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Anticipation
I work part-time in a midwifery clinic as the office administrator. In this position, I get to see a lot women, partners and children as they go through the months leading up to the birth of their babies. I welcome them to the clinic, offer tea, tell them about the lending library, show them how to use the scale and the pee test strips. I see the couples as they wait for their appointments to start. I watch them gaze at the wall covered in baby announcements. I hear them giggle as they both try the scale. I listen as they discuss a book choice or show pictures to their toddlers. There are a lot of reasons I like my work but I must say that it’s such a privilege to be the quiet observer of this third trimester anticipation. Whether it’s a first time mom or a seasoned veteran, as she approaches her due date it seems all these couples/families slip into this otherwise unseen state. It’s a mixture of trepidation and excitement, wonder and worry. And there is nothing like it. No other life change brings anticipation like this. Not a new job. Not a move. Not even getting married. Welcoming a new (unknown) family member changes your life—for the rest of your life. It’s exciting. It’s scary. There’s no way to prepare for the emotional impact of welcoming a whole new individual permanently into your heart. It’s exciting to meet them for the first time and it’s an adventure to watch their little personalities emerge over the coming years. But there is also apprehension about how your life will change, how your family will adjust, and about who this little one will be. To me, that sense of anticipation is the epitome of the magic of pregnancy. Maybe it’s the glow people talk about. Last year, when I didn’t know if we’d ever have any other kids, I would watch the mamas and envy them. I’d been there twice before so I recognized well that look of joyful expectancy. The funny thing is when I was in the middle of it, living it, I ended up taking that feeling for granted…until it was gone and life went back to normal and then I recognized it for the first time. Now, every time I see a pregnant woman, I see that anticipation just oozing out of them. Even the calmest and most nonchalant of midwifery clients, even the quick glance of a stranger on the street, reveals a woman waiting for a life changing event. And here I am now, just about 34 weeks pregnant with my last baby, sore and uncomfortable and tired, and full and round and heavy with the weight of all that anticipation. Only this time, I’m aware of it, I’m honouring it, I’m reveling in it because I know there’s nothing else that compares to this and I know that this is my last chance to live it completely. How about you? Do remember that feeling from your...
Read MoreHere we go…
The PNE in Vancouver has a wooden rollercoaster that is close to 60 years old. I’m not a rollercoaster expert so maybe they all work this way but I thought it was pretty cool when I learned that this rollercoaster works entirely on gravity. The first hill is big and steep; the train is hauled up to the very top ever so slowly. It rounds the top curve and then hurtles down the slope below. From there, the ride just goes on it’s own by the grace of momentum and gravity with no mechanical help. I’ve had this unmistakable feeling in the last few weeks that my life is on a similar course right now as we wait for this third baby to arrive. The last few weeks, we’ve been getting ready for Christmas and Aaron’s birthday: organizing gifts, planning meals, cooking & baking. The year ahead has been pushed to the side but all the while I’ve had the underlying sense that we were all being firmly tugged up a long hill. And this frosty, sparkly morning, this first day of 2011, as we packed away all the Christmas decorations and wished each other Happy New Year, I felt the ride crest the hill. I find myself in that brief moment at the top, peering down the precipitous drop in front of us, giddy and terrified about the free fall that lies ahead. No turning back...
Read MoreCrafting My Life Guest Post
“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” – Robert Kiyosaki I’m excited to say that I’m guest-posting on that very theme over at Strocel.com today as part of Amber’s awesome Crafting My Life series. This is one of my favourite things on her blog and I’m honoured to have been able to contribute. She’s busy putting together a Crafting My Life e-course and I highly recommend that you check it out. And in the mean time, I hope you enjoy my post today. I have a dream. This dream began as a talk about what my husband Aaron and I envisioned for our retirement; then it morphed to include what we hope to provide for our kids as they grow up. A random conversation evolved into an elaborate picture of what we want our life to be like and I’m serious when I say elaborate. …Read the...
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This is my 2 year old daughter nursing after a late afternoon swim in Klein Lake on the Sunshine Coast this summer. I am now pregnant with our third child and Noa weaned a few months after this photo was taken. This is the last photo we have of her nursing.
