This Time Last Year...

... my water had already broken but there were no contractions yet.
... Jenna had come by to check on us and make sure she had time for dinner.
... I had already called everyone and told them that by tomorrow there would be a new baby in my house.
... the last bedtime with Little A being our only Little.


I am heavy reminiscing about the homebirth of Little B. It is different from A's birth, I am always happy that she was born, I celebrate her entrance into this world, but I don't remember so fondly the way she came into it. After she was born people told me "you forget how bad it was when you see the baby." I don't think her birth was "bad" not after some of the stories I've read, but it was forgettable. Little B's birth on the other hand was amazing and this week I have been reliving it. As I walk thru my days, I try to remember how I spent the last days of pregnancy. Like my last prego dance class with Melinda and Natalie. I actually got to have lunch with Melinda on that anniversary and we talked about the year we've had and Little B's entrance into the world, which she was present for. Or how at around 5 o'clock today I remembered waking up from my last solo nap with A. As soon as I stood up from that nap my water broke. I remember taking my last solo picture with Little A too. She was so excited and anxious about her baby brother coming. We did our best to prep her about birth, I think she handled it well... I remember trying to sleep in between the contractions when they finally started around midnight. I remember getting our of bed when they ramped up sometime between 1 and 2:30. I remember calling Kei at some point and she said we should all keep sleeping till things took off but then she was at my door because she knew I wouldn't get back to sleep and she said neither could she. I remember letting Huz sleep for as long as possible because there was nothing he could do to help me thru the mild contractions, but on my life, when I finally did need him it was the only time he ever jumped up and was awake right away. I remember when Melinda got there, with her oils and her crystals and her loving energy. She rubbed my feet. and my back. and heated the water. and sang me songs... I remember getting into the tub and the amazing feeling of the water. Then I remember the transition, thinking "oh my god what was I thinking? i can't do this shit!" and I remember seeing Little A's face, fear and excitement meeting there. Having her near me was amazing. I could look into her eyes and know that this would be fine. Then I remember roaring my son earthside. I roared him here so hard my voice was hoarse for days. Then we named him. We gave him a name that matched his birthspace. A middle name to honor our family. A last name to honor his father.

My Little Baby is a year old tomorrow. I cannot belive it. really. He is almost walking. He shows interest in everything he can see. and hear. and touch. and put in his mouth. The light in his eyes is so bright and amazing. I can't belive he is here. I can't believe that I had a successful home birth. I can't believe that my son in One Year Old.

Oh, I love Talking to Bean!!!

So, here I am sitting at the kitchen table watching this great birth video. The woman is gently vocalizing as she has her contractions and begins to push (not at all like me, who yelled/screamed so hard my voice was horse the next day). K Bean was on the other side of the room and couldn't see what was on the screen.

"Mommy, she's having a baby!"
"Yeah, she is."
"Like me!" Here she lifts up her shirt and pats her belly.
"Oh are you having a baby?"
"Yeah, in the bath."
"Ok."
"In the big bath!"
She came over to sit with me and watch the video. We talked about having babies and how we had Man Child at home in the tub, just like the lady in the video. I love sharing birth with my daughter. She always gets sooo excited when the baby comes out.
"Mommy, is she so happy she's crying?"
"Yeah, that's what Mommies do when they are soooo happy to see their babes."
"You were laughing."
"Yes, yes I was. I very happy."
I cried when I saw you too, my little love.

Spiritual Mantras for Cleaning House

Earth my body
Water my blood
Air my breath
fire my spirit.

I got clean sheets on my bed, laundry folded, dishes done and a baby washed! Sweet! Before I even discovered the mantra for house work, Melinda was helping me use it birthing babies. I thought, hey it worked then, maybe it'll work now. It did.

Tapatio is hotter when left on the counter... and consumed in large amounts at 10pm...

