Across the Pondlife

The first catch is the sweetest

2012-01-21T08:06:00.003-05:00

The birth:

At 00.01 one morning in January, the world welcomed another baby. He was born in water, into the waiting arms of his mother and the guiding hands of his midwife. He birthed himself whilst his mother laboured into the night. He was not delivered, he was not even caught really, he was just guided, shown the way to his mama.

They worked through her pain and helped her with her fear. They reassured her that she was strong and that she could do it, but they were there for her all the while. The husband never left her side and the midwife was just quietly present.

She eventually found that part of her inner self that realised she needed to get on and birth her son rather than fight against the waves of contractions. She knew that her husband was holding her hand and that the midwife was there, in the corner, watching and observing as she had learned to do.
The midwife would listen to the baby and reassure her that all was well. They would together rub her back and pour warm water from the pool over her shoulders. As the night moved on and people slept below, somewhere, in the quiet, in radiant beauty, a mother birthed her first born child.

As her son slipped from his warm home for the last nine months, she let out a gasp and the tears fell. "My son...My Thomas!" she called out his name and looked up at his husband with wonder and anticipation in her eyes. "Thomas? Right?" she questioned.
I don't think her husband would have denied her calling him anything at that point.
The midwife, however, smiled as her own firstborn son was Thomas too.
The mother then went on to birth her placenta without interruption or need for any intervention.
Whole, intact and undisturbed.

The midwife's tale

It is such an honourable job to be present at a birth, but more so when you are the carer of that woman throughout her labour and see her to the end. When your hands are poised to help the baby come to meet its parents and you are the first to touch that new life - what humility, what a small part we really play!

Any birth is special, but a birth where it is your very first 'catch' is ultra special. The feelings of pride and ecstasy when a wet, pink screaming baby is put onto his mothers chest is second to none and it brings tears to my eyes as I write.

I have been very lucky so far with the births I have been present at. 2 homebirths already, 2 water births already and another normal birth. Writing my current essay about ways to help a woman have a normal, physiological birth, always brings to the forefront of my mind the environment within which many students see birth. The fact that whilst I was doula-ing in the USA, 85% of the births I witnessed were on beds, had epidurals or intervention or were in lithotomy. It is quite easy to resign yourself to the feeling that "yes, you know that birth is a normal, physiological event, but we are products of our environment so therefore..." but, stop, NO!

Birth IS a normal, physiological event and we make ourselves products of our environment by not bathing ourselves in normality or stories of normality. A story about a lots of blood loss, or about a 'touch and go' scenario is draws the listener in far more, than one that just tells a normal tale of a normal birth in normal circumstances. Horror movies or tales that tell of fear, near death experiences and edge-of-your-seat excitement pump more adrenaline than a straighforward biographical documentary. It's car-crash society viewing!

If you create just a shadow of doubt in your mind, then you lose faith in what will be. Ina May once told me that in order for birth to become more normal again, in order for women not to fear birth, we need to tell these stories and let others know how it 'can' be if we just wait, watch and observe. These are the stories that needed to be shouted about. How it can be if we give the woman time, bathe her in love and make her feel secure.

So, this is Thomas' story and this is the mother's story and this is the midwife's story of the day she caught her first baby and this is the midwife, shouting!

Finding time

2012-01-11T09:02:00.000-05:00

I shouldn't be here!

No, really! Read that as I really should. not. be. here.

I have an exam tomorrow and really should be revising, but...sometimes things go in more if they are soaked into an open soul rather than force fed, so, that is my philosophy right now. I am finding time to just soak in some of the things that I am loving right now in my home, some of the corners and objects that make me smile. Then I will go back to the uterus and the pelvis refreshed - promise - just let me spill my brain here first because in order to remain me, I need to remember I love to take photos and I love to write too -non-midwifery stuff is fun as well!

Three of my five girlies. They are all free ranging now and look so much better for it, alas, the garden doesn't so much, however, I think that we can organise it so that they can range all year and we can build up the sides of the raised beds and cover them.
The photo of Mrs Miggins is not exactly world class, but I just love how it shows her really curious expression. She always comes rushing to greet me, cocks her head to one side as if she's giving me a real once over! Now I need to teach them that they stay outside and the utility room is NOT their domain!

For Christmas my mum sewed this gorgeous little diary cover for LMB. I was so unbelievably in awe of it, I had to find one of my own. You have to love Folksy. Just look at this beautiful crotched version of the same. It covers my midwifery reflective diary. Now LMB and I can both write in our beautiful diaries.

I also found these beauties on Folksy the other day too. Now I can enjoy my coffee upstairs in my leather armchair, sitting looking out at my girls in the garden in a beautiful pottery mug. I have a thing at the moment for stoneware.

Finally, in my lovely kitchen there is a huge vat of chestnut and celery soup simmering on the stove for dinner this evening, with fresh bread. Life is sweet - well, it will be at 4pm tomorrow!

*Louise

2012-01-06T04:05:00.002-05:00

Nearly twelve years ago I was frightened and scared. There were lots of people, lots of noise and lots of lights.
On my left side was my equally frightened husband, and on my right was a young woman who I have never forgotten.
I will call her *Louise*.
Louise made me feel safe and reassured me that things were okay when I didn't know any better.
Louise held my hand, mopped my brow and cleared up my vomit.
Louise told me things would be okay when I thought it was the end of the world.
Louise smiled and laughed when I was happy on my epidural (finally) and got help for me over and over again, whilst I had my asthma attack and before it really was okay on the epidural and it finally worked.
Louise answered my banal, neurotic and quite simply repetitive questions with calmness and demure.
Louise stayed over her shift, above and beyond the call of duty when our son eventually made his way into the world some 15 hours after our entering that room.
I never forgot Louise.

In fact, two years later after giving birth to my second child, I was at home and the midwife came to visit. It was a part time midwife who had recently qualified and had since had a baby.
It was Louise!
Her baby was Rachel (no, that really WAS her name!!)
We cried again!

Yesterday I tried to be Louise for someone else.
I had the great honour of attending a new mama's birth, my third as a student (probably around my 33rd as me!)
She needed reassurance - that was all.
She needed to know she was safe and could do this.
The biggest thing I could do for her was tell her she was strong, she was amazing, she was powerful and she was birthing her baby beautifully.
Lucky for her, there was no epidural, instead a peaceful, calm, amazing waterbirth.
I stayed...a little longer ;-) I sat with her afterwards and chatted, showed her how to dress her new son, reassured her it was totally normal to fumble and feel nervous picking him up. I helped her feed him and brought her tea and toast. I told her she was an amazing mother who had done so much already for her son.

Sometimes, it's hard as a midwife, you feel you need to 'do' so much.
The text books say x, y and z, much like the parenting text books that both myself and my new mama yesterday were and will be drowning in, the manuals that tell you how to birth, how to parent, how to feed your baby.
Sometimes, all you really need to do for that woman, in fact, often, all you really need to do, is just 'be'. Just be with woman, not 'do-for' woman.

That is the true power of a midwife and that is the midwife that the mother will remember, despite the chaos, the drugs, the lights, the doctors with their tools, and the fear...oh yes, the fear!

It will be the midwife who was calm, who held her hand and mopped her brow and told her she was amazing!

I hope I was as good for her as Louise was for me.

2012

2012-01-03T14:54:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year.

I do hope you've all had a lovely festive season.

We have had a lovely time, receiving plentiful gifts from the big red fella;

Catching up with friends and family;

and godparents ;-)

and besties!

So now we move into 2012 with somewhat of a windy start, and it's time to begin looking to what's in store ahead again.

This year is my 'big' birthday and inspired and encouraged by some girl (and boy - thanks Chris!) friends, I've taken my friend Julie's idea to do a 'Fortieth year and Forty things' list. The only rule is that the list has to be achievable, so isn't meant to be full of expensive things or crazy ideas...those can go on the bucket list ;-)

1.

I am going to cycle 10 miles per week for 40/52 weeks

2. Learn an appropriate poem and recite it - open to suggestions as long as it's not in a Pam Ayres accent!

3. Raise 440 pounds for charity

5. Sing...outloud...in front of people...preferably a musical! but NOT Gilbert and Sullivan - I will not be a little maid from school ever again

6. Learn to make a Baked Alaska

7. Make a successful Cheese souffle

8. Go to a gig

9. pull a cracker (yeah, don't go there!)

10. go to a fireworks display and stay for the fireworks (I wouldn't go there either!)

11. learn to row properly

12. ride a camel

13. smoke a shisha (that was Chris' idea!)

14. drink tea in a Berber village

15. bellydance (might have to leave that until after I've lost the half of 40lbs ;-)

16. walk amongst the wolves

17. make myself a piece of silver jewellery

18. grow a veg or fruit I've not grown before

19. pass my first year exams

20. I really ought to put 'catch 40 babies' but sadly that'll take me 3 years, so I think 10 is quite a good compromise!

21. say 'yes' more to my kids

22. say 'no' more to adults!

23. use hubby's telescope to find three constellations and learn about them (if there's any space after the pelvis, uterus, heart and fetal circulation!)

24. go to a festival

25. Do one selfless thing per week

26. Pay someone a compliment, every day!

27. give my kids at least three hugs everyday

28. learn to do more tricks with my hoop

29. make time for yoga

30. take one photo on the 25th of every month to record the year in photos

31. learn to make wine using foraged food

32. squish grapes with my feet

33. have Em's t-shirt for meeeeeeeee!

34. learn to make four things with origami

35. Lose 1/2 of 40lbs by this time next year

36. speak to my friends at least once a month on the phone!

37. Donate blood

38. Keep a personal, fortieth year journal (inspired by Em - thank you!) in a beautiful journal book

So, as you can see I'm two short right now and with the revision for my exam, seem to be rather lacking in the imagination department. I'm hoping I'll be inspired over the next couple of weeks to add the remaining couple and keep you updated with how I get on.

Christmas

2011-12-23T12:05:00.000-05:00

What does Christmas mean to you?

Today I needed to 'pop' to the shops for a couple of last minute bits (disorganised this year with all the exam stress!) and it was frightful. Every single space in car park was taken! People had their carts piled to the roof.
It was actually quite scary how much people had.
The woman in front of me was buying, amongst the more Christmassy things, perishables and delicacies; lard, self raising flour, juice, polishes, a frying pan. She, quite literally, was shopping for the end of the world, and she had many, many allies.
But why?
The shops in the UK shut for one day and one day only.
Why do you need polish two days before Christmas, are you planning on doing extra cleaning or really have you suddenly run out today? Bizarre.

This is Christmas to me:

Making mince pies

Lighting the fire and bunking down reading stories and playing games

The tree and pretty twinkling lights

Christmas is a time for being together with friends and families and quite honestly I don't think they'll really care if you have a little dust...well, mine better not or they know where I keep the polish.

Have a lovely Christmas x

A story of a cake.

2011-11-04T15:34:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time in a cottage in a village somewhere on the edge of the Cotswolds, there lived a mama bear and her three little cubs. Every day, the mama bear would make porridge for her cubs, she would bake bread and hang the washing on the line. Whilst the washing swayed in the breeze she would gently rock her self back and forth, back and forth in her rocking chair by the fire whilst she lovingly knitted one of her cubs a new jumper for the coming winter.

Okay, so this is where the record scratches.

So, let me tell you a TRUE story about a harassed ex mama bear who decided that the time had come for her to embark on a three year midwifery degree course...whilst attempting to stay afloat with her cubs (who were at times acting more like wolf cubs than cute cuddly bears), put a meal on the table each day that contained a microgram of veg and didn't come out of a can, ensure the cubs were suitably dressed for the winter in clothes that were patched together (on occasions with sellotape - temporarily mind you!) and the porridge lingered in the pot so long that it was used for the youngest cub's model sculpture for homework - late of course!

