself as she simultaneously grows up (a little!) and deals with some new feelings she might be experiencing as a result of the recent growth of our family. She's more volatile than she used to be, she seems more defensive. If she runs past you and trips over something, the little girl who used to exclaim, "Whoa! I'm okay!" and get back up now points an accusing finger and says, "You tripped me!" as her eyes well up with tears.
She has adopted some attention-grabbing behaviors that we had never seen from her, too. Yesterday while I was away and Joel was hanging Christmas lights she used a green crayon to color on every surface in our bathroom--the floor, the wall, the sink, the toilet, the trash can, the shelf, the door. No big deal, and it wiped off easily (in my heart, I believe that the Mr. Clean erasers are genuinely MAGIC), but this kind of behavior is so un-Lucie that it makes me feel really sad for her, because I know that she is doing these things to get the attention that she obviously perceives she has lost, although we are doing everything we can to preempt these things by liberally giving her our time, attention and affection.
Despite all of this change, though, the parts of Lucie that are most essential to her have not been lost. She is still empathetic in a way that I think most 3-year-olds are not. She thinks of her brother and her sister and her parents and her cousins and her friends all the time. Since well before she was two-years-old, she has always insisted on splitting whatever she has so that everyone can have some of it--whether it's food, or toys, or stickers...whatever. We have always said it's as if she can't enjoy anything unless she can have someone enjoy it with her.

Lucie, dressing up in scarves a month-or-so ago.

So we feel confident that we haven't lost Lucie to three-dom or "Middle Child Syndrome." Lucie is still sweet, loving, compassionate, generous, thoughtful Lucie. She's just sweet, loving, compassionate, generous, thoughtful Lucie who sometimes colors on the walls, decorates her sleeping baby sister with play dough, or covers her naked body with Elmer's glue. And we love her to pieces.

A blurry-but-recent picture.

Back at it.

2009-11-18T19:06:00.000-08:00

I attended a birth this morning--the first I've been to since Fiona was born in August. It wasn't my intention to start attending births quite this early, but these were people that I particularly liked (they were some of my first doula clients when they gave birth to their daughter a bit over two years ago) so, when I found out this summer that they were pregnant and interviewing the midwife I work for, I told her I'd make an exception for their birth.

I'm glad I did. It was a difficult labor and birth. The baby was OP, and the mother's labor was long and, especially in the last few hours, very hard. She pushed for a really long time (especially given that this was her second vaginal birth) and when the baby finally came, he had a shoulder dystocia that my preceptor had to resolve. It was an intense minute or so while she maneuvered him out, but in the end he was well and didn't require any help immediately after the birth.

It was sort of tough being away from Fiona, but the timing couldn't have been better. I was nursing her to sleep when I got called out (at about 10:45 p.m.), and she slept all night and was still sleeping when I arrived home a bit after 8:00 a.m. the next morning. That's pretty typical for her, so I didn't even end up needing to pump at the birth (although I was *quite* ready to nurse her by the time I arrived at home). And she slept peacefully and awoke none-the-wiser with regard to our 10-hour separation.

Still it was a little tough for me, as the sun came up and I imagined her waking without me. I knew, cognitively, that she was perfectly fine at home with her dad, but I couldn't help but feel a bit of a tug at the thought of missing her waking-up smiles, or her having to eat from a bottle. I'm not currently planning to attend another birth until March, so I suppose we'll see if leaving her behind will be more or less difficult when she's a few months older.

Despite feeling a little sad to be away from my own very little baby, it was really fantastic to be back at a birth. I've missed it, and I'm glad for the opportunity to get back to my apprenticeship.

I've been thinking a lot lately about when and how and in what capacity I want to get back to attending births. I feel really conflicted about it. On one hand, I'm excited about this work, I have an excellent opportunity to work with, and learn from, a midwife I respect and trust immensely. And I think I'm a happier person and a better partner and mother when I'm engaged in something outside of the home (be it a job or a book club or whatever). But I also know how quickly these months go by, and how little is Fiona's world and what a big part of it I am right now. It makes me pause.

So, I'm thinking a lot about this, and hoping to arrive at a conclusion soon that will feel right for all of us. In the meantime, though, I'm taking it one birth at a time, and I'm really grateful for each experience and the people who afford it to me.

Postpartum Elation...

2009-10-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable. Fiona is 2 months old today, which seems absolutely impossible. Impossible that two months could pass us by so quickly, to be sure, but even more impossible to imagine that 2 months and 1 day ago this little person lived inside of me, upside-down, her name and her face (and her sex!) still a secret from us. I can't believe that three and four and five months ago we lived our lives and got along just fine without her. A year ago, this little girl was hypothetical.

But now she's here, and I'm having a hard time remembering how we managed to get out of bed every morning without these *three.*

I've been meaning to post for some time--have actually started a post several times, only to get distracted, or bored, or frustrated and discard it (I'm not a "save-it-and-come-back-to-it" kind of girl)--about my postpartum condition. I'm here for the third time, and yet I've never taken the time to really reflect on the way it is for me in the first weeks and months after having a baby.

I'm not a very emotional person. Or, rather, I'm just a very, very cerebral person. I'm not unfeeling--not in the least. It's just that, when I experience something, whether it's a film, or a song, or a conversation with a friend--hell, even a kiss from my husband--I experience it intellectually first, and my emotion follows. It's sort of like lightning and thunder; both have the same origin, but we experience the lightning before the thunder because light travels faster than sound. So if, for example, I receive bad news, my first response will not be to feel sad, or angry, or afraid, although I might feel any of those things eventually. My first reaction will be to think through how something happened, or why, or what I can do, or could have done, or what ramifications it has for the future. Then, in a sort of second-wave response, I will likely feel something about it.

The effect is that my mind ends up working as a sort of filter for my feelings. If someone says something potentially hurtful to me, I typically process it mentally first, asking myself (and of course there's no "asking myself" anything, as this all happens in the split second after I've heard something), "Why did he say that? What did she mean by that?" et cetera. So by the time I'm ready to make an emotional repsonse to something, I've already analyzed it, at least preliminarily, and interpreted it.

It makes me a very rational person, and it's something most people who know me well point out to me about myself--in one way or another. Some see it in a positive light. I've been told that I am very "stable" and "reliable" and "strong." Others don't see it that way; I've been called "cold" and "unfeeling." My mother has often remarked that "nothing ever gets to me."

But in the weeks and months after I've had a baby (and, to a considerably lesser degree, while I'm pregnant), everything gets turned upside-down. Instead of processing everything intellectually and coming to a rational "decision" about how I should-and-therefore-do feel about a given thing, it happens backwards. I instead find myself asking myself, "Why am I crying about that?" or "Why does that song make me so happy?"

The result of the total disturbance of the-way-I-work is that I cry more, yell louder, laugh harder than I do when my brain is "in charge." A woman expecting a baby a month-or-so after Fiona was born wrote to ask me how long it took my pelvis to heal after I injured my symphysis because she had just sustained a similar injury a few days before *her* due date, and I burst into tears, because the part of me that says, "Oh my god, that was so painful and terrifying and debilitating for me and now someone else is dealing with it" got to be the lightning for a change, and the part of me that says, "Well, let's see...I injured myself on a Saturday, and I was 39 weeks on Sunday, and I still couldn't walk on Tuesday, but I went to the chiropractor on Thursday...so that was...5 days until I felt like I could walk, 8 until I felt like I could have a baby, 14 before I actually had to," just had to stand in line until crying-me was finished.

And I think it's really fantastic, living this way. I'm like Dorothy, falling asleep in black-and-white Kansas and waking up in technicolor Oz. My day-to-day dealings have more texture; they're richer, and fuller, and deeper. What was "provocative" becomes "moving;" what was "interesting" becomes "compelling." And I'm reminded that I am moveable.

I feel really connected to the things and people around me when I feel so freely. I'm less articulate, but more empathetic, I have less perspective, but I'm more present. It's why I posted that elephant birth video recently--I was so moved by it. The birth actually reminded me a lot of Fiona's birth--those early minutes when the elephant calf is limp and not breathing, and its mother tries to stimulate it, calmly at first, but you can see her becoming more anxious, and then she makes that desperate-trumpet-sound, because her baby hasn't moved or breathed and she knows, the same way she knew to push that baby out and the same way she knew to pick it up by its trunk and the same way she knew that that was her baby, she knows that it's getting to be too long and she isn't sure what to do next. And I'm not an animal-person--not at all, really--but in that moment I found myself moved because I was certain I knew what that elephant was feeling, and I knew what it was like to be compelled by so much instinct, to cry out with so much instinct. And I know what a gurgle and a breath and a cry sound like when you've been made to wait for them.

This won't last. It's happened twice before, and as the hormones rebalance, my mind seizes power again and my heart once again does as it is told. And it's not all bad--there is a place in this world for rational thinkers, and in a few months, I will have resumed mine. But for the time being, I'm enjoying my postpartum state, where feelings come fast and hard and without permission from anybody.

Elephant Birth Video.

2009-10-08T23:22:00.001-07:00

Apple Picking

2009-09-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

Our first-ever family-of-five photo.

Last weekend we woke up to a sort of brisk morning and decided to get a little jump-start on our favorite season by heading out to the apple orchard. We met my sister and her two kids at a favorite orchard and spent the day riding the wagon around the orchard (this place is huge), and picking a very large bag of Golden Delicious, Northern Spy, Gala, and McIntosh apples (and we might have also gathered some donuts and raspberry-apple cider--yes, you read that correctly, raspberry-apple cider--before it was all over with.

Sam, catching a ride on Joel's shoulders.

Lucie, taking a break from the very serious apple picking.

Lucie worked so hard, and for so long, on this apple. I think she sat in this one spot in the orchard for at least 20 minutes.

Sam, enjoying the first of many apples on the wagon ride back from the orchard.

We had a really great day together, and I don't imagine it will be our last orchard visit this fall.

Middle Child.

2009-09-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

As I was saying, we all have our adjustments to make now that Fiona has joined our family. As the days pass, though, it is becoming clear that this is turning out to be a more difficult transition for Lucie than for anyone else. It's not surprising: she's the only one of us who hasn't done this before, really--Joel and I have welcomed, now, three babies into our lives. Sam is experienced at adjusting to life with a new sister. But this is unchartered territory for my little Lucie. This fact is compounded by the fact that Lucie is approaching her third birthday (in November) and, if I haven't shared my opinion before, I'll share it now: Three is the new Two. I feel like, if you were to draw a graph representing the degree of humanity of a given person, you would see a steady decline from age 2 to age 3, which would bottom out somewhere around 3.5 before beginning to climb toward 4, 5 and 6. It's just a rough year. And Lucie was getting there well enough *without* anyone upsetting the order of her little world by bringing a baby into the family.
As I said yesterday, Lucie has been exhibiting a handful of behaviors that sort of scream, "I'm a poor, irrational toddler recently displaced by a baby sister who simply cannot get enough attention right now and who will stop at almost nothing to get as much of it as possible." The least subtle of these, perhaps is the pants-peeing. Lucie potty trained last summer, when she was 19-20 months old. A month or two ago, she became very independent about taking herself potty (pulling her own pants/undies up and down, wiping herself, et cetera). I remember remarking to a friend that she was becoming so independent in her bathroom use, and how I hoped having a new baby wouldn't set her back. When I said this, I was envisioning her reverting to coming to get one of us every time she needed to pee, asking us to pull her pants down, waiting for us to lift her onto the toilet. What I was not envisioning was what has happened: Lucie walks out of the room, happily playing and fully clothed, and returns a few minutes later, still happily playing...and naked from the waist, down. I ask, out of habit and not curiosity, "Lucie, where are your pants?" to which she replies, "I peed in them." I say, as matter-of-factly as I can muster, "Okay, you need to go get your wet undies and pants and put them in the diaper pail and get dry ones out of your dresser."
I don't want to overreact to this. I know it's not abnormal, and I know that she's under a lot of emotional and developmental stress right now as she adjusts to having a sister. But as the diaper pail grows full of pair-after-pair of her pants, I grow weary. Tonight we had friends over for dinner and, exasperated, I told her, as I helped her into yet another pair of dry pants and undies, "Lucie, if you pee in these pants, you're going to have to go to bed." She assured me she wouldn't pee in those pants.
It was an hour or so later that I heard Lucie announce from the bathroom, "I PEED!" and saw her walk out of the bathroom, bottomless. One might assume she had peed in the toilet, but she had this look on her face. I said, "Did you pee in the toilet?" "Nope!" I said, "Then where?" She was carrying a large saucepan she had taken off the stove, and it suddenly occurred to me what had happened, before she even explained that she had removed her pants in the living room, peed in the saucepan, and dumped it into the toilet. I took the (now empty) pan to the sink and she proudly put her pants back on, happy to have beat the system, so to speak.
It was an hour or two later that she disappeared into the living room (for 2 minutes, max) and then returned to the dining room (where our friends and we were still sitting around the table)--totally naked and covered, head-to-toe, in Elmer's School Glue.

This is not the little girl I knew a month ago--this was the little girl who could be trusted with things like markers and scissors (and glue!), even unattended, because she just...didn't *do* stuff like this.

I know it's a phase. I know she'll get over it. I know that I just need to be patient, remain calm, show her extra love and attention. But...wow. She's wearing me out.

Here she is, being a robot this afternoon. She had taken stickers and stuck them, in a row, up her arm. She came in and, pretending to push a few "buttons" on her arm, declared, "I AM A ROBOT," in her best robot-voice. I didn't get a clear photo of her "robot buttons" (because she was mechanically waving her arm around at the time), but here she is, in robot-mode:

Two-and-a-Half Weeks...

2009-09-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

Man, I love this baby. I can't believe two-and-a-half weeks have passed since I birthed her. And I can't believe that, two-and-a-half weeks ago, she lived inside of me. On one hand, she seems so pure and perfect and brand-new and, on the other, I feel as though I've known her my whole life. The details of her face and body have become so familiar to me in two-and-a-half weeks that I cannot believe I ever didn't know the pattern in which her hair grew, or the creases in her arms and legs, or the dimples in her elbows or the folds in her tiny ears. I don't remember what it's like not to know all her sweet smells--her breath, her skin, her head--or to sleep in the absence of all her little squeaks and sighs. And, yet, it hasn't quite set in that I am the mother of three children now. Nursing Fiona on a bench at the park yesterday, I found myself looking up and checking for only one child--forgetting that I now needed to keep track of two children *in addition to* the one I was nursing. But, gradually, it's coming.
It's an adjustment for all of us, and we all seem to be adjusting in different ways. I'm working on mustering up the courage to perhaps, one day, leave the house with all three children, alone. So far, I've found ways to avoid it--either planning outings when Joel can come along, or managing to leave one-kid-or-another with family (for example, Lucie is staying with my sister tomorrow morning while I take Sam to the dentist, and Sam is staying with her Friday while I take Fiona and Lucie to the pediatrician).
Joel has been really fantastic and helpful, and has really afforded me the time to rest and heal from the birth, and to just sit around staring at this beautiful new baby. Physically, I feel like this birth was not nearly so hard on me as the first two were--and I felt so much better so much sooner than I did with either of the other two that I've astounded myself--but I've had a lot of lingering pain from my unfortunate pelvic mishap, and that has made this recovery somewhat more difficult than the others. Having Joel home was marvelous, though, and I hate that he had to go back as soon as he did (although he took more time off after this birth than after either of the first two).
Sam and Lucie are adjusting to their new roles and are realizing the impact that welcoming Fiona to the family has on them, as well. I'm pleased--though not at all surprised--with the way they love and tend to her. Lucie has always sort of amazed me with her nurturing spirit and her attentiveness to other people's needs and feelings; she has always seemed far too empathetic for her age. Rather than seeming bothered by the fact that Fiona nurses so much, for example, she comes running whenever she hears Fiona cry and is usually quick to suggest that, "I think the baby needs to nurse!" She is gentle with her sister, and kind--reaching over from her carseat to try to hold Fiona's hand, and offering reassurances when Fiona becomes upset in the car. But despite her immediate love for, and acceptance of, Fiona, Lucie appears to be struggling some to fit comfortably into her new "place" in the family, as an older sister and, more importantly, as something other than the "baby." Despite having been potty trained for over a year, she began wetting her pants a day or two after the baby was born. And she's a bit more defiant. Sometimes she asks to nurse in this sort of desperate way, as though she's afraid *this* might be the time I tell her, "I'm sorry, Lucie, you're just too old to nurse." (And Lucie is no stranger to tandem nursing--in fact, she's never had my breasts to herself, so to speak, since her older brother is only now weaning in time for her little sister to have joined her--but more on that another time, soon.) So I'm doing my best to just let her feel all of this out, and to reassure her of her continued importance to me and to our family. (But, seriously, the pants-peeing has me a little on-edge, at least inwardly.)

Sam seems to be exploring what this big change means for him, too. He seems to really embrace his status as "eldest," and enjoys some of the "privileges" that come with it. For example, we moved his carseat to the third row of the van in anticipation of Fiona's birth, and he seems to find that exciting. (And it works out perfectly--as the only forward-facing child in the car, he sits in the back talking to Fiona and Lucie, and he enjoys unbuckling both of them when we arrive wherever we're going.) He's a pretty independent person, and I feel like I have to be careful not to let the introduction of a new baby push him from "independent" to "isolated." He's quite happy to play by himself, and often doesn't bother to come around us unless prompted to do so by Joel or me. He's also *very fond of* (read: addicted to) all things electronic, and there's been some struggle to keep his "screen time" moderate since Fiona's birth. He is aware of the added time and responsibility that comes with having a baby, and he uses that to his advantage when he (quietly and secretly) helps himself to my laptop, cell phone or iPod--opting to "beg forgiveness" rather than "ask permission." He knows that I'm likely to let more things "slide" right now, and often just...ignores me...when I talk to him or ask him to do/not do something. (And if there's something that drives me even more crazy than the repeated peeing-of-pants, it is certainly the blank look on the face of a child who hears me, understands me, and simply has no intention of doing what I'm asking.)
But bringing a new person into our home and our bed and our lives is a really big deal, and I get that. So I'm trying my hardest to be patient with all of us and to forgive Joel his inability to call Fiona by anything but *Lucie's* name, and Lucie her near-constant wetting of her pants, and Sam his indifference to every word I say. And I'm trying to forgive myself for sometimes *not* being so patient with any of them.
All-in-all, though, it's been a good two-and-a-half weeks, and I emerge from it hopeful and happy and confident that we, the five of us, are going to be okay and that sometime--sometime soon, even--this is all going to feel normal, and we will resume using the toilet, and leaving the house, and listening to one another. I think it's going to be all right.
And one thing is for sure: we all love this baby. Very, very much. And I think she's beginning to like us, too.

The (Unabridged) Story of the Birth of Fiona Bee.

2009-08-25T21:12:00.001-07:00

Saturday morning began the way mornings generally begin in my house, with Lucie crawling into bed with me and asking to nurse. While she was nursing, I had a sort of crampy feeling, but it didn't prevent me from dozing back to sleep while she nursed. I awoke to these cramps once or twice, and it occurred to me that this could be very early labor, but shortly after getting out of bed, it became clear that it wasn't going to go anywhere.

The crampy feeling never entirely left me, but I didn't pay much attention to it, either. In a moment of absolute insanity, I suggested that we should run (read: drive an hour each way) to IKEA (on the last Saturday before most colleges in the area began classes) to make a couple returns and to look at dressers (we recently moved Lucie's out of her room and into ours to use for the baby's stuff, and we needed somewhere to put her clothes). In a moment of weakness, Joel agreed to the plan, and we headed out with the kids.

