Robert went to a conference in D.C. for two weeks. The military put him up in a nice suite and cover his food too. So we went to visit for the weekend, figured it would be an opportunity for a cheap trip! None of us had ever been to Washington D.C., infact, once I crossed over into North Carolina it was the farthest north I had ever been on the east side of the US. Daddy's hotel was in Bethesda, MD, so technically me and the kids drove through four states! South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. The drive was estimated to be about 9 hours and 20 minutes. I almost chickened out when I found that out, having never driven with the kids by myself for longer than a few hours. But, we persevered with positive attitudes and a month prior devoted to reading and learning about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson, and all things we could about the capital of our nation.
We arrived Thursday evening at 10:20. Almost exactly 12 hours after we pulled out of our drive way in Georgia. But over all the trip was not bad. The kids were pretty patient and I had ebooks to listen to on my phone. Friday Daddy was at the conference so I met up with my dear friend, Julia and we walked around downtown Bethesda. Probably walked about 1-2 miles, ate lunch, and shopped a "woman's market" that was outdoors. Then naptime and when Daddy got back we all headed to the metro to see the monuments. More walking....guessing, 2-3 miles. LOTS of walking, baby wearing, and stroller pushing. I felt full term pregnant by the end of the night. I think its amazing how in parenthood you can feel like if you take one more step you will likely collapse out of exhaustion, but then your body surprises you by not only walking another 6 blocks, but also carrying a preschooler on your back, getting back to the hotel, putting pjs on everyone, changing a diaper and laying everyone down for bed....all BEFORE you collapse. Truely astounding what we are capable of when we have no other choice. And then ofcourse, rising the next morning before seven (because in parenthood, and ironically on vacations, there is NO rest!), feeding everyone breakfast (super yum, great free buffet at the hotel!) and then heading back out to go to the zoo!! Mooooore walking!! This time, after the zoo, which was about 2 miles of walking, the metro was under construction and instead of waiting for a while for the next train we decided that we would walk the rest of the way back to the hotel. Are we on CRACK?! yes. We figured it couldn't be more of a mile. But by the time I pulled up how far it actually was (almost 2 miles) we were already headed out, so no turning back. Needless to say, we all got our excercise. Except Cal ofcourse, he was either nestled into the mei tai or in the stroller at all times. Sunday we spent the morning eatiing breakfast and packing. Said our goodbyes at 10 and headed back to Georgia. Amazingly, this trip back only took 9 1/2 hours and we only stopped three times. Likely because the girls were stoked to be sitting for long periods of time? Probably. Oh! And did I mention: Just during the round trip of 21 hours, Cal pooped four times, exploding out of his diaper and onto the carseat and all over his clothes every single time?! Yeah, memorable! ; ) Here are some pictures!
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A couple weeks ago we went to a little carnival on the base. Evidentally it was military kid appreciation month. So everything was free for the kids! : ) Even lunch. Great fun! Here are a few pictures from that. I had to add here: There was another family looking at this snake at the same time as us. Two little girls and their mom were petting it and the mom even held it, finally I noticed that the dad was a few feet back talking under his breath. He was obviously NOT happy that his girls were playing with the snake! He was scared to death and kept asking them to stop. Sooo funny.
Homebirth, spiritually:
When we lived in Missouri, I attended Friends of Missouri Midwives meetings once a month. It was such an encouraging place to be for many reasons. One reason was because a vast majority of these strong, educated, passionate women happened to also be Women of God. That wasn’t a coincidence. You ask these women or me, home birthing women do it for spiritual reasons. Not all of them may feel like it is necessary for ALL women, but we defiantly feel that it is necessary for ourselves. Like Paul said, “All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial”. I do not feel it is beneficial to birth at a hospital. In fact, in a lot of cases, I feel it is the opposite. One dear friend says that she tried to make her birth about God at the hospital with her first, but when you are following a doctor that doesn’t put their trust in God’s plan, it’s darn near impossible. We live in a fallen world, and our bodies are not perfect. But if we treat them right and put our faith in God’s plan and find peace in that, things go smoother, I believe. God’s timing! I believe in God’s timing for birth. I am way too human to determine when my baby should be born. This is why I am 100% against elective induction (without medical need). The thought of taking such a HUGE responsibility under my own understanding scares me to death! While I believe that God gave us doctors and medical advances to use, I don’t believe in using them, unless completely necessary. He also gave us natural things to try. I wanna stay hands off of normal physiological processes that He ordained as much as possible. And follow the instincts that He gave all women. It’s going to sound silly, but I couldn’t help but share a scene from LOST that has always touched me. The character John Locke is talking about a moth cocoon. He says that the moth is inside struggling to get out. And it’s hard work, he says, “I could use my knife and cut the cocoon open and free him so that he wouldn’t have to work so hard, but if I do that, he will die quickly.” The moth needs to strengthen himself completely before he is able to break free upon his own accord. I would assume that like child birth, that it’s different for every moth. There is probably an average amount of time, but it varies a bit, depending on how long the moth needs. Darby came out at 37 weeks, she was basically okay. But I had another friend that had her baby at 37 weeks and he had to spend several days in the NICU because his lungs were not developed enough. Cal was born right at 40 weeks, only God knows what would’ve happened had I decided I was “done” being pregnant and been induced at 39. Maybe he would be fine, but maybe not! I just don’t feel comfortable deciding that for my baby, I much prefer to leave it to