Elanor is Eight
Eight years ago today, I was in labor with my firstborn, Elanor. She came into the world that night screaming and cried a lot after that for months. She and I survived each other, and Dan survived us both. It was a humbling time, being a first-time mother. Our plans to teach her to eat and sleep on schedule did not work (they still don’t). I did my best to screw up breastfeeding by following the plan in the Ezzo book On Becoming Babywise (or, as Sheila Stubbs so aptly puts it, “Unbecoming Baby Lies”). But Ellie wasn’t about to fit into a schedule or a program. One thing I did right was to keep breastfeeding (it was easy, although I missed the joy because of my legalism), and God put people around me (Terri) who kept me from certain death.
There have been many other such scenarios; the first months of Elanor’s life were just the beginning how we push and pull at each other with our personalities.
Oh, my girl. I am so sorry. Maybe a lot of mothers feel this way about their firstborns. As I think over the eight years of Elanor’s life, what overwhelms me the most is grace. After all I’ve done to screw things up (because I thought I knew best), she still hangs in there with me.
She’s not always right, even though she thinks she is. Somehow her ebullient spirit has not been quashed. Last week at her second-grade program, she was an absolute star, confident, expressive, happy, so fun to watch. She got to sing a short solo AND do the final reading, and she rocked it. She asks questions now, at eight years old, that it took me at least another decade to grapple with: If dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, and it took God six days to create the world, and there aren’t any dinosaurs now, how can that be? And why aren’t there very many girls in the Bible? I know, those are biggies. And she wants to be baptized. She really does get it.
I try not to giggle when her teacher says she needs to have two chapters of a book read by the end of the week, because the truth is she probably already has the whole book read, and waiting for everyone else to catch up is torturous. She thinks conversations about chile peppers are interesting and doesn’t get squeamish about insects. She wants to live on a farm someday with lots of animals and nature all around. And she just got an award for trustworthiness.
She wants me to homeschool her (I do, too). If that is the case, I can’t have screwed up our relationship too badly, I hope. Of course, sometimes I don’t understand anything! (she tearfully says in our Moments). I have to steel myself to withstand those storms, and I have a feeling they’re not going to calm down anytime soon. Did I create the problems? Maybe. I’m sure I’ve created some of them. Ann Lee told me, when Elanor was just a couple months old, “You are the best mother you know how to be.” That spoke grace to me. I had already screwed up seriously, but it was true: I WAS doing my best. And thank God, even with all my mess-ups, she still shines. She still loves God. She still loves me, and Dan, and Jonathan.
I am so proud of my sparkling Elanor. Her name means “light,” and she is that.
Trust Birth Conference preview!!
Tomorrow I’m off to Nashville for the 2012 Trust Birth Conference! I am reeeally excited to see some of my fellow students, some of the most brilliant people in birth work, and some of the bravest, most truthful, most compassionate people on the planet. I am not looking forward to being away from my family, and after this, I plan not to go anywhere for a long, long time — at least not without them.
Now this here is meant to torture you, as I am now going to reveal to you the sessions I am registered for.
All day Wednesday is “Midwifery Management of Neonatal Resuscitation,” by the inimitable NRP-accredited instructor Karen Strange.
Thursday I have a several-hours-long workshop with internationally known herbalist Shonda Parker, called “Ancient Herbs; Modern Medicine.” And then I have a three-hour session with Welsh-Australian midwife Lisa Barrett, called “Variations of Normal Birth.” (I could sit for three hours just listening to her talk with her beautiful voice and cadence and then trying to look like her, which I never will, but a girl can dream.)
On Friday, I expect to be blown away by a two-part workshop called “Oxygen and the Midwife,” with Jill McDanal. The director of my school raves about her vast knowledge of the research out there about supplemental oxygen. That may not sound like a big deal to you if you haven’t been at many births, but it kind of is, and the evidence doesn’t really support mainstream practice. I can’t wait to learn more about it so I know what I’m talking about. (That’s after the morning general session, and I don’t know what is planned for that. Friday is the first day of the actual conference.)
