The Forsberg Family

Birth Story!

2009-11-03T16:00:00.003-07:00

I folded up the purple towels yesterday. Buried in the Moses basket was a baby blanket and my birth bag. All that was left in it was a single plastic drop cloth and two packets of Emergen - C. My corner of the neatly prepared birth supplies lay in a tangle on the floor - four weeks of stepping around it and glancing at what remained. I couldn’t pick it up and put everything away. It was like dismantling an altar - sacrilege. It meant moving on from the birth. It meant taking another step away from the miracle. It meant fading memories and sensations. It meant loss and grief and mourning for what was gone.

I love to cradle Harrison’s head and his little round bum. I know those same shapes - I held them inside of me and my body wrote the details of them on my soul. I knew at 39 weeks that we were close, 40 weeks closer, any day now. My body was stretched and tight and sore. I was ready to meet this baby. Even though we danced and talked together I needed more and the waiting to see this baby’s face and hear it’s cries and feel it’s breath on my cheek made me anxious.

Memories from my last birth had stayed with me. I was afraid of the pain and pushing and recovering. I thought of screams and blood and even at 41 weeks I didn’t feel ready. I expected the baby to come on the weekend. We inflated the pool, sorted through supplies again, and prepared my birth space. I made this birth space a shrine. I wanted to be surrounded by beauty and love.

My sweet friends held a mother’s blessing for me. Surrounded by candlelight they made charms and beads for me. I had a silhouette drawn and they decorated it with birth wishes and blessings. We feasted and laughed and the support I received that night stayed with my until my baby was in my arms. I placed their candles around my room along with tokens from previous pregnancies and births. A photo of a great grandmother, a belly cast from my pregnancy with Elliot, necklaces and bracelets adorned with beads from previous mothers blessings. I was ready.

Waiting is hard. Waiting to look into those new eyes and see that sweet spirit. Waiting to confirm whether it was a boy or girl. Wondering if that painful contraction meant something was happening. Hoping my husband would be home when labor started. Praying I would find the challenge and meet it and be refined.

After a few false alarms I resigned myself to surrender to the unknown. Labor would start eventually. There was certainty in a birth and a baby. And there was probably no way I was making it through another week so the certainty was soon.

I was just concerned about Jay working so far away and going to a conference in the mountains. He was too far away and a storm was coming and I was worried. He called as soon as he was done with his presentation and on his way. I was counting the minutes but at that point I knew it would all be fine. I have had short labors in the past but never under an hour and he would be home soon. I relaxed and took my heavy body off the couch where I had been quietly taking it easy all day. I went outside and watched my children play while the sky got darker. I chatted with neighbors and was relieved to see my husband pull up safely. Life was good! It was even better when Jay suggested Chinese food. He joked he would ask to get it extra spicy but I didn’t want heartburn so he picked up our regulars. I devoured the Mongolian beef and almost choked when the first bite went down - I guess we didn’t have to ask for extra spicy. The stars must have aligned because this was the spiciest we had ever had - and it was delicious.

We spent the evening relaxing and went to bed around 10. I woke up around midnight with a painful contraction. Another false alarm so I went back to sleep. There was another one, and another. I took nothing seriously because in the groggy semi-sleep state I was in time meant nothing. Had it been seconds between them? Or hours? I woke Jay up and told him to tell me how far apart the contractions were. He said they were about 4 minutes apart. I decided to stay in bed until I absolutely couldn’t deal with them anymore. That was pretty immediately though. Jay got up to get the birth pool ready and I got out of bed to wander around our dark quiet house.

I ended up in the dining room where I leaned on the counter and rocked back and forth with each contraction. They were very intense but I was still having a nice break in between them. I called to my baby and told him to come. I prayed and closed my eyes and tried to see the burning inside myself.

I went back into our bedroom to check on the progress of the pool. It wasn’t ready yet to I sat on the toilet to wait. Immediately contractions started coming stronger. Jay chatted with me through the open door and I leaned my head on our cold bathroom counter to moan through another contraction. These were strong and with every sensation I tried to look forward to the next. I knew each one was bringing me closer to the end. I felt deep pressure and reached in to feel how close my baby was. I could feel almost half of his head. I knew it wouldn’t be long until he was here. The pressure of the toilet was strong - too strong I thought. Even though I knew that position was helping I had to move.

I got up to check on the progress of the pool. The room was hot and I went to Jay’s arms for comfort. He whispered to me that it would be over soon and reassured me that I was doing a great job. He turned on some of my favorite music while I made sure the candles were glowing throughout the room and paced around the pool watching it fill up with steaming water.

Elliot woke up around this time and sat on the end of the bed just watching. He put his head in his hands and I looked into his big chocolate eyes and told him the baby was coming. He didn’t seem to concerned - he just smiled. I took him into my arms and enjoyed our last few moments with him as the baby of our family. I was worried now that he was awake. I didn’t want to be bothered while I was in the water but we were blessed and he just wanted to watch. He was quiet and helpful. He brought me cold drinks and rubbed my head.

Around 1am the contractions got much stronger and much closer together. I knew I would need the pool soon. It was almost full so I jumped in and it was instant sweet relief. I closed my eyes and relaxed my body. My arms were draped over the side of the pool. Elliot held one of my hands and Jay sat with his head next to mine. I took a deep breath at the start of each contraction, closed my eyes, and hummed along with my music. It was the same music Elliot was born to and I thought of each song and wondered which would be playing when this baby was born.

Jay offered counter pressure for my back but I wasn’t desperate for it yet. I wanted to wait until I felt it was absolutely necessary. I knew how exhausting for Jay it would be and I really needed him present. I didn’t want to waste it. I knew no measure of time. I didn’t know how long I had been working. I had no idea how long the contractions were or how close together they were. I was lost inside myself feeling a sense of warmth and peace deep within and knew I was close to that place where my baby was coming from. Was he ready? Was I ready? Who was he? Would I know him? I rubbed my big belly and breathed into another contraction. I hung on to Jay and buried my face into his neck. He was warm and familiar and whispered to me about our plans and hopes and thoughts for this birth and this baby. Elliot sat quietly just holding my hand. The breaks between my contractions got smaller and smaller and soon it seemed like I had no time to recover. Jay decided to call our friend Michelle at this point. She was coming to photograph the birth.

I was trying to think about the baby during these intense moments with the contractions coming on top of each other. I concentrated on his movements and my breathing, imagining I was sending him life and love with each breath. I talked to him and I felt like we were working together and conscious of each other. It was amazing. I could feel a lot more pressure and reached inside and I could feel his whole head with my bag of waters in front of his head pooling up like a limp water balloon. I had a lot of anxiety about the upcoming pushing stage and I was trying to stay positive. I prayed that I would have confidence and strength and health. I talked to the baby and in between contractions I would sit back and lean against Jay and smile to think of how close we were.

I started to put a little bit of pressure into a contraction to see how it would feel. I held my breath a few times with each contraction, not really pushing but putting a little bit of pressure into each sensation. I didn’t really feel any progress but the slight pushing eased the intensity of each contraction. It was around this time (1:45) that Michelle got there. The contractions were coming with very few seconds in between them. They were intense and I decided I was having this baby. I started pushing with intention and it didn’t feel like I was making much progress. I reached inside to feel the baby’s head come down but my bag of waters was still intact and when I pushed it just filled up with more water, creating more pressure, but not doing much to help the baby move down. While I gave some light pushes with the next contraction I broke the bag of waters and immediately the baby started moving a little bit. I felt his head and I could feel lots of hair. This was so exciting to me after a bunch of bald babies and I made Jay feel it. I could feel the baby working with me and slowly moving out. His head was right behind my pubic bone and it would slip back it would come down but slip back with each push. I had my hand on his head which felt so much better for some reason. I decided that it would be more effective if I moved to a squatting position. I apparently announced this to everyone and Jay tried to help me up but it felt horrible. I couldn’t move during the contractions and I wasn’t really getting a break between them and it felt all wrong. I told Jay no - no I wasn’t doing that and went back to my previous position.

I reclined on to my side again and braced my feet against the other side of the pool. Jay was holding me and trying to press on my back and I was being quite loud. Elliot started to get a little bit worried so Michelle went to grab Anicka to come sit with him. I told myself this was it. I needed to keep the pushing up. I couldn’t stop when I felt intense pressure. I thought of my mothers blessing and the strength my friends had shared with me. I thought of my previous births and I looked at the poster my friends had made. There was my big bellied silhouette and loving and powerful messages decorated it. We had talked about my birth fears - namely pushing. My friend had counseled me to just surrender and she had added that to my poster. I kept my eyes on the poster and told myself to surrender. Jay said I was whispering it while I was pushing. This gave me the strength and courage to really do it. I thought of my birth with Elliot and my midwife telling me to just use all my energy and push through it. I knew this was the only way out of course so I did. I gave in. I surrendered and I worked up all my energy and I pushed and he slid right down. I held his head in my hands as it was born. I stroked his hair with my fingers and started to say that I needed another contraction so I could push the rest of him out. It was so intense I didn’t feel like I could wait. Luckily I didn’t have to wait long because before I could really finish the thought another contraction was coming and I was pushing my baby out into my hands.

I held him in my hands as he came towards me with his arms outreached. I pulled him right up into my arms. He was here and he was beautiful. Michelle and I said, almost at the same time, “he looks just like Jay!” while Jay was telling us it was a boy - something I hadn’t noticed or even thought to check. I immediately felt better. I was launched into a birth high by my flooding hormones and emotions. I was completely unaware of everything else in the room except for my husband’s arms around me and his tears and my sweet pink baby snuggling into my arms. It was thrilling and exciting and I felt amazing.

The placenta was birthed soon and it was intact and healthy and perfect. The room was warm and smelled like cinnamon from a candle a friend had given me. I felt surrounded my love and warmth from my friends and family and the candle seemed to symbolize that. I wrapped the baby up and passed him to Jay so I could have a quick shower. It felt so good to stand up and see my feet and stretch out. I got dry and warm and snuggled up with my new little guy in bed. He had been trying to eat his little fist so I nursed him and he ate for about an hour. I was eager to see how big he was so when he was done we weighed him 8lbs 9.5 ounces. We measured him the next day and he was 20inches long. A couple hours after he was born we cut his cord and dressed him and snuggled him up for bed. Blessedly the kids all went back to sleep and our first night was filled with rest for all.

Baby!!

2009-10-16T21:49:00.002-06:00

Since it's been two weeks I thought I would finally post something here. I kept waiting because I thought I would post a birth story at the same time but I haven't even started writing that! So here are the basics!

Harrison Ezra was born September 30 at 2:01am. He was 8lbs 9.5ozs and 20in. He has lots of dark hair and he is totally scrumptious! We had a lovely unassisted waterbirth by candlelight. Jay was awesome as always and my little 2 year old woke up and helped out a little bit too. Our friend/photographer made it just in time for the birth! It was a really amazing birth.

H is doing well and was ready to nurse immediately. He's been a little piglet (and so cute!) and is gaining weight and thriving. I weighed him last week and he was over 10lbs already. He is yummy and adorable and his hair is like feathers. Everyone is just loving him to pieces.

Whining

2009-09-25T09:37:00.003-06:00

I think last night was my emotional crying freak out. This means -

BABY YOU CAN COME OUT NOW.

Ways I have been spending my days:
Crying when Jay leaves in the morning.
Driving my kids to school (it's a block away but I cannot walk that far)
Watching CSI
*On the floor.
*While the boys play legos, castle, batman, etc. on top of me.
Watching dumb You-Tube videos because E loves them so much (his favorites are the dancing vampire below, and anything that plays All the Single Ladies)

I have these marvelous pregnancy journals I kept for O and L. Detailed (too detailed?) and fun. I love looking back on them when I hit the same points in my current pregnancy. The problem is that about 2 weeks before I have the baby I get really quiet and stop writing. I have no idea how I felt in those weeks leading up to the birth. There are some things I'm positive about. I was tired and large and wanted to meet my baby. I waited and wondered every day if THIS would be the day. It usually wasn't because my babies like to be like - HA! We tricked you! You only thought you wouldn't be pregnant for 7 years. So I forget that I'm going to have a baby and resign myself to being the first lady that is pregnant FOR.EVER. And then the baby is born.

The problem here and now is I don't feel completely terrible and huge although I am at the end and need to have this over with. I also am not resigned to being pregnant forever because for some reason REALITY has slapped me around a little and I understand that I don't have elephant pregnancies. (Poor elephants) I know that one of these days this kid has to come out. And hello - scary. Was I scared before? Anxious? Nervous? I am all of these. Some days I can be joyful and look forward to the birth and others I'm wondering why I want to do that. It's not like it's a picnic. It's hard and it hurts and I'm TIRED and don't really feel like doing it right now. And even though I can't bend over and my pants keep falling down and I have like two shirts that fit - aren't they easier IN than OUT?

