I met my future husband at a dorm room party on Friday, April 24, 1992. Twenty years ago today.

“You were babies!” people exclaim when I tell them this. Yes and no. I was 19, he almost 21. We did, in some ways, grow up together.  We’ve seen the world change together, from days of waiting for letters in the mailbox to texts moments before we walk in the door. It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years. Sometimes I feel like we are exactly the same people, and other times, when I think about the details of our courtship, I have to admit that my life today is many moons removed from that one.

The night I met LJ, I’d earlier been out to dinner to Olive Garden to celebrate the birthday of a new male friend. B and I had met just a few weeks earlier, at the beginning of the spring quarter at Kalamazoo College where we were both first-year students. I wandered into my friend Hannah’s suite in the newly remodeled Severn dorm while B and a group containing some folks I knew and some I didn’t were going around saying nice things about one another. He said my lips looked “kissable.” As someone fresh out of a year-long relationship with a high school beau, the attention of college guys were something I’d just opened my eyes to.

A few weeks later, on April 24, I went along on a group outing to the mediocre meal spot and gasped at the prices of what appeared to me then as fancy entrees. I opted for the plain marinara pasta after I realized I could fill up on the table’s free bread and salad. Kissable comments aside, this was a group thing, not a date with B. The thing that made it special was my actually getting off campus and getting out with new people instead of pining in my dorm about my jealous (newly ex-) boyfriend back home, still in high school.

Still, it was spring, and though I was not looking for love, my newfound freedom was apparently attractive. Not only had B shown an interest, but I was also going to have a date the next night with a basketball player a year older than me. What a 6′7″ guy would want with a 5′0″ girl like me, I had no idea, but I was ready to branch out!

There was a new group of girlfriends I was trying to connect with now that I fully planted in college and had lifted my boots out of the mud of my previous relationship. It was through the Outward Bound-like program I’d done at the beginning of the year, Land/Sea, that I met one of these women, a gorgeous creative spirit named Ivana. I met up with her and her roommate, Denise, and some other friends of theirs who  looked beyond my frizzy hair and the nerdy rayon shirt I was sporting from The Limited — hunter green, with gold and green buttons down the front — and let me pre-party with them before we headed over to Severn for a suite party next door to where I’d met B.

Not a whole lot of details stick out about that night after that. I know people were selling beer behind a makeshift counter in the far back bedroom, and I went to get at least one. But the rest of the evening, my butt was pretty well glued to the wooden framed dorm couch, sitting next to LJ. A junior just back from study abroad in Germany, he’d happened upon the first-year party with some friends because there was nothing better to do. It was a small school with a subdued nightlife.

He and I spent much of the night sitting next to each other on the boxy cushions of that couch, looking into our dark brown bottles and sharing the darkness of our souls. His parents were just splitting up, and I shared how my (so young!) life had been shaped by my older brother’s suicide five years earlier. Not exactly flirtatious material.

But it stuck. He walked me home across the quad in the chilly April air, and we hugged goodnight on the steps of Dewaters dorm before he headed to neighbor Trowbridge Hall. I figured that would be it; we’d shared a connection, we knew each other better than we knew some of our friends, but this was not the stuff of romance. And I was on the rebound anyway. Too early for anything too deep.

Sitting alone at breakfast in the cafeteria the next morning, I felt a little funny as he walked by, tray in hand, alongside another woman. (This was also the season of defining myself as a feminist, so my classmates were no longer “girls”). Smiles were exchanged, and I think I might have passed him later that day while he was playing frisbee golf near my dorm room. I do know the day was grey, and I know that later that night I had an innocently awful date with the basketball player. We rented White Men Can’t Jump. I probably don’t need to say anything more, but it’s too tempting not to add that he made me pizza with pepperoni, not realizing I didn’t eat mammals.

Rather than accept his offer of staying over in his extra room, I drove back to campus mostly sober and to answering machine messages from Ivana who told me that LJ from the night before had been wearing a funny hat and looking for me. She said he seemed disappointed that I was on a date. She didn’t know a lot about him except that he seemed nice, and she thought he’d been on Land/Sea, too. So our start was build on somewhat false pretenses. I thought he, too, had hiked through the Ontario wilderness.

It wasn’t long before I learned that he hadn’t and that I got a chance to learn a whole lot more about him. He found me that night and we chatted in the florescent light of the “lounge” in my dorm, an underutilized square of cinderblock walls that looked like a place furniture went to die. I wonder how the green and black stretchy sweater I was wearing would look now. At the time it seemed clingy, but in an age just after oversized was fashionable, it’s hard to know.

Our first date soon after was a trip to Meijer’s so I could buy deodorant. The next time I bought tampons. I didn’t even really consider that he’d flinch, and he didn’t. We had dinner at Pizza Hut and Burger King. This was all on my dime, our excursions in my car with my new feminist bumper stickers. LJ hadn’t much worked, and his folks were fighting at each other through his finances. I was buoyed by parental allowance and my own earnings from summer jobs.

LJ made me a mixed tape of jazz and I didn’t really know how to appreciate yet, and I took him to see Tracy Chapman. When tickets for U2’s Zoo TV concert went on sale, I stood in line at a Harmony House back home where I ran into high school buddies. We all bought tickets in a block together, me musing I hoped I would still be with this boyfriend when the concert came around in September, something like three months and what seemed like a lifetime away to a 19-year-old.

I was still with LJ, after a summer of visiting LJ on campus for K’s then-year-round calendar while I was living at home and working at the now-defunct F&M drugstore. I used to buy I bought discounted Entemann’s goodies to bring for my weekend visits to Kalamazoo. At the time of the U2 concert, LJ and I both were sick with bronchitis, but we went anyway and watched Bono talk live to the MTV awards show.

We spent the fall together on campus and then most of the rest of our relationship long-distance, through him graduating in 1993 and me going to France for six months. LJ visited over Christmas, and when we fell asleep to the smell of a honey candle I’d bought at a farmer’s market in Lyon, I knew it was his arms I wanted to spend my life in.

After that, I found a way to take my summer off so I could live with LJ and work, and be involved in my sister’s wedding preparations.  I also got myself a student-teaching job in Ann Arbor the next winter, so we lived together then, too.

But meeting someone at 19 seemed too young for forever. So after I graduated in 1995, I set off for Washington, DC to work at the Feminist Majority Foundation. LJ came out for our big conference, Expo ‘96 for Women’s Empowerment and brought my underslept and overworked self a lot of food from local restaurants. He’d moved to Austin, Texas, and was working for the central offices of Whole Foods Market even before they opened a Bread & Circus in DC or eaten up all the Fresh Fields stores.

He transferred to Chapel Hill so we could have a year of living only 4 hours apart, and then we moved together to Cincinnati so I could pursue graduate degrees in English and Women’s Studies. I started to think of marriage an arcane and sexist institution, and watching my sisters with their kids did not inspire maternal instincts.

After a few months working at Joseph Beth a super cool independent bookstore, LJ got himself a consulting gig and started to ride the dot-com bubble, jet-setting across the country and living out of hotels. While he built up his bank account and filled our cheap apartment with furniture for then-little-known Room & Board, I was reading and teaching about social justice and finding myself wondering if we were headed in different directions.

But we planned to move back to DC, where I started teaching in 2000. The transition hit me with a severe bought of depression. When LJ communicated his intention not to live like that forever, I got motivated to get help. Within months of getting on medication, I felt like a better version than I’d ever known of myself. Our landlords said they intended to sell our apartment. We decided to buy a house together, and while we were at it, I said, we might as well go ahead and get married. The meds helped me see both the forest, and the trees, and even the leaves, and I knew I wanted to be with LJ. So we put in a contract a month before LJ got laid off and began planning a wedding and 10-year-anniversary celebration for the following summer, to be held near our new home in July 2002.

