ina may

Ina May Gaskin, the most influential American midwife of the past 50 years, and author of "Guide to Childbirth" and "Spiritual Midwifery" visited our little corner of the world today, and I got to witness it!

Her workshop took place at the Goleta Valley Community Center. I was only 1 minute late and hustled to find a seat, say hi to some friends, and grab a decaf before turning my attention to the front, where the object of my great admiration was, in all her wisdom and beauty. and fame! i can't deny i was a little star struck.

The lecture, over 4 hours long, seemed more like 1 1/2, and she told so many great anecdotes while covering amazing ground on multiple topics. I took copious volumes of notes. Blurbs:

-Ina May is a self-taught midwife! she learned by doing, learned by watching, & a few people informally giving her workshops here and there. the first few births she assisted took place on busses during the "caravan" she & her husband were a part of in the '70s.

-Did you know that the US maternal death rate (from childbirth complications) could be as much as 3 times higher than the reported numbers?

-"Pit to distress" is the unwritten policy in many hospitals in this country. (They will rev up the pitocin until the baby starts to go into distress, then back it off a little. baby now in distress, needs to come out soon, c-section ensues, hospital gets more money...)

- The WHO recommends that c-section rates stay below 15%. the US c-section rate is 30%. in 1965 it was 4.5%. Have women's bodies REALLY changed THAT much in 44 years?

-Maternal morbidity rate goes up 4x with a c-section compared to a vaginal birth.

-Ina May uses bodily function jokes to encourage mothers to laugh during labor. laughing produces oxytocin and relaxes the sphincter! (she uses a hilarious german poop book as a tool sometimes. this is the video version.)

-Prolonged labor usually happens when the woman is not allowed to eat/drink, when she is kept at the hospital instead of being allowed to labor at home.

-Prolonged labor is frequently due to psychological reasons/ hangups. (in one instance a lady was stuck at 7cm for 2 days before i.m. discovered that what was bothering her was a lack of commitment from her husband! they repeated their vows then and there in a more "acceptable" way, & baby born an hour and a half later. another lady was stuck at 7 for 12 hours & it was found out she had always been afraid of dying in labor but once it was vocalized, she progressed.) so: slow labor? try a DTR or a heart-to-heart!

-the "classic" upside-down beetle position of a woman giving birth in a hospital began because one of the old kings of france decided he wanted to see his mistress give birth, and decreed that she should lie that way because it was most convenient for him to see like that! and the position is still favored by male OBs (and insensitive women OBs) who prefer a convenient view rather than the employment of gravity and common sense.

-i.m. has a theory that the no eating/drinking rule in hospitals for labor came about cause the staff can't be bothered to clean up the potential vomit. (they SAY it's because in case you have a c-section and need general anesthesia, you can get aspiration pneumonia if you have food in your tummy and happen to vomit. there is NO recorded instance of this actually happening during a c-section, and--hello!! could someone not be standing by to just WATCH and see if she vomits, then turn her head, suction, etc.?) these things are NOT about what's best for the woman, obviously.

-Vomiting is actually good in labor. (to a point!) it makes you dilate.

-Sphincter law! Ina May has so much good common sense. sphincter law is about comparing the cervix to other sphincters in the body, studying what makes them tick, and applying the knowledge to help a smooth dilation and easier labor. (they are involuntary muscles, they are shy, they don't obey orders, they respond well to praise, they open better when the jaw is relaxed, open better with a laugh or a smile...)

-thankfulness increases oxytocin! i was happy that i.m. admitted that a thankful prayer could help a labor progress. and it's a true Biblical principle, too: be thankful, and the joy will come. not the other way around.

....................as you can see, i learned and learned. drank it in. i was happy i remembered to take my camera, too.

after the workshop, there was a most amazingly delicious vegetarian, organic lunch catered by kim schiffer/fresh food catering (?) i can't find a website, but if you ever get a chance to eat their food, DO it. BEST pita bread ever. and i don't even like pita bread.

thankfulness still following me for the whole gorgeous uniqueness of this experience.

the new healthy

i thought i was quite the expert on healthy living. wrong. i have just been taken to a whole new level in the past month or two by the goading of holly lomelino, my good friend here who is one of the best people to exchange ideas with. what i love about holly is that she is a person of action. she reads, she absorbs, she acts. it's not just a sitting-around-discussing-theory thing with her. and she's a great listener, i could go on and on. she has three young ones and also a stay-at-home mom, and this past semester we did our own preschool together twice a week, so she is one of the people i hang out with the most.