One ~~fine~~ long day, she returned home from work to discover a ~~request~~ demand from the cubs' school for a cake for a bake sale, not 24 hours later. The mother bear ~~smiled~~ growled and put the cake plate aside vowing to bake the following afternoon. Of course, as in all good fairy tales, the story doesn't always go according to plan and, the mother bear, being a student midwife and ~~dutiful at that~~ a freakin' eager beaver, attended a homebirth with her mentor that following afternoon, returning to the den, sleepy and tired at 10pm that night.
On being greeted by the feckin' plate, she realised that she didn't have time to ~~go out and buy one, taking the wrapping off and claiming a hand made job~~ make one that night, so she decided she would get up the next morning as she had been rather ~~uncharacteristically~~ growly with her offspring, and bake a cake.

The following morning she arose at dawn and set to work. An hour later she had a perfect cake sitting on the counter top waiting for icing. A carrot cake with lemon icing - quite a work of art ;-) However, she had had to ice it later in the day due to it still being warm, so took it to the school at lunchtime.

The rest of this bit is mindnumbingly boring, so I'll skip a few chapters, your toddler doesn't know this story so won't work out that I missed out the middle to save time, thus repeating it to you word for word.

The mother bear went up to the school at the end of the day and bought some cupcakes from the bake sale so that she could ~~contribute to the lives of her children~~, feel less guilty.

The next day her middle bear called her up on the phone to tell her that there had been some cakes leftover from the previous day and he had decided to buy one for us all to share for dinner that evening.
He excitedly explained that he had bought one with lemon icing as lemon icing is his very favourite type of icing.
He then explained that this cake was a carrot cake with lemon icing and he was very much looking forward to having some for tea.

I think it is fair to say at this point that the mother bear would have liked to have said something rather indiscreet containing many "bleeps" and not quite for the ears of a little cake loving bear. Instead she realised that if you decide to continue to be a mother bear when studying to become a midwife, the egg will indeed end up on your face!

Chasing placentas!

2011-10-07T14:44:00.000-04:00

Popping in to say hi.

This week I feel rather like Pippin does when she chases her tail. The adventure and excitement is addictive, but the lack of achievement overwhelms.

(This is NOT Pippin btw, but did make me laugh!)

It has been the last week of our month long induction this week, next week we're out in the community!
We've had mandatory trust inductions, lectures, practical days etc.
It's been fun, but exhausting, overwhelming, amazing, incredible, exciting, terrifying, boring and wonderful all at once and right now my brain is ready to burst open at the seams.

I've got nearly a whole bloody notebook full of scribbles already so am trying to make some semblance of order this weekend - Oh, the sky is full of pigs tonights!
I've ordered several really great books and have a pile of library ones with a gazillion little post its poking out the sides telling me that when I go to that page I will forget what it is I put the post it note in there for in the first place *sigh*.

I also have to remember that people don't have the same fascination over placentas as I do and that, as I've seen quite a few with my doula work, some of the poor girls were just overcoming their initial gut reactions this week. I don't think they appreciated me diving in, rubbing my hands all over the placenta and saying rather loudly "Oh my god, it's beautiful, look at the blood on it, it'd make a lovely print". I think I may have blotted my copy book (particularly with the poor 18 year olds fresh from school) and I'm now marked as a social nutter!
I also have to make a note to myself that tea time is not the best time to relate the story to my family or continue talking about the one that had some missing lobes and felt grainy.
It's NOT normal !
Still, best I get this out of the way now, rather than gush over some poor new mum's placenta in a few weeks time.

Tonight I'm having a night off from opening a text book. Mr Beehive and myself are taking ourselves to our local as it's the "cheese club" night. Mr Beehive is always wanting to share his smoked cheese with anyone that is stupid enough to listen (tasting is fine - it tastes lovely, it's just the blow by blow account of his smoker and the method that is enough to cause you to go mouldy not least the cheese!)

And so it begins...

2011-09-25T13:03:00.000-04:00

I have been chastised, for being slack. However, once you know where I've been, you'll be a little more gentle with me.
I've been at uni!
Two weeks ago I started my journey as a student midwife.
It's been a tumble of emotions to get to this point.
Will we have childcare, or won't we?
Will the children fare okay without me or will I be consumed by guilt?
Will the academic work steam ahead of me or will I keep up?
Will I cope with the many hats I wear as NHS employee, NCT teacher and doula?

The list is endless and ever changing too, however, as one of my lecturers said, we need to take one day at a time.
I have the first four weeks sorted, then I'll work on the next.

I'm still a few weeks away from going out into the community and have to do all the basic training first, so these few weeks are a bit of a headrush of necessary nursing and other requirements and not so much midwifery, but before I know it, it'll be time to be out there...

We are keeping reflective diaries in order to help ourselves as practitioners, the NCT has prepared me well for this little gem ;-)
I can see that the diary will become more related to cases and my individual days than a wider picture, so I hope to keep this blog for that purpose and there will not be any inference to anyone or any case I may run up against.
What I hope to do with this blog is use it for a way to find some kind of restorative calm and peace. A way of reminding myself about the other things in my life and the world.

The next three years are going to change me (or so I've been told). However, I don't want to change too much, or at least, I'd rather mould for the good of midwifery than become hardened or brittle. I may need to remind myself from time to time who I am or why I'm doing this or how to do this with a smile or a peaceful heart. I may need a place to seek solitude that reminds me that there is a wider reason to this, that by doing the small things, I will, slowly help to change bigger things.

So, I'm going to leave you today with a picture of my new sanctuary...the bathroom, it's finally finished!
and a quote from Gandhi that will, hopefully, ensure I remember why.

" A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history"

Je Retourne!

2011-08-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

Only one more week until school starts back. It's incredible how fast time has gone.

So much has happened since I last wrote, so, firstly "hello, I hope you all had a good summer and that you didn't receive too much rain. I hope my friends on the East coast of the US are relatively unscathed after their run in with Hurricane Irene."

So what has been happening here in the Beehive. Well, the girls have arrived, which has been big news.

Friday we became the proud owners of six hybrids:

Bluebelle - the...er...Bluebelle. She is already the dominant chook and bosses the others around.

Diamond (the coral) and Ginger (the Goldie) hiding under the house. Her sister, Molly is hiding in the house!

Mrs Miggins (hmmm, too much Blackadder! the copper black)


Speckled Jim - the Speckled, not male, too much Baldrick, hen.

And then less than 24 hours later, they gave us these! So, so far, they are paying for their keep!

We also had a week in France after my delicious friend, Em, finally had her even more delicious (sorry!) baby:

Delicious Baby!

So France, that was great! We spent a week in the Dordogne and had a lovely time, bar the weather, the borrowed teen and the broken car window!

We visited Grottes and Chateaux, drank copious amounts of red wine and ate cheese with everything and played far too many games of scrabble, but it was a great week to reconnect and not feel part of the world. In fact, we pushed our heads so far into the sand we didn't even hear about the riots in the UK until I caught sight of the headlines on our penultimate day.

Now we are back to reality, the reality of still not having a bathroom completed, still not having a shower that works upstairs, still having many, so many weeds in the wild garden that the garden is less wild than dead, back to the reality that in less than eight days my eldest will be a secondary school child, that in less than 15 I will be a student midwife. Life is a changing...fun times ahead!

Craft Camp

2011-07-29T06:20:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, I said I was going to be away for much of the summer, but we have just come back from a week at a craft camp and I just had to share it with you, so this is a temporary return for a while ;-)

Last Sunday we packed the car to the gunnels to drive down to Gloucestershire for a craft camp. We were a little wary because we didn't seem to have too much information about the whereabouts or what we were required to bring. Dare I say it...oh, go on as I have been there and feel I am therefore allowed...it has it's roots in Steiner education and simply was organised in a similar vein. If you had been to the camp before, you were sorted, but if not, you were expected to just "arrive" and eventually you'd go with the flow.

So that's fine and I presumed we'd have a day of high wound-up-ness as we found our groove and chilled out, however, what I didn't presume was that the place would be so bleedin' difficult to find, that we'd arrive crying, stressed and with smoke coming out the engine of the car!
We had a tiny map that had been put on the website that didn't even have the names of the roads we needed, no postcode and no emergency contact number and I was trying to navigate with Richard on speaker phone whilst he tried to track this field from home...yes, mad eh, but the postcode we did have was for the centre where it was taking place but was no where near the place where everyone was camping!
At one point we started off down a very steep hill for the road to suddenly become exceedingly narrow and truthfully, not wide enough for my car and top box! About a quarter of a way down I decided that we were highly likely to become wedged or scrape the car, so decided that we had to come out....backwards. It sounds now, like a comedy moment, but it wasn't at the time and it also sounds like I was a muppet for setting off along a lane that was too narrow, but it became narrow very quickly and this wasn't visible from the start of the lane...honest!
Of course, the car didn't like reversing up a hill, so we had to take ten for me to stop sweating, shaking and the car to stop steaming. Now it has a trip to the garage to probably replace the clutch F***kity f**k.

Eventually we found the very tiny hand painted sign on the un-named road in a farm, parked and pitched and began to frantically find our grooves.

This makes the whole thing sound awful, which it wasn't at all. As I said, if you'd been there before (which I soon discovered, most people had) then finding it would have been easy. You'd also had been aware that you didn't literally take heed of the instructions to only bring plates and cups but you needed to bring your own stove really for hot water, that there was only one shower between 200 people and a supply of water and soft drinks were a necessity. You'd also have known that coming late would mean you were a long way from the communal area (which benefited us at night time as we weren't kept awake by drumming circles or jamming sessions) which meant a long walk to wash your plate, have a shower, fetch a coffee etc...hence the need next time for a stove. You would also have recognised some of the craft tutors so you could have ensured you were close to them when the time came to choose your craft for the week and this way you'd get a space, rather than us who waited until we were told who was whom and then couldn't get on as the 8 spaces they had were already allocated!

Still, by Monday afternoon I think we'd begun to find our grooves and Master Beehive the elder was busy stretching animal skins over frames to make a shield and whittle himself a spear in the Young Warrior group, Master Beehive the younger was busy making pots in all shapes and forms in the Pottery group, LMB was making all kinds of mess and singing songs in the 6 - 7 crafts and stories group and I was learning to make a spoon out of green wood.

Meals were group efforts with each tutor group taking a lunch or dinner session to prepare and serve.
The food was excellent...primarily veggie, so of course Master Beehive the younger lived on bread and pureed fruit that I'd brought for the most part, however, one evening there had been a slaughter earlier int he day and lamb and pork were on the menu. He gained some colour and began to smile again!!

By day two, once we'd made our peace with the fact we weren't going to be showering daily, lentils were the staple diet, that we would, quite literally be crapping in the woods (in composting toilets...) and mobile phones were unchargeable, I was beginning to enjoy the slowness of it all. To be in an environment where we were learning to make everything we'd need to live was pretty amazing.
Although most people stuck with the craft they'd chosen for the whole week, other workshops on offer were leatherwork, blacksmithing, metal casting, musical instrument making, weaving, felting, basket making, diggeridoo making, bushcraft, pottery, warriors and others I've probably forgotten.
We will definitely do this again as there are huge numbers of crafts I'd like to learn.

My next experience of crafting will be next year when i am going to be learning to make silver jewellery. Last week I "doula-ed" for my beautiful friend Emma, who was the true amazon woman exuding strength from every last bone in her body during her mammoth four day labour. Her sweet baby boy, Arthur, was born on Master Beehive the younger's birthday. As a thank you (which she didn't need to do) she, Arthur and Arthur's daddy, bought me a weekend silversmith course. I am so touched by this. I most certainly wasn't expecting a material thank you because I was just so honoured that she allowed me to be there with her. Birth is a very intimate and private occasion and each time a family allows me to be there, I feel honoured, although i know I am offering them a service for which they are paying, it is still a very sacred occasion to be a part of. However, for Emma I didn't want payment because she is my friend first and foremost, who just happened to be having a baby. So this was a very special thing for her to do for me and for me to be able to do for her. So Emma, if you're reading this at 2am in the morning with Arthur nursing and making those cute snuffly noises...thank you, you are truly generous and I am very grateful and happy xxx

Back to the story, it was pretty wonderful to return to civilisation, however, and come home to hot water, mattresses that don't deflate in the night, a mirror (although that wasn't quite so nice initially!) and a hot cup of "my" coffee - albeit, it was pretty good coffee at the camp and you'd earned it after the walk!
However, I am going to have my hair cut today and put chemicals on it (oops!), eat a take away this evening (bigger oops!) and use my computer to put my photos on facebook (bigger oops still!) and look forward to my holiday in a fully equipped gite in France next week, so perhaps I'm not totally cut out for life in a cave just yet ;-)

Skool's out for summer!

