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Choosing Less
This year we made the decision to stay home for the holidays. Having moved last year and now living away from our families, this meant it was our first Christmas just the four of us. No grandparents. No cousins. No aunts or uncles. Just us. In our own house. Though finances did have a big part in that decision, there was definitely some choice. The choice to forgo the big family Christmas was made because it would be easier on all of us. We gave up the time with our parents and siblings so that we could sleep in our own beds, get our own Christmas tree (for the first time!), eat on our schedule and spend time with our kids (rather than chase them down as they run around with cousins). Though some of this was selfish (because I wanted things to be more stress-free), it was also about doing what was best for the kids. Travel is hard on little ones who thrive on routine, who sleep better in familiar surroundings with a predictable bed time. Visiting family often means missed naps, late dinners, late nights. The result is that the holiday is often exhausting for everyone in the end. So we chose to let go of some traditions and stay home. I’ve been reading Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. In her chapter on Holidays and Vacations, she says Unfortunately, we are often drained by baking, shopping, entertaining, cleaning, driving or other activities. When our kids need us the most we’re not available. Sometimes in order to bring joy to the holidays and vacations we have to let go. Traditions are supposed to be fun—an opportunity to come together as a family and celebrate. We collect them as we go along, gathering some from the family we grew up in, from our spouse’s family, and from friends. The result can be an overload of traditions. Too many should that lose their joy. We were on the right track when we chose to stay home this year and focus on the needs of our young children. Being home, however, meant that I could try to do more myself. Homemade Advent Calendar, special meals for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, homemade gifts to finish on deadline, potlucks to attend, dresses to sew. Considering I am still waking with a nursing toddler 3-4 times per night, I don’t have the luxury of staying up to squeeze everything in during the late night hours. Out of necessity, I started dropping things off the to-do list. I chose to do less. I gave up the tradition of pumpkin pie since making pastry was just too much work when only two of us would even eat the pie. We had crème brulée instead. It was easy to make and it was divine. I sewed one dress as a gift but didn’t get to the one for my daughter to wear for Christmas. We had a pj day instead. I got the blanket I was knitting sewn together but I left the trim for after Christmas. The passage from Raising Your Spirited Child really resonated with me today because it reminded me that letting go is best not just for ourselves. It also helps us be more present with our kids. If we are less stressed and haggared by the flurry of holiday shoulds, we feel better, we have more fun and there is more of us still functioning to help our kids through. Holidays are exciting and even at home in our familiar surroundings, it gets a little out of whack for little ones. School’s out, treats are in, routines get loosened. At such a busy time our kids need us more. Sometimes it feels like the long list of things to do is for the kids, that we are making the holidays special for them. But if we were to ask our kids we might find that they’d rather have less traditions and more time with...
Read MoreDoing It Myself
My husband and I have talked for a long time about the idea of being more self-sufficient. When we lived with my sister, we collaborated on a huge garden and we learned a lot from my sister who makes a lot of things herself rather than buying. Some of the changes we’ve made this year were done for financial reasons but we often find that making decisions for financial reasons reveals other bonuses you might not have expected. Food-wise making things from scratch gives you total control over the ingredients for instance. Product-wise making items often means that you can choose materials that won’t end up in a landfill. You can also reuse and up-cycle to reduce the impact of acquiring more things and by making rather buying, you teach your children about self-sufficiency and hopefully, skirt around some consumerism issues. Things we used to buy regularly that we now make ourselves are: ice cream, bread (though we have an awesome local baker that we support at least once a week for our sliced bread), mayo and granola. The bread recipe we use required a baking stone and rather than buy one, my husband had a potter friend fire us a flat slab of clay and we’ve been using the artisan bread recipe from Mother Earth News. My sister also makes her own yogurt, crackers and pasta noodles. I’m itching to try cheese although it feels kind of daunting to cut out buying cheese completely. And in a way, who would want to?? In the last couple of months, having closed my business, I have a lot more time to do things with my hands in and around caring