Saturday morning’s first breakout session is with Australian midwife Rachel Reed, of the wonderful blog Midwife Thinking, on practically my favorite subject, the umbilical cord. And then after that is a breakout session with none other than Dr. Sarah Buckley, author of Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, my favorite book to recommend to expectant parents; this session is called “The Hour After Birth: Postgraduate Education for Mother.” And then there’s “Cultured at Birth,” by Sherry Rothwell, a registered holistic nutritionist who will be speaking about cultured foods. And finally that day (ending at 9:30 p.m. — we are serious learners!) is a session with Lisa Wass, one of my fellow AAMI students, called “Transitioning from Doula Service to Midwfery.”
I can’t wait for Sunday’s sessions, although I bet I’ll be reduced to a blathering idiot by about then. The first one is by Karen Strange again (the woman who teaches neonatal resuscitation), and it’s called “Meconium: Facts, Implications, and Perspectives.” And then Sarah Buckley will teach on “Prenatal Testing and Ultrasound: The Good, The Bad, the Ugly.”
And then there will be a closing session, and then I will schlep myself to the airport and come home exhausted and overwhelmed and inspired and happy.
And hopefully the next morning when I get out of bed, I won’t break a toe, as I did my first morning home from the Intensity. The sacrifices I make. 
And I will kiss and hug my kids and Dan over and over and over. And get ready to serve some more birthing families.
I’m a published writer!
I have a thing for umbilical cords — and that led to my making a presentation on the normal closure thereof at the AAMI Intensity in October — and that led to my writing the cover article for the inaugural issue of birthnbabies magazine!
I’m just a little tickled about it; I thought my article would be hidden somewhere in the nameless middle part, but there it is on the cover! And the letters are in turquoise! 
I wish I could plop an image of it right here in this blog post, but I can’t figure that out right now.
Anyway, ultimately, I’m glad to be getting the truth out there: The more people know, the more babies will be treated right.
Adventures in neonatal resuscitation
My major midwifery-study project lately is to study the Textbook of Neonatal Resuscitation (6th ed.) from the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, so I can take the online test, so I can attend a day-long workshop at the Trust Birth Conference in April and be certified in neonatal resuscitation.
Here’s an excerpt from the textbook:
“Several recent studies suggest that resuscitation of term newborns with 21% oxygen (room air) is just as successful as resuscitation with 100% oxygen. There is also some evidence that exposure to 100% oxygen during and following perinatal asphyxia may be harmful. However, since asphyxia involves deprivation of oxygen to body tissues, and pulmonary blood flow improves when oxygen concentration is increased, there is a theoretical possibility that using supplemental oxygen during resuscitation of newborns with asphyxia will result in more rapid restoration of tissue oxygen and, perhaps, less permanent tissue damage and improved blood flow to the lungs” (p. 85).
Evidence be damned.
My kitchen, of late
The other day, Elanor got all sorts of dramatic about the fact that I wasn’t making her meatballs and spaghetti for lunch instead of whatever yummy leftovers I was offering (probably this exotic white bean and wild garlic curry, said wild garlic having been harvested by her for the ultimate in locavore eating). She cried, because I hadn’t made meatballs and spaghetti in so long. I gave her a lecture about how I am not a restaurant. But I do believe in listening to your cravings, and, let’s face it, the beans-and-greens curry wasn’t my favorite food, either.
The solution I came up with was to make a calendar with certain days highlighted. On the orange days, I will make what Elanor has put on the menu, and on the green days, I’ll make Jonathan’s request — with their help. They have to write down their request in advance so I have time to plan, shop, etc. They each get one day per week.
So on Thursday Elanor and I made these yummy baked meatballs with this tomato sauce. We were all happy, especially me, with my glass of zinfandel.
Saturday was Jonathan’s day, and he wanted cinnamon rolls. We added some organic whole wheat flour and used my homemade butter from raw milk, so I think that probably makes them healthy?