several months ago, she started talking to me about this book called a full quiver. "i don't wanna know," was my first response. but a few weeks later when she mentioned it again, i said, "oh yeah, when are you giving me that book to read?" holly: "i thought you didn't want to." me: "holly, give me the book, build my faith. i probably won't agree with everything in it, but whatever. that's not going to stop me from approaching the information." the book changed my life. (if you are familiar with the bible, you can probably guess the topic and stance of the book just from the title. but we will leave that for another post and another day.)

a few weeks later, holly got into perfect health the natural way, by mary-ann shearer. she started moping about my kitchen telling me i HAD to read it and help her work through all the info, cause she felt it was so impossible to follow the dietary recommendations, esp. with kids in the house. and that is how this all began. before i had a chance to read it, she burned through another one that was making her even MORE mopey: why christians get sick, by rev. george h. malkmus. this was a major upheaval because it was changing her whole concept of how a meal should be built, and in today's modern age it is practically impossible to escape the foods and food combos that are not recommended, not to mention keeping them away from your kids and convincing your husband of the joys of this new milk-free, practically meat-free, heavily raw diet.

i finally got a chance to read perfect health (still in the middle of the other one) and again, it changed my life. by the time i was reading it, holly was getting a lot more gung ho and into the swing of things with feeding the kids right and starting to feel all this transformation and energy from her newfound knowledge. she had gotten a recipe book (i think it was this one), geared toward moms with young kids, from the malkmus angle. she is looking fabulous, by the way. she's a skinny minnie, and has super radiant skin. "well i'm not getting sleep, so it must be the food," she says.

indeed, i can testify. a few weeks after beginning my own transformation, i was up til 4 AM writing my business plan for the self employment training class i was taking through WEV (amazing local small business center. i recommend their services and the class to anyone). as you know, when moms stay up til 4 am, they don't have the luxury of sleeping in. oh, no. up at 6 again, and at 'em! i had read in perfect health that eating only raw food when under stress or with little sleep can help you to keep functioning well. so that is what i did the next day. raw food until after the class was over (9pm) and then we had some bread and cheese and champagne to celebrate. but it was seriously amazing, the immediate effect of the foods i was eating. i was full of energy that day.

the other thing this lifestyle change helped me to do with relative ease was to quit caffeine. quit caffeine!?!!? why would i do such a thing, you ask? yes, haha anyone that knows me knows that coffee was pretty much one of my #1 joys in life. when it was time to go to bed at night, i used to get this secret little excited feeling that the next thing i would get to do was wake up and have my cup of coffee! mmmm mmm mmmm nothing but peet's for me please, i am a coffee snob and was a coffee/tea educator at peet's when i worked there. actually, my husband and i fell in love over church and coffee snobbery, so it was a big part of my life to say the least.

however, when i read perfect health, there was a section of the book where the author mentioned that caffeine can contribute to aggression, and the sentence stopped me in my tracks. for the last couple of months i had been bumming on my frequent anger outbursts with sparrow over small issues. yet, i would be SO tired and feel not in control of my emotions many times, if she was testing me just a bit too much or refusing to take her nap, etc. i had so far heard nothing bad about coffee except as concerns its acidity (can leach calcium from your bones), and i felt i could deal with that risk. now i was confronted with a very real opportunity to change my attitude in the home, if i would be willing to give up that one half-caf cup of coffee that i loved so much. and i decided then and there that i would take the challenge. how could i not at least try and see what happened? i waited awhile, though, then went a little less on the caffeine one day, then decaf. it was pretty hard goings for about three days, when i felt sluggish and blah all day. but it was still amazingly easy for the likes of me, coffee addict extraordinaire, and i got zero migraines or other intense symptoms. and almost immediately i also noticed a change in my aggressive behavior. now i feel like i am in control of my voice and my frustration a LOT more, which is amazing, and i know it makes a difference in sparrow's life. my daughters needed that.

