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Begin at the Beginning
Forgive me for being a bit obvious here: Natural Parenting came pretty naturally to us. When I look at the list of principles that make up the natural parenting philosophy, I identify with so many of them that it’s hard for me to think of just one that might resonate more than another. I can’t even really pinpoint how or when I came to incorporate them into my life. Sometimes I end up in a situation (like the sign-in sheet at La Leche League meetings) when I am asked where I first heard of La Leche League or co-sleeping, or when did I first become interested in homeschooling or midwifery, or when did I decide to breastfeed and to leave my son intact, and I just can’t say. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about those things, yet the truth is that somewhere in my twenties I must have started absorbing the Natural Parenting principles from somewhere, little by little. I have a feeling that the process was very organic, each of these ideas meshing with some part of who I was already. There were no epiphanies; just a feeling that “hey, this makes sense—how could I do it any other way?” If I had to say what opened the door for natural parenting in my life, I’d have to start at the beginning, and for me, that is homebirth. I was born at home and thus, all my life I’ve understood homebirth as a legitimate option. In grade school, I was more interested in the fact that I could wow my classmates as the only one not born in a hospital. I didn’t give much thought to the significance in terms of birth options or maternity care reform, but subconsciously I must have realised that I was proof that hospitals were NOT a vital part of the process of birthing a baby. In University I took a class on the Psychology of Health where one section looked at maternity care around the world. I was instantly enraptured by the system in the Netherlands. In the Dutch system, prenatal care is delivered by midwives and general practitioners, unless the patient is deemed high risk and transferred to the care of an obstetrician. Thirty percent of Dutch births take place at home and every new mother receives free daily in-home post-natal care visits by a nurse who helps with chores and gives assistance establishing breastfeeding. Sitting in this class in my early 20’s I knew that I would be seeking midwifery care for my own pregnancies. Midwifery care was attractive to me in the beginning primarily because the midwifery model of care is so strikingly different than the medical model. For a really in depth explanation, I highly recommend Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth, but in a nutshell, the midwifery model of care views pregnancy and childbirth as normal, natural parts of life. The midwifery model believes that birth unfolds best when left alone and that the fewer the interventions the better. Even though I’d never been pregnant before that rang true for me; I didn’t believe that pregnancy was a disability or that birth was an emergency waiting to happen. I guess what it came down to is that midwifery validated what I’d known deep down my whole life—that birth is a safe and normal part of life. Nevertheless, when I was pregnant with my first my attitude toward homebirth 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 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. Over and above the fact that many studies have been done recently that verify the safety of homebirth, a few things...
Read MoreGoing Solo
In a few hours, Aaron is going to drop me off at the shuttle that will take me to 30 hours away from my children. I’m going to the City to visit my sister, a couple of girl friends and to get some much needed maternity clothes. I will be gone two nights. This is BIG. Rain is five years old. He co-slept with us until he was three when we started the slow process of transitioning him to to his own room: first in his own bed beside ours, then by having him nap in his new room, and then by switching him to sleeping nights in his room too. By this time, we were co-sleeping with his little sister Noa. This summer we transitioned Noa into her own bed in a room she shares with Rain. The process was surprisingly easy. Nevertheless, we wake up every morning with both of them in our bed. I breastfed Rain until he was a little over two. He weaned when I got pregnant with Noa. Noa has also just recently weaned after two years of nursing. For the last six years, I’ve been non-stop pregnant or nursing and co-sleeping. When Rain was two, Aaron and I went away overnight to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Rain stayed with my sister and I think we were actually gone less than 24 hours. Rain was a little sad but it went well and we probably would have done it again except that we got pregnant the next month so we started the whole process over again. Other than a few hours here and there when I’ve gone out with a friend, or Aaron and I have gone out and gotten a babysitter, or Rain went to preschool, or I worked part-time, that night away is the longest I’ve been away from my kids and they’ve been away from me. And now I’m 24 weeks pregnant. In February, I will begin what will likely be another two years of nursing and co-sleeping. It’s high time Mama had a bit of an extended break. I’m beyond excited about this trip. I will be able to: Read a book or knit on the ferry (rather than chase active toddlers round and round the boat, or sequester ourselves in the car with a DVD on the laptop) Go for dinner with a friend and stay for dessert (rather than rush to gobble the last of my meal and pay the bill before the toddler has a total melt down) Leave a restaurant without having to pick up food off the seats and floor first. Take transit and zone out listening to my own music on the ipod (rather than listen to non-stop child chatter or fighting) Do whatever I want all day Have uninterrupted conversations SLEEP BY MYSELF. ALL NIGHT. TWICE. I’m also incredibly nervous about this trip. I know in my heart that they will be fine. They will be with their dad who they adore and they have lots of fun things planned to do while I am gone. I will have a cell phone so they can call me whenever they need to. It will be ok. But it’s also a first and firsts are always a bit scary. I know there will be at least a few tears (on both sides) when I leave and over the weekend. I worry that two nights is too ambitious for a first separation. I worry that it’s unfair to leave Aaron with the full-time parenting over the weekend (hello irrational mother-guilt!). But I know that this will be good for all of us. I know it’s important to get space for yourself every now and then. I know it’ll be good for the kids to have both the uninterrupted time with Aaron and the opportunity to see that they are capable of surviving time away from me occasionally. I feel immeasurably grateful (and loved!) that Aaron encouraged me to do this trip. Plus, when I get home, I will have more than 1 pair of pants...
