Well, she’s been out about as long as she was in, and it’s gotten pretty warm here in the D.C. area.

So I went ahead and put my almost-nine-month-old girl in a dress. For the first time.

When my son had taken it out of the box sent by my mom a few weeks back, he channeled Tim Gunn:  “It’s aDORable!”

I have to say, it was pretty cute on, and we’ve been sporting plenty of handed-down girlie get-ups on the warm days that continued after this one.

I don’t do faces on this blog, but trust me that her cheeks make these chubby hams look small!

Check out my post from last fall on gender and baby clothing.

I remember the first time I got a message from the Bradley Method® of Natural Childbirth after my son’s c-section in 2006.

The subject heading — “The World Needs More Bradley® Instructors!” – didn’t exactly feel warm and fuzzy to my tender belly and the emotional guts beneath it.

But it was the contents of the message that just about ripped my heart in two:

“If The Bradley Method® helped you to have an unmedicated birth, perhaps you would like to become an Instructor? Space is limited! Sign-up now and become part of this exciting program to help more babies have a Happy Birth-Day!

The World Needs More Bradley® Instructors! What a Great way to help others and to help your family too!”

When you’re reeling from an unwanted c-section, a message like this is more than unwanted. It’s a slap in the face, a reminder of what you can’t do, what you can’t be.

Or that’s how I chose to see it, licking my wounds as I was.

I’ve gotten messages like this periodically for the last 4+ years. Now they start with “Thank you for contacting us in the past” or something that tells me I’ve made it onto the old mama list. Only just now did I feel like I could unsubscribe myself from the list, now that I have had a successful homebirth after cesarean (HBAC, or home VBAC).

Before, it felt like tempting the fates. “Well, maybe someday I might want to do that,” I thought. If I deleted myself, it seemed like I’d be saying I didn’t believe I could give birth naturally.

But now I know I can. I did. I regret spending so much of my energy while pregnant doubting myself and my body. I know it was part of a journey I had to take, but I wish I could have just enjoyed the pregnancy. Inhabited it.

I put on this Mommy Goddess tank top for sleeping and had the baby the next morning!

Our new family of four

And while I think most everyone should take the Bradley Method before having their first baby, and while I got a lot out of attending a “Belly Talk” led by a Bradley teacher about 8 weeks before I gave birth, I know I needed more. And different.

I didn’t use much of the Hypnobirthing techniques in labor, but I needed to have refreshed the training and have relaxed to the CDS.

I needed to have done some Emotional Freedom Technique to let go of some of my fears and anxieties and do to work through my thoughts on birth, to imagine a visual representation of the birth I wanted and the birth I didn’t want.

And then I needed Birthing from Within to take those insights further and put them on the page, in art, and into discussion with my partner.

Making belly cast as part of Birthing from Within private class

Painted belly cast

Day of motherblessing after having my belly painted, having a birth necklace strung for me and having a yarn bracelet woven through my circle of friends

There was art and love with motherblessings (with belly henna and beads), and bellydancing, and yoga, and a Mommy Goddess tank top, and I could go on about other help and healing modalities, but the point is: It took a village to have a VBAC. I drew probably a lot more than I realize on what I learned in Bradley, but I am not a one-approach kind of gal. Not for birth prep, not for bodywork or healthcare, not for nuthin’.

So goodbye, Bradley list. I wish you well, and I will speak highly of your owners. But I’m on my own path.

Make that paths.

Professional photos are not something I’ve pursued for my family. It took me over a year to redeem a free shoot I won from Holistic Moms Northern Virginia chapter’s one-year anniversary party for pregnant belly shots.

When I connected online just a week later with DC-area newcomer Lisa Hager of Red Thread Photography, I was intrigued by her August campaign to donate 100% of August’s income to CARE, an organization that works to fight global poverty with a special focus on helping women and girls.

We never did a newborn photo shoot with my son, but I decided his sister should get one (and we were way overdue on family photos, too). Lisa came over when my daughter was almost 4 weeks old and did an amazing job corralling my clueless family — between bouts of crying or preschooler drama — into so many lovely shots we had a terrible time deciding what images to buy! Seriously, it has taken weeks!

I don’t post full-on child faces on my blog (especially when they are so crystal clear!), so here are photos of me and the babe. I was surprised to find myself hesitating to post the more obvious nursing shot considering how much lactivism I did with my son, who nursed until age three.

This isn’t too much breast for prime time, is it?  How can the most loving, healthful act be anything but beautiful? Especially in this photographer’s hands!