And what is up with all this pre-labor stuff?!?! Not enjoying the middle of the night contractions that lead absolutely nowhere. I KNOW this didn't happen with any of my other babies. I don't even need to read an old journal. I had braxton hicks for my entire pregnancies and then just after 40 weeks it turns into transition and I have my babies. I'm sore. And tired. And frustrated. And knowing this could possibly go on another week while I worry Jay won't make it home from work is really freaking me out.

No baby yet

2009-08-29T16:24:00.002-06:00

No - we don't have a baby yet. I had emails and phone calls about Jay's last post. Yes - I'm awesome. But still gestating. I expect to go about 4 more weeks still so I've still got some time! We're both on facebook where updates aren't as sporadic as they are here.

I am just now starting to get somewhat uncomfortable. I can tell the baby is getting bigger because it's feet are killing me. I can't imagine how smashed the baby is in there and it's not unbearable for me so I'm still trying to enjoy things while they last! I can't remember not being pregnant. I can't bend over - what was that like? I can't get out of bed, can't walk, can't eat, can't sleep....etc. I can't remember what it felt like to be normal. I know I'll miss being pregnant when it's over though.

I have so many updates from the summer to post but I'm lazy and tired and it's too hot to think. One of these days....

Hi

2009-08-18T13:40:00.004-06:00

Sara is awesome.

Babies.

Fun!

2009-07-22T07:06:00.001-06:00

Something you could have lived without knowing

2009-06-19T20:38:00.003-06:00

The other day my playgroup went to a little splash park. The kids loved it and we stayed for a few hours and had a picnic and the moms got to hang out and chat. Great right? Well my lovely pregnant brain thought it would be a particularly grand idea to get some vitamin d! That's good for you when you're pregnant right?!?! The guidelines say you should expose your chest. K - my chest has never seen the light of day. Outside day. You know? But, many moms at the park wear swimming suits and play with their kids or soak up the sun. I figured I'd just wear a low necked shirt without a tank underneath. Still reasonably covered considering....

Everything was lovely until I started packing up and realized my arms and face kind of hurt. I brought sunscreen for the kids - I didn't use it because it doesn't help with vitamin absorption. My intention was to put it on after about a half hour but I didn't even think about it. So I got sunburned. I have aloe. It will be ok. It was NOT ok when I got home and saw my magenta boob. It has been 5 days and I still have a magenta boob. But just one. The other hurt for a day and then was fine. This other one is so not good. Just tonight it was really itchy so I scratched it - huge mistake. It is completely blistered up. I have a second degree burn on my boob. I accidentally popped one of the blisters - which is how I noticed it. I wondered why I was all wet. Even under the blister the skin is dark and bruised looking. Ordinarily my OCD issues would have me thrillingly picking the skin off. It still hurts really bad though.

Lesson learned. Keep the girls inside unless they're doused in sunscreen.

Balance Bikes

2009-06-17T13:18:00.004-06:00

I have wanted a balance bike for L for a LONG time. You can go to this blog to enter a giveaway for one and then if you win you can give it to me. (You can also go here to buy one) He has typically had better than average motor coordination, especially for having sensory issues, but he can't pedal very well. I think it's the rhythm, up and down and around. I think a balance bike would be awesome for him.

Our other kids have picked up riding a bike very easily. I was really scared to learn how to ride a bike. I think I got my pink Huffy with the puppy on it when I was about 5-6. My dad determined pretty early that I needed to do it without training wheels. Because that's how he rolls. I've always wanted to impress my dad so even though I was scared out of my pants and didn't really want to try - I did. He chased after me down the sidewalk and as soon as he would let go of my seat I would slowly lean over to the side and crash into the grass. I think I cried. Mostly because I wanted to ride my bike and I just knew I couldn't without the training wheels. Eventually my balance caught up with his chasing and we were good to go!

Our learning to ride experiences have mostly been better. A took to it pretty easily. O was riding and her trainers weren't even touching the ground so we took them off. Bikes mostly get put away for the winter here and it was almost that time of year. She didn't want to do it and freaked out so the bike got put away for the winter after that. In the spring I think we "lost" the training wheels. I took her to the top of the driveway, told her NOT to stop pedaling, and we took off. We luckily live on a dead end, pretty lazy street. She rode down the driveway, turned into the street, and took off and hasn't stopped. That is going to be how we teach our kids now. We tried with L a little bit but he didn't like how it felt. He's been talking about trying again though so we'll see how it goes! He doesn't have a back and has only ridden the neighbor's a few times so he's still very cautious.

Anyway, go enter the contest and good luck!

I just can't get enough

2009-06-14T16:44:00.002-06:00

I can't stop baking. And I hate baking. But it's the best way to have instant sweetness and it's SOO easy to eat all the rice krispy treats. I'm sitting here trying to decide if my sugar craving outweighs my exhaustion.

I'm a little wary of my intense fondness for sweets this pregnancy is going to make me have a giant baby. Luckily fruit can pretty much curb the cravings so I don't always have to resort to chocolate and refined sugar. Baby E was over a full 2 pounds heavier than any of my other babies. And I think I got a slush from Sonic every other day with that pregnancy. And that's just for starters. Can I make another 2 pound jump? E came out just as easily as my other babies did, so I'm not worried about that. Stupidly - ??? I just want this baby to be in tiny baby clothes for a while. E was too big for my favorite outfit and I couldn't even fit the shirt over his huge head.

We'll survive. But maybe I should take a nap instead of make cookies.

Update of sorts

2009-06-04T19:11:00.003-06:00

WHERE IS JAY WITH MY CHOCOLATE!!!???

Seriously. What is up with this week? A lot of my friends have said their kids are having issues but theirs seem to run around the fact that it's the last week of school for them. That's not something we have to worry about. What's the deal?!

Bedroom cleaned out! Just need to tape and we're going to start painting! We supposedly have someone with a truck helping us go get our bed frame and Jay told me I could order our duvet cover whenever. I also decided to get a chest for the end of our bed. Let me say - having the crib sidecar is totally cramping our style.

Baby is doing well. I am 24 weeks this week. Baby is still much calmer than my last baby. I think. It's so hard to remember. But it seems calmer. Measuring a little bit ahead but baby feels normal and happy. Hates the doppler (don't blame it!) so must get a fetoscope. Also ordered the birth pool!!!! When I start putting everything together it's going to be super real. It hits me sometimes and I'm like WHAT!? 5 kids?! WHAT!? The first time I hyperventilated but I'm ok now. I'm really excited and not worried about anything anymore and we're all good. We're going to try to take some hypnobabies classes if we can work out some kind of schedule. I'm really hoping for that.

If you have any fabulous recipes for make ahead meals please share! Once I get the house done I want to stick a bunch of stuff in my freezer for when the baby comes so I can be lazy.

Oh - chocolate is here!!!! (Yum - ice cream - must remember to get papaya enzyme!)

Potty training

2009-05-11T10:46:00.002-06:00

I want to do a post about our vacation because we got some really cute pictures and had an awesome time. But I need to catch up on laundry and don't have time to do all the pics and write out what I'm sure will be a horribly long entry.

So.

Instead I'm going to ask how it's possible that I've got 3 kids in underwear but I don't know how to potty train my almost 2 year old. E has been pooping in the toilet - pretty inconsistently - but he knows how and he likes it sometimes. For the past 2 or 3 days he's really wanted to - and today he even peed in it. His problem is that he's trying to stand up like his big brother and I walked in on him trying to figure out how to get his guy pointed over the rim of the toilet so he could pee IN the toilet. We've always just used a potty seat in the big toilet and had a stool to get up there. I'm considering one of the little potties from IKEA. We'd also be able to leave one in the car for those moments when you just have to go and don't want to run in to your nearest gas station public bathroom. ICK. (Double ick - nowhere in Texas did they have seat covers in their bathrooms!!!! What is up with that?!)

My girls both started using the toilet pretty much on their own at 18 months. L has had a harder time and still has accidents at 4.5. Potty training is a P.A.I.N. in the butt and I'm not eager to start it. I'm on the go a lot and I get busy during the day and don't think of reminders. Diapers are just so much easier to change than the diligence and commitment it takes to help your kid use the toilet. I know it would be better to get it done now before the baby comes and we have two in diapers.

How have you helped your kids learn how to potty? I think my biggest question is diapers? No diapers? Training pants? Thin cloth diapers? Undies?

Lists

2009-04-28T11:58:00.002-06:00

List A:

Plan a vacation

List A.1

Track travel budget
Reserve lodging
Learn about destination online
Create travel itinerary
Create pre-travel checklist
Create packing list
Find directions

Each of those has it's own list. We have 6 packing lists. The travel budget list got ignored. The lodging was done by someone else so I have nothing for that one. We sent for maps, travel guides, and coupons and I think those are floating around somewhere. I plan on finding them to put in the folder with the birth certificate so we can prove E is under 2. The travel itinerary blew up when my grandpa got put in the hospital and we will now be driving to see him. Pre-travel checklist is saved somewhere on the computer in the midst of everything else I've been working on that I just HAD to get done before we left on vacation. Like, you know, the recognition night in November. I haven't even started the baptism talk I'm giving only days after we get back. Jay says I'll have 4 hours on the plane. I need my laptop and the internet and scriptures and Faith in God book and Preach My Gospel and the new nursery manual all laid out around me so I can stress a little more about a very simple talk. And directions? I'm hoping to find addresses so we can just use the GPS. At least we have someone picking us up at the airport.

The house is also a wreck and we can't find the pink Leapster or a Jonas Brothers t-shirt. We can't leave without either of them. I want it clean before we go so I don't come home to a messy house. The light at the end of my tunnel are watching dolphins play in the waves while I lounge on the beach of the Gulf of Mexico and my kids build sand castles. That's my happy thought.

16 weeks

2009-04-14T13:35:00.002-06:00

Just an update. Mostly for myself so I can keep a journal of sorts :) I love looking back on my previous pregnancies! I have great journals for O and L but E kind of got the shaft and with A I had no idea what things I would find interesting later. I have some records but not much.

I had started feeling movement weeks ago but light and not consistently. I have always felt my babies move early - around 13 weeks - and then from there it just got stronger. This time though it hasn't! I started getting a little worried so I was glad to be able to check on the baby this week. The heart rate was in the 150's. Nice and strong! I was about 16 weeks 4 days when we checked and I was measuring 18cm. After being so pukey for so many weeks and then being horribly sick last week I was worried about nutrition and the baby's growth since my belly is still pretty flat. It's good to know the baby sounds strong and was moving around a lot (even though I couldn't feel it) to get away from the doppler.

I have almost no appetite and it's a struggle for me to really eat enough at the moment. I lived on apples and cheese last week. I went through 2 bags of apples!

It was so sad to get sick the week before Easter. Luckily I had already bought all of the Easter goodies for the kids. They got their baskets on Saturday and they were all excited - mostly with the candy. (Me too) I was totally unprepared for a nice Easter dinner. I had all kinds of plans but was seriously so sick there was absolutely no way. I'll have to do one this weekend. We didn't even get to dye eggs! My poor deprived kids.

My house is a wreck from letting the kids rule all last week. I'm trying to get things straightened out now. Sadly, I think laundry is calling.

Bedroom makeover!

2009-04-06T12:59:00.002-06:00

When we got married we were (un)fortunate enough to have been given a lot of hand me down furniture. Looking at the entertainment center made me cry. Our dining room table was ok but it was always worrisome when we had company and we wondered who would be next to have their butt fall through the seat. Dressers - gag. Old fake wood with gold finish. You know - the 80's favorite that some people (Jay's parents) still favor. They had boxes of these dressers so we took what we could get! Of course the dressers last about a year before falling apart so we spent a few years drawerless. They balanced ok on each other but you couldn't slide them. Pretty soon the drawers were on the floor and we thought maybe we should get new dressers. I wanted something that would last though. Which means shelling out the big bucks for something with nice heavy wood. We probably spent a year debating.

Our dining room table got too small too quickly. We couldn't all fit around it and we didn't have enough chairs left so we had to bring out the barstools. Which quickly got put away again because little boys and barstools don't mix in our house. My super awesome parents gave us a nice money gift for Christmas of 07 for the purpose of buying a new dining set. Again we wanted something wood - nice and heavy and sturdy. I fell in love with a table at IKEA - which does have some really nice dining sets - but the good sturdy ones are expensive and I didn't want to waste the money on something wobbly. I probably would have bought it anyway but they were out of stock. Jay wouldn't buy me the dresser I wanted so I cried and we left. On our way home we got a phone call from my mom saying RC Wiley was having a tax free weekend sale and encouraged us to look there. I hate RC Wiley. I can't even get started on the horrible customer service and experiences I've had there. But we stopped by and found a big, heavy, solid table and chairs for a very decent price. While we were waiting to buy it we looked through the clearance and found the most super awesome dresser ever. Big, heavy, wood, clean, good shape, etc. It was such a good deal I wouldn't let Jay pass it up so we got both.