Read MoreMindfully Creating Family Traditions
When we first got together in our mid-twenties, we (and our friends) were in the habit of celebrating about 3 holidays: Thanksgiving (big potluck), Halloween (costume parties) and Christmas. Beyond the required family Christmas, we also often did things with our friends, especially during the years when I had no family close by (potluck dinners, staff parties, secret Santa gift exchanges). When we had kids, it became more fun to revisit old traditions and holidays that had fallen by the wayside. Over the years we’ve added more and more (starting with Easter), and in the last year we decided to make a specific effort to focus on traditions and festivals in a mindful way. Rhythm This decision was precipitated by some of the things we learned about Waldorf school when we began to investigate Rain’s options for Kindergarten earlier this year. According to Waldorf educational philosophy, rhythm is an important aspect of human life: When more people depended directly upon nature for their living, their lives were, of necessity, more rhythmic. They recognized that the rhythms of their days, their weeks, and even the seasons of the year supported them by yielding to them what they needed to live. Beyond the Rainbow Bridge – Nurturing our Children From Birth to Seven For young children marking the seasons and festivals throughout the year is an important way to incorporate rhythm into their lives. This becomes increasingly important as we live in a society that is more and more cut off from the natural world. Though we chose not to pursue Waldorf education, the focus on rhythm throughout the year has enriched our family and homeschool life. We’ve made this a priority year round, but today I will just mention a couple that come to mind immediately. Birthdays One of our cherished birthday traditions began the day my oldest was born. We had made a blueberry pie to cook during our homebirth with the intention of sharing it with our midwives before they went home. Rain was born at 7:00 am. Every year, my husband takes the morning off work so that we can begin Rain’s birthday with blueberry pie for breakfast. Valentine’s Day Two years ago, I made a deliberate decision to start celebrating Valentine’s Day with my then 3.5 year old son. It was a reaction against the glut of commercial, trademarked characters (Dora, Spiderman, Sponge Bob, etc.) on store bought, throw away cards that was coming home from preschool. It was a reaction against the fact that cartoons aimed at children seem to often contain love interests when 4 and 5 year olds don’t need to be obsessed with having a girlfriend or boyfriend. It was even a reaction against all the people who hate Valentine’s Day for the way it makes single people feel and for the fact that it is so commercialized. I thought that at least while Rain is young I would like to teach him that Valentine’s Day is a day set aside to tell or show people in your life that they are special to you, whether that’s a good friend or a family member or your mate. I also wanted him to understand that Valentine’s Day can be about chocolate and cards but that it can also be about a thoughtful gift, or ideally using creativity and imagination. Rather than buy cards for his friends, we gave out pictures of Rain. We also celebrate as a family: heart shaped pancakes for breakfast or making jam sweetheart cookies together. We’ve also done things like hang dozens of hearts from the ceiling on strings or leave a trail of hearts on the floor leading to a hiding spot with a gift. Christmas Christmas can be pretty tricky to work out as a couple. We have had to figure out how to incorporate each of our individual traditions to try to create a meaningful holiday for our kids. Thankfully, Santa didn’t figure too prominently for either of our families so we don’t really do Santa for our kids (other than as a fun story). We...
Read MoreBriefly November
This month I learned again that it feels better to listen to the little voice in your head rather than ignore it. Earlier this month our landlord approached us and inquired if we would be willing to move before our Lease is up in August. She’s a really nice woman and we like her. She was not being evil. She’s going through a rough patch and we would have loved to help her out. I was rather overcome with panic and yet because I wanted to help her, we started looking for somewhere to move. We even looked into buying a place (but that’s a depressing tale for another day). During that week, I really couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I was totally consumed with the whole moving situation. My intuition was telling me that it was NOT a good one. I don’t think there are many people out there who relish the packing and cleaning involved in moving, but having moved a lot as a kid, there’s a part of me that still finds moving kind of exciting. Given that our house is pretty tiny and we’re expanding our family, a move could be a good thing for us too. But wait a minute. There’s the catch. We’re expanding our family. Our due date is only 3 months away. Back in 2008, we were expecting Noa and we made the decision to move the same month that she arrived. We didn’t just move to a new house; we moved to a new community and in the process left behind my sister and her kids who were virtually like Rain’s siblings. We also moved out of our bus and into a real house. Inflicting this many changes on our not-quite-three-year-old all at once was more than he could handle. He had a very hard time adjusting. We vowed not to do that again. We had committed to keep our kids’ lives as consistent as possible for at least 3-4 months on either side of our due date. But this month we found ourselves only thinking about what WE (the adults) might be capable of. My pregnancy is going smoothly. I am feeling well. I am feeling physically capable of moving. I can rationalize and consider the benefits of moving now. I can intellectually separate the move from the birth of our baby. As a parent, I can welcome a baby with unconditional love. I have moved many times in my life and am capable of adapting to new surroundings. As we ran out of options for December 1st rentals, we found ourselves looking at January 1st opportunities and caught ourselves rationalizing that we could make that happen. It wouldn’t be so bad. Except for that little voice in the back of my head that kept telling me that this isn’t a good idea. I had to keep reminding myself that little people, while resilient, need consistency in their lives. I had to remember that the question is not what we are capable of, but what are our kids capable of. The truth is that in many ways asking a 5 year old and a 2 year old to welcome another family member is a pretty big deal. It doesn’t seem fair to also ask them to cope with: having all of their things packed into boxes a week of driving back and forth from house to house the boredom while mom and dad pack and clean the late nights and late dinners associated with moving learning to get used to the sounds and smells of a new house losing the comfort of home (during the wait until the new house feels like home) Moving now, or anytime in the next 6 months, is not the best decision for my kids and my intuition was telling me that every time I looked up rental listings on craigslist and felt overwhelming panic. So I told our landlord that we couldn’t do it. Guess what happened? She was fine with it. And I feel a hundred times better for having listened to...
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