Normally, they’re not going to get Thursday and Saturday, but we had spring break last week, so I felt at leisure to play more in the kitchen toward the end of the week.
Yesterday was Elanor’s day, and she wanted sandwiches. (Are you getting the impression that sometimes my kids just want normal-people food?) So I made a baguette-long sub sandwich. It was a deli-cacy the likes of which they had never tasted. They wanted it for lunch today, and Elanor wanted it for her snack after school, and for supper tonight as well. And I made a cabbage salad with cilantro, chile, and cumin, and a bowl of guacamole, because we have a ton of avocados from our food co-op. (Local people, if you’re interested, ask me about it!) And we had Rice Krispie bars, which got “100 thumbs up”! I have made those a total of twice (?) for my kids. I tell ya, they are deprived.
Elanor’s fixation on the sandwich may have been partly because today was Jonathan’s menu choice. He was lured by an advertisement for a “seafood boatload sale” at the grocery store, so I bought some tilapia, which sort of rounded out his menu of biscuits. It was a true demonstration of love that we all ate tilapia, bein’s only one of us likes fish much. I made these lovely roasted potatoes with some organic Yukon golds from the co-op and rosemary from Sally (the name of one of our rosemary plants). And I made the biscuits with some of that organic whole-wheat flour, so obviously they were healthy, too. And we had cabbage salad again; it had aged deliciously. Besides, we needed something to round out the carbs, and there is very little in this world that is healthier (and yummier) than cabbage.
With all this cooking, there have of course been tons of dishes, and I don’t get as much help with that job as I do with the cooking. I did, however, make dish soap last night, because I’m in the long process of minimizing our exposure to unhealthy chemicals. It worked OK once I prewashed the greasiness on some of the dishes.
Most adventurously of all, a few days ago I made tooth powder. Brushing with it is not as pleasant an experience as brushing with fluoride-mint-blast-green-stuff. My tooth powder fills my mouth with stuff that looks like the water draining from pipes when you are doing a plumbing job. But it’s been interesting. At least I know what’s in my decay-preventive dentifrice.
I’m encouraged by all of this. Sometimes it seems I’ll never make progress on anything scholarly, spiritual, or athletic. Life rests heavily on my shoulders lately. But I HAVE fed my family, and the food and creativity have made us all happy.
Great article about low-intervention birth
I have to share this great article — from a mainstream source — somewhere. It says lots of the things I hear myself saying when I talk to clients (and non-) about birth.
Love this quote: “I wish American women were told the truth about birth — the truth about their bodies, their abilities, and the dangers of technology. Mostly I wish all pregnant women could hear what Libby Bogdan-Lovis, my doula, told me: ‘Birthing a baby requires the same relinquishing of control as does sex — abandoning oneself to the overwhelming sensation and doing so in a protective and supportive environment.’ If only more women knew how sexy a scientific birth can be.”
In which I brag about my kids
Since I’m not on Facebook right now, and even if I were I’d have serious qualms about bragging about my kids, but because my kids are pretty awesome, I just have to share some fun stuff about them! (I dare you to diagram that sentence.)
1. Elanor, my creative dynamo who can’t for the life of her organize all the ideas spewing from her mind at all hours of the day, has been asked to help illustrate a book by a group of fellow second-graders. Book illustration has been her dream job since forever, so it’s wonderful that she gets to do just that. The writers have created a clever story about different kinds of rock (pumice, granite, limestone, etc.), where they originated, and the stories those rocks have to tell. Coincidentally, they all end up at Bluemont Elementary School. Anyway, Elanor and another girl are doing the illustrations out of cut paper, watercolor, and marker, and they look beautiful! They spent a couple of hours at school yesterday (Saturday) working on this project. When they’re done, they’ll be submitting it to a contest with Scholastic Books. Wouldn’t it be neat if they won? Maybe if I get a chance, I’ll share with you a picture of one of the pages.
