I miss Brookhaven: an ode to my birth experiences

It's been over a year since I was last at Brookhaven, the birthcenter where I gave birth to both Yonah and Naisa.

Just to clarify, I don't miss being pregnant. Not at this moment!

However, I do miss the welcome place to talk and talk and talk about my baby and my pregnancy and the openness to natural paradigms instead of mainstream.
I miss the nonjudgmental approach with which every issue was approached.
I loved how I looked forward to the visits instead of approaching appointments with anxiety.

I loved how labor was "chill" because I wanted it to be. No unnecessary exams, no constant monitoring, just me and my husband doing our thing until my water broke and things picked up. But then, it was only a Doppler checking heart rate. I pushed the baby out. I held my child when they were still beautifully covered with vernix and amniotic fluid. I got to sit in the tub as long as I wanted. The baby's cord could stay attached to the placenta as long as I liked.

There was always so much love from the midwives after the birth. They know it's hard. Not only have they been through hundreds of postpartum experiences with other women, these ladies have experienced it first hand with their own babies. They stopped by our home a couple extra times because baby had a little jaundice and I needed more observation on breastfeeding. They were just a text or phone call away all the time. Even after my six week postpartum, I could text them!

We (my husband and I) developed a real love and trust with our midwives at Brookhaven, and I am so blessed to have delivered with these ladies.

I held a robin in my hands this morning

The kids got up at 5:30 this morning.

5:30

AM

Am I glad I convinced my husband NOT to start watching Thor at 10pm?

Yes.

Oh Yes.

Our mornings start like they always do: I nurse the baby and get irritated when he decides it is time to talk and time to sleep. It didn't help that Naisa was ready to party when I went to get  Yonah.

Then everyone gets mad. Me, because I can't get more sleep. Naisa because she doesn't want to share her toys, Yonah because he doesn't get excacyly what he wants (oh the joys of communicating with a toddler).

The sun begins to rise and we open the curtains.

"Is it morning? Is it morning, Mom?"

YES. IT"S BEEN MORNING. YOU ARE SO VALIDATING, NAISA.

My sarcasm comes out a lot more with my Yes and No child.

As the morning goes, I get angry at adobe flash player for donating pop ups to my web browser and see to revise it with no luck.

The kids are still going strong. Singing and spinning around on the office chair.

I do a "dry run" on wedding hair.

I think I'll try again tomorrow. It's a little abstract.

I cannot find Naisa's new box of markers.

I give Naisa her birthday present from Anna. She enjoys the stamps. She uses the ink as a stamp (it's a circle!)


Then we hear a big thud on the window, and I see a feather float down.

A bird took a wrong turn, and in the morning light, perceived that our (very dirty window) was the entrance to greener pastures.

BAM!

I peer out the window to see if the bird is lying, dying on the porch. Instead I see a stunned robin. In my mind, I think it must be stunned and could go into shock, so out I go onto the porch. And then my assistants follow. and I pet the robin's back and it doesn't move. It's just breathing through it's beak and so I pick it up.

I sit down on the chair and wrap the hem of my shirt around it and make soothing noises (what can I say? I'm a mommy!) We sit for five minutes, and I comb through what I would do if it died, if it was injured, how would I care for it, or not, etc). And then it moves it's head, and i know the stunned period is over.

I open my fingers, and it flies away.

how precious it was

I'm sure that birds were created to survive crashes.

Then I dig Yonah out of the potting soil on the porch and send my reluctant three year old back inside.

And back to reality

the minute of calm of a strange life in my hands
a connection just for a second
disconnected from normal

There it was

Naisa is now politely smothering her elephant and duck in the cloth diaper pile. "Ok, see you in a couple minutes!"

Bed bugs...

Yesterday morning I woke up with the kids at 6:45 and I was itchy on my calves.
I looked at my leg and saw welts, and I knew.

http://www.newhealthguide.org/images/10408409/bed-bug-bites.jpg

There was a bed bug in our bed.

http://cchealth.org/bedbugs/img/bedbug_cycle_240_250.jpg

But how the heck did it get there?!?

I had a dozen bits on my legs, a couple in groupings and one line of three. But I had to be sure, so I looked for the other signs of bed bugs online (I used orkin.com--it's very informative and doesn't just try to sell their product).

Three main things:
Look for their poop: it looks like an ink stain on the sheet--it bleeds a little bit after it is dropped.

http://www.bedbuginfo.com/wp-content/uploads/images/bed-bug-with-bed-bug-feces-01.jpg

Look for skin casings or body parts of the bed bug (if you rolled and killed it in the night)

http://www.underpricedfurniture.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Cast-skin.jpg

Look for blood spots on the bed (from when they bit you.)

http://bedbugs.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/bed-bug-blood-stains.jpg

I found all three.

