Dry Spell...FLOOD...Birth...Unschooling Ponderings

How is that for a loaded title?


This summer was weird. It was dry dry dry and HOT until about late July. Every thing was suffering, not growing well. And then it rained, and rained and rained and rained. And a few hurricanes in, and several rainy weeks. And now the area has had to deal with some serious flooding and damage


And some times, in that funny way that randomly happens, my little life is on parallel. 


Yeah, okay little dramatic. But I feel like January through hmm... July were dry. Hard...grueling months. Not all bad, some sweetness...some bitterness...Just too much on my plate, too much happening. I felt so dry...uninspired and drained. 


And now FLOOD.  


I feel like I'm on "process this" overload. I am so excited! And feeling so befuddled. And AGH! I have so much I want to say, to know, to DO, so BE...I really want to get back to reading and thinking. 


But slow and steady... taking it as it comes: when I want to rush, dive, and KNOW NOW.  Instead, I'm taking the kids to the park as much as possible....Reading more... and waiting.

Trip to the park yesterday... Apple slices on the bench.

And when I get an inkling...feeling it out. Which leads me to a little update since a few have asked...


 Newby's Birth: ???????????  I have no idea where, or how, or who, or any thing with this baby. It is honestly, a little bewildering. A lot bewildering.  I am 23 weeks and ?????? Time is not going to be my friend for long.


 I am a person who likes to have a plan. A person who knows (generally) what she wants and usually sticks with it (in the past to my determent). I am stubborn and if I know what I want and can't have it I can be kind of a bitch. At the same time, some times I'm too flexible... Also to my detriment. My life the last few years has been finding balance. But finding balance and listening to my conscience, and when you don't have all the factors in place: it gets messy. 


 I have felt out so many scenarios, interviewed or reached out and talked to so many OB offices (and a few OB's), tossed around so many home birth ideas... Felt so many emotions...Sorted through so many big feelings (and I'm sure I have more to process). And here I sit with a great BIG "?" and all I can get is *crickets*...Okay not just that His voice through has held an undercurrent of, "Shhh...Peace. Take your time. It will fall into place.Do NOT rush."


I still want my answers. But I think that's the thing with this sweet little Newby... I need to learn to take the journey as it comes. Slow and Steady. I really truly believe, it will fall into place. I'll know, and it will work out. 


I refuse to make decisions out of fear... Or shame... Or haphazardly!


In other news...I've been reading, a lot. 


Books that travel with me right now... 

Well, they also make a good table for snacks...

Learning All the Time
How small children begin
to read write, count
and investigate the world, with out being taught
By John Holt

Also

LOVING these books. I am working through them and I really recommend them, even just to think outside your box...They resonate so much with my heart, validate so many things that I have felt for Roo. 


Our little "school times" have evolved over the last 2 months... It's been so fun to read with them, to really make a more focused effort to not just "expose them to literature" but to make my love of books some thing we share... Not just my "me time" activity. It's been so interesting (and maybe this is just where she is at developmentally)  to see Friendly's appreciation and interest in books grow. She goes off into her room, or snuggle next to me in bed, with a pile of books and "reads" to me. Also as I've been reading my "big books" I've been holding her and reading out loud, letting her take my books and read from the pictureless books as well. Roo too, has been really enjoying sitting down and going through a pile of books.

The TV has been on less...Though I'm not really opposed to it's presence.. It's been so fun though the last 2 months to watch how their play has grown. It gets more and more creative! Some of this, is honestly Friendly being more on level with Roo developmentally. They spend hours having "adbentures" and using the most random things to enhance their play (their favorite objects being, clothesline, jump ropes, stuffed animals, card board boxes, pillows, blankets and random kitchen utensils). 


I want to write more about these books as I process. I would like to talk about unschooling and what I think it will mean in *my* family...And that's what I love about it. NO 2 unschooling families are going to look even remotely similar....I will definitely be processing this here a lot. 


Just for now I will leave you with a few quotes...


This is my objection to books about "teach Your Baby This" and "Teach Your Baby That". They are very likely to destroy children's belief that they can find things out for themselves, and to make them think instead that they can only find things out from others."
-John Holt


There are SO many things that I learned about myself in his sections on reading and counting. I feel, almost like some things clicked for me. I saw myself as some of the children he described and realized a little more about how my brain works. I've been enjoying it.


"unschooling not a life to be hurried, nor is it neat and tidy."
-the unschooling handbook


"it's about the journy. Not a paragraph definition."
-the unschooling handbook


So much more to share...eventually. Intrigued, challenged, and ready to feel this stuff out!

A duck playing on a rock... deep.

That "Rock and a Hard Place" Birth.

I'm pondering the moment I became a mother, twice.

I labored with my firstborn, I was scared. I didn't feel safe. Some thing was off. I wasn't connecting with the people who were supposed to be helping me. My labor stalled. I came to that Rock and a Hard place with my firstborn, but it wasn't during her birth. Her birth? I remember snippets. I remember feeling exposed. Scared and panicky. I remember my neck was throbbing so badly (in a horrid spasm). I couldn't move my arms to relieve the spasm because they were strapped down to a table. I remember the clock on the wall to my right. I remember feeling like I couldn't breath, like I was sure my baby was going to suffocate me. I remember my husband coming in, pale and anxious. I remember him stroking my hair and talking me through. I remember tugging and the official announcement "It's a girl" I think they lifted her naked body over the curtain for a moment. I couldn't reach out to touch her. I remember them bringing this bundled little squinched up and unhappy baby near my face for a moment to snap a picture and then she left me. I remember falling asleep and having a hard time waking up for the next 2 days.