The day was relatively uneventful, really. The crampy feeling stayed, and I told Joel that I suspected that I was either (a) trying to get something going, labor-wise or (b) getting a UTI or something. Occasionally I noticed a contraction, but it was never enough to even warrant looking at a clock.

I realized I was in labor some time between 9:30 and 11:30 Saturday night, when I laid down on my couch and happened to glance at the clock for three consecutive contractions and realized they were five minutes apart, which led me to actually time them for a little while. After I laid there for an hour or so, I went to the bathroom and had a good bit of mucus/blood (the first I'd had). So at midnight I called to give Stacia, my midwife, a "heads-up," and told her I planned to go to bed for a little while from there, and that I would call her if-and-when things picked up. We got off the phone and I was about to go to bed when I thought, "No, I should get a few things ready first." So Joel and I started sort of bustling around--I unloaded/re-loaded the dishwasher while he inflated the pool, et cetera. He kept saying, "Okay, let's get to bed," and I'd come up with one more thing we needed to get organized first. So finally, at about 1:00 or 1:30, he said, "Okay, seriously, we *need* to go to bed." And I was like, "Um, Joel? I don't think we're going to bed." The look on his face was priceless.

My labor was strong, but really very manageable. In a total afterthought, I had noticed my mom had bought an exercise ball recently, and asked if I could borrow it. (I wasn't into the birth ball during Sam's or Lucie's labor, but figured, what the hell?). I ended up spending almost my entire labor sitting on that ball, with my headphones/iPod on, bouncing and swaying to some good music. At 2:45, I finally decided to call Stacia. When I was having a contraction, things felt super-intense, like I should call her, but I was still totally conversational (me!) between contractions, and that made me sort of leery of calling too early. Finally, I had resorted to timing contractions for a bit again, and realized they were coming 2-3 minutes apart and lasting nearly a minute, so I decided to call her (since she had almost an hour-long drive ahead of her, too). So I called and told her what was going on and that I thought she should come, but not hurry. She said she would eat breakfast and be on her way. I also called my friend Kelly whom we had asked to come over for the birth.

Kelly came over around 3:30, then Jamie (an apprentice from another local midwifery practice who was helping out at my birth--and who was actually serving as primary-under-supervision at my birth) arrived at about 3:45, and finally Stacia at 4:05. In some regards, I felt a little weird about everyone being there, because I didn't really need anything in particular and I sort of felt like everyone was just sitting around my living room waiting for me to do something.

I had been thinking of how nice it would be to get in the pool, and it had been ready for a while, but I felt as though the warm water was sort of the best pain management tool I had available, and I really wanted to "save" it, so to speak. I was really afraid of getting in too early and then having my labor really pick up and sort of already have played my "best card." So I told myself wouldn't get in until 4:00 or when Stacia got there, whichever came first. So after Stacia got there, I took one last trip to the bathroom, had a couple contractions, had a contraction standing outisde my bathroom, and then climbed into the tub at about 4:15. Right away I had a contraction, which felt nice in the water. Then I had another, stronger contraction that produced a little more pressure. Then two more really intense contractions that made me think I should probably try a different position (I was just sitting in the tub), but I was at a bit of a loss for what might feel any better (I had found sitting upright--mostly on the ball, but also on our couch for a while, to be the most comfortable position in which to labor), so I just stayed put.

As I anticipated this labor and birth, and thought about how it might be different from my experiences in the hospital, one thing I thought a lot about was the way pushing would feel--or, rather, how the urge to push might feel. With Sam, I had a very medicalized birth--a failed induction that began on my due date and lasted about 28 hours, followed almost immediately by another induction which resulted in Sam's birth about 20 hours later) and elected to have an epidural. I felt absolutely nothing during his birth, but sinply waited until I was told to push and then pushed just as I was instructed. With Lucie, I remember doubting I would know when to push, but recalled hearing that the urge to push was often confused with a need to poop, so when I felt what might be interpretted as a little rectal pressure, I told a nurse what I felt, a midwife checked me and offered to hold a cervical lip back so I could try pushing. So I began pushing and Lucie was born 15-or-so minutes later.

Having witnessed quite a few natural births--and home births in particular--over the course of the past year-or-two, I felt pretty familiar with the way a more natural second stage of labor usually looks from the outside, which gave a starting point for imagining what it might feel like from the inside. Typically, when a woman is left to labor relatively uninterupted, we will first notice a change in the way she sounds during contractions--perhaps moaning or otherwise vocalizing through the contraction, then sort of giving a little "grunt" at the peak of the contraction. She'll often do this for (sometimes quite) a few contractions before we hear the grunting/pushing noises beginning earlier in the contraction and she is pushing through the entire contraction.

So, as I anticipated that stage of my own labor, I imagined a subtle impulse to bear down--one that would grow with each contraction until it became so powerful that it could no longer be resisted.

When I got in the pool, though, pushing was the last thing on my mind. As a matter of fact, it had never even occurred to me to wonder how dilated I might be or when I might start pushing. I just...wasn't there yet. Not really. I was still just sort of taking the contractions one at a time as they came. I do remember wondering if I would start to feel "transitiony" soon--maybe nauseous or spacey or something--but I dismissed the thought as the next contraction came and demanded my attention.

Joel and Kelly were just sitting in nearby chairs, and Stacia and Jamie were sort of chatting quietly in the corner about something, when I got my next contraction. I'd been in the pool, at this point, for maybe 15 minutes or so (it's hard to say; I wasn't paying attention). And seemingly out of nowhere, every part of me was pushing, full-force, with absolutely no control on my end. I hadn't made a sound my entire labor (well, during a contraction--naturally, I was running my mouth in between contractions until the very end) until sort of moaning through those last two intense contractions, but if I had a dollar for every profane word I shouted during the 8 minutes that followed that contraction, my daughter would have a respectable college fund underway. To say it was "intense" is a gross understatement; "unexpected" is purely insulting. I twisted and contorted--braced my feet against one wall of the pool and my shoulder against the other in a sort of anti-gravitational side-lie. I grunted, cursed, and tried desperately to sputter the phrase, "This is coming out of NOWHERE!"--an undertaking far too ambitious for the occasion and a sentiment obvious enough, given the circumstances, as to not require explanation. Still, I tried unsuccessfully several times--punctuating each attempt with a different obscenity: "This is coming--SHIT!...This is com--FUCK!" (You get the idea.)

Again, my sense of time as I recall all of this is unreliable at best, but I feel as though that contraction lasted two minutes or so. What I can say with certainty is that, if it was two minutes, it was the longest two minutes of my life. If it was four minutes, it was the longest four minutes of my life. And if it was 45 seconds, it was the longest 45 seconds of my life. I could feel the baby's head moving rapidly through me and reached one hand down to support my rectum and perineum and the other to support my vulva and recently injured pelvis. Eventually, the contraction concluded and I took a good, deep breath and exhaled: "That came out of nowhere."

At that point, I felt something smooth just at the opening of my vagina; my amniotic sac was bulging in front of the baby's head. I slipped a finger past it and felt the baby's head an inch or so behind it. When my next contraction started, I pinched and pulled at the sac until I felt it pop and the fluid rushed out of me. I heard Jamie say that she saw light meconium in the fluid, but quickly recognized that there was no sense in (me) worrying about that right now. With the sac broken, the head crowned and with that contraction (or was it the next? This is a bit blurry.) the head was born.

The room was dark, and Jamie kept a light shining on the baby's head. I had wondered to what degree I would be able to turn off "apprentice brain" during my birth, and it turns out...not very well. I stared at the head, watching the color of the baby's scalp and waiting for restitution to occur. The scalp was a bit pale, but this was less troublesome to me than the darkening color I was afraid of. But as the contraction came to an end and I began waiting for the next, I noticed that the head didn't turn. Stacia and Jamie suggested that I sit back (from my suspended side-lie) and helped me open my legs into a McRoberts-ish position. When the next contraction came, I pushed again, but nothing budged. Stacia suggested that Jamie look for a nuchal cord, which she found but was unable to unloop, and advised that she "somersault" the baby out (by holding the baby's head close to my thigh/pelvis, she could allow the shoulders and body to "somersault" out of me without pulling the already-tight cord any tighter/further from my pelvis. She also advised that she may need to help with the rotation of the shoulder.

I don't recall if it occurred to me first, or someone suggested it first, but I turned onto my hands-and-knees before/at the beginning of the next contraction, which allowed the shoulders to rotate on their own. I felt this occur and with a couple more pushes, I felt the baby slip into the water, and Jamie pushed her between my legs so I could lift her out of the water.

She was entirely limp and Stacia helped me unloop the cord from her neck. I brought her to myself but knew she wasn't breathing. I cradled her, talked to her, and rubbed her, but it was clear that she would likely need a bit more help. Jamie suggested holding her lower, so I handed her off to Jamie so I could stand (to get my placenta above her) while Jamie held her close the the surface of the water (it was then that I noticed she was a girl). Stacia said it was time for "a breath," Jamie agreed, and while Stacia grabbed the bag/mask and oxygen, Jamie gave a few breaths mouth-to-mouth. It didn't take too long (naturally, it seemed to take far too long) before she gurgled a little and then let out a lusty, if sort of juicy, cry.

They helped me out of the tub and I sat, holding her on her side, trying to keep her head low to allow drainage. She was breathing and crying, but continued to sound really congested, and Stacia eventually suctioned her airways with a DeLee, after which Jaime followed up with a bulb syringe. From there, she sounded clear.

Her 1-minute APGAR score was a 4. Her 5-minute was a 10. (Thanks, Stacia and Jamie.)

And a perfect 10 she remains.

I Traded My Widget...

2009-08-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

For this baby girl!

Fiona Bee was born at home at 4:47 a.m. She weighed an even 10 pounds, is exceptionally cute, and we are very, very fond of her already. Details/birth story forthcoming but, in the meantime, here she is:

"I Wonder If She Hasn't Posted in a While Because She Had Her Baby."

2009-08-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

Well, wonder no more. The fetus is tucked safely inside of me, where he or she shows no signs of budging any time before Labor Day.

And that's okay. For now. Don't get me wrong--were it up to me, I think this weekend would be a splendid time to have a baby. But it's mostly okay with me to not. Yet. In another week, I do not promise to maintain my go-with-the-flow mentality, has he or she not yet been born.

And, as I told a friend last night, come August 31st I'm just going to climb in the tub and start pushing. I'm just not prepared to think of this as my "September baby."

Against my better judgment--or rather, just despite my doubtful disposition--I visited a chiropractor a few days ago. Although I was starting to feel quite a bit better, I was still in a lot of pain when I walked, and I had started to notice that a lot of the discomfort had shifted to the back of my pelvis, rather than the symphysis, where I had actually injured it. It occurred to me that maybe I had been sort of holding my legs/hips/back really stiffly in an effort to sort of stabilize my pelvis, and that this could be causing me some of the stiffness and discomfort (not to mention the ridiculous gait I had developed). So I asked my midwife about it, she gave me a couple of names of chiropractors in the area, and I visited one Wednesday evening.

She adjusted my pelvis, which she said was definitely misaligned, and she said she adjust two vertebrae in my back--T12 and L4, if you're into that sort of thing--which she said "communicated" with a particular muscle in my abdomen that I might have pulled (based on how she found the vertebrae, I guess, which is interesting because this was the muscle that my midwife suggested I might have injured back in May, but...who knows; I'm not totally ready to drink the Kool-Aid just yet), and then she adjusted my symphysis and "freed" my sacrum. It felt, to me, like she did a whole lot of nothing, but I didn't feel any worse when I got up, so I thanked her and Joel and I left. As we walked to the car, I sort of felt as though I might be walking a little straighter, but I figured it was some sort of placebo-effect. Nonetheless, I thought I would try to keep from adopting the same crooked limp I had become accustomed to; in the event that she had "fixed" something, I didn't want to undo it.

I was still in a lot of pain as we made our way to run a couple of errands nearby and then headed back to my parents' house to pick up the kids. When we got home, though, Joel went to put the kids to bed, and I assumed my place on the loveseat, and I noticed that I was able to put my feet up without so much discomfort as I had been having. Not one to waste time, I carefully pulled my feet up to my body and slowly let my knees fall apart (keeping my heels together). And it felt okay. I tried moving my legs in a few other ways that had previously been rather uncomfortable and...mostly nothing.

That night, I made my way up the stairs--one foot after the other, not matching them on each step--and slept (wait for it...) in my bed. On alternating sides. I couldn't believe it.

So now, a couple days later, I am feeling *so* much better. I'm still in some pain and am staying off my feet as much as possible, but I can definitely get around reasonably well now. In fact, I did a MAJOR clean of Lucie's horribly disorganized room--complete with hanging things that I've been meaning to hang for months and moving her dresser (which is, amidst cries of outrage and injustice from Lucie, being repurposed for the baby's clothes and diapers) into our bedroom.

So I'm feeling good. In the mood to have a baby.

Speaking of said baby, I'm becoming increasing anxious to meet this one. Not finding out the sex of this baby adds such an element of anticipation to all our waiting! Names are still up in the air, but...I think we're about as close as we're going to get until we meet him or her. We're sort of mostly settled, but then I still find myself perusing baby name websites and throwing totally new names out at Joel now-and-again. And he seems open to considering all these brand-new names. So...we're not that settled.

My midwife has said, repeatedly, that she doesn't think this baby feels all that large. She later conceded that perhaps the baby was "long," but still not "big." Although I have yet to pin her down on just what, exactly, she considers a "big" baby, I think I'm officially ready to publicly disagree with her. I'll be happy to be wrong, but this baby doesn't feel small to me. I don't anticipate a giant baby or anything--I expect it to be in the same range as its older brother and sister (Sam was 9.1 at ~40 weeks, and Lucie was 10.7 at 42 weeks...so I consider them to have been roughly the "same size," given the extra couple of weeks of gestation Lucie enjoyed). I suspect this baby will fall in between the two of them--bigger than Sam but smaller than Lucie. But we'll see. If I'm wrong, and this baby weighs a nice, moderate 8 pounds or something, I will happily recant, rescind, abjure, eat crow. Time will tell.

So that's about it around here. More waiting, less limping, and no Vicodin. All in all, it's not so bad.

This Post Brought To You By...

2009-08-18T10:22:00.001-07:00

Gravely disappointed in the performance of this fetus widget. Sunday night, as midnight--and my "due date"--approached, Joel and I sat rapt in anticipation of what would happen at midnight. Would the fetus no longer float in the little amniotic bubble? Would it don a party hat? Would its tiny little cord disappear? At 12:00, I hit "refresh" to see the same fetus, floating around over the words "0 Days Left." Oh. That's it. Okay.

But then what would the widget have to say on the day AFTER my due date? Huh? You can imagine what a long day it was, waiting for the time when widget-watching could resume. And sure enough, come midnight, there I was, only to find this inscription: "1 Day Left." Wait. What?

So apparently the widget is counting up now--an act which I find uninspired, at best.

Nothing terribly exciting going on here. I continue to heal on the love seat. Towards the end of last week, I was beginning to feel as though I wasn't going to be able to heal any more so long as the baby remained in/on/all around this injury, and I began, for the first time, to feel anxious about just "getting it over with." The weekend was really boring and helpful, though--with Joel home, I started taking a half-dose of the pain medication in the middle of the day, as well as a nice, long nap, and I left the couch very little (and the house, almost not at all). By Sunday evening, I was started to feel markedly better. Yesterday, I had to get up and take Sam for a hearing/vision screening (when I scheduled this appointment for my due date, several weeks ago, it seemed like a great idea). I was in a lot of pain, walking with him to the appointment (the good news is he can hear and see, and he enjoyed the screening so much I felt really great about having planned such a fun "outing" for him. He's a bit of a perfectionist, so he took these "tests" very seriously, and beamed when the women doing the screenings told him he "got them all right"), and afterwards I took the kids over to my parents' house for the afternoon and sat on their couch for a while. I noticed when we got ready to leave that afternoon, though, that I was walking considerably better than I have been--the weekend definitely left me in better shape than it found me. So that's exciting.

Joel came home for lunch today (he works just 5-10 minutes from here, so this is typical) and after we ate he dropped the kids off at my parents' house for a few hours so I could rest, take another half-dose of Vicodin (this has the propensity to knock me out, so I don't take it when I'm home with the kids, for fear of what I may awake to if I did fall asleep), and wait for my midwife to come by for a prenatal this afternoon.

I'm not the type of person to give kids gifts on their siblings' birthdays, but I do often like to honor older siblings on the occasion of the birth of a younger sibling--it marks such an exciting and important moment in their lives (just as it does in their parents' lives). As such, I wanted to get something little for Sam and Lucie as a gift when the baby is born. I wasn't looking for anything overly "meaningful," per se--just because I think it might be lost on 2-and-4-year-olds--but I wanted to give them something little to celebrate their new roles as "big sister" and "big(ger) brother." Lucie was easy. She absolutely adores dolls/babies, and is always drawn to a particular "baby" we gave my niece on her first birthday (we got my niece this doll, in pink), so I picked one up for her (in green). This is one of my favorite dolls, too--in fact, I originally purchased it for Lucie's first birthday, but then decided to give her another doll instead--for many reasons, not the least of which is that its clothes don't come off. If I had a dollar for every time I've re-dressed the couple of dolls Lucie and Sam currently have...

Sam was a little trickier. If it were up to him, he would almost certainly receive either a workbook of some sort--he absolutely loves to do the kind of (phonics, especially) workbooks that I have been so deliberate about "protecting" him from when choosing a preschool for him. I was always so careful about *not* trying to push any sort of deliberate "teaching" on him as a toddler/preschooler (not quizzing him, for example, on letters and shapes and colors and "what does the horsey say?" and things like this), instead letting him learn through his own curiosity and everyday life. Then he saw an alphabet video a couple years ago (give the alternatives at the time, it seemed an excellent choice), and almost immediately began pointing out letters and reciting their "sounds." Anyway, I've gone far off track, but all this to say, my son LOVES to sit and do workbooks.

What he would really, REALLY, want, though, would be, in his words, "electronics." Sigh. He's four-and-a-half, but it's already started. Luddites we are not--far from it, especially in my (sort of geeky) husband's case--but we try to limit the amount of that "stuff" with our kids. We've always avoided battery-operated, blinking, flashing, noisy toys for them. We have a television, which we keep in the basement and do not receive any "channels" on (except for special occasions, when Joel hooks up his homemade-out-of-clothes-hangers-and-a-2x4 HD antennae (see, a little geeky), reserving it for occasional movie-watching (sometimes with, but more often without, the kids). Obviously we have computers, and Sam is allowed on occasion to visit two sites (to which he expertly navigates himself now): www.starfall.com and www.pbskids.com. And we have been given a couple of handheld video game systems by my nephews (these kids always have the newest in video game technology, and so our hand-me-downs have improved vastly over time--several years ago, my nephew gave me his "Game Boy Pocket." A few years later, he offered me his Game Boy Advance. Around Christmas time last year, my *other* nephew "got over" video games and gave us a Game Boy DS Lite *and* a Sony PSP which was broken, but which Joel has been able to repair, at least in part...I think). So, anyway, the point is that my children are not strangers to technology. Sam has several friends, though, who have recently gotten Game Boys--DSes, in particular--and he desperately wants one for himself. In fact, he does not know that we actually *own* a Game Boy DS (procured from my nephew) and that we intend to give it to him...eventually. We haven't decided when yet. But, anyway, he often talks to us about various technologies and when it might be appropriate for him to own them (he recently asked when he might get his own iPod. When I told him I didn't know, he insisted that "10...or at least 13" should be old enough), and the Game Boy DS is always first on his list (not surprisingly, my 4.5-year-old thinks that five is the magical age at which one should be allowed to own this particular piece of electronic entertainment.

