The Anxiety Is Setting In

With over a week of sporadic labor, dropping baby, and the super hero cleaning power kicking in, it is safe to say the end is certainly coming quickly and we will be meeting our long awaited miracle.  While I am so very excited, I cannot help but to start having flash backs of my pregnancy, labor and birth with Aiden.  I typically recall his birth as follows:

Water broke at 7 am.  I called my friend to tell her my bladder quit working. Went to the hospital, was treated less than human, felt forced into unwanted interventions, I had bad back labor, a stupid nurse, family that was making me crazy.  Aiden was born at 3:34pm.  My doctor cut me for a baby that weighed less than 6lbs. I spent 3 hours alone after having him when they took him to the nursery.  Had a nurse grab me and shove my son's face into my breast when I asked for help feeding him.  Then had a hysterical drive home with an asswipe ex-husband who thought it was funny to scare me 3 days postpartum.

End story.  The only thing I got from my birth that I planned was a vaginal delivery.  There are a lot of other sad details that play over in my head about that experience that I typically try to push away, I don't share.  But I shared the saddest with my husband the other nite.

I can remember being in transition with the worst back labor.  Stuck because I opted for an epidural due to the pitocin and no actual support from my family.  I had a husband that didn't care, a mother that was running in and out of my room in a panic and a mother-in-law that just sat in a rocking chair knitting a stupid hat. I had a nurse who kept telling me to be quiet.  I was nearly hysterical with emotional grief and pain and all I wanted was for everyone to leave. I didn't feel safe having my son with all these people who clearly didn't care about me.  During a time that I should have felt safe enough to check out of reality and check into the deepest part of me to get the job done, I was forced to remain present and tell myself that I could NOT ask these people to leave.  I had to remember to set up protection for myself AFTER the birth.  I did not want to, nor could I have dealt with the emotional wrath I would have endured from those people if I had just done what I felt.  I was so vulnerable and no one protected me. I was forced into protecting myself from the aftermath that would have come otherwise.  I want to cry just remembering that.  Just knowing that I was truly forced into submission by mental games.

I have felt robbed of being the mother I wanted to be.  My integrity, my ethics, my skills were questioned nearly everyday after Aiden's birth.  My mental ability was questioned.  I was cowed into letting everyone else do what was "best" for my son.  I feel like I lost so much of him for the first 3 years because I didn't step up and take what was mine out of fear of all the retaliation that I felt I would have endured. I cried so many nites in my apartment alone when I didn't have Aiden.  No one would meet me half way.  Help me be a better mother. It still hurts.

Now here I am, ready to have a baby with a man who allows no harm to come to me.  He has taken the time to come to class with me every week to get education on what's going to happen.  To learn how to support me so I can give our child the best start in life.  So I can bond and not feel helpless. Not feel like its a better choice to make everyone else happy above my own needs.

Skip has told me countless times that everything that has happened was never my fault.  That I did the best I could with what I had at the time.  Most the time I believe that, but parts of me still doubt that I did do my best.  I still wonder if I could have done better for myself and for Aiden. I know that things are amazingly different now and that I really have no need to worry about anything.  I am fully protected and fully in control of my parenting.

But looking back makes me feel like I am giving birth for the first time. I really don't know what to expect of myself.  What I am going to feel and how much different this process is going to be as compared to what I dealt with last time.  It scares me to a point.  All I want is peace from this birth.  I want to know I am capable, I am not broken, and that I can be a parent to a helpless infant without people judging and telling me I am doing it all wrong.  I want to be respected as a full grown woman and mother this time around.

Most of all, I want to know that I am strong enough to tell people NO without fearing their hurt feelings and retaliation for not putting them above myself and my family.

The Ending Weeks of Pregnancy

It's been 37 weeks since the beginning of my last loss over Mother's Day.  But it's the beginning of the countdown to bring this new baby into the world.  It doesn't feel like it has been that long.  There has not been much stress with this one either.  No daily worrying over what to expect, if I have all I need.  I've not had to worry about family breathing down my throat and telling me what to do and not to do.  Over all it's been pretty relaxing.