That was the start of my grown up furniture. We found a great bench to go with the dining set at the pottery barn outlet. The dresser looks great in our otherwise boring room. And that's what makes me sad! A boring room for this nice dresser to live in! We've been looking at new homes but I think we've decided to hold off on buying something new until we move OUT of Utah. Until then we are going to try to love this house. And there are things about it I will always hate, but why get something new when I'm not taking care of or doing anything with this house!? So I've started.

Our bedroom is going to be first because that is where this baby will be born. We have a photographer coming to this birth and I'm stressing a little about this birth for various reasons so I want to make a nice peaceful happy place for this baby to be born. And I want it to look good in the pictures ;) So, here's the start of things. I should take a before picture and post it here. Unfortunately it won't be complete until June because the duvet cover we chose won't ship until then, but we'll have to live with that.

Our headboard. I love this. We've looked at a lot of the iron looking things and some of them are freaking heavy - ouch if it lands on your head. Some of them are too gaudy and some a little too modern for me. I also wanted something dark because our dresser is really dark wood. The mirror is very modern but the shape of some of the accents are a little Victorian. Best of my favorite worlds!

I'm still undecided about this but we need some kind of lamp for each side of the bed and I'm thinking of getting 2 and having one hand above each of our heads. They're very light weight in case they fall so I'm not too worried about getting knocked out. I like the hanging lamp idea because then we won't have something cluttering up any side tables. In fact, I won't even need one.

Our duvet cover. It's kind of pricey but I've decided to splurge a little. I love my down comforter and I have had a really hard time finding decent duvet covers that are good quality. We're on our 3rd right now and it was a great price, and so were the 2 before, but had I just bought a good one to begin with it would have lasted us years. And I'm planning on that! I like this because it's white so not very overpowering, but very bright and cheerful and I can use a lot of different accent colors. There is a painting my friend did for me years ago that I have wanted to put up so I went with that for colors and it will look perfect with this cover. Plus I have some purple sheer drapes that I really like so I can still use them with this. It's kind of modern and vintage at the same time which I also like. I think it can go a lot of ways.

So in addition to the painting I have (which is a portrait), I really like both of these (both from IKEA and very decent prices). I think I like the bigger one better and I have just the place for it, but I think I can fit the others on another wall.

I think we also narrowed the paint down to a yellow color. I can't really post the color here, but we've had really good experience so far with this paint so we're probably going with that and choosing the color "Freshness". It's a yellow.

We also really need to do something about the floor. We're redoing the living/family/dining/hallway so I'm thinking about doing our room too. L sprayed bleach all over the floor and dumped a bottle of lotion all over and randomly peed and chewed up gum and spit it out. (I just found the gum the other day - a pair of E's jeans were stuck to the floor with it)

We're also working on the girls room so I'll have to do another post sometime after they find their new bedspreads. They have all new furniture so the beds just need clothes and we need to paint. Fun. My most favorite joyous part.

Monsters vs. Aliens

2009-03-31T09:05:00.000-06:00

Go see it, it be a fun time!

Baby Must Haves

2009-03-26T13:25:00.003-06:00

Since we're on baby #5 we have most things we need for a baby. Some of them are getting old and well loved. Some have never or hardly been used - swing, baby tub, diaper genie (still in the box! after 6 years), and crib (which is theoretically used as a co-sleeper but has mostly been used to hold diapers, wipes, burp cloths, etc.)

I want to buy stuff though. Not knowing the baby's gender makes it a little hard because I want cute girly slings or fun pirate diapers. You know? So here's my list and if you have comments to add about your favorites, or good places to find these things let me know! Also if there's something you think I've left out that I MUST.BUY.NOW please tell me so I can go get it! And saying that I have to add that I don't really believe in "mechanical mothers" so they haven't been added to the list. We don't really do swings or loud moving things with flashing lights although the bouncy seat has come in handy while gardening.

I HEART my wrap from Otto Baby Wear. It is super cute and way comfortable and so versatile. I love how newborns just fold and snuggle right into a wrap. I love how easy bigger kids are to carry around in it. And it doesn't kill my shoulder the way ring slings do. It's a great investment although if you don't want to spend the money on it they're also really easy to make. I bought 5 yards of gauze fabric off the $1 table and learned how to wrap and love. I bought a stretchy one from Otto Baby Wear as a gift for my cousin and WOW - I loved it. So much better than the gauze! A wrap is a lifesaver for housework, going on walks, running errands, and chasing down other children. I have a bunch of the gauze ones and I leave one in each car and in the house and I take my custom otto baby wrap with me as much as I can. I don't remember if it was this blog or my birth blog but I posted about our vacation and how the wrap saved my life, my back, and sanity at Sea World, Legoland, and the zoo.

Burts Bees mom and baby products. I linked to their whole mom and baby section but my favoritest thing is the apricot oil for babies. One of my sweet awesome friends gave me a baby sampler at my Mother's Blessing for Liam and both my boys have smelled like apricots since then. I love that stuff. I used the sample and have only had to buy one more bottle (Target and Walmart both carry Burts Bees now) since then. A little goes a long way and the stuff is awesome. I don't bathe my babies unless they're really dirty (so like - never almost) but it's great to give them a massage and keep them nice and soft in a really dry climate. It's also very gentle to the skin and has no parabens or phthalates, no talc or petro-chemicals. I loved that Johnsons all in one baby wash smell - but that stuff is full of all kinds of horrible crap.

I mentioned before that I love the Britax Marathon. Love it. To death. Aside from random baby clothes (that I'm always buying so it's not exactly a pregnancy purchase) this is the first thing we bought. It took me months to figure out what car seat to buy and our baby was a week old before it finally showed up at our door but it was worth it.

Diapers! It's been a while since I cloth diapered but I loved it and think it's the best way to go and it's cute and blahblah. O was cloth diapered and L was part time but E has only been a little bit. It's the only thing I really feel guilt over because I know disposable diapers are yucky in so many ways and I feel so bad for his little bum and boy parts. I have lots of cloth diapers but will definitely need more. I have a ton of wool that has been sitting smelling like a sheep in my closet for 5 years. I'm scared to do anything with it but I'd like more wool covers. Any recommendations on that? I have one wool cover that I've used and liked but I'm scared to use it because I'm scared to wash it and take care of it. I know it shouldn't really be a big deal but... there. I have issues.

I also love cutesy things that I'm finding on etsy (teething rings, snugglies, dolls, baby legsetc.) and I want an amber teething necklace. I also love homepathics and I use hylands the most for my kids. I also really like Dr. Sears The Baby Book and Elizabeth Pantley's Gentle Baby Care. They're both good books written by doctors who are also parents using up to date evidence based care that is pretty mother and baby friendly. I also really like Mothering Magazine that promotes being attached to your children in opposition of being detached like so many other popular parenting magazines. They promote informed and aware parenting and do have a natural slant which is also always evidence based and always mother and baby friendly.

new c-section stats

2009-03-19T15:41:00.003-06:00

I have a sleeping baby and 20 minutes before Jay gets home. I've wanted to post a couple of these articles for months now but have had no time. With the newest cesarean statistics out (The CDC just released 2007 statistics) I decided I'd just post it all.

Cesarean deliveries rose for the 11th straight year to an all time high. It rose 2% to now account for 31.8% of all births in the US. My lovely friend Pam was quoted in this article.

"Every pregnant woman in the U.S. should be alarmed by this rate," Pam Udy, president of the International Cesarean Awareness Network advocacy group, said in a statement. "Half or more of Cesareans are avoidable and over-using major surgery on otherwise healthy women and babies is taking a toll."

In the article "The Trouble With Repeat Cesareans" Time Magazine examined the risks associated with cesareans and repeat cesareans. 9 out of 10 women do not get a vbac (vaginal birth after cesarean) even though research shows it to be safer and beneficial in most cases. In fact, many hospitals don't allow women to choose to have a normal birth anymore. ICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network) called thousands of hospitals at the beginning of this year and found that 28% of hospitals don't allow vbac's and 21% have "de facto bans" which means that although the have no policy in place about refusing vbac, they have no providers willing to do them. That is half of all hospitals in the United States. ICAN has a directory on their website where you can look up the hospitals in your area to see their status.

You can also read more about the Time article in Medical News Today. I really liked this article, especially coming from a medical standpoint and interviewing some doctors and talking about why so many cesareans are performed. A recent survey performed by the Childbirth Connection found that 57% of women wanted a vbac but were denied. In addition, doctors say that women are getting skewed information about risks associated with vbac that leads women down the road the doctor wants them to follow. One of my friends had a cesarean after she was induced early and "failed to progress". With her second baby we talked about vbac and she talked to her doctor and she was told that vbac's have a 40% rupture rate!!! Talk about skewed info! The rate is actually under 0.7%! She believed the doctor and had another cesarean that resulted in a hysterectomy. Repeat cesareans are extremely risky. These risks are usually passed over.

And finally, the author of the Time article blogs about Childbirth Without Choice and her thoughts and reasons she wrote the article. It's a great read. You can see it here.

Spring!!!!!!

2009-03-18T16:34:00.003-06:00

I am so excited for winter to be winding down. We have had fabulous weather this week! It's so nice to feel the WARM sun on your skin. We had a great day at the park with friends today. The kids were so excited to spend so much time outside. The little boys are really loving it. We went on a nice walk, fed the ducks, and played for hours. Of course everyone needs a bath now but it was worth it! I am looking forward to this weekend when it's supposed to be in the 70's!!!!!!

So after a great day of sun, fresh air, and exercise I'm sitting here reading the news and eating girl scout cookies. I know. Shame.

I woke up on Monday and did.not.feel.pregnant. It was fabulous. No dry heaves in the shower. No trying to choke down something for breakfast. Of course there's the crazy hypochondriac part of me (I tell Jay someday he'll be sorry when there really is something wrong with me) that got all anxious about it. How awesome is it to get paranoid and call one of your best friends to go in and listen to things? I got a massage (lovely) and we played with the fetoscope and managed to catch a heartbeat here and there. I don't like to overuse the doppler but I do give in during the early days of pregnancy just for reassurance. We listened enough to catch how many bpm and that was enough! In the 160's still. My boys have generally been in the 130's and I know O was consistently in the 160's so fingers are still crossed for a girl. Especially because we just bought this.

Let me just say that it was clearanced because the print is an older one and it was almost $100 off. E has a Marathon and they are totally worth the money. We're leaving it in the box and if we can't get a new super cheap cover I'll sell this and buy a more neutral one if it's a boy. I didn't get it before - there are so many car seats to choose from. There are some with decent ratings that are cheaper. But Britax makes the BOMB car seats. Seriously. Your baby wants one. And you will like it. And your husband will think it's the coolest thing ever. My friend, trying to talk me into getting one, told me that she walked into Babies R Us and the heavens opened up and streamed light onto the seat and she heard angels sing. It was just like that! The best car seat ever. Almost all the reviews are fabulous. The safety features are the best. And you can use it forever. It's perfect for newborns and goes all the way to 65lbs! You will only need to buy one car seat. Instead of the infant bucket seat, then the seat when they are old enough and weigh enough to turn them face forward, then the booster. The Marathon also have a higher weight limit for rear facing. We leave our kids rear facing for as long as possible for safety reasons and they're able to stay rear facing longer in the Marathon. The best part was when Jay went to put the seat in the car for the first time. It is bulky - it looked like it would be a pain. But in Jay's words it was freaking easy. Especially with LATCH (bless you LATCH and Britax - you work together SO WELL!) but even without LATCH it's still the easiest seat he's ever put in. He sings it's praises and tries to get everyone he knows to buy one.

Now I need to go pretend I'm listening to Jay while he talks to me about tires.

2009-03-12T12:35:00.001-06:00

I think the first obstacle that many women are presented with during pregnancy is the due date dilemma. I know first hand what problems a baby may have when born too soon. Development differs between mothers and babies and there is no magic date when the baby is all of a sudden done baking. Sometimes it’s a matter of hours for optimal lung development. My doctor started my labor 2 weeks early so I didn’t go into labor when he was out fishing with his son - I was due Thanksgiving weekend. You would think 2 weeks wouldn’t matter. She was small, had a hard time staying warm, my body wasn’t ready to give birth, and we had a difficult time establishing breastfeeding. I know a host of things contributed to that but it’s still irritating that a doctor would risk the health of a mother/baby for a fishing weekend, golf game, or his precious sleep. (Yes, I understand lack of sleep. I’m a mother. A birth attendant. I’ve spend 36 hours at births before without a decent meal or rest. I knew what I was getting into. It’s what I signed up for. And I work HARD as a birth attendant. Not like most providers who pop in at the end of labor to catch a baby.)