2011-07-22T09:09:00.000-04:00

Summer is here, well, school is out at least.
One thing about summer is that it reminds me how much I truly miss living in Connecticut and the summer season in the US. Guaranteed warm or hot days, swimming at the YMCA outdoor lido, swimming at one of two local water holes, the beach, hanging out with friends, lying in a hammock dodging my hibiscus flowers falling off the tree, melons, oh, so big in the garden and fighting the rabbits and deer to get there first.
10 weeks, if not 11 or 12 of blissful nothing-ness.

We didn't have plans as such, well we had a few camps here and there, but for some reason, life just seemed so "un - stressy".

There was no rush to buy school uniform and new shoes for the fall before it all sold out or everyone was getting the kids' feet measured.

Maybe I just feel rather full to brimming at the moment of trying to hold onto and juggle a bit too much, but all i can think of is "how on earth will I fit it all in in six weeks" and "I hope it won't rain and ruin all the plans".

I'm sure it'll come together once we start relaxing and lying in without the rush of having to get to school on time.

I partly think that it feels more stressy than usual because I know I only have seven weeks until I start at uni and life will be a permanent juggle for three years. It's a kinda of last chance saloon summer ;-)

It's also been an emotional and epic week in other ways. My beautiful, strong friend Emma finally birthed her gorgeous boy, Arthur on Thursday, after a week of off/on labour. The poor sweetheart was totally exhausted by the final stages but let me tell you, she was AWESOME!

Arthur shares a birthday with my very own Master Beehive the younger. It is a phenomenal coincedence and brilliant addition to Emma's and my story. That we only "reunited" with each other after many, many years, a short few years ago, yet our history extends back to the age of 11 when we were at secondary school together and for our boys to share a birthday seems...well, extra special in a way, a kind of bigger bond. I certainly won't have an excuse to forget to send him his birthday gift each year ;-)

So congratulations Em, as I know you'll be reading this as your sweet smelling little boy is nestling into you, nursing and you only have one hand free to scroll your mouse up...internet reading will be your life for a while!!

And on the subject of new beginnings, Master Beehive the elder has also reached the end of an era. Yesterday he finally left primary school for good. In September he will join a new Secondary school. It's incredible to think that my firstborn is old enough now and in the same time again will be leaving home for university. He has grown so tall, lost all his "babyface". He has his roots now and I really hope to see him get his wings and learn to fly at his new school.

Life really does pass by at a rate of knots and it is so easy to be so busy that you miss it. As John Lennon said; "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans"

So, on that note, I will not be blogging very much over the summer. We have a wonderful week at a craft camp lined up with some friends from Edinburgh, then we're going to drive to the south of France for a week holed up in a gite with a pool and eat lots of french bread, brie and drink copious amounts of vin rouge and finally we will be catching up with friends, shopping for new shoes, school uniforms, university gear, gathering the final bounty from the garden and storing it for the autumn and welcoming home Mr Beehive who, after four months away from us is finally coming home next week.

What's not to celebrate?

Sphincters, Birth, Friends and Dildos all before breakfast!

2011-07-01T03:28:00.003-04:00

Last night I was propping my eyes open after having two hours sleep and being called to a birth.

The birth, as all births do, taught me something yet again. It reinforced in me the fact that no one is in charge of anything when it comes to birth. It taught me that we can help women prepare and understand things, but ultimately, birth will do what birth does best and will be unpredictable.
My mama was around 39 weeks (but who's counting?) when she rang to say she had some leaking that wasn't really stopping. Three weeks later I finally got the call to say that her waters had fully gone with somewhat of a pop and contractions were picking up.
From past experiences and the fact her first birth was only 14 hours and straightforward, I'd got it into my head that this birth would be fast. So much so, that I was actually concerned I may not even make it.
It was a humbling thing to discover that second births are not always fast or around half the length of time of the first. I learned that you can never predict anything in birth.
Outward signs mean different things for different women and different births. I also feel even stronger about the connection between psychological needs impacting on the birthing process. As I watched her contract I visually saw her retract into herself as if she was scared to let go.
She laboured so calmly and beautifully,rhythmically rocking and blowing and making ripples on the water of the pool but when she felt the desire to bear down, she appeared to try to pull upwards. What was her brain telling her? What was worrying her?

For some women, there are things within the course of their journey to becoming a mama, for the first time or subsequently that can impact on their release of their baby. Perhaps this mother is fearful that she may pass a stool? Perhaps as a mother bringing a sibling into the world, she's scared about her ability to parent two or her relationship with her firstborn and how that may change now? Maybe there is a reason as to why she's scared that comes from her first birth, an episiotomy or forceps story that needs to be told during pre natal visits.

Ina May mentions this a couple of times in her book Spiritual Midwifery. One of her women appeared to stall at 7-8cms and eventually it was discovered that she was fearful that her husband might leave her (he was at her side) as their marriage was not "official" in her eyes. The marriage was officiated there and then on the spot and this appeared to be the bridge required for the woman to "allow" herself to release her baby.

It's not an uncommon phenomenon. There are reports of animals in the wild doing this, where there is the threat of danger or a predator close by, if a mother is close to birthing her baby, she will, in fact, close up again to ensure that her body keeps the unborn safe until danger has passed.

A midwife friend of mine has a couple of female cats. Last year, one of them, heavily pregnant, made a nest for her impending birth. The other cat (non-pregnant) destroyed the nest (yeah, jealousy - let's save that psychological mess for another time!). The pregnant one tried again, in a different place. Repeat!
Finally two days after she'd made the first nest she managed to give birth at the bottom of a sleeping bag where the other cat couldn't find her. Her body held her kittens in until time was safe.

It's not a rare occurrence that you read that a mother whose partner is away or whose preferred midwife is not on call or an older child has a birthday, waits until all these things are rectified and satisfactorily "put to bed" before she "allows" her body to open up.

It all just reiterates "sphincter law". The cervix is a sphincter, just like the anus, the ileocolic, uretheral, pyloric and cardiac sphincters. If under stress or duress, they shut down and don't relax and open. It's a simple flight or fight response.

I had talked at length with my mama, and it revealed nothing glaringly obvious. However, having been taken on rather late in the game (at 37 weeks) as they'd made more of an late decision to use a doula, I think I missed this whole "why we're having a doula" thing that "may" have been the reason things were slow. Often a woman taking on a doula for a second birth after not using one for a first has an agenda. Why does she need a doula this time if she didn't have one the first time? She has a need there, often something that she maybe wishes to avoid or not repeat. I knew her first birth story, what I didn't know though or really manage to explore was how she'd felt, emotionally, through her first birth. It wasn't a birth that happened in the UK and was a rather "over managed" affair. In hindsight I think that much of it she felt like a "specimen" on a slab. In hindsight, each time she was "on the bed" (despite asking to get on the bed herself) she clamped down. Once we got her onto the beanbag in a small, intimate corner of the room, she gave herself permission to release.

I also wonder how much an impact having growth scans and being referred because two separate parties on two separate occasions couldn't agree on the size of the baby, had affected her. With her first son born at around 39 weeks at 6lbs, I wonder if she was fearing that this new baby, who came at roughly 41 weeks was now going to be gargantous? She had already told me a couple of times during pre natals, that a baby puts on an oz a day.

What a wonderful thing hindsight is and what a wonderful thing being able to be a reflective practitioner is. What a wonderful job I have and will do that allows me to sit and listen to women and what a wonderful job to be in that surprises me everytime and keeps me humble to the power of women and the power of nature.

My next birth is going to be one of the most special and important events of my doula career and days of my life as a friend. My next birth will be as the doula for my dear friend, Emma, who has allowed me to be there to witness this - in return for a hand hold or two ;-) I feel so honoured for this opportunity and blessed that we managed to rekindle this friendship after nearly 20 years of being out of touch.

This brings me to the topic that I was going to blog about today, before getting all birthy on you again and that is friends.

This week has been an emotional bag due to feeling particularly vulnerable at the moment with Mr Beehive still working up in Edinburgh and there not being any set signs as to this ending at the moment and me feeling under the weather with a cold.

On Tuesday I did, what I never normally do (aren't I good *polishing halo) and earned my "mummy of the year" badge by taking my kids out of school to go to Legoland! It's an educational experience! We wouldn't normally do that except that some friends of ours from the US were here, quite literally for three days and we wanted to spend time with them, having not seen them for two!

There were tears and hugs and laughter and OMG, the chatter and noise!!! Laurie and I were unable to let go when we saw each other and the kids (we both have three and they're all around the same age) well, it was as if they had never left.

Amazingly, life, two years, two countries and yet there is nothing there that made it hard or awkward.

Last night, on two hours sleep, Laurie and I snuck away (thanks Magda!) to the pub for a quick dinner and pint of something "reddish with a good head" (L's description of a good english ale- honest guv!) which dissolved into raucous laughter in the corner, a wonderful meal and reminiscence...in particular of a wonderful few days that we spent together at the Cape early in our friendship where after dinner one evening (the kids were at home with a sitter), Laurie took me on a tour of P'town and we ended up bonding over dildos in the porn shop!!! Apparently she's been worrying for the last couple of years that this was not a great way to develop a friendship and the fact that we are both on the extreme end of the "crap-o-meter" when it comes to telephoning or Skyping meaning that she was unsure if I was mentally scarred and ignoring her. Her only fault there is that she doesn't know me well enough...sadly. Our vow to each other is to remedy this and this also needs, therefore, for us to have a repeat performance and return to the Cape next summer to further develop our friendship and knowledge on P'town's extensive range of manacles and chocolate body paint (not on each other though I hasten to add!!)

So, true friends really are amazing people. People who allow you to attend their births and who you can discuss dildos with over a pint of something "red with a head" and a bowl of faggots (yes, I forgot to throw that in, my local pub has them on the menu in a tomato sauce - apparently v. yummy!)

Both these friends are ones who I don't see often, sadly, due to distance primarily, but both these amazing women are such huge parts of who I am.

My friends make me smile, cry, laugh until I nearly pee my pants. We can pick up where we left off. We can know that the other is okay with no more contact than a text or email message, but then spend hours over dinner or in the rain over a flacid sandwich at a theme park, putting the world to right and finishing each others' sentences. Two more friends sent me a message last week when I was feeling particularly down after a disparaging week of mishaps and lack of husband, to say they were coming to see me. They had decided amongst themselves to arrange to come. I cannot say what that sentiment did for my week. Tonight my best friend arrives with her hubby and two kids. They're here for the weekend and we're going to the local version of Glasto on Saturday. This friend has seen me through thick and thin...provided boxes (with holes in) for me to puke in at age 17, cleared up and covered for me when I've done things I shouldn't, slammed doors in my face when I've pissed her off and been on the front row for all the concerts I've played in. She (along with all my beautiful friends) supports what I do, doesn't mind when I use the words vagina and placenta in dinnertime conversation, looks after my children when she thinks i need a break. She tells me when she thinks I'm a knob and gives me a hug when she's listened to me rant and cry. She's seen the boyfriends come and go, walked with me down the aisle and was the first person to hold her first nephew. She's seen me at my very best and my very worst. Our friendship is unconditional.

Friends are truly amazing people and I am so blessed.

Today tell your friends how much you truly love them.

Have a happy weekend x

Waiting

2011-06-29T05:39:00.000-04:00

In my garden this week I have peas, lots and lots of lovely mange tout peas at the moment. One minute they were teeny seeds that I sowed, with a small tinge of doubt and a lot of hope. Over the months they slowly developed without my full knowledge or acknowledgement, beautiful white flowers were the only sign that they were happy and content in the sun with their roots in the soil.

Suddenly I have these beautiful peas.

But are they ready to pick? Should I eat them as they are, crisp and fresh, or wait just a little while longer for them to fatten and to see what further delights Mother Nature has to offer me?