LJ was unemployed and home painting the house when 9/11 happened. I called him from my classroom at school, and we went to an Ethiopian restaurant that night, pondering our future just miles away from the Pentagon. We’d met just weeks before the Rodney King verdict and LA riots set off a “Day of Gracious Listening” on our campus and protests, undoubtedly, nationwide. All the major historical markers of my adult life have been shared with LJ.

LJ benefited from the post-9/11 unemployment extension and got a job just before our wedding, which we did a little on the cheap but had a lot of fun. It made me sad that none of the girlfriends who’d been around when we met could attend and that two of LJ’s friends didn’t make it, dealing as they were with divorces of their own.

We had a wonderful time in spite of missing company, and it was great to celebrate a decade of togetherness. Still, it was a lot to plan for a wound-up gal like me (no J.Lo event planner in the budget!), and between the stress of that, the bigger crises of 9/11 and the DC-area sniper scare the following fall, combined with the day-in-day-out craziness of teaching high schoolers in crisis, my health started to suffer. My history of medications and a diet that wasn’t suited to me contributed to my finding myself in a bad way in 2003. Just when we were ready to start a family, I started to get depressed and anxious. My thyroid was out of whack, my gut was a mess, and my periods were nowhere to be seen. It was not pretty.

On my journey to heal it holistically, I learned I had celiac disease and was intolerant of dairy, too. Research and consultations with alternative health practitioners and mainstream docs alike became a part-time job. Although I was earning a decent wage, what with two master’s degrees and four years in the school system, it was a good thing that LJ had found his way back to employment that put teacher salary to shame. From a rough place to a healthy one cost a pretty penny.

In 2004, I was much improved. One weekend we attended the standout Napa valley wedding of our best man, who married his Kalamazoo sweetheart, and the next weekend we went to Colorado for another classmate’s nuptials. The former included lots of reminiscing, and the latter, not so much. LJ had been that friend’s best man at his first wedding to the woman he started dating the same spring LJ and I got together in 1992. What a blast that first wedding was in 1994. How bizarre to refrain from “remember whens” a decade later at the celebration of a new pairing. And humbling. Take nothing for granted.

When LJ’s mom remarried in 1995, she changed the date because I had a college friend getting married that same weekend. That friend, too, has since remarried. There have been moments I’ve wondered if LJ and I could make it. After my health had improved by our conception prospects looked uncertain, we started going to counseling, ostensibly to get support for dealing with potential infertility.

We got pregnant a month later, and have been riding the parenthood rollercoaster since. With both kids, there were months in the postpartum year when the lack of sleep and the trippiness of hormones converged to put me in great doubt about our future. We are not always the partners we want to be to each other.

Last fall, when it became a possibility that we could buy the house next door and renovate it exactly as we wanted, I knew it was his dream come true. His college application for Kalamazoo said he wanted to be an architect, to go to the 3-2 program and finish up at the University of Michigan after getting the best of the small liberal arts college experience. He didn’t pursue that path, but the desire to design remains.

And for us, the opportunity to take a look at how we live in our new family of four and shape a nearly identical home to suit that was an opportunity we could not pass up. So, for the past several months, we’ve been looking at our space and our habits and spending every waking moment thinking about what makes sense, what will be beautiful, and what will make us and our kids happy for years to come.

Although I’ve all but checked out of my friends’ lives in recent weeks and have spent a lot of money on babysitters while we manage this project, and although there are times when we’re at each other’s throats about all there is to do before we can sell this place and move into the new one, the process has helped me appreciate my husband in a new light.

For one thing, it kicks ass that he has figured out how to manage this insanity from a financial perspective. He did all the research to find out how to get us approved for a second mortgage while we still own this house, and then he did everything to get us to buy the new place directly from the owners, with whom he negotiated a deal worthy of neighbor envy. He’s an impressive realtor, without the capital R.

He’s also done a ton of work on both homes, in and out, and has designed most of the place such that we’ve needed architects only for permitting, drawings, and for feedback. The one we’ve turned to for design consultation says repeatedly, “You’re really good at this.”

She’s not kidding. He is. And he’s funny. And he can still play the piano like no one’s business, even though he hardly ever gets a waking moment to sit down at the bench without a child climbing on one of his extremities.

And, even though I am someone who unfortunately set expectations too high for any mortal to meet, no one can argue with the fact that he is an amazing father. When he comes home from work, it takes only one “Go see your daddy!” to get our 20-month-old daughter off my pantlegs and giddily waddling toward the front door. When I woke up next to her this morning, admittedly in the futon in our son’s room while he and my husband slept in our king-sized bed across the hall, I felt such a feeling of gratitude.

This person has seen me through so much. Through stress, frustration, success, joy. Through accomplishment and embarrassment. Through accolades and disappointments. Through sickness and through my journey toward health. Through two pregnancies and a lot of time wondering if they would happen. Through a c-section and an homebirth. Through breastfeeding struggles and successes, going on five years’ worth now. Through mothering, with all its attendant ups and downs, and extremes. How astoundingly lucky am I?

I wouldn’t want to go back and tell the 19-year-0ld me where she’d be in 20 years because I wouldn’t want to change a moment of its natural unfolding. But when I think about her, I think about the magic of that night and a night a few weeks later when I jumped into LJ’s arms after a Saturday apart and before a spring dance. It was this night I spoke of in my wedding vows, of this moment on the quad looking up at the stars, asking for this to last.

It has. For a really long time that sometimes feels like just a few breaths even though it’s over half my life. When LJ and I met, I used to jog around campus in the evening, wondering what it would be like to own a home, to be a family. I imagined the babies I would have with LJ, never seeing being baldness into what has become redheaded childhood. I am living the life I dreamed of and so much I never knew to expect.

The other day, before LJ got a much-needed haircut, I looked at his shaggy head and saw a glimmer of the young boy I’ve seen in photos from a few years before we met, at his sister’s wedding. He was in a late-80s Don Johnson pastel suit. I didn’t know him yet, but after 20 years of sharing our stories and looking at albums that now show us where our children’s eyes come from, nothing is a total surprise.

And at the same time, everything is.

I love you, LJ. Thank you for a wonderful 20 years. Happy anniversary. I love what we’ve built together.

When I first met my friend Elaine, she spoke warmly of her two homebirths. I had just one child who was born via c-section, which saddened me. Now I am the proud mama of a home VBAC — Vaginal Birth After Cesarean, or HBAC. And today Elaine is writing at TheDCMoms.com about homebirth.

Here are some upcoming resources to learn more about VBAC and to support those who are working hard to make VBAC a viable option.

Fundraiser for ICAN of NOVA (International Cesarean Awareness Network of Northern Virginia)
Go to California Tortilla on Wednesday, October 12. Write “ICAN of NOVA” on your receipt and put it in the box so that the chapter gets proceeds.
Fair Lakes – 12239 Fair Lakes Parkway, Fairfax (all day)

Arlington – 2057 Wilson Blvd., Arlington (all day)

Alexandria – 301 Swamp Fox Road, Alexandria (all day)

Oakton – 2930 Chain Bridge Road, #102, Oakton (5-9pm)

VBAC 101 Class

Capitol Hill Yoga on Sunday 10/23 from 3:00 to 5:00
p.m. The class covers:

Everything you need to know about vaginal birth after cesarean such as: Are you a good candidate for a VBAC? What are the risks and benefits of VBAC? What can you do to increase your chances of having one? Where can you find mother-to-mother support as you pursue your VBAC? Workshop facilitator Barbara Stratton is a former doula and is currently the national VBAC ban chair for the International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) as well as the founder and co-leader for ICAN of Baltimore. $40 per couple. Interested women can contact me at womancaredoula @ comcast.net

Baltimore ICAN Meeting

October 13, 7pm at
Butler Volunteer Fire department, 15019 Falls Rd Butler MD 21023. The hall is stroller accessible and
handicap accessible. Topic will be on Holistic Midwifery with midwife Lori Serabo.
http://www.icanofba ltimore.org/

ICAN of NOVA Meeting

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 from 7 PM (until 10 PM). At the City of Fairfax Regional Library.

http://www.icanofnova.org/articles/Meetings_&_Events and on Facebook

The theme of yesterday’s post was “reveal,” but I waited until this one to close that loop. I am not going to yoga on Day Eight. Instead I went back to a second class on the evening of Day Seven.