(caffeine, by the way, can rear its ugly head in a number of other ways, too: moods, stress levels, hormonal functions, blood sugar, and blood pressure. i found it made me extremely tired after the high, and now i am more evenly energetic throughout the day.)

seriously, perfect health was a major wake-up call and paradigm shift in the way i thought about nutrition for health. i thought i was doing pretty good because we eat whole grains, don't have a lot of sugar, eat fruits and vegetables every day, don't eat a lot of dairy, and very rarely have red meat. sounds pretty good, right? wrong. enter food combination theory. sure, i had HEARD of food combining before, but come on, that just sounds hokey. not to mention complicated. so the major rule of food combining is: don't ever eat meat or other protein with carbs/starches. and when i found out why, it made so much sense. our stomach uses different enzymes to digest proteins than it does to digest starches. when the two are eaten at the same time, the one enzyme cancels the other out, and the meat sits in the stomach undigested, and ferments, then putrefies. gross. a meal like this can stay in your stomach for up to 12 hours. just the stomach!! when foods are actually supposed to travel through the entire digestive system in 15 hours or less.

mary-ann shearer led me through research, science, and common sense on the matter, and i am a complete believer. which is good, because since we don't buy chicken anymore, our food for the week is cheaper. but i love love love this book because it didn't make things hard. i had no burden while reading it. i love that she is so big on eating fruit. lots of the anti-cancer and weight-loss diets are really warning against fruit as high in calories and sugar. this is completely missing the picture. i hate diets that focus on calories. God made fruit to be the most attractive food group on the planet. why on earth would we suddenly think it is bad for you? it is full of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and even protein. it is a live food that builds cells instead of tearing them down. it is alkaline-forming in the body instead of acid-forming, like most other foods. note that fruit is best eaten by itself. when consumed with carbs, it can stay in the stomach too long and ferment and indeed create acidity. this includes a glass of orange juice with your cereal or strawberries on pancakes. but if you eat fruit by itself and do so a lot, you will find your cravings for other foods going away, and you will stop obsessing over food.

i have seen this in my own life to an amazing degree. parties used to be a major gorging ground for me; if i went to a social gathering where there was food, all my healthiness would go right out the window and i'd eat whatever the heck looked good, and a lot of it. now i find that the unhealthy foods at parties mostly don't even appeal to me anymore. it is a huge freeing breakthrough for me, actually.

so step 1 is to eat one fruit meal a day. step 2 is to eat for your cravings: if you crave salty foods, your body is craving healthy fats, so try eating an avocado. if you crave sugar, your body needs fruit. step 3 is to eat something raw before every meal. there are 5 steps, but these 3 are the most important. i recommend buying the book for anyone who wants to have more energy, be less dependent on food, think clearer, be more upbeat, have better skin, avoid chronic diseases common to western society, improve their digestion, get better sleep, feel more rested in the morning, lose weight, deal with hormonal imbalances or behavioral issues, or generally get more healthy.

most health problems can be taken care of with a change in diet. doctors don't know this, nor do they want to know. they want to give vaccines and prescriptions so they can get their perks from pharmaceutical companies. ok, that might be generalising doctors a bit, but seriously, doctors get practically NO nutritional training during their 12 years of schooling, so some won't even acknowledge a link between eating and health! and they do get perks from big pharma when they prescribe & vaccinate more. does anyone else think that should be illegal?! helloooooooooo, conflict of interests! (don't get me started on vaccines. the best book i've read on this is raising a vaccine free child, by wendy lydall)

two more reasons why i love the approach of mary-ann shearer is that she presents the lifestyle as an "add-to" diet, not a "take-away" diet. and she also has lots of common sense about vitamins. if you are being pressured by a diet promo to purchase a bunch of supplements, you should be wary of it. i think this is super good advice, and so freeing. i used to bemoan our inability to spend money on supplements. now i know whole foods can supply all we need.

i am up and blogging at 1:40 a.m. and will be up at 6 or 7 tomorrow. how do i have the energy with my 2 little ones? caffeine? red bull? super pills? nope. good, plain food that is renewing my cells and giving my body life as God intended. be inspired!