It feels good that in these counted down days my future is not uncertain.  That's how I felt at the end with Aiden.  But not now.  I have a real family and a man that is over the moon about what's about to go down.  It just doesn't get better than that.  I feel really lucky.

The supplies are organized, the birth pool is inflated.  We have a start to the few baby items we need.  The midwife is on call.  Our family is ready to become four.  I am as prepared as I can be for the work it's going to be, my husband is prepared as he can be in how to help me manage it.  The midwife has total confidence that everything is going to be normal.  100% normal.

We did a couple of pregnancy shots last nite.  Something I missed out on the first time around.  I wanted to remember what I looked like this time.  The human body is amazing and pregnancy shows just how amazing it is.  Looking forward to baby photos.

Pregnancy Weight Gain

Please don't hate, but this time around I am the pregnant lady no one wants to hear about this time around.  Sorry, but I feel good and have to brag a little.  I should be having this baby in the next 3-6 weeks and I have only gained 16lbs.  The best part is I just compared my current measurements to my pre-pregnancy measurements and with exception of the belly, they are all the same!

Sorry I just totally had to write that down somewhere because I am kinda in shock.  I have eaten a ton of food, but taken care of myself and I guess doing your best to stay healthy is worth the efforts.

Here's to hoping for an 8lb baby!!

What's in store for 2012

In 2011 Skip and I simply spent the year getting on track and laying the ground work to get some serious business done in 2012.  I believe for the most part we have managed and are hoping to not see any new surprises this year.  Fingers crossed.

The first quarter of this year is going to be VERY busy, new baby and a big move back home.  Both of those things lead right into further plans for the year.  First being having a natural birth being a HUGE requirement to have for the childbirth education program I am planning to become certified for in September. The course is being held in Denver for 3 long days.  I intend to become an active member at the Le Leche League and perhaps a leader at some point.  Also having the baby is going to start me on the track to infant photography.  I've been studying that quite a bit and I hope to be doing that in my spare time.  Even if it's just for fun.   

My off the wall goal that most of you are going to totally cringe at has to do with placentas.  I am going to become a certified encapsulation specialist.  My plans for home birth have brought forward some interesting studies, ideas, and made me think of things that have never crossed my mind.  One of the most profound being the use of our placentas after birth.  http://placentabenefits.info/ is a great place to start when it comes to understanding why consuming it is the best thing for a mother.  Yes, I know you just threw up a little in your mouth.  Sorry.  It makes a lot of sense and I want to be able to offer the service to new moms who just wouldn't be able to do it themselves.  Skip has already agreed to help with mine, but he still turns a little green at the thought.  

Those few things will eventually be laying serious groundwork into becoming an apprentice midwife.  I plan to start taking classes in early 2013.  

Those are personal somewhat business goals I have for myself this year.  As a family we have others.  We have devised a plan to get the majority of the left over debt from the surprises early in 2011 eliminated. We have these set to be eliminated by the beginning of summer! Like I said earlier, 2011 was a serious groundwork laying year.  We can actually see light at the end of the tunnel.  We are also moving forward with family nutrition.  I am currently tracking down things like local eggs and milk for our family when we get back to Colorado. We have discussed highly utilizing the local farmers markets as well as looking for more free range/local meats.  It is going to be impossible to eat perfect, as everything in our country seems to not be processed in a honest way.  All we can hope to do is try to get as close to perfect as possible.  

Aiden's actual homeschooling starts this year.  After much discussion we decided we simply don't feel comfortable sending him to a public school.  Lots of personal reasons for that.  Aiden is certainly a struggle to deal with some days, but we know how we want his education tailored and we are going to be only ones able to do that. 

Skip simply hopes to be getting into a decent unit so he can get some real groundwork laid for promotion. With only a little over 4 years left to go, he also has some decision making on what to do once he gets out. 

The dogs have personal goals of sled pulling and the cat has a goal of becoming an indoor only cat.  We will see how those go.  

I think that is a pretty good summary of what's going down for the Johnson's in 2012.  I of course will keep you all updated and will continue to post somewhat mindless rants on my blog when I feel so inspired!!