Earlier in the day, no chanting... but I still got some chunky stuff done- I showered Bean, with Soap this time instead of getting her wet and calling it good, AND I cut her hair. Yeah I did! She looks so cute and neat instead of some crazy scraggle kid I pulled off the street. She even ate 2 really good-ish meals today. I know most kids eat 3 or more but she fell asleep at 6:45! Crazy Kid. Maybe that helped get all that stuff done...? Naw it was the chanting.

Bean says Toy Story 3 is too scary for her so we watched Bugs Life instead. Also a great movie, but I sooo love TS3! I got most of the head of another frog done, but I was nursing, then holding a sleeping baby so it didn't go as fast as it could have. Now I will work on it for a little while while watching Hulu and then go back to bed with my spit-up free clean smelling little baby. yay.

The Man Child's new favorite night time song (another chant courtesy of Melinda) helped him doze off quite a bit faster tonight and kept him entertained as I washed dishes next to his bath tub. yeah, multi-tasking.

We all come from the Goddess
And to her we shall return.
Like a drop of water
Flowing to the Ocean...

The fact is, chanting these and putting love and truth into the words gives me the strength I need to finish my task. Just like when I birthed my Man Child, hearing these words... or maybe I thought them waaayyyy hard in my head, gives me strength to put one foot in front of the other. Women have been raising beautiful, honest children in worse situations than ours and we will be fine as long as I don't give up.

Thank you
Blessed be

yay!!! Finally!!!

So as of today, my new baby is 2 weeks old. The delivery went really well, better than I could ever have imagined! It took 5 1/2 hours and I only pushed for 15 minutes before he came out. K Bean was there in Daddy's lap for the whole thing! She got a little freaked out for the pushing but Wade-o got her all stoked and excited when they saw his head come out. She likes to say "Mommy was making scary sounds and baby brother was purple!" Having a baby at home is such a different experience than having a baby in the  hospital. When we had Bean, she was born in the hospital and when she came out she went to the doctor then a nurse then another nurse for all the tests and things then to J Wizzle and then , finally, to me. This time, as soon as he came out, he was placed right on my chest where they were able to check his lungs and heart beat and suck the goo out of his mouth and nose. In the hospital they took my baby then surprised me with having to push out the placenta, at home I got to hold for as long as I wanted while we waited for the cord to stop pulsing before any one made me push again. The hospital made me lay on my back to deliver and gave me no real method of controlling my contractions, at home I could walk around or do squats or get in the tub full of warm water. The water was amazing, the warmth and the buoyancy helped relieve the contractions to a point where I felt I could really ride them and I really knew when to push. In the hospital, the nurses and doctors told me when I was or wasn't having a contraction (I was hooked up to all sorts a monitors), they told me when to push and when not to. This time I was truly encouraged to listen to my body and channel my inner goddess and birth this life on my own, in my own way. Don't get me wrong, it still hurt like bitch, but it was an amazing pain. Life giving, life altering. I didn't have to wait for any go ahead, I said I was ready to get out of the water after snuggling him close for a moment and the midwives and my beloved doula helped to dry me and wrap me while Wade-o said hello to his son. They helped me to my bed, only steps away, and got me settled then put his little face to my breast and started nursing. He didn't want it at first but after a second of thinking about it he latched on.

At birth he weighed 7 lbs. 8 oz. and was 21 1/2 inches long. As of Wednesday he had already gained a whole pound! I will call him "The Man-Child" and so far he is living up to it. K Bean has been a great big sister but I think she is starting to get bored with waiting for him to play with her...

The recovery was so simple, I was up and moving about days after his birth rather than weeks as I had been with K Bean. I didn't tear this time and I didn't want any drugs, I felt so powerful and I knew I could do it all by myself. We still spend as much time in bed skin to skin as possible but we have already been to the play ground with Bean and the grocery store twice. Oh and the baby boutique! He loves outings.

So that's it. The Goddess has truly blessed my family and I can't wait to see what comes next.

It Has Begun!