Anyway, I digress--and embarrassingly so. (I will take this opportunity to mention that I *have* recently imbibed that half-dose of Vicodin I referred to earlier, and that I tend to react very strongly to these substances. My sister likes to play a game where she reviews things I have posted/commented/et cetera on Facebook and guess--with unsettling accuracy--which ones I wrote "under the influence" of these pills. On that note, though, I don't want to give the impression that I am drugging myself and the fetus into some sort of stupor--I did look into these drugs rather thoroughly before taking any, and while *my* particular response to them is a little...exaggerated?...they really are quite safe to take in the very low dosages in which I am taking them, and at this particular stage in my pregnancy).

What? Gift for Sam? Right.

So Sam will not be receiving workbooks, because I would feel super-lame doing that. And he won't be receiving "electronics" because...I'm not quite that cool, either. I considered getting him one of these marble runs--something he has seen at friends' houses and would really love to own, but they cost a bit more than I wanted to spend and I'm afraid he couldn't quite play with them independently (when he's played with them at friends' houses, an adult has always been needed to assist in the set-up, and a toddler--Lucie or otherwise--has usually ended up knocking it down in a well-meant but infuriating attempt to join in). So we decided on some Fiddlesticks--like Tinker Toys, but made of wood (like Tinker Toys used to be).

While placing the order for Sam's Fiddlesticks, though, it occurred to me that the baby would probably want his or her mother to enjoy some special gift on the occasion of his or her birth, too--and so I ordered myself a very reasonably-priced copy of Varney's Midwifery, a text I've been wanting to get my hands on for some time. It arrived yesterday, on my due date, and I promptly tore the package open and began leafing through this big, delicious volume. I'm really quite pleased.

If you're wondering if I've forgotten poor Joel in my recent spirit-of-giving, I have not. But Joel occasionally has a tendency to poke his nose around this here blog, and I'm a better keeper-of-secrets than that.

Well. This has turned into quite the run-on-blog-post, now, hasn't it? Soon I hope to be posting stories of labor and birth, walking without crutches or a limp, photos of a tiny(ish) baby boy or girl. But, for now, this is me: sitting on the love seat, anticipating another prenatal visit, head spinning ever-so-slightly from the Vicodin, about to spend a few more minutes leafing through Varney's.

Couchrest

2009-08-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

An update of sorts, although I'm mostly just sick of talking about this:

Sunday morning I spoke with my midwife, who suggested it might be time to make a trip to the ER. I still couldn't walk--not a step--and before I did anything like seeing a chiropractor, a more definitive diagnosis might be useful. So we went. As it turned out, they saw me in L+D, and didn't tell me much I didn't already know. I have a rather severe sprain or tear to the cartilage of my Symphysis Pubis. What they *did* do what prescribe me some Vicodin and a pelvic support belt, the former of which I have taken sparingly but with rather convincing results. I've taken it before bed the last few nights, and it has allowed me to sleep relatively well, all things considered, and I've woken up feeling improved every day except, perhaps, today. I'm not sure whether to attribute my lack-of-improvement today to a natural plateau in my recovery, or whether it is because I opted *not* to take the Vicodin last night but instead took Tylenol. When it had been 4-5 hours since my Tylenol dose and I was still lying awake and miserable on the couch, I decided to take a half-dose of the Vicodin and try to sleep the rest of the night, which worked. Still, I didn't get the kind of rest I did the few nights prior, and this may have influenced the way I felt this morning.

Overall, I am encouraged by how I'm feeling in comparison to how I felt a few nights ago, and any apprehension I had about the birth as it relates to this injury is nearly-gone (I can't say I wouldn't prefer to be approaching the birth feeling strong and well, but I am no longer in a state of mild panic over the thought of giving birth in the near future, and this feels an awful lot like improvement).

Anyway, I'm staying down as much as possible, and I feel like it's helping. I'm hoping, perhaps ironically, that I have another couple of weeks to heal before I'll be laboring and birthing, but if it happens sooner, I am resolved to simply face it as it comes and deal with it as it happens, in whatever condition I find myself. I will just do whatever I can do as I handle whatever I must, and this resignation brings me, surprisingly, a lot of peace.

Good News and Bad News...

2009-08-09T00:44:00.000-07:00

I have good news and bad news. While I know it is often preferable to lead with the bad news (get it out of the way, so to speak) and end on a positive note, I will do the opposite--in the interest of chronology.

The good news began early Friday morning, around 2:30 a.m., when the midwife for whom I work called to tell me that our client--now 14 days past her due date--was in labor. I rolled my pregnant body out of bed, threw on some clothes and headed downstairs to eat a quick breakfast before heading out. I wasn't particularly hungry, but thought it would be wise to have something before I got to the birth, which I feared might be long. As I swallowed bites of cereal and banana, the fetus kicked and hiccuped in rhythmic confusion at this upset in our schedule.

I live about 45 minutes from this client, and it was a pleasant drive in the dark. Driving to births is often a really refreshing time for me, actually--it's usually dark, the roads are usually quiet, and I'm alone in the car to turn the music of my choosing up and sing along, loudly. This was no exception. I arrived at our client's house feeling good.

Within an hour of arriving, the client (who was in the pool) began to push naturally--grunting and bearing down at the peaks of contractions at first, then growling and pushing through entire contractions after a bit. About 45 minutes later, her beautiful little boy slipped into the pool where his father's hands were waiting to bring him to the surface.

It was a very pleasant and uneventful birth. We saw the client this morning. She told us that she wouldn't have changed anything about her birth, that it was her "ideal" birth.

Having this birth finally take place was such a relief to me--I felt as though I was free to begin really thinking about and anticipating my own birth. And just in time, perhaps--I'm due a week from tomorrow.

* * *
And now the bad news, entirely unrelated:

A friend of mine threw a little party tonight, a "Sangria Party," at her farmhouse just outside town. Although I couldn't imbibe (much--come on, I had to *try* it) sangria, I'm not one to turn down a night of sitting around a bonfire with friends while the kids enjoy tractor-ride after tractor-ride (my friend's father had made this really cool "train" out of four barrels, that hooks to the back of her tractor and can thereby be pulled all over the yard--it was a huge hit with the kids), slip-n-slide, s'mores and bubbles.

Most of the guests were up in the house or on the porch, but several of my friends and I were sitting around a picnic table toward the back of her property. I'm not sure what time it was, but it had gotten dark and Joel and a couple other guys had built a bonfire near the table where we were sitting, and we were having a nice time talking with friends.

Cars had been parked around the perimeter of the yard and, at some point, I turned around to see a car backing out of its spot about 25 yards away. About 8-10 feet behind the car, a two-year-old boy was standing, just watching the car get closer and closer to him. I yelled something--not even sure what--and took off in a dead-sprint toward the boy. About 10 yards short of the car, I felt something in my pelvis sort of "pop" (for lack of a better word) and pain radiated down my legs. I took several more (involuntary) steps as my momentum died, and then I was just standing there, unable to move my legs; it felt as though they were cemented to the ground.

Fortunately, a 39-week-pregnant woman dashing through the yard attracted a bit of attention, and my husband had taken off sprinting behind me. When I stopped, he raced past me and scooped the little boy up from behind the car, which had continued to back-up, obviously unaware of the child.

Joel took the boy inside to his parents, and the car drove off, but I was still stuck, standing in the middle of this huge yard. I tried taking a step and drew in my breath sharply as the pain radiated through my pelvis. I could stand on my left leg, but it was excruciating to bear any weight at all on my right. A few moments later, I saw Joel come out of the house, and called him over to me, while another friend (who had noticed me standing there) made her way over to see if everything was all right.

Eventually, with Joel's help, I made it back over to the picnic table and sat down. I was pretty sure what had happened. The pain was all coming from my pubic symphysis--the joint at the front of the pelvis which relaxes during pregnancy to allow, ultimately, for the flexibility of the pelvis as the baby passing through it during birth. I figured that I had somehow stressed that joint and had injured either the cartilage that composes it or the ligaments that support it. I gave my midwife a call to see if she had any advice or insight to offer.

Her opinion as to what had probably happened confirmed what I had assumed, with regard to the nature of the injury. She said that a trip to the ER would probably only provide ice and pain medication--there was likely nothing they could do to "fix" it. She suggested that I try taking a bath, then alternating ice and heat, and that she would call me in the morning. She said that a chiropractor might ultimately be my best bet, and that she could recommend someone for me to see on Monday, if not convince one to see me tomorrow (Sunday).

I sat at the picnic table (sitting was uncomfortable, but not particularly painful) for a while, until it began to hurt a bit and I needed to use the bathroom. I asked Joel to help me get to the house to use the bathroom, and told him we should probably leave after that. So he tried helping me to my feet, but I found, once again, that my feet were absolutely cemented to the earth. I couldn't seem to lift my legs once I was up. We tried several times and he eventually suggested that he could just go get the car and drive it to the picnic table to get me. So that's what he did and, with the help of him and another friend, I was able to stand, turn, and sit in the front seat of our car. He drove up to the house, loaded the kids into the car, and we headed home. Once here, he moved the sleeping children to their beds and then backed our car onto our lawn, right up to our front porch. About 10 minutes later, we had managed, together, to get me in the front door and to our bathroom, about 20 feet away. I (finally!) peed before Joel sort of dragged me to the armchair he had moved to be right outside the bathroom door. It was clear that I would not be climbing the stairs to our bath tub, nor would I be able to get in (let alone OUT!) of the tub. So we began alternating hot and cold and...here I am now.

It's excruciating. Seriously. I have been sitting here for the past several hours trying to envision a birth involving this pelvis in the next 1-3 weeks. The thought makes me shudder. I know that many, many women suffer from extreme SPD during their pregnancies and go on to have fine births--I'm able, if barely, to get my mind around this. But I seriously don't know if I could get myself out of this house if it were on fire right now, so the thought of going into labor in this state is paralyzing.

So I'm trying not to freak out. I'm sitting here with ice between my legs, trying-but-failing to sleep in this chair. The rest of my body is aching in response to my lack-of-movement and poor posture, which I feel incapable of fixing. The baby has adopted some sort of weird (and uncomfortable) position, and is hiccuping quizzically while I try to convince myself that I don't need to pee again, that this is going to be okay, that I'll feel better in the morning.

Would Somebody Please Name This Baby, Already?

2009-08-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

So a couple (nearly three, I guess) years ago, while pregnant with Lucie, I sent an e-mail out to a big group of friends, asking for opinions on our top-five names. We knew that Lucie was a girl, so narrowing names down had been considerably easier, but I was curious to get a few last-minute opinions from a wide range of people. As it turned out, I honestly don't recall how influential everyone's opinions were on our final decision, but the responses were many-and-varied, and we saved them all for her to read one day--in the hopes that she would find them as entertaining as we did.

So, here we are again. Except, this time, I've waited much longer, and we're much less committed to any name-in-particular. Largely, I believe, because we don't know whether the baby is a boy or a girl, and the knowledge that roughly half the time we spend ruminating over names will be for naught is just too much for us.

We've narrowed the names down to five-or-so for each sex, although I will say that, in each case, the first two are our most serious considerations. I'd love to hear your most honest opinions on these--no worries about hurting my feelings or anything silly like that.

As a reminder, my other two children are Samuel Emerson and Luciana Hasley Kennard (pronounced, god help us, ken-ARD). Sam and Lucie.

This is your opportunity to tell me that the bully in your elementary school was named _____________, or that you lost your virginity to a ______________, or that ______________ was the name of the kid who puked on your shoes in 7th grade P.E.--all the associations that expectant parents often do not welcome. Tell me if one of these names sounds like a stripper, or a World of Warcraft junkie, or a politician. Tell me if I'm missing a seemingly obvious cultural reference. You get it. Here goes.

I'll begin with BOY names, since, deep-down, I believe the fetus to be a boy:

1. Elliot. This is our current front-runner. I'm aware of associations with musician Elliot Smith and the little boy in E.T. Anything else I'm missing? My biggest concern with this name is that it might be too trendy. The Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager had it at number 332 last year. It's not popularity of a name that I fear quite so much as *trendiness.* Sam, for example, was something like #25 the year he was born--but Sam has been a sort of enduring name that's been around forever and has never fallen entirely out of favor. When someone sees the name "Sam," they won't automatically go, "Oh, you must have been born between 2002 and 2008." I'm not so sure about Elliot. What's your impression?

2. Miles. This is, surprisingly, our only recycled (boy) name from our other kids. Joel favored this name when we were expecting Sam, and I favored Emerson. We ended up settling on Sam (obviously). But we still like the name Miles and, although we *didn't* consider it before we knew Lucie was a girl, it's back on the table this time around. I personally like the imagery it conjurs up, when considered as an improper noun--I think of miles travelled (or "miles to go before I sleep," perhaps?), by foot, or by car, or by bike. That's a really positive association for me; I like to go places (plus Kilometers, I feel, lacks a certain aesthetic and conveys a false European identity that I would hate to suggest). If we don't use this name, it will be in serious middle name contention.

-----------------
I felt compelled to draw a little line there, because those really are our top two considerations, and these next three are only marginally still in-the-running, so to speak. But, please--feel free to change our minds. I do love these names, too.

3. Ezra. The top two responses I get to this name are "For a *boy*?" and "Oh, like in the Bible." (often from the same individuals, which I find perplexing). Apparently no one has heard of Ezra Pound. Or they have, but assumed he was a woman? Anyway, the Biblical reference doesn't bother me, except, perhaps, inasmuch as I already have a Samuel and I wouldn't want each name to cast the other in a religious light. As for people thinking it's a girl's name...I just don't know what to make of them (am I overlooking a famous female Ezra or something?). And Ezra Pound is no particular hero of mine--just the first association I make with the name, culturally or historically.

4. Dorian. Joel actually was the first to say, "For a *boy*?" to this one. And while I might have shaken my head at him, I actually met a woman in my ALACE doula training a few years ago named Dorian, and it suited her so well that I wouldn't be entirely *opposed* to using it for a girl. But mostly I think of it as a boy's name. I will understand sentiments to the contrary, but I don't mind the Dorian Gray association, myself.

5. Holden. This is straight out of The Catcher in the Rye, and I like that association. What I don't like is how the name might sound, purely aesthetically (or aurally), in relation to such names as Aidan, Colton, Hayden, et cetera. Divorced from the literary association, does it remind you of those names?

AND...a couple names that are in contention for middle-name-status, only:

1. Fionn. This is our current favorite for a middle name, I think--especially with Elliot. Elliot Fionn. It's nice, right? Our leading girl name, as you will soon see, is Fiona, so I like that about it. Mostly, though, I just...like it. I suppose a Huck Finn association is possible, if you hear (and don't see) it, but...how often do you hear-and-not-see a middle name?

2. George. We like this name, as it is, but it is also Joel's grandfather's name, which is a very pleasant association (as we are quite fond of Gramps). The biggest drawback is that we don't like it quite enough to make it his first name, and we don't like how it sounds with many names, as a middle name. Elliot George is problematic to me because it sounds too much like George Elliot. Is that silly?

And our GIRL names:

1. Fiona. Like I said, this is our top choice. As a matter of fact, at the time that I sent out our name-inquiry-e-mail for Lucie, it was our top choice for her, too. The Shrek association has been brought to my attention over and over and over again--which sort of irritates me, but should also, I suppose, indicate what a common association it is for people. Fiona Apple, to whom I am indifferent, has been mentioned a few times, too. Still, I like it. Thought I wouldn't seek to shorten it, I think "Fi" is cute. Someone recently asked if I would call her "Fi Fi," and I simply responded with the same dirty look I would teach her to give to anyone who ever referred to her as such. Fi Fi is, obviously, what you name a poodle, and I feel certain that I could quickly-and-rudely dissuade anyone who might feel inclined to using such a nickname to refer to my (human) daughter. But tell me if I'm wrong. If I name her Fiona, do you imagine people will actually try to call her Fi Fi?

2. Vera. This was also a strong consideration with Lucie. In fact, at one point during the summer of 2006 (Lucie was born November 2006), when the World Cup was being played, I assigned names to each of the final four countries and declared that the winner of the Cup would determine the name of our daughter. Had I stuck to that, Lucie would be Vera, because that was Italy's name. (For the record, France was Amelie, Germany was Ingrid and Portugal was Sofie or Sofia--I forget which and, besides, everyone knew Portugal wasn't going to win, right?) I like this one. Someone has pointed out the Vera Wang association, an obvious drawback for me, except that I don't make that association myself. Otherwise, there's an Erin McKeown song called "Vera" that I like to sing and play from time-to-time. Not a meaningful song, just a nice one. (If you go to the link, there's a player in the top-right corner.)

3. Evelyn. When I was pregnant with Sam, we were absolutely certain that, if he was a girl, he was to be Eva. Turns out, he was a boy. By the time I got pregnant with Lucie, though, I had started to worry that, with all the Avas around, Eva would get mispronounced and lumped in with that trend--or *not* mispronounced, but *still* lumped-in, in the spirit of Aidan's friends Hayden, Caden and Jaden. But I still loved it, and considered Eve for a little while, thinking that would clear up any confusion about pronunciation. It was my niece who first suggested to me that we could name her Evelyn (which is lovely) and call her Eve or Eva. As my other children's names suggest, I sort of like this idea of giving a kid a name to "grow into," if they feel so compelled. Then, while visiting friends in Virginia that summer (whilst pregnant with Lucie), we stopped to visit our friend's elderly (great?) grandmother--a sort of spritely woman named Eavie (or was it spelled Aevie? I think it's the former--but, regardless, it was pronounced with a short "e," thus making it a more natural fit with Evelyn). We were briefly in love with this name, but some of my in-laws threw an absolute FIT about Evelyn (can you even imagine?!) and said they just couldn't call her Evelyn. And, I let them dissuade me (which is so unlike me). So we dropped it. Now it's back, but with one problem: I would still want to call Evelyn "Eavie" (or "Evie?--we'd have to sort this out later), but I'm not sure I like having both my daughters have a "--ie" kind of name. Lucie and Evie. Might be too much "ie," don't you think? And I could say I was going to call her Eva or Evelyn or Eve...but I just like Evie better than all of these, and it feels more like an Evelyn-derivative.

4. Ingrid. Another "honorable mention" name from Lucie, I forget what ultimately caused us to put this name aside, but I still like it. Ingrid Michaelson is a good association--although not an important one.

And our only middle-name-only contender for girls is:

1. Bee. I like it spelled like the buzzing, flying thing--not like a shortening of "Beatrice." And I dare you to come up with any name it's *not* cute with. Fiona Bee. Vera Bee. Evelyn Bee. Remind you of Bea Arthur? All the better. Otherwise, I haven't thought much about girl middle names. Haven't thought much about girl *names,* actually. I don't know why, but I totally have it in my head that this baby is a boy.

2. George. Okay, I take it back. Joel came up from the basement while I was writing this and I read it to him, and he said, "What about George for a middle name for a girl?" I hadn't thought of that, to be honest, but I'll throw it out there for your consideration, nonetheless. Could be cool, I think.