Thanks, Lisa, for capturing such wonderful images! Now that I have them, I guess there’s no excuse for putting off that birth announcement. Have I mentioned my daughter is now 8 weeks old?

A year ago, at the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage weekend, I saw a staged reading of Karen Brody’s play Michelle Obama: Taskmaster.  Now the author of Birth: The Play is holding what sounds like an amazing workshop for moms who have had cesarean sections and VBACs. If I didn’t have a newborn and live on the other side of town, I would be there!

This storytelling/performance workshop of the My Body Rocks project takes place over the course of nine weeks. Proceeds from the performance at the end of the session will benefit chapters of ICAN, the International Cesarean Awareness Network.

Check out My Body Rocks for other workshops, including a pregnancy circle starting September 27.

Being pregnant in the summer is a different experience than having a baby due in March. My body is really out there. And I mean out there. But still, people have been pretty nice.

One friend complimented me on how good I looked and then made the analogy: “like an olive on a stick.” I liked that better than the “did your mommy swallow a basketball?” question in the grocery store.

As I was walking away from dropping my son off at day camp, another parent rolled down the window of her car to say: “You look great! I’m an obstetrician and I would have had no idea until you turned the corner!” I replied with a thanks and “Two weeks left!”

Because it was super cheap and super close to my son’s camp, I bought a month trial to a gym through a Living Social deal and ran into a friend who is a member. “I’m impressed!” she chirped about my working out at 38 weeks pregnant. “You can even hold a conversation!” she noticed while I ellipticaled.

I went to a bellydancing Moms Night Out with my Holistic Moms chapter, and, when we danced in a line, my friend commented that she couldn’t even tell I was pregnant from behind.

Bellydancing at Moms Night Out

So, despite the fact that I think my face is super puffy looking and my wrists are tingling and numb, if not painful — while I hold the phone, while I chop vegetables, and a lot during the night — it’s nice to get some positive feedback from the outside world on this body that is carrying an extra third of its normal weight.

Dear Angie Ferrell of Norwood, Ohio and Jennifer M. of Danvers, Massachusetts,

Thank you for writing letters (published in the July/August issue) about recent Mothering magazine news briefs on Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC). When I first read Jennifer’s letter, I thought she was responding to the piece I wrote in the May/June issue about the National Institutes of Health calling VBAC a reasonable option (see extended online piece here).

Only later did I realize, Jennifer, that what you were mad about was the piece in the previous (March/April) issue about VBAC rates plummeting, which is indeed pretty darn sad. Let’s hope that the NIH report will make some kind of positive difference.

But even though I was playing Carly Simon in my head, so vain as to think your letter was about me, I was also moved by the similarity in our stories, Jennifer. Like your daughter, my son was breech, and though we tried for a vaginal delivery after being transferred from our midwife practice to the rare OB in our area who delivers breech babies, ultimately we ended up with a c-section since the baby’s cord was too short (and around his neck) in order to let him descend.

My hospital experience was probably better than most, and it sounds like better than yours (though I still would not want to go back!). We got to keep our son in our room, sleeping right with us without having to put up a fight. Our doctor let me go home just 46 hours after the surgery (I would have been so deflated to spend another night there!) Like you, Jennifer M., it saddens me that women often don’t know about their options. But some of us have to learn the hard way.

Because of my c-section, I’ve learned a whole lot more about the system and its problems. If I hadn’t had a c-section, I probably never would have attended a meeting of ICAN, the International Cesarean Awareness Network, and I probably wouldn’t have even known about (much less attended) the NIH conference on VBAC.

Angie Ferrell, I’ve heard so many stories like yours at ICAN about “failure to progress,” but it’s been through listening and experiencing my own healing that I’ve learned to have compassion and understanding about these disappointments. I think I needed to be jolted into understanding instead of rushing to judge that women who had c-sections just didn’t work hard enough, which is the righteous attitude I think I used to have.

Same with breastfeeding. We made it to three years, but that first week with no mama’s milk to be seen, my son had to have some formula, which I always thought was a cop-out.

Through challenges we learn to open our hearts and put our activism hats on.

So Jennifer, I know that the “VBACs plummet” piece made you angry, but I hope you and I can both continue to find ways to channel our negative feelings into something positive. I appreciate hearing your story and love knowing that you had a successful homebirth VBAC (or HBAC). I’m hoping to have one sometime in the next few weeks!