God. From using the brain that God gave me, I have read a lot about this subject. So much that I would feel terribly convicted if I went any other route. Not to say that I would be “sinning”, but that I would be missing out on a small detail of God’s plan for me. A part of my God given Life of abundance. I don’t want to miss out on that. I don’t think He wants me to miss out on that. He sent the Holy Spirit to lead us, and personally I feel like this is where the Holy Spirit has lead us. And we are reaping the benefits! : ) My prayer is that my sisters in Christ would listen to God along with the advice of professionals. And that no matter where that takes them, they would have peace about it. Peace enough, that they wouldn’t feel offended when someone questions their choices! The 50,000 times people have questioned OUR choices I have honestly never felt offended by it! I felt honored to attempt to explain to them how we were lead to this! ; ) One of my favorite documentaries has an amazing quote from a father in it. In an interview after the birth of their first child, when speaking about what it was like to see his wife give birth he says something like, “It’s amazing, it’s like, there must be God in the room or something.” I believe that God is right with our babies from conception and that He deeply cares for them and knows their little souls!! And it is our responsibilities to protect that baby from the beginning of conception. That is what I intend to do. And the way Robert and I feel that we need to do that, is by having our babies at home, surrounded by people we trust and being honored by experiencing a process we trust ordained by a God that we trust. Homebirth, the emotional side.
Through experiencing childbirth in a few different ways; medicated, unmedicated in a hospital, and unmedicated at home. I can look back and notice differences emotionally. There are certain hormones that our bodies release during normal physiological body functions. During sex, or while breastfeeding, or while giving birth…if we are to interfere with these processes, the hormones are also messed with. Its scary ramifications, I think. It has been shown that women that give birth at home are less likely to experience post partum depression. This is believed to be because studies show that women are more pleased with their experience and feel more in control of their experience when they choose to stay home. http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/118.php But some experts believe that natural childbirth plays a large role in prevention of PPD because the mother (and baby) receives the benefits of ALL the hormones that they were intended to get. It was God’s plan! : ) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1247567.stm, http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/firsthour.asp, http://www.sarahjbuckley.com/articles/ecstatic-birth.htm Obviously, this topic may seem more logical than emotional, but these hormones are what prepares us for the emotions of motherhood! They are SO important! So bare with me…. In my own experiences I noticed differences at the time of birth. I really never experienced baby blues let alone PPD, but there were night and day differences between Darby’s birth and Bryse and Cal’s birth. With Darby I had only received a few hours of an epidural, which they had to turn off about an hour before she was born because my blood pressure was dangerously low. But still, when she was born, I was happy, but not “present”. I did not feel loopy by any means! But I just was not connected emotionally. I felt odd holding her after she was wrapped up tight in a blanket and didn’t feel “moved” very much at all. I didn’t feel much of an urge to breastfeed, although I did. I personally, believe that breastfeeding was what really helped me with bonding with her in the long run. I got those much needed hormones from that! Thankfully! With Bryse and Cal, my hormones unhindered by drugs, I felt ecstatic! Like I was on another planet and no one could reach me even if they tried! Remembering that feeling is enough to make me wanna run a marathon!! I wanted to squeeze and love on my naked baby and wanted to breastfeed immediately! : ) I felt beyond ready to mother this child! For me, there is something about natural childbirth that gives me confidence and spunk for months! And it is not because I think I’m “awesome” for being strong enough. Not at all. It is just this deep down confidence that it instills within us. I cannot explain it but that it was God’s design for Mom’s preparation for being a mom! : ) It makes me want to shout from the roof top and urge other women to experience. While I will say, I don’t care what women choose to do for themselves, but I do care for my sisters in motherhood and Christ, I want this for them too!! You know!? Similar to when you make an amazing cake and want to share the recipe with friends! Only magnified by a ton! HA! Thankfully, I don’t feel that I have experienced anything so horrible, but I have had friends that have experienced such a stripping of their instincts, confidence, and humanity during their childbirth that they entered motherhood with broken spirits and beaten bodies. This breaks my heart. There are women being diagnosed with not only PPD but also Post traumatic stress disorder! They have nightmares and flashbacks, need medication and counseling, to recover! We should be protecting our women during such a sensitive time in their life! Not abusing them! For us, staying at home and using our own discernment and prayer to choose a care provider that will allow us to be in control of not only the process but also the end result is huge for this. I don’t want to be in a hospital fighting off unnecessary and unscientifically based interventions when I should be enjoying the process that God has set forth! I don’t want my baby taken from me when we should be bonding. I don’t want a nurse coming in every few hours to interrupt my time with baby to check my blood pressure. I want to choose what is right for my body and my baby right from the beginning. I want to be a mama bear protecting my baby! I will say this, the experience is NOT more important than the outcome. But if you don’t have to trade one for the other, than why wouldn’t you want to have both?! It's gonna take me a while, but I'm trying to collect some of my thoughts on why we chose and will continue to choose to homebirth (as long as I'm lowrisk). It's a HUGE topic for me, so I've broken it up into three parts: Homebirth logically, emotionally, and spiritually. There is NO way that I can cram everything I think about this topic on here, but atleast the most important stuff, hopefully! So here ya go!