for my kids. This Christmas especially I’ve been getting a lot of joy out of making things. Some of my recent projects have included: A magnetic Advent Calendar that is about counting down the days, rather than counting up the chocolate or little gifts every day. I wanted a calendar that was not disposable and that didn’t focus on getting something everyday. I stumbled on this idea (using a cookie sheet and scrapbooking papers) last year and loved it right away. A Caterpillar Dress for a swap with members from my old Due Date Club at Mothering.com from when I was pregnant with my daughter. I have made 1 which I sent in the swap and I’m making 2 more out of the remaining fabric (1 for my daughter and 1 as a gift). The corduroy was store-bought and the satin was an old housecoat I got from a friend. These dresses will fit from age 1-3 because as Little Miss grows you just start layering it over pants and it goes from Dress to Tunic to Tank Top. A Baby Blanket for my daughter to replace the one I knit her while pregnant and which got lost when she was 4 months old. I’m doing a different pattern this time, from Natural Knits. I still have 3 squares left to go + blocking + sewing together + knitting the edging. Do you think I can get it done in the next 9 days??? Our Stockings. I would like to maybe re-do these at some point in the future and do a nicer job using nicer fabrics. For now, I whipped these up in an hour using some cheap fleece. I like them. They’ll do for now. Popcorn Garland. This is our first year with a real tree. We used a little potted Norfolk Island Pine when we lived in the bus but it just wasn’t the same. Last year we travelled for Christmas so no tree. As a result, we’ve been married for 7 years and have almost no Christmas decorations. Plus, we’re in our first year of a new business so we don’t have a lot of cash. We did the old-fashioned popcorn and cranberry garland. Aaron and I sat up doing it one evening after the kids were in bed. It was a lovely way to spend the evening, sipping wine and chatting over a shared project...
Read MoreFirst Baby First Homebirth
I was born at home so I’ve known all my life that there was a possibility that it wasn’t all about the hospital, that there were options. Even so, when I was pregnant with my first my attitude was “we’ll see.” I thought we’d explore it, talk it over with the midwives but that it was more likely we’d have a homebirth with our second baby. I was unsure and I thought back to my mom saying that one of the reasons she had me at home was because she’d already given birth twice before. She talked about it like it was no big deal, but there was always the underlying explanation that she had experience. And me? In my first pregnancy? Of course, no experience. I recently read this post by @heartsandhandss from twitter where she talks about whether or not homebirth is for you. What struck me so much about her post was the idea that as a first time mom, even those who are drawn to homebirth often feel this ambivalence about homebirth. You say that with your second baby you might consider a birthing center or a homebirth because it won’t be as scary as with your first baby. Her argument is that you might as well have a homebirth while you still qualify for one, while you are still low risk. With cesarean rates hovering round 30% (depending on where you are), you have a 1 in 3 chance of coming home from the hospital with the prospect of trying for a VBAC next time. Again, depending on where you are, you might not be eligible for a homebirth anymore after that. This point of view really stuck with me. To me the tricky part is being able to balance that kind of rationale with the fact that first time moms often haven’t got the experience to TRUST birth yet. Interestingly, for so many the experience they gain in the hospital does the exact opposite: it doesn’t teach them to trust birth at all. Or you find that experienced mothers turn to homebirth only because they’ve had such a terrible hospital experience that they go looking for anything, any alternative must be better than doing THAT again. A few things helped change my mind about having a homebirth for my first baby. The first was that in my family it was treated like a normal and acceptable choice. I had support for my decision and it was something I’d known about my whole life. The second factor was the trust I had in my midwives and when I told them that I thought maybe a homebirth the second time around, they were able to put whatever nebulous fears I had to rest. In fact, I can’t even remember what their answer was. I just knew after that talk that we’d be planning a homebirth. And lastly, I read books books books until I trusted birth at least logically if not from experience. For me, it ended up being the natural path to take, perhaps because that’s where my path started in the first place. For others, I really think that @heartsandhandss makes a compelling and logical argument. If you want the best chance of staying low risk, staying eligible for homebirth in the future, at least explore it as an option the first time. Or make the choice to birth with a midwife in a hospital or birth centre. Otherwise, the choice may never be yours. photo credit:...