Happy New Year.    

Working Toward Career Choices

Right now my job is staying home and grooming dogs.  I love them both.  While grooming dogs for the last 9 nine years has most certainly had major rewards, advanced my knowledge and taught me patience beyond what any normal human being has on any given day, I have been questioning whether or not it is the path I want to stay on.  Being home with children will take up a TON of my time, I realize I would still like to have my own business and contribute to my house and personal interests at the same time.  Skip will be retiring in the next five years and we are going to have a lot more freedom and flexibility than we have now.  So I have been thinking hard and searching myself for what truly feels right.

I have considered nursing many many times.  Skip and I have talked about it, but in all honesty I do not want to go back to school.  I do not want to work in an environment of artificial drugs, no faith in the human body or an industry based on money not people.  I really love the human body and it's ability to heal.  I love to learn about different diseases and what they do, the workings of our insides etc, but I just cannot bring myself to go into the field. Not to mention I have ZERO desire to work for anybody but myself.  I want my career on my terms that works best for my family, not someone else's.

Last year's miscarriage taught me the medical field doesn't actually care about what human life is to an individual person.  So I decided at that point I would seek a midwife for care when I got pregnant again.  This year's miscarriage taught me the things we put in our bodies can and do cause long term side effects.  It also started me on a path learning about herbs and natural ways of healing.  We started to lose that baby just 2 days after meeting our midwife. She treated me like a person, kept in touch with me and directed me towards natural ways to help my fertility.  I was an actual person, not just a broken uterus.  She didn't down play the situation as "something that just happens."  She instead understood it as a loss and something that doesn't have to be "normal" until I lost so many it needed to be looked into.  I am convinced that because of her advice and guide into some serious research I would have lost this pregnancy without it.

I have been so engrossed with pregnancy research and education with this one that it has almost become a full time job.  I send my midwife links and questions and we have discussions about all kinds of things.  I signed Skip and I up for a natural child birth class called The Bradly Method and every week for the past 6 weeks I have loved seeing all those women and their husbands coming to class more and more educated because something has sparked them to research and get educated.  Needless to say I am almost OCD about women, pregnancy and birth.

Skip said to me after our 3rd class, "You know I think you can teach this."   So I went home and looked it up.  The laundry list to teach this 12 long class is HUGE!! The commitment is extraordinary.  But I am going to do it.  There will be a teaching conference in Denver next year.  We found that out just as we were getting our orders to Colorado.  Talk about timing!

So it comes down to these decisions.  I am most certainly without doubt going to become a natural childbirth educator. It allows me to have my own business and work for no one, but the women and husbands that come to me.  It allows me to have my hands in something I have become VERY passionate about and I get to help change lives.   But that is only part one of the plan.  Come mid 2013 when we have hopefully settled into a routine with classes and we know where the growth of our family is going, I am going to work on becoming a direct entry midwife.  I can do this 2 ways.  1) Relocate after retirement to attend a school or 2) become an apprentice midwife and test for my certification when I feel ready.

Not only does this satisfy my interest in the medical field, but I also feel like it allows me to be a part of something that I don't have to have compromised integrity as part of a system I don't think works.  I want to help women take back what is the most important part of their lives.  Motherhood, and it has to start before a baby is even born.  She cannot fear bringing life into the world or she will fear her abilities to do what is natural to her, mothering her children.  Only one percent of our nations babies are born at home and only 3-5 percent are delivered in the care of midwives.  The rest are subject to hospital protocols, interventions and doctors who are trained to believe women are broken.  We are not broken, I want to spread that message.

On Doctors

We are fairly anti doctor/hospital/medication in my house.  We know emergencies happen and it's a great thing to have a medical facility to help out(like the flu/reflux attack I had the other week), but 99% of the time we prefer to wait out an illness or treat it at home.  Skip has been treated by military doctors his whole life.  Any of us that have had the pleasure of dealing with that know good and well it's not exactly an awesome experience.  I have spent a good part of my adult life without health insurance and seen the difference in treatment when you don't have any means to pay for care.

