Today is the last day of Cesarean Awareness Month, something I would not have expected would apply to me when I first got pregnant a little more than 10 years ago. But it does. After my 2006 c-section, I went on to have a homebirth with my second child, thanks in no small part to…
birth
Breastfeeding and birth celebrated in book, film, conferences
Birthing and breastfeeding have been on my mind a lot lately for a woman whose days are normally filled with talk of baseball and potty time. My seven-year-old son weaned four years ago, and my daughter, who just turned three, lost her access to my breasts at 22 months when my health was just struggling…
April events for green and healthy families
April in the DC area is bursting at the seams with events to help you get connected to the earth and focus on your health Here’s a quick look at some of the great offerings for natural-minded families around DC this month. April 13: NoVA Outside Early Childhood Outside Conference: Lens on Outdoor Learning, 9:00-1:00,…
Upcoming conferences & events for healthy living
It’s hard to keep track of all the amazing events coming up in the next few weeks! Here is a snapshot. Let me know what I should add! Thursday, October 18 Holistic Moms Network Arlington/Alexandria chapter presents: “Breathing Techniques” Learn about different breathing techniques and how they can contribute to health and wellness from VitalSelf…
What’s to like about a c-section?
Welcome to the June 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Embracing Your Birth Experience This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about at least one part of their birth experience that they can hold up and…
20 years ago today: How I Met Their Father
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…
Support VBAC in October!
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…
10-Day Yoga Challenge: Day Eight: “Expose your heart”
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…
Busy in the birth world
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…
Birth activists to hold conference and rally
“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…
Top 10 Natural Strategies for Conception (aka How to Get Pregnant!)
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….
When a friend gets cancer
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;…
The pregnancy test, one year later
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…
NWSA panel addresses pregnant women and feminism
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: …
Healing the c-section scar
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…
Freedom for Family Wellness Summit
Reporting here on this exciting event I’m attending tonight and this weekend! Wellness Summit to Address “Vitalism” and “Conscious Choice” Parents are up against a lot of choices these days. Whether the question is about vaccinations or breastfeeding, co-sleeping or where and how to give birth, today’s buzzword is “informed choice.” As International Chiropractic Pediatric…
Happy Midwifery Week!
I just found out that it’s National Midwifery Week! I want to publicly thank the midwives I have worked with who have supported me before, during and after pregnancies. Thanks to the midwives at BirthCare and Women’s Health, to Tammi McKinley, CPM, of Northern Virginia Midwifery, Susan Dodge, formerly of BirthCare, and Marilee Pinkleton, CPM,…
No, I don’t think I’ll become a Bradley instructor
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…
Performance workshop for cesarean and VBAC mamas
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…
The second time around
I have an essay called “The First Time Around” in an anthology that is coming out soon, From the Heart: A Collection of Stories and Poems from the Front Lines of Parenting. It compares my first year mothering to my first year teaching high school and explores the desire for a do-over, to fix all…