This does feel like cheating, I admit. But looking at the day, with a wedding at 2:00 and a mother blessing 4-7 p.m., and commitments to my family and my home in the morning, it is just not feasible for me to go to either of the Saturday classes offered. If there were a 6:30 Sunrise Yoga, I’d be there. But 8:30-9:45 is just too late for all we have to pack into the day, including my preparing all the food I will need to eat all day to accommodate my special grain-free, starch-free GAPS diet. My friends and family need a nourished, rested mama, and that is already a little sketchy.

So instead, I went out for a second time on Day Seven to my first evening class at Centered Yoga. It was Yin yoga, a class described by the studio as using passive poses and the breath to create a “sense of balance, harmony and inner peace.” Sign me up!

Even though I was dragging a little all day, and it was so lovely outside I might  have rather taken a walk than spend as much time in the car as in the yoga studio, I knew that I would feel better for having had the meditation and relaxing stretches. And I knew that I would feel almost I wasn’t a cheater if I doubled up on one day but certainly like a failure if I didn’t go on Saturday or Friday night. My husband was going to be home early, so it was the one time I could get to an evening class.

Aside from the yoga, which I’ll get to in a second, one eye-opening part of the experience was seeing what life is like for the hundreds of people who work in Georgetown and live in Virginia. The post-work and Friday night scenes are foreign to me these days. It felt like cultural tourism just to sit on Key Bridge at 6:15 p.m. And then, on the way home, to sit on Canal Road at 8:15 p.m. That was the most exposure I’ve had to over-20/under-30 humanity and to external combustion I’ve had in a long time. Witnessing it — while listening to classical music — was an exercise in anti-narcissism. It’s important to be reminded that your own individual issues are not being obsessed over by everyone else in the world.

But I’m avoiding talk of the class, I see.

Early on, the teacher invited us to dial back our intellect and to “turn up the volume” on our intuition. She said a lot of provocative things, and sometimes the music helped me get out of my head and let her words take me to their essence.

The first time she said, “Our hips tell our stories” — that they reveal a lifetime — I could only think of boys and things you do with them in the dark. But on the second side in pigeon pose, I thought of giving birth to my daughter, 10 months ago yesterday.

In the birth pool, I had my left knee down and my right knee bent, up and perpendicular to the ground. My labor was short — just 4.5 hours from the pop of my water when I went up into bridge pose at 5:30 a.m. to her birth at 10:08 a.m. — but I was pushing for too long. I’d been unpracticed in the art of breathing through intensity; as soon as it came, I wanted to match it. But three hours later, I was tired and the midwife’s tone got just a touch stern after my daughter’s head was out that the rest needed to come along, too. No longer feeling the inevitability of the next contraction, I had to finish on my own, and quickly.

And when I did, I was cautioned not to pull the baby too high out of the water because of her short cord. My son’s cord was so short, he’d been breech and delivered via c-section. I’m not exactly a fan of short cords. I got a little freaked out.

Then I remarked that, while my surgically-delivered baby’s head looked quite intact and non-smooshed, and this baby’s did not. It looked funny, her eyes and ears seemingly set wide apart. She also didn’t cry right away. I didn’t know what to make of this near-flaccid baby who looked rather like Gollum. My first thought was a worry that she might have Down Syndrome and that I would not know how to be a good mother to her. I worried I wouldn’t love her enough, that my heart was not big enough to envelop this being I’d spent nine months worrying about and loving and feeling move inside me. What would this reveal to me about me if I stopped short of adoration?

We can never know who are children are, but it is striking to me how much with both I just looked at them in wonder. And with my daughter, I had a nervous first two minutes wondering if anything had gone wrong, chromosomally or otherwise. Here I’d had my successful homebirth in barely enough time for my midwife to make it to my house and relieve her backup. But what would happen now? Who were we all going to be?

In yoga class, I felt my hips expand in pigeon pose and thought about my story. The teacher told us, before folding, to expose our hearts, and I found that sob at was hiding on Day Four. And I cried. Mostly it was in my body, but some tears fell on my block, the floor, my cheeks.

I hope the teacher wasn’t concerned if she noticed. It was an important release.

I came home wanting to embrace my baby and her father. They are precious.

And yet, life is not just a Lifetime movie. The baby would not go to sleep. When I pulled her off my breast, she writhed like I was sticking her with a hot poker. I gave her homeopathy, Rescue Remedy, an herbal calming tincture. My husband tried again to get her to sleep. Finally I put her on my back, did some watercolor painting for the motherblessing books, and there she lies, her neck cocked over in a way that probably feels as uncomfortable as the extra 20 pounds feels to my back while I sit with horrible posture.

But it’s what is working right now. I don’t want to challenge it. Sometimes you just have to go with that and have faith that things will all work out as they are meant to be.

Right?

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

Registration, with photos by JLA photos in the background

While the International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) was having its big conference in St. Louis this weekend, Birth Matters Virginia was putting on the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Birth Summit on Saturday, and Ina May Gaskin was leading a rally on the Capitol Sunday with her Safe Motherhood Quilt project. Both D.C.-area events aimed to shed light on the problem of maternal mortality in the U.S. and to strategize solutions.

See my coverage of the summit at the Leesburg Patch and of the summit and rally on the Washington Times Communities.

Jennie Joseph talks about the success of her birth center, The Birth Place, near Orlando, Florida. Paintings in the background by Jessica Clements

Healthy Mothers Healthy Birth audience including Spiritual Midwifery author Ina May Gaskin, Orgasmic Birth filmmaker Debra Pascali Bonaro and birth painter Jessica Clements.

Me and Ina May!

Although my participation in the weekend’s events was somewhat limited by attention to my health needs and those of my baby girl, it was great to be part of these important gatherings. I am so grateful to all the organizers for their hard work and to all the practitioners for their work every day, and I hope to continue to be part of efforts to keep women, babies, and families safe and healthy.

Moments after my daughter was born at home in the water, a vaginal birth after cesarean

“Midwifery and Homeopathy” was the subject of a weekend workshop I attended last year at a conference sponsored by the National Center for Homeopathy. The information I gleaned from presenter MJ Hanafin, and later from an interview with Miranda Castro, author of Homeopathy for Pregnancy, Birth and Your Baby’s First Years, put me on the track to have a healthy and successful homebirth, a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC, or HBAC for homebirth after cesarean).

I’ll be disappointed to miss Hanafin and Castro this year when they present again at the “Homeopathy Meets the World” conference in Alexandria, Virginia (where my chapter of Holistic Moms Network will have a table! Stop by!).

But I will get educated on issues related to maternal mortality Saturday at the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Birth Summit sponsored by Birth Matters VA. (The event is sold out, but press is welcome.)

On Sunday, summit speaker Ina May Gaskin, midwife and author of the classic Spiritual Midwifery and the just-released Birth Matters, is taking her Safe Motherhood Quilt on a march to the Capitol. See the rally’s Facebook event page for more info.

The goal of both events is to raise awareness about the underreporting of maternal mortality in the United States and to call for infrastructure that accurately records this problem nationwide so that it can be studied and the rate of deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth can be lowered.

Ina May’s new book, Birth Matters addresses the problem of maternal mortality — and its underreporting — and calls into question our cultural values as reflected in our attitudes toward birth. Gaskin explores how feminism’s efforts to erase differences between men and women have not served women and babies well.  We have lost touch with the sacred experience of birth as a unique domain of women. Much of what I have read of the brand-new book so far resonates deeply with the discussions that were had in October 2009 at Perinatal: A Symposium of Birth Practices and Reproductive Rights organized by my friend, birth artist Jessica Clements.