My lady number one is now a week and a day past her hospital-imposed due date. She's doing fine. She's well and the baby is happy, but he's just not quite ready to come to meet her.

He's a cute, tender little mange tout right now and give him a couple more days he'll fatten and also have a sweet and tender tiny pea in the middle that will make his mama draw breath every time she sees it, and she'll be glad, so glad that she waited because in that moment, the world stands still.

Nature is the boss. Time is the essence. Together they are the perfect combination. Mess with things and the bitterness creeps in.

That is all for today apart from a few photos from around the garden:

sweet peas

Blue Agapanthas

North Star, white agapanthas

Purple Sprouting broccoli from which we ate our first portion on Sunday - delicious!


Colourful chard, ripe for the picking very soon.

and "sweet" Pippin. Not remotely for eating, but growing as fast as the crops.

D'ya want Pitocin with that?

2011-06-25T15:54:00.001-04:00

Have you noticed recently how much American stuff seems to be slipping into UK markets? I'm not just talking about the fact that you can buy Nerds in the local sweet shop here (yeah, don't tell my kids!), but such names as Krispy Kreme are beginning to roll off the tongues of the Brits as if we were talking pear drops or mint humbugs. There is a Subway on every corner too! I really noticed this today and last week when looking for somewhere to grab a sandwich. What has happened to the little independent delis that gave us choice over our bread, our filling, crusts on or off, butter, mayo etc. If "choice" has become limited by the few things on the standardised menu which can be found uniformly in every town across the UK, what message is that sending out?

But I'm not writing a blog entry about sandwiches or chocolate (I probably could write one on the latter). I'm naturally writing about birth. What started out as something that could have done wonders for the birthing culture; what began as something where directors had the power to change the way birth is envisaged; has become a carcrash soap opera. Directors had every opportunity to normalise birth, however, the power of the media saw an investment. The success of OBEM* (that acronym on is the lips of a good portion of pregnant women, midwives, doulas, childbirth teachers and parents in the UK) has now become as appalling and stereotyped a reality show as Geordie Shores or Made in Chelsea. How, because we are now being broadcast the same show from across the pond. OBEM USA! Whoop de do! Excuse me for my lack of enthusiasm!

Now these same pregnant women are subjected to watching the American model, yes, I will use that term and many of my US friends and colleagues will back me up on that, because that is exactly what it is for the most part in the US hospitals; a sterile, directed, organised template for women to slot neatly into. Birth will happen in hospital, in lithotomy position and if you don't fit that American model, you'll get "Pit- ed"**.

My job now as a doula and even more so as an antenatal teacher is now made twice as hard. Rather than starting from a position of just helping women realise they are able to ask questions, consent to or refuse various things, information gather and be independent thinkers and choice makers. Now I have to allay new fears, that the midwife will be on their side and not ready to shoot them up with a dose of pitocin if they so much as take a quick nap, that generally they won't have their legs in stirrups or people shouting like cheerleaders from the side lines all whilst shining lights that would impress Captain Kirk up their fanny. That their birth won't be over managed, rather like a processed food, with all the goodness and nutrients taken out to ensure that the end product is quick and easy for the outsider to manage.

Having been present at many births on both sides of the Atlantic I do see some traits from the technocratic model seeping slowly into the British birthing culture.
Cynical as I may be but this particular sketch springs to mind. From 1983 none the less, but the number of births I witnessed similar to this in the US is disturbing.

Ironically, it's British and presumably, at the time, meant to be farcical.

I see more women now who see consultants than ever I used to. Currently I have one woman who is being told that, despite two negative results for Group B Strep, she should have antibiotics...why? Another woman is being told that she'll "need" a caesarean section, and not be able to have her planned VBAC. When she questioned this, was told the usual story about her scar rupturing. This is a well informed lady. She was, luckily, able to throw some figures back at her consultant to show the minimal risk of this happening, she was then told that her baby would be too big for her to birth. Which is it for one thing?

So what can be done? How can we stop the invading shadow of the likes of OBEM USA becoming the future generations' perception of "normal birth"? I don't see the fear or the acceptance of interventions without challenge in mums having their second or third babies. These mothers realise they are powerful and that their bodies can birth. They realise that in a low risk normal birth, there is nothing to be fearful of and that the baby will be born when it's born. A first time mum, however, has no previous experience of her own to draw from so she gets her ideas from the media, her friends and family.

Back in March this year I asked Ina May Gaskin this very question:

"How, in a world where we most women interpret "normal" birth by what they see in the media and from "horror" stories, can we empower women to trust in their bodies and trust birth for the first birth, not the second or third?"

And her answer was that it starts with women telling their stories, spreading the word. Women need to tell the story of their normal births and not be embarrassed because their friend had a c-section and she had a straightforward birth. I personally, had an epidural, an augmentation and a ventouse with my first child. I think it must have been hearing the stories of the one or two women in my antenatal group that told their stories of their normal births that made me realise for my second child, things could and would go very differently and that may be down to me doing things differently as well. Don't feel guilty because you birthed your baby with no pain relief or that you weren't induced or that...you even enjoyed it with a euphoric sense of achievement and pride. If you tell that story to even one person, you may change things. Perhaps you can tell the story to your daughters and then to your granddaughers. Tell it to your sons and grandsons so they can tell their wives and partners. Pass the word. We can change the world, one birth at a time.

*One Born Every Minute
** Pitocin in the US or Syntocinon in the UK - both of which are artificial synthetic oxytocin.

Fruits of my labour

2011-06-23T07:29:00.000-04:00

I think it's time for a little update around the house:

I've been attempting to find ways to ensure that the three strawberries that my 16 or so plants produce this year are not eaten by the nesting pigeons in the tree above the strawberry patch. So on Sunday decided to create my own defense system. The words "cobbling together" really don't do the appalling carpentry justice. Let's just say, if any bird manages to get through the chicken wire, it's likely to die horribly, impaled on one of the gazillion nails that "missed" when I was attempting to bash them through. However, if it lasts a couple of seasons, then it's worked (not the bird that is!)

So this is a slightly better piece of joinery! I've made another raised bed. Realising that they are silly money in the shops and I could make one myself for less, this is a really basic bed. I think it will be my lettuce bed next year, but I feel compelled to plant more radishes today after trying the first of our season's booty this morning.

This is all that remains as I had it for breakfast. It is a reminder that, despite feeling like one radish really won't feed the 5000, there is a reason as to "why" I grow lots of veg. Sinead O'Connor basically sang about* why growing your own veg is superior to shop bought ;-) (and if you press the link and you're my age - you'll be whizzed back to late night parties in Becky's house during sixth form years!!)

*okay, so she wasnt' "actually" singing about vegetables - but then I suppose it depends who you dated !

This shot shows the whole of the plot. It's really hard to show how it looks now in comparison to February when I started and it was just an overgrown mass of weeds. I'm really chuffed.

Some rather marvellous bounty all shiny and red - well, okay, a bit green too - but we're holding out for enough mixed berries to make something with on Sunday!

Painted the front door. Now all I have to do is cut back the triffid that is wisteria to ensure that we can actually get in and out of the house and there isn't a Sleeping Beauty's castle situation.

And when it gets cold or rains, I can retreat to my nice fire (I keep showing this don't I?!) and the sunny batik we brought back from Kenya last year that we've finally had framed. The perfect place I think.

As for the rest of the week. It's been a bit of a mixed bag of emotions. I've been frustrated with things going missing in the mail, both things I've sent recently AND stuff that's been sent to me. One of those things was all the important forms that I need to fill in and send back for uni. So I've been printing off ridiculous amounts of paper from websites instead to ensure I have all I need.Of course, the printer hasn't wanted to play ball, so there has been much cursing and wasted paper in the process.

I've then been tracing my medical notes as I need my immunisation records and need them signed.... However, somewhere between leaving the surgery in Edinburgh and moving down here and registering, the notes are "in transit" and that is as much as anyone can tell me. Of course the whole thing could be a bit of a moot point as I doubt my notes of 1973 will show my immunisations, despite the fact that I have a piece of paper with some vaccinations recorded from 1980ish. That's the problem of being a dinosaur!
I'm also finding it hard being a lone parent in the week. It seems so long until each weekend. Then, like happened this week, the electrician stops by to do a couple of things but unearths a plethora of other problems, some of which are dangerous...

I've also discovered that it's highly likely that one of my six weeks of holiday from uni will be changed to suit the school holidays. Which, in a normal year, would actually be great and, from a less selfish perspective is more practical. However, Mr Beehive and I had organised for my mum and dad to look after the kids whilst they were still in school and he and I were going to New York and back to Wilton for my fortieth for a few days. Now that's gotta be kyboshed!

Finally to top the week off, I learned that one of the teachers from the children's old Montessori school in the USA had succumb to cancer. She was only 50 and a wonderful lady. Full of life and vitality. Her youngest is Master Beehive the younger's age. Terribly sad.

On the upside though, a couple of school friends had been making plans behind my back to come to visit me. They managed to reduce me to (happy) tears this week. I was so excited to get a note in my inbox to say that they were coming with their boys to spend a day with us here at The Beehive. I haven't seen either of them for...a long old time...too long! So that made me feel quite loved and gave me the kick up the arse required. Thanks Lynn and Becks xxx

Learning about Kristen and reading the blog of another of my friend's battling cancer at the moment makes me put everything in perspective. So if you have a few more moments, I'd just like to introduce someone to you:

This is Charisse.

Charisse made me cry the first time I really was introduced to her (seriously, there isn't a reccurrent theme with me and friends that make me cry- honestly!).

Not many of my friends do that.

She had taken photographs of our children at the Montessori school that we were privileged to watch on a big screen during an parent/teacher evening early in the school year in 2005. In front of me and Mr Beehive was a picture of each of my boys in huge 10ft by 10ft black and white.
Raw, unchanged imagery of the insides of my boys' characters. This woman is SO remarkable that I swear she takes her photos of kids from the inside out. You don't just see the exterior, the blonde hair, blue eyes, you see what they are thinking, how they were learning, what emotions certain things manifest in them.

When I first met Charisse, she had just been undergoing treatment for non-hodgkins lymphoma. All her beautiful hair had come out and she was wearing a scarf. I remember her distinctly because I hadn't even noticed her hair, I noticed her eyes, the laughter on her face and the scarves - she had some cool scarves ;-)

When she was well, she would always be in school with her camera, capturing internal images of our children. Anyone can take a photo, but with Charisse's there is something more to them, something that actually makes you feel that you can reach out and shake the hand of the child in her picture or give them a hug, something that may even make you go home and look at your child in a different light as there is something there that you didn't notice before, something that Charisse and her camera are only let into, rather like being granted permission to step into a child's imagination just for a moment.
When she wasn't taking photos she would be laughing. I can actually hear her laughing even after two years of being away from Wilton. She has such a beautiful face that radiated the love that she has for life, her love, David and her boys.

So, I'm not going to grumble about the paperwork, the missing medical notes, the stupid wires that have been wired up wrong or the fact that during the week I don't have my Mr Beehive with me.

Charisse would use her coined phrase "Wasa" to put everything in perspective.

Wasa means "already done"
For Charisse, the power of this word is a message to her cancer that it is done with, gone. She will fight this and win.
For me, this week, I shall use Wasa to mean that life is what it is and what will be in it, will be. Tomorrow is a new day and yesterday and much of today is already done and there is little if not anything I can do to change it, just work with it.

Next time I have a crappy week, I shall take strength from Charisse, play this song and breathe a few Wasa's out into the air...maybe there'll be enough power in my energy to transmit some vibes to Charisse as well.

Wasa.

Be the change.

2011-06-15T03:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I enjoyed the company of fellow colleagues. We had a "meeting" in the sunshine a top a beautiful vantage point in the Oxfordshire countryside. Apart from the birds and her aberrant neighbour shooting his gun at delayed intervals, all was well with the world!

Over a lunch of fresh salad leaves with fresh eggs from one colleague's garden, falafels and tzatziki from mine, soup from another, the question arose as to why I wanted to become a midwfe.

It's not a question I've not toyed with over and over and, because I am a hugely reflective person, will again, many times.