Okay. So please do give me your feedback--like I said, in addition to valuing a wide range of impressions/opinions as we *choose* a name, I will certainly compile all the responses I get and keep them somewhere for this child to enjoy some day. For as unsure as I am about names this time around, I do very much enjoy the process of thinking about and sort through names. You can leave me a nice, long comment, if it suits you. Or, if you prefer, send me a response at: susankennard@gmail.com.

Creeped-Out.

2009-08-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

As a favor to the Middle-Child-To-Be, my sister gave Lucie this set of "I Feel..." stamps at my "un-shower" a couple weeks ago. The kids have enjoyed getting them out and playing with them, but hadn't actually tried stamping them until this morning, when Sam decided to get them out.

(You'll have to forgive me these photos--I was really in no mood to pull out the camera, but felt compelled to share this nonetheless.)

So Sam got them out (as you can see, Lucie quickly lost interest in her Play-Doh and opted instead to join Sam) and began stamping. As he went, he demonstrated his nurturing big-brotherliness as well as his emotional maturity by quizzing Lucie, "How does this face look, Lucie?" She would answer, for example, "Happy!" And he would correct her, "No. Excited."

To be perfectly honest, I probably wouldn't have interpreted many of these expressions quite as they were identified; "Tired" just looks bored, if you ask me. And "Scared" simply looks surprised. Sam interpreted most of the expressions his own way, too (and I had to remind him not to deny his little sister the same liberty).

My favorite, though, was this one:

He said, "Lucie, what kind of face is this?"
She answered, "That's a saaaad face." (According to the back of the stamp, this is a "sorry" face, by the way.)
Sam quickly corrected her, in his best older-and-wiser voice: "No, Lucie. This one is Creeped-Out."

A Current Favorite...

2009-07-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

If you know Joel and me, you likely know that one of our favorite things to do is to play board games. About a year ago, we became acquainted with a whole little world of really fantastic board games and have spent many hours (and quite a few dollars--these games, typically available online or in specialty shops, are often on the expensive side) playing some of our new favorites.

Lest I give the wrong impression, I should clarify: I'm talking about really fantastic, sometimes complicated, strategy-based board games. I'm not deeply familiar with "role playing" type games, but I'm aware enough of them to feel compelled to differentiate between them and the games we play.

Some of our favorite games--which I won't try to get into explaining, but which you can Google if you're interested, are Ticket to Ride, Power Grid, Stone Age, For Sale, Pandemic and, a favorite most recently, Agricola.

Last Christmas, we gave Joel's parents a game called Carcassonne: a game played by laying tiles to create cities, farms, roads, rivers, et cetera (there are too many variations on this particular game to even go into it) and won by scoring points by strategically placing little wooden figures (called "meeples") in those various features.

To our delight, our 4.5-year-old Sam (and, to a lesser degree, 2.5-year-old Lucie) enjoys board games with more enthusiasm, I think, than any of us. He will play for hours--literally following me around some days with his Memory cards or Trouble game, waiting for me to pause long enough to engage me in one or the other. He loves all sorts of games--some of our favorites have been (in addition to Trouble and Memory) Guess Who?, Connect Four, and Tier Auf Tier (a wooden animal-stacking game made by the German toy company Haba). Sam also loves to involve himself in the "grown-up games," often taking the role of train-placer in Ticket to Ride, or joining an adult "team" in other more complicated games. When we began playing Carcassonne, though, we quickly realized that he was very capable of playing along. Although following the rather complicated (for a 4-year-old) rules required most of his attention and he wasn't quite ready to strategize, per se, he enjoyed playing along, and we were happy to have him join us.

You can imagine my excitement, then, when the makers of Carcassonne recently released a version of the game intended for children aged 4-and-up, called The Kids of Carcassonne. The game is played similarly to the standard version, by laying tiles to create roads and placing colored "meeples" on the roads to score points. Although Sam could handle something slightly more complicated, the very simple gameplay of The Kids of Carcassonne allows him to begin focussing on strategy (something the more complicated "adult" version did not) and, as an added bonus, his little sister is able to enjoy playing as well. The game is designed to take about 20 minutes to play, which is another nice feature for kids. Depending on how you play the regular version (you can purchase additional "expansion packs" to make the game more interesting, but they add time to the game), it can easily take more than an hour to complete, which can be a stretch for even the most avid 4-year-old gamesman.

A few weeks ago, I took pictures of a game of The Kids of Carcassone between Sam, Lucie and myself.

The kids, ready to dive in. You can probably read Lucie's irritation at me wanting to photograph the box before allowing her to dive into it:

The set-up is simple: each player chooses a color of "meeples" and the cards are placed in piles, face-down, around the perimeter of the playing surface. On his or her turn, each player turns over a tile and places it on the growing system of roads in the center of the space. In the kids' version, the tiles are all designed to "fit" wherever you place them--unlike the regular version, where you must align the different elements (city, road, farm, et cetera) in order to place a tile. As you can see, there are differently-colored people pictured on the cards.

When a road is completed ("dead-ends" at both ends into a city, lake, tree, et cetera), players place "meeples" of the corresponding color onto the people pictured on the roads. The first person to play all his or her "meeples," wins.

In this case, that was Sam. Early in his game-playing career, Sam's grandparents taught him to shake his opponents' hands at the conclusion of a game and to tell them "good game." Sam takes this ritual rather seriously, and we are often very impressed by his mature acceptance of the outcome of a given game--regardless of having won or lost.

We hope that, with time, we will be able to say the same for Sam's little sister, who still feels the burn of defeat rather...poignantly.

Anyway, if you're sick of Candyland and want to try something a little more interesting, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of The Kids of Carcassonne (and, while you're at it, why not a copy of Carcassonne for yourself?!) and give it a whirl. A very cool game, indeed.

Full Term Musings...

2009-07-27T07:43:00.000-07:00

(It occurred to me that a pictureless post is really quite boring, and so I tagged this on at the last minute--it is, admittedly, just over a month old, taken at 32 weeks, 5 days, but it's a photo, and really...I don't look *that* different, I'm sure. I'm a bit bigger and I really need a haircut, but that's about it.)

As of yesterday, any aspirations I might have had of giving birth prematurely (okay, I had none--but still) went out the window when I reached the end of the 37th week of this pregnancy. It might seem late in the metaphorical game to be saying so, but it's starting to really set in that we will soon be introduced to a new family member, another tiny person to spend the rest of our lives loving and admiring and generally disbelieving we could have had any real part in creating. Occasionally, this realization brings anxiety, as I imagine the potential inefficacy of our "divide-and-conquer" strategy as we become outnumbered by the kids and envision, instead, the kids using their numerical advantage to compensate for their deficit in physical stature and cognitive maturity, until eventually we are prisoners in our own home, where only refined sugars and pre-packaged entrees are allowed, where the television plays non-stop, in a high-traffic living space (and actually receives *channels*), and the pajamas all have licensed characters on them.
Most of the time, though, it is with pure joy and absolute wonder that I imagine that there will be one more of these amazing little people with whom to share our lives. I remember when I was pregnant with Lucie, looking at Sam and feeling such an intense love for, and commitment to, him that I worried that perhaps I wasn't cut out to have a second child. I hated to admit it to anyone, but I was really fearful that I simply wouldn't like my second child as much as my first. Those days, when I thought about Lucie, it was only in the context of how her existence would affect Sam--would he feel jealous, would the adjustment be difficult for him, would their spacing serve his personal development well? It was as though I couldn't quite consider her as a real person, with needs as real and as important as Sam's. I remember recalling Sam's birth, those first moments looking into his face, and the immediate familiarity with and recognition of him that I felt--as though I had always known his little face, had often stroked his wrinkled feet and grasped his tiny hands. I was afraid that Lucie would feel, by contrast, like a stranger to me.
You may have guessed, though, that it turned out to be all right. In fact, I forgot to notice it at her birth, and instead realized several days later, "Oh, thank god--I'm totally in love with her." And her birth was no less magical, and our first moments spent gazing at one another no less sweet or familiar. And at no time since her birth has one of my children seemed any more-or-less a part of me, or like anything less than the most important things in my life.
And so as I await the birth of this third child, I'm not at all worried that perhaps this will be the child that doesn't evoke the outpouring of love and emotion, the one who really will feel like some sort of interloper in our home or our lives. Even though I can't imagine what it might feel like to love a third like I love my second and my first, there is no doubt in my mind that, in a matter of weeks, I will wonder how we ever survived without this person.

I ordered my birth supplies and they arrived, and my thoughts were thus directed, in many ways for the first time, to the details and logistics of the birth itself. It is my preference to keep my contemplations of the matter sort of loose, not in such a way as to leave me unprepared--far from it!--but to allow my birth to unfold as it will, without the rigidity of some sort of structured expectation on my part. So while I enjoy the task of preparing supplies and organizing what may be needed, I am keeping my thinking about the birth as broad as possible. It has occurred to me that this must make me appear unprepared to some friends who ask, "Will you have a water birth?" or "Where will you set up the pool?" or "Will your mother/sister/kids attend the birth?" or "Is someone taking pictures?" I've sort of envisioned my birth all sorts of ways--in the tub, in my living room, in the tub in my bedroom, on my bed, on the floor, in the bathroom, on the couch. I picture my mom or my sister or both being there when the baby is born, and I picture a more private birth with only my husband and midwife. I've imagined it happening quickly, in the middle of the night, before my midwife can arrive or my kids be taken to my parents' house (where they have indicated they would prefer to be during the birth--Lucie reminds me that the new baby will "cry so loud" and Sam speaks knowingly of the way newborn babies often spit on or lick (?) people shortly after their births, and both think they might prefer to avoid these insults and--particularly because their preferences align nicely with my own, but even if they didn't--I plan to honor their requests that they go elsewhere until the baby is born). It's not entirely intentional, that I see my child's birth so differently each time I imagine it. I guess it's just that, when I began to go down that particular path of thought, I do my best not to steer too much, but to instead just let the story unfold for me. And it always seems to unfold differently. And my suspicion is that, when the time comes, my birth will unfold in some entirely different way that I haven't yet thought to consider.

Un-Shower...

2009-07-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

My kind and generous sister threw a little party for us today--an "un-shower," as she called it. It was very informal, quite small, and exactly the kind of gathering I favor. I really enjoyed myself. So much so, in fact, that I didn't take a single picture, despite thinking several times, "I should run upstairs and get my camera." I didn't do it. And I'm not sorry. But if had taken a few pictures, they might have the following captions:

1. My guests, from left-to-right--my sister, a few friends who live nearby, one friend who drove a bit to be here, and one friend who drove a mighty long way to join us today (and who just found out that she too is expecting another little one--hurray!), my niece, and my midwife.

2. The food table. My sister instructed everyone to bring their favorite pregnancy craving. We had: tacos and seven-layer dip, bruschetta, German potato salad, puppy chow, m+m's, fruit, a variety of olives, tortilla chips and sour cream, and ice cream with a wide variety of toppings.

3. The calendar on which my guests wrote their guesses for the date and time the baby would be born, along with what they supposed the baby's weight and length would be. They wrote their guesses in pink or blue to indicate their guesses as to the baby's sex. As you can see, the guesses are weighted somewhat heavily in favor of Sam and Lucie having a baby brother, and no one suspects I will give birth on my due date (thanks, though, to the two optimists who chose dates two and four days *before* my due date; you're kind). The range of weights ranges from 8 lbs., 13 oz., to 11 lbs. A couple months ago, Joel and I also made our own guesses:

Mine:
A boy, born August 29 (I forget the time, but it's written down--early afternoon, though), weighing 10 lbs., 2 oz. and measuring 22(.5?) inches.

Joel:
A girl, born August 22 (forget the time...afternoonish, I think), weight 9 lbs., 10 oz. (and I forget the length, except that his original guess was 17 inches until I explained that that would be a rather short baby for that weight and reminded him that our other two children were 22 and 22.5 inches long).

4. The kids, playing in the backyard. That would be my nephew who has turned the hose on and is soaking the other young guests and turning the sand table into a mud table.

5. The generous gifts brought by my thoughtful friends: a lovely muslin sleep sack and cute onesie, the most adorable knit longies that ever I have seen, a super-soft fleece blanket, a glass bottle with a cool silicone cover on it, a giraffe made of natural rubber, a natural diaper-rash balm, and a very cute little stuffed frog, and the most beautiful baby book ever (I couldn't possibly forsake this beautiful book--even if it is my third child) for the baby. For Sam and Lucie, bubbles, hand-made bracelets, an activity pad and crayons and, for the middle-child-to-be, a set of "I feel" stamps like these.

Seriously, the photos hardly do it justice, but it was a very nice day, and I really enjoyed myself. I'm not a big baby shower fan, but I always feel a little sad that second and subsequent births and babies don't receive the sort of attention that first baby does. As I record the details of today for my third child (in a really gorgeous baby book, perhaps?), I hope I will be able to convey the kind of support and excitement that surrounded us and we anticipated him or her.

This is More Like It...

2009-07-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

Okay. So a couple weeks ago, I posted the results of my day spent dying diapers and other mostly-baby-related stuff. The word "lackluster" comes to mind. Although I had a great time with everyone at our little "Dyeing Extravaganza," I was rather disappointed in the way everything turned out.

And so I started over.

With my chemist-husband by my side, I went back and re-dyed nearly *everything,* this time following the dyeing instructions to a "T." We generally did only one color at a time--usually late at night, after the kids were in bed (or we'd start it, and I'd sit and stir while he put the kids to bed). It was laborious and tedious and time-consuming...but I couldn't be much happier with the results.

Here's what we did, more or less:

1. First I organized all the diapers/clothes into piles of what I wanted dyed what color. At this time, I also tied-up any garments that I intended to tie-dye.

2. Starting in no particular order, I weighed the clothes for a given color (on an infant scale, which made it extra fun, because my scale weighs in grams, and my dye recipe was for a pound of dry fabric. The scale also had to be re-calibrated nearly daily--which is to say, between every color--because my children found it an irresistible plaything when I left it set-up on the dining room table). So I weighed the clothes, making adjustments in order to get as close to an even pound-or-half-pound mark as possible, and occasionally having to prioritize which items would make it into a particular color, as I was running low on dye (remember--this was my *second* attempt with this particular order of dyes).

3. Using the following formula, I mixed my dye in a large tub (I used the same Rubbermaid-type storage tubs that I use to store all my kids' outgrown clothes):

For every pound of dry fabric, mix:
3 Gallons Warm (~105*) Water (some colors called for hotter (130*) water in order to achieve accurate color results)
3 Cups Non-Iodized Salt
1 Tablespoon Fiber-Reactive Procion Dye
(For the record, the colors I used were: Truffle Brown, Hot Pink, Chinese Red, Deep Orange, Bright Yellow, Bright Green, Turquoise, Brilliant Blue, Grape, and Imperial Purple.)

(I mixed the warm water and salt until the salt had dissolved. In a separate container, I mixed the dye with enough hot water to create a "slurry." Once the salt was dissolved, I added the dye and mixed it until it appeared even.)

4. I submerged my diapers/clothes in the dye, on item at a time, until everything was in. I stirred constantly or nearly-constantly for the next 20 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, Joel mixed (or, if Joel wasn't here to help, I did this in advance) 1/3 cup Sodium Carbonate (we used Arm + Hammer Washing Soda) per pound of dry clothes with hot water (again, the amount of water wasn't extremely important--just enough to dissolved the sodium carbonate completely).

6. After 20 minutes, I held (wearing gloves, of course) all my fabric to one side of the dyeing bin, and Joel added roughly 1/3 of the sodium carbonate solution to the dye (keeping it away from the clothes and mixing as he poured). Once it was added, I mixed the fabric back into the rest of the tub. We did this again at 25 minutes, and finally at 30 minutes.

7. After the finally installation of fixer (~30 minutes after having initially added the clothes to the dye), I continued stirring as constantly as I could stand for another 30-60 minutes (depending, primarily, on the shade of the dye--darker colors require a bit more time and lighter colors, less).

8. After that additional 30-60 minutes, I wrung the fabric out, piece-by-piece, and transfered it to another (dry and empty) tub. At this time, I removed rubber bands from the items I was tie-dying.

9. When everything was wrung out and untied, I put it in the washer for a short cold water cycle (to rinse off the salt and other chemicals) and then, using a little bit of special detergent, washed it on the longest, hottest cycle my washer had to offer. Most of the time, this was sufficient for removing all the extra dye (which I verified by watching during the rinse cycle to see if the water ran clear). If it didn't, I ran it a second time.

10. Once the water was running clear out of the washer, I dried the clothes (I used my dryer, because (a) I was growing very impatient for this process to be over, (b) it was usually between 12 and 2 a.m. by the time I was doing this and (c) the weather has been rather cold and damp lately, but line-drying would work just as well).

I have yet to learn how to re-size my photographs so that Blogger will let me add more than five to a given post (I'm pretty sure that's the problem, anyway), so this will just be a sampling--a smattering, if you will--of my dye results. But here's what we have:

In addition to the large stack of prefolds (24 each of newborn, infant, and standard size), I dyed some newborn-sized fitteds that I picked up used. I also dyed and tie-dyed a few covers--one came free with the Kissaluvs fitteds, and the other two were leftovers from Lucie's diapered days:

I dyed roughly a billion old onesies--most of which were originally Sam's, handed down to his cousin Luca, who returned them in time for Lucie to wear them, before they went back to Luca's house for his little sister Annika to enjoy. My sister lives in the country, and her water turns everything a sort of dingy grey color (this is what she tells me, anyway, though I suspect foul play). To put it lightly, these onesies were disgusting. Putting them on an innocent little baby would be entirely unconscionable. But a little (lot) of dye took care of that, and they're looking good-as-new.

In addition to many, many solid-colored onesies in every color under the sun (too boring to photograph, but you can imagine), I dyed several of these in two tones by simply hanging them over the edge of the dye bin and allowing only half of them to reach the dye:

I tie-dyed several others; these are a few of my favorites (the one in the middle is my very, very favorite, I think:

And I also bought a few blank garments from Dharma Trading Company, just for dying. Many of these are not pictured (not because they aren't nice, but because that would make for six photographs in one post, now, wouldn't it?). Here are a few that I liked. The green and yellow shirts on the right of this photo are actually the little t-shirts we took from the hospital when we had Lucie; I bought the pink and green shirts on the left.

Perhaps when I have a chance, I'll post some pictures of the also-very-cool stuff I dyed for Sam and Lucie (who were not about to be left out of this process)--several shirts, dresses, a couple pair of PJ pants, and even a fitted sheet for Lucie. But not today.

Why Ultra-Pasteurized Milk Freaks Me Out...

2009-06-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

I had a prenatal visit today, here at my house. It's only the second "official" prenatal I've had with the midwife for whom I work (and who, I suppose, works for me), but I see her often enough at *other* people's prenatals, births, and postpartum visits to feel like she is adequately caught-up on the goings-on of this pregnancy. In fact, it was sort of funny having her out for a prenatal for me--it just felt like we were in between appointments or something, waiting for the client to arrive.

Nothing of particular interest happening on the clinical front, I suppose (and this is one case where I have a preference for the uninteresting). I'm 32 weeks tomorrow, and the baby is still quite moveable--a fact that I am well aware of every time I make a big position change, like lying down or rolling over in bed. The baby seems to adjust make him or herself comfortable. When she palpated my abdomen today, the baby felt sort of oblique, but squirmed into a vertex position shortly after she began (going, it seemed from OP to LOP to LOT in the time it took her to palpate). When she went to listen to heart tones, she gave a little push on his or her legs/feet, and he or she quickly turned more LOA so she could listen through his or her back. So...plenty of room, which is not surprising. I'm 5'10, and most of my height is in my torso, so there's plenty of room for a baby to sort of...sprawl. She said the baby felt "normal-size," which isn't high on my list of concerns, but is nice to hear, nonetheless. My first two kids were big, but not record-breakingly enormous (9 lbs. 1 oz., and 10 lbs. 7 oz.) and I don't have any reason to suspect that this baby will fall significantly out of that range. And I like that range.

