Dove Evolution Video - Dove Self Esteem Fund

I came across a wonderful video today, courtesy of Tamela who was the featured blogger at The Secret Is In The Sauce/The SITS Girls website. It is a short video where a woman with no makeup comes to sit in front of a mirror. Time lapse photography shows how people do her hair and makeup, and then how the photo editors manipulate the photos before they are put on a huge sign. I feel like every young girl and teenager should see this, probably every young teen boy too, and it wouldn't hurt for all of the rest of us to see it either. Media has distorted people's concept of what beauty is, and I love this message.

Here are some links for more information about the campaign:
Campaign for Real Beauty
Dove Self Esteem Fund

Annelise's Unplanned Unassisted Home Waterbirth

Science & Sensibility, a research blog about healthy pregnancy, and birth, is hosting a blog carnival related to the Lamaze Six Healthy Birth Practices. I wanted to share the birth of my third child as a part of the blog carnival on Healthy Birth Practice #1 - Let Labor Begin on Its Own


The First Indications
I had only been 1 cm dilated and 75% effaced at my 39 week appointment. I woke up at 4:30 the morning on the day that I was 39 weeks 3 days pregnant, and had a strange and intensifying burning, stinging feeling in my cervix. Looking back, I assume this was my cervix effacing the rest of the way. About 15 minutes later, I had my first contraction. It lasted only about 30 seconds, but it was difficult to breathe or talk through. I stood up, and had another contraction, also 30 seconds long.

Testing a Theory
I decided to see if my positioning made any difference. I laid down, and had another contraction, 30 seconds long, about 5 minutes later. I stood up again and had a contraction 2 minutes later. I thought this was odd, and called my midwife. She told me that my uterus might just be irritated from the evening primrose oil capsules I had inserted the night before, or that it might be the start of labor. She told me to call her if things changed.

Transition
I endured a few more contractions by myself, and then had my husband get up to provide moral support through them about 5:20 am. This should have been a big clue that something hand changed, but we both ignored it. I was shocked at how incredibly painful my contractions were becoming, and how quickly they progressed to 2 minutes apart peaking after a minute. My husband called my midwife again to tell her of the change, and I had some significant bloody show. I had NO idea what was going on, but the contractions were just monstrous. Having been through labor twice, I was not feeling terribly confident or competent. Don't you love transition?
Transition?! What???!!!!

A Slight Change of Plans
We were already planning a homebirth, and my midwife had not brought over her aquadoula birthing pool for us to set up. I had asked my husband to fill the bathtub after he'd gotten off the phone with the midwife, as I thought it might provide some relief. About 6 am, I called my mom to tell her we were having a baby today. I felt another contraction coming, and got off the phone.

During this contraction, my body started to push! I considered momentarily that I must be misinterpreting the urge to push, I didn't even know if baby was engaged!!! By the time that contraction was over, I decided I'd better get off the living room couch if I didn't want to have the baby right there on the floor! The midwife was not at our house, and the birthing pool was not set up. Time to go with Plan B!

I ran out of the living room tearing my pajamas off as I waddled swiftly down the hallway yelling "She's coming! She's coming!", and got into the tub. I prayed very quickly that God would preserve me from tearing badly, and that he would keep us both safe.

The Express Train Birth
I had no sooner gotten in the water than I had the most amazing contraction. I really did not push Annelise out. She pushed herself into the world, and I just sorta held onto my husband's hand and the bar above the soap dish while I felt like my body was ripping in two pieces. My bag of waters exploded with that one long pushing contraction, and her head was out!

My husband supported her head in the water while I waited for the next rush to push her body out. The second contraction hit and she came out with the force of a torpedo. My husband says if he hadn't been there to catch, she might have hit her head on the other side of the tub with the sheer velocity of her exit. The express train route!

Meeting the Family
Her cord was nice and long, and it was looped loosely around her head, so we unwrapped her, and he handed her to me. She was breathing quietly, and alert, looking around at the well lit bathroom, but wasn't yelling or anything. We weren't even sure if she was breathing at that point, she may have still been breathing from the cord, and she did seem a bit shocked to be perched on my knee.