sparrow the three-year-old

i didn't get a chance to make notes on sparrow's birthday. the big one turned three on april 18th. her party was held on sat, april 11th at goleta beach park. what a whirlwind. we were doing an "art" theme, and one of the brilliant things about the party was that the kids were each going to decorate a cake. not until i was making the cake the day before did i realize that our limited fridge space was going to create a problem. where were six cakes going to go? and even more difficult: once they were frosted in white the next morning with butter cream frosting, i couldn't stack them any more, but the frosting was prone to easy melting. good thing my brother came to the rescue with a mini fridge that he has in his room. but it was a frantic AM what with the baby and the frosting and getting all the food and bbq and art supplies together; thomas was out running an errand and the party was scheduled to start soon, but i couldn't get out of the house by myself or drive the tray of cakes without them fudging, and was going a bit crazy. at that moment naomi and barnaby knocked on my door and asked me if i needed help! they figured they should probably not leave before my car was gone. bless them! so they took the cakes for me and we made it out the door. thomas had gone on ahead with the balloons and table cloths, but as i was arriving, he called me and asked me where i was.
"i'm here. i'm just pulling into the parking lot."
"what? which way did you go? why did i get here so much faster?"
"i took fairview."
"fairview...?" then something horrible happened on the other end. he realized we were in 2 different locations!
"where are you?" he said.
"goleta beach. where are you?"
"stowe grove!"
i tried to say something but he had already hung up. i was too baffled to think too long cause now we had to get the food out and the babies and round up any wandering guests who might have already arrived before us. then the whole caravan of the reeves arrived, and my jaw dropped open. they ALL came! i was only expecting goldie, but was so happy to see the entire family nonetheless. soon enough thomas was there and we set up table cloths and gave kids balloons.

enter holly: "the sea gulls just ate your cakes." WHAT! aaaaaaah! worst ever! i ran over and swatted away the sea gulls (rats of the sea), which had left a nasty mess of my careful frosting job. (yum, said the sea gull. naughty sea gull.) i was super flustered because thomas and i had already discussed the sea gulls and the cake earlier, knowing the weasely food-swiping nature of these characters, and had decided we'd leave the cake in the car until time to decorate. information that in all the jumble i had forgotten to pass on to naomi and barnaby, poor unsuspecting souls... i rushed the sad crumby cake tray back to my car, where i realized that it was not quite so bad as it had seemed at first. i could salvage the other halves of the two compromised cakes, and i'd have had to cut all the cakes in half anyways because of the extra guests.

the kids' first artistic activity was painting wooden "treasure" boxes from michaels that they would get to take home. there weren't quite enough once again, but samuel and hope were good enough to share.

then on to the cake decorating. cake first! because if we waited, the frosting would have melted in the car. the kids had such an awesome time making their cake creations with nasty store-bought tubes of glitter-gel icing and colored sunflower seeds. there were some very over-the-top pieces of piled/dripping colors and ALL the adults scraped the color fun off before eating. hahahah. bitter stuff.

sparrow had helped me make the cake, and she was so excited to have chocolate, her pick. last year the cake was more healthy with carrots and no refined sugar. this year since she had an opinion and heck--it WAS her birthday--i let her choose whatever kind she wanted. i still made it with whole wheat, of course. she gets cake/ treats sometimes at weddings or special occasions, so why make it more extreme on her birthday. that carrot cake takes a really long time to make, too. but it is good.

anyhow, next on the party agenda was more artistic embellishment of the treasure boxes as the kids got to glue jewels on. they got crayons to decorate their own white gift bags too. but it was SUCH a crazy windy day that the table cloths blew off a couple times and almost scattered the drying treasure boxes. my hair was everywhere and it was generally loud, so i felt like i was yelling and shrieking at everyone with instructions. boo. good thing i had help from derika and tara in directing and assisting the creative endeavors. tara and melissa took over the care of golden, too, who to her chagrin had been basically ignored by me all day long. =(


the most elaborate treasure box was created by jade dillon, who took such sweet time and care in gluing those flower jewels on in every spare space. i was impressed.

then more food, free play, and present time, and before too long we were wrapping it up. what amazing silence when we got into the car out of the wind. what a full day. what good friends. precious daughter. oh and i can't forget to recount the hilarious instance where hope (below) ran off with the cheese. she found a block of cheese in the cooler and decided to take off running! then goldie reeve decided to chase her, and the two ran around the park like little munchkins. fast ones. with cheese. too bad there is no picture because it was amazing, and all the grown ups were laughing and yelling.