In more interesting pregnancy developments, Joel informed me today that I'm beginning to "look pregnant everywhere, and not just in your belly," as if that was something to be excited about. "You mean fat." I clarified. "No, not fat--pregnant...just, you know, like your face is sort of filled-out, and your arms and thighs have gotten bigger, and your feet are swollen." Apparently this means something other than "fat," though; interesting. It's okay--I'm pretty comfortable with my weight (don't get me wrong; I prefer non-pregnant numbers) and he knows that. And he's pretty bad at articulating such observations without sounding offensive, and I know that. It works.

I noticed this morning that the milk I bought a few days ago expires August 12, just 5 days before my "due date." This is my first real indication that the baby will be here soon--when the milk's expiration date approaches (and eventually exceeds!) that of my pregnancy.

When I was pregnant with Sam, I was seeing an OB at a small, local hospital, and was induced on my due date (despite the fact that I showed no signs that I was ready to go into labor and Sam showed no signs that he wasn't a happy and healthy remaining on the inside for a couple more weeks--don't get me started) and I gave birth to him 3 days later (again, don't get me started). Lucie came, of her own volition (with a gentle nudge or two from my uterus), exactly 14 days after my "due date." So I'm not anticipating this baby arriving in a particularly punctual manner. Although I generally frown on this sort of thing, I remind myself that he or she is only a fetus, and I have years to indoctrinate him or her with a favorite adage: "To be early is to be on time, and to be on time is to be late." Actually, with regard to pregnancies and due dates, I almost feel as though the opposite is true--to be late is to be "on time," and to be "on time" is to be early.

We haven't given too much serious attention to naming the baby--I suspect because we've decided not to learn the baby's sex. We have a couple boy names--one that was a leftover from my first pregnancy and one that we tossed around during both pregnancies, but never considered very seriously for either (but that, for whatever reason, we've grown to really favor this time around). I'm pretty sure that, if the baby is a boy, he will bear one of these names (or both of these names, in one order or another, perhaps). We feel like both are really good names that we like a lot, and we'd be satisfied naming our son either. Girl names present more of a problem, for some reason. We also have two girl names that are currently contending for the top slot on our list, but I sort of have this feeling like we're deciding which girl name we dislike less sometimes. It's not that exactly--I like both names--it's just that neither feels like I like it so much that I want to name my daughter with it. Perhaps it's because I feel inclined to think--for no particular reason--that the baby is a boy, and that makes it harder to really picture this child with any "girl name." Not sure. But that's where we're at. Both of the girl-names were names we considered for Lucie. In fact, we always sort of regretted not naming her one of them (we've often lamented that she just doesn't actually feel like a Lucie, now that we know her), which makes it hard, in some ways, to think of naming another child with this name, as though it somehow "belongs" to Lucie or something.

I'm not being secretive about the names--I just realized I haven't mentioned any of them. Our top boy names are Elliot and Miles (in that order), and our current favorites for a girl are Fiona and Vera (in, right now, no particular order). Other boy names we've tossed around, but that I'm pretty sure will not gain enough favor in the time it takes for our milk to go sour to replace the others, are Ezra and Dorian. Other girl names: too many. Sam was going to be an Eva, had he been a girl. (Lucie was going to be a Henry, incidentally). Lucie's first name that I really thought might stick was Amelie. We also considered Evelyn (calling her Evie), Silvia, Ada, Vera, Fiona, Beatrice. Beatrice, Ada and Silvia have been left behind, Evelyn *mostly* left behind, which leaves Vera and Fiona. Anyway, that's where we are with regard to names, and I suspect that's about where we'll stay until something compels us to make a decision. Something like a baby being born.

As for the birth itself, I haven't done a lot to prepare for that, unless you count growing the baby--which is a really imperative process with regard to the birth, really. I did buy a fishy net the other night at Meijer. I was looking for a hose adaptor to make get warm water into my dying buckets much easier when I stumbled upon the fishy nets and thought, eh, I'll go ahead and pick one of these up. Joel joked that he should probably "practice" before the birth, so I offered to hold unannounced "drills." I told him that, whenever he hears me taking a bath, he should poke his head in from time-to-time to make sure everything looked all right--ready to spring to action at any time.

It's funny, this is my first home birth--Sam and Lucie were both born in (different) hospitals, with an OB and CNM, respectively. But out-of-hospital birth has become my "normal" over the past couple of years, so it is actually easier and more natural for me to imagine giving birth at home than in a hospital, even though I've never done so before.

I don't feel particularly anxious or nervous about the birth, despite a run of sort of difficult or abnormal births I've attended lately. As much as these situations do occasional inspire "what if...?" type questions with regard to my own birth, I'm a rational person and I know that these things happening does nothing to increase (or decrease) the likelihood of them (or something else) happening to me or my baby. They do cause me to think through some scenarios that I might be able to ignore were I in a different profession, but I don't regret that. Anyway, I feel good about my upcoming birth and confident in the people who plan to attend it. And I'm looking forward to it--I very much appreciate the tension between the predictable-and-unpredictable that labor and birth create, and I'm looking forward to experiencing my baby's birth as it unfolds.

Pregnancy-Induced Homeschool-Fantasy?

2009-06-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

Sam, to my surprise and my delight, is shaping up to be more of a language-guy than a math-guy. I recognize that this could all change, but it's been a sort of shocking development over the past several months. I guess he just *looks* so much like my chemist-husband that I didn't think there was much chance he'd turn out to be a language-lover like myself. About this time last year, though (perhaps a couple months later) it came to my attention that he recognized all the letters of the alphabet, and knew the phonetic sounds associated with most of them. Terrified that I'd make him hate reading forever, I *really* let him set the pace as I helped him to learn the sounds he didn't know, and began teaching him slightly-more-advanced phonics. A couple months after he became so very interesting, he lost interest just as quickly, and we just let it go. He didn't really show much interest in this pre-reading stuff again for several months, until one day a couple months ago he pointed out some word (I feel like maybe it was "fast") and said, "ffffff-ah-ah-ah-ssssssss-tuh. Fffff-ah-ssss-tuh. Fassssss-tuh. FAST!" Since then, we've worked here-and-there with him, teaching him a new phonics rule here ("silent e," or "when two vowels go a walking..."), reading BOB books there, but mostly just waiting for him to take the lead in going the next step. It remains really important to me that he do this all at his own pace, because it's really important to me that he enjoy reading. The funny thing is, he is absolutely averse to learning the simplest "math." He counts to about 15 reliably. Sometimes 20, but not always. He learns "math" on a needs-to-know basis. He LOVES, for example, to play games. When we started playing some game or another with him that used dice, he quickly learned to count to 12. For the longest time, he could only count to 12. I forget what prompted him to learn to count to 15-20, but I think it was his desire to play hide-and-seek with a slightly older girl at the playground at the zoo a couple months ago. I recall that, when they played, he would only count to 12 on his turns, and she would count to 20 on hers. On the way home from the zoo, he wanted to rehearse the numbers from 10-20. The other day, he was doing a phonics workbook (another thing he loves is any sort of "workbook"--phonics, mazes, dot-to-dot, et cetera...anything but numbers, of course), and the activity was to write the first letter of the picture above the line. He came to a picture of a dime and asked me what it was. I said, "It's a dime." "D-d-dime...D!" he said. I continued, "Sam, you know what a penny is, right? So if you have ten pennies, it's the same as having one dime." He sort of waved his hand at me, as if shooing a fly, and said, "Mom...just...don't."
In addition to this interest in letters and reading (especially as it is contrasted by his *dis*interest in numbers and math), Sam is developing a respectable vocabulary for a four-year-old. I love this about him so much. I love that he experiments with vocabulary, trying out new words that he hears until he really gets a good grasp of their meaning. When I hear him say something new or unexpected, I'll often ask him what a given word means--often he demonstrates a pretty accurate understanding of the word, often not. But I love that he cares to implement these new words he is hearing into his own lexicon. I've recently overheard him threatening to "obliterate" his sister (charming it is not, but he defined it rather nicely), another time, to "analyze her brain," (his definition of this was rather far off). He told me he was a Star Wars "genius," (definition right on), and, comparing his grandparents to two Star Wars characters, said, "Grammie is sort of like Gpa's apprentice" (definition way off). When I poured a cup of water on his head to get his attention in the bath, he told me I had made "quite an impression." Tonight, he asked his dad to "supervise" him while he tried out a new recipe. It's not that his vocabulary is so large that warms my heart--it's that he isn't content to say "kill" when he means "obliterate," or "beat" when he means "defeat," or "defeat" when he means "annihilate." I love that he is experimental, and not overly cautious, with new words.
A couple days ago, he had some paper that is intended for preschoolers to practice writing the letters of the alphabet. So the first page had a row of solid "A"s for him to trace, the second row had dotted "A"s, and the third row was blank (for him to practice, theoretically, writing his own "A"s). He was looking at the book, but instead of practicing writing, he was "reading" a story that he was making up as he went along. He did this for over 10 minutes, after about 5 of which it occurred to me that he was doing it all in iambic tetrameter. "da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA/da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA." Sometimes he worked rhymes into it--often he had to use nonsense words in order to do so, and he often dragged a word out into additional syllables to make it "work," (I heard him say, at one point, "The circus is such fun indeed/The dogs can do cool tri-i-icks"). Again, it just did my heart good to hear him playing with language and imitating the sort of simple, sing-songy "poetry" found in a lot of children's books we've read.
Of course, all of this awareness of language comes at a cost. While we were up north a couple weeks ago, my sister was telling a story that involved her husband using a German slang word that literally means "snail," but that is apparently used by German teenagers, at times, to refer to a woman's vagina. She said, "It would be sort of the same connotation as using the word 'pussy.'" Sure enough, the next day when Lucie came into the house crying, Sam followed her, explaining that "She hurt her pussy, Mom." Rather taken aback, I exclaimed, "Sam! I don't want to hear you use that word--do you even know what that word means?!" He said, "Yeah--it's another word for 'vulva.'" (We've since talked about the fact that I would like him to just stick with "vulva," and he has agreed).
All of this recent interest in language has stirred up a little feeling in me--one that occasionally surfaces and which I am usually able to suppress--that I would really like to homeschool/unschool Sam. The thought of turning his curious little mind over to the drudgery of public education makes me feel a little uneasy. He seems so eager to learn what he wants to learn that I hate to think of forcing the "other stuff" on him before he's ready. (I suspect that a dismissive wave of his hand and a "just...don't" may not go over so well when his first grade teacher tries to teach him addition).
More than keeping him out of school, though, I get really excited about all the things we could do if he were home. The things I would love to read with him as he gets a bit older, the places we could go. His interest in reading came earlier than I anticipated and it has encouraged some semi-formal educational moments between us (by which I guess I just mean times when I am *deliberately* teaching him things) and I've been pleasantly surprised by the way the relationship seems to work.
I don't know. As I've confessed before, pregnancy sometimes stirs up some uncharacteristically crafty ambitions in me (see here and here and here), and it's possible this is just more of that hormone-induced-creativity carrying me away. And it's all a very overwhelming prospect for me, to be sure--it leaves me feeling so unsure where to begin. But, for now, I'm just going to carry the idea around with me for a bit, and see how it develops (or doesn't) with time. And if it passes with the placenta, why then, so be it.

Diaper-Dying Results...

2009-06-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I made my first dying attempt a few days ago (as in, adding color to some uncolorful garments, not suicide). It could have gone *better,* but I'm not completely unhappy with the results, and I feel like the things that turned out poorly are salvageable. I had intentions of taking lots of pictures to document the whole day/process, but there simply wasn't time or energy for such a thing. I didn't even get any "before" pictures--but you can use your imagination. Mostly stuff was white. I had a few friends over to make the day more enjoyable, and it certainly did. At the end of the day, as I surveyed the results, I was able to dismiss any artistic shortcomings by virtue of the fact that I was in such good company--even if said company did not improve my artistic aptitude or mathematically prowess.
So, here's what I learned:

1. Trying to dye in 10 different colors at the same time is simply too much. Next time I'll stick to no more than half that--and if I really feel compelled to create an entire rainbow (an understandable compulsion, no?), I'll break it up into two or more dying sessions. It was really difficult to get 10 color buckets set up, to remember what colors I had what soaking in, to remember to stir each of 10 bins often enough, et cetera. Too much.

2. Perhaps the most important lesson of the day: When the instructions say "1 Tablespoon of dye + 3 gallons of water + 3 cups of salt for every 1 pound of dry clothing," this should be interpreted to mean, "1 Tablespoon of dye + 3 gallons of water + 3 cups of salt FOR EVERY 1 POUND OF DRY CLOTHING." It looked like plenty of dye for the amount of fabric we were dumping into it, so we just assumed it was enough dye for the amount of fabric we were dumping into it. And the interesting thing is, the first, well, pound-or-so of clothing that went into the dye turned out brilliantly. The rest...didn't. The funny part was that it all looked good hanging on the line--you couldn't tell what went in first or what went in later, really. But when I rinsed it all and washed it, the things that were thrown in first remained deep and vibrant, and the other stuff washed to either a much lighter shade of the same color (think half-saturated or less), or, in some cases, washed totally clean. The good news is, I have more dye, so it should be pretty easy to just re-dye the stuff that didn't turn out like I had hoped.

3. Do this on a Saturday, when Joel is home to watch the kids. Inviting friends over was a great idea, but each of those friends brought offspring, ranging in age from 5 months to 6 years--a total of 8 kids, including my own. Shouting for my niece and nephew to stop digging in my vegetable garden, putting out fires between 2-and-3-and-4-year-olds, taking Lucie potty, and turning a blind eye on the number of Freezy Pops these children were consuming turned out to be rather distracting. My kids did enjoy dying some things later on (unfortunately, these were among the "washed nearly clean" items), but when everyone was here, it was just too chaotic. And don't get me wrong--I appreciate a little chaos now-and-again.

Okay, well, without further explanation or excuse, here are some pictures--it's an overcast, thunderstorming kind of day, but I wanted to take the pictures in natural light to get the colors as close as possible. The fitteds are the closest representation of the colors, but even that one didn't turn out perfectly. The really dark ones are "imperial purple," and they look more purple in person than in the picture. And the green ones are a little more of a "bright green" than the sort of minty color they appear. But, anyway, you'll get the idea.

Some of our dye buckets in action:

I bought these Kissaluv fitteds (the teeny-tiny newborn sized ones) used from someone online. They were mostly the unbleached color, but some of them were pastel purple, blue, peach or yellow. I was happy with how these turned out.

Some newborn prefolds--I actually dyed 24 of these, but this was a sampling of the colors that actually took:

Some regular-sized prefolds (I did 24 of these, too):

All my prefolds. I dyed 24 each of newborn, infant and regular sized. Some turned out, others didn't. I'm going to re-dye the ones that washed to a really pale color or white.

Overall, my first attempt at dying was a success--if not because the results were exactly what I desired, because I feel like I learned enough to possibly do it well the *next* time I try. And that is shaping up to be very, very soon...

Thinking About All This April Rose Drama.

2009-06-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

I just read a post on Rixa's Stand and Deliver blog, entitled I Solemnly Swear, that compelled me to comment. As my comment grew longer and longer, though, I began to suspect that it was moving out of the realm of "comment" and into the realm of "rather long response," so I decided to just post it here, rather than overwhelm her "comments" section with it. So go check her post out to catch the context, and then come back if you care to hear me go on and on about it.

Rixa's Post.

I'm so glad someone else caught this. I was following this woman's blog for the past few months because a friend of mine from high school was really instrumental in promoting her blog/story, even going so far as to design and sell t-shirts to benefit her and an organization that was, supposedly, important to her. It all has had me thinking a lot--did you read her blog at all? It was really...well done, to say the least. When it was all over with, I was sort of taken aback, but also a little impressed. She wrote really well. Or, more than "writing well," she explored the whole subject really thoroughly, addressing her alleged situation from so dimensionally.
Of course, whether or not anyone was "hurt" is a matter of perspective--she apparently didn't make significant financial gain as a result of this, but she did really mess with some people, emotionally--not the least of whom were the three women (my friend from high school among them) who devoted so much time and energy to helping her out and getting her story out there--two of the three lost babies to Trisomy 9, in one case, and heart and kidney defects (I think) in the other, and the third woman's 7 month old has a heart defect that hospitalized him for a month a few weeks ago and which will almost certainly require further surgery in the coming months/years. I think she exploited them in a way that was particularly unethical given their circumstances and histories (but which would have been unfair, in my opinion, regardless).
The thing that I found really interesting, though, was when I was reading her interview with the Chicago Tribune and it said that she had lost a son shortly after his birth in 2005 (of course, whether or not this is *true* is another matter, but I can't know that, of course) and that she started this as a way to deal with that grief. And that's where I think it becomes really interesting--the idea that perhaps she was reliving her *real* pregnancy and loss as a means of seeking, retrospectively, the support and guidance she perhaps didn't receive when it was real. It reminds me of a fantastic book, The Things They Carried, in which Tim O'Brien explores the line between fiction and non-fiction as he recalls his involvement in the Vietnam War. In it (if I remember the details correctly--it's been a few years since I read it), the narrator's (author's?) granddaughter asks him if he killed anyone in the war. He answers that yes, he did--and goes on to recount the details of what it was like to kill Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. He later admits to his readers that this account wasn't exactly factual--in fact, he had never personally killed anyone. But, he said, that didn't make his story untrue. He knew that a straight, factual account of his personal involvement in the war would be insufficient to let his readers/listeners experience what he felt and experienced as a result of having served in that war, and that in order to elicit an emotional response from them that even resembled what was his *very real* emotional experience, he had to change the literal "facts" to more closely mirror the psychological and emotional reality of his experience.
I couldn't help but think of his book as I read her interview. Simply telling what might have been her factual story, four or five years later, simply wouldn't have drawn the sort of incredible love and widespread support that this story did. Perhaps she needed that deep and widespread emotional involvement as she revisited what happened to her several years ago and sensed (rightly so, if you ask me) that she couldn't compel that sort of compassion without the unfolding-in-real-time drama that she created through her fictitious pregnancy and newborn loss.
I'm not condoning what she did--not *exactly,* anyway. I know that many people made a real emotional investment in her story and that they felt exploited and hurt by her. But whether she's ever been pregnant, or ever lost a baby, I believe, having read her posts relatively faithfully for the past couple of months, that her grief just might be real--whatever has caused it--and if this whole story was what it took for her to find the support she needed in order to heal...I don't begrudge her that.

More (and More and More) Photos.

2009-06-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

A few from the beach, when it did eventually warm up.

In an effort to get Lucie to look at me, I asked, "How much do you think I love you?" Her answer (a gross underestimation, by the way):

Sam, "cooperating" with me, or, rather, complying to my demand to "Look at the camera and SMILE" in the most uncooperative manner he could fashion, on so little notice:

The four kids. Sam and Luca didn't even plan their coordinating shirts!

Joel and Lucie, just looking adorable. When our children are grown, I hope Joel might consider obtaining a prosthetic child to carry around on his shoulders--it suits him, I think.

