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By justine, June 10, 2010 12:14 pm

We want to hold a fact-gathering + opinion-generating meeting with area doulas, birth advocates, and maternity care-providers to help build our organization into something that will benefit families in the ways that really matter! So, put your thinking caps on and plan to join us on June 29th @6pm at the Millcreek Mall Borders! Our website exists (but has no content yet!) at DoulasForAll.org and you can always email me at Justine@DoulasForAll.org for info or questions about this project. We also have a new phone number: 661-DOULAS-1

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By justine, March 16, 2010 1:16 am

"Your baby is so content! What is your secret?"

Parenting can bring out some pretty big emotions. Nothing kicks off a debate between adults quicker than the implication that YOUR/THEIR parenting philosophies might be half-baked…or wrong…or questionably legal…or safe. Say one of these words loudly at the mall, at your next family reunion, or at the office get-together: Circumcision. Co-sleeping. Breastfeeding. Spanking. Childbirth. These simple words can evoke so many different feelings depending on who you are talking to: Guilt. Pride. Jealousy. Regret. Joy.

But the feelings that I am trying to cultivate more in myself are: Empathy and Humility.

I recently watched the film Away We Go. Let me say first: I really loved it. Let me say secondly: I only knew the bare minimum about it, I had not read reviews or viewed any trailers for it. And finally, let me say: the scene about AP values really stung when I first saw it. Here is a clip from that scene. And another. Go ahead and watch them if you have not seen the film. Here is the trailer if you want to get an overview of the whole thing. I’ll wait.

The film depicted several families and several different parenting styles. There was the disrespectful family who seemed to believe that their children were deaf and dumb. There was the super-crunchy AP family. There was the open-arms adopt-a-lot-of-kids rainbow family. The single-parent family. It was very easy for Sir Hubby and I to scoff, guffaw, and feel superior when the disrespectful family was on the screen. What kind of jerks treat their kids like that! But there was an awkward silence in the room when the AP value family came on. Mostly it was quiet because Sir Hubby had fallen asleep. But also, because I could easily identify ALL of our AP values being depicted by these characters. At first, a sort of pride welled up in me…

Hooray for AP values being shown in a movie! Extended breastfeeding! Babywearing! Family bed! Doula’s! Yippeeee!

But then I realized that the film was not praising those choices, but depicting them as kinda crazy. Kinda over-the-top. Kinda awful. The pregnant couple shouts at the AP family, calls them horrible names, and finally flees the house.

Whoa. I start warming my fingers up to draft a strongly worded letter to the writers:

How dare you! Babywearing this! Family bed that! Baby-led breastfeeding this! Don’t you know that studies have shown that AP…

Wait a minute. THIS is what the writers of the film were making fun of! The passionately snobby caricature of AP parents. They were showing how non-AP parents are meant to feel when smug-AP parents berate them or humiliate them or shame them for not being superior enough to make the choice to AP immediately and instinctively. And maybe we don’t do it on purpose…but whenever we proclaim that our way is the best way– the ONLY way– if you want healthy kids, happy kids,  gentle kids, smart kids, compassionate kids, then we have not turned someone on to AP…we have chased them away. They are fleeing the house just like the couple in the movie did. Continue reading 'Away We Go With Parenting!'»

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By justine, January 26, 2010 12:05 am

Erie Times Announcement

I am sure that it would come as no surprise to anyone to hear that our family doesn’t usually read the newspaper. Reading the news online just seems so much easier these days. It is greener. No stacks of newspapers to store until recycling day. I can choose what kinds of news (regional, national, international, politics, health…) I want to read and just skip over the stuff that doesn’t interest me (sports, comics, obituaries…) So why would  we care about going through all of the steps to make sure that our birth was listed in the newspaper?

Well, frankly, let me just say that I am a bit ashamed that we don’t read the newspaper. I think that our children could probably benefit from seeing us reading it and become inspired to read it themselves. Finding creative ways to reuse the newspaper seems like something our kiddos would be into as well…we  just saw a PBS special in which grade school kids made a fairly complex engineering project with newspapers and masking tape. Not to mention the glass cleaning properties or using it to stuff into wet boots in the winter. But I digress. Continue reading 'Home Birth In The Newspaper!'»