Read MoreAttitude Adjustment
Remember: if something is hard to do, then it’s not worth doing. — Homer J. Simpson I have often laughed about this quote partly because it’s true for me in some ways, and partly because I know to laugh at myself. I have never thought of myself as strong. I’ve hovered around 110 Lbs since my mid-teens. I wasn’t on the basketball team in high school. I’m not athletic. I get winded running around the block. And sometimes taking the stairs at work (though I still do it). I’ve never thought of myself as someone you’d ask to carry heavy boxes when you move. Or as someone who just keeps at it no matter how tired. That’s more like my husband. And that’s why I married him. When I was pregnant with my son, back in 2005, I took a Birthing From Within childbirth prep class and we spent one beautiful, sunny, Sunday morning in August talking about and crying about our worst fears about labour. Mine was pretty much that I just don’t have it in me to do something that physical for that long, that I would give up. I was afraid not only that I wasn’t strong enough but also that I just didn’t have the attitude to get me through. I had heard that quote about “having a baby is hard work. That’s why they call it labour” and while I appreciate it, it kind of scared me more than all the media hype about pain. But you know what? Guess what I’ve done in the last five years? I’ve made and grown another human being inside my body. Twice. I’ve pushed a baby out of my body without any pain relief medication or extraction methods. Twice. I’ve fed and kept a child alive and thriving for six months with my body alone. Twice. It turns out that my body is pretty damn strong and amazing. I did all this without training. Without special exercise or diet for the most part. I mostly ate the way I always eat. I took prenatal vitamins regularly the first time and when I remembered the second time. I did some prenatal yoga during my first pregnancy. I had awesome fans and a couple of great coaches which helped a lot of course. But I didn’t practice pregnancy or labour or birth or breastfeeding. I just did it. Because my body is made to do it. It turns out that I wasn’t just wrong about having a strong body. I was also dead wrong about my mind and my attitude. Or rather, by the time it really mattered I found out that I was wrong about my attitude. Before the contractions hit and around transition when I was telling myself to go to the hospital for an epidural, I still had some serious Homer attitude. But somehow I didn’t quit. What made the difference? When I look back, I realise that I was training and practicing and working hard getting ready to have a baby, breastfeed a baby and become a parent. I was preparing my mind for a mental marathon and I was adjusting my attitude. The yoga, the childbirth class, journaling, reading, learning: all of those were my training, my practice. It turns out that all of those are what helped me do what I needed to do. And for the rest, my body just did it’s thing because that’s what it is meant to do. Turns out that I’m more Winnie the Pooh than Homer Simpson: There is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. — Winnie the Pooh **photo: The hard work of labor, Flickr,...
Read MoreIdentity Crisis
For a very long time I was a student. After I left school, I worked various jobs. Nothing I would call a career, but jobs I liked and excelled at. I had a circle of friends at work and the jobs were, inevitably, part of who I was. I also read The Georgia Straight, went to movies, read books, listened to music and went to a lot of concerts and shows, saw a lot of DJs. I went hiking in the Coast Mountains on the weekends with co-workers. Then we bought a school bus and every spare moment was spent on the monumental project of converting an empty steel hulk into a livable space. We stopped hiking and camping. We went to fewer DJ shows. We gardened and went to Home Depot. Then we had a baby. There went movies and concerts and reading. The first year living in the bus was like the first year of parenthood. It is so hard, so different and so all encompassing that at the end of that year, you come out completely different. There is so much to learn, so much to adapt to, so much work to do that a lot of your old self drops away. The loss of former identity markers (though coupled with some disorientation) resulted in the forging of new ways of identifying. I became a “bus person,” a mom, and I suppose, (though I find this term a little silly) a birth junkie. I started my home birth supply business and threw myself into learning everything I could about birth and maternity care advocacy, about web design, about entrepreneurship. I was immersed in this world of living in a bus, of raising my son and of spending every spare minute building my birth store. Old interests were replaced with new and part of me was happy as I’ve always thought that we are more than our jobs, more than what we do. I felt excited about the prospect of self-definition coming from relationships, from who we are and who we love. Then we moved away from the City, away from our family, out of Eliza. We live in a little house and Eliza sits empty in a friend’s yard, forlorn and lonely, and sadly, unfinished. Then I made the difficult decision to close my business. I have spare time again. I’m knitting. Reading novels. Enjoying cooking and baking. But I am not a student. I have no career. I am no longer a bus person or an entrepreneur. I am not actively involved in the birth community as I was through my store. I have also come out of that fog as a new parent where your life is wrapped so tightly around the day to day necessity of being mom to a helpless infant. I am more than mom, more than wife, more than supporting actress. Right? In the same way that a home-maker might feel a little at a loss when her babies leave the nest, I feel that my other babies (my projects) just flew the coop too. And well, what does that make me now? Other than a bird sitting on an empty nest? I am letting myself exist in this space for a bit, knowing full well that I need me some renewal and some time. I am reading The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal, keeping tabs on the Mama Renew blog and waiting for whatever comes next. The next phase will probably start without me realizing it and in the mean time, I’ll be...
