Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Two Different Births

Welcome to the June 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Embracing Your Birth Experience
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about at least one part of their birth experience that they can hold up and cherish.
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I've had two children.  Both completely different birth stories.

I had my son three years ago at a hospital with pitocin and an epidural and thank goodness vaginally because I was just minutes away from a c-section.

I had my daughter last year, at home, in my bedroom.  All natural.

I wonder sometimes if people think of my birth story with my daughter as sort of a redemption from what the birth of my son was like.  But I don't think that way at all.

I don't dwell on what could have been because there is simply nothing I can do about it.  It was what it was and it's over.  It doesn't take a piece of me because the whole of me is right in front of me, and that is my son.

Even though I don't dwell on my son's labor and delivery, it wasn't my ideal birth. There was something I could learn from it.  When I got pregnant with my daughter I told my husband I wanted the home birth this time.   We googled home birth midwives in our area and interviewed and picked the only one we looked at.  I know now that God lead us there as we were prayerfully considering the home birth.


What I learned

Trust your midwife (or OB)

My home birth midwife had delivered over 2000 babies before me.  She knows almost everything.  That was very important to me when I selected her.  She also knew a lot of the reasons my first labor went the way that it did.  We were able to troubleshoot so that I wasn't having the same long labor again with coupling contractions and stalls.


Trust your body
During my first labor I constantly wanted to be on my hands and knees.  Looking back, I wanted to be that way to keep my son from flipping.  When I was home birthing my daughter, I didn't fight the urge, I was in that position almost the whole time.  I even had my daughter in that position.  My labor was shorter and I didn't have those coupling contractions.

Learn from your experience
Don't be ashamed about your birth experience.  It may not have been what you wanted, but you can come closer to ideal if you change a couple things by learning from last time.  And you don't have to want a home birth to be an awesome Mom.  You are an awesome Mom because you are a Mom.  Don't forget that. You are what you believe. 

There are things that I would do different next time, too.  It will probably always be like that for me because I read something new.  Or change my thoughts from my previous experience.  And there are things that I choose not to think about anymore because I just don't want to.

Are there still things haunting you from your previous birth experience?  What has helped you let them go?  What did you learn from it?




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Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon June 12 with all the carnival links.)

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Garden 2012

We've done quite a lot of work out in our garden this year.  We rotatilled in April.  Then I planted a bunch of seeds on my birthday.  Then, since we dug up our grass to build our garden last year, a bunch of grass grew up again.  I got busy, you know with the two little ones, that I couldn't tell the seedlings from the weeds.  The broccoli and kale grew fast enough that I weeded around it.  Since some of my seeds didn't work I bought a few starts- tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkins and peppers.  Then re-weeded and planted the starts and planted a few more kale seeds.  I also bought some radish seeds since the go so fast and my kids really like them.   So hopefully we'll have some good things coming out of our garden to supplement (not that we need supplements) for our CSA.    I'm really excited.

Ben and Luke putting the fence up

We also put this fence around mostly to keep the dog out because she likes to dig holes in my garden.  But also to keep my two best helpers out, too.  Sometimes they help a little too much ;)