Ina May Gaskin's Safe Motherhood Quilt was right next to our Holistic Moms Network table at the International Chiropractic Pediatric Associations October 2010 Freedom for Family Wellness Summit. Here I am with her and my then-two-month-old baby girl.

When I interviewed Ina May on the phone yesterday, I asked her about her target audience for this new book. She said she hopes a lot of men read Birth Matters to better understand the culture of birth and the process of birth in general, and the “sphincter law” in particular. “I can be funny,” she assured, in the way she explains how the body and mind interact in birth, to close in response to stress and to open in response to comfort and support.

“My message has always been that a healthy woman’s body is capable of birth,” she said when I asked what she would want a newly pregnant woman unfamiliar with her other work to know. Amid so much scary information about maternal mortality (as noted below), we don’t want to contribute to a culture of fear, do we?

“We are like other mammals,” she explained: “We need competent caregivers. We need love, comfort, and understanding, not harassment.” Although hospital interventions are put forth under the auspices of helping a woman rather than harassing her, they can still stop or slow the progress of labor even in the best of circumstances (and cause complications or lead to cesareans or even death in harsher circumstances).

Ina May wants women to understand these needs and to believe that their bodies are not inferior to other mammals. Human birthing bodies just don’t function naturally in unnatural (which can feel like hostile) circumstances.

We also discussed the issues that will be front and center at this weekend’s summit and that motivated her to start the Safe Motherhood Quilt project. The information below can also be found in my Washington Times Communities column.

Ina May Gaskin, far right, with the Safe Motherhood Quilt at the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association’s October 2010 Freedom for Family Wellness Summit.

In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control released a report showing that no improvement in maternal mortality had been made since 1982. Additionally, the report showed that black women face four times the risk white women face of dying for causes related to pregnancy or childbirth.

The report put the 1982-1998 maternal death rate at 7-8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births; the Healthy People 2000 goal set in 1987 was 3.3 or fewer maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. In addition to noting that the U.S. had not made any progress toward the Healthy People 2000 goal, the CDC report also points out that its report’s numbers reflected only known maternal deaths. On the problem of underreporting, the report reads: “The number of deaths attributed to pregnancy and its complications is estimated to be 1.3 to three times that reported in vital statistics records.”

Gaskin explained in an interview that infrastructure changes are necessary to obtain accurate data that will allow the problem to be studied. In the U.S., there is no standard death certificate whose use is required or whose list of questions includes recording whether a woman was pregnant within a year of her death. Contrast this to the United Kingdom where maternal deaths must be reported within 24 hours and a team collects data that cannot be used in any malpractice suits. Rates are studied over three years when analysis is made, along with recommendations and lessons learned.

In the U.S., Gaskin noted, “we’re taught to think it’s terrible to have government involved in health care.” But, she asked, “How else are you going to get correct data?” If hospitals – corporations – have their bottom line to protect, we are naïve to think that accurate voluntary reporting is going to happen.

It’s easy for American women to assume that no pregnant women die in hospitals because hospitals can – and feel they need to – put out the impression that “nobody dies here.” Gaskin cited the example of a pregnant woman who had an aneurysm and died – through no one’s fault – before reaching the hospital. The hospital, scared of having this maternal death on its “report card,” asked if they had to actually report the death. If the U.S. had a standard maternal death reporting system in place, there would be no question about how, much less whether, to report this death. Her case would be included and studied to give a more accurate picture of maternal death and its causes.

In 1999, Gaskin started collecting names of women whose deaths were connected to pregnancy and birth. Many of these cases seem to point in some way to inductions. “We should not have an induction rate of more than 10%, but there are some parts of the country where more than half of women are induced,” Gaskin noted. She also cited elective cesarean sections as a problem: “Surgery is always going to have a degree of danger and should only be used if there is a greater degree of danger by not having surgery.”

Gaskin said that The Maternal Health Accountability Act of 2011 – H.R. 894 – is a “great first step” toward accurate accounting and study of maternal death. The bill reads: “To amend title V of the Social Security Act to provide grants to States to establish State maternal mortality review committees on pregnancy-related deaths occurring within such States; to develop definitions of severe maternal morbidity and data collection protocols; and to eliminate disparities in maternal health outcomes.”

However, Gaskin remains skeptical that much will change without “substantial penalties for inaccurate reporting.” We are not used to having accurate reporting required, she explained, but “we need comprehensive data so we can determine priorities…If we want to study maternal death, we have to study why we’re having them.”

Saturday’s summit will bring together practitioners, researchers and advocacy groups to discuss the problem. On the agenda will be Gaskin’s research, Amnesty International’s Deadly Delivery report, and data reflecting racial disparities in birth. On Sunday, Gaskin will lead a rally showcasing the Safe Motherhood Quilt 2-4 p.m. at the fountain in Upper Senate Park.

See you there!

Welcome to the March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Natural Parenting Top 10 Lists

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared Top 10 lists on a wide variety of aspects of attachment parenting and natural living. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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I’ve had lots of folks ask me how I got pregnant after healing from Graves’ disease (autoimmune hyperthyroidism) and previously undiagnosed Celiac disease. Then I had extended lactional amenorrhea ; my period didn’t return until 29 months postpartum. But, each time I was ready to conceive, we got pregnant on the first try. Some I attribute to luck, but I also take credit for working hard to make sure that my body was as ready as it could be.

Here are some suggestions I would make to anyone thinking about trying to conceive (TTC). I’m focusing on the mama’s health, but of course it’s important for the father to be paying attention to his nutrition, too, and a sperm issue should always be ruled out if things seem to be taking a long time. But in most cases, these ten strategies should be about all you need if there isn’t something more serious going on (and maybe even if there is!)

1. Read about your body

Anyone considering pregnancy would be well served by first reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility and Garden of Fertility. The journey really starts here to understand your body’s fertility signs and to get clear on what might be going on with your cycles. These books explain how even light in your bedroom can affect your fertility and a whole bunch of other stuff you will likely not get from a doctor.

Me with my son after my motherblessing, 8 days before baby girl arrived

If you think of your body in a loving, nurturing way, you will train yourself to be a good parent and be more likely to have your body happy to work with you. Become an expert on yourself and your fertility the way you would a child who had a particular need or condition.

Another great book to read if you are at all concerned about your toxic load is Sandra Steingraber’s Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. It just might make you want to wait a little longer and detox from medications, environmental pollutants, and unhealthy eating before your body becomes a home (and, later, food source) for a little being.

2. Consider your diet

Nina Planck’s book, Real Food for Mother and Baby, is my go-to resource to explain how to get the nutrition a preconceptual body needs. The short version: eat plenty of fat from good sources (avocado, coconut, grassfed dairy, wild fish, and pastured eggs and meat), avoid sugar and processed food.

Make sure you are getting enough fat: forget low-fat items that are processed/non-whole food! If you’re vegetarian, think about animal fat/protein sources you might feel comfortable with. I was near-vegan in 2003, subsisting largely off of soy and grain, and I hadn’t had a period for 3.5 months when a nutrition counselor convinced me to lay off the soy and start eating eggs and full-fat dairy. I ovulated two weeks later and began having regular periods.

Down the line, I eliminated gluten, dairy, corn and soy, and I’ve recently eliminated grain/starch/sugar on the GAPS diet. If you are eating something your body can’t tolerate, it is not in a good place to conceive. So consider food sensitivities. And, if you’ve had a restricted (especially vegan) diet for a long time, consider vitamin and mineral deficiencies. A good health counselor can talk you through this and get you some testing that might give some clues.

And no matter what, eat lots of organic produce! And probiotic foods.

3. Get acupuncture

This healing modality can help increase circulation, regulate hormones, decrease stress and physical pain and just generally open your body, mind, and spirit up to creating a new life. When I went in around the time of conception, my practitioner did a few extra spots to let my body be a good “host.” And then when I went in just two weeks after conception, she put in one needle that positively buzzed with energy in a way I’d never felt before because I was carrying the beginning of a new life. Pretty cool!