And then I was mad, because I could NOT figure out where we could have gotten one. Certainly not at my in-law's house, which looks like a model home at all times, and they are immaculate about cleaning (and even keep pillow and sheets in bags between uses).

However, you can get a transfer of a bed bug from someone getting getting into your car and then the bug getting transferred to you in the process. I have a theory though... we killed all the brown recluse spiders (which are hunting spiders), and now there's a bed bug in my bed! ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh

Of course my husband never gets bit. (and I had ice cream before bed, so I'm sure it was very sweet blood), and he was sleeping late, so I got antsy about getting the bed worked on.

I stripped the blankets and sheets from the bed and put them in the washer on hot. As hot as you can get. Then you are supposed to put it in the dryer for a long hot time. We don't own a dryer, so I took everything out on the line until it was dry. I also washed all the clothes that we were wearing while we were sleeping.

http://www.kfir-madbir.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tick2.jpg

While things were washing, I went and used the vacuum attachment around the bed frame. I didn't really feel like that did anything, so then I liberally applied essential oils (we use plant therapy organic lavender and organic tea tree oil) on our mattress pad. This was around noon. Our room smelled wonderful the entire day. These oils are supposed to repel them (my source is just a comment on someone else's bedbug blog, so really I'm not sure. But it smelled great!!).... I suppose it helps with the brown recluses too....

http://brownthumbmama.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/oilsOPT.jpg

We had a storm coming, so I watched the clock and the radar and ran out to get everything off the line when I had "three minutes until heavy rain and a thunderstorm", which actually danced around our area. so we got a quarter of the rain that accuweather said we were going to have. But the clouds were dark-dark! so I was hustling. But everything was dry, so I was impressed with how quick everything dried. And thankful. We did NOT need to figure out how to dry a twin and a queen size comforter inside our apartment.


So last night I did not get bit at all, and I think I might put lavender and tea tree oil (diluted in coconut oil) on my ankle points and behind my knees tonight and tomorrow night to avoid them.

I also read that the find their 'host' via the CO2 they exhale, so some people have had success with using "yeast traps" to catch bed bugs. I have not researched it yet, but it seemed a but more viable than purchasing dry ice to put under our bed.

I may have to try this method.

My kids are driving me crazy. So I will be going now.

Time at the in-laws and tornado dreams

We've been at my inlaws for the past five days.

I'm getting anxious about the food rotting in my kitchen. We were only supposed to be here a couple days and then go back home, but we had a wedding on Saturday and Ben had to get the oil changed on Monday and then they didn't want us to drive at night.

Anyway.

When we stay here, I actually feel like i have less me-time even though everyone takes turns watching the kids. It's a bigger place, so there are more things for them to get into, including toilet paper, pulling plugs, and coasters. And because there are other people around most of the time, I feel more self conscious about exercising, although I do do it anyway. But when you do a precocious exercise program (hello Jog Rocks!), you feel a little silly doing the movements in the middle of the living room while your father in law is watching the news on the TV in the kitchen. Luckily he does his own precocious exercises to strengthen his back for his work.

Last night, Yonah woke up at two thirty to nurse and then was moaning very loudly and not going back to sleep, so I could not sleep (he shares a room with Ben and I when we are here) and after forty minutes of him moaning and me attempting to rock him back to sleep and that not working, we came downstairs to have a snack and play a little bit. Then I nursed him again, and put him back to bed... by then it was four and I had realistic dreams about tornadoes hitting our apartment.

Oh the tornado dreams. Again and again they come. And I can never move fast enough (it's like walking through water when you try to run in your dreams) to get to the safe places that I have situated in my mind for when a tornado would come.

I can always see it in the distance and then I yell to who ever is in my dream (this time it was Harriet, my neighbor who lives below us) that I see a tornado and we need to get into the basement (which hypothetically exists, although I have never been down there... there is a door in the floor in the stoarage area that I know leads to somewhere. ... I need to get batteries for my headlamp and find out where!

And in my dream I felt the wind push me into a corner and then lift me up off the groundin the corner, and the whole time I was thinking, just don't take me away into the tornado!

And then the wind would subside and I would be on the ground again.

And then I would wake up.

I wonder about the re occurrence of the tornado dreams sometimes. Why is it the only natural disaster that happens in my dreams? I wasn't even thinking about tornadoes that day, so somewhere in my subconscious is this fear of tornadoes that comes up.

Interesting.

We finally came home, leaving around one and getting home around 2:30. I'm ready for routine at home again. And I had to throw out a pot of beans that I had set out to soak while we were gone because they sprouted and got moldy. And three eggplants, some chard, and some grains that had been in there too long. And the peppers that got moldy on the counter. But now all is (mostly) better.