Read MoreBriefly October
The things I learned in October: Despite my best intentions, I can’t seem to get my butt in gear to blog as often as I’d like while also juggling a 2 year old, homeschooling a 5 year old, doing the books for our family business, re-designing the website for the family business and being pregnant. I don’t manage to stay nice Mommy when 2 year old has a melt down and doesn’t want to wear the costume that I fretted over for weeks and finally pulled together the week of Halloween. Challenge for future learning posts: Learn how to keep my own stress from infiltrating the holidays for the whole family. I really love making our own pickles. We made our first batch in August (dill pickles) and finally got to test them this month. So yummy. We also did beet pickles and pickled carrots over the weekend, bringing the total count to 19 quarts of dills (cukes), 12 quarts of pickled beets and 11 pints of pickled carrots. We also just got a canner as a gift from my in-laws and look forward to doing jams, sauces (apple, tomato, pear) and fruits & veggies (peaches, pears, tomatoes). Aaron and I have gotten into this as a joint hobby and find that it’s a nice way to spend some time together despite that it means that the kids either watch too many movies or rip the house apart jumping on every surface and spreading bedding and pillows far and wide. We drown our sorrows while cleaning the mess by eating pickles. I should mention that this is a surprise because I hated canning as a kid, partly because it was forced labour and partly because my mom would get really stressed out (file this under legitimate reasons for #2 above). Pregnancy related nausea likes to stay longer and longer with each of my pregnancies – another reason why this will be our last baby! With Rain I was feeling better by 12 weeks, with Noa it was somewhere between 14 and 16 weeks. This time, while I’m definitely over the all day sickness and exhaustion of the first trimester, nausea in the morning is still persisting at 24 weeks. Bummer! I may also have to accept that pregnancy seems to be increasing my allergies too as I sneeze my head off every day this fall (never having suffered from fall allergies before). Anticipating the births of friends’ babies and seeing the newborn photos afterward works very well as means to get me excited about our own little surprise baby—until the middle of the night when I can still be struck with intense panic at the thought of grocery shopping or bedtime with three kids. What I Learned This Month posts are inspired by Amber of Strocel.com. View this month’s link-up on her site to see what she and her participants learned in October...
Read MoreYou Are What You Eat
Last night I had the pleasure of getting out for an evening with Aaron (!) and the privilege of seeing Joel Salatin speak. I first saw Joel in the movie Food, Inc. (which I highly recommend, by the way) and I was captivated by his passion for sustainable farming. He operates a family farm in Virginia called Polyface Farm and has been featured in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and also in the documentary Fresh. Here is a clip of Joel from Fresh: Joel’s family raises pasture-fed beef, pork and poultry on their once totally depleted, almost soil-less farm which they completely revitalized without sowing any seed. Refining methods introduced by his father, Joel rotates his herds through his land using portable electric fences to allow the land to replenish itself naturally, without fertilizers. The animals eat grass and roam in the open air. This is the exact opposite of the feedlots and industrial food system. Salatin argues for the local food movement, for transparency in the food production system, for a re-integration of our rural and urban lifestyles where we respect our food producers and include them in the communities where we live and work. He urged us not to expect change overnight but to do what we can every day to change our food system. Ideas included turning the millions of acres of lawns in North America to edible food gardens, reinstating the kitchen as the heart of our homes where we make our food from scratch from real ingredients (not unpronounceable ingredients that come in packages), buying from local farms that allow us to tour the premises and of course, gardening with our children. With sparkling eyes and a big grin, he is a compelling, even mischievous speaker, as he said last night, “I definitely recommend that you break a lot of laws.” This was in response to the question at the end of the night from a man who stated that everything he wants to do is illegal so what laws should he break first. Of course, Joel is referring to the over-regulation of ordinary citizens who want to make their own choices about the food they eat: whether it’s to buy eggs from the neighbour, have backyard chickens or drink unpasteurized milk. I was already sold on his message, but I was further enamored when with a roll of his eyes he stated that our disconnect with food began back in the day when people decided that breastfeeding wasn’t good enough for our babies. He went on to tout the virtues of La Leche League, Lamaze and having dads in the delivery room as examples of ways the pendulum is starting to swing back towards an acceptance of the sanctity of life, even the sanctity of life of the least among us (the animals and plants we eat). Maybe it’s because I’m a hormonal pregnant woman but when he ended his speech by saying, “May your children call you blessed for they have inherited a better earth than we had,” I had just a little tear in my...