2. Jonathan (and his friend/rival Katy) taught their kindergarten class while the teacher’s voice was gone. I think that is just awesome. They read one of the Dr. Seuss Horton books and explained directions to the class based on what the teacher wrote on the board. I love it that she gave them that responsibility, and I love that they’re able to manage it competently. The funny thing is Jonathan didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary; he couldn’t even remember it when I asked him about it. I found out from Katy’s parents.
Sometimes I struggle with the idea of school. Are my kids’ energy and time being wasted on what happens at school? Should I homeschool them? Will the teachers recognize the good qualities in my odd-duck child? And then things like these happen, and I’m OK again.
The doula dilemma
It’s hard for me to believe I’ve been serving women at birth for five years now. I’ve witnessed the births of 60-some babies. About a month ago, I learned how to encapsulate placentas and am really excited to offer that to families. Then a midwifery apprenticeship came to me, which was like getting engaged! (It hasn’t started yet, but it’s a for-real act of providence.) And then last week I took a CAPPA training to become a childbirth educator. So I feel like I’ve glimpsed the gamut of birth work.
Meanwhile, though, at least for the next few months, I’m just a doula. As I continue to serve, mostly in the hospital, I see the doula role with different lenses. Serving is great. Doula work is sacred work and drudgery and blissful worship all at once. But I’ll be honest, a doula who cares passionately about women and babies and birth, all three, is in an untenable position, especially in the hospital. Today it happens to be ripping my heart in two. Doulas are expected to support women, partners, doctors, nurses, babies — everyone! — without having a personal opinion.
Here’s a sample situation. As you may know, I really care about leaving the umbilical cord alone till the baby has received all the blood that belongs to it. I now know a lot about that topic. Some of my clients see the sense in not clamping the cord immediately; they read research and find good articles to share with their doctors. They work hard to get the OB’s word that s/he won’t clamp the cord immediately. But immediately after the baby has been born, the doctor might flat-out lie to the mom: “The cord has stopped pulsating.” S/he will reach for the clamps and the scissors, and voila! Baby is separated from his placental transfusion, aren’t we efficient. The doula, meanwhile, has to bite her tongue, keep from grabbing the instruments out of the doctor’s hand, and not let the mom know that the baby just missed out on 30% of his blood volume, because that might make her question her doctor or her birth experience.
Or, in another variation on that scenario, the dad might not be at the birth. So out comes the baby, doctor catches, reaches for the clamps and scissors in one swift motion, clamps the cord, and then asks the doula, “Do you want to cut the cord?” The doula thinks, “Hell, no!” But it’s already been clamped, there’s no turning back, and the mom says, “Yes, go ahead!” So the doula is party to an amputation that she doesn’t believe in. And she has to smile, be all zen, and not make waves.
Not that I’ve ever been in those exact situations.
The doula might make waves by virtue of radically supporting families to have their own voice, but she can’t appear to have changed anything much at all or she has stepped out of her scope of practice. In fact, she really isn’t supposed to go about trying to change anything, even though the way things are currently is a human-rights failure.
So yeah. Basically, I care a lot about women and children. (And you know, I have found in my Bible reading this year so far that Jesus really cared about women and children, too, so I think I’m on the right track.) But I feel like my hands are tied most of the time. I’m enabling disempowerment.
And that is why at this moment I cannot sign anything to pledge my allegiance to the well-known doula or childbirth-educator organizations. And that is why I cannot be a doula forever, at least the way it is currently defined.
Do you even know what you’re turning down?
When Dan first asked me out on a date to see the Flying Karamazov Brothers, I told him no. I had just started my first year of teaching, was completely overwhelmed with that, mild sickness, and some stressful relationships, and I didn’t see why I should go do something fun when there was so much work to be done. I explained all this to him when he called me on my classroom phone that September evening. He wondered why he was asking out such a dour, rude workaholic.
He said, “Do you even know what you’re turning down?”
I said, “Well, no.”