sparrow got to wear home made birthday crown. she picked, placed and glued all the jewels the day before.

thanks to alan for taking pics at the party. my computer crashed at the end of april, and i lost my photos--bloooo--but through alan's documentary the party's essence was saved from suffering a fate of banishment to a place of mental images alone.

thomas was off to china on the 15th of april, so sparrow's real birthday was more of a quiet day. i did have plans to take her to padaro beach grill again as last year, but we battled traffic only to find the place closed for a wedding! so we got some picnic food at tj's instead and headed once again to goleta beach park. ah, and sparrow got to pick out flowers--finally, finally! every time we go to tj's she wants to get flowers, and i always say, "no, maybe on your birthday." now was that day! and she picked out a dozen red roses. what an adorable girl. at the park i also bought her an ice cream from the ice cream trolley lady. she picked a nasty blue sonic-character ice cream with gum eyes that turned her tongue and whole face blue. when it started dripping down the stick, she licked it and then said, laughing, "i licked the paint!" and to top off the sugar, i let her get a gum ball in the amazing gum ball machine at blockbuster. that might have been her favorite part, watching the red gum ball roll around and around down the track. wow. first ever experience with that american classic. then we stayed up late and watched "milo and otis" and ate home made popcorn. i am so proud of her & it's fun to let her stay up late every now and then and have some "big girl" time.

may musings

"the wind wants to come in, but we will never let it in here." -may 5

"mom, the potty wants me to fall in it. but i wanna stay out of it." -may 8

"mom, can you be careful not to flush me in the hole?" -may 8

funny and a little disconcerting: sparrow's first "ocd" behavior has emerged: for some reason, she has decided that she can't be in the bathroom longer than the toilet tank takes to fill back up after flushing. so when we are washing her hands, she gets all squirmy and hurried and starts saying, "it's gonna be too late! it's gonna be too late!" (it took me a few times to figure out what she was talking about!) then she races off down the hall as soon as i let her go. now i don't even bother to flush until she's done washing--it eliminates the stress.

sp: "mom, cut my leg!"
me: "but that will hurt you!"
sp: "mom, i won't have any legs, and you'll just have to carry me." -may 10

me: "wow, this is my fourth mothers day!"
sp: "no, it's HAPPY mother's day." -may 10

me: "guess what we are going to learn about in preschool today? rectangles!"
sp: "mom, we always learn about rectangles. what about our ABC's?" -may 14
(after all the effort i go through to keep her clear of the pressure to learn early alphabets so that she can flourish as an artist...)

sp: "what will the police do to us when they pull us over?"
me: "they'll probably give us a..." (sparrow cuts in)
"will they turn us into a statue?" -may 16

"when it snows a lot i will wear my fairy dress ALL night long." -may 19

sp: "i wanna watch a movie."
me: "when do you NOT wanna watch a movie?"
sp: "i don't wanna watch a movie after my movie." -may 19

"the elephants walked all across the crosswalk string." (she meant "tightrope." haha!) -may 19

"here is a heart for you, for being good." -may 20

"mommy, i'll let you sweep if you're good." -may 20

"mommy, i got some coin for you. so you can go to trader joe's and get me some balloons." -may 20

(i was trying to fix a toy)
me: "i need some tools."
sp: "mom, someday if you're a daddy you can have some tools." -may 24

"this is my wedding day... i bedda dance." -may 24

me: "what do you say when you want to measure yourself?"
sp: "five months tall?" -may 24

(singing)
"red and yellow, black and white and green, they are precious in my sight." -may 26

(reading amelia bedelia book, page where amelia bedelia is looking at the fancy draperies in the huge house...)
my, those must be rich folks.
sp: "no, those are not rich folks."
me: "what are they?"
sp: "those are windows!" -may 28

"the next time we go to heaven, we will see my grandma." -may 28

"mom, next time it's thursday we will go to the wedding and we will wear a wedding dress and we will marry daddy." -may 30

sp: "what are we doing today?"
me: "we're going to church."
sp: "i just have one question: can you not leave me alone?" -may 31

(discussing jacob of the Bible and the goat skin deception)
sp: "he was like a bear."
me: "why do you think he was like a bear?"
sp: "cause he had fur on his arms."
me: "why do you think he wanted to have fur on his arms?"
sp: "cause he was like a bear, ya goon!" -may 31

faster than falling

i dreamed that an israeli family was staying with us in a horribly cluttered apartment. a specific family that i have actually met in real life.

