Birth Survey

The volunteer group Grassroots Advocates Committee of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services has founded the Transparency in Maternity Care Project.  The are trying to ensure the public in getting access to the best information.

So if you would like to help with this project and have given birth in the last year, please take their birth survey.

 Please take the survey here:  www.thebirthsurvey.com

What a Year

So much has happened this year.  Three of my sons graduated from high school, junior high and grade school and now are doing well in college, high school and junior high.  Our oldest lived in Spain and now is home and working as a reporter, our oldest son has had things to deal with and over come, but I am sure he will find what is right for him.  Our son Eric had three friends die in a months time and had to learn at to young of an age that life really can be short.  Our youngest just keeps on getting taller and is just so bright, well all the kids are.

I have had the pleasure of teaching some of the most amazing students this year, I have learned so much from them and feel blessed to have been a part of their lives during such and important time.  I hope I can continue to grow as a teacher.

I am blessed with a wonderful family and a husband.  No matter what life throws at us we can get through it.  I know that the love I have for my husband runs so deep and makes me want to always do all I can to keep that love alive.

So may you have a wonderful New Years.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

25th Cookie Party

I am blessed with so many amazing women that surround me. I have my online friends that are truly amazing and full of wonderful information and support, and then I have my Cookie friends. Yesterday I had my 25th Cookie Party. A slightly smaller group this year, sometimes life gets in the way of coming, there are 12 of us, but most show up with their baked goods (it doesn't have to be cookies, just bring something!). I am lucky my husband takes all the kids out, though Alexa was working and couldn't go, no matter how old they get they look forward to hanging out with their dad and then coming home to goodies.

It was a busy day, as my daughter Alanna and her best friend Hannah marched in the Christmas Parade, Hannah's mom comes to the Cookie Party, so we spent our morning in the cold and wind. I rushed home an hour before my party was to start to find Lenda knocking at my door, great, help! We finished up cleaning a few things, as Liz and Rachelle showed up and they pitched in to help. Soon, Lisa, Debbi (who came from Arizona), Freda, my sister who was at my first and most since, and Holly showed up. We may not always have time to get together during the year, but really try to make the time for "our" tradition. Lisa made beautiful stockings for everyone with her cookies inside and Holly (the crafty friend) made special towels with "Dorene's 25th Annual Cookie Party" emborided on it, how thoughtful and special of her. There was a time we cared what someone brought, now we just care that we show up. Sometimes husbands wonder why all the hassle of baking goodies for every woman there, it is a time where we eat lunch and just talk and catch up on each others lives, there is nothing to buy and no one to impress, just be there and listen and talk.

I thank my "Cookie Sisters" for always making my Cookie Party special, and for keeping the tradition alive.

Giving Thanks

We like to say in our family we are "Traditionally untraditional." Years ago to get what was then the little ones out of the house my husband decided to take them on a hike, which is where the tradition started. Each year they go to the same place, take pictures, eat oranges, and write what they are thankful for and bury it in a canister, to be dug up the next year, this has been going on well over 10 years, the three youngest could hardly wait to be old enough to go on the hike, which was 5 years old. They all come back in a good mood and laughing.

My husband are thankful that we have our six children to make memories with, he with the "Thanksgiving Hike" and I with a sit down dinner for 16-30 people. We are blessed.

Dr. Jack Newman

Please help Dr. Jack Newman if you can. He has helped so many woman and babies get the best start in life.

Who’s Your Birth Link?

Please click on the post below to vote in the poll.

Traditionally women have learned about birth through stories passed on from their mothers or other female relatives. Sounds great but there are women for whom their mothers are uncomfortable telling their birth story or their mother is a Twilight Sleep mom or had some other birth experience that rendered her unable to recall many details of her birth experience. Today, we have more and more women exploring all of their birth care options and birth stories range from birthing a baby under the moonlight because “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be at the hospital and fight the docs who didn’t agree with natural childbirth” to “the doc and I high-fived each other because this was his first time catching a baby with mom on her hands and knees” to “my midwife guided my hands into the water to catch my daughter.”

So, who’s your birth link?

A Son

Well because I don't think I could improve much on the birth story my husband wrote years ago about our son Oliver's birth I will post it here. I would like to add that in the years since he was born he has grown into a strong handsome young man, but still my little boy. He is very much like his birth, he is fast and hard, and then he is quiet and thoughtful. He still likes a "I want to hold you" and I love holding him.

MAN, WOMAN, AND HERE COMES CHILD

I wonder how many fathers-to-be get really involved with changing the sheets on the bed while their wives labor alone in the bathroom nearing the birth of their new child. Not many is my guess, but that's exactly what I was working on just before our fourth child, Oliver William, was born in our home.

We had not expected this crazy scenario; the ideal birth we had planned for was to occur in the birthing room at our local hospital with our personally selected midwife. But one of the things you must prepare for is the unexpected. In our case, Dorene's labor came on fast and hard, and by the time she woke me up, she appeared to be in a state of I've come to call "the maternal odyssey," in which her awareness of external reality dims with the strength of her contractions. Her attention was clearly directed inward, her eyes closed and her breathing deep, trying to relax against the hormonal rodeo going on inside her.

When Dorene woke me, at about two a.m., she didn't bother speaking. I was just supposed to figure it out from the non-verbal clues, like a game of charades. That I could do. "You're in labor," I said, still half asleep. But what to do next? She was clearly too far along to be getting dressed, carting out into the car, and being driven to the hospital - and don't forget about the other three, already born children, that would also be coming along. No way. This birth, I knew, was going to happen right here, right now, at home sweet home. And this is where the sheets came into play.

After helping Dorene into the bathroom (she may have whispered the word between contractions) and seated of the toilet, I realized that she was not so out of this world that she forgot about our emergency-protect-the-bed-with-plastic-sheets plan, just in case of a fast labor. This she repeated to me, "did you change the sheets, yet?" For myself, when a baby's coming, I'm not worried about mattress-stain protection, but the fact that she was, meant I had to be as well. Skipping over little mother's wishes would only cause distress.

It seems now almost like there was some kind of bizarre sequence of events that had to happen for the baby to come - contractions, full dilation, sheet change, pushing - because just as I pulled that last corner over I heard Dorene moan a long loud moan that I recognized as a push. I rushed into the bathroom and asked - told - Dorene to scoot forward on the seat and then lean back against the tank. I took a look and sure enough the baby's head was crowning. "Okay, Dorene," I said, "Very gently on the next push. Very gently." Dorene followed my voice, eased out the next contraction, and like a little miracle my new son slipped out warm and watery right into my arms. I looked into his eyes, saw him looking back, and then cradled him over to Dorene, who cried with joy at the sight of him.

We tended to him with love rather than panic or haste, covering him with a towel, wiping at him here and there, clearing a little mucus out of his throat with a rubber bulb.

Sitting there in the smallest room of our house, holding in our arms our new baby son, a secret to the whole world but for us, his parents, it didn't take long for Dorene and me to realize that we had just experienced our ideal birth after
all.