Whew. Back to due dates. A German obstetrician made this up about 200 years ago. You would take the first day of your last period and add a year to it, then subtract three months, and then add seven days. It will be more precise if you calculate this and add enough days so the due date lands on the same day of the week as the LMP (last menstrual period).

Of course, this assumes a few things.
- An average menstrual cycle. This would only be accurate if your cycle is 28 days and that you ovulate on day 14.
- Lengths of the months you subtract. Not all months have the same number of days. This can change your due date by a few days.
- Average length of gestation. A normal pregnancy is 40 weeks. However that is not a hard fast rule. He average can be between 37 and 42 weeks. You are not “overdue” until 42 weeks 1 days. Many recent studies also suggest that the due date time period should be lengthened. First time moms also typically have babies later. It can also vary depending on the mothers ethnicity. However, even with up to date research on the subject these things aren’t taken into account.

“Policy” in most of the hospitals and practices around here is to offer induction at 39 weeks. I’m going to give a little breakdown of my own due dates so we can see what that might look like. I’m not including my first or second pregnancies because I wasn’t charting at all with my first and I was charting on paper with my second and no longer have it. (I use Fertility Friend online charting btw)

Baby L
LMP - March 4
Cycle length - 34 days
Ovulation day - 21
Due date according to LMP - December 9
Due date calculated using cycle length and ovulation date - Dec 16
Actual birth date - December 18
Newborn exam showed a perfect 40 week baby. 7lbs 3oz Had I been at a hospital based practice I would have been offered an induction around the first part of December. You can look up health statistics by state and here we find that the most popular day to give birth is a Wednesday! Guess why? Had I been induced around the 2nd of December my baby would have barely been full term.

Baby E
LMP - September 13
Cycle length - 33
Ovulation day - 19
Due date according to LMP - June 20
Due date calculated using cycle length and ovulation date - June 25
Actual birth date - July 4
Newborn exam showed baby was still close to 40 weeks. 9lbs 4oz
I had a friend with the same due date when I was pregnant with E. She took the 39 week induction and had her baby around the 10th. She had a very long difficult labor. E was born almost a month later. It was a fairly quick but intense labor.

The only indications for induction are when the risk of staying pregnant outweighs the risks of induction (which are plentiful and I’ll go into some other time since induction is a whole issue in itself). Maternal issues like pre-eclampsia or uterine infections are legitimate medical reasons to induce. Another might be premature rupture of membranes and possibly a pregnancy continuing after 42 weeks.

Convenience is not something that outweighs the risk of induction to a baby, or mother for that matter. I once heard a doctor say to a nurse at one of our local hospitals that he hadn’t been to a 3am delivery in 9 months! He was so proud! He just gets his patients in there at 6am, breaks their water, turns the pit up as high as it will go and those babies are out for him to go to lunch. Maybe he should choose another line of work.

Because I’m tired and uncomfortable! Sounds like a great reason. Believe me - I know. With my long pregnancies I’ve often felt like I was 11 months pregnant. But what mom won’t sacrifice a few days to make sure her baby is healthy and fully developed and ready to be out in the world? What mom wants the pain of induction and all of it’s risks? I’d like to do everything I can to avoid a cesarean (a high risk of inductions) and the risks of a premature baby.

My baby is too big. First, there is no way to accurately tell how big a baby will be. An ultrasound is +/- 2 pounds. My sister’s induction for an 8lb baby gave her a 5lb early baby. Even if we could depend on accurate weight estimates they will never indicate whether that baby will fit through your pelvis or not. I know of 16lb babies that have been birthed at home without tearing. Solid things like shoulders can possibly be an obstruction, but fat cheeks, and rolly thighs and bums don’t hinder birth. My biggest baby had been 7lbs 6oz. A little under average. I have some meat on my bones now but my frame is small. I was as surprised as anyone when I gave birth to a baby over 9lbs. He had lovely little rolls of back fat and the cutest little hobbit cheeks ever. He also slipped out in about 1 contraction.

If you want to read a great article that gets more into statistics and such with great information and a nice bibliography you can go here .

Use the research articles and medical journals if your doctor is pressuring you to induce. When you’re 38 weeks and your doctor tells you there’s no reason to continue a pregnancy because the only thing that happens in the last month is that your baby gets fatter - fire him, find a new doctor, and mail your old idiot doctor copies of peer reviewed journal articles that support letting your baby get ready for his journey into this world.

Second trimester!

2009-03-12T11:28:00.002-06:00

Passing into the second trimester is a lovely thing. I feel less sick every day!

I am thinking of my friends this week who were lucky enough to go to the Midwifery Today Conference in Oregon. I had originally planned on attending. I know it would have been an awesome road trip with some great friends and there were so many interesting classes I wanted to attend! I changed my mind though when I found out I was pregnant. I don’t want to think about and worry about complications in pregnancy and childbirth while I’m trying to be completely positive and prepare for my own birth experience.

Many of my friends have the same outlook on birth as I do. I’m always surprised though when I talk to other women who have already had a few babies and they’re not aware of basic physiological birth information. I’ve discussed this with other friends and decided that I would write about it here. I’ve blogged about 2 of my other pregnancies in pretty good detail so I plan on doing that here and also talking about the different choices in pregnancy and birth and evidence based care and all that jazz.

I know a lot of people think these things don’t matter. They don’t realize that pregnancy and birth is going to affect the baby for the rest of it’s life. It also affects mom. Our care, or lack of it, can determine so much. Infertility, surgery, infections, hysterectomy, premature birth, injuries, postpartum depression, breastfeeding difficulties, etc. We don’t connect the dots enough. No matter that choices you make they have to be just that - a CHOICE. Mothers can’t be complacent. You need to know all sides and weigh it and make the best decision. That might not be my decision, or your neighbors decision. I prefer to lean towards nature and scientific evidence. We have to know that nature, whether God or evolution, has designed the birth process with a specific purpose - to succeed. For decades medical evidence has also pointed at the obvious. In most other fields of medicine doctors take evidence and alter practices accordingly. However obstetrics doesn’t work that way. Instead of promoting normal birth, doctors are still pursuing convenient birth. Inductions, medications, cesareans, and interventions should be the exception, not the rule.

I just want to present the options side by side.

I've been busy

2009-03-03T12:48:00.003-07:00

I am eating these. They are good.
With these on top.

I am so glad I accidentally ate them together because it's delicious.

So I've been busy. Dry heaving in the shower in the morning. Only able to eat Ramen for lunch. I don't even remember dinner. Taking B- for nausea and then itching uncontrollably for weeks. Changing September's Disneyland plans. (sad) But the heartbeat we heard last week will make up for it. And we can go to Disneyland in November. With 5 kids instead of 4.

11 weeks down. 29 left to go.

Countdown to V-Day

2009-02-11T13:44:00.002-07:00

The package I was putting together for my parents didn't get sent on Monday because I was out of chocolate chips and I waited till the last minute to make the cookies. Partly I was sick and partly I wanted them to be fresh.

On Tuesday I didn't buy the chocolate chips because I was sick and it was snowing really hard. I made Jay get them on his way home from work. Then he made dinner and I was off to a church meeting and by the time I got home it was well past cookie time.

Today I made the cookies and got the package together. It's still snowing hard and I don't want to go anywhere but if I send it by priority today it will get there Friday.

However. I put 2 dozen cookies on a tray and put it in the oven. I had a small bowlful that I was going to make one giant cookie heart out of. I turned on the timer and ran downstairs to make sure 2 people had received an email about the homeschool Vday party. Then I emailed a teacher and went to the book of the month club to decline our selection for the month. I was thinking about how much I was getting done! I was so efficient! The timer hadn't even gone off yet! I was rocking it! So I finished and came back upstairs and I could smell burned cookies. I run to the oven and pull them out and they're poor hard little ugly rocks. Smoking rocks. I turn the fan on and crack open the window slightly. Too cold. I ask A what was up - did the timer go off? YES - she lovingly turned it off for me. But didn't tell me. And left the cookies in. And didn't turn the oven off.

Thinking I could at least make the big cookie heart I went to get the bowl. Empty. Licked clean.

76 valentine's to be made for one of our parties.

Snow.

2009-02-09T08:51:00.001-07:00

I hate it.

Birth Safety

2009-02-08T19:23:00.002-07:00

I hate those people who have blogs and never write in them.

I've been SICK. And tired. But really SICK. And I'm finally feeling better. And every time I read other blogs I think - HEY maybe I should post something! And I've started a few different posts and got sidetracked by so many other things and those posts are still sitting there. I've been talking to a few people lately, mostly about homebirth and fear and safety, so I wanted to post info about homebirth and safety and risk and choice. So I will. But not tonight because Jay made a delicious dinner and I'm going to go sit with my family. Instead, I'm posting something I found through a friend. Who actually updates her blog. So you can visit her and then you can visit Raving Liberal. Because that is who wrote this post and it's wonderful.

Birth Safety as a Binary Condition

"Your baby is healthy and that's all that really matters."

How many times have you heard it or some variation of it? How many times have you said it or something like it? A new mom is struggling to make sense of a traumatic or confusing birth experience, to come to terms with unplanned interventions, perhaps an instrumental vaginal delivery or cesarean section that she'd never imagined she'd have. When she expresses her sorrow over the loss of the birth she had hoped for, the beautiful event she'd imagined, too often the response is, "At least you have a healthy baby." Christy Fiscer's essay, "A Healthy Baby Isn’t All That Matters", addresses this troubling tendency to trivialize a woman's birth experience by implying she isn't grateful enough that her baby is "healthy" (which really equates to "not dead or noticeably damaged") or that she's selfish for wanting, let alone expecting, more from birth than to be treated like an insignificant baby-bearing vessel. Seeking meaning in birth outside of a "healthy" newborn is viewed as frivolous, and women seeking empowering birth experiences are portrayed as solely being out to prove something or expecting to "get a medal for going without drugs." There's no need for me to rehash in great detail something that Christy has already addressed so passionately and eloquently. The "healthy baby is all that matters" attitude is merely one facet of a larger flaw in how our culture views birth outcomes.

The other day, someone left a comment [which was deleted due to the comment's author, not the comment's content] on my essay about "bravery" not really being a factor in choosing a homebirth to the effect that, if maternal and neonatal mortality outcomes of homebirths and hospital are nearly identical, that neither hospital birth nor home birth was more or less dangerous. I found this to be an interesting interpretation of the Johnson & Daviss study. While it's true that outcomes in terms of mortality rates were nearly identical, what made the study relevant to my essay was NOT that it showed a difference in the number of deaths, but that the low rate of mortality in the homebirth group was achieved with significantly fewer interventions than that of the hospital birthing group. If safety is measured by number of deaths alone, I suppose this would indicate that neither hospital nor home is more "dangerous" than the other, but is "not a lot of people died" really all that we're going for?

When did "didn't die" become our only barometer for success in childbirth? Baby was born/extracted from womb, both mother and child survived, therefor all is well, regardless of whatever other steps may have been involved in that birth/extraction process, regardless of any long-term harm (or increase in risk) to the mother or child, and regardless of the way anyone feels about the experience. Mom and baby lived; most studies would consider that a positive outcome. From a purely statistical standpoint, the birth was a success. This is certainly how birth is judged in this country from an obstetrical standpoint, but are we really satisfied as individuals with this binary notion of birth wherein "bad" is defined only as "dead" and "good" is defined only as "not dead"?

If a living mother and child are all that is required for birth success (or if, indeed, a healthy baby is the only thing that matters) then yes, hospital birth is "just as safe" (or "equally dangerous" or "no more dangerous," choose whichever language you prefer). If you start measuring safety and success by something more than a binary "live or die" condition, however, then you find disparity in outcomes.

What do many homebirth advocates view hospital birth as dangerous? It's not because more women die in hospitals, or because more babies die in hospitals, but because the interventions performed in ever increasing numbers in hospitals can have a devastating effect on long-term physical and mental health. The increased likelihood of cesarean section for women giving birth in hospitals is a good example of what is perceived by homebirth advocates as a danger of hospital birth. Cesarean section is a major abdominal surgery. While some care providers like to present surgical delivery as "just another way to give birth," the reality is that the procedure introduces a host of new risks to mother, child, and future pregnancies. These risks are worthwhile if the cesarean section is necessary, as the World Health Organization says the procedure is for less than 15% of births, but the procedure is grossly overperformed in the United States. Can a woman who did not need a cesarean, but who was manipulated/pressured, legally forced, misled by care providers about the necessity of the procedure, or who experienced iatrogenic health complications (for herself or her baby) due to mismanagement or over-management of her birth, be said to have had a "safe" or "successful" birth experience, even if the immediate outcome of the surgery is that mother and child live?