Read MoreFive
Last night, before tucking Rain in bed, we read him this poem from our new Gateways book: When I have said my evening prayer, And my clothes are folded on the chair, And mother switches off the light, I’ll still be four years old tonight. But, from the very break of day, Before the children rise and play, Before the greenness turns to gold, Tomorrow, I’ll be five years old. Five kisses when I wake, Five candles on my cake. Five years ago today, Rain was born at sunrise, on the last day of summer. It was a glorious sunny morning and Trout Lake was still and calm, reflecting the golds and greens of the park. When I think of the day he was born, I cherish that vision of the lake, even though I saw it because I was on my way into an ambulance for a retained placenta. At the time, I thought we’d be back in a few short hours to soak up that sunshine with our new gorgeous baby. Unfortunately, within an hour, my infant son and I were seperated for the first time and I spent the next few hours unconscious. We spent the remainder of that day in a window-less recovery room at BC Women’s hospital and didn’t get home until dinner time the next day. That glimpse of the lake as I stepped out to the ambulance is the only moment I had of that beautiful last day of summer in 2005, the day Rain joined us. That moment of blinding sun after a long hard night is the way I think of Rain, who, despite his name, really is a ray of sunshine. He is wild and tender, a great story teller, a brilliant inventor, an infectious laugh and a barrel full of energy. And he is five. How things have changed in these last five years. As I feel this new baby fluttering in my belly, I find it amazing to think of the person I was when I first felt Rain kicking. I still feel very much like I’m just a novice at this game called parenting, yet I’ve learned so much since those early days with baby Rain. Five years certainly is a respectable start. Looking at my boy, so big and still so little, I can’t help but feel that five is a bit of a milestone. Perhaps because five is often associated with heading off to Kindergarten, five feels like the beginning of a long slow letting go. Granted, I truly believe that letting go begins the moment you feel that first contraction. Nevertheless, five seems to mark the time when our kids will begin to go out into the world, at least for parts of the day, without mom & dad. That part fills me with wonder and pride and sadness and my heart swells and I get just a tiny bit choked up as I give him five kisses when he...
Read MoreMissing Out
Yesterday, I ran into a friend whose daughter is the same age as Rain. They went to preschool together for a year and a half, have attended each other’s birthdays and had play dates. I asked my friend how school was going for her daughter. She told me how much her daughter likes getting ready for school in the morning, how she’s asking to ride the bus instead of being picked up, how she loves having a spot to hang her backpack. I’ve been thinking of these things the last two weeks as I remembered to slow down in the school zones on my way to work, as I watched the kids in the new sneakers and backpacks walking to the front doors of the school two-by-two and smiling, as I noted the adorable rows of bikes on the bike rack. There’s this little part of me, deep down, that feels like I’m depriving Rain of all those things. In many ways, I liked school. I have a lot of fond memories: Going back-to-school shopping – we didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but it was one time when we were guaranteed at least a few new things. The novelty of riding the school bus School supplies – pink pearl erasers, cahiers (french immersion-speak for those ruled notebooks with half page blank to draw a picture), a new plaid pencil case with a zipper, and the Laurentien pencil crayons carefully arranged by colour to create a rainbow on the night before the first day Waiting in the line up to use the pencil sharpener on the wall to sharpen all of our pencil crayons Getting assigned a desk by alphabetical order and hoping a friend would fall nearby Arranging everything neatly in my little desk (until it eventually became a mess of crumpled paper and uneaten peanut butter sandwiches – even today I have good intentions but not the follow through). Sitting cross legged on the tapis (carpet – some words are forever in french in my memory) to do calendrier (calendar) – what day is it today? what is the weather like? Swinging at recess Recess! School lunches in a brown bag or my red Tupperware lunch box – with tiny snack size things like juice boxes A new back pack The first trip to the school library Picture day and getting the pictures back Clearly I was a bit of a nerd, but man, I really loved those things and I still kind of do. It makes me smile to think of Rain experiencing it all and part of me is sad to think that he is missing out. And part of me is sad that I am missing out on living it again vicariously through him. I have to remember however that Rain isn’t a mini-me. He would rather be building in the garage or digging for worms than sitting at a neat row of desks, and unlike my friend’s daughter, Rain hates getting dressed and ready to go anywhere, let alone to spend 6 hours in the company of 22 peers. I also remind myself some of the ways schools have changed since I was there. I think about the ways I felt let down by my education. But this week, I find myself wistfully wishing that public school really was the idealized version that exists in my memories. What did you love about elementary...
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