4. Get chiropractic

If there is a structural issue in your way, chiropractic might be worth consulting. Perhaps you had a car accident or a fall many years ago , and your hips never quite realigned. Or maybe your neck has a constant problem that is influencing your thyroid or a nerve near your pituitary. Get checked out!

At a chiropractic conference, I met a practitioner who developed a method called Mercier Therapy, which has been successful at helping women with fertility issues related to endometriosis, scar tissue and other problems. One session with Dr. Mercier working on my c-section scar (after my home VBAC) made a dramatic difference. Dr. Mercier studied a lot of osteopathy to come up with her method, which leads me to my next point.

5. Get energy work

Sometimes there are more subtle nuances at work at the cellular level. Our bodies carry memories of emotions, traumas, events, and sometimes this energy can get stuck. Craniosacral therapy or cranial work with an osteopath can help release some of this energy. I am convinced that both of my pregnancies were assisted by CST. The first time, the practitioner commented specifically on energy around my ovary shortly before ovulation, and I think he helped things move in the right direction. The second time, I had several treatments in the weeks prior to conception because I ran into a glass door (d’oh!) and was very bruised on my nose. That same CST practitioner said the force was so strong it actually let him into my sinus cavity area such that he could work on trauma from my own birth (and my asymmetrical facial structure). I think this might have helped my pituitary, and also just taking the time to slow down and give my body attention was probably necessary for me to conceive.

Other energy modalities that might help include Reiki, chakra healing and crystal healing.

6. Do saliva hormone testing

Blood tests only provide part of the picture on a certain day; they don’t tell you about your whole menstrual cycle. A more comprehensive look at what is going on with your body can be found through a cycle-long saliva test through DiagnosTechs. At 11 different points during your cycle, you spit into a tube, and when you’re done, you send the tubes off to the company that will provide you and your practitioner with a report that shows the arc of your cycle compared to optimal hormone levels. This will show if you have estrogen dominance (too much estrogen related to progesterone), for which you might try using some progesterone cream and you would for sure stop eating or using all phytoestrogens (including soy) and xenoestrogens (including plastic containers). It could show a quick drop in a hormone after ovulation, or a low level throughout, for which supplements might be indicated.

Reproductive hormone issues are often related with adrenal hormone issues, so your practitioner might recommend diet or other lifestyle changes depending on what your profile suggests. There are also panels specifically for adrenal health and other hormone issues that can be done at different points throughout the day to see what your cortisol levels are doing compared to what would be expected.

My first test in 2005 showed estrogen dominance with my very long cycles. Within a short time of starting progesterone cream, I ovulated and conceived my son. My test in 2009 showed much more average hormone levels. How interesting to see what difference time — time in general and time off the Pill — and a changed diet could do!

7. Do yoga

In addition to helping you manage stress and to oxygenate your body with all that great breathwork, yoga can offer therapeutic benefits for a number of conditions. Certain poses, like cobbler’s pose or butterfly pose, are great for bringing circulation to the reproductive system. The Iyengar yoga book, Path to Holistic Health, has several series of poses for different fertility-related issues.

Days before I conceived my son, I walked out of a yoga class where the energy just didn’t feel right. I came home and, with my Iyengar book at hand, did my own practice that I believe helped things go in the right direction!

8. Clear your emotional baggage

Okay, this one is a life-long process. But seriously, try to unleash your burden before 1) some of it gets passed on to your baby and 2) you become a sleep-deprived parent. If you are holding a lot of fear or anger, that’s not a good foundation for a new being, and it might be blocking your body from creating one. So free your mind, and the rest will follow. Work with a practitioner who does a meridian tapping technique like Emotional Freedom Technique or Be Set Free Fast, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Or consider hypnotherapy. Mainstream talk therapy is great, too, but adding in these modalities can energetically re-set you in some powerful ways. So can flower essences and essential oils.

9. Laugh, sing, dance (and bellydance!)

Joy is what you want your baby to be born into, right? So cultivate it and inhabit it. Find some old school tunes you haven’t heard in a while, or discover a new artist that you want to sing to at the top of your lungs. Believe in your body’s beauty through dance. There are volumes written about how bellydance in particular can increase fertility — check out some research or just get yourself to a class!

10. Imagine your empowering, orgasmic birth each time you have sex

Okay, this one isn’t so much necessarily going to contribute to your likelihood of conceiving. But if you’ve gotten to think of sex as a chore, well, just imagine how you’ll feel about parenting! Approach sex full-on for its own sake, and imagine — not to stress you out, but just to keep you positive — that each act of intimacy could be the predictor of a birth experience nine months down the line. Ina May Gaskin and others have said that your birth experience mirrors the act of conception, and when I thought back to my son’s conception (described in this poem of mine), it made sense how he ended up with a short cord that necessitated a c-section. So get in it to win it every time!

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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: 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 March 8 with all the carnival links.)