My husband called the midwife and asked what he ought to know about delivering the placenta. She was in shock that I had already had the baby!!! Right on cue, Annelise let out a nice strong wail, and my midwife told him to get some chux pads from the birth kit and help me out of the tub. She said to wait for the placenta and to not cut the cord till she arrived.

My daughters woke up around the time he was on the phone, and they were able to see me and the baby in low light in the bathtub just moments after her arrival. They were so excited. Ella heard me laboring, but was too scared to get out of bed. As soon as the baby cried the first time, she and Maddie fairly flew in to see.


Reflections
My husband is a very calm and levelheaded person. I always knew that if we were faced with a precipitous birth situation, that he would perform well under pressure and be a great source of strength and focus for me. He was just exactly those things, and I am so blessed to have a husband who can keep his wits about him! He told me later that I made it all look easy, not sure how that's possible since I was barely contained for that last half hour or so!

It was a fascinating journey, and I can say looking back that while being in the throes of a 1 hr 15 minute birth is terrifying, it was just as it should have been. My blood pressure was 150 over 100 when my midwife arrived, and I don't believe I could have labored for very long at home with blood pressure that high. I would not seek to repeat an unassisted birth, as I happen to love my midwife as a dear friend, but my husband and I enjoyed our "do it yourself" experience.

Child Psychology - How I Discovered Attachment Parenting

I was raised in what I percieve to be a typical 1970s/1980s American Midwest home. My dad worked as a bread delivery man, and my mom was an elementary school teacher. I was nursed for about 10 days, before my maternal grandmother finally convinced my mom that I would probably starve to death if she didn't switch to formula. I never slept with my parents in their bed. My mom was a substitute teacher after I was a year old, and by the time I was 5, she was back to fulltime teaching. I was a latchkey kid by the time I was in fourth grade, and the following were staples in my home: koolaid, toaster pastries, boxed Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Oscar Meyer Bologna and ketchup sandwiches on wonder bread, and generic oreos/hydrox sandwich cookies.

I went to college deciding whether I wanted to be a special ed teacher or work in clinical psychology. During my junior year, one class I took spent a lot of time on theories of attachment and non-attachment. Eriksen's Theory of Personality really resonated with me, though it was not at all the way I had been raised:

from Erik Erikson on Wikipedia

The Erikson life-stage virtues, in the order of the stages in which they may be acquired, are:

1.hope - Basic Trust vs. Mistrust - Infant stage. Does the child believe its caregivers to be reliable?

2.will - Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt - Toddler stage. Child needs to learn to explore the world. Bad if the parent is too smothering or completely neglectful.

3.purpose - Initiative vs. Guilt - Kindergarten - Can the child plan or do things on his own, such as dress him or herself. If "guilty" about making his or her own choices, the child will not function well. Erikson has a positive outlook on this stage, saying that most guilt is quickly compensated by a sense of accomplishment.

4.competence - Industry vs. Inferiority - Around age 6 to puberty. Child comparing self worth to others (such as in a classroom environment). Child can recognize major disparities in personal abilities relative to other children. Erikson places some emphasis on the teacher, who should ensure that children do not feel inferior.

5.fidelity - Identity vs. Role Confusion - Teenager. Questioning of self. Who am I, how do I fit in? Where am I going in life? Erikson believes that if the parents allow the child to explore, they will conclude their own identity. However, if the parents continually push him/her to conform to their views, the teen will face identity confusion.

6.love (in intimate relationships, work and family) - Intimacy vs. Isolation - Young adult. Who do I want to be with or date, what am I going to do with my life? Will I settle down? This stage has begun to last longer as young adults choose to stay in school and not settle.

7.caring - Generativity vs. Stagnation - the Mid-life crisis. Measure accomplishments/failures. Am I satisfied or not? The need to assist the younger generation. Stagnation is the feeling of not having done anything to help the next generation.

