Withdraw from the Mainstream!

Together, these videos convey an interesting message which bears consideration. Personally, I adamantly refuse to vaccinate my children, and, as a former public school teacher, I'm very much in favor of alternative education. Take the children away from schools that push vaccines and other controlling practices. Instead, get them involved in other programs that allow not only for socialization but also for creative cognition, criticism and communion with the Earth. Please watch these and then take action!

Sign here to ask government to label genetically modified food

Sign here to keep Monsanto's GMO sweet corn off your plate!

Visit me at homegrownlearning.org to learn more about alternative education.

Economic Hitmen

This video speaks volumes. Take a look. Then VOTE HEMP to start planting seeds of change.

Tim Franzen for Occupy Atlanta

I connected with Tim through mutual friends on Facebook and am thankful to know him. He has assumed a leadership role within the local Atlanta Occupy movement, and I'd like to share an interview in which he explains his position. Take note, also, of the commercial following his interview and of how it's brash, consumerist approach stands in stark contrast to Tim and is at the heart of the type of culture Occupy is trying to peacefully overthrow. Also, take note that, when compared to nationwide Occupy movements, Atlanta's was peaceful in terms of how the police responded.

11 Alive Video Here

Above: Tim Franzen is arrested at Occupy Atlanta

Below: Veteran Scott Olsen suffers a fractured skull from rubber bullets fired during Occupy Oakland.

Click Here to Support a Peaceful Occupy!

Beginning with the Children

 

All my blogs are about motherhood in some way, and, honestly, I look at all life through the lens of being a mom. For example, I think of how my Mother Earth sustains me and of how even men and chidren remain alive and vibrant as long as they are giving birth to ideas and new creations. Nonetheless, this blog goes futher than the others at focussing directly on parenting, so I'm designating this one as the landing place for my children's birth stories and for sharing information about the tribes of which they are part.


First, I'll share with you that my nuclear family contains three children. Two entered the world through me and my husband. The eldest is my stepson, Aldan. His natural childbirth inspired me to also have my children with my husband's coaching and no drugs for pain. Today, I will post the stories of his sister and brother's births.


My Firecracker, Kyra Lena
June 12, 2008; 8:42 PM

 Two weeks before my due date, I interviewed a pediatrician, pre-registered at the hospital, and finished the paperwork regarding my stepson's custody trial. My husband and I went to sleep talking about my accomplishments and joking about how we needed more time. We woke to my water breaking, as though on cue, with the 6 AM alarm.

I remember feeling great excitement and anticipation. I sensed that my child's birth would simultaneously shatter my preconceived notions about myself and the people-pleasing persona that I created during my adolescence, but it's only now, nearly one year later, that I'm feeling the effects of that revelation. At the time, I was focused on timing my contractions the way I'd learned to do in Bradley Classes and on holding as still as possible while my husband hastily created a plaster caste of my pregnant torso in the chaos of our loft's kitchen. We arrived at the hospital 6 hours later, but I was only dilated to a one. Thus began what would become a record-breaking 39 hours and 42 minutes of labor. Since I failed to dilate, I was given the hormone oxytocin to strengthen my contractions. However, I successfully managed my pain without an epidural and achieved my goal of a narcotics-free birth.

There is no way I could have survived and avoided the epidural and/or a cesarean without my husband's support, so the whole experience is really as much his triumph as it is mine. He spent hours walking up and down the hospital halls with me leaning against his back. He held me close and breathed with me, directly into my mouth, during every contraction. He spent the night with his head beside the toilet on the cold bathroom floor when I sequestered myself in the warm shower because that helped the pain. He removed my parents from the hospital room when their fear became an impediment to my experience, and he called in his aunt Julie and our childbirth instructor Rachel when he needed help to keep me calm and on track. When the pushing stage began, he talked me through the process and kept me covered in olive oil so that I successfully avoided the need for an episiotomy and did not tear at all. Finally, he caught our child and became the first to announce that we had given birth to a baby girl. He held her up--bloody, kicking, and screaming in raw, healthy beauty, and my relief at the reality of her perfect existence became as tangible as the birth plan posted proudly upon our door.

I got to hold her for an hour before the hospital staff took her to the nursery for her preliminary examinations and first bath. During that time, I embraced her and rejoiced in the unusual notion that she had not come from me, but rather through me, and is not so much mine as she is a divine expression of love given form inside me. Every breath she takes is pure joy.

My Wonder Bug, Christopher Valor
August 22, 2010; 8:26 am

While hot water poured into the basin of our restored claw foot tub, I added handfuls of salt and dried lavender flowers harvested from plants that took root in our Wedding Garden 3 years before. I placed lavender oil in a burner I bought in my college days and lit a candle beneath it. Then, as a final important touch, I placed a wooden figurine of a pregnant woman affectionately caressing and lovingly admiring her extended torso on the ledge just above the bath. Now I was ready. Sinking into the deep waters, I absorbed healing energy and communed with the child growing inside me.