Homebirth, Logically: A starting place: Why we choose to have our babies (from now on) at home with the assistance of a midwife. The logical side of our reasoning. One of the first things we hear from people questioning our decision is, “But women and babies used to die all the time before there was hospital birth!” In a sense this is true. The mortality in and around childbirth did drop pretty dramatically around the time that birth started moving into hospitals. But one of the main reasons for this is because of advances in sterility, use of antiseptics in medicine, and one of the main helps, washing hands. In fact, Ignaz Semmelweiz proposed washing hands between autopsies and attending births to cut down on puerperal fever (childbed fever). He noticed that women under the care of midwives at the hospital or at home were not dying at such an alarming rate, because midwives did not perform autopsies. Unfortunately, the body of doctors at the time denounced him and rejected his beliefs. He died several years later, never seeing any real difference in the death rate. It took decades and several doctors carrying on his work before doctors would finally see that washing their hands well before attending a birth was necessary to reduce mortality. But that is just one example of advances in medicine that helped the mortality rate. When looked closely at, the rate of women going to the hospital for childbirth very gradually rose between late 1800s and 1950. It was very gradual and the drop off on deaths came before that. Obviously with midwives getting more training and hospitals being more readily available, things did get safer for homebirthers. But the main reason that doctors used to lure women to the hospital with was pain medication. It was the only thing they could offer that midwives at home could not. Most male OBs at the time had never even attended a birth; they had no way of competing with “granny midwives” that had been catching babies for decades! Also, if it were the case that the mortality of homebirth vs. hospital birth was so drastic, we would see evidence of that in clinical studies done now. And we don’t. (http://www.sep.org.uk/catalyst/articles/catalyst_20_1_428.pdf, http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/timeline.asp ) Clinical studies: There have been many, many studies done on low risk women choosing homebirth vs. low risk women choosing hospital birth and the outcomes. While some aren’t as thorough as they should be, and some were preformed in other countries (where homebirth is more prevalent), there is very little to argue about how good the results are for low risk homebirth. The mortality rate is the same for both, which means it is NO more risky for your life or your baby’s life to give birth at home assisted by a well-trained midwife. But, the morbidity rate is higher for hospital birth. This means that there is more unnecessary harm done in the hospital than compared at home. This is because interventions are used much more in hospitals with little to no medical need, increasing the chances that baby or mommy will have injuries or suffer as a result. Some would say that midwives are better at trusting nature (God’s plan) and sitting back and waiting, where as OBs (and other hospital care providers) are more scared of the process, wanting to try and control it. Luckily, we have the technology that doctors can undo (physically) the damage that they do with the interventions, usually saving a life or correcting an injury, while at home, there is usually no need to undo anything, as things were left alone in the first place. (http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/166/3/315 http://www.bmj.com/archive/7068pr3.htmttp://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/313/7068/1313ttp://www.vbfree.org/docs/schlenzka.htm http://www.homebirth.org.uk/homebirth2.htmhttp://www.compleatmother.com/homebirth/hb_safety.htmhttp://betterbirth.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-study-home-birth-as-safe-as.html http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/bmj2005HBSafety.html) Transferring: Many folks want to know what will happen if something goes wrong when you are at home. Well, most of the time, labor moves slowly and there for any complications come up slowly. Midwives are trained to see complications coming from far off so that they can try things at home and then if that doesn’t work, move the mom to the hospital. Most of the time it’s calm move to the hospital. Now there are those mad dashes or dialing 911, but they truly are rare. A lot of mothers might say that they feel better if they are down the hall from the OR if needed, but in reality, your OB will not be present at the hospital while you are in labor, so if a C-section does become necessary, you will have to wait for him/her to arrive anyway. While many women believe they received an “emergency cesarean” while in labor, true emergency cesareans are quite rare. If you received an emergency cesarean, odds are, you weren’t awake for it, because they don’t have time to place a spinal or epidural or to make sure that the one you already have is working adequately. As far as things going wrong, when you are in a hospital those chances go up tremendously!! The instance of things like cord prolapse (very serious complication), fetal decels (fetal heart rate dropping lower), post partum hemorrhage, and infection happen more often in hospitals. And not because the women are just more high risk. They happen more to low risk women because of routine drugs and protocols that cause