Why become a midwife when you're a doula? Why put yourself through it? In many respects I have it far better. I can be with women one to one from the beginning to the end, knowing that I have no medical responsibility for them and therefore, am not going to be hauled over the coals for something as long as I'm sensible and stick to basic rudementary guidelines and, more importantly, my own intuition. At the end of the day, the parents tend to thank me for what I've done and tell me how they couldn't have done it without me. Okay, well they could have, and would have, but that's a story for another day.

So why am I about to embark on three years of potentially removing all these options from my care. I won't be "with woman" from beginning to end. I will be more restricted with my choices and autonomy may be a word I struggle to bring into my care. My every move will be documented and monitored and if I miss to record even one contraction, it could be the last mistake I ever make. I may not have time to be with that woman from the minute she comes into the hospital to the minute she leaves and rubbing her back may only occur whilst I'm simultaneously caring for two or three other women. Ridiculous eh?

But actually, no!

I have always been very fond of Gandhi's statement "Be the change you want to see in the world" and I feel that midwives get short shrift over everything. Yes, there are some crappy midwives out there and sadly, as with any profession with a few crappy ones but the majority wonderful, it tends to be the tales of the crappy ones that pave the way for the rest. I honestly know that if I want to help to change birth experiences in the UK then I need to be a part of the closest force to that that I can be. I need to be "on the frontline" so to speak.

I don't have a "god complex", nor do I feel that I am a pseudo super-hero (although I do like this terminology, thanks Charlotte ;-) I just know there are better ways to do this than many of the stories I hear and I know that I can sit and bemoan it, or get in there and try, in a minimal way, to help change things. I also feel supported that there are many other women who are moving into midwifery now who feel the same way as I do. Perhaps the Mexican wave is coming?

I also have an interminable desire to learn and there is a huge lure towards the knowledge side of things, particularly to enhance my teaching skills. Of course, I don't have to put myself through three years of a degree to do this, that's just the surface.

I also know that much as I believe in the art of being able to be "hands off" as a midwife, as a doula there is more of an element of "hands tied". I can see things sometimes that I know I wouldn't do or have done as a midwife and then I have to sit back and watch my internally forecasted predictions unfold before my eyes. As much as I can suggest as a doula, make my clients aware of the pros and cons, the decision has to be theirs. Of course, as a midwife, I can't insist that the parents do as I say, nor should I want to, but the reality is that if I don't suggest breaking someone's waters to speed up a perfectly normal and healthy, if a little hesitant, labour, then it won't happen. As a doula, if a midwife suggests it, my clients may well choose to do it, regardless of my thoughts, because it has been suggested by the midwife and there is a feeling that it "must be for the best". It's hierachical. Naturally, as a US doula, I saw that more there than I do in the UK.

Last but not least, I think I'm lucky! Of course, I'm lucky to have a supportive family who can help me so I can do this, lucky that they love me and believe in me enough to know I'll make them all proud. I'm lucky that I got a place on a highly over subscribed course and I'm lucky that I am still wearing my rose tinted specs and feel that NHS politics won't get rid of me (they may get me down at times) and that my vision to provide one-to-one care from beginning to end, in the comfort of a birth centre or the mother's home is on the road to being fulfilled.

But most of all, I'm lucky that I AM a doula. I'm lucky that I have had six years of learning what a woman needs and how her emotions need to be met and what really is important, when push comes to shove (no pun intended!). I'm lucky that I can and bloody well will, put this essential part of caring for a labouring mother into practice as a midwife. I can be her sole carer, I can stop all the clocks and make her and her partner the most important people on the planet so that her birth experience, with the best of natures blessings, will be the best of her life.

So, there you have it.

Enjoy your day x

Planes, trains and automobiles!

2011-06-13T13:29:00.002-04:00

It's awfully quiet around here today. There are no men putting holes in my walls or roof, there's no au pair (not that she was ever loud!) and I only have one child having packed the older two off to a residential school trip for three days. What to do eh?

It does rather compensate for the weekend we've had. Firstly Mr Beehive's train was delayed due to something or other...probably rain *sigh*, so I had to go to Birmingham to pick him up at 9.30pm on Friday night. Then the teenager left for Germany, so she had to be taken to the airport for 5.30am, so back we went! It proceeded to rain ALL DAY on Saturday which was miserable and meant the jobs we'd planned for outside, couldn't be done and the washing got whiplash what with the schizophrenic on the line, off the line. The kids and Mr Beehive went to see Horrible Histories in Oxford and had sushi, I'd also got a ticket but realised that it was asking a lot of the puppy to stay home for what could have amounted to six hours and not poop all over the kitchen. So, I got to stay home and stand in the rain every two hours coercing a 10 week old puppy to poop on demand - oh yay!
Sunday appeared to be a little better although it still rained all day. However after dropping Mr Beehive back at the station at 6, I got a phone call to say...guess what...the train was delayed, so I had to go to bloody Brum again.

Then there were the flies. Whilst the rest of the family were enjoying the Romans being utterly gruesome and ruthless, I was having my own battle with something from return of the living dead. After dropping them at the station, I ran a few quick errands and returned home. I opened the door to the sound of not one, but about 40 flies! The skylights were crawling with them. No, before you asked there was no missed poop that had brought about this infestation. In fact, I have no idea. The only thing I can think of is that we have a section of roof over the cooker hood missing and whether or not a colony (is that what you call a collective of flies? perhaps a nightmare would be more suitable) had hatched from somewhere under the floorboards upstairs that we'd disturbed on the removal of this panel? Either way, I had to push the pups into the wet garden whilst I fumigated and then proceeded to vacuum up the black winged rain falling from the ceiling! Bah!
On the puppy front, we're making progress (although I may have just signed my own death warrant here). She gets most of her business outside and Meggie even played "with" her today and they tug of war-ed with humpy duck. Meggie is the Sharpay of the dog world, she likes things just so and isn't much of a playful dog. She loves nothing more than to snuggle up. She probably would have been better as a cat. So for her, the transition has been surprising. She makes it known when she's had enough of her face being licked by the puppy and won't share her food until she's only got dregs left but, heck...I think that's okay to stand your ground and the puppy is beginning to learn where the boundaries are!
The puppy is still bemused when Meggie is allowed to sit on the sofa in the lounge but she is relegated to the floor. She is not to know that she'll be 50lbs in a few months and built like the proverbial brick s**t house! She'll get there eventually though!

It is quite odd the boys and Mr Beehive not being here. They've never both been on sleepaway camp at the same time. Master Beehive the younger has done a weekend scout trip as has the elder Beehive, but both separately. I had been rankling with them about packing, they wanted to pack as soon as they bought the letter home from school and I, being the boring, kill joy parent, felt this slightly premature (yes, even for me and my love of packing weeks in advance!) Of course, the most important thing on the list was the fact they are allowed to bring a packet of sweets, so naturally this had to be bought a fortnight ago and admired from afar. Being the mean mother I am, I insisted they could look at them on the windowsill in the kitchen rather than "storing them for safe keeping" in their bedrooms...you know how that goes, don't you...months later you find sweet wrappers behind the bed and under the mattress...but of course...it wasn't them that ate them.

Do you have one of those fairies in your house? It's the one that doesn't flush the chain or leaves toilet paper on the floor, the one that eats the last chocolate mousse without asking or finishes the orange juice but leaves the empty carton in the fridge, the one that definitely hung up his/her uniform but it obviously fell off the hanger, through the closed wardrobe door and onto the floor! You will have one of these fairies if the immediate response from all of your children is "it wasn't me!"

Tomorrow, as long as I don't get "the call" to go to a birth, I'm meeting with some local NCT teachers for lunch, so I've been trying out a new recipe for falafels and tzatziki. Hopefully it'll taste alright, and if it does, I'll post you a new recipe later in the week.

Right now I'm off to have words, as our "fairy" bumped the car on the gate post again yesterday (just to perfect her weekend!) cos...it wasn't me...ooops!

Around the Garden

2011-06-09T14:35:00.001-04:00

Inspired by Farmama's amazing blog and idea of having an "around the farm/garden" record of our progress during the season, here is what's been happening in my garden this week

First of the redcurrants are ripening.

Beautiful fat gooseberries, ripe for the picking this weekend

Peas on their way.


Beautiful lavender heads, they're a creamy white with a purple flower below.

It's very small, but I have an elderflower bush in my garden. I'm so happy!

This is the first of the numerous gladioli bulbs I planted. Oh yay!

Of course, my blog wouldn't be complete if I didn't show you the mess that is inside as well.

I do the "smashing" of the tiles!


Then my lovely assistant comes behind me and "makes good"

What's happened in your garden this week?

Welcome to the House of Fun!!

2011-06-09T04:15:00.001-04:00

We have a new addition to the house, the one I alluded to in an earlier post. Pip is a yellow lab from working farm dog parents and she's just nine weeks old right now.

It's not madness or the burning desire to never sit still that's brought me to a decision to acquire another demanding mouth to feed, but the fact that Meggie will be on her own a bit more in September when I start at uni and we (or rather I, as I'm pretty sure Mr Beehive will agree that he didn't have too much say in the matter!) felt she could do with some company. I am also liking the idea that she is a larger dog so hopefully can be a good deterrent for foxes and 'Oil Burglars"!!

Anyway, so far, things are tentatively okay. She seems to be doing really well with house training, all poops and pee has been in the garden, bar one, and I'm actually crediting Meggie with some of that teaching. She's a bit of a chewer, so I have the "no chew" on all my chair and table legs and she's being given many alternatives - funny how none of them taste as nice as my crocs though!

The harmony between the two dogs is neutral at the moment, Meggie has never been a "playful" type of dog. I throw balls for her and she'll play for a short while, then grow bored, preferring to roll on her back and have me stroke her all day. Pip, obviously wants to play and barrels herself full force into Meg. This is currently not such a problem, in a month or two when she is twice Meg's size, could cause injury, so we're trying to teach her to find the balance. Meg, when not so appreciative of having her face licked or chewed is telling her so. I think they'll work it out!

Reluctant peace!

So, the floor sanding dust is on it's way out, although, I have a layer in my car - presumably from returning the sander to the store! and now we start on tiling. I have half a bathroom to remove of tiles, along with probably half the plasterboard, and then my lovely handyman will be re-tiling once the shower is in.

On other news, I had my first salad yesterday from the leaves in the garden- most delicious too. I am not entirely sure what types of leaves I had, there was some rocket, some that was like a Pak Choi, I added some chives and some basil - true mix of tastes, then put in some goat's cheese and cranberries and a softly boiled egg, adding a balsamic dressing. It was truly yummy, even more special that it came out of the garden!

So new puppies, pile of mess, bathroom disaster zones - may as well kill as many of those damned birds as possible and eat them with lettuce leaves to boot !

Surfacing through the dust!

2011-06-04T16:58:00.000-04:00

It would appear that we're making progress, dusty, slow, but steady progress.

We now have the Ecocent system up and running and it's quiet (that's a plus!).

We have two out of the three showers installed and the bathroom floor is no longer a scary combination of white plasti-paint and sand!

We have been asked lots of questions about it from people who are also interested in the potential from this system. How does it work? How long will it take to pay for itself? Is it expensive? Why have we done it?

So, I'll answer them for you within this blog entry, bearing in mind that my ability to "do technical" tends to be in the same place as my ability to follow a recipe!

The Ecocent is basically a very large hot water tank in the roof that also has a smaller device attached above that is connected to a couple of extractors in our various bathrooms. Each time we shower (which with six people, is a lot) the extractor takes the hot steam produced up through the tubing and this then is used to heat the hot water tank. Added to this will be the Photovoltaic panels on the roof that will also help to heat the water, we should be able to run almost oil free for the majority of the year, not only turning off our heating (which we would normally do in the summer), but turning the water to minimum too as we should require minimal oil to heat the tank. Obviously it does require a well insulated loft so that it remains at a fairly constant temperature all year round.

Stand alone, the eco cent takes many years to pay for itself. Mr Beehive, being the nerdy, financial geek he is, showed me all the figures in a spreadsheet once. I think I may have glazed over and started seeing my life flash before me, but I recall hearing 19 years. This is a long time, stand alone, however, with the PV's, it should start to pay back after nine.