Maternal mortality rates do not tell us if the mother who had a unneeded cesarean section went on to have more children (as cesareans can cause fertility problems). Maternal mortality rates do not tell us if she had other cesarean deliveries as a result of her primary c-section (as fewer and fewer doctors/midwives will attend VBACs and many insurance providers will not cover them), or what complications or outcomes came from that birth (as each additional cesarean section has increased risks over the previous cesareans). They do not tell us if she experienced uterine rupture during her VBAC or repeat cesarean as a result of scar tissue from the primary surgery (the risk of rupture for VBAC and repeat cesarean is nearly identical, at slightly less than 1%). They do not tell us if she experienced placental previa or accreta in later pregnancies as a result of her prior c-section (the risk of both is increased in women who had have c-sections). They do not tell us if additional surgeries had to be performed after birth to correct iatrogenic health conditions, such as damage to the bowels or bladder (rare, but possible). They do not tell us if she experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, postpartum depression, or sexual dysfunction (all more common among women who had unplanned c-section than women who had planned vaginal births or planned c-sections) as a result of the unexpected surgery. Maternal mortality rates don't tell us if the mother had difficulty breastfeeding (women who have c-section are less likely to breastfeed). The only thing that maternal mortality rates tell us is whether or not a woman died during or shortly after giving birth as a result of that birth. These rates say nothing about the dangers to a woman's long-term health, either physical or mental, that resulted from the cesarean section. These rates say nothing about the feelings of disappointment, guilt, confusion, anger, or fear experienced during or after the birth.

I could list every intervention more common in hospital births than homebirths and tell you exactly why I, as a homebirth advocate, feel the overuse and misuse of these interventions make hospitals a dangerous place for low risk women to give birth, but why beleaguer that point? The heart of the issue, for me, isn't to examine the individual interventions, or even the cumulative risks of the whole cascade of interventions, but to bring attention to how little a binary notion of birth location safety actually tells us about the safety of giving birth.

When a child is born, a new mother is made. The process of her making, the experience of her birthing, is a meaningful one. Statements like "a healthy baby is all that matters" marginalize the mother by implying that the she doesn't matter, that she is lacking in worth (either by comparison to her child or in general). Though every mother's primary concern is a healthy baby, the mother's own experiences are not suddenly made worthless or unimportant if that goal of a healthy child is attained. Defining birth outcome by whether or not the mother and her child lived is equally marginalizing of the mother, because this narrow definition doesn't allow for variations in personal experience, physical or mental health, non-mortal birth crises. This definition of birth success says that only life or death, not the process, has meaning, and that even if you were poked, prodded, injected, cut, dehumanized -- if you didn't die, well, you were actually "safe" the whole time. You were in no danger, because the end justified all the means.

I don't know about you, but I want more than that particular binary view of safety.
Author - by Morgan A. M. McFarland at Raving Liberal

Happy Anniversary!

2009-01-07T14:58:00.002-07:00

Happy 7 years! I know this is late but I wanted to share pictures from our night out. We try to get out and have fun for our anniversary. Since it's right after Christmas it's always a great night to just chill. For our honeymoon we went to Vegas for New Year's. I don't know why we decided to do that. We should have gone somewhere warm and laid back. I do not like Vegas. I know there are all kinds of family friendly things, and who can go wrong with In N Out Burger (although there is now one 2 hours closer to us!) but we have only spent money in Vegas once since we got married. Sorry. Totally does not melt my butter and completely undeserving of any of my money.

Back to celebrating. Our first anniversary we spent with our 3 month old baby in the Hotel Monaco. I've heard so many raves about it. Totally not all that. The service sucked hard and the beds were terrible. Terrible. We couldn't get a spot at the Melting Pot so we got a private tea room at the Mikado where the people next to us got super trashed drinking sake and the waitress would not leave me alone because she was so impressed that I was breastfeeding. Plus - it's always scary sticking your feet into those holes under the table in the tea rooms.

We've also done one of our local Japanese tea rooms (Windy's sukiyaki) and it's really good too. We took L there a week after he was born. I made a nest of blankets on the floor and he just hung out while we ate.

The other years that we've celebrated we've gone to The Roof. I totally think this is one of the more enjoyable places, particularly in December. First off, the food is super awesome. And it's all you can eat. You might not know - I really. Really. Like to eat. The mousse is so good. Prime rib awesome. Fresh fruit. The salads. Yum. And it's so pretty around Christmas. The building is decorated so nice and since it's on the roof you can look out through the windows down in to temple square and downtown SLC where you can see all the beautiful lights. Ah. So nice.

This year Jay made reservations at The Melting Pot. We drove through downtown and looked at all the lights and made it to the restaurant. I really want to rave about this place. It's flippin expensive but worth it! You can go do just the cheese and/or dessert and those were my favorites and then it wouldn't rock your pockets are much, but man, this was gooooood.

So we got the big dinner for two. You get to pick a cheese for the first fondue, then you get all the meats and veggies for the main course, and then pick a chocolate for dessert. We decided on Swiss and they brought out breads, cauliflower, carrots, celery, and granny smith apples. The apples were so gosh darn delectable with the cheese. SO good. So good.

Then they brought out the main course. Ravioli, pork, steak, shrimp, chicken, and salmon. You also get a big bowl of potatoes, broccoli and mushrooms. Then there are like 142 dips and sauces.

We got the oreo cookie chocolate for the big finish. It was chocolate fondue with marshmallow creme and crumbled oreo cookies. You get marshmallows, brownies, cake, strawberries, bananas, rice crispy treats, and a piece of cheesecake to dip.

Even though it was a big splurge it was worth it. Just thinking about the cheese and chocolate makes me want to go there again. It was great. Perfect little private booths, good food, fun atmosphere, exceptional service... it has definitely become one of our favorites!

I have some great pics but apparently blogger hates them. I'll keep trying to upload.

Happy Christmas!

2008-12-29T12:55:00.003-07:00

I hope ya'lls had a wonderful Christmas and/or other holiday! By the way, I subdued Jay in our "feats of strength".

We spent Christmas Eve putting together the toys and wrapping everything up. Jay doing the putting together, and me wrapping in my Mrs. Santa clothes. I snapped this before finally going to bed.
I was so tired and so excited. I think I was more anxious than the kids! I knew they were all getting really fun things and I wanted to see Jay open his presents and then I wanted to move along to our anniversary. I have a super hard time keeping secrets and I had surprises for Jay and the suspense was killing me. I was having major stress over it. Luckily I didn't give in!

Jay came out to the living room with the camera so he could film the kids as they caught sight of their spoils. I thought E would see his car and go straight for that but he noticed his little... thing first. You push it around and it has chimes in it.

A opened her sweet gift first. She was almost in tears. It's a Nintendo DS. Of course, if you're cool you'll recognize the box. Don't ask me, I have no clue.

L opened his Leapster next but that wasn't what he was excited about. The dollar store fishing pole made his day.

He's showing off his goofy face. O was next and she really was excited about the Leapster. Especially because it was pink.

We showed E his car and he got in and grabbed his panda and didn't get out. I tried to get him to open his other gift and he wouldn't come do it so I held the gift for him so he could do it in the car. He got one of those little kittens that walks around and makes noise. I'd say it "meow's" but it kind of chirps. He loves it. He got the cat and the panda (something he cries for every time we go to IKEA) and sat in his car for hours.

Now that it's been a few days he's finally letting the other kids touch it. If they sit in it he does his scary little girl scream though.

Every year I get Jay a new desk calendar. It has to be fun. And obnoxious is a plus. I really hit it this year!

What's Your Poo Telling You?

He liked it and it was nice but he really loved his snow boots. (?) Yay.
Then I got my super surprise.

One of my favoritest paintings! I LOVE this so much and I've been whining about it for over a year now. I am PSYCHED about it! Totally matches the living room and it's going right over my awesome couch.

Then the kids went to get ready and Jay and I snuggled on our big fat soft chair and took stupid pictures of ourselves.

We went to see Jay's parents after our little celebration and had our traditional brunch and it was so freaking good (I heart sausage) and then we went home. I was sad without my family. (poor-charlie-brown-music) My parents are in TX and my brother went to visit them.

I got a few days break from the after Christmas clean up because it was our anniversary and then Sunday I had some meetings after church. Monday, on to a new week, and there is playdough all over my dining room. And then putting away all the Christmas stuff...uergh. I'm going to Walmart tonight to get one big huge container for all the Christmas stuf. (K, maybe 2 big huge containers) Then I get to put it all away. With our new pre-lit tree! I hate fake trees. LOVE the real ones but a neighbor gave us a huge fake tree before we got married. So we've used it because it was free. It's kind of starting to fall apart and I HATE putting lights on the tree so eveyr year I say we're going to the clearance sale's after Christmas and we're getting a pre-lit. So - we did! Finally! And I'm so excited! Next year will be so easy and I won't be ready to kill everyone by the time it's ready for ornaments!

Hope everyone has a happy safe new year! If anyone wants to come party with us, let me know! I'm definitely up for it. We got a bunch of games for Christmas and we can get a hot wii party going too. WOO! (more food!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!)

7 Years!

2008-12-29T12:04:00.002-07:00

That is how long my beautiful and awesome wife and I have been married! Woo!

I just wanted to share this with the internets.

happy birthday baby!

2008-12-23T17:03:00.006-07:00

The holiday season is crazy for us! We start in November and go from one birthday to another. Then on to Thanksgiving moving right along into December with another birthday and then Christmas. Jay's family had 3 of their kids all in one week and then we had L during that same week also. Birthdays during holidays can get pretty crazy, BUT it was a super awesome time to have a baby. I got to sit in the dark living room with the Christmas lights on the tree listening to Johnny Mathis. Can you beat that?!

Happy Birthday L! We have always taken our birthday kids out to dinner by themselves. He didn't want to go out alone though. He wanted everyone to go to Hungry Bear. All you can eat pizza with some video games. We met up with my socialist brother and luckily we were the only family there. When I'm with my brother we tend to get pretty loud and obnoxious. Jay just watches us and shakes his head. Although, I have started getting in trouble with Jay even. Some guy at Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble got all offended by my use of the word "boob".

Anyway. Back to the party. We had to endure Carl's Jr for lunch and then had pizza and brownies with Jay's mom. L got a bat cave and a Power Rangers thing. Oh. And a bow and arrow from the dollar store which ended up being his favorite thing.

Jay left for work at way-too-early-am and I got up to pee and realized I was sitting on that same toilet 4 years ago that very hour! I have a really hard time going back to sleep after Jay leaves if I wake up too much so it was nice to have some good thoughts to fall back to sleep to.

This my perfect little baby. I love how he's all mookie in this picture. YUM. I had a super awesome terrific birth. I credit this to Michelle and her fabulous Birthing From Within classes, pretty much the best husband in the world, and my most amazing and fantastic body. Because I am spectacularly amazing.

I woke up to pee around 4 and groaned about the late night (Anchorman and potato chips and onion dip) we had kept the night before. I dropped my poor tired self into my bed and got angry with the chips and dip. After the 4th or 5th "stomach ache" I realized I was actually in labor. I smacked Jay and told him we were having a baby and he said "right on" and launched himself out of bed. The only thing he gets a spanking for was not turning up the hot water heater when I must have mentioned it a few times. An hour. Over the course of 4 weeks. He started filling up the tub and after we ran out of hot water he boiled pots of it on the stove. Look how cool and old fashioned. We just hung out and talked. I was totally in the zone and it was fabulous. Someday if I convince Jay to hook the computer up to the camera we can capture some stills and show the internet how super I am. We called the midwife and left a message and then after a while (like an hour and a half) the head-in-the-bum sensation got annoying and I decided I was going to just get that dang thing out of there. So I did! And it was totally intense since my water didn't break until he was out. But. But it was cool. He was born and after Jay unwrapped him from his cord we noticed he.was.a.boy! And then later the midwife got there. Which was perfect. And we were in love and it was beautiful. See. He glowed. He was magic.

He looks like such a little old man here even though he was only about an hour old. Aw. Now he's a mean little bum. But for a while there he was cute. See my boys. The girls took off with my mom and I got to get in bed and snuggle with my boys and McDonalds.

He likes this picture. He was all proud of being on the train.

And he got a haircut today which he would like me to share. And I don't have a picture to share yet but when I do I'll definitely post it. As per the instructions from the child.

