• Walmart for baby proofing (see photo below) and crafting stuff
• Finish G’s birth story since she turned 6 months old yesterday
• Meet a friend and hike “the M” today before the weather turns (hooray, snow!)
• Bake me a cake (no I don’t mind pampering myself on my birthday)
• Go to one of my BF’s to celebrate avec family (it may even turn into an overnight par-tay)
  

  Happy Birthday to Me (aka thank you for not killing yourselves)

My good friend from Birth After Cesarean posted this yesterday on my wall:

Well, who would have thought this past year would bring so much difference for you, woman!

Seriously, this has been an epic year for me.  I happily and healthily grew another blessing.  Against all odds, really . . . I had a successful hospital VBA2C.  I held my ground and refused a cesarean.  I achieved tenure and was promoted at my University.  I performed a solo faculty recital (my recital partner backed out on me a week prior) a mere 2 months post partum!  My hubby and I drove to and from Denver for the holidays with our four young kids (which I consider a HUGE success).  My Dad flew me to Houston to check on my ailing aunt, and I was able to see my mom, brother, SIL, niece, and meet my nephew!  And we ended our childbearing years yesterday with a vasectomy.

It’s crazy to think that my childbearing years are over.  I love pregnancy.  I might even be addicted to pregnancy.  I am jealous of every pregnant woman I see.  And thankfully a part of me is at peace with being done.  But, now I have to face raising these beautiful children that my husband and I conceived.  Some days it’s really really hard to be a good parent . . . to be a minimally acceptable parent.  I never feel like I’m a spectacular parent.  But maybe now that I’m done making, baking, and birthing babies, I can focus on being a better parent?

So, what’s next?  I think I’ll eat a little something and go for my hike.  Guess I’ll have to postpone finishing my birth story until this afternoon while my birthday cake is baking.

After that I’ll continue herding my little flock of kids and herding my big flock of students and loving my husband and my home!

I am a ball of stress, so I’m thankful for a few moments of deconstress (LoL!) time.  I’m just about as addicted to Pinterest as I am to Facebook.  So, I’ve been pinning all sorts of things.  Here’s a link to my HBA2C board, for instance.  The holidays make me feel very crafty, but of course, I’m having to prioritize my crafts.  That means putting away the more complicated projects, and focusing on a few that give me a lot of bang for the time buck.  My oldest daughter and I are enjoying making snowflakes today.  Great stress buster, actually!  You can HARDLY screw these up.

Here are a few links to get you started:

• How About Orange’s directions for a 5-pt snowflake
• Bon Temps Beignet’s tutorial

Here’s How About Orange’s 8-point flake:

And here’s my simplified “take” on it:

To do this I followed Bon Temps’s folding instructions and eye-balled Orange’s template.  Really, it’s not that hard to do, and my 6 year old is having fun making her own snowflakes her own way!   And my 4 month old is just hanging out watching Mommy and Big Sis.  (She’s such a love!!)

Blessings this holiday season!!

Anyway, on the one hand I am glad that steps are in place to give women access to home birth. And if physicians and CNMs will actually attend these home births, then it’s possible that insurance will cover these births. Hooray!

However, I don’t believe that a physician or CNM is necessary for a great outcome at home. A trained midwife, CPM or otherwise, should be just as capable of handing low and lower risk births at home.

Furthermore, many women who fall outside of the definition of low risk will have better birth experiences outside the confines of a hospital. Typically, physicians and CNMs are not able to provide homebirth services to these women and their babies. I don’t recommend limiting their ability to find qualified providers who will attend them at home. I hope this board will use better mental hygiene and reconsider their ban on lay midwifery.

Even if you had pain meds . . . or an induction . . . or a cesarean . . . you might have had an empowered birth.  Who decides what constitutes an empowered birth.  YOU DO, and don’t you forget it.  It’s not for medicalists or luddites to determine though many are happy to throw in an oar.  You have to be ok with your birth experiences, and if you’re not, I encourage you to figure out why and try to resolve that.

Did I have an empowering birth experience?  I suppose the answer depends on the moment you ask me about it.  Sometimes I think that if I had gone a different direction in terms of care providers that I’d have had a birth experience perhaps more resemblant of the one I so deeply desired.  Sometimes I think that my pain-in-the-ass, scare-tactic OB was an angel.  He was the best birth coach ever, as far as I’m concerned, especially considering that I had NO idea where my ass was nor how to push from that imaginary ass.

And it’s ok to struggle with being ‘ok’ with your birth experiences whether they are au natural or full-service medicalized.  It’s ok to question (or not) the validity of your birth choices (or the choices made on your behalf).  Wherever you are on the spectrum, I encourage you to think of yourself as an empowered woman.  You have the power to be fully present and accepting and/or participant in your health care decisions.  For me, being fully present and a participant are at the heart of being an empowered ‘patient.’