Home Again, Home Again (Jiggity-Jig).

2009-06-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

We spent the week up north, at Lake Michigan. The weather wasn't perfect, but we managed to enjoy ourselves very much. My sister, nephew and niece joined us, and we all had a pretty nice week. And I have the photos to prove it (and, since I *still* don't know how to upload more than 4-5 photos to a single post, I'll probably split this one up, too).

These first photos we'll call, "Yes it's June, but it's freezing up here so...let's roast marshmallows in the fireplace, shall we?"

The kids roasting marshmallows:

Lucie, enjoying a freshly-roasted marshmallow:

Sam, taking a shortcut:

My sticky niece:

A First Time For...Even This.

2009-06-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

I've often said that, while relatively brief, I've had a pretty widely representative apprenticeship experience thus far. I've been apprenticing for about a year-and-a-half now, but I got off to a pretty slow start, in terms of the number of births I was attending, and things only began to really pick up for me about 8 months ago, or so. Since then, though, I've attended primip births, a couple VBACs, and one breech. I've attended the birth of a baby who required resuscitation and have seen a couple relatively serious hemorrhages. I always feel a little conflicted about my attitude toward these things because, while I care very much for these clients and want them all to have very smooth, easy labors and births...I also need to learn to deal with these things that can-and-do occur, and I'm always grateful when they come up now, while I'm assisting and learning from a wise and skillful midwife who tends to know what she's doing when these situations arise. So I often find myself thinking, retrospectively, "Well, I wouldn't have *wished* that (hemorrhage, long labor, difficult birth, breech presentation, et cetera) on that woman, but now that it's over...I'm kind of glad it happened and I got to learn from it."

If I ever feel that way about what I am learning right now, it won't be soon.

One of our clients lost a baby a few nights ago, at 41 weeks. Out of fear that I might jeopardize someone's privacy, and because I'm not sure I would know what to say anyway, I'm not going to go into any details here. But it was unexpected. And very hard to accept. I was with the family through the (first) night of labor, but they went on to deliver in the hospital, where my preceptor attended them with the support of the staff there. I'm seeing them for the first time since their birth in a few hours.

These things happen. I know that. I knew that. But no textbook could have prepared me for the way it feels to watch as people I have come to care about deal with this sort of loss.

Baby Ticker Musings, Magic Banana Wonder, and other Drivel...

2009-06-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

I just sat staring at the Baby Ticker in my sidebar, trying to figure out if the baby looked more like a boy or a girl. Based on the ticker, I'm leaning towards boy. It says I have 75 days to go...does anyone know what these tickers do when your 75 days is up? During my last pregnancy, I was receiving some sort of week-by-week newsletter in my e-mail, so when Lucie's due date came, I received some sort of "Congratulations--here's what you might experience *this* week" e-mail, telling me all about engorgement and meconium and cord care and other things that couldn't not have been, at the time, further from my mind. Two weeks later, when she was born, I was still getting the e-mails, "Your baby is two weeks old!" my inbox announced on the day that she was born. Although I don't read these newsletters, I still receive them--always two weeks off (not that it makes any difference now if she's 30 months or 30.5 months old).

I was thinking, if I were to design a "Countdown to Baby" ticker that would operate in the terms in which I think of this pregnancy, it would contain several babies at different gestational ages--these would be my current clients' babies. And, one-by-one (let's hope), they would disappear as the babies were born, until eventually only my baby would remain, and I would know it was okay to go ahead and have my baby now. I'm currently waiting on a leftover May-baby (turned June-baby) to come (I'm hoping he or she will be born soon--we're tentatively planning to go up north next week, pending said birth. Then no babies in June, and then one doula-birth and one home birth in July. Both of those clients are due about 3 weeks before I am. So, I figure any time after their babies are born would be a fine time for me to have a baby. Speaking of which, my 10-year high school reunion is scheduled for August 29th and I'm having a very hard time deciding whether or not to reserve my family a place. It's going to be at a baseball game (I don't know who comes up with this stuff) and we have to make reservations by the end of June. As much as I would like to never attend a baseball game in my life (and, so far, so good), I suspect that my children might actually enjoy themselves at such an event (and god knows I'm never going to take them to such an event *without* some sort of social motivation like seeing all my old classmates), and I'd like to attend the reunion. But while Lucie will attend for free, we'll have to pay for Sam, Joel and myself. So I'm trying to decide whether or not to RSVP. If I knew I'd have the baby by, say, my due date or so (which would make for a nearly-two-week-old baby), I'd be willing to commit to going. Or, if I knew I'd still be pregnant (it'll be 12 days past my "due date;" Lucie came 14 days after), I'd be up for going. I don't want to pay all this money, though, and then have the baby 2 or 3 days before the reunion. Because I'm not going to want to go, and I think it might be weird to send Joel and the kids without me. So it's a bit of a gamble. I'm going to be mad if I pay to go and then am not able...but I'm going to *really* be fuming if I don't make reservations for us, and then I'm sitting at home, pregnant, on August 29th. Hmm...

Lucie had a ridiculous visit with the orthopedic surgeon the other day. I drove 45 minutes to the hospital, took about 20 minutes to park in the big parking structure, make my way to the correct floor of the hospital, and find the orthopedic surgery reception, sat in the waiting room for 10 minutes or so before being led to the "cast room." Once there, it occurred to me that perhaps they were going to take her cast *off* to take the x-rays (that I presumed they'd be taking, since it was apparently so imperative that I bring her in that day), and that perhaps I should prepare her for as much. So we talked a bit about it, and she spent 20 minutes or so coloring with the Crayola pastels I had the presence-of-mind to throw into my bag that morning. Finally, the doctor appeared and said, "Hi, I'm Dr. V. I looked at Lucie's x-rays (as in, her original x-rays from the E.R.); I can see the fracture on her tibia. How long has she been in the cast?" I told her it had been about 10 days. "Okay, well, we like to see these injuries immobilized for at least 4 weeks, so...we'll make an appointment to take the cast off in about 2.5 weeks. Sound good?" Why, yes, Dr. V, that sounds great. It would have sounded even better had I heard it over the phone, spoken by a receptionist, from the comfort of my own living room. So the cast comes off June 18, two weeks from tomorrow. Let the countdown begin.

In BIG news, we have decided to shell out nearly $20 a month to have our very own internet connection, which will be useable from *all* parts of our house (and not just perched in one of the two "hot spots" I have discovered). It should be up-and-running in the next few days, I think. Ah, luxury...

My side feels much better. A little sore, but no biggie. Big thanks to calcium, magnesium, and/or those magic bananas.

Close-Ups...

2009-05-29T20:20:00.001-07:00

I can never upload as many photos as I would like to a single blog post. Boo. Also, you'll have to take my word for it, but the colors look pretty nice in person, not all faded and sad like in these photos.

Brobee:

Toodee:

Plex:

Foofa:

Muno:

My Master piece Cast.

2009-05-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

As promised, the photos of Lucie's cast makeover. I realize that, when considered in the context of this blog (and therefore, this post) it might appear that I am a trifle obsessed with Yo Gabba Gabba. Not so. In fact, I suggested the Yo Gabba Gabba design to Lucie because I was confident I could draw little else, and she quickly took to the idea. As soon as I started gathering the Yo Gabba Gabba figures to model for my project, I was struck with a much better idea: to draw Lucie's favorite storybook characters on her cast. I tried to sell her on my idea--I was envisioning the Very Hungry Caterpillar, David (of the No, David books), Olivia, and maybe even a Wild Thing or two all coming together on her cast. But she was already clutching the Yo Gabba Gabba toys, and it was clear that her mind was made up. Ah well...another project for another cast, I suppose.
Anyway, here are the photos.

Me at work (photo courtesy of Sam):

Lucie, mesmerized by SuperWhy:

The finished product (front):

Back:

Naughty Blogger.

2009-05-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

This is my problem with blogging: I sometimes don't get around to doing it for long periods of time. (Come to think of it, this is my problem with many things.)
But here I am. It's been an interesting couple of (few?) weeks since I last wrote. I attended an interesting conference with an OB-GYN named Dr. George Morley. He presented on two interesting topics: Shoulder Dystocia and Brachial Plexus Palsy Prevention, and Placental Transfusion. The latter was particularly thought-provoking. It was also blog-post-provoking, but I have yet to wrap up the half-written post I started a day or two after the conference and post it. One of these days.

In other news, my 2.5-year-old, Lucie, broke her leg last week. That was exciting in its own rite. I'm not surprised it happened--she is both daring and clumsy (a dangerous combination), and she has a 4-year-old brother. I was, however, more than a little surprised by *how* this particular injury took place. She just...fell. She was in her bedroom playing (Sam was sitting on her bed reading a book), and I was in my room (right next to hers--just a few steps away) when I heard her *shriek,* and then continue shrieking in such a way that I knew she was certainly injured. I bolted to her room to find her trying to stand (but obviously unable to put weight on her left leg). I picked her up and tried to settle her, but she was pretty hysterical. I took her back into my room and sat with her on my bed and asked where she was hurt. She managed, amidst cries, to say, "I...need...to...NUUUUUUUURSE!" So I tried nursing her and, though she tried her very hardest, she would nurse for a second or two and then open her mouth to let out a few more cries.

When she eventually settled down enough to speak, I asked her where exactly it hurt (there was no visible injury) and she kept pointing to her shin. Knowing that toddlers are notoriously bad at localizing pain, I wondered if she had actually turned her ankle or something, but I did take note of how consistently she indicated the same spot on her shin.

Long story short (or is it too late for that?), we took her to the local hospital for x-rays (against my better judgement--this hospital is a disaster, in my estimation) and they declared her bones to be unperturbed and diagnosed her with a sprained ankle. A quick Google search at home revealed that toddlers almost *never* sprain their ankles (because the ligaments are already relatively loose) and that there is an injury frequently referred to as a "toddler's fracture," in which a child (not just any child, mind you, a toddler-child) twists their leg in such a way while falling as to put just the right torque on their tibia as to send a spiral fracture up the tibia. When she refused to put any weight on the leg the following day, we followed up with our pediatrician over the phone, who told us to take her to an E.R. where the doctors have experience reading pediatric x-rays. So Lucie and I spent the day at the pediatric E.R. of the big university hospital, where it was revealed that she had...a "toddler fracture." Her tibia is fractured, not surprisingly, right where she indicated that she had hurt it. She's now wearing a long-leg cast and, after a few days of army crawling, then crawling, then "cruising" around the furniture (deja vu, anyone?), is getting around quite well.

When the pediatric orthopedic surgeon came down to the E.R. to cast her leg, he said, "What's your favorite color, Lucie?" And then, "Oh, wait, I guess we only have white casting supplies down here." So I spent this evening fancying-up her cast for her--I'll post photos tomorrow (seriously; I will).

Here she is the night she got the cast put on (we covered it with this soft leg-warmer and it's worked out so well that, even now that her cast is nicely decorated, I'm afraid all my hard work will likely be covered up, because it's just so nice not to have that scratchy cast exposed. She had the leg warmer off this evening while I worked, and I already noticed her little cast-scratch-marks on the toilet seat!

The night she got the cast put on:

A few days later, when she began walking on it:

In other, other news, I seem to have...I don't know?...pulled a muscle in my abdomen? This is my best guess. I began feeling a bit unwell on Saturday night and slept poorly. Sunday I was feeling sort of off all day. By about 5:00 a.m. Monday morning, I was in excruciating pain on my right side of my abdomen. Joel was home from work for Memorial Day and after some more time with Google (what would we do without Google?!) we began to worry that I could have a UTI or, worse, kidney stones or, worse, appendicitis. We decided to go get it checked out while he had the day off and I hadn't died yet. So we spent Monday morning in the L+D of the university hospital I mentioned earlier (having learned my lesson, once-and-for-all, regarding the local hospital). A urinalysis, blood draw, and speculum exam later, we learned that...there was apparently nothing wrong with me (except that my pulse was quite high--ranging from ~115-130) and that my white blood cell count was a little high (13,000-ish--not *super* high for pregnancy). The triage midwife explained that perhaps I was having round ligament pain (I nearly showed *her* round ligament pain, but was in too much pain to do so), and we left. As the day went on, the pain increased, but also began to feel less a-tiny-little-organ-is-about-to-explode-like, and more could-I-possibly-have-pulled-a-muscle?-like. All at once I remembered playing a rousing game of catch with my two (12-and-15-year-old) nephews on Saturday, during which I threw a baseball with outstanding zeal across the backyard for an hour or so. If you know me, you know that I do not boast a particularly impressive musculature, and, as such, throwing a baseball any respectable distance is sort of a whole-body-affair for me. Sheepishly, I reminded my husband of my activity, and called my midwife to let her know that the funeral was off and I would likely be fine in a day or two.

But I'm not. And it's been a day or two. It's been four days, in fact, and I don't feel even a little bit better. It hurts to walk, it hurts to sit, it hurts to stand up straight or bend over. It hurts to lay on my left side, and it hurts to lay on my right side. Or my back. Or my front. It hurts to breath deeply. It hurts to eat. It hurts when some fetus kicks me from inside. It hurts to touch my side. Or look at it. Or talk about it. It hurts to pee. I have absolutely no idea what is going on. I'm not sure whether I did, in fact, injure myself throwing a ball around (really?) and if said injury is just taking an extra-long time to heal because of aforementioned fetus living behind it, or if I have something altogether different going on. What I know is: I don't have a fever, my urine is void of bacteria, and my blood does not reveal an infection of any kind. And a triage nurse and midwife think I'm nuts.

Here's a photo I took of the kids. When I took it, I might have wondered why Lucie was covering her eyes, but now I think I know: this is them sitting on the deck watching their mother play catch with their cousins (with whose iPod Sam is intently playing). I imagine now that Lucie smelled disaster...

I have a client who is a few days past her due date right now, and I am just dreading the ringing of the phone. Because it hurts to answer the phone, and it hurts to put on my shoes, and it hurts to drive a car. And I'm not sure, but I think it probably hurts to watch someone have a baby. Hell, it hurts to type this post.

I'm currently taking, on average, 4-5 hot baths a day, and lots of Tylenol (if only for the placebo effect, because I swear those things do nothing), and icing it (although this feels, somehow, not right, as I imagine my poor little fetus shivering beneath my ice pack), and applying heat. At my midwife's recommendation, I have begun supplementing calcium and magnesium to, hopefully, speed recovery. And, also at her recommendation, I just ate a banana, though I can't remember why (I feel like she said phosphorus the first time she mentioned it and potassium the second time and, you know...whatever).

So THAT is what has been going on here and why, at least ostentatiously, I have been unable to blog as of late. Boo hoo.

But seriously, Lucie's cast is looking quite nice, if I do say so myself. Photos tomorrow, when I finish my masterpiece.

I (Don't) Like to Move It, Move It...

2009-05-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

A couple nights ago, I had the ~~pleasure~~ obligation of attending an "Authentic Movement" class at the request of some home birth clients. They have been attending the classes for a year-and-a-half now, and it's something that has become really important to them, and so they asked if we (my preceptor, another apprentice and myself) would consider attending a private class that they would arrange with their instructor. I sort of gritted my teeth, smiled, and told them I would be happy to attend such a class. By "happy," what I really meant was, "I would rather walk across burning coals and eat broken glass, but I don't see any way out of this." I'm not a big dancer (I know--surprises around every corner, right?), and the thought of attending a very loosely-structured "movement" class sounded about as appealing as having that dream where you go to high school totally naked--and realizing it wasn't a dream.
So "Authentic Movement" is basically this (or, at least, this was how our class played out, and it's how I understand the class to generally work): a bunch of people get together, close their eyes and...move. Dance? No, move. To a little music? No, to a little silence. Someone--in our case, the instructor (or facilitator?) sat against the wall and watched ("witnessed") our movement for 20 minutes (read: an eternity) or so. Afterwards, we were given some time to write, draw, or dig through a huge stack of postcards to find or create images that would reflect what we thought or felt about or movement (or while moving). Next we took turns talking about our experience with the other participants (the "movers"), and the "witness" would offer (if we wished) her observations about our movement. (Later we did this same exercise, except that we were all "witnesses" to the pregnant client's movement.) There was a strong emphasis on stating our observations of one another as our own experiences--rather than trying to project our feelings onto their movement, or to "interpret" their movements. So, for example, one might say, "I felt (or experienced) a lot of sadness when you were crawling on the ground, but when you suddenly stood up, I had this image of a lioness, and it was a real image of strength." As opposed to, "You looked really sad when you were on the ground, but when you stood up you looked a lot stronger, like a lioness." The idea is to take full ownership of your experience as a witness, rather than imposing your experience on the mover and assigning your own meaning to their actions.
And I'll be honest: I hated it. Nearly every minute of it--the moving, anyway. I felt uncomfortable knowing I was being watched, and often felt at a loss for "what to do." The discussions afterwards were interesting enough, I suppose--still not necessarily my "thing," but it wasn't uncomfortable for me.

And, yet, I find the idea of all of this really very interesting and, in fact, I think it is strikingly relevant to birth-workers. As birth attendants--whether doulas, midwives, doctors, or partners--we act as "witnesses" to this compelling act of birth. We see what the mother does not; we watch her posture change, listen as she moans and grunts and roars, notice the range of expressions that appear on her face. And we interpret what we see, to determine how we might best help. We think, "She looks really peaceful," and we quietly slip out of the room to afford her more privacy. We think, "She looks afraid," and perhaps we offer an encouraging word or a reassuring hand on a shoulder. We rely on the sounds she makes to give us clues as to what her body is doing and what that might mean about the imminence of the birth. In this way, we are "movers" along with her, responding to what we see and hear with actions (or inactions) of our own.
In the days and weeks following the birth, though, our role as "witness" often becomes very important to the women we attend, as they recall the birth from their perspective and seek the perspective of those who were there with her. As she processes the event and recalls how it felt for her in those moments--both physically and emotionally--a woman often becomes interested in what we saw, what we heard, what we noticed that perhaps she did not. And it's during these conversations that our language can become so important. Women often value our perspectives very highly, as we are the people who not only witnessed her birth but who have, theoretically, anyway, witnessed many other births. The way we choose to share our experience with them can have a real impact on how *they* might interpret their experience. And sometimes I think this is okay--because we often can offer the perspective of someone who is more knowledgeable and experienced in birth and women are often interested in knowing how "normal" their experience was, or what might have been particular to their birth. But when it comes to assigning meaning to, or interpreting, what they were actually experiencing, I think it can be really dangerous and potentially invalidating to them. So, for example, if I say, "You got so scared right before you started pushing, but once you started pushing, you were fine," I am projecting my interpretation of the woman's "movement" onto her--perhaps invalidating her experience with my own. If I say, on the other hand, "Shortly before you started pushing, I noticed a real shift in the way you appeared--your breathing became sort of shallow, and you changed positions several times in just a couple minutes, and that was when you started saying things like 'I can't do this,' but as soon as you started pushing, I noticed that you were able to drop your shoulders between contractions, and really slow your breathing down, and I felt a real sense of peace as I watched you experience those final minutes of labor," (or whatever), I'm stating objectively what I saw or heard (breathing patterns, things that were said, position changes, posture), and commenting on my own experience as I witnessed her birth (which is different, and has different implications, I think, than trying to tell her what she felt or experienced).
This seems really obvious, but I know I've heard other doulas or apprentices talk about a woman's birth in this way--and have wondered if they would talk to the woman in a similar manner, or if they were just being more relaxed because they weren't talking to the woman at the time.
And, although I've never really given any conscious thought to this idea of "mover and witness," the idea, in other terms, had a really significant impact on who I wanted to be at my birth (or, more specifically, who I didn't want to be there). Early in my pregnancy, I talked with my preceptor (who is also attending my birth) about not being comfortable with one of the attendants who could potentially help out with my birth. She said she understood and could accommodate that, and said something like, "Yeah, sometimes if something is going to bother you at the birth..." and it occurred to me why I *really* didn't want this person at my birth. I told her, "It's not that I have a problem with her being at my birth, so much as I don't want her to have been at my birth." It may seem like a meaningless distinction to make, but this is a person who, in my experience, is quick to interpret the events that she is "witness" to (birth-related or not). Before I had all this new Authentic-Movement-Vocabulary to use, I recall saying, "She likes to write the history books; she has occasionally told me what I just witnessed--when I was there to see and interpret for myself--as if to dare me to disagree and to assume, if I didn't, that I agreed with her interpretation." And even without having thought through this whole issue of the "role of the witness" at a birth, I knew that this was something I really couldn't invite into an experience as important to me as the birth of one of my children.
So, anyway, I'm going to say what I thought I'd never say: I'm not only really grateful for the invitation to participate in this Authentic Movement class...I'm even glad I went. It gave me a lot to think about--and a new frame of reference for thinking about it--around an issue that I think is deeply important with regard to the way we care for women and families.