So he explained what the Flying Karamazov Brothers’ act was (juggling and comedy). It sounded mildly fun. Somehow he kept me on the phone long enough for me to consider that maybe a spot of fun would be just the thing. So I said, “Well, against my better judgment, I’ll go out with you.”
(I know, it’s awful.)
Turns out we had a ball. I laughed hard for the first time since I could remember. We argued about nerdy things like what’s better, the dictionary or the encyclopedia? He asked me my ACT score, and when I told him, he said, “OK, then we’re compatible.” We ate frozen yogurt.
I knew within a week and a half that I’d marry him. (I didn’t tell him that, of course.)
How glad I am that he asked, “Do you even know what you’re turning down?” I would have missed out on a lifetime. He kept me from ultimately turning down the potential of dreams coming true.
I found myself thinking about that question today in regard to homebirth. I listen to a lot of hospital-birthing families. The people who want me to be their doula often want a birth that is low on interference; they want me to stand up for them, make space for them to make good choices for their births, remind them that they have a voice. They want at least one person who believes in them, someone who is not afraid of the mind-blowing and yet normal experience that is the way birth is designed. And they might get a glimpse of it, like I did during Jonathan’s birth — because there is grace.
You see, if you want an undisturbed birth, the undisturbed hormonal process that protects, comforts, and empowers the passage of baby from inside to out, the hospital is not the place for that. In reality, most families want a normal birth, but, like me when I had my babies, they are choosing the only birthplace they know. Yes, for some of them, money is an issue. For others, it’s fear, usually the fear of the dad (“What if something happens?”). In those cases it’s worthwhile to ask some questions to see if money or fear is a true deal-breaker. But I think for most people in our culture it is that they don’t even know what they’re turning down.
Here’s what you’re turning down when you choose a hospital for a “low-risk” birth: You’re turning down the chance to be in control of your environment. You’re turning down the ability to eat and drink when and what you choose. You’re turning down the easy ability to go to the bathroom when you want to.
You’re choosing not to have
. . . privacy
. . .soft bedding
. . . familiar smells
. . . intimacy with your lover
. . . freedom to go outside
. . . freedom to move around
. . . a birthplace free of other people’s MRSA and strep
. . . lighting that actually allows your baby’s eyes to open wide as soon as he’s born
. . . a peaceful hour or two after your baby’s born so you can all imprint on each other without hurry
. . . your privates private
. . . a place where you don’t have to fight for your baby to get all of her blood after she’s born.
You’re turning down
. . . safety statistics that are just as good as or better than the hospital’s
. . . breastfeeding chances that are better than the hospital’s
. . . the ability to have your other children be a part of this major family event
. . . the tender, knowledgeable care of a midwife, should you choose to have one
. . . the chance to see just how this amazing process was designed to work when undisturbed by machines and fear-based meddling.
If you’ve only ever seen an OB, you probably have no idea what you’re missing. If you’re choosing a hospital birth because you haven’t experienced homebirth in any way, you don’t know what you’re turning down.
Honestly, it makes me sad for myself and my babies. Now that I’ve been part of some homebirths, I know what we missed out on. I wish someone had asked me the question, “Do you even know what you’re turning down?” I wish I’d asked that question of myself.
Intensity report
So, last week (Oct. 14-21-ish), I was in California at a small-group intensive workshop, called “Intensity,” for my midwifery school, Ancient Art Midwifery Institute. I spent the month before that working very hard to get ready for it, knowing that I would be at the bottom of the class. Even though I’m the least advanced midwifery student in that particular group, I wanted to have something to offer them. These are all women who have served women at birth many years longer than I have even been thinking about birth. Most of them would be considered experienced midwives already. This is the kind of person who enrolls at AAMI, and I really benefit from it.
It wasn’t really a conference; it was a workshop at our director’s house. It went from about 9 a.m. to about 11 p.m. every day, and it lasted for six days. The first day Carla even called anything a “break” was the fifth day, and that was for 10 minutes. It was boot camp. We all had a great time, seriously.