• Attachment Parenting in the NICU — Erica at ChildOrganics shares some strategies to help you parent naturally in some unnatural circumstances.
• 10 Reasons to Choose Baby Led Weaning — Luschka from Diary of a First Child shares ten reasons to choose Baby Led Weaning when it comes to solids.
• Choosing to Breastfeed — From selfishness to self-giving, CatholicMommy at Working to be Worthy lists reasons why breast is best for her and her family.
• Ten Things I Wish I Knew About Before Little Man — In this reflective post, The ArstyMama discusses ten things she wishes she knew more about before the birth of her son, Little Man.
• 10 Things That Helped Me Become a Natural Mama — The Accidental Natural Mama counts down ten things that helped her find her moderately crunchy inner mama self.
• Top 10 Reasons to Breastfeed Your Toddler — Extended breast-feeder Kate Wicker of Momopoly makes her own top 10 list for why she loves nursing her 2-year-old.
• Top 10 Tips on Authentic Grandparenting — Mamapoekie of Authentic Parenting offers a list of tips to make the grandparent-parent-child relationship flow smoothly.
• Top Ten “Dad” Things — Liam at In The Now talks about his favourite ways to spend time with his children.
• Top 10 Natural Strategies for Conception (aka How to Get Pregnant!) — Despite facing plenty of health issues, Jessica Claire at Crunchy-Chewy Mama found her way to two first-try pregnancies thanks to these natural strategies.
• Top Ten Reasons Why Home Birth Rocks — Lucy at Dreaming Aloud shares her passion for birthing at home – the natural place for natural birth.
• Top 10 reasons why cloth nappies are fun — Tat at Cloth Nappies Are Fun shows how using cloth nappies can brighten up your day.
• Top Ten Ways to Be Present With Family — Amy at Innate Wholeness shares how to make the most of parenting and family life through being present.
• Top 10 Things In My Arsenal of Kitchen Witchy Mama Tricks. — Joni Rae at Tales of A Kitchen Witch shares with us the simple things she would never want to be missing from her cupboards.
• Top 10 ways I’m not very good at natural parenting (and why I keep trying anyway) — Jenny at Babyfingers shares the ways she is imperfect as a natural parent, and why she embraces natural parenting anyway.
• Top 10 Ways to Know You Are a Natural Parent — So what makes us “natural parents,” anyway? A lighthearted look at the Top 10 Ways to Know You Are a Natural Parent by the editors and readers of Natural Parents Network.
• The Top 10 Things Every Natural Household (with children) Should Have — Amanda at Let’s Take the Metro shares a list of the most common natural products and remedies she uses for health and cleaning.
• Top 10 books for raising loving, spiritual children — In her ‘food for the soul’ post, Mrs Green from Little Green Blog shares her favourite spiritual books. No matter what religion you practise, there’s something for everyone!
• Top 10 Things No One Told Me About Natural Parenting — Adrienne at Mommying My Way explains that the best things about natural parenting are things she never expected.
• Top 10 Flower Essences for Families — Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings lists her pick of the top ten flower essence which can help ease families through the ups and downs of life.
• My Top Ten Parenting Tools — Amyables at Toddler In Tow names the top ten tools that have been helpful to her while learning to parent respectfully and successfully.
• Ten Ways Families Can Enjoy Nature (for free!) — Spring is nearly in the air, and Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction is dreaming of the fun and frugal ways that her family is going to get out and enjoy nature this summer.
• 10 Reasons We Unschool — Patti at Jazzy Mama explains why unschooling is the right choice for her family.
• Must Read: Natural Parenting Top Ten — Amy at Anktangle wants you to do a little reading! She shares her top ten favorite books to help parents prepare for pregnancy, birth, and parenting.
• Top 10 Breastfeeding Misconceptions — Sheila at A Gift Universe examines ten reasons women give for why they didn’t breastfeed as long as they wanted, and shows how these obstacles can be overcome.
• Ten Reasons to Plan a Home Birth — Since a home birth can be an incredibly empowering experience, Leslie at Lights and Letters outlines ten reasons why you should plan to have your baby at home.
• Top Ten Books for Birth, Breastfeeding and Parenting — Megan at Just Me(gan) writes about the ten books that have helped her the most in her natural parenting journey.
• A Top Ten Letter To Me… — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment writes herself a letter of reflections and bits of wisdom she would have liked to know as a new mama.
• Top Ten Mama Necessities Money Can’t Buy — Buying baby gear is fun, but Emily at Crunchy(ish) Mama knows real parenting must-haves can’t be bought in stores (or even on Amazon).
• Top 10 Books for a Natural Mum — Isil at Smiling like Sunshine talks about her Top 10 Books for a Natural Mum.
• Ten Great Spring Activities To Do With Preschoolers — Kellie at Our Mindful Life and her family have come up with a great list of activities to do together this spring.
• 10 Ways to Reuse Yogurt Containers — Acacia at Fingerpaint & Superheroes keeps the stacks of yogurt containers out of her recycling bin by reusing them in both practical and creative ways.
• Top Ten Ways To Have a Harmonious Home — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama shares her natural parenting-inspired methods for maintaining a harmonious daily life with her toddler.
• 10 Natural Baby Items I Love — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama shares product ideas to support your natural parenting.
• The Pandas’ Top Five Crunch-osophies — Top five crunchy philosophies, as employed at the Panda Residence by Ana at Pandamoly.
• Top 10 Reasons to Leave Your Son Intact — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children has shared 10 reasons why you should leave your newborn son intact.
• Ten things everyone should know about unassisted homebirth — Olivia at Write About Birth shares practical tips for women considering an unassisted homebirth and debunks some common myths
• 10 Most Popular Ways To Treat Cloth Diaper Stains — Chante at My Natural Motherhood Journey gives ten easy tips to make your diapers like new.
• 10 Lessons in 1 Year — Abbie at Farmer’s Daughter shares 10 parenting lessons that she has learned throughout her first year of motherhood.
• Top 10 Ways to Get Breastfeeding Off To a Good Start — Sheryl at Little Snowflakes shares 10 effective ways to ensure breastfeeding gets off to a good start.
• Top 10 Ways to Avoid a Time-Out — If you are uncomfortable using time-outs in an attempt to control your child’s behavior, try one of these gentler alternatives. Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares her Top 10 Ways to Avoid a Time-Out.
• My Top 10 Parenting Scriptures — Dulce de leche is learning to integrate faith and parenting. Whether it is breastfeeding, babywearing, comforting her children, or gentle discipline, she finds that the Bible has beautiful passages to encourage her on her journey.
• Natural Cleaning Ideas – Top 10 — Laura at Laura’s Blog lists the ways she keeps her house clean and clear of chemicals.
• My Top Ten (plus two) Life Altering and Growth Inspiring Books — A top ten list of books from MJ at Wander Wonder Discover that changed her life as an individual, a parent, and an earth dweller.
• Top 10 Ways to Use Natural Parenting for Children with Special Needs — Danielle at Mommy Makes Cents feeds the needs of her family and special needs child through the use of Natural Parenting.
• Ten Fundamentals — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante gets philosophical with a list of the fundamentals that drive her natural parenting.
• 10 reasons why I chose breast over bottles — Becky at Old New Legacy writes a quick list of why she chose breast over bottles.
• Top Ten Natural Tools for the Work of Play — Lori at Beneath the Rowan Tree offers insight into 10 natural toys that will span the early years (and save you money).
• 10 differences between pregnancy and parenting in Japan and the US — Megan at Ichigo Means Strawberry gives her impressions about differences in pregnancy and parenting in Japan and the US.
• Natural Parenting Benny & Bex Style — Pecky at Benny and Bex explains why Natural Parenting principles work best for her boys.
• Top 10 Reasons to Co-Sleep — 10 practical, emotional, and completely selfish reasons to co-sleep and share a family bed from Lily, aka Witch Mom.
• My Top Ten New Mommy Moments — Melissa at The New Mommy Files recounts the ten most memorable moments of her daughter’s first year.
• Top Ten Things Every Breastfeeding Mother Needs to Know — Kristen at Adventures in Mommyhood believes knowledge is power and wants all moms to be well informed.
• Top 10 Nursing Positions / Situations — Momma Jorje uses her 5½ years of nursing experience to share her Top 10 Nursing Positions/Situations. She includes some adorable photos of her youngest daughter at the breast.
• Ten Top Ways to Connect Kids with Nature — Terri from Child at the Nature Isle offers 10 ways to immerse ourselves in the natural world and develop a love affair with the Earth.
• Top 10 Slacker Ways to Natural Parent — Guavalicious is happy to show you how to parent naturally the slacker way.
• Simply what it looks like — Andrea!!! from Ella-Bean & Co. offers a glimpse into natural parenting through the eyes of mama and babe.
• Top Ten Reasons Why Natural Parenting Dads Are So Attractive — Nada at miniMOMist sure digs her husband, but it’s not just his good looks — it’s his parenting!
• 10 Family Systems and Routines That Work for Us — See what routines, organizational systems, and parenting approaches work for Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings to help avoid conflict and maintain sanity in a family with three young children.
• Top 10 reasons to choose midwifery care — Lauren at Hobo Mama lists the features that drew her to midwives’ care for pregnancy and birth.
• 10 Ways to Cloth Diaper on a Budget — Michelle at The Parent Vortex shares her best thrifty cloth diapering tips.
• Ten Reasons it Felt Sew Good To Make My Own Play Food — Brittany at Mama’s Felt Cafe lists her 10 (OK, 11) favorite reasons to grab a needle and start sewing your own felt play toys.
• Top10 Ways to Spark Interest, Learn, and Have Fun With Everyday Tasks! — Bethy at Bounce Me to the Moon gives you her top 10 ways of incorporating fun and lessons into everyday tasks and chores.
• Postpartum Gift Ideas — Alicia at I Found My Feet suggests a top 10 list of gifts for mother’s after giving birth.
• My Top Ten Shows Worthy Of Screen Time — Tree at Mom Grooves shares her top ten list of shows that she believes are positive, educational, kind, joyful, and a nice way to share some downtime with your children.
• The Top 10 Ways to Succeed as an Working Attachment Parent — That Mama Gretchen shares tried and true ways to succeed with attachment parenting even when working away from home during the day.
• Top Ten Books for Natural Parenting — Pregnancy, herbs, cooking, and healthcare the ten books Asha at Meta Mom the most.
• Preparing for a Hospital VBAC: My Top 10 — Thomasin at Propson Palingenesis shares 10 ways she’s preparing for her upcoming hospital VBAC.
• Top Ten New Mom Survival Tools — Wolfmother shares her most beloved motherhood survival tools at Fabulous Mama Chronicles.
• Top 10 Montessori Principles for Natural Learning — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now gives her top 10 list of Montessori principles parents can use to encourage their children s natural learning.
• Going Granola — Tashmica from The Mother Flippin’ Blog describes the 10 ways that natural parenting sneaked up on her. She never expected to go all granola on the world.
• Step Away From the Amazon List — Stefanie at Very, Very Fine wishes she hadn’t bought so much useless stuff.