Read MoreSix Week Check-Up
Do you have new first time parents in your life? You’ve probably gotten them a gift and visited to meet the new wee one. You’ve probably puzzled over what a new family needs and how to help out. There are lots of great ideas out there. Here’s one I particularly liked as it really rang true for my experience as a new parent. To take it one step further, I’d like to challenge everyone out there to do the Six Week Check-up. That is, make a point of checking in with the new mom as her baby nears the six week mark. Why Six Weeks? Do you remember the six week check up after you had your first baby? Do you remember what else was going on for you then? Maybe you haven’t had kids yet or maybe your kids are older and now that you’ve left the sleep-deprived haze, those early days are all a blur. Let me remind you: The first few weeks were all bliss, staring at baby in awe, proudly presenting her to family and friends, feeling totally bonded to your partner for producing this perfect little angel. But now? Dad has gone back to work. The whirlwind of out-of-town visitors is slowing or they’ve all come and gone. Friends and family have all met baby and are back to their regular lives: working, house renos, family vacation. The new baby celebrations have all ended: the baby shower or meet the baby party was a few weeks ago. Friends are no longer dropping in with a cute onesie or yet another handmade blanket. The email congratulations have tapered off. In short, everyone else’s excitement has worn off. For them, now it’s business as usual. For mom? She’s home alone with baby and the reality of her new life is finally starting to hit her. This likely means getting used to the isolation of maternity leave. The first few weeks felt like a well-deserved vacation, especially after the aches and pains and fatigue of working while pregnant. But now, she’s kind of bored. She’s surprised by how much she misses talking to adults when she’s staring at the four walls and nursing AGAIN. She’s surprised by how much she misses the noise of the office (or the restaurant or the store or wherever it was for her) when she realises how quiet it is at home alone while her friends and partner are at work. When she sees her friends, she realizes she has surprisingly little to talk about now that she can’t talk about her work. She wonders what to do with herself and she misses that productive self, that woman who excelled at her work. It’s lonely and she feels a little lost in a culture that defines people by the work they do. After the standard first few weeks rest and recovery, she was feeling great and tried to get back to her normal routine, only to find that she’s still exhausted. Mama’s beginning to realise that her plans of continuing life as before with baby in tow might be a little unrealistic. Her thoughts of tackling some of those crafting projects gathering dust during her “year off” seem laughable now as she struggles to sleep enough, keep the house clean, shower and eat lunch. By 6 weeks, the new family is likely out of the extra freezer food they prepared before the birth and friends are no longer dropping off casseroles. Offers to throw a load of laundry in or pick up groceries while new mom grabs a nap have petered out. Mom’s learning to navigate the grocery store with baby (and all the baby gear) now. Every day is a list of laundry, nursing, diapers, nursing, napping, nursing, dishes, nursing, more laundry, more nursing, more diapers. She’s surprised at how little she accomplishes and she might be starting to get run down around the 6 week mark because she’s trying to do too much. Back to regular life? Not exactly. At 6 weeks, baby often goes through a growth spurt (also...
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