I am done with my antibiotics now. So I really have to be intentional about getting probiotics in my system and taking immune supports this winter. Bring on the daily garlic!

A brief education on how the female body works

So this information is for those out there who were like me four years ago.... someone who knows exactly two things about the menustration cycle. I ovulated sometime when I didn't have a period and I could get pregnant if I was sexually active.

But, silly me, I knew nothing else. I tried the mini pill for one week and it left me (you guessed it) hormonal. I didn't want to be "PMS"ing all the time, so I quit and decided to figure out an alternative. I looked up the rhythm method. It sounded good, despite the fact that I had irregular periods and never knew exactly what day my period would come, it sounded perfect. So I tried that. And was I dreaming! And then I got pregnant.

And I learned all about pregnancy. Then I had a baby, knew all about babies, and didn't have a period for ten months.  That was nice.

I did research on family planning methods that did not involve hormones and decided that I was going to use temperatures and cervical mucus data to avoid pregnancy.

I got my first period successfully knowing when I ovulated.

And then I had a 67 day cycle. And we got pregnant again.

Now, obviously I am an "expert" on my pregnancies and on my babies, but had yet to conquer the avoidance of more of them. But I was determined.

So here's a simple education on the female cycle that is vital for both men and women to understand if you prefer no hormones or foreign objects in your body.

Cycles change, and there are lots of reasons why. 
Hormones, stress, the moon, the people you are living with, breastfeeding, hormonal birth control. These things throw your body off and cause anxiety or excitement about the possibility of pregnancy.

In you (or your female significant other)'s cycle there are two phases: the follicular and luteal phases. The follicular phase is the period of time when you start your period through when you ovulate and the luteal phase is the time period after ovulation through the first day of your period.

Ovulation is when the body releases a mature egg from an ovary and it goes through fallopian tube to the uterus. The egg survives 24 hours. If a sperm finds it before it dies, then you have an embryo that goes into the uterus and attaches itself to the cozy ready-made lining (aka period discharge) and grows a cute cuddly baby. 

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/prn-limbaugh-20130611-planbchart.jpg

The follicular phase is the part that varies due to situations listed above. However, you always have fourteen days after you ovulate (luteal phase) before your next period.  

During the follicular phase, the cervix is prepping for ovulation. After your period ends, the cervix begins creating copious (or small) amounts of mucus of various textures. It goes from creamy to very stretchy. The very stretchy (as in you can stretch it two inches) mucus is called (for lack of a better term) egg white mucus. This is considered fertile mucus and can shelter sperm.

A note on sperm: sperm, in hostile conditions (aka post ovulation), live only 24 hours, but sperm in ideal conditions (egg white mucus) can live for 5 days. Five days. That's more than half a week. 

So this is all scary and it seems inevitable to get pregnant if you don't want to touch your mucus (and who does?)

Your body temperatures change during the phases.  When you wake up in the morning, before any hot beverages, you take your temperature for five minutes (leave it in after it beeps). This temperatue is your body's baseline temp. Depending where you are in your cycle it's higher or lower. 

In the follicular phase, your temp is lower. For example, mine is 97.5 -97.7 (F). 

Once you ovulate, your body temperature jumps at least .3 of a degree. Mine jumps to 98.3-98.6. 
 During this phase, I always feel warmer than everyone else. And when the week before my period happens, I drink red raspberry leaf tea to negate rash behavior on my part (haha).

Here is an example of someone's temperature on a chart.

http://thegiftoflife.info/Images/Images/nfphormonegraph.jpg

What's so great about this??
 1. I always know when my period is coming (I just look on my calendar two weeks from when I ovulated, and also my temperature drops)
2. I understand my body and what's happening and so when we are ready for another baby, it will be simpler to "plan". 
3. I do not have to ingest any hormones (and their side effects) and our birth control budget is minimal (just barrier control during the fertile pre-ovulation periods)


 



 

 

overcoming the fears of the what ifs

I'm back on facebook.

But getting back on facebook means I see things I don't always want to see.

I follow a page called Stories Untold about sexual abuse survivors. This topic has always striked a chord in my heart, but the most recent post has made me rethink whether or not to continue to follow.

I am a mother so I always have a part of my mind preparing for the worst situation. How to get out, what we need, how do I protect?

So when I read a story about a four year old getting sexually abused at a birthday party by the host's father, I get anxious.

THere are so many unknowns in this situation. No one could have known that was going to happen. It makes me want to stay by my own children at all times. It is a fear inducer, but it is also a great reminder to be very knowledgeable about the people that we allow near our chidren.

The solution to my fear is to build relationships with people and observe them. Watch how they interact with other kids, watch how they interact with my child. Prepare my child. Protect by preparing.

And number one: pray. Pray for safety in the future. and trust God to show how to protect and provide safety in every situation.