them. We’ve just decided that if I don’t need medical professional help and my baby doesn’t need it, then we will stay home until we DO need it. And that maybe during birth, afterwards, or maybe several months later for a completely unassociated illness! ; )(http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/homwatif.html ) Our story: Our first two children, Darby and Bryse, were born in the hospital. Darby’s birth was a very normal American hospital birth. I had more trust in my OB than I did in the process. I really liked her, she was very sweet. However, hind’s sight is 20/20! Looking back, although I still like her personality, I am disappointed in the choices that were made for me and Darby without much need or consultation with us. At 37 weeks (because I was 4 cm dilated) my membranes were striped without first telling me what she was doing. This is a natural form of induction….and very painful. It put me in labor and I very much wanted to experience natural childbirth but had done very little in preparation. I allowed them to tether me to the hospital bed with electronic fetal monitoring and IVs, thinking they must all be necessary if they just automatically put them on you! (I was wrong, but again, wasn’t informed of anything) I went on with labor for 9 hours while repeatedly refusing the epidural but once I got “stuck” at 7 cm gave in and got the epidural and they started pitocin to get me passed 7 cm (even though there was not medical reason to start pitocin, just failure to be patient). For two and a half hours I enjoyed the very well placed epidural and slept. At the time, I didn’t realize that Darby’s heart rate and my blood pressure was fluctuating because of the epidural or pitocin, because no one told me that was a side effect. I pushed her out in a position and under commands from the nurses and doctor in such a way that I should’ve torn, but luckily, did not. But they were sure to tell me that I was “lucky” she wasn’t any bigger at 7’14 because if she had been I probably would’ve torn. (Side note: Cal was 9’10 and I still didn’t require sutures) She proceeded to be quite jaundice which is also an illness that is made more likely when an epidural is used or when labor is started before the baby might be ready. Bryse’s labor and birth went more smoothly because I was much more educated. Very smooth natural childbirth while walking around the halls of the hospital with the help of my husband and doula. Although we did face some “complications” after her birth because I did not learn what is safest during that time period and no one informed me that the OB’s normal protocols make things more likely to occur. I retained some of my placenta which had to be removed manually (NOT FUN!) and this complication was almost certainly as a result of my OB pulling on the cord to hurry the placenta out. Really, because of that I could’ve hemorrhaged so I count myself lucky that she didn’t cause more trouble. Cal’s labor and birth was left alone and went very smoothly. I did not fight off a nurse with an IV or argue about not wanting pitocin. And we DID face some complications with Cal’s labor; they just weren’t answered with dangerous drugs or protocols. They were answered with scientifically based responses which caused no dangerous side effects for Cal or me. I just wish that I had learned the logical reasons to birth at home before Darby. Stay tuned for Part two: Homebirth , emotionally. For anyone's family that has had a homebirth, you know, there is not a whole lot out there as far as choices of what to read your child in preparation! EVERY sibling book cuts out the birth of the baby with a few lines like this, "Then mommy and daddy went to the hospital and came home with my baby ________" For a homebirthing family this is booooooring! lol! Seriously, the kids at a homebirth are involved and know A LOT about the birth experience. Even if they aren't in the room when baby brother or sister are born, they are WAY more involved in every way. Getting to "help" at prenatal appointments, helping mommy organize the birth supplies. And usually atleast in the same house if not in the same room for the birth! I am currently preparing Bryse for the birth of this baby (as she wasn't in the same room when Cal was born) just the same way that I prepared Darby. By watching homebirth videos and talking a lot about it. (which, btw, she can not get enough of!!) But now we have a new way of preparing the kids!! "We're Having a Homebirth!!" by Kelly Mochel This is the kids' new favorite book! They LOVE it. It's honest and talks about birth in reality! Even explaining the placenta and umbilical cord. It even gives children advice on what they can do during a homebirth to help mommy! It is all illistrated very sweetly, even with drawn pictures of the mommy giving birth AND breastfeeding! I am quite pleased! I suppose we will just have to wait for other authors to get the idea and join Kelly Mochel in giving us homebirthers books for our children to enjoy. Until then, we couldn't be happier with this one!
I have some pictures from Easter to post. We went to an easter egg hunt at a local church that was kinda lame, so we did our own easter egg hunt at home. Me and the girls also made treats and cards for our neighbors (which I didn't take any pictures of). And then we had lunch with two families from our church. It was a fun time celebrating Jesus rising from the dead!
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LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
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