A Crafty Morning in Bad Artificial Light.

2009-04-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

We woke up feeling crafty this morning, so we set right to it (you'll notice Sam didn't bother to get dressed first. I had dyed some various pasta shapes last week, and we recently assembled a fabulous new IKEA desk in our basement, so I cut some shapes from the cardboard box for the kids, and we glued the pasta to the cardboard. The only problem was that I *thought* I had plenty of glue. Turns out, I had a totally-hardened jar of rubber cement, a strangely viscous bottle of Elmer's "school glue" (which was nearly impossible to squeeze out of the bottle), some "scrapbooking" glue (god only knows how *that* made its way into my Box of Craftiness), and some really noxious stuff that was labeled "GOOP" and which lived right up to its name.
The good news is, we were able to make our various adhesives work--Sam used the scrapbooking glue, I used the GOOP (just for the fumes), and I squeezed-until-my-fists-were-trembling some of the extra-thick Elmer's onto the cardboard for Lucie to stick in. The bad news is, I didn't think to turn the (damn) artificial lights off while I was snapping pictures, so they all look really crummy. When I realized what I had done, I thought about picking every piece of pasta *off* the kids' boards and making them do it all over again, in natural light, but I wasn't sure exactly what that might be teaching them (and I was still a little high off the GOOP), so I decided to just let it go.

When we finished with the pasta, we decided to try out some new Crayola oil pastels we found a couple weeks ago. They are decidedly un-oil pastel-like, and much more crayon-like, but the kids seemed to really love them. They're still very waxy, but just a little juicier than normal crayons, so they sort of went on the page nicely, and they weren't so prone to breaking. So, despite my initial disappointment, I'm going to declare the Crayola pastels a big hit. And, I thought to turn the overhead light off before snapping a few pictures this time.

Sam and Lucie trying out the new pastel-ish crayons. You can also see our pasta creations, drying on the rack beneath the glass in the table.

Sam said he was drawing a frog.

So, naturally, Lucie declared her art to *also* be representative of a frog.

Intuition: Learning to Trust Myself

2009-04-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

You can't spend much time, I've found, hanging around midwives or reading books written by midwives, without hearing (or reading) a lot about intuition. I myself have a rather contradictory relationship to intuition: I tend to have a rather strong (and I deliberately choose the word "strong," and not necessarily "good") intuition, but I am pretty fundamentally distrustful of intuition--mine or anyone else's. I am often uncomfortable with talk of "intuition," particularly as it relates to midwifery. It often feels, to me, irrelevant at best. And, at worst, like an excuse not to bother doing the work one might have to do in order to arrive at something more solid than a "feeling." I remember reading this in Heart and Hands:

"Your intuition and innate sense of what is right for you must always come first."

And I just thought, Really? Your innate sense? Your intuition must always come first? Seriously?
And the thing is--shh...don't tell the other midwives, in their patch-work skirts, reeking of patchouli--I think I still mostly feel this way. Sometimes when I hear someone talking about what their "intuition" is "telling them," I just want to add to the conversation: "Really? I love grapefruits and the color green." Because it's just as relevant to a woman's care, most of the time.

But here's the thing: lately, I've been catching myself thinking I know something before I really know it. Or, rather, I've caught myself believing something to be true before it has been satisfactorily verified.

And this is not like me at all.

I recently had such a moment with regard to a birth I attended. I had a little bit of evidence--not even "evidence," per se, but *suggestion*--and, for some reason that I can't quite articulate, I was feeling sort of...sure. And it sort of *bothered* me. I actually came home--this is not artistic liberty, but what actually happened--and googled "intuition definition." At first I found what I was afraid of: : "the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference." But then I found a secondary definition that eased my mind, if only a bit: "an impression that something might be the case." That I can work with. With regard to intuition, I like words like "impression" and "might." They put intuition where it belongs, I think. And so I slept well that night, tired from the birth and reassured that I hadn't crossed over to the other side, with the midwives who "know" things on the basis of their "power of attaining to direct knowledge." I'm just a rational, thinking human being who sometimes gets "impressions" that things "might be" true. And then I do my best to verify--or disprove--these little hunches. And then (and only then) I believe them to be true or untrue, accordingly. See? Rational.

It's an interesting aspect of apprenticeship, though--maybe even what this model of learning boils down to. In the context of my apprenticeship, I have the luxury of sort of "practicing" intuition. I get my little hunch (and, no doubt, my preceptor gets hers), and then I just sort of keep my mouth shut and watch it play out. And lots of times I'm wrong, and occasionally I'm right--but right and wrong don't really matter. What matters is that I'm gathering little bits of experience and information, and I'm putting them in this little mental catalog of mine, and as I learn more and more (but more importantly, as I see more and more), I'm starting to have something to compare things to. I'm starting to recognize things. It's this painstakingly slow process, really. And I just can't imagine any better way to learn.

So I'm not crossing over, I'm really not. I don't believe in fairies or elves or Santa Claus, and I'm never going to "know" anything that I don't actually know, just because I feel a given way. (I should just come clean right now and say that I *do* own a patchwork skirt.) But I'm learning a ton, and I'm experiencing a lot, and little-by-little, I'm learning to investigate my "impressions that something might be the case," because every once in a while, it is.

A Nice Birth This Morning.

2009-04-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I knew I had a client in early labor all day yesterday, I was up late folding laundry and catching up on TV shows online last night. When I finally went to sleep, I was awakened about an hour later by my phone, and was called out to the birth. Ouch. Lesson learned (theoretically, anyway).
It was a nice VBAC--pleasantly uneventful, really--with a really nice family that I rather like. Their little girl was born exactly two years after her big brother, so that was a sort of exciting coincidence.
This recent string of births really has me thinking a lot--about birth, about women and families, about the apprenticeship model and the way I process information. It's a lot to think about, really. This recent string of births has me thinking, yes, but it also has me unable to think *too* clearly--at least right now.
Now I'm off to sleep a bit. I have a day-full of postpartum visits to make tomorrow, and a couple prenatals (one of them my own). I'm meeting a new client tomorrow who just hired us for a May birth, so that's sort of exciting.
But yes, for now, time to sleep.

My First Breech Birth

2009-04-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Early this morning I had the pleasure of attending the fantastic breech birth of a very healthy (and quite cute!) baby boy. This was the first breech birth I've attended, so it was particularly exciting for me--although I think it was rather exciting for everyone, given that his "breechness" was not ultimately confirmed until about two hours before his birth.
My preceptor arrived at this client's house around 8:00 p.m. last night and, upon request, performed a vaginal exam and found the mother to be dilated to about 9 centimeters. She called me right away and I ~~drove~~ flew to the woman's house in fear that I would miss the birth (I live a good 45 minutes from this client by regular car, but a mere 40 minutes by Super-Subaru).
When I arrived, my preceptor explained that she had performed a vaginal exam and had felt the head (there had been some question about the baby's position in the past couple of weeks), but she added that there was quite a bulging bag of membranes in front of the head, so it was hard to feel for sure. But, she said, if we hadn't questioned the baby's position prior to this exam, she would not have questioned it as a result of this exam. Made sense.
As the woman reached full dilation and started making small pushes, she asked, "What keeps poking out?" My preceptor asked, "Is something poking *out* of your vagina?" (The woman was in the pool, in a darkened room, so we wouldn't have seen if there *had* been.) The woman said that, no, nothing was poking *out* of her vagina, but something was *in* her vagina. My preceptor asked if she would like her to feel, and when she did, she felt and said that she didn't feel anything in particular, but that she might still be feeling some bulging membranes. A few minutes later, the woman expressed concern again, and was again checked vaginally. My preceptor told her that she thought the cervix was completely gone now, and asked to talk to me in the other room. Once there, she told me that the baby was breech--she was feeling a scrotum in the woman's vagina. She returned to the room where the couple was laboring and asked to perform one more vaginal exam, to be absolutely sure of what she was feeling. After doing so, she told the woman, "Well, your cervix is definitely gone, but I have some surprising news: Your baby is breech." I watched the woman for her reaction to this news, uncertain whether to expect fear, or sadness, or anger, or panic, or determination, or courage. And she laughed. Not the maniacal kind of laugh one might expect when springing such news upon a fully-dilated, pushing, first-time mother. Just an amused-but-peaceful little laugh that said, to me, This woman is going to be all right.
My preceptor has attended a handful of breech births, but I believe this was the first she's had in her own practice. She called a back-up midwife who (if I understood correctly) has assisted at a few more breech births than she, and pulled me back out of the room to explain what might be required of me if the back-up didn't make it in time. When we returned to the couple, I felt remarkably calm and confident--I was confident in this woman's ability to birth her baby, confident in my preceptor's judgement and skill, and confident that I was knowledgeable and skilled enough to follow her instructions.
The woman continued pushing--still in relatively small pushes that felt most natural to her at the time--and as she pushed, the baby's scrotum would emerge from her vagina temporarily, retreating after each contraction (and the couple, who had opted not to find out the sex during their pregnancy, quickly learned that they would have a son).
The back-up midwife arrived about 30 minutes after receiving the call (a rather impressive feat, by the way, given her distance from the couple), and joined us in waiting. Because the baby was breech and because the woman was pushing, we listened to heart tones more frequently than normal, and were consistently rewarded with an appropriately-quick heartbeat.
After several good pushes in the tub (in two positions), my preceptor suggested that the woman move from the tub, where she could get a bit more gravity on her side, and where she (my preceptor) would be better able to assist in the birth, if that became necessary. The woman willingly walked to her bed where she gave a few pushes in lithotomy position before moving, at my preceptor's suggestion to hands-and-knees, with her husband sitting in front of her for support. After a couple pushes, the baby was "rumping," and she put one foot up (in what my preceptor calls the "runner's stance") and pushed him into her midwife's waiting hands. My preceptor was very deliberate about keeping her hands off the baby while he was being born, only offering support when his head began to emerge (to prevent too quick a birth of his head). We were careful to note the time when the umbilicus emerged so we would know how much time had elapsed between that and the birth of the head, but it was only about a minute. He was born with fantastic tone, decent color, and the sort of cry I imagine you or I might make if we were sucked ass-backwards through a tunnel the size of our fist.
The placenta followed about 10 minutes later and was preceded by a bit of bleeding, but nothing alarming. Within an hour or two, the baby had nursed, the mom had eaten, been up to the bathroom, and had taken a shower. A check revealed two labial tears, which didn't require stitches. The baby's newborn exam looked great, save for a badly bruised buttock and a horribly swollen scrotum. We administered a Vitamin K shot--which we do not routinely do--because of his bruising (I believe she would have given it, after a breech birth, whether or not there was visible bruising at the time).
Anyway, it really was a lovely birth, and I was very fortunate to be there. And I was particularly fortunate to have attended my first breech birth with such a strong, confident mother, and such a wise and skilled midwife.

An Interesting Comparison...(Or, The Longest Post I May Ever Write)

2009-03-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

I attended two births last Friday. The first was a doula birth. I arrived at my clients' home at about 4:15 Thursday afternoon and was with them through the night until their baby arrived around 4:30 Friday morning (and, of course, I was there for a couple hours after the birth). The second birth was a homebirth that I attended with my preceptor. I was called out around 1:00 p.m., and the baby arrived around 3:30 that afternoon. (As a matter of fact, these babies were born *exactly* 11 hours apart, to the minute.)
Attending these two very different births in such proximity to one another would have been interesting enough, but things got particularly interesting when both mothers suffered a postpartum hemorrhage after their births. The circumstances of their births were really quite different, but their hemorrhages were sort of strikingly similar. So it is particularly interesting to look back on the way both hemorrhages were managed and to sort of consider the effects of both styles of management on the outcomes (both women--and both babies--are fine today, by the way).
The first birth (the doula client) was a hospital birth. First-time mom, 38 years old, being cared for by a CNM. Her labor lasted about 20 hours from first contraction to birth. She pushed for about an hour, side-lying at first, but mostly on her back, reclined (but not flat) on a hospital bed. She was unmedicated and her labor was spontaneous and was not "augmented," although her membranes were artificially ruptured when she was about 6 centimeters dilated and labor was very active. The baby's heart rate was being continually monitored while she pushed (intermittently during labor). As the baby was crowning, a nurse became concerned that the baby's heart rate had dropped drastically (I'm not at all sure that this was *actually* the case, as the nurse was holding the monitor on the mother's abdomen, and had repeatedly lost the heart tones only to find them again with repositioning. The mother's pulse was not being monitored during labor, and when the baby's heart rate "dropped," it fell to what would be a very believable maternal heart rate at that time--in the high 80s, low 90s.) At this point, the CNM and student midwife (who was serving as primary care provider in this case) became very aggressive with pushing the mother's perineum and labia over the baby's head, facilitating the birth of the head. The baby's face was pink, not particularly dark. A nuchal cord was felt, but was not particularly tight, and was easily slipped over the baby's head. At this point, despite the fact that the mother was between contractions, despite the fact that the baby's coloring looked good, the midwives instructed the nurse to lay the bed flat and began aggressively working to deliver the baby's shoulders. At this point, the feeling in the room shifted to panic, as peds and NICU were paged. After about a minute or so, a nuchal hand began to emerge and was pulled free by the CNM, who then easily pulled the rest of the 7 pound, 15 ounce baby from her mother's womb. The baby was placed, very briefly, on her mother's chest, where she was vigorously rubbed with blankets by two nurses, and where she was heard making respiratory efforts and grimacing. After 15 seconds or so, the cord was clamped and cut, and she was taken to a warmer, where she was given PPV (positive-pressure ventilation), her heart rate assessed (and declared "perfect"), and where she was soon breathing and crying.
The mother was given intramuscular pitocin immediately after the birth (this is protocol with this particular group of midwives, and it was explained to my client well before the birth that it would occur), and her placenta did not come right away, but she wasn't bleeding and so the midwife simply kept an eye (and a good bit of traction) on the cord, waiting for it to separate. After about 10-15 minutes, the (student) midwife started to get antsy, pulling more on the cord. At 20 minutes, she paged the CNM who was overseeing her to come help. The CNM did some more tugging on the cord, and eventually injected a mixture of pitocin and sterile water into the vein of the cord and that, with much more tugging and pulling, facilitated the delivery of the placenta. The placenta was followed by a few clots--not *too* many, I don't think--and a bit of blood, while the fundus was being massaged. When the midwife felt satisfied with the tone and size of the uterus, she stopped massaging it, and pointed out that it was right at the umbilicus, where it should be. Shortly thereafter, she left to check on another patient. Thirty minutes or so later, a nurse checked my client's fundus and found it to be several inches above her umbilicus (but seemed unconcerned as she explained to my client, "Here's your uterus--it will eventually shrink down to the size of a grapefruit"). I waited for her to say something more and, when she didn't, I said, "Her uterus was at her umbilicus before [the midwife] left." She still seemed unconcerned, but said she'd mention it to the other nurse. When she did, *that* nurse paged in the midwife, who was quite concerned. After some uterine massage, manual removal of quite a few blood clots, bladder catheterization (to get her full bladder out of the way of her uterus) and more uterine massage, the woman's uterus was relatively well contracted again (she was also given intramuscular methergine at this point, as well as an IV for fluids to bring her blood volume/pressure back up), and she had lost an additional 800 cc of blood (they weighed it for accuracy). All in all, her estimated blood loss was around 1850 cc.
The second birth was a planned homebirth with a second-time mom, in her late 20s. Her membranes ruptured spontaneously Thursday evening and contractions began Friday morning. By noon or so Friday, they had significantly increased in intensity and frequency, and we were called out around 1:00 p.m. or so. Her labor progressed quickly, and soon she was in her birth pool. Shortly thereafter, she was pushing, and the baby was born easily after a few pushes, weighing (we later learned) about 7 pounds, 13 ounces. She looked great right away--perfect APGARS at 1 and 5 minutes--and after maybe 15 minutes, the woman delivered the placenta spontaneously before getting out of the pool. While there were some clots and some bleeding in the pool, it was pretty minimal. We arranged her a place on the sofa and helped her get out of the pool. After sitting for a few minutes on the couch, she was feeling some really uncomfortable after-pains, and my preceptor asked her if she thought she could pee. I helped her make her way to the toilet, where the chux pad we used to catch any bleeding looked relatively clean. When she sat down on the toilet, I heard quite a few large clots fall into the toilet, followed by a trickle. I went and grabbed my preceptor at this point because, while passing some clots on the toilet at this point was not abnormal or alarming, it sounded like quite a bit, and was continuing to trickle. When my preceptor found her uterus to be a bit atonic, she offered intramuscular pitocin, which the client refused (on the basis of a strong needle-aversion). She then offered an herbal tincture (cotton root bark), which was also declined. She massaged our client's fundus until it felt relatively firm, brought her the baby to nurse (the baby latched on quickly and nursed well) and then helped her back to the sofa, this time to lie down. The client continued to complain of very painful cramps, and when one would come, she would often expel a moderate-sized clot or some additional blood. After a couple more uterine massages, my preceptor recommended a bit more forcefully that she try the Cotton Root Bark, and she agreed. This didn't have a noticeable (by me, anyway) effect on her bleeding, although I'm not sure there was really enough time for it to take full effect, and she continued to expel clots and blood intermittently. After a while, her uterus still feeling "boggy" and the bleeding continuing, my preceptor offered to empty her bladder with a urinary catheter, which she did successfully. When the woman continued to bleed 10 or so minutes later, the midwife explained that she felt she needed to manually remove some clots and administer pitocin, which she did (I forget in which order), and brought out a *lot* of blood and clots (I wish I had a better estimate, but I had stepped out of the room for a minute (and returned in time to help clean up what I will just call a "very bloody mess"). After this, the client kept reiterating that she was feeling so much better now, and seemed very sure that the problem was resolved. My preceptor explained that this may or may not have taken care of the problem (come to think of it, I'm pretty sure this was when we administered the pitocin). We elevated her feet, took her blood pressure (90/58) and pulse (90ish? I forget), and got the client eating and drinking (some more). She was exhausted, but content to snuggle with her baby for a while. After 20 minutes or so, the client said she'd like to try going to the bathroom. I took the baby and the midwife and the cllient's husband helped her to first sit up, and eventually stand. Before she could take a step, she fainted. She quickly regained consciousness and, after being reoriented, wanted to try again. They slowly began helping her to her feet, but she fainted again. At this point, my preceptor made the decision to call an ambulance, and explained to our (now conscious, but laying on the floor) client and her husband that while fainting was not entirely abnormal, she had lost quite a bit of blood, and that she wasn't convinced we had seen the last of the bleeding and that she had "reached her limit" in terms of how much bleeding she felt she could safely tolerate. She elevated the woman's feet and called an ambulance. Paramedics arrived within 10 minutes of her placing the call. When they took her blood pressure, it was 70-something/40-something (I forget, but it was quite low), but she was conscious and very lucid, talking with them and us and we prepared for her transfer. She was taken to the hospital (her husband and baby followed in one car, and my preceptor in another), where she was given I.V. sedation and another moderately-sized clot was manually removed from her uterus, which seemed to resolve the bleeding. She was admitted overnight and received I.V. fluids to increase blood volume and pressure and oral methergine, which kept her uterus firm. She was released the next morning and returned home, where she has been resting and is feeling quite well now.