I didn’t even know what the term lymphedema meant when Susan Niebur of Toddler Planet blog told me she was working out a deal to have compression sleeves made available to women who can’t afford them. I hadn’t ever met Susan, but I knew she was in a rough place with a recurrence of cancer; we both used to write for DC Metro Moms and will soon be writing for The DC Moms.

Despite everything else she has going on, Susan replied quickly to my inquiry if a visit from a woman she’d never met (even one with a cute baby!) would be welcome. I offered referrals to holistic folks, and she wrote back about having gotten relief with lymphedma therapy at an integrative medical center I’ve been to. Some quick Googling told me that removal of lymph nodes can result in painful swelling, which can be mitigated by sleeves or compression devices.

Susan shared that she, too, was an attachment parenting mama, and that I should save my new-mama energy rather than come to her side of the Beltway. But she asked for my help in spreading the word about the new partnership she was going to launch the next day, and I promised I would.

And then my son got sick. And then his dad got sick. And, already not knowing which way is up as a newish mom of two, I lost my way.

I knew I would eventually get a post up, but I didn’t know that cancer would first hit home, giving me a whole new perspective on Susan’s experience and on her important project to give women access to lymphedema sleeves (which are not covered by insurance).

Liz strings a bead on my labor necklace at my motherblessing

I found out yesterday that my friend Liz has breast cancer, invasive ductal carcinoma, and that it’s said to be “aggressive.” She’s 42 and has three daughters who are 21, 9, and 5, and a baby boy who is almost 10 months old. She’s been an extended breastfeeding advocate for a long time, so it’s breaking her heart to think about weaning him as almost as it’s scaring her to think about her future.

Liz quickly became a mentor of sorts to a playgroup we formed together over four years after “meeting” through an Attachment Parenting email list. The other people in the playgroup connected over their interest in and advocacy of homebirth. Liz helped build the Northern Virginia Homebirth Community resource. Her license plate is H20Birth. Being around Liz helped pave the way for my homebirth this past August after my 2006 c-section.

Despite my emotional turbulence during my pregnancy, Liz stuck by me and helped organize a wonderful motherblessing. A week before my daughter was born, that special afternoon helped me float into the reality of birthing my baby in my home. Speaking of floating, Liz also arranged for me to rent the same birth tub her son was born in, and she even picked it up and brought it to my house!

The day I had my baby, she was over within hours. Unfortunately, she was faster than my placenta, which took 4.5 hours to be delivered (about exactly as long as my labor was for the baby). Since my neighbor was also in labor (and had hired the same midwife), Liz, once a midwife in training, went down to the other woman’s house to help out as an assistant so that the actual assistant could go with me to the hospital. When I ended up expelling the placenta on my own, it was Liz who was directed to call the hospital and tell them I would not be coming.

Even though she had her own 4-month-old and two elementary-aged girls, Liz picked up my son several times this

Liz paints my belly at my motherblessing

summer to take him on playdates. How she mustered the energy to brave the splashground with all those children I’ll never understand!

But she did. And now we know that the lump she felt that month was more than nothing. A biopsy last week revealed the bad news, and now she awaits an MRI for more information about the extent of the cancer and her possible treatment options.

I have not been the greatest friend to Liz or to our mutual friends. I haven’t shown up for her or others when they’ve had their babies in the way I wish I could have, especially now that I have been on the other end and know how much help helps, and how much silence can hurt. I still need to do some work on myself to figure out the roles I have and haven’t played, and to forgive myself and move on.

But now, there is no “getting to it later.” There is no assuming she let me know if she wants something. She needs help now. And she has no health insurance. Her family is applying for Medicaid, but there is not much in the coffers, and any treatment — holistic or conventional — is going to cost a whole lot, upwards of $20,000 another friend’s research found.

So I started a blog at http://helptohealmama.blogspot.com/ to enlist some help. Another friend got PayPal set up for donations. Please make one if you are reading this and can spare even $10. A lot of smalls can add up to something big!

I hope we can eventually get a system of healing service donations going so that Liz can get massage, acupuncture, detox treatments, nutritional consults, Reiki … whatever people will offer pro bono.

If it’s determined that Liz will need to be aggressive with her treatment in a mainstream way, she will need breastmilk donations for her baby. At some point, she will need help with meals and with childcare, so I’ve set up a Lotsa Helping Hands website.

After all the support and love Liz has given me and the difference she’s made in the lives of so many women, the least I can do is to help create a network of help. Maybe all the time I’ve spent cultivating relationships with healing professionals can in some way benefit her and her family.

Added later:

More on blogging power for moms fighting breast cancer at She Posts and at Mamma Loves, where you’ll get the story behind this icon:

It was exactly a year ago that I found out I was pregnant. I tested two weeks after I’d ovulated and was ambivalent. On one hand, I had been told I was glowing, and I seriously felt buzzy electricity where those cells were dividing. It’s like there was a frequency, and every once in a while, I’d tune in and feel the vibration. So I kind of suspected.

But then there was the fact that this was our first try. And things weren’t exactly going swimmingly around the homestead, so it was with some hesitation that we even pulled the trigger. But I’d wanted my son to have a sibling, and I was far enough away from weaning and past the move and a busy October that it was the time to start trying, already halfway through being 36 and all.

I had, in fact,  been planning for this for months with detox and health consults and herbs. I started writing a “how I got pregnant” essay when literally asked that by a friend who was trying to conceive, and I have yet to finish it and add in a bunch of links to make it useful for sharing. But someday I will.

Right now, I’m still scratching my head at that double pink line on the first of five or six tests I took those first few weeks when I had zero symptoms other than two nights of insomnia while my in-laws were here for Thanksgiving. And scratching my head that a morning I woke up before dawn

Pensive, like her mama, on this anniversary of the discovery of her soul.

thinking the day would look one way, I ended up with a baby in my arms less than five hours later. And now, here she is, with the fire wand her brother made three years ago at his first Waldorf school fall festival placed oh-so-lovingly on her head, the better for watching race cars on a plastic track.

I still cannot believe she is here.

Shortly after I found out I was pregnant, I started a little blog I don’t think I shared with anyone, except maybe a friend from my writing group. http://maybebabywaitandsee.blogspot.com/ Maybe my husband, but I don’t think so. I wanted to write daily, but didn’t, and then trailed off around 16 weeks. I just re-read a few of the entries and wish there were more.

There’s something people tend to say every time I talk about regrets, which include: The regret that I spent so much of the pregnancy afraid that I could pull of a vaginal birth, or that the baby would make it and be okay. Regret about the way the birth video and photos turned out (and our lack of preparation). Regret that I didn’t have a soundtrack and so that two hours in the tub was just so damn quiet. Regret that I didn’t do more hypnobirthing preparation so that I could have breathed through those early contractions more and waited to push so that those last pushes would have been more powerful and less of the this-needs-to-happen-put-it-all-in-even-though-you-don’t-have-much-left variety (both for my own sense of satisfaction and so that the baby wouldn’t have started to lose her color). Regret that I wasn’t enraptured in joy and smothering her with exuberant kisses upon lifting her out of the water but was so freaked out that she was out, that her cord was too short for high lifting, that she wasn’t active or crying, that she looked so darn freaky.

People say, “Next time.”

I don’t know. What is the right motivation to bring a child into the world? I wondered if I’d “heal” from my c-section if I didn’t have a vaginal birth. I did want another child, and I really wanted E to have a sibling. But I also wanted this for me. And yet, how fair is it to have a baby if you doubt your own investment as a mother. I’ve hardly looked at my daughter. I can’t keep my brain focused on her for more than half a minute, running down the list in my head of all the things I want to do, write, reply to, sign up for. Hell, I’m writing this instead of doing a lot of things I could be doing for my kids. Or I could be sleeping, or doing yoga, or cleaning the house so we all felt a lot calmer.