Yes, it is expensive. However, it is a long term investment. It's not always about the instant gratification and our beliefs are, whether you agree or not, that oil is a becoming a more and more scarce resource, it is currently very expensive and we feel that by doing this we are not only trying to reduce our fuel bills, which should start to show after 10 years (this is our "forever home" too remember), but we are hopefully reducing one family's use of this form of fuel.

I suppose this also answered the last question, but I also wanted to add this when asked if we're doing it "to be green"?

It’s a bizarre label isn’t it, “green”.
I hope one day there will come a time when there is no label, when hopefully my kids don’t think twice about “being green” because it’s just a natural thing.
I don’t really call myself green because I feel what I do is a natural extension from having children we are trying to live for a sustainable future. I am genuinely concerned for life in 2070.

I already worry about their futures, will they get to college? If they get to college will they get a job? Will they have shit loads of debt and will they ever get out of the rental market before they reach the care home? I really don't want to add to that by using up more than we genuinely need to use, providing them with a large landfill to live on in their rented shoebox and by not using local produce, supporting local shops or growing my own, in order to make their only job option when they leave with their excellent 2:1 degree and several thousands of pounds worth of debt, a shelf stacker in the only remaining global conglomerate - Messers Tescos and sons and sons and sons who may have succeeded in world domination by 2070.

I guess the only bright side is that, by 2070 I won't care about the dust, in fact, I'll probably be a contributing factor in the layers ;-)

Tiny footprints and baby wings.

2011-05-29T16:32:00.001-04:00

Life can be incredibly fragile and cruel sometimes. As easily as life gives, it can take away.

Two months ago I met a lovely lady, a midwife from Tennessee. We were basically two midwives from two different continents, thrown together when she answered my advert seeking a roomie for the conference in Eugene.

We spent the best part of a week together at workshops, having dinner, laughing, sharing anecdotes about our families and children. What leapt out at me about Daphne was the love she radiated for her children and her husband. What I neglected to tell you was that her and her husband were expecting her third child at the beginning of July.

This morning I found out that her baby was born six weeks early and is now on life support which is likely to be turned off over the next few days. It will probably be nothing short of a miracle that will save Baby Ansley.

Some cruel twist of fate has decided that gentle, loving, midwife mama, Daphne is worthy of an angel with wings. Life is just so terribly unkind. Why has this decision been made to take Daphne's beautiful baby and not leave her earthside with them where she is much wanted and much loved?

It makes me wonder how anyone can believe in any God when these cruel things happen. I'm not trying to start a religious debate by the way. Daphne, however, is a devout Christian and I am sure that the support of her Christian beliefs and her church family will be of some comfort to her.

After discovering this news I then had to get into the car and drive to facilitate a class for 16 expectant mums and dads. I had to stand there, looking them in the eyes and answer their fears about childbirth by explaining that it's a rare occurrence when things go wrong, knowing darned well that my friend is living every mother's nightmare.

How do you bring up this conversation with women? Childbirth is only as safe as life gets, life is fragile, sometimes nature is cruel and sometimes babies are taken prematurely. Maybe this is life's way of population control, some vicious and spiteful attempt at survival of the fittest.

There is a huge part of me that wants women to understand the word nature. To appreciate that it cannot be controlled, that things are not guaranteed as the text book says. To have a healthy appreciation for this helps women realise that scans are not diagnostic tests, it can't pick up everything. That continual monitoring won't always pick up if something is going awry but more likely is going to show that something might be awry when it's not. That, when they are in labour, they may have to allow the inner animal to take over and strict birth plans may lead to disappointment. The other part of me wants women to feel safe and confident in their abilities to grow healthy babies and birth them. I want them to believe in their bodies and listen to them so they respond if there is a niggle that concerns them. I don't want them to worry about the minute statistics and fear that they might be the 0.05%.

But, then there is Daphne, sitting tonight with her husband, holding hands over the plastic incubator which is likely to be their daughter's only experience of life on earth.
Beautiful Daphne, a midwife, with a healthy appreciation and respect for nature now experiencing it's cruelty firsthand.

If you pray, please say an extra prayer tonight. If you don't, maybe you could direct your thoughts and energies. We can't control nature and Ansley's fate is probably already decided, but it certainly can't help to at least envelop this dear family with extra love whilst they mourn.

Thank you and give your children extra hug this evening x

This is an edit to add that Baby Ansley got her wings yesterday afternoon May 29th as she lost her fight. Her funeral will be on Tuesday 31st May at 4pm GMT (10am central time). Please send some special love that day to Daphne and her family. Unless you have walked but a footprint in the shoes of someone who has lost a loved one, not least that of a child, taken too soon, it is impossible to understand. However, love can help to heal.

Earth, Air, wind, fire and ... tiles!

2011-05-28T12:52:00.000-04:00

We've had the builders in this week as we're having the hot tank put in the roof to free up space for a shower in the bathroom as well as engaging a special system called an ecocent that draws all the hot air from the bathrooms to recycle it to help heat the tank.
All sounds great in theory because we're on oil, so along with the PV's we'll hopefully be able to reduce our oil bill considerably over the next few years.
However, as with every house project, nothing ever goes smoothly.
We currently have power showers, but with the new system with have high pressure gravity showers, this has meant purchasing new showers. That, in itself hasn't been an issue, but of course, the showers we've removed have left one or two places where the tiles have had to come off to sort out plumbing.

Ye Gads, trying to find matching tiles that are anything older than about six months is really like trying to find the Holy Grail. I have been in and out of tile shops, buying and taking back due to things being the wrong dimensions, the wrong style, the wrong colour, the wrong thickness. Finally we have tiles in.
I could get matching tiles that were just so subtly different that they would have looked like we'd not managed to match the tiles so i thought it'd be simple to go for a contrast *throws head back and howls with laughter*. Suffice to say, I'll be glad if I NEVER see the inside of a tile shop again, although I am currently contemplating tiling around my work area in the kitchen, but at least I won't have to match stuff up!

My willow trellis for the clematis.

Today I've released my frustration by burning things.
Yeah, the hidden pyro in me has been pulling up crap and playing with my new incinerator.
What is it with a pair of secateurs and an incinerator that draws me in so much. It's so cathartic!

I've also planted out some beans

and made some eccles cakes. D'ya want the recipe?

Eccles Cakes made in Banbury!

Puff pastry (ready made stuff!)
4oz cranberries
4oz sultanas
4oz sr flour
1tbsp oil
4oz brown sugar
1 egg
1tsp all spice
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 lemon and zest
milk
sugar

Beat your egg, sugar and oil in a bowl, then fold in the flour, baking powder and spice. Add the lemon and zest and your sultanas and cranberries (I saw the recipe the other day using carrots and walnuts - sounds nice too!)
You then want to roll out the pastry and cut it into around 10cm diameter circles. Put a blob of the mix in the middle and then close the pastry over to make a kind of cornish pasty style casing (brush water around the edges to make it stick.
When you've done them all, ensure your tray is greased and then brush milk over each cake and add a sprinkle of sugar. Use a knife to make three air vents!

180 deg C for around 30 mins, although keep an eye because any escaped fruit will burn.


Nom Nom!!


How big are these beetroot? Not from my garden but the farm up the road!	Looking forward to pickles!

First of the season's Elderflower cordial.

It's curry time!

2011-05-23T16:05:00.000-04:00

Some recipes for you because I know I've been neglecting this part of my blogging for a while now. My dear sister got quite irrate with me the other week because I'd been promising her my scallop/prawn curry recipe and okra recipe for ages and she quite literally phoned me from her stove top, pan in hand to demand the information NOW!

So, just for her, here are a few recipes (curry like) to keep you going this week:

Firstly:

STORE CUPBOARD CUZZA!

You'll need:
A few potatoes, peeled and diced
An onion - finely chopped
Garlic - as above
chick peas (or lentils or beans) - I always have these as a store cupboard staple
Tin of tomatoes
fenugreek, cumin, caraway, tumeric and seasoning
Coconut oil or cream (not so much of a staple, but I do tend to have the oil in as I love to cook my curry bases with this - it's delicate and not overpowering and so, so good for you!
fresh coriander (growing in the yard, so also free!)

This whole recipe, if you keep most of it in store will cost you about 1.50 to make and I feed six!

Fry your onion and garlic lightly in olive oil and a little coconut oil if you're using it
Add your diced potatoes and gently brown to allow the potato to seal. This will help reduce the chance of it collapsing and creating a mush in your pan.
Add 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of each of the spices and season to taste. Oh, less of the tumeric, you only want to add a faint hue.
Add the chick peas and the tin of toms along with about a cup of water.
Let it all simmer along for around half an hour but stir regularly as you don't want it to stick.

When you're ready to serve you can add your tbsp of coconut cream if you didn't use oil and a handful of fresh coriander.
You can serve with rice, chapati or on its own.

Scallop and ginger curry

Okay, so this is a bit of an indulgence, but if you're going to do a curry that kicks arse, then this is the one to do to seriously impress!

You'll need:
Onion
2 cloves of garlic
enough scallops (smallish ones without the roe) for your hungry guests
fresh ginger about a finger sized piece sliced small or grated
fresh tomatoes chopped
cumin seeds, cardamon pods, coriander seeds
fresh pepper (you'll grind all this together in a mortar and pestle)
one lime
fresh coriander

Fry your onion and garlic in a little coconut or olive oil. If using olive oil I like to add a knob of butter too - kind of helps things to not stick and adds a nice base to everything
grind all your spices and add them to your browning onion and lightly fry them.
Add your ginger and chopped tomatoes and allow the mixture to simmer gently.
Add the scallops and allow them to lightly cook. You don't want to leave them too long or you'll end up with rubber bung curry and that is not nice!
Add your lime juice and seasoning.
Just before serving add a generous handful of coriander.

Okra and mango - side dish!

Dead easy using veggies that many people don't know how to cook.

So you'll need a load of Okra, I find that Waitrose tends to be pretty reliable for it, Sainsbury's a bit hit and miss, Tesco even more so and Morrisons will probably stare at you. Yeah - Okra is obviously food for snobs LOL!
Onion
Dried mango pieces
Chilli
Cumin

Okay, so preparing Okra is easier than you think. You need a bowl of water on standby because the insides are sticky and full of seeds.
I like to top and tail as you would runner beans. Then I slice them lengthways but keep them thin. Put them into the water and this is the important bit, you need to dry them as much as you can. I tend to prepare them a few hours before I'll need them an put them into a colander with kitchen towel soaking the water. If they're too soggy they'll not brown well.

Gently fry your onion in butter - decadent, but far nicer end result than oil.
Add your chilli and 1/4 tsp cumin (don't go crazy here - this is a light flavoured dish. you want the mango and fried okra to win through)
When this is nicely browning, add your Okra.
You will now need to fry this for quite a while and vigilantly turn it in order to brown all over.
Once you've gotten an even brown colour you can add your dried mango. I cut it into thin strips.
Don't use fresh mango, it doesn't have the same effect!

Allow the mango to gently infuse with the okra for around 15 mins.
and serve!

Right, now you have mama's best curry recipe I can't put that in a bottle and sell it now!

Enjoy!

Rebozo, reparo and re-go-slow!

2011-05-22T15:40:00.000-04:00

I can't believe we've been in six weeks already. The weeks seem to be flying past. The weekends go the fastest, probably because Mr Beehive literally flies in on a Thursday evening and out late on Sunday afternoon.

Of course, with us being in our own house, we manage to fill the weekends with DIY and jobs that need doing.

We need to find time to explore where we now call home, rather than putting it off, so he's going to be around more over the half term holiday and we have planned to do a few things. It's so easy to get carried along by life rather than carried away with it, so half term is going to be our time to reconnect as a family and be present for a bit.

This weekend he put together the chicken house which I'm thrilled with. All we need now is the run, which my dad is coming up to help me build and the girls themselves. It'll be a real blessing when they're here and laying as pancakes were the demand for breakfast this morning!