8.wisdom - Ego Integrity vs. Despair - old age. Some handle death well. Some can be bitter, unhappy, dissatisfied with what they accomplished or failed to accomplish within their life time. They reflect on the past, and either conclude at satisfaction or despair.

It made sense to me to meet the needs of babies and children as they came, and to not supress them or hurry them to another stage. This primarily has to do with stages 1 and 2 of Erikson's theory of Personality.

I was also influenced, after researching this information, by the work of Thomas Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, which you can read about here: Attachment Theory

During my several months dating and engagement with my husband, we became close with a couple who practiced attachment parenting. The husband was my (then) boyfriend's boss. They had 3 sons when we met them, and their youngest was 18 months old, and still nursing. She had given birth to him at home with a midwife, and also had a homebirth with her next son. Hers was the first and only real life example I'd had of following a child's lead for sleep, for nursing, and fulfilling all of his wants on demand as often as she was able. Her other boys were not spoiled, dependent, clingy fellows, and I assumed that it would not be the case with their new baby either.

During my first pregnancy, I became a research NUT. I read everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy, its potential complications, childbirth, breastfeeding, vaccination, and childrearing. By the time our baby was born, I was convinced that I would breastfeed until she self weaned, I would not be letting her cry herself to sleep because of the potential for raising cortisol in her brain to dangerous levels, that the best and safest place for her to sleep was next to me, that we would delay her vaccines indefinitely until I had more chance to read and to talk to our pediatrician, and that we would be following the general tenets of Attachment Parenting to raise her.

As it turned out, she was a high need, constantly nursing, screamed if you put her down, stimulus seeking sort of baby. Just the exact sort of child who benefits greatly from the use of Attachment Parenting principles.

I am so glad that I was prepared to recieve the child with the personality that needed me to be open to attachment parenting. I have used many of the features of AP with our subsequent children, though I don't think any of them "needed" it as much as our first did.

How Are You Different?

There are several ways in which I differ from most of the moms I know. I would like to create a separate blog for some of those issues, and I wanted to introduce a little bit more about myself here.

I am one of "those" mothers.

* I do not vaccinate my children.
(disclaimer, since my blog tends to focus on my daughter with Aspergers. The decision was not based on fear concerning MMR and autism)
* I breastfeed my children until they choose to wean.
* I believe the best and safest place for my baby to sleep is next to me in my bed.
* I believe the best and safest place for me to give birth is at home.
* I did not and would not circumcise my son(s).
* I believe the best place to educate my children is at home.
(another disclaimer: Ella is in public school. I do not think it is the best place to educate her, but it works for us right now)



I used to be a Mary Kay lady. I drive a minivan with cute little stick people stickers on the back. You will mostly find me dressed in flats, capri pants, dressy t-shirts from Target, wearing jewelry and makeup.

But you'd never know looking at me that I was a hippiechick on the inside. I blend in well. I don't seek to blend in, it has just happened that way.

I socialize in person primarily with parents in the mainstream. I've never been on the receiving end of any spoken judgment about my choices, and I've not verbally dished out any judgment onto mothers who parent differently than I do. It may be that I just live in a very tolerant pocket of the universe, but I am "free to be me" and do not have to fear the moms at the park or at church making comments about how weird I am for nursing until past age 2, or having homebirths, or homeschooling my children. I have sought to make friends with other local moms who share my parenting ideals, but have very often found that they have a much more "us vs. them" idea about things, and do not have any friends who parent differently than they do. I was never very adept at making my own style, so I never have dressed the part of the hippy. I don't know how. So I definitely appear to be a mainstream suburban mom in that aspect.

In the next several posts, I will take each of those starred statements and blog about them and why I came to those decisions.

They are, of course, my opinion, and my decision, and do not really affect other people. So while you are welcome to comment about how you believe differently, I can assure you that I have been reading and researching about these topics for the last 10 years and have come to my own educated decision about them. Like I said, I am free to be me.