i dreamed that i was running around in a shopping/restaurant area close to a beach, trying to find my backpack that i had left at an outdoor restaurant table because someone malicious was out to get it, or me...

there was a building with some sort of balcony. it was three stories tall. i went up into the building. i met some amazing and knowledgeable professor or theologian or writer that i admired and he was telling me something very interesting. we were sitting at the edge of the balcony in this discussion, and there were two other guys behind us. suddenly one of them leaned over and pushed the professor off the balcony and tried to push me too. i somehow resisted and kicked him in the face so he fell off the balcony instead and died.

i ran away. i was trying to get to the elevator but when i went through the next door, there was the dead guy i had just kicked, standing there, trying to get into the elevator with me with his bruised head and limp limbs. i pushed him out of the way and closed the elevator door. the elevator said it had 20 floors, even though i knew there were only three. there were only two options. arrow up or arrow down. i wanted to go down so i pushed that one.

the elevator went down. then it started going faster and faster and faster. i had to hold on. i was having the awful falling feeling in the pit of my stomach. it was unbearable. it kept going down and it kept going faster. i was gripping a handle inside the elevator. it was going faster than falling. i couldn't handle the feeling anymore, it was physically frightening and horrible. i had to wake myself up. i started shaking my head. i woke up on my pillow with a fog in my head and the stomach crunching finally faded.

a naptime dream, no less. i can't figure out all the pieces. it was definitely some sort of spiritual oppression. the past two weeks have been more bare than usual in our house. we are being broken down piece by piece.

there is bad news after bad news and the girls are sick, it really does pour. we pray, we worship, i do feel like i am losing hope some days though. there is nothing to do but to press in to God.

clark bread

look what we found in the park in the dark
we will take him home, we will call him clark
he will live at our house, he will grow and grow
will our mother like this? we don't know.
-Dr. Seuss

our first self-made sour dough bread, from a recipe out of "above rubies" magazine.



we had to catch the wild yeast from the air, and feed the "dough pet" for a week before he was ready for baking. now that we have our starter, we hope to keep him alive for years to come. sparrow can't decide what she wants to name him/her. one day it was freddy, the next it was polly. for now, in honor of the dr. seuss verse we recited while we were growing the dough, we call him clark.

the beauty and satisfaction of home made bread. four simple ingredients, many bites of bliss.

(note that sparrow is eating her bread butter-side-down in this pic... another dr. seuss reference!)

infant potty training, take II

golden is 10 months old. time to stop buying diapers. my plan is to let her be naked for a few weeks, get ready with spray and wipes, and... not check email, do housework, or do anything else besides pay attention. when i see her going, i will say the trigger word until--hopefully--i get used to her rhythm and she can go on command.

today we had a few presents on the floor, but we were prepared for cleanup. since i am off caffeine now, and am eating so much better (i recommend mary-ann shearer's book 'perfect health the natural way' for easiest & most amazing nutrition overhaul ever), i have the energy and equilibrium to handle the messes. that is not stressing me out at all.

the trigger word thing only happened once though. i didn't pay attention enough, i know that much!

also, i am doing hand motions for both pee and poop, so if she needs to, she can tell me that she's gotta go. this could be really funny, hahaha! but i kept it clean, they are G-rated.

i tried infant potty training when golden was just newborn, but at the time she had really liquid-y excretions and i was unwilling to let that get on the furniture. now that she is both autonomously navigating the floor and creating firm little "cookie poos" as we like to call them (way easier cleanup!), i am ready to take this on again. i do need tips if anyone has done this before.

ok, but i saw the most shockingly brilliant and surprising thing on a home video my husband made in china: the toddlers there are all diaperless. and they run around in PANTS THAT HAVE SLITS DOWN THE BACK. WHY is this not common knowledge in america??! has ANYONE ever heard of this before? apparently they just hold out the newspaper when the kid's gotta go. these people are quite resourceful. they even take the kids in public like this! if they can do it, we---can---do---it. can you imagine the possibilities of new children's clothes we could design? this should SO be my new business endeavor: "kids anytime pooper pants for all seasons! cute new styles!" i can just see it now.