As with my daughter, I’d requested that the gender remain a secret. However, I still knew I was carrying a son. I told him that I was ready for his arrival and that I welcomed him to come forth with love. I prayed blessings of safety on his arrival in the world, the life he would spend here and my health throughout his delivery and upbringing. While I ritualistically submerged myself in this sacred bath, my daughter slept peacefully upstairs in her room, and my husband and stepson slumbered on the couch. Peace and anticipation existed hand in hand. I emerged from the bath and did a series of yoga postures. With each breath, I affirmed my readiness to meet my healthy child. I completed the entire process by walking in circles around the downstairs of my home. Through the kitchen, the dining room, around the staircase, through the parlor and then down the hall past the bathroom and out into the living room and kitchen again—I did a total of 55 laps.

When we woke the following morning, I felt sure I was in labor. Contractions were coming regularly at five minutes apart and continuing for over an hour. However, unlike when I delivered my daughter 2 years before, my water had not broken. We had already had one false call earlier in the week, but we headed to the hospital anyway. I went on a monitor. My labor was confirmed, but I was not dilating. Since my water was intact, this wasn’t a problem. Asserting my desire for a natural, drug-free childbirth, I refused induction and left. My stepson Aldan, my husband Ryan and our daughter Kyra Lena went to visit my parents, to eat at my favorite local dive and then to a riverside benefit celebration for the local water keeper’s alliance Coosa River Basin Initiative. The four of us, glowing in the moonlight, danced barefoot to jams by the band Red Eye Jedi. My stepson said he fell in love. I saw my friend Elisabeth and told her I was in labor but had been turned away from the hospital. She assured me that I’d experience a clear change before the baby was ready to commit to its release from my body, and that I should relax and trust myself and my child.

Upon returning home, I leaned against my husband and fell asleep. My prayer was that the child would not come during our trek to return Aldan to his mother’s house, over an hour away. Two hours later, I woke up with searing pain. My husband was groggy and skeptical about making another trip to the hospital when my water still had not ruptured, but I committed myself to deliver my son that morning. We woke the other two children and headed to the hospital yet again only to discover that I was technically no further along than I’d been earlier in the day. Fortunately, the nurse suggested that I walk and agreed to check me again in an hour. She directed us to a stairwell with the wisdom that the stepping motion would help open my body and encourage the labor’s progression. My husband and children entered it with me, but the door closed behind us and we found ourselves trapped.

Puzzled security officials freed us from what, apparently, was a restricted area. I spent the rest of my hour walking in circles as I had the night before. I could see blue and pink ribbons adhered to doors all around me and envisioned myself within one of the rooms, a beautiful blue ribbon on my door. This vision became my goal. When I returned to be checked again, I had progressed to 5 centimeters, the halfway point, and the line at which natural birthing moms may enter a hospital. I was admitted with my husband and children by my side. A series of quick questions followed, I refused an unnecessary antibiotic and asked permission to walk around the nurses’ station because walking was helping things progress and helping me manage pain. Thankfully, the staff obliged.

Unlike with my daughter, this time I was left to face most of my pain alone. Fortunately, her beautiful and long 39 hour, 42 minute labor had prepared me for the task. My husband was occupied in the hospital room keeping watch over my stepson sleeping on a cot and our daughter sleeping in his arms. I was content to walk, slowly but steadily in a circle, occasionally kneeling on all fours to manage my pain. After an hour of this, I heard my father’s voice. During my daughter’s birth, he’d been afraid. This time, he simply followed me, rubbing my back when I dropped to the ground, walking with me when I raised up again. One more hour passed, and I returned to the room. My father walked the halls with my daughter now, and my stepson continued to lie dreaming on his cot. Sitting cross-legged, I fell forward into my husband’s lap with each contraction and began to consider drugs. Without telling anyone my fears, I asked to be checked again. I was a 9, almost the magic number. My worries shattered in the form of tear drops and shaky laughter. My best friend, my husband, cried joyful tears with me and announced that I was in transition, that stage toward the end of labor when a woman realizes that the very moment when she can take no more is also the last moment she has to. My hope was new again.

The next few minutes passed quickly. The nurses informed me that my doctor was not answering his beeper. Another doctor fascinated by natural childbirth introduced himself. Then his beeper called him away. A third showed up at the door and said he’d be present should I need him. About that time, I screamed deeply, "The baby is coming now!" Aldan, at last, awoke. Like a bullet, he ran from the room to join his sister and my father in the hall. Nurses fumbled with a squat bar, and I assumed an untraditional position. Rather than emerging from the front of my body into my husband’s waiting arms as Kyra Lena had, this child would fly out swiftly from behind. My husband held my hands, locked eyes with me and quickly assumed the role of a cross country coach urging me toward the finish line. My mother entered the room to announce her arrival and then, very swiftly, was gone. I remember the look of her feet in black sandals stepping gingerly across the floor. The third doctor, who never left my doorway, prepared for the unusual task of catching my child from an unfamiliar direction. With a few strong pushes, my son emerged, still encased in his caul, his water unbroken--a sign of what folk healers say is second sight, healing power, a charmed life. We had already decided to name him Christopher, in honor of my husband. However, like my husband, we knew we’d call him by his middle name. After a couple days’ consideration, we chose Valor. Gazing in his shining eyes, I know I hold courage in my arms.