And Angie, it’s great to know that you found a baby-friendly hospital and had a drug-free VBAC! It’s even better to hear that it resulted in a renewal of your trust in your body.

Thank you both for sharing your experiences. And, since Angie was indeed referring to my piece on the NIH report when she said “thank you for sharing the latest information,” I get to say a hearty, “You’re welcome!”

During our week home sick together, my son did a lot of whining and a lot of snuggling. But he also came up with plenty of interesting things to say, including this question he asked of me while I was peeing:

“When are you going to get a penis?”

My response about that he would, sadly, not be growing a uterus any sooner than I would be growing a penis did not, I’m afraid, appear to satisfy.

Where did that glass door come from? I could have sworn it was open. Oh, that’s just another piece of glass there for show? Right. Thanks. My nose and its new scar really appreciate the optical illusion.

“But why wasn’t there a doorknob?” my son asked when I explained why I had a cut on my nose (from my glasses bridge) and a bruise under my eye. Good question. I guess there was, but it was vertical, on the side of the brand new glass door instead of horizontal in front where it would hit an unsuspecting person’s belly before her face.

I’ve never run into something with that much force before. It hurt. I bled all over. And I look stupid and have even less motivation than before to get out of my pajamas. Did I mention that the reason for me going to this building I’ve been to a million times before it got its facelift and snazzy new invisible doors was to attend the grand opening of the new location of a holistic medi spa and maybe win a door prize for some great beauty or relaxation treatment? The owner was a sweetheart who got me ice and called me the next morning to check on me.

So, less than a week later, when I get the call from the preschool teacher that my son had some funky physics with a rock that somehow clocked him and gave him some nose bleeding, I just have to ask the universe what the hell is going on? At least he knows his mom got through an unhappy nose job; so can he.

I’ve known artist Jessica Clements for a while, but it was a thrill this week to attend the symposium she organized and to see her MFA thesis exhibit of birth paintings on the campus of George Mason University, right in the middle of the Johnson Student Center. Talk about bringing art and activism to the people! Folks standing in line for lunch got a full view of her fabulous paintings of natural childbirth.

“Perinatal: A Symposium on Birth Practices and Reproductive Rights” was an amazing event. It was great to see moms and babies on the college campus in addition to the empowering feeling of being with so many people doing so much important work. See Crunchy-Chewy Mama regarding a woman being denied a VBAC.

This post originally appeared on DC Metro Moms on April 7, 2009

A bra costs WHAT?

I had one other nicer nursing bra, but it was really too big, and if you poked me at the right spot, I’d go concave. Then, when my boy was almost two, I graduated to the Bravado “Silk Seamless Nursing Bra”, which came with removable and durable cups that stayed in at all times to ensure that no one would sink my battleships.

Until a few months ago, I was nursing enough during the day that I still chose nursing bras over regular ones for everyone’s convenience (well, except my husband. He had no privileges). A few weeks ago, when I considered that we’d be out at a friend’s party until almost bedtime, I thought ahead: my shirt needed all the shape help I could give my little little girls. I figured that will all the activity, we might be able to just stuff our son in his jammies and drive him home to sleep without him realizing he was missing his pre-bed nursing, the last one to go. But just in case, I opted for a front closure so I wouldn’t have to totally undo myself or lift the whole bra up. I think it hasn’t been since the 1990’s that I consciously chose my undergarments based on who I thought might see them. But back then, I was hoping for my guy to see the silk rather than crossing my fingers that I’d keep my shirt on and my son’s paws out.

I have a vague memory that my husband bought me some super-fancy bras way before the baby that either didn’t fit well or just seemed like too much for me to pull off. My body-image-confidence meter is even lower now. If it’s possible to lose a sense of style like you lose a good tennis serve without practice, then sign me up for beginner fashion lessons. I keep thinking that eventually we’ll be ready to try for baby #2, so why bother updating my wardrobe now? And with bra prices like those in Garnet Hill, I’m cowering with my credit card in the corner.

But, if you asked my bras, they’d tell you they were tired and sad and ready to be put out to pasture. What’s that? Someone’s hissing at me from the dresser. Oh, Underwear and Jeans, you feel the same? But it’s a recession! And any extra money should go into the house we’re buying! You say there’s no way you’ll consent to being packed up an moved? Even my husband, scared about money though he is, agrees with you?

Well, if you insist. I guess I’m going to have to find some new threads for this saggy body.

Can someone at least point me in the direction of some coupons, for bras or for self-confidence?