I did miss my kids and Dan, a lot. Scattered throughout the day, there were maybe 30 minutes total during which I could call them, but I was in a different time zone, and they had their own schedules, so I didn’t get to talk to my kids every day.
It’s been hard to distill what I should say about the Intensity to people who weren’t there. It was an experience, like the disciples having small-group time with Jesus. But it resembled a conference in that there were planned talks on different topics. It resembled school in that there were lots of quizzes and research. It was like a skills lab in that we practiced some things that midwives sometimes do (palpation, taking blood pressure, and vaginal exams, which it would be best to never do on a real woman — we did it on a teaching tool called Vagina in a Box — lol). And it resembled a sleepover in that there was lots of conversation and not much sleep.
Carla says the measure of what you learned is not what you know, but how many more questions you have about it. I agree. So even though we had some amazing presentations and assignments on these topics, I don’t in any way feel like an expert.
We had “official” presentations on:
twins and multiples
breech
prolonged labor (that was my long presentation — I think it went on for about 2 hrs., w/ all the discussion, in keeping with the topic)
PEMS — a holistic way of looking at birth and life decisions and all kinds of stuff
birth certificates
normal cord closure (that was my short presentation)
Group B strep
blood pressure
lots of time-management stuff
preeclampsia
rupture of membranes (those last two I listened to on mp3s, in my “free time” — either when I got up early to run or while I was falling asleep)
We had to do short (20-min.) presentations on a food we think people should eat more of, and those were:
coconut
kimchi
legumes
We watched and critiqued an instructional video on shoulder dystocia and watched/critiqued a bunch of other movies about birth.
We put together models of the female reproductive system that we can use to educate parents in the future.
We took quizzes, wrote papers, and did research on:
ectopic pregnancy
postpartum hemorrhage
things you can observe about a woman that tell you something about her health (I think we decided this was called “observational signs”)
female anatomy
all kinds of other terminology
We discussed:
licensure
certification
phytoestrogens
eating disorders and how long it takes to rebuild minerals
whether to carry oxygen to births
oil pulling
cell memory
medical marijuana
liking, loving, or tolerating people
history of midwifery
nitric vs. nitrous oxide
I feel like that list is barely skimming the top of all that we talked about. A lot of those things just “came up”; they weren’t on the agenda.
Someone asked how long it might be till I’m able to attend homebirths. Hmm. Well, it’s not a piece of paper that will qualify me as a midwife. I don’t know yet whether I will seek certification or not. (Once you’re certified or licensed, you are bound by some other organization, not the parents, and I don’t want someone else telling me that I can’t serve VBAC moms or that I have to induce at 42 weeks. Heaven forbid.)
I would like to have at least another year of very serious academic work done (think intense unschooling), and I would like to apprentice. It will take me at least 2 1/2 more years of serious academic work to graduate from AAMI. I believe that when it is time for me to start serving in the position of a mother-appointed midwife, parents will find me. I’ll pray about it, and I trust God to let me know when it’s time.
Maybe the most important lesson I learned was that when you have something that people need, it is selfish not to share it. Even though I’m not an expert on birth by any stretch of the imagination, I do know some things that people need to know. Often, here in my mainstream world, I feel like the only radical, and I keep quiet for fear of offending people, making them dislike me, etc. But I really need to learn to tell the truth boldly. As Christians, we talk about doing that with the truth about Jesus. There is also truth about birth, and when people ignore it or just don’t know about it, they and their babies get hurt. The triumvirate of introversion, perfectionism, and approval-seeking in my life must be overcome. This is hard stuff for me, but I came back from the Intensity with a renewed challenge to go ahead and do the hard thing, because it’s the right thing to do.
How will that look? I hope it translates into informal conversations with friends, acquaintances, and strangers. I’d also like to start teaching some little classes on different topics. I’ve got one ready to go (the one on normal cord closure). As I keep working on my AAMI studies, I’ll have more and more to share.