We're also having work done on the heating and water system over the next few weeks. We are in a village that has no gas so all our heating comes from oil. We are starting to cut back on it by installing the first of two wood burners, the other one will go in the kitchen/diner area which is large and with that and the range will mean we should be able to cut back downstairs. The main change though is that we're going to put photovoltaic panels on the front on the house and put an ecocent system in the roof.
The eco cent works by extracting the heat and hot air that is produced in the bathroom and using that, alongside the energy created by the PV's, will help to heat the water in the tank. Hopefully this will gradually reduce our need for fossil fuel, potentially reducing it completely in the spring and summer, maybe we can just use it in the winter for really early mornings or cold evenings.

Of course, with putting this system in, we no longer need the electric showers that we have, so we're having them taken out and will be putting in regular ones. Whilst we're at it, we're going to use the space that housed the old hot water tank to put in a new shower.

We realise with making all the mess to create this, we may as well do the remedials and redecorate the two bathrooms too. Being all dreamy and having my head in the clouds, I have clear images of how I want the upstairs bathroom, in particular, to look. It already has a roll top bath and classic sanitaryware, but it just needs "old-i-fying" a bit more. So we're going to replace the tiles and taps to something more representative of the look and I also want to do "something" with the floor.

The floor is currently a very strange concoction. I believe that previous owners probably brought in a bucket load of sand from the beach, threw it randomly across the floor and then dropped paint on the top. This is before they bothered to level the floor, ensure the nails are all down and everything is neatly sealed. Hence we have a rather nasty floor, which isn't pleasant to walk on but, Boy! it gives great exfoliation!

My lovely handyman managed to talk me out of my unrealistic dreams of a bamboo floor due to the fact the stack doesn't have enough in it to lift the toilet high enough to run the floor under it.

So look what I'm up to now!!

I wish we lived in a dolls house because I'd be done by now. I am beginning to think that my "lovely" handyman actually is trying to teach me a lesson for all the ridiculous ideas I keep thrusting his way. This is his idea! Stripping the floor back to it's lovely original wood - which, when it's done, I know he's right!

This is two hours of work - both dry removal - on the right (which works better!) and using some paint stripper - on the left - that basically appears to have no stripping ingredient in it! I think the floor probably contains the same properties as kevlar and the stripping ingredient is fairy liquid!

Ah well - luckily, the lovely handyman won't see the mosaic tiles I bought for him to fit in the downstairs bathroom until AFTER he's done this one mwahahaha!

So back to the theme of staying present I worked on creating a zen garden with LMB's help this weekend. We have a small patch of barren earth that was covered in cobbles. I can only think the cobbles were there to hide all the stones and rubbish that was buried underneath it. We dug and sifted and sorted. In the end we resorted to the fact that we'd need to get part way to Oz, then re fill with so much compost or imported top soil that we may be better off thinking of new plans.
Having a ton of slate chippings left from the paths round the veggies, we decided, inspired by our years of Montessori, and, more importantly, to remind us of our Montessori friends, to create a small Zen garden. So this is the beginnings. To finish it off, we'd like to install a small solar powered fountain or water feature in the middle. I think it'd look really cute!

Oh and finally, this was an awesome day! A Rebozo workshop, lead by a doula and NCT teacher. The rebozo is basically a simple Mexican scarf, made of cotton with a weave in it and used for just about anything, carrying, warmth, wrapping etc. However, this day was exploring the ways the Rebozo can be used with clients in labour to help turn posterior babies or to massage tired muscles. I did a workshop on the Rebozo in Philadelphia in 2006 with some traditional Mexican midwives , including Naoli Vinaver, but I've never felt confident enough to use it. It's amazing what a few years of experience, working with women and learning some important pregnancy related anatomy does for you. This was a seriously amazing day. I do have notes and photos from the day which I am happy to share with any doula, midwife or childbirth teacher if you just contact me below, however, I'd highly, highly recommend a hands on day with Stacia Smales Hill!

This is me having a lumbar stretch - unbelievably relaxing and restorative!

Now this is a great way to live in the present!

Have a lovely week!

Take a walk with me...

2011-05-17T15:48:00.001-04:00

Complete, at last! Painted, carpeted and fire has been used. Well Mr Beehive and I were determined to try it out so we were sat (almost) with the windows open last Saturday evening reaping the benefits. It's a ferocious little beast and we're chuffed to bits with it. I can't lay my finger quite on what adjective it seems to bring to me about the room now, but it seems...neater? more spacious? more delicious? I don't know, I just know I love it!

The next project is the bathroom.

I have been revising this week so haven't got anything too much to tell other than I went to visit our newest family member on Tuesday. Her name is Pip and she lives on a farm at the moment. I won't reveal more than that right now, suffice to say that she doesn't need milking, she won't provide meat or eggs but she will provide love...

I thought I'd take you for a walk through my garden today as it's a nice day.

I've been sneaking away from revision every now and then to do a bit more. My biggest challenge is the patch at the front that has been suffocated under couch grass.

There are literally thousands of bulbs underneath which have been planned with the seasons in mind. So far we've seen snowdrops, acconites, tulips, bluebells, daffs. There are also a couple of old heritage English roses that I am so loathed to take out. However, the whole area is wild.

So I've decided that, rather than trying to fight and tame this, I will leave it wild and so am just adding to it rather than taking away. I've been looking up various natural and wild flowers that I can plant that are native to the area and that will attract wildlife and am currently growing cornflowers, delphiniums, calendula, hollyhocks and some bleeding hearths and many others in the garage ready to plant out in a few weeks. So:

Aquilega

Yummy gooseberries on their way...lots of jam and fool this year!

Ox-eye daisy

Oops! Forgot to add this in. My new border courtesy of Mr Beehive. We're attempting to try to hide the leftovers from the pond extraction ie: breeze blocks and crumbly bits! Hopefully my clematis will grow over much of it and then I'll just plant annuals in the bed itself.

I also have some links for you today.

I wish I had the patience and time to make this:
I love the old beach chairs that seem to be coming back en vogue, I keep coveting several on ebay now and then!

I'm also coveting these tiles which sadly come in at around 20 pounds per tile *shocked*, so I need to look further for something similar but cheaper for the bathroom!

I was intending to have a go at doing this with my strawberries, but never got around to it. Maybe next time I plant some.

I have indulged in this from Katie's mercantile in the US. There is something really Little House about it and I also love the practicality. I now don't have the excuse to not make fresh bread every day and sweep the floor with a besom broom ;-)

Here's some music I've just been pointed towards - a little mellow for a midweek mooch

And just to finish, I so wish I could crochet, not to mention speak fluent Dutch ;-) I think I'd have no excuse to ride my bike if I had one of these - life would be so complete, hey?

http://dutch-blue.blogspot.com/2010/03/bicycle-fashion.html

Birth is Boring!

2011-05-14T04:26:00.001-04:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1386545/Cannes-2011-Film-scenes-childbirth-make-real-women-feel-like-failures-says-Tilda-Swinton.html

Normal birth, doesn't make good telly - fact!

Someone said earlier today when I was chatting about this subject, that birth language is subjective which I totally agree with. What might be euphoric for one woman could be hellish for another.

That said, I'm struggling to reflect on Ms Swinton’s description of birth being murderous. Violent, however, I can associate with. Birth can be violent, both naturally and due to interventions. However, birth can be beautiful and serene.

I also think that women are programmed to find things that make them feel failure whether it's down to thinking their hair is crap, they look fat or they "failed" in their birth and the media plays into this. Every week we're told how we're not feeding our children right, how we should be slim, how we should have curves, how we've lost the art of x, y and z!

My answer is to make birth more normal - let women see "real" birth, let women see birth that doesn't have to be on their backs, but sometimes it is. That birth doesn’t have to be induced, but sometimes it is. That for many women birth takes a long time, not a lot seems to happen externally and won’t make good tv viewing. When I think about the types of births I’ve witnessed on the television, it is always the calm, three pushes and it’s out (supine of course !!) or the emergency or highly medicalised.The births I've witnessed as a doula, however, tend to be incredibly long, consist of making more cups of tea than an army requires, lots of back rubbing and nothing more mind blowing than deciding what position is working best for the current contraction.

Women need to see birth as an every day part of life. It can be (for the most part) amazing and incredible, it can also be scary, and occasionally tragic.

I don't know the media is all to blame, I think women have to take some responsibility too.

Women who have normal (dare I say, boring) births where things just pottered along, don't tend to shout it from the roof tops, those that have more of a dramatic story or had serene and tranquil home births often get their stories out there more because they make for more interesting reading or more controversial discussion.

There is also not the occasion in most girl/woman's life to be a part of birth. Girls don't tend to grow up having witnessed their own mothers giving birth to their siblings. There is no "red tent" where women talk about their boring normal births, thus what we learn is from books, the media and our "louder" friends.

Birth, for the most part, is hidden away from the public eye, apart from when the media gets it’s juicy paws on it and pimps it up. Even One Born Every Minute spends less time on the normal births than it does on the ones that have an interesting story or a dramatic complication.

Each "side" then tends to draw this debate from the other (bit like the breast vs bottle) that then paints this picture that birth is either callous and degrading or fairy lights and lotus births, which is normally the extreme in both respects. All those births that don't fit either category are not spoken about.

Women need to know that a natural birth will do its own thing.

This, for one woman, if left alone, may result in no interventions, no epidurals, maybe even no hospital, for another woman this may result in chaotic busyness, lots of noise and people, various implements and possibly surgery. I am still convinced though that many of the latter births could have avoided c section, were an earlier step such as an epidural or an induction avoided, but that's another blog post!

Women need to know that their bodies are designed to birth and they need to know that they can do it and there are things they can do to help themselves. One of those things they can do to help themselves is to surround themselves with people who have had straightforward births and also to believe in themselves.

They also need to know that birth will follow its own course.

Look outside the window. How many things do you see that are exact and precise straight lines? Okay, now how many of those things are made by Mother nature rather than by man?

My point is that if we try to control something that is, by its very nature, twisted, curved, independent, we are more likely to “fail”. If more women believed in themselves and their sisters before them told their ordinary, boring birth story, less women would be scared, more women would be empowered, more women would be open minded. Less women would feel that they needed to consent to intervention because their birth is long or because their contractions are not regular or having a little rest because they'd know that normal birth can be long, intermittent at times and...boring!

Ms Swinton's comments remind me of a story that I use in classes; a midwife in Pennsylvania works with the Amish community. This means she sees many young primips birthing at home in a community where birth isn’t hidden behind screens. They are incredibly focused and aware and they do believe in their body's ability to birth, however, because they are new to birth, they still feel they can control it.

One story she tells is of the young mother to be who is sitting upright in bed, pristine clean sheets (white!) and a pressed nightdress. Her birth goes very slowly whilst this young woman doesn’t want to be seen to make a noise or break a sweat. Eventually, many, many hours after she first called the midwife, she gets out of the bed with a large noise, rips off her clothes and within an hour, the baby is born. Once the mother realizes that she is not in control of her birth and she needs to listen to what her body wants her to do and this may be messy or noisy, but that's okay, she births her baby. Ina May Gaskin also talks about this in both Spiritual Midwifery and her latest book, Birth Matters: “Letting your monkey do it” is what she calls it.

So yes, birth can be violent, birth can be beautiful, birth can be messy, it can be very boring for the most part. Birth is subjective. However, those of you who have had “boring births”, please make your stories known too. Women have to know that empowerment isn’t about being in control, it isn’t about being controlled either, it’s about a symbiosis. Working symbiotically with your body and baby and believing that both of you can do it. Sometimes, occasionally, there will be a situation that will require medical help, but for the most part, given time and support, birth is long, hard work, messy and surprisingly boring!

Spread the word!!!

Making Butter

2011-05-10T08:54:00.001-04:00

In honour of the fact I now have a fully installed, working, wood smelling and burning stove,
I have decided to share my quick and easy butter recipe with you because, let's be honest, who can resist a nice hot piece of toast with lashings of dripping butter - yeah, yeah, cholesterol and calories are watching, but everything in moderation I say, even moderation itself !