Well, my water has broken and the contractions are starting. They aren't intense or very close together but, hey, it's a start! I had 2 acupuncture treatments, one yesterday and one today. Right before my appointment today, my mucus plug came out and while I was sitting there with the needles all in me I felt a few very teeny contractions start. So on with the process. I'll probably be back as the evening goes on.

Still No Baby

Nope, it is true, there is still no new baby at my house, but that's OK. My dear, dear friend Natalie is coming to stay with us a while to help me finish getting some of the more tedious things done, so hopefully everything will be clean and ready when this little guy is ready to come out.

J Wizzle is home, that makes everything in life waaaayyyy better, though we did get off to a bit of a rough start. Now that he is home and settled in, he is helpful and great and loving. He still gets snappy with me and K Bean if she needs something at night and I declare that I am not about to get my huge ass out of bed. But he gets up and does his best (which is pretty darn great) to take care of her. Today he made breakfast and let me sleep till noon!

We had another appointment with the midwives today, I grew 1 1/2 inches since last Friday! Oh I hope this kid isn't too huge. They said everything looks great and on track so I should just hang in there and wait it out. I'm still going to walk 3 or 4 miles tomorrow, in hopes that that will speed things up a bit. I didn't walk today, I needed to give my legs a rest.

I finished the yellow hat I started about a week, week and a half ago. I did it with the wrong sized needles so it turned out to small for my mom, but looks adorable on K Bean's little head, so she gets it. I also learned how to knit on double pointed needles, which turned out to be way easier than I thought! The ladies at the Mendocino Yarn Shop are sooo great and helpful, they helped answer all of my silly knitting problems, got me the stuff I need, and sent me on my way. So Jodi's hat should be done in no time at all, then I can start something new! yay!

Exciting News! and My Baby Girl's Birth Story... or parts of it anyway.

The first thing is way awesome, the second thing kinda sucks and the third thing is K Bean's birth story. I thought I should write it out before it gets all blended up with Baby Brother's.

After weeks of putting it off and watching things get grosser and grosser, I finally cleaned my bathroom. That is my Sunday Room-to-Clean on my new clean house chart. I got it done and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be... OK, yes it was. It was waaayyy gross. But I did it anyhow. The floor, the window, the blinds even! the mirror, sink and toilet, and even the shower! I even reorganized the shelves and brought in a new cart-ish thing to store towels and the like. Yay.
And to day, I finally started the kitchen. This will be a big project because not only are there 3 or 4 days worth of dishes in the sink, to K Bean 'helped' by turning her lunch into 'lotion' then dropping the yogurt covered tray on the floor. So hopefully today, I will finish the dishes, clean the counters and get the floor mopped and shiny. I really want to reorganize the shelves in here too so we'll see how far I get.
Oh, and I gave K Bean a hair cut! She looks sooo darn cute.
Oh, aaannnddd J Dub comes home today! Yay!

In case I haven't said anything about it in the blog so far- this baby moves around a lot. I mean all the time, this fetus is never still. His most active times of day are, of course, nap time and bedtime. And he always plays back when I move hes foot or poke some part of him that is sticking out. Well, yesterday, K and I were playing and she kicked me pretty hard in the upper tummy, where his feet would be. So all day yesterday, I payed close attention to his movements and found that he wasn't moving nearly as much as I thought he should be. When I laid down next to KBean to go to sleep (at 11pm) the little man in my belly wasn't moving at all... so, I called one of my midwives to ask her what she thought I should do. She had me go to the hospital to get a 'Non-Stress Test'. Not very non-stressful. My friends hubby came to sit with K and I sped all 10 blocks to the hospital. My midwife must have called to say was coming because the emergency room door burst open when the night guy (a super super nice dude with a great and reassuring smile) saw me. He sent me right back to the birth wing, which I had nooo idea where it was having never been there before. The nurse was ready for me and I was weighed, pee tested, and hooked up to the machine in like 5 minutes! As soon as she had the heartbeat monitor in place, and I could hear the little thumping, I knew everything was fine. But she had me stay hooked up for 20 minutes, that is how long the test takes, and she checked me every 5. Needless to say, Baby Brother is fine, lots of movement, just a clam kind of day, I guess... The exciting news was that while I was sitting there, I had 2 contractions!... OK, well, I didn't feel them, but still, 2 contractions! He'll be here soon, I just know it!