Happy Festivus!

2008-12-23T06:26:00.003-07:00

Everyone have their metal poles up for all to enjoy? If not, snap to it!

May the Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength bring your family closer this merry season.

Urgent action!

2008-12-04T11:22:00.002-07:00

I know this is totally short notice. Especially for people who only occasionally check blogs and need babysitters and have other plans. This is URGENT. It's about YOU.

In this country we have the rights to make our own decisions about medical care. This is a public meeting where those rights will be slowly chipped away. I have seen it.

Our c-section rate is at an all time high and doctors are refusing to allow vbac's to the detriment of women and their babies. It is proven that cesareans are much more dangerous for mothers and their babies and it is proven that vaginal birth after a cesarean is safe in most situations. Who should make the decision? Should a doctor be allowed to make the decision that forces you into handcuffs because you want to give birth normally? You think it's fanatical? It really does go this far. It really does. Sadly.

Today a group of doctors and high paid lobbyists will meet in a room downtown and try to change rules already in place. They want to change these rules to outlaw midwives from providing safe and effective care at home to women with a previous cesarean. Where will you be while these few people are deciding the fate of your body? Of your future health? Of your child's future health?

I know this is inconvenient. I have a ton of stuff going on. It's a busy time of year. But sitting in a room, showing that there are people who care, that our choice and agency matter; this is important. Deathly important.

Please come.

Rules Committe Meeting
Thursday Dec 4, 2008
3pm-5pm
Department of Commerce (300 South and 100 East)
2nd Floor room 210
Discussion of VBAC

Midwifery Reporting Stats

(Yes - they're worried. Twice as many people had out of hospital births last month than normal. Midwives statistics beat out the docs any way you look at them. Fancy what taking a personal interest and dishing out appropriate care does for the health and safety of mothers and babies. If hospitals would provide it, we wouldn't have to look for it elsewhere.)

You missed it!

2008-11-20T12:40:00.002-07:00

It's too bad you weren't there when we were standing in the street in the middle of the night freezing out butts off and Regina started yelling about putting Lysol in your hoo-hoo.

These are some of the best girls in the world.

the last hurrah!

2008-11-12T10:31:00.003-07:00

The big 2-9. The last birthday I ever have to have.

Shouldn't that be a joyous occasion? A overshadows me every time. She was born on the 14th and since she's been born (10 years!) I've had 2 birthday celebrations that were all my own. 2! And what am I doing today that is so unbelievably fun and birthday-ish? Cleaning my house from top to bottom for a house full of kids to come party on Friday.

Her birthday will be spectacular. I love to party. I love to plan. I think it's going to rock. Literally. She's having a Guitar Hero party and we made concert tickets for the invites. They're going to have a battle of the bands and each band will get their photo on the cover of a magazine. While some of the kids are playing on the wii the others will be doing crafty things with guitar picks and making VIP passes. We're having pizza and a sundae bar.

My to-do list for today - dig through the books at DI and Savers for Josefina volumes 2 and 3. Find snacks for Activity Days and get some kind of activity ready. Clean the kitchen and vacuum. Figure out what the heck I'm going to do with all the junk we pulled out of the old entertainment center. (Any good storage ideas for dvd's/cd's/movies?) Finish my sharing time lesson. Break up fights between the boys and constantly, constantly, constantly remind the girls that their bedroom needs to be cleaned. Also shopping for bday supply stuff.

I wanted to share some of my favorite birthday memories because some of you may remember them. And they're funny. And cute.

Once Corey and I went to Chuck E Cheese. I think it was my 8th bday. We got batons. Batons were so cool.

Once I had a sleepover and we were so loud and crazy and Missy fell asleep and was snoring so loud and her mouth was open (and this is shameful and I'm sorry) so we filled it full of red sparkle Hawaiian punch toothpaste. And she ate it. That was jr. high sometime because I had spent the day at the San Bernardino museum. And Arthur was there. And he had braces. And he was so cute.

And then there was this other time that we were watching IT and waiting for the pizza guy to come and it was dark and scary and there were balloons and fear. And it was good.

My best gift ever was The Clapper.

One time I went to a super cool concert and made out with two guys. Not at the same time.

One time I was pregnant and some of my best friends in the whole world had a beautiful mother's blessing party for me. They were all so nice and had so many awesome thoughts and wishes for me. And they got me a cake. And it was a GOOD cake. I love my friends. (I love you all!)

Next year I want to do something really really cool for my birthday. Like a fun girls retreat. Yes?

This year all I want for my birthday is a magic genie. Or a maid. But mostly the genie.

Sweet as pie

2008-10-22T19:52:00.003-06:00

E has just figured out praying. He's also our resident comedian (or one of them anyway) and he has to ham it up any time he sees a camera or cell phone. He loves getting his picture taken. I love how his little dimple comes out. The kids were excited for our fun dinner tonight - we had mini meatloaves and baked potatoes. E dug in to the potatoes and then hurried and folded his arms for prayer but he wouldn't let go of that fork for anything. It was too cute and luckily the camera was right there. He's getting so big! I finally got rid of our old gross high chair and we got a really nice bench to go with our awesome table/chairs. He loves to sit on the bench and be big like the other kids.

Not that again!

2008-10-22T19:29:00.002-06:00

One storm. One night. 6 inches. Many tears.

Sadness.

Free stuff!

2008-10-22T19:23:00.002-06:00

Go over to my friend's blog and check out her giveaway! (You'll have to scroll down a bit - I'd link directly to the post but you need to read her other posts because she's awesome) Cute stuff. My creativity doesn't drift into the scrapbooking world so just looking at templates and designs and ideas is enough to totally overwhelm me. It all looks really cool but honestly I really don't like it very much. BUT this design site Shabby Miss Jenn Designs opened my eyes to some fun new (to me) things. CUTE cd albums and tin albums. I might actually be able to do that if all I need to do is stick a few pictures in there. Also really like the calendar thingies.

BLAH!

2008-10-17T09:21:00.001-06:00

Attachment Parenting

2008-10-16T09:54:00.002-06:00

Happy Attachment Parenting Month! Attachment Parenting International's theme is "Giving Our Children Presence."

I've been running an AP support group for about 5 years now. It went from a few moms in my home to us moving to the library auditorium to accommodate all the moms and kids. We have kind of made up our own topics and we do our own thing but it's always awesome. Because consciously parenting our children and treating them like they are people with feelings is always the best way to parent. I hope to touch on each of our topics throughout the rest of the month but I wanted to share something by Astrid Lindgren. I took my neonatal resuscitation certification class from Karen Strange. She is so incredibly cool. She really tries to get people to understand what matters to babies and what they want and need. She sent us all home with this story.

Never Violence

"Above all, I believe that there should never be any violence." In 1978, Astrid Lindgren received the German Book Trade Peace Prize for her literary contributions. In acceptance, she told the following story.

"When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day when her son was 4 or 5, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking - the first of his life. And she told him that he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, "Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock that you can throw at me."

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child's point of view; that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with, she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever; never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery - one can raise children into violence."

I think that too often we fail to feel situations "from the child's point of view," and that failure leads us to teach our children other than what we think we're teaching them.

-----------------
I hope we would always shun that kind of treatment of anyone - especially a child. I think there are other things we do as parents that are just as detrimental to our children. We often do them without thinking, because everyone does them.

The biggest example of this is when we think we're "sleep training" our kids. I want to gasp in horror when people tell me they leave their babies to cry themselves to sleep in another room. We don't look at this from their point of view. We think we're teaching them to go to sleep on their own and sleep all night by themselves. What we're really doing is telling them - it doesn't matter how long or how hard you cry - I will not be there for you. They're not learning to sleep - they're learning not to depend on you or trust you. We are failing. Miserably.

Farm!

2008-10-13T09:41:00.003-06:00

I took the kids to a little farm/pumpkin patch the other day. They had so much fun. We were all pretty wiped out by the end.

First we went on a little hayride. They took us around the farm and showed us the different crops.

They stopped out in the cornfields and let us run through a pumpkin patch and choose a pumpkin. E went and found a tiny little pumpkin, picked it up, and then just sat down and held it and waited for everyone else.

L (of course) ended up in the very back of the field. Every time he would find a pumpkin he would look a few feet further on and see another one he liked better. O was looking for the perfect pumpkin.

After we found our pumpkins we got to go play! They had some really fun slides. There was one big giant one all the kids were going on so I took the boys up there and when I got to the top and looked over the edge it was straight down. I was seriously reconsidering going down and I was totally going to use the boys as an excuse but I figured it would probably be easier to get them down on the slide rather than trying to climb down. The "stairs" were bales of hay covered with a rope net. Plus my friends were going down and you know - all the peer pressure. ;) So we went and it was fun and I wanted to go again and again. E loved it. L didn't. There were smaller slides though so they just kept going on those.

They also had a little train ride. There was a little tractor that pulled plastic barrels painted like cows and pigs. The kids have all ridden it before but E loved it. He wouldn't get out and when I finally made him he screamed and screamed.

We took them into the corn maze after that but he was still screaming.
Then all the kids got grumpy and wanted to go home and eat. We're going again next week so I'm going to make sure we have a backpack this time so we don't have to leave all the snacks in the car. It was so fun. L was sad that his dad didn't go because it meant he didn't get a pumpkin. Next time!

Body Worlds

2008-10-09T11:43:00.006-06:00

WOW. We took our kids to see Body Worlds. The website has a little movie thing you can watch. If you're considering going - GO! Now! If you're not considering going - Consider. Seriously.

First I have to purge my anger so I'm going to rant about something for a minute. I'm on a few different homeschool lists for the area. I'm probably going to be rude in this paragraph so I'll start that right away and use my friend's term for the list - worthless. A bunch of us have talked on and off about how we don't love the list but we've stayed. Recently someone asked if anyone had seen the Body Worlds exhibit and if they had recommendations for how age appropriate it is. Well, nobody spoke up about seeing it. A few people had heard about it and a few more people read the description of the exhibit and immediately dubbed it pornographic, tasteless, disgusting, disrespectful, irreverent, etc. And then the stories started flowing in - someone knows someone who knew someone who went. And they were with their doctor/nursing/medical group and people were passing out. Someone finally spoke up who had attended it in another state and said they loved it which caused all the anti's to pop out in full force again. I finally posted something about how we would be attending in a few days and I would post my thoughts about it but that I encouraged people to make their own decisions about it without relying on email forwards or stories from a friend. I cited my favorite shirt "Don't hold strong opinions about things you don't understand", left a little smiley :) and the end. Of course someone jumped on me immediately but whatever. I left the group and don't care! Yay! Purging and getting rid of negative annoying thoughts and it was all good.

So I'm not in the slightest interested in indecency or pornography. Jay is grossed out easily. We also decided to take a child that loves gross things, but is LOUD and wild. I started to have misgivings thinking about everything that people had been saying. They've discouraged most of the public schools from attending. I got worried about what I would be exposing my kids to and the waste of money it might turn out to be. Plus I didn't want Jay to pass out. He can't even handle watching me poke my finger for iron testing. How was he going to deal with a skinless dead guy holding his own brain?

First I downloaded the student and teacher guides. The kids read them and learned about how they were designed and donated. For the record - many of them did donate their own organs before they were used for the exhibit. I know some people were really upset about that. There was a woman at a panel I went to a few weeks ago and she was very supportive of the exhibit and she was a donation recipient. There's also some rumor that the bodies are all dead Chinese people. Um. Don't know where that came from, but also not true.

We got to the exhibit and our group was full of all different aged kids. Babies to teens. They were all well behaved and listened to the group leader about what we were going to see. They gave everyone cute little "Leonardo" notebooks and pencils and then took us upstairs to the exhibit.

I'm getting the chills and teary eyed thinking about it because it was an amazing way to start an incredible exhibit. I was having a hard time for days just finding the words to talk about it. I hope this is coherent and does it justice because I really hope if you have the opportunity to see it that you take it.

We walked up to the entrance and the entire crowd slowly quieted. You could just feel something. It totally reminded me of when you're sitting in the Conference Center for General Conference and the Prophet walks in and the atmosphere changes and you just know something is different. When everyone started hushing at the exhibit you could hear a heartbeat playing in the exhibit. What a way to start things off! What an incredible sound. Amazing. Full of meaning and life and beauty. I couldn't even talk.

You walk right into the room about hearts. I don't want to describe too much because I know I can't explain how amazing it was. There were quotes about hearts and living and loving all around the rooms. The light was dim and the first little exhibit was a heart. So small but so amazing. There was also one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I don't know how they went about this, it must have been so painstaking and a super long process, but they had plastinated the entire arterial makeup of the heart. It was beautiful. It was like the most delicate lace. Just crazy. We went through the entire exhibit and my kids were just awestruck. Even my loud wild L was quiet and calm and amazed.