I remember the first time I held her the nurse "scolded" me for bending my arm and setting the blood pressure cuff reading off. I remember how pretty her eyes were, how sweet she looked. I could feel how happy she was to see me. She nursed readily and hungrily. In my memory I can remember the Roo-ness of her, isms and quircks I know so well now.

Those early months were the most painful and stretching I have ever experienced. Her birth was not what I had wanted. But it was what I needed. My birth as a mother did not come with stretching of my skin and the opening of my pelvis in the way I had expected. It did not come with a moment of exultation, the "I did it! Look at my baby!" cry was not on my lips. My birth as her mother was much longer. It came with many tears, and yes, some blood. It came through my giving myself to another human being in a way I had never experienced in my life. Through my breasts. Nursing did not come easily to us, I had some other health complications that made the whole newborn stage a hellish daze. I feel sad when I remember it. When my newborn was asleep at night, I was often up vomiting. Vomiting on my surgery site, ow. There isn't even a word for the level of sleep deprivation I was experiencing. I remember wondering "Can I do this? How have mothers done this? Will I ever feel normal again?" It all came to a giant climax when she was 10 weeks old when I landed myself in the hospital for a week. That week back (at the same) hospital changed everything. We got it that week, I got it. I started to advocate for my baby, for our nursing relationship, for that bond I had fought week after week to continue on with. It was probably one of the hardest, sickest weeks of my life. But we did it. I learned to fight for myself, fight for my baby. I learned, it's okay to be a Mama bear every once in a while. I realized I HAD DONE IT. When we left the hospital that Sunday evening I had saved some thing I was so scared I would lose: our breastfeeding relationship. My body wasn't broken.

And then 10 months later, I found myself pregnant with my surprise, Friendly girl. I had learned a lot about doing things my way. That my way was going to look different, and that's okay.

I chose to give birth at home, where I felt connected and safe with the people helping me. I knew they'd help me. I struggled my whole pregnancy. It sounds awful, but I didn't really want this baby. But boy, I can't say how much I needed her. She changed me. I wouldn't trade her for a million "planned" babies. But facing it all, I wasn't ready to face birth again. I wasn't ready.

That Rock and a Hard place? Well I faced it in labor. A lot of women do. That point where you realize you're stuck. You really have to go through with this. You are almost sure you can't do it, but you have no choice: you have to.

I remember that moment so clearly in Friendly's birth. I was in the birth tub floating, and then I was on my hands and knees holding on to the soft side of the tub. I couldn't do it. I just wanted to beg J to get a vacuum extractor and pull her out (not really an option with a HB) , I couldn't do what I was facing.

I could feel my heavy belly in the water beneath me, my skin stretched to the max. I felt my baby squirm, an elbow or knee shift, a foot press on some thing deep inside me. I remember the unbelievable pressure of my her body pressing on my hips, in my hips.

I remember the sheer despair that this would NEVER end. I was sure it wouldn't. And then the rational voice some where in there would pipe up, "Maybe only 15 minutes, you could be holding your baby an hour from now...You've waited so long. This WILL end."


Birth can be painful. It's not a bad "this is terrible, I'm in danger" pain...It is, overwhelmingly NEW. The sensations can be felt as just "pain". But when you can calm yourself down and be really in the moment...I felt them. My hips opening in a way they'd never ever opened before. The pressure of my 8lb baby passing through. I remember very clearly at one point when I was pushing, I felt my whole body curl around my baby. I met her in that moment, I knew it was a she, and I even felt like I got a peek at her some how. I knew we were working together, her determined little charge (she came out nuchal hand and asynclintic). I swear I could see her. I had moments of clarity when I knew where the sensations were coming from: The pain from my tired uterus contracting, that muscle had been working long and hard. The aching of my pelvis flexing and stinging of my flesh stretching. Birth.

Birth can be painful. The fear of what lies ahead, will I be able to handle this new person? Will we bond and mesh? Will I disappoint? Will I do this okay? Will we be able to hack it? Will we mess this child up? The What Ifs? The newness, the insecurities, the work you are facing. And yes, the joy....And yet, that is scary too. Or maybe I'm the only one that felt that way? I was after all becoming a mother...for the second time. I had held and cherished, and breastfed my firstborn for almost the whole of the 19mos before I arrived there. Facing birth, giving birth. I changed that day.

Birth can be painful. It always brings a lot of change, things can tear or are opened that will take time to heal. It can change the way you see things. Suddenly your standing on the other side of the experience, your point of view is not what it once was. And you have a new life with some one else. Your life will never be the same as long as you live.

How you feel about your birth changes every thing.

Friendly wasn't born 15 minutes after I hit that point, it wasn't an hour...But a few hours later, I was holding my baby.

I held her to my skin. It wasn't the birth I was expecting either, I didn't meet the woman I thought I would. There was no cry of exultation on my lips. But one of utter relief. I had done it. I had DONE IT! I want other women to know that moment, it changed me.

Friendly is almost 18 months old. And lately I've been facing another kind of birth, a labor of sorts. Change. Life is stressful, things are changing. I have never felt so overwhelmed in my entire life. I feel sad. Frustrated. Discouraged. Anxious. And just so ready to get this show on the road! I have been thinking back to those moments where I cried and I was sure I couldn't go on, and I did.

And I will.

I remember how God held me and sustained me in those hours and I know He's holding me now. Every one comes to a rock and a hard place now and again...And the wonderful part? It always brings NEW LIFE.

Hold on through the stretching, it hurts but you'll come to the other side a new person...With a new point of view. And maybe even a new mission. Because of my daughters births, because of the people they are, I am forever changed.

And I'll make it through the next few weeks.

One of my defining moments of victory:

Would They Make an Elephant do that?

Found this on facebook. WoW!

HERE