Now on to K Bean's story... First of all, she was 6 days past her so called 'Due Date' and our Dr. in Georgia had us go to a specialist at the hospital for the same test. Once again, everything was fine. The nurse kept trying to tell me I was contracting, I guess a ton of little ones, but I couldn't feel them. They sent us home and said 'If anything changes come to the hospital right away.' So we went home. J Wizzle and I both figured if I was contracting already then today would be our last day to really get things in order. So we spent the rest of our day cleaning and organizing and making phone calls, all that stuff that gets put off till the last moment anyway. We didn't start getting ready for bed till around midnight. That's when I had my first real contraction. We had a hella busy day and now I was in for a sleepless night of birthing my daughter. Great. We already had the bag and the car seat in the car so J Dub drove us the 26 minutes to the hospital. We had already registered, some pre-reg thing to make check in go faster. The triage nurse took us right away and was pretty cool, she did all the initial checking and poking around and whatever it is that they do and sent us to our room. I labored for 8 hours but have no idea how long I had to push for. At this point it all seems the same. At some point I declared I was done and didn't care what had to happen, just get her out of me!!! I don't remember the Dr. coming in but she was just like my mom, she told me to stop whining and push, that my birth plan said no forceps or things like that and that was how we would it! I told her to reach in and grab the baby by the ears, no tools needed. Isn't that how they do cows? Anyway, after much, much, yelling, the Doctor and J Dub were looking at a little purple monkey and telling me to push one more time, for the placenta. WTF? No one said that shit has to come out separately! Any way they took K Bean to run all those first-day-on-earth tests and she was perfect. The couch in the recovery room was way too short for my poor man and his poor back could only take so much.Since the baby Bean and I were doing fine, nursing and sleeping and peeing and all that, J Dub and I decided we should leave. So we did. We practically had to fight our way out, the hospital didn't want us to go. But we both hate hospitals and were very adamant about leaving so after signing away all types of disclaimers we got to go home...
And she grew, and now shes 2 and amazing and that is how it went. I bet J Dub remembers things differently but between the 2 of us, I think we have it pretty down.

Some Stuff Done, Still More to Come

Every time I think I have a handle on the To-Do list, it seems to get longer.

The good news is that I got all the laundry done despite having a broken dryer. I did have to take it all to my mom's house and use her appliances, but that is ok with me, I think it go done faster that way. I hung the belly cast just to get it out of the way but it still needs to be primed and decorated... I figured we could all do that as a family when J Dub gets home and this baby is finally born. The rug in the living room still needs to be laid out and both that and the carpet in the bedroom need to be cleaned while I still have mom and dad's steam vac. I need to do it soon because once I return that I can borrow the sewing machine and make my curtains. I finally laid out a cleaning schedule so I don't get so overwhelmed everyday when I wake up and realize my house is a pigsty.

Hopefully, getting the cleaning part of homemaking down will inspire and help me get to the cooking part. The ideal for our family is good home cooked, mostly vegan meals at least twice a day. There is an amazing grocery store here that has great sales on all types of organic, gluten free, or vegan packaged goods but I need to start cooking things from scratch too. I have a great collection of vegan and gluten free cookbooks, the recipes I have tried have all turned out well, and I enjoyed making them. But something always stops me from doing it on a regular basis. Usually it is the fact that my sink is still full of dishes from yesterday, or even a few days before! I don't want K Bean to grow up loving prepackaged, over processed foods, but she will if I don't change my act soon. Even organic gluten free cereal bars are still over processed products of the food industry.

Tomorrow my midwives come to check up on the little guy in my belly and make sure he isn't running out of room. I have a lot to do in the morning before they get here. Goodnight!

What's with Today, Today?