I was waiting for the gross parts so I could laugh at Jay when he passed out but there was absolutely nothing. And I mean nothing. At all. I'm kind of thinking those stories were full of crap, and if they're true, those people do not have the makings of future medical field workers. I'm actually planning on calling the museum to ask if they've seen anyone pass out just because it is so unfathomable to me. I was a little worried about the fetus room but it was kind of sweet. They are very old bodies - 60+ years. The embryonic stage babies were all in small vials floating. It is amazing the difference just a few days make. The 9 week baby was a baby - in all forms. It was so cool to see the sizes of these babies. The older babies were curled up like they were sleeping. It was awesome to see. Also a little sad, but still very interesting.

There was a small section about reproductive organs and it was kind of funny because I mentioned to Jay that I would love to see mammary glands. Science can totally have my mammary glands when I die. That was SO COOL. They also had all the reproductive organs and there was a woman talking to another group of high school students about it and this kid kept saying, "I have that. That's in me. That's... wow. I never knew that". I knew I had ovaries but it was still awesome to see.

Another thing that was really cool was to see the nerve network. Cool.

The grossest thing there was the sections about health - smoking and obesity. It was pretty sick to see the fatty tissue. Ew.

It was pretty incredible and I hope to go again, without the baby this time. I'd like to go through it a little more slowly and read everything and take better notes. If you've gone leave a comment and tell me what you thought of it. I don't know why people had to be haters about it when they have never seen it. I think the most incredible thing was that each small organ, nerve, muscle, tissue... each of them works in ways so complicated and diverse. They are so individualized and essential, yet each of them also contribute to the whole in a perfect balance. Not only is your heart beating and pumping blood and feeding your other organs and cells, but your brain, and your nerves and each muscle and breathing and seeing and hearing.... what a beautiful mass of perfection we are.

Evidence Based Maternity Care

2008-10-09T11:15:00.003-06:00

Hallelujah!
USA Today just published an article about a newly released report, Evidence Based Maternity Care: What It Is and What It Can Achieve.

"The report takes stock of the U.S. maternity care system, identifies many opportunities for improving the quality, outcomes, and value of maternity care, and presents policy recommendations. It was developed through a collaboration among Childbirth Connection, the Reforming States Group, and the Milbank Memorial Fund."

The USA Today story featured here, "High tech interventions deliver huge childbirth bill", is a must read. The findings of the report - Childbirth is the leading reason for hospitalization in the USA... yet much maternity care consists of high tech procedures that lack scientific evidence of benefit for most women".

More than $2.5 billion per year is spent on unnecessary C-sections, which now represent about a third of all deliveries. An uncomplicated vaginal delivery is around $7,000, and a cesarean is around $16,000.

Former president of ACOG says there are definitely economic incentives for doctors and hospitals to use these high tech procedures. Some doctors get bonuses for performing more labor inductions. Inductions raise costs and are much more dangerous - raising the risk of c-section. This in turn requires longer hospital stays so the hospital profits from that. Some doctors also order unnecessary tests and procedures to protect against malpractice suits.

Add economic incentive to convenience for doctors and you have the conveyor belt maternity industry available to women today.

Another article, also about this same report, was published on USA Today also. It's here. Instead of concentrating on the costs of these high-tech intrusions, they talk about how to remedy the situation. They found three basic things, if included in maternity care, can significantly lower costs for families and also create better outcomes.

Lower the c-section rate. The US has about a 31% c-section rate. They are trying to lower this number to 15% in women without a previous c-section. Of course, it's expected that the rate will actually climb higher, but this goal is hoped for by 2010. The World Health Organization
Informed consent. We need more education so women can make choices for themselves. We don't have correct information about tests, procedures, and outcomes. My friend just went to a doctor for her second pregnancy (vbac) and the doctor told her she had a 40% chance of her uterus rupturing. (!) Ogden Regional Medical Center has a document they make families with doulas sign that tells them episiotomies are better then tears. (!!) The quote from the article is great about women being told their bottoms are going to fall out if they have vaginal deliveries.
Doulas! Many people have never heard this word before. It is typically used to refer to a woman trained to support a family during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. They provide physical and emotional support, individualized for families, and help them find the information they need to make decisions for their health care. Traditionally this was a role for sisters, cousins, aunts, mothers, grandmothers... many of us don't have that support so a doula steps into that position. Research shows that using a doula during your birth leads to fewer c-sections, fewer interventions, less need for medications, and better outcomes physically and emotionally. A doctor in the article said, "If a doula could be put in an IV drip, everyone would get it." (the Utah Birth Network has more information about doulas)

What can you do? What should you do? Realize this applies to you or someone you love. You are not the exception. Watch The Business of Being Born (trailer on the website) and start reading. (A good place to start is Jennifer Block's book Pushed)

You can read the full report here.

I know often "natural birthers" are vilified or made out to be martyrs. But really what is my stake in your experience? A doctor is getting paid big money to put you onto their conveyor belt. And yes - they're often very manipulative and nice about it. You don't get the real experience until you've been talked into your 39 week induction, strapped to a delivery table with someone telling you normal birth doesn't matter - all that's important is a healthy baby. Well of course a normal birth matters. Of course a natural birth is better for you - and most importantly your baby. You think pulling your baby out into this world before it's ready with massive artificial contractions, while it's drugged up with an epidural cocktail or narcotics is healthy? Right. I also beg to differ that the only important thing is a healthy baby. It's also important that the mother is healthy - mind and body. Of course we would do anything for our children. That's why so many of us willingly submit ourselves to the chopping block for a c-section when the doctor plays the dead baby card. We wouldn't do that if we weren't willing to sacrifice all. But the truth is that it's better for our babies, and better for us, to have a safe, healthy, normal birth. An experience that nature has developed as the optimal way to bring a baby into the world. It's a perfect orchestration of hormones and organs, muscles and nerves. We are destroying that for the "sake" of our children, but really at the detriment of all of us.

it's canada for me

2008-10-08T15:39:00.001-06:00

(for the record - i don't like any of the candidates. i did however, love this.)

(go nader)

dream house!

2008-10-07T22:29:00.002-06:00

We are considering moving and met with a real estate agent tonight and went over contracts and money and all that terrible stuff. Done with that already. On to the next thing -

An ulcer. Seriously I am going crazy over this. When we built the home we're in now it was -what is the most we can get and still be cheap- not what I want to do now. I want a place where we are comfortable now, but somewhere that we will still be comfortable in 10, 20 years, if we choose to stay there. I really want a big kitchen/dining area. I love the separate formal dining room but everyone I talk to says they never really use theirs. Maybe it's wasted space. I'd also like a large living/family area. We really like to have people over and need a good place to get our dance dance on. Or, guitar hero, as the case may be.

I'm not sure what else I want. There are little things that can pretty much be done anywhere - flooring ideas and stuff. There are things I know I don't want - split entry. HATE that about our house. Carpet in the dining - who thought of that? What were we thinking?

So I have questions. What is necessary to have in your dream home? What would you absolutely NOT do? And how do you decide to move? Some days I look at houses and feel great and drawn to a few houses. Sometimes I'm just sick about it. Do I jump on it on a good day and throw up on the others? I don't like moving.

On the opposite end - what if we just stay where we are. 4 kids - maybe more in the future. 3 bed, 2 bath, 17hundred something sq ft. How long do you share bedrooms for your kids? When do we buy our grown up house? When we built here we put zero personality into our home. Everything is bland, neutral, bland. White paint, white floors, blah, blah. We have the opportunity to get a super sweet deal and put wood floors throughout the upstairs. We have to do it NOW though. Do we go to the trouble and then sell? Do we stay? I think it's like $160 to clean the carpets upstairs and we have to get rid of the dining carpet no matter what. So that's another $160 if we just put linoleum tiles down. So $320. OR for about the same price, we can do the entire floor in wood. This weekend only. Hurry hurry. I guess I just answered my own question. Even if we only live here another 3 months we'd get to do it without another day of cleaning pee out of the carpet. Plus my new furniture would look sweet with wood flooring. I've also always wanted to paint a wall dark brown. So maybe I'll do that too.

It's supposed to be a buyers market for another year- year and a half right? Maybe I'll buy my grown up house after I turn 30.

Next up I'll take pics and you can tell me what colors to paint over the MARKER ALL OVER MY WALLS.

Picture Of The Day

2008-10-07T10:16:00.002-06:00

Response

2008-10-05T11:51:00.003-06:00

I admit freely that I like Dr. Who. Totally enjoy it. I'm still distraught over losing Rose though. Also. Jay's a dork.

We were eating out the other night. Trying to ingest oysters. Jay ended up eating most of them because it was seriously like eating slimy goo in rancid beach water in crusty shells. A gagged one out all over the table. A waiter walked by and L yelled, "IT'S THE DOCTOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He did sort of look like him but the guy had no idea what L was talking about and he wouldn't stop yelling and pointing.

The kid needs a lesson in a few things.

One - to stop pointing at people and commenting on them. He used to tell me people were ugly. We finally got that to stop but now he tells me when people aren't ugly. "See her? That girl is cute!" Or, when we walk into our favorite sushi place he yells, "Look! Chinese people!"He was so excited but I was trying to get him to chill out but he kept saying, "but mom! They're Chinese!" To which I didn't know what to say because I assume they're Japanese but what do I know?!

Two - He needs to stop using my stairs as a bathroom. You don't even want to hear about that.

Back to Dr. Who. I like him just fine. Especially when he talks about Harry Potter. (The William Shakespeare one was TRULY great) It just sucks a little when we don't have a tv and can't see the season going on right now. Same with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Which totally deserves it's own blog post.

Doctor..... Who?

2008-10-05T00:58:00.005-06:00

Alright, I don't know what is going on, but I am all about Doctor Who. Now mind you, this isn't the super ultra campy ones from back in the day, I am talking about the super ultra campy new one.

It's good and you should watch it.

The kids are even all about it. They get super excited when I get a DVD in the mail from Netflix because they know what viewing awesomeness is contained in that lovely red envelope. Once I put it in and they hear the opening music, everyone comes rushing in, stakes out their spot on the couch and wont move until the episode is over.

It's awesome.

I even changed my ring tone on my phone to the Doctor Who theme song, even when I get a text, its the sound of the TARDIS taking off (If you know what TARDIS stands for, you get an awesomeness point).

It's funny seeing the eye rolls I get from Sara when my phone rings, or I get a text. I know deep down she is a fan, but just won't admit it! HA love ya....

Anyways, watch it if you have a chance, David Tennant does an awesome job as The Doctor, its family friendly and it makes for a great ring tone.

EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

Getting it done

2008-09-30T10:32:00.002-06:00

So, how do you get motivated and stay motivated to do anything?! It seems like we do alright here for a while and then we have a couple busy days and then I can't keep the laundry or dishes caught up, we don't get as much "school" done, and my house starts to get thrashed.

I don't mind a lived in home. I think my kids should be able to make messes and I don't worry too much if I don't get the laundry put away immediately, but things spiral out of control so quickly. The biggest problem I'm facing right now is that we are putting our house up for sale. I am starting to panic a little (ok, A LOT) about keeping a presentable house for potential buyers. We haven't 100% decided to sell, but I feel like now might be a good time before interest rates go up even more - as I'm sure they'll do with the election - and I really want somewhere bigger where we can live forever if we want.

I'm having a really hard time getting rid of all my "stuff." I have tons of stuff I don't really want anymore but it's hard to say, "I paid x for that!" and just give it away. But half of our garage is FULL of stuff and I'm sure our storage is too. I haven't even gone through and unpacked some of it since we moved in. 5 years ago. I'll take it to DI if I have to, but it's going to be a pain! I've used freecycle but I've posted stuff on there and had no replies. For a bed even! It seems like that would be useful to someone!

The laundry is calling. Any ideas on how to get stains off linoleum? My kids left a hot pink piece of paper on the floor and it got tucked up into the shower curtain, got wet, and stained the floor. Urgh.

Birth, Beginnings - A discussion

2008-09-26T14:40:00.003-06:00

Last night I went to a panel discussion at The Leonardo. They're hosting the Bodyworlds exhibit (which I am SO excited to see in a couple weeks!) and they had this discussion about birth.