So all of this really got my thinking--seeing two hemorrhages that played out so similarly, in such proximity to one other, but in such different settings (where such different protocols were followed--particularly in terms of the third stage). I left the first (hospital) birth feeling like their "active management of the third stage" (and perhaps their equally aggressive management of the second stage) probably caused this woman's hemorrhage. She didn't have any other indications that such a hemorrhage might occur--she didn't have a particular long labor, but it wasn't precipitous, either. Her baby wasn't large (and she didn't have polyhydromnios). She was not obese, this was her first birth, she received no drugs during labor--either to augment her contractions or for pain relief. I thought, just another case of hospital protocol (particularly the routine administration of pitocin immediately postpartum, and the aggressive action taking to deliver a placenta that, although it was not coming *quickly* after the birth, did not appear to be posing any problem (she wasn't bleeding, and the size/tone of her uterus didn't suggest bleeding behind the placenta)--the midwife repeatedly told us/my client that they try to "encourage" the placenta to come out for the first 20 minutes or so, and if it wasn't out by 30 minutes, they "get a lot more serious" about getting the placenta out; the only indication she gave for getting more aggressive about it was the amount of time that had elapsed, and not any particular sign or symptom on the part of my client.

And then our homebirth client hemorrhaged.

She had a *few* more "risk factors" for hemorrhage, but it was still unexpected. The third stage was "managed" entirely differently from my doula client's, but it resulted in such a similar hemorrhage. The hemorrhaged themselves--once they occurred--were not handled *so* differently from one another, though. Both clients received: intramuscular pitocin, fundal massage, urinary catheterization, manual removal of blood clots, methergine (intramuscular in the first case, oral in the second), i.v. fluids. My hospital client had some of these things more quickly available to her--actually, only the i.v. fluids were available more quickly, come to think of it. Everything else was available to us at home. But she received them less quickly than my hospital client (someone with a bias might prefer to say she received them less hastily). That was largely her decision, though--pitocin was offered at the first sign of the hemorrhage, while she was still sitting on the toilet after losing all those clots and while having that trickle bleed.

In the end, I guess this is what I take away from it all:

Active management of the third stage, as routinely practiced in the hospital, will not prevent every hemorrhage and, in fact, one could make a compelling case for it causing or contributing to a considerable hemorrhage in this case. Likewise, sometimes bleeding occurs in the most natural and un-messed-with of births, and at these times, we are grateful for the skills and resources to respond to it. As my preceptor and I were talking after the birth, the question arose, "What if we had been a bit pushier with the pitocin (or at least the herbs) when the hemorrhage first began? Could we have avoided the transport and all the subsequent blood loss?" And, for me, that's a really relevant and important issue to explore--the balance between using your discernment and judgement as the trained and experienced care provider in those situations and allowing a woman or couple the space to make their own choices regarding her own care. I'm sure most would agree that you simply must strike such the balance (and my preceptor has, I think--which was why she didn't hassle the woman about declining the interventions early on, but went ahead with them when things became more serious) that you feel is right and appropriate, do your best to convey that balance to your clients (or potential clients) prenatally, and then honor that balance that you've found as you interact with those in your care and react to the surprises their births may present.

I'm not glad to watch a client bleed--I can't help it; I just prefer "easy." But I am grateful to have witnessed these recent complications in the company of wise and skilled midwives--even, and in fact, particularly, midwives who follow entirely different protocols. I have a lot to learn.

Sam on Easter and Bunnies.

2009-03-22T20:21:00.000-07:00

We've never really addressed the Easter Bunny with Sam. We make Easter baskets for our kids, but last year they were young enough not to question where they had come from, and so we just didn't make an issue of it. This year, we thought it would be the same. But then Sam asked, quite out-of-the-blue, as we were riding in the car the other night,

Sam: Mom, are Easter Bunnies real?

Me: Well, what do you think? Do you think the Easter Bunny is real?

Sam: I think it's not real.

Me: Oh. Well, you're right.

Joel: (Breaking in, not about to give in so easily as I just did.) Well, Sam, why do you think the Easter Bunny isn't real?

Sam: I don't know. Bunnies are small and I don't think they could really do that. (Pause.) I know! We should set rabbit traps for Easter, so if there are Easter Bunnies, we'll catch them. Then we'll know!

Joel: Ooh, that's not a bad idea. Maybe we should set some rabbit traps!

Me: (Shaking head.)

(We rode in rare silence for several minutes before Sam picked the conversation back up.)

Sam: You know, when I go to bed at night, I sleep forever--until the morning I mean. Maybe while I'm sleeping, you two could just hide eggs, and when we wake up in the morning, Lucie and I could find them. We wouldn't wake up, I don't think. 'Cause bunnies are so small, and I don't really know if they could hide eggs. So maybe you two could just hide some?

So I guess it's settled. What with Sam and Lucie being such heavy sleepers and all, Joel and I can just wait for them to go to sleep and then hide the eggs ourselves. The Easter Bunnies, if they *are* real, are probably over-taxed as it is. And, as Sam repeatedly pointed out, they really are so small to be hiding eggs.

Now we just need to decide whether or not to go to the trouble of purchasing a couple bunnies, dying their fur pink and green, and placing them in a "rabbit trap" for Sam to find in the morning. Just to keep him guessing.

And What Did We Learn Today?

2009-03-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

I have this thing about interrupting. I know kids do it (and all sorts of other social 'no-no's such as nose-picking and calling old people "old" and fat people "fat"); I get that. And you know, it doesn't bother me that much when my kids pick their noses. But I know a few adults who haven't kicked the nasty habit of interrupting (for that matter, I'm married to an individual who is often caught picking his nose, but this is another subject for another day), and I think this is why I feel so compelled to nip this particular behavior in the bud, so to speak. So we've worked with our kids on saying, "Excuse me," for example, when they wish to interrupt a conversation someone else is having in order to say something themselves. And they do, most of the time--they're really good about this. But sometimes it gets a little out of hand--particularly in the car--and soon they are shouting "Excuse me," (or " 'Scuse you!" in Lucie's case--she's trying) every 15 seconds or so. After being interrupted several times in, say, 2-3 minutes, I'll often say something to the effect of, "Thank you for saying 'Excuse me,' Sam--that was a very polite way to interrupt me, but Dad and are trying to have this conversation and you're interrupting us so frequently that that isn't possible. So I'm going to give you a chance to speak now, but when you're finished, I'll need you to wait a few minutes while Dad and I talk before you interrupt again, unless it's really, particularly emergent." Something about me having a conversation, particularly with their father, just really inspires a lot of verbalizations on Sam's and Lucie's parts.

The only thing more inspiring to them, in fact, is when I try to talk on the phone. They can't stand it. I have to lock myself in a bathroom to schedule an appointment or to take a call from a potential doula client, because otherwise it is simply not possible to have a meaningful communication.

Today, I was talking with my mother-in-law when it started. We were in the (parked) car, waiting for Joel to run in somewhere, and they wouldn't let up. Occasionally, I would ask Joel's mom to hold on for a moment so I could give them a chance to speak. Once recognized, though, they could never come up with anything to say. After a few (miraculous) minutes of quiet (well, quiet-enough-to-hear-the-person-on-the-other-end-of-the-phone, anyway), Sam started in: "Excuse me, Mom, Excuse me, Mom, Excuse me, Mom, Excusemeexcusemeexcusemeexcusemeexcuseme..." So I just opened the car door and got out so I could finish the conversation in peace. Within a few minutes, I wrapped up the conversation and got back in the car. Before he could say anything thing, I turned around and said, "Sam, I'm really disappointed in the way you were behaving." He looked genuinely startled. "Why?" "Because you know better than to constantly interrupt me when I'm talking on the phone. Now what was it that you so urgently needed to tell me while I was talking to Grammie??"

"There was a big spider crawling up your back."

So. After I calmly stepped from the vehicle and stripped nearly to my underwear, violently shaking clothes out and brushing down my and body and (very short, thank god) hair, I returned to the car to embrace yet another valuable "teaching moment" with the children--the lesson entitled, "Times When You Don't Need to Say 'Excuse Me' Before Interrupting."

Crafty Feelings and Blank Matryoshkas

2009-03-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I get a little crafty feeling inside. Upon getting such a feeling, I usually dive head-first into some crafty endeavor, obsess over it for a few days until it is finished, and then go back to my uncrafty state for several weeks or months.

Last September, we were in Toronto visiting two of my very favorite friends from college. My friend Ryan spent a couple years in Ukraine with the Peace Corps, and had a matryoshka doll sitting on a shelf in his apartment, to which Lucie took an immediate liking. For the few days we were there, she was always carrying it around the apartment, taking it apart and filling the dolls with other treasures (magnets, coins, et cetera). One day, while we were out walking around Toronto, one (or both?) kids declared that they needed to use the bathroom, so we found the first establishment that looked like it might have an available facility: an art supply store.

It is a known fact that such stores often bring on the Crafty Feeling in me, and so I'm quite sure that my husband would have liked to have pressed on towards the *next* available bathroom, even risking an accident on one or both kids' parts. But it was too late, as I was already on my way into the store. Once the kids had used the bathroom, I began wandering around the store and came upon a nice little set of unfinished wooden matryoshkas. It was early September, and Lucie's birthday is late November, so I quickly purchased them so that I could paint something on them and give her her very own set when she turned two. (I will admit now that I briefly entertained visions of a matryoshka-themed birthday party and that, although her second birthday has come-and-gone, I'm not at all sure that we won't celebrate her third year with such a party.)

So I bought the blank nesting dolls and tucked them away somewhere, and soon it was Lucie's birthday and the dolls were still blank. This didn't stop me from pulling them out (nor did it stop her from playing with them, I should add) and so for several months, Lucie has been playing with blank nesting "dolls."

But then, last week, the Crafty Feeling came again. I was watching Lucie play with some plastic Yo Gabba Gabba figures, when it occurred to me that there were five characters, and five nesting dolls. She likes Yo Gabba Gabba very much (although she's only seen the show once, she likes the figures) and they looked simple enough for my skill level (or, the skill level of the average 4th grader).

And so we set to painting. Sam and Lucie began working on some other projects--Lucie was working on a painting for our wall, and Sam was painting a piggy bank for his aunt's birthday--and I set to work on the Yo Gabba Gabba nesting dolls. And yesterday, I finished them:

Here's Sam, working very intently on the piggy bank:

And Lucie, expertly painting her canvas:

The Crafty Feeling has mostly left now (although I'm pregnant, and this means the Feeling could creep back up on me at any time).

Way-Back-Whensday...

2009-03-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Again, with thanks to Raechel for her clever idea, I'm digging up a couple of older pictures.

Lucie at the park on a nice, hot, August day.

And me and the kids, showing off our tandem baby wearing skills when they were 2.5 and ~9 months.

Ask not what your apprenticeship can do for your pregnancy...

2009-03-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

I attended a birth Saturday--the fourth or fifth I've attended during this pregnancy. Before I even got pregnant this time around, I wondered a lot about how a pregnancy might be different in the context of my apprenticeship. I wondered if I would feel detached at all, if I might look at the pregnancy somehow more "clinically," for lack of a better word. Or if I might worry more--if the cases I've seen end poorly or some of the things I've read about or heard about at peer reviews might overwhelm me. But, so far, the apprenticeship hasn't seemed to affect the way I experience my pregnancy too much.
Yesterday, though, at this birth, I was surprised by how frequently I found my mind wandering off to imagine my own upcoming birth. From thinking about where we would set up the birth pool, to imagining who would be in attendance, all the way to wondering how I would react to "this" or "that," I had to keep bringing myself back to then, to that birth. During the critical moments (and there were many at this particular birth), I was absolutely completely present, but as we sat around for several hours of labor and a relatively long pushing stage, I was here, in my house, giving birth in my mind.

I have four more births coming up in the next month or so, and then I have, for now, a really long break until I attend one last birth late July-ish. I feel like I've sort of hit some sort of stride in my apprenticeship lately, and I'm actually not looking forward to the time off--for the next couple of months or after the baby is born. And it's not that I want it another way--I'm excited to bring this new (and, I think, final) member into our family and to take time enjoying those first months with him or her. But I'm also really enjoying the work I'm doing right now, and I'm just not really excited about taking this step backwards.

Way-Back-Whensday...

2009-03-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, I'll bite. My clever friend Raechel came up with a great idea (and so wittingly spelled! I hope she won't mind the liberty I've taken with the hyphens...I do so love a good hyphen.) of taking a weekly opportunity to post a photo or two from the days of old (a relative term, you know), and I think I'll join her.
So, because it is way too late for blogging (but--hooray--the neighbor's internet signal is nice and strong tonight!) and because I am not on the computer with all the *really* old photos on it, I'll leave you with shot of a much balder Lucie, taken when she was seven months old.

And one of Sam from around the same time--he was just shy of 2.5 years in this photo.

Welcome to the Family...

2009-03-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a very special day, as we welcomed a new piano into our home. If you know me, you know the very sad story of how we sold our house on land contract last summer and had to quickly find a home for our baby grand piano. When we were unable to find a suitable piano-sitter, we had to sell the piano on consignment at the local piano store. About a month after it sold and we received our big, fat (and yet, unwelcome) check from the piano store, our buyer stopped making payments and we began the process of repossessing our house. We moved back into the house this past January, to our empty, pianoless living room.
Our new piano is quite a bit smaller than our old, but I actually like it much more. It's a bit less beautiful to look at, but it sounds amazing, and it plays really nicely. I don't mind saying: I'm in love.

Gone but not forgotten, here is a picture of our old piano. This was the way it looked when it had a tired baby sitting on it:

Doppler Star...

2009-03-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Last night I tried listening to the baby again with the fetoscope, but wasn't able to hear the heartbeat. I decided to try finding it with the doppler first, and then listen at that spot with the fetoscope. I had finished with the doppler and was just giving up with the fetoscope when I looked to my left and saw this:

(Forgive the blurry images--apparently he was moving a little too fast for that shutter speed.)

Third-Time Mama Syndrome...

2009-03-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

I read this advice from a midwife online the other day: "Have a first baby, have a second baby, have a fourth or fifth baby, but never have a third baby."
I just don't know what to say about this pregnancy but that it has totally taken me by surprise. I was riding around with my preceptor back in December--she was one of the few people who knew I was pregnant at the time--and we were talking about what a busy January we had ahead of us. "Oooh...that'll be just as the morning sickness is setting in," she joked. I happily informed her that I don't get morning sickness. I believe I used the word "asymptomatic" to describe my pregnancies. The next day was Christmas Eve, and I don't think I got off the couch all day long. This was the first of many such days.
My children, I am sorry to admit, have viewed more TV (by which I mean YouTube, DVDs, and the DVR remnants of our stint with DirecTV a couple years ago) in the past few months than in the rest of their short lives combined. One day, I thought I could lay on the couch (just a few feet from my sweet children) and sort of...rest my eyes...while keeping a supervisory ear over the kids. So I would doze for a few minutes, then Lucie would bring me a bowl of "soup" or a cup of "tea" to taste, then I'd doze some more and hear Sam instructing Lucie on the rules of Candy Land. I came out of one such dozing episode to hear Sam saying, "Lucie, Mom's not going to be happy when she sees that you're getting into her bag and playing with your EpiPens." A particularly shining moment for me as a mother.
I don't know what it is. It could be that I'm tandem nursing this time around...but nursing Sam while gestating Lucie didn't seem to put *any* additional strain on me. And I'm not doing much milk-making these days, to be sure (while pregnant with Lucie, my milk supply didn't dwindle noticeably until I was at least 7 months pregnant--this time around, it was about 6 weeks). One morning about a month ago I was laying in bed and Lucie was talking about nursing when Sam came in. He was like, "I want to nurse, too; Lucie will you move to the other side?" Lucie started to protest, "No--this side..." when Sam said, "Lucie, FINE. It doesn't matter--there's no milk on either side!"
I wondered what effect my past year-or-so of apprenticeship might have on the way that I experienced this pregnancy. I've heard people talk about it sometimes being harder not to worry when they know "too much." That hasn't been my experience at all--if anything, I'm worrying less than with previous pregnancies (not that I was particularly given to worry before). But I am sort of preoccupied with (over)analyzing the circumstances and symptoms of this pregnancy in an effort to "figure it out." It's my nature to over-analyze, but I've been keeping most of my pregnancy analysis to myself (read: to myself and my poor, trying-his-damnedest-to-be-interested husband) lest I sound paranoid or worrisome.

But for the past few days, I've been feeling all right. Well, even. I daresay the worst of it is over. I've had the pleasure of feeling this baby's tiny little tap-tap-tapping movements for several weeks now, but today I've started feeling some big, rolling movements that I didn't feel until much later in my other pregnancies. And yesterday, my new fetoscope arrived in the mail (I had one with short tubing, but I imagine an attempt at listening to my fetus with this fetoscope might look something like the time my husband asked me whether I could nurse myself--long story, don't ask--and I said, "I don't know; let's see!" The answer is no, I cannot nurse myself.) So I got my new fetoscope out and I *swear* I was able to hear the heartbeat with it. I have a doppler at home and have listened a few times--most recently just a day or two ago--so I had an idea of where to begin listening.

I have a nice, little handful of births coming up in these next couple of months...I think just a couple in March and a couple in April...and then, for now (sometimes we get hired for sort of last-minute births), I have a considerable break until my very last pre-baby client is due just a few weeks before I am.

So things are looking up. All of a sudden, the baby is feeling like a baby and sounding like a baby, and I'm feeling like a person, and the world is just generally a brighter, albeit still *freezing,* place to be.

Start Blogging

2009-02-27T12:26:00.000-08:00

I've tried this once before, blogging. I decided it wasn't for me--and perhaps it wasn't. But I've been thinking lately about how much I enjoy a handful of blogs, and thought maybe I should give it another shot. As a matter of fact, I've clicked on "create a blog" a number of times in the past few weeks, but was always overcome by my inability to think of a clever name for my blog. To add insult to injury, whenever I did come up with a name that might be passible, I was defeated by the fact that that blog address was already taken.
But today, upon checking in on one of my favorite blogs, Totally Smitten Mama was celebrating her "blogiversary," and encouraged her readers to start their own blog, and I just thought, "Maybe I will." So I'm going to give this a(nother) try. Maybe this time, I'll unearth my inner-blogger-self. Who knows?