The health system can very difficult to navigate and more often then not I personally have been treated like an object and not a human.  That was really the first reason we opted to not deal with doctors or hospitals with this pregnancy. I don't want to be part of an assembly line baby making production here.  I've never had a doctor introduce themselves and then tell me about who they are, where they grew up. their beliefs or what made them choose medicine.  NEVER.  They essentially remain a stranger that has permission to touch you all over once or twice a year.  They are the only people that get to do that without knowing much more than your birthday from your medical chart.

My midwife on the other hand has told us her story of how she got into her field.  What drives her. Her personal beliefs and values.  We know about her family, her marriage and a lot of times about the things she is doing currently or scheduled in the future.  She respects my body as my personal temple and doesn't see me as an object to treat.  She speaks to my husband and includes Aiden in all our visits.  She will ask about testing and explain the pros and cons.  She lets us make the decision with making us feel guilty or worried that we made the wrong choice.  She trusts that I am telling her the truth and never speaks down to me or tells me that I am wrong.  All of her solutions to things are natural.  Things that can be found in nature that won't harm my body or that of my baby.  I feel safe and in control while in her care.  She does NOTHING without asking first and making sure I am ready.  She has not given me a single vaginal exam and chances are I will give birth without ever having one.  It's my personal space and no one needs to be violating that.

I am so very thankful I will not have a doctor attending me and treating my body like it is dysfunctional.  I will not have a bunch of nurses telling me I am wrong and I can't possibly know what I am feeling and only they can make the calls on what happens next.  I will not be paying someone this time to imprison me and take away my choices and rights because they think they know more than me.

Teaching Our Children

When was the last time you spanked or slapped a co-worker for screwing something up at work?  How about the last time you hit your spouse for not doing the dishes or laundry right?  Did you yell at your neighbor last time they didn't mow their lawn on time?  Hey, maybe you even stood your mother in a corner for an unreasonable about of time for forgetting the cheese on her grocery trip.

Why don't we do any of these things to adults?  Simple, it would be considered assault or some kind of abuse.  You would go to jail, even though these people are old enough to fight back and protect themselves. Yet every single day a child is subjected to one or more of these forms of "punishment" because somewhere it was made to be Ok.  It's ok to physically harm little people who have no voice yet in the world for doing something wrong.

I grew up on the receiving end of physical punishment.  As a child things always seem much bigger and worse than maybe they are or perhaps the perception is right on target.  I learned nothing but FEAR and VIOLENCE from these punishments.  I was affected long into adulthood and to this day there are still things that make me flinch, get edgy and uncomfortable.  I will have a life long battle remaining calm in the presence of situations I endured growing up with.

We have had a rough couple of years with Aiden.  Understanding what makes him tick, what he is capable of sorting out himself and what he needs help to reason with.  During that time there has been spankings.  There has been yelling and there has been long time outs.  With every single punishment we felt guilty and we felt we had failed him by not understanding or teaching him what was expected.  Instead he got punished and the behavior we were trying to fix did not change.  So we had a talk about it.  We sorted out why we were feeling bad after an episode and discovered our failures and ultimately the damage that was going to be done by looking back to our childhoods and remembering our own small feelings.

We want Aiden to do the right things not because he fears punishment, but because he has learned that doing the right things are moral.  He needs to know right from wrong, not pain VS no pain.  We he grows up and learns to drive I want him to do the speed limit not because he fears getting a speeding ticket, but because he knows excessive speed can kill or harm himself or others.

The way we handle Aiden now and the way he interacts with us when he does something wrong has changed dramatically.  We understand he is not an adult and it is out job to show and be an example of what adults are.  He is more willing to reason with us and understand why his choices are wrong based on learning, not on fear and punishment.  We cannot expect our children to become adults when we are not giving them the opportunity to act and learn like one.  Hitting them, yelling at them and putting them away in a dark corner will not teach them how to make better choices.  You have to guide them there with patient hands and understanding.

Someday your children will be adults, how do you want them to interact with the world?  Do you want them to fear repercussions from doing the wrong thing?  Or do you want them to know what right is and not have fear of doing the wrong things to make their lives a success?