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By justine, January 16, 2010 9:29 pm

Following the Principles: Parts 7 & 8 in a series of 8

Baby Lazlo~ 1/6/10 ~ 11lbs~ 23"long ~ Born Safely at Home!

Now that we have finally welcomed our newest addition— an 11lb son named Lazlo who was born safely at our home — I can take the time to sit down and write again. The swelling and the restlessness of late pregnancy made computer time just one more form of torture in a sea of physical discomforts. Fortunately, those discomforts are behind me now (although I vow to never, ever forget the challenges of the third trimester, just in case I am ever stricken with Baby Fever again years from now) and my recovery has been a joyous time of healing, snuggling, nursing and marveling. Well…for the most part.

Our first tandem nursing session a few minutes after Lazlo's birth.

There, of course, is my sweet little 22-month-old T-Bird to deal with. While she is thrilled that there is breastmilk on the menu again, she is not as enthusiastic about her new little brother trying to enjoy that milk–with or without her. Nursing them together is a terrific way to get a worry-free 20-minute power-nap, but can also backfire and result in T-Bird’s numerous attempts to unlatch the baby, to poke him the eye, to cover his face with a blanket, to elbow him… fun times. So then, I will go with the other extreme and nurse T-Bird first, or nurse her in another room, or nurse her after I get Lazlo to sleep. She then proceeds to spend that time constantly unlatching and relatching asking “Where’s Lazlo? Baby wants nursie?” while pulling, scratching and patting the unoccupied breast…more fun times. Not to mention the all-new behaviors when we are not nursing—throwing, hitting, screeching, drawing on walls, stomping food into the carpets. Continue reading 'Practice Positive Discipline & Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life'»

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By justine, September 13, 2009 1:02 pm

Homeschool Perk--Getting the playground all to ourselves!

Along with our unexpected pregnancy, we have also been gestating another new little life these past few months: the life of a homeschooling family (or maybe we are more technically an “unschooling” family).

As the back-to-school frenzy surrounded us here in our part of the country, our school year had already been in session for nearly a month. We didn’t have to buy a thing to get started. There were no uniforms to buy, no back-to-school haircuts, no competing with the mom next to me at The Big Box Store to get my hands on the very last purple glitter pencil box*

Let me tell you about our first day of homeschooling this year: Continue reading 'Why We Have Decided to Homeschool'»

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By justine, March 15, 2008 11:59 am

Baby T-Bird 2008

Thursday March 13^th Our Due Date: I woke up in a total funk today. Nobody knows more than I do that due dates are suggestions, not rules. Intellectually I can accept this today. Emotionally, however, this realization sends me over the edge. I did everything right. I ate right. I gained the right amount of weight. I went to all of my prenatal appointments. I took the right vitamins. I believe the right things about birth and babies and parenting. I want to be rewarded for doing things right, dammit. That IS how it works here in America, right? (okay that might be a bit facetious, sorry) I decide to spend the entire day pouting and wallowing in self pity since no one could possibly feel as sorry for me as I feel for me. My cankles are huge. My feet hurt when I bear weight on them. My hands swell when I…well, when I do absolutely anything. This child’s head is literally taking up every bit of available space in my pelvis which leaves room for about ½ teaspoon of pee. The biggest of my big maternity clothes no longer have the capacity to expand over the belly. I have become some monstrous caricature of a pregnant woman: a barefoot, swollen, waddling, nearly naked, puffy faced, screeching like some crazy Medusa-headed Harpe, who will never, ever, ever, go into labor. I will be pregnant forever– or at least long enough to make the skin on my feet explode while they wheel me into the OR for the miracle of my MRSA infested surgical birth. Then I will finally have the c-section which everyone will console me about while not so secretly scolding me for selfishly thinking that I had what it might take to pull off an empowering, healing, society-defying homebirth. Childbirth sucks for a reason, right? How dare I be arrogant enough to think that I could escape what our society has planned for me? Continue reading 'My VBAC Homebirth'»