WOW! Today was a really productive day! I feel like I really got a bunch of stuff done. Not really to do with the upcoming birth... but, still a lot of stuff. We woke up and did a belly cast in our living room, where we will be having the baby. It started out a little bumpy, J Dub and I weren't really on the same page. It was his idea, but he thought we'd do it at my mom's house with her help and him just watching. I thought he really wanted to do it, but he isn't really crafty so I shoulda guessed. After some bickering we got to the part where we actually put the cast on my belly, it was very slimy and wet and fun! J Dub got really into it and it ended up being really romantic. So now we have a beautiful cast of my prego belly drying in the laundry room and as soon as it is dry, I will hang it and post pics.
I also managed to go to my mom's house and borrow the carpet cleaner and get a ton of new yarn. I measured the window for the living room and went to the fabric store to find curtains. Which I found, but I have to pick them up tomorrow, oh! along with the new crib mattress. I went to the plant nursery to find out how to take care of my new plants. That went well, hopefully I wont kill them like all my other house plants... And then Jamie came over and tried to help me figure out how to finish the hat I've been working on since Christmas. We didn't figure it out but it was really nice to work on it. I'll post pics of that later too and if anyone knows the Kitchener stitch aka grafting knitting, let me know. I just can't figure it out!
Now I am going to pick a new pattern and start a new project. I feel like knitting!

Yay! Preparations!

Things are coming together. We got a bunch of stuff off our really long list... still no bendy straws though! Not to get side tracked but! I will be boycotting the bendy straws until someone tells me why I need them! I had to get a CLEAN garden hose to fill the tub. And a sink- hose attachment... Oh man. Now I just need to keep the house in a constant state of readiness, keep the living room picked up and clean, and keep the dog hair to a minimum. Having J Wizzle at home has been amazing, for both me and K Bean. But as usual he will be leaving again soon, hopefully to be back in time for the birth. I mean, if he misses it, I will have to kill him! LOL.

We still haven't decided what to do with the placenta. We most definitely will NOT be cooking it and eating it. gross. But maybe we will bury it in my mom's yard and plant a tree over it, or something. I mean that is really the only thing I can think of that isn't super gross. Apparently, people dry it out and save it or they eat it or... well I don't know what you would do with something like that but the idea of it getting treated as bio hazard medical waste makes me a little sad. Hey, that is the thing that kept my baby alive in there! It isn't waste! But it is sorta gross...

Home Birth Preparations

I had no idea how much I needed to do to get ready to have my baby at home. When we had K Bean at the hospital all we needed to do was get our bag packed and show up. But to have the baby at home there is a whole list of things I will either need to buy, borrow or find. Today, my midwives dropped off the birth pool and a long list of things that would be needed, like trash bags, clean sheets, a large Tupperware... bendy straws! Why am I going to need bendy straws? WTF? I mean this list is over 30 things long. But, I will have most of it ready, so the day when this little man comes to stay, all will be ready for him. We already sleep with his blanket and his first outfit so our smell is on it. We have the tub and the tub liner. We've cleaned and rearranged the house. I got house plants and flowers and candles... Tomorrow, J Dub and I will prioritize the list and start chiseling it down. Most of his clothes are still at my mom's house, unwashed. But we do have a good 2 day supply of cloth diapers -also unwashed- but at least they are close to being ready to go.

I am really starting to freak out about this whole not-at-the-hospital thing. I like to tell myself that it will all be fine, that the only thing about the hospital is I will be more tempted to want drugs, the only way I will be able to welcome this child the way I, and J Dub, want to is to do it at home. Besides, the Bragg hospital is only 3 minutes from our house and is so low tech that if anything went truly wrong they wouldn't be able to stop it and we'd still have to be air-lifted to Santa Rosa. J Wizzle shows no fear. He says he knows I can do it. I know I can do it too, but it is still hella scary! He is so excited to meet his son. He has a name picked out, which I like, but haven't quite latched onto.

J Dub works so hard so he can be home with his family, but still be off making money. I love him, he is really amazing!