Highlights - I think I started to go into shock and I had to put my head in between my knees. I was shaking so badly and my hands and face were getting all tingly. Why was it so ridiculous? Here goes:

Continuous fetal monitoring is freakin AWESOME! WOO! YAY! Gigantic step. (Nevermind that for the past 25 years research has shown that it has done nothing to improve outcomes for ANYONE. In fact, it has done the opposite and helped to create a c-section epidemic! Yeah- great gigantic step!)
Women have more choices than ever before! We can choose hospital, medicated, unmedicated, home, c-section... What about our vbac choice? I wonder if the doctor had ever tried to make that choice because in the hospitals where I work - we have a 6% vbac rate. That is not a choice! The World Health Organization says we should have a c-section rate under 15% and a vbac rate of at least 65%. Well - 30% and 6%, we don't add up do we?! Where is our choice when women are hauled off in handcuffs for a court ordered cesarean? She must have forgot about that part.
Babies have progressively been getting bigger and we're having more struggles getting babies out. Oh. Hm. Is that why the March of Dimes has this new outreach program to get out there and figure out where this epidemic of LOW birth weight babies is coming from? The trend is going down. Not up. I have never even heard that BS before.
Also, apparently, the US is suddenly number 10 for maternal mortality?! Really. Because the last report they did in 2005 showed that it was safer to give birth in BOSNIA or KUWAIT than it is to give birth here. You are almost 3 times as likely to die in the US in childbirth than you are in Kuwait. Hm. Yeah - the doctor really did say we were number 10. In fact there are 33 countries that have better maternal mortality rates. I've got to print out that report and send it to this lady. Who is she? Stupid, or a liar?! I can't believe she can stand up in front of a room full of people in a professional lecture and pull that number out of her ass. One of my friends mentioned that in the US the maternal mortality rate is the highest it's ever been and still rising, and will continue to rise the more we do c-sections. (You are twice as likely to die from a c-section and it creates more risk for each subsequent pregnancy) The doctor was like, no. No way. It's the opposite trend. We're getting better. Hm. Really? U.S. women are dying in childbirth at the highest rate in decades! UGH.

I'm so irritated. Irritated enough to look up all the numbers for death rates on the world health organization's website and made a 169 row spreadsheet. ARGH. Again.

Do you understand why this matters? Is it ok that women are dying in record numbers and they're attributing the causes to c-sections and obesity? What is causing the c-sections? It's typically about mismanaged care practices; interventions. Of course there are true reasons for surgery. Even midwives who practice at home have a c-section rate - of 3%!! The hospital is 10 times that! Why aren't women pissed that we're being lied to? That we are coerced? That we're promised choices but when it comes down to it we have to fight tooth and nail to avoid the most simple of things. We are worth more than a conveyor belt and we are filling the hospital's pockets. How is that ok? That we pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for a service and we wait 3 hours for a 10 minute appointment with a doctor who barely remembers us, plans their Tuesday inductions so nothing interferes with their family life, and sees birth as a (meaningless) means to an end. Birth is not the end. It is the beginning. It sets the stage for your child's health for the rest of their life. It sets the stage for your relationship and many of our parenting abilities. And we are charging an arm and a leg for piss poor service and killing and injuring women at an alarming rate.

There is something wrong with that.

And truly - Choices? Give me a break. If a woman doesn't know her options, she hasn't got a choice.

DDR

2008-09-25T08:31:00.003-06:00

Sara p0wns me at this game... big time, even holding a baby.

Updatedness

2008-09-23T13:32:00.005-06:00

Did you watch the video posted below yet? Hope so ;)
Last week we told the kids we would take them miniature golfing. It seemed like a great idea. But then O had dance all week so we were busy with that. We finally took them last night though and they had so much fun. E was mad the whole time because we wouldn't let him use the clubs. I went and got him a baby one and he was sort of happy - until he realized his was different and completely uncool. So sad. A got the first hole in one and she was pretty psyched about that. The whole way home all the kids just kept saying, "THAT was SO MUCH FUN!" It was!

We also had out 3rd annual soup party this weekend. First of all, I love to party. Second, I love my friends. Third I love food. Fourth I love summer and fifth goes along with that - I hate winter. We do this every year for the autumn equinox. It's a nice, warm, happy, tasty way to say goodbye to summer. Everyone brings a soup to share and we sit around chatting and laughing and eating. I think we're going to have to have a dance off here pretty soon though. I didn't get to go downstairs to watch everyone play on the wii but it sounded like they were having a lot of fun. I'm not a big video game fan but I have to admit that the wii is pretty fun. Except for right now. The girls are doing school and L is mad because Link can't find his horse. (I don't even know what that means)

We made it up to the mountains last week and it's obvious that the weather is changing. Autumn is beautiful here, but it still sucks. I hate the cold and the snow. Drives me crazy. I got to wake up to 3 kids snuggled under the down blanket with me this morning.

Tomorrow we're off for our makeovers. O is turning 6 this week and she requested a diva party at our beauty school. Saturday we're getting together with our cousins. I've got to figure out a cake but I think we're eating, having a dance dance party, and decorating t-shirts.

Birth Video for Fathers

2008-09-19T13:40:00.002-06:00

I've received quite a few emails about this new birth video for fathers. It's called "The Other Side of the Glass." I kept passing over the emails but finally this afternoon I watched it. Wow. If you haven't seen it WATCH IT and then tell everyone you know to do the same.

Good Going Heavenly Father

2008-09-09T22:29:00.004-06:00

I pulled off the freeway and saw the most incredible sunset. We are lucky living right next to the lake so we can watch the sun set until it falls off the earth. I took a ton of pics - at every stoplight even. When I got out into the more rural area by our house there were less lights and the colors came out a lot better. I even locked my doors and drove down the rapist road. (it's almost always deserted and it's long and narrow and surrounded by absolutely nothing) The mosquitoes got me so badly - they somehow ended up all down the back of my pants and it seriously sucked to wear anything with a waistband for a couple days, but it was worth it!

Good going Heavenly Father. (except for the mosquitos. don't know what you were thinking about there)

Natural Childbirth Makes Mothers More Responsive to Baby

2008-09-03T14:05:00.016-06:00

A new study has found that mothers who delivered vaginally compared to caesarean section delivery (CSD) were significantly more responsive to the cry of their own baby, identified through MRI brain scans two to four weeks after delivery. Read more here.

Interesting article. The experience of natural vaginal childbirth is a complex orchestration of hormones. Of course variations of normal birth can alter the physiological response to our children. Inductions, medications, and surgical removal of a baby (especially without labor) are going to change outcomes for ourselves and our babies. They've also found that because of the lack of normal stimulation by normal labor and birth it can do something to the chemical composition of the brain - thus changing the way we respond to our children and also increasing the risk of postpartum depression.

So in the 1960's the c-section rate was what, like 4%? How have women's bodies changed so much in the past few decades that 30% of them can no longer give birth normally? Oh, right. They haven't. Doctors suck.*

So at the recent meeting for changing rules for birthing centers don't you like how the hospital admin freely and openly admitted that limiting a woman's choice to birth at the hospital was all about financial gain? Part of me is glad I wasn't there (who wants to clean up after I throw up a little bit?) but I wish I could have heard it for myself. I will be at the next meeting. If you care AT ALL whether or not families should have the options of giving birth at a birth center, home, or hospital, (and you happen to be in Utah) COME to the meeting. Even if you wouldn't choose if yourself. Come.

See, now I'm getting all riled up and I haven't even posted Ogden Regional Hospital's "Doula Guidelines." Longer post for later. Look forward to that! Get your barf bowl handy also!

Peace :)

*So I know it's not just doctors. I blame the entire patriarchal capitalistic establishment. And maybe your mom.

Sleep Deprived

2008-09-02T22:07:00.005-06:00

Being a mother is crazy sometimes. You think? So strange that we can just make babies. I'm trying (ahem - have been for over a year now) to get Jay to upload the video from E's birth so I can capture some still shots and make a slideshow. I have one from O's birth somewhere. Still need to do it for L also - only almost 4 years later. I usually write a nice blog about my baby's birth days and I'm late for E - 2 months late. So, while I'm working on the slideshow, here are a couple pics.

Then: my sweet hobbit baby (look at his chubs! he had back fat!)

Now: still sweet but thinks he's big enough to head on out on his own

We have a morning ritual. It developed out of my laziness but it has become so sweet. E slowly wakes up and I roll over hoping, begging, please, to have more sleep. Chances are the girls are already up, blasting the Jonas Brothers. E is generally very happy and will pound on the wall or yell, "AAAAA," which is a signal for A to come get him. She pops in and he jumps off the bed into her arms and waves bye to me. He plays in their room for a bit while I try to drag myself out of bed. I get into the shower and I know it's only a matter of minutes until the bathroom door flies open and a little hand pulls the shower curtain back. E peeks in at me and smiles his huge toothy smile. I tell him to shut the door and he runs over and slams it shut and then comes back to climb into the shower.

He is so sweet about obeying. At 14 months he doesn't really talk. I can sometimes get him to say mama but he thinks it's silly. If I ask him to hold hands he very eagerly grabs my hand. If I ask for kisses he slimes me. Snuggles and he chokes me. He helps with the laundry when I'm throwing stuff into the dryer. He'll throw his garbage away. And he loves when I call to him and hold out my arms - he comes running with his arms thrown back behind him.

Thank goodness for the sweet things in life :)

Can't..... stop.... watching.....

2008-08-27T14:25:00.000-06:00

A Request

2008-08-25T07:43:00.002-06:00

Help.

I have not ridden my scooter for over a year now because I am looking for a particular part to get it going again.

I need a gear selector box for a 1962 Vespa VNB3 125cc... I found some online, but they want my first born plus $100.

If you know of anyone who might have some type of hook-up, please let me know.

Tea and Pics

2008-08-24T11:00:00.003-06:00

We all had tons of fun at tea yesterday. The girls dressed up and they were all perfect ladies. It was tasty and beautiful.

Me and my girls!

The chandelier that looks like it's made of saran wrap.

Crab and shrimp mousse, chicken salad, egg salad, cucumber, hummus. The hummus was SO good. Blueberry scones. Lemon curd, strawberry preserves, and clotted cream.

The place settings and "tea". So see the big goblet in the middle of the table? At the beginning of tea they put this little weird dried up ball in the goblet and fill it full of hot water. It slowly unfolds into the flower and makes a pretty tea. A pretty nasty tea. I have to say I do not enjoy tea. When I'm really sick I love lemon tea with honey. But only if Jay makes it. I don't like warm water, let alone hot water, with leaves, grass, weeds, etc. floating in it. It's very pretty though!

Olivia when they brought the dessert cart out. (I felt like that inside) So. Good.

I hope to make this some kind of annual tradition. I can't wait till my boys are old enough to take. At this point, L would run around like a feral child. I have hope that in a few years he'll calm down a little. Enough to sit at a table for a couple hours anyway.

Must go watch Camp Rock. Jay is bonding with the girls through the Jonas Brothers.

Bear Lake Greatness

2008-08-22T21:22:00.009-06:00

This is how awesome our kids are:

Cheese Ball + Throwing Metal + His Sister's Jacket = A FREAKING EPIC PICTURE

Afternoon Tea

2008-08-21T10:56:00.004-06:00

My parents are leaving in a week and a half to serve a 12 month mission for our church. They're going to be in Dallas. Don't worry. We'll make sure my mom gets her hairspray and tiara before she leaves. The sad part is they'll be gone. (sad) The happy part is that we get to go to Texas to visit! (happy!) I haven't been to Dallas, except for a short layover. I do love San Antonio. My cousins live in Corpus Christi (hello - what a gross thing to name your city) and I really like it there too. We have our web cam ready to go and I'm getting myself through this by pretending it's just a long vacation. Just a little trip. It's all good.

SO. Last fall my mom, sister, and I, went to Afternoon Tea at the Grand America Hotel in SLC. We also went to the open house for the unveiling of the newly restored State Capitol. Seriously - the hotel was WAY better. LOVED it. Loved it a whole lot. The tea was just fun too. I was hoping my sister and I could take our daughters there this fall in between all their birthdays. I wanted my mom to come so we're going there this Saturday. To tea! If you live in the vicinity you have to go some time. It is so worth it. Deep inside I am a lady. Truly. I am cultured and refined. I just don't usually act like it. I will this weekend though. I mean, how can you sit here in these plush chairs in front of a fire with harp music in the background and not get a little swept away?

(i promise i will not talk about poop. or say any bad words. or make fun of anyone.)

Random

2008-08-20T13:44:00.003-06:00

At the moment this is the first post. Hopefully it won't be for long. With my parents moving out of state for a year and our friends and families regularly updating blogs we (the mr. and mrs.) decided to combine our blogs (Jay's random stuff and Sara's birth stuff) into one big random, birth, family blog! Yahoo!

So. I'll probably move archives over at some point. Until I get sick of it. And then I'll stop.

Here's a picture for the day.

How cute. Our Bear Lake trip last weekend. Add to the list another place I've nursed a baby. Hiking 888 steps in Minnetonka Cave. (yes, it really did suck that bad)