For three and a half months now, I’ve wanted to be pregnant again, to just enjoy the experience, to look forward to the birth. After I got past a big event when my daughter was six weeks old, I’ve wanted to live through another newborn period without so many irons in the fire and just really doing a laying-in babymoon. I have an essay in this anthology about fantasizing about a do-over for my son’s first year. I’m really good at wanting another chance.

But there are issues of time, and health, and  stability of various kinds — marital, mental, financial. And, though part of me thinks I want my children to be able to say that they have siblings, plural, what kind of childhood can I seriously give them if I’m this distracted with just two kids?

In five years, am I just going to wish I’d made up my mind, stopped wondering, and enjoyed settling into the present as a mother of two, certain that would remain my future?

I was thrilled to learn that my friend Jessica Clements, birth artist and organizer of last October’s “Perinatal” symposium on birth practices and reproductive rights, was part of a panel  this past weekend on “Pregnant Women: The Outsiders in the Women’s Rights Discourse” in Denver at the Annual Conference of the National Women’s Studies Association:  Difficult Dialogues II.

Jessica reports a great response to her panel; I can’t wait to learn more when she returns from a much-deserved vacation. This woman is blazing a trail between feminism and birth rights. Until I learn more, I wanted to at least share the general information about what looks like a fabulous panel.

Pregnant Women: The Outsiders in the Women’s Rights Discourse

Scheduled Time: Sat, Nov 13 – 2:20pm – 3:35pm

Room: Plaza Concourse Level / Governor’s Square 16

Session Participants:

Birth Activism as Feminism

*Jessica Clements (George Mason University)

Pregnancy Portrayal in the Media

*Laura Possessky (Gura and Possessky, PLLC)

Feticide Laws: At What Cost for Women?

*Sarah J. Gareau (Lenoir-Rhyne University)

Promoting the Civil Rights of Pregnant Women

*Lisa Pratt (University of the District of Columbia)

Abstract:

Motherhood “continually recreates the core paradox and core ambivalence that being ‘from the mother half of humanity’ poses for all women” (Blum, 1993, p. 291). Through restrictions on abortion, fetal personhood statutes, abolishment of the patient-provider relationship, and denial of birthing rights, pregnant women are one of the most marginalized groups in the U.S. Walker (1995) argues for a new space in which we acknowledge motherhood as a social identity that has provided particular women with a sense of self-worth from which to challenge various forms of oppression and, in the process, develop new strengths and capacities. The panelists will argue that this new space is emerging through the transformation of media, law, and politics. In this new space, both pro-choice and anti-choice mothers can and have found common ground — the shared belief in the health, humanity, and rights of all pregnant women.

Speaker one discusses the history of birth activism as it relates to feminism and explores the impact of political movements during the 20th century on women’s perceptions of their bodies, reproductive choices, and identities as mothers. She then turns to contemporary issues in birth activism and theorizes why feminist work to advance birth choices is largely neglected by American women. Most importantly, she addresses why many in the contemporary feminist movement distance themselves from choice as it pertains to childbirth.

Speaker two examines the portrayal of pregnancy and birth in media as a commentary of how society perceives gestation, labor and birth. Media representations of birth also send messages about how women should act, how women should be treated and what is expected of women in the early years of motherhood. These images often create unreasonable expectations and frequently drive misconceptions that women have about the experience of pregnancy and birth. She will argue that popular media images hinder a public discourse in improving maternal care and enforcing legal rights of pregnant and laboring women.

Speaker three argues that feticide laws, such as Unborn Victims of Violence Act, promoted as improving the livelihood of pregnant women, in actuality set the precedence to deny women their rights to privacy and bodily integrity by establishing the legal personhood of a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus, therefore undermining the foundation for Roe v. Wade. Similar laws have also been used to prosecute women who suffered stillbirths under fetal homicide statutes. This approach ignores the relevance of the shared maternal-fetal relationship and the importance of the pregnant woman as a person in her own right from conception to birth.

Speaker four discusses how current laws fall short of protecting the rights of pregnant women and argues the need for a new civil rights statute to codify the rights of child bearing women. The unequal power positioning between a doctor and the woman, coupled with the relatively short duration of a pregnancy, create a prime opportunity for systemic abuse. Although pregnant woman can refuse treatment, they are often unaware of their rights and fearful of retaliation for not complying. Panelist will discuss procedures forced on pregnant women, the historical violation of pregnant women’s rights, and examples of retaliatory practices against noncompliant women.

I knew when I went in for my c-section in 2006 that the effects would be lasting, but I only recently realized to what extent. I tend to hold on to emotion through my body, and since the need for a surgical delivery was profoundly disappointing to me, I expected that it would take my body and heart a while to get over the method of my son’s entry into the world.

Last spring, before I conceived, my doctor’s muscle-testing and her colleague’s computer scan of my energy meridians showed my body sort of “divided” at the midline. After that, I began using a laser after acupuncture treatments at their office to help the scar heal. Before bed, I would massage sesame oil into my scar at night to help it loosen. I also felt called to use the essential oil SARA from Young Living Oils, a blend that markets itself as being for sexual trauma.  After I got pregnant on the first try, I essentially gave up thinking about my scar and turned my energy toward worrying about whether or not I could manage to have a successful natural birth.

Now I’m 12 weeks postpartum after a homebirth VBAC, or HBAC. So you’d think I’d have gotten over the c-section, but apparently not! I noticed that my first attempts to jog around eight weeks after my daughter’s birth — just a mile and a half or two! and slowly! — had me later feeling like my pelvis was aching. This was not the case with my son. With him, I didn’t try any exercise — or much of anything else — until ten weeks and then went out for four miles and felt great.

I figured the discomfort was product of the different method of birth and also the fact that, instead of staying home, napping, and healing like I did in 2006, this time I’m running around with a preschooler, volunteering for his school, running a mom’s group, and trying to have something like a freelance writing and editing career. Not much time for rest, and so many things I want to do!

I mentioned all this to Dr. Jennifer Mercier, who was selling her new book Women’s Optimal Pelvic Health with Mercier Therapy just behind our Holistic Moms table at the Freedom for Family Wellness Summit last weekend. She offered to work on me.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier discussing pelvic health

It hadn’t occurred to me that any of my discomfort was related to my c-section scar. I thought it had to do with my pelvis spreading internally. The word that came to mind after I ran or spent a lot of time on my feet was “crushed.” That sounds dramatic, but I felt like my pelvis had been sort of crushed in a car accident years ago and that what I felt was the residual dull ache.

But then she started palpating my scar. It hurt. It was hot, like a muscle with a lot of tension. She noted that my scar was very close to my pubic bone. She worked on it for a few minutes, rubbing it like you would a knot you’re trying to knead out. Then she had me do some resistance exercises. I was on my back with my knees bent, and I tried to pull them together while she tried to push them apart, three times for 10 seconds.

After she was done, she pressed on the scar again and asked how I felt. It didn’t hurt. “If you’re seriously putting the same amount of pressure as you were before, then that is am amazing difference,” I told her. She said she was. And she showed me how to work on my scar myself, by applying pressure and then pulling up and down off the pubic bone.

The next day, we took a long family walk, and I jogged a little bit of it. Zero ache the next day. Seriously. I was pretty impressed.

Dr. Mercier told me she developed her method through the study of osteopathy. I happened to have an appointment a few days later with my osteopath, Dr. D. I told her about my experience a few days earlier. Dr. D. was pulled into my pelvis and told me to put my hands on my scar and imagine pulling up, just energetically, but the same motion Dr. Mercier had recommended.

Through my work with Dr. D, I felt some major releases, and, at one point, like my whole body went light — illuminated — from my scar down and from my scar up — like a bright light moving in both directions from my middle. It was pretty intense, and pretty amazing. I left feeling much less emotional and testy and much more in a place of acceptance than when I walked in (even though I didn’t think any of my crabby mood had anything to do with my surgery four and a half years ago).

I have started reading Dr. Mercier’s book and am going to recommend it to anyone I know who is (or knows someone who is) dealing with infertility or cycle issues.