Butter:

You'll need:

A pot or two of double cream that is towards the end of its shelf like or, like I used, even a week or 10 days out of date (as long as you've kept it refrigerated!) DON'T use single, it's too thin to turn.
Very cold water - I tend to put a pile of icecubes into a jug of cold water and leave it in the fridge while I'm getting ready.
Salt
butter paddles or palette knives or flat wooden spatulas
Clingfilm
Cheesecloth
and a food processor or whisk

So first thing is to let your cream warm to room temperature. Don't heat it in a pan, literally let it stand out for an hour before you use it.

When it's ready, pour the cream into your food processor. Use your whisk attachment if you have one.

The cream will stiffen to start with, just as it would if you were wanting a thick whipped cream.
As the cream moves through whipping, you'll begin to see what looks like the cream cracking or curdling. This is the separation of the butter from the buttermilk and now you need to turn your processor speed down as it turns FAST!

This is the butter milk. You can see the butter globules around the side. The large lump of butter I've removed. It will form one or two large lumps.

Suddenly you'll see you now have yellowy buttery substance in the middle of your bowl and a watery creamy liquid surrounding it. This is your fatty butter which has separated from your buttermilk.

Separate off the buttermilk and that's great to put into a cake - or you can make a nice soft creamy bread for your butter later ;-)

This next step is the really important step:

My water here is still not clean, so I will remove the butter, pour out the water and repeat the process.

You don't want your butter to turn rancid, so you have to ensure you get out all the remaining buttermilk. This is where your cold water comes in.

Pour your cold water into the bowl with the butter lump. Let the processor turn it on a very slow speed.
You will need to repeat this step several times. For the first couple of times you'll still see "dirty" water. Eventually the water goes clean.

When this happens, the next thing is to take your butter out and I like to put it into to a piece of cheesecloth here and give it a good squeeze.

Lift it out of your cheesecloth and place on to a wooden board (better than anything else as butter is fatty and sticks).

Using your paddles (or adapted paddles), you are now going to literally, pat the butter on each side at the same time. You're trying to get out as much of the water as is possible, but it can also be used to help to "rectangular-ise" your butter.
Turn your butter and keep patting.

When no more water flies out (it will spray out as you pat!) you are ready to wrap in clingfilm.

If you want to add salt or herbs, you'll need to add them after the water step. Put a little of either into the processor and gently stir it in. Remember though, salt will become more flavoursome through the freezing process, so if you're freezing the butter, either leave it out, or add far less than you'd normally deem right.

You can freeze it for up to 3 months or eat it within a week if stored in a fridge.

Enjoy x

A good dose of rain!

2011-05-08T14:02:00.000-04:00

Isn't it wonderful?

I think I positively leapt out of bed on Saturday morning as there had been a downpour in the night. Normally I would be fed up with the grey and dreary, but not down here. Rain means that my garden will be so much easier to dig. Rather like the difference between burnt toffee and a lovely gooey fudge!

I don't think the garden has seen any water from the skies since we moved in and probably much before that too judging by the state of it.

The garden has been in a very sorry state, which I'm sure I am repeatedly bleating on about. However, what i was seeing was the superficial stuff. I swear I am digging out a second home from under the ground. Anyone need some hardcore?
I think the reason is that our cottage was originally two, so where our veggie patch is now, used to be the driveway for the second cottage. Rather than removing the hardcore, the 10 inch nails, the broken china etc, they just piled the topsoil on the top, hence there are large patches that were making me wonder if I might have struck buried treasure or needed to call in an archaeologist to show him the remains of my own personal Roman villa!

Anyway, this week I've been working on a pathway between the veggies. My plan is to have a garden that looks something like this eventually:

All beautifully lined up neatly with walkways between so i can weed easily - a sort of cottage-kitchen garden thing. So I ordered a bulk lot of blue slate pieces from ebay and have today started the outlines of my pathways


Lower slabs have gone and I'll be putting the weed supressing membrane down and then covering with the slate. The edge here is the leftover bits of rockery that were dug up! May as well recycle!

Rows of Box to edge the pathway.

More box to edge along the side of the peas, strawberries and onions.

I hope it'll turn out okay. My vision is often far greater than my manageable achievement.
Inside the house is chaos as well. We haven't had the use of the living room for a week now as we're having the first of the two woodburners installed. So we've gone from this:


Looks like an old coach tavern - suitably nicknamed "The nasty, guilded hood".


To this, which is far less fussy.

Our builder has plastered it now and we're awaiting the fitting of hearth and fire. This should have happened a little sooner, only I managed to go to London on Thursday taking the key for the garage with me. We're re-using some of the Horton stone that we took off the pond top as our hearth - doh!

So, it's starting to look a little like "ours". My back aches - but I'm looking forward to seeing a bit of muscle tone on my arms after all the digging in months to come.
I'd like to order a few weeks of sun in the day and rain at night please and then I'll be sorted !

We're in!

2011-05-03T17:36:00.000-04:00

What a fortnight, but we're finally in.
I won't bore you with the details of extraneous packing info, suffice to say, they did manage it all in 5 days and we finished (bar the garage which holds the dregs) in another 5.

Now we're settling into village life, which has a current great pace to it. I'm getting used to having to think in advance as to what we actually need and doing it all in one run into the town (makes me sound like I live on an island in the Hebrides!) as there isn't a cash point or even a shop in the village, however, it does mean that the boys can just walk to the park to play footie with their school friends as they have already done.

I've been working like Barbara Good on prozac on the garden in order to ensure we have some crops for the summer and believe you and me, it's not only done wonders for the garden, but my trousers are falling off, so there must be something to be said for the waist line too.

The living room is currently under dust sheets and the accompanying inch of dust whilst Andy, our local builder and registered fire fitter is in fitting our new woodburner. There is much excitement for this to be in as not only will it help reduce our bills as we can lower the heating in the winter, but it will also neaten and increase the size of (very slightly), the lounge.

Over the next few months we have plans to put PV panels on the house and an air flow system in the roof, move the tank up there too to enable us to have a shower put in the main bathroom (and a re organisation to make the most of the space in there), we are having a carpet put in the living room once Andy has gone and I'm taking a rotavator to a patch on the front garden that, much as I'm adoring the "wild" look at the moment, I'm beginning to see more dandelions and couch grass than I am bluebells and aquilegia.

We have a wonderful hiding place under an enormous 50ft conifer and its friends that the is some persuasion by the PV guys to cut down, but I am fighting that one as it seems the perfect place to hide and have a den and, let's be honest, every child needs a den!! So I'm going to make a sign out of a piece of wood from the bequeathed pile in the garage that states it's a "secret garden" and all the spoilsports and their solar panels can make do with the rest of the sky!

So, I thought I'd give you a quick tour so you can see how we've progressed:


I have now put up the fruit cages over my currants, gooseberries and blueberries. I've removed the shrub, slightly hidden from view in the middle left of the picture and that's now allowed me two more raspberries and a third that I found hidden under some unkempt thyme.


LMB's room, saved by the 25 year old cabin bed that has been residing mournfully in my parents' loft! I think I've done them as much a service by lightening their beams than they have done enabling LMB to have space in her room.

I do have other photos to show you, but unfortunately Blogger is refusing to cooperate with my upload, so you'll have to wait with baited breath for the next batch.

Farewell to Bonny Scotland!

2011-04-10T12:18:00.000-04:00

Wheeeeeeeew, and pause!

Move week this week and we're working like crazy things.

It's been a week of good byes for the mini's and for me. This has meant that the eldest Beehive has had friends sleeping over and coming for lunch and calling round to take him off to play footie etc. On Friday lunchtime I had 8 children for lunch, amongst which were a vegetarian, a vegephobe, a food-a-phobe and 3 pre-teens with permanently bottomless pits. Of course, with moving, I'm running the fridge down, I've not done a big shop this week, so there was a menu of olives, 6 low fat wraps, cheese, 3 fishfingers from the freezer floor, ketchup and a pack of tortilla chips. Bizarrely for kids, this didn't pose a problem and between them they managed to work out what they wanted and sufficiently fill their bellies!

Pre-teens eating and drinking what ever odds and sods they could find!

Yesterday we then saw off the mini Beehives on the train with the teenager, they're off to my mum's for the week so that we don't accidentally pack them in a box.

We've had somewhat of a rough last few days, poor Master Beehive the younger has been up and down with a fever. However, midst all of this he's been determined for this to not interupt his last few days at school. He had a fun run on Thursday in which he wanted to wear the Big Ben creation. So we have been feeding him lots of Elderflower tea, Echinacea, giving him baths and rest and resorting to a bit of Calpol, particularly in the evening, to lower his temperature. Luckily, it seemed to pay off and a couple of bad days and he's back to his bouncy self - my mum isn't going to thank me for that!

Big Ben - look how ashen he is, poor lamb!

We're moving Mr Beehive into his temporary accomodation, which is a bit like the return of student digs. He's renting a one bedroomed place for during the week and will be flying down to us at weekends until his contract ends up here. Hopefully we won't be apart for too long.

It's funny, I worked out that I have moved 16 times since leaving home at 18 - a gypsy through and through, but I am no better at it now than I was then, perhaps I am more experienced, but I just have more stuff now. We have been brutal, but we have a lot of sentimental things that remind us of our travels and life in various places, so it's not quite as easy as it used to be to just fling it all into a couple of cardboard boxes.

Of course, this weekend it is glorious and warm, 22degrees C outside and everyone is lying out in The Meadows, except us. We're discovering colonies of oompa loompas under LMB's bed; preventing the reproduction of a gazillion more dust bunnies behind wardrobes and cupboards and cleaning carpets etc. Not fun, but needs must.

Hopefully we will be all packed and loaded by Wednesday and unloaded and unpack by Friday, but if anyone has a way of disposing of flying pigs and rose tinted spectacles, please let me know!

Being With Wombyn

2011-04-05T14:55:00.000-04:00

Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Portland, Eugene, Eugene, Seattle, Amsterdam, Edinburgh in 6 days, 8000 miles covered and 30+ hours of travel and...was it worth it...Absoblummin'-lootly!

It was even worth wearing the same clothes two days in a row as my luggage was delayed and didn't arrive at the same time as me (okay, well, I do speak for myself here, my roomie may not agree!)

I last went to the Midwifery Today conference in March 2006 in Philadelphia. That time I had just begun working as a doula, I think I'd had one client! I drove down with a friend and we spent the weekend in various sessions. I don't remember too much about that conference, partly because lots of it was all new to me and I was just beginning to take it all in in depth, so I think the only classes that really stuck were Debra Pascagli Bonaro (she of "Orgasmic Birth" fame) and her class on doula comfort measures and the rebozo class, which, although very useful and practical, didn't go in verbally as the class was lead in Spanish by a Mexican Midwife - (god darn learning German and French at school!) so whilst very tactile and hands on, was a little bit guess work as to what the contraindicators were for certain uses, thus I've not been overly confident in using it in the last few years.

This time around, I'm a good five years down the line - I've been a doula since 2005 for over 30 couples, I've taught over 400 hours of classes both here and in the US and I'm on my way to becoming a midwife, so the reading, reading, reading...

This time, I was so geared up for it I knew exactly which classes I wanted to take and it was worth every last moment. The classes I attended were mainly ones on practical issues in midwifery from which I wanted to learn great tips.

Midwifery Today as a publication, if you are unsure, is very much a "word from the wise women" type of magazine. Yes, it's evidence based, of course, but it also has dying skills and anectdotal tips from other midwives who have been practising for decades and just see wonderful results with a certain technique so want to share and pass it on. It also celebrates the fact that we are women, being a woman is a beautiful and amazing thing and what I love about MT is that it encapsulates this as well as being a journal that teaches. Thus their conferences are always very hands on and practical, very unlike any conferences I've really attended in the UK. The attitude is to learn by doing, which ultimately, is what I won't learn in any text book.

The opening pre-conference days were about midwifery skills, Day one I chose to learn about first and second stage difficulties, doing a full physical exam, herbs for birth and philosophy of care. Day two I went to; keeping birth normal, third stage difficulties, hands on midwifery and how is the baby?
These two pre conference days were full day classes lead by a variety of midwives in differing situations - one was a midwife who was currently living and working in the Phillipines, another was a midwife who'd been midwifin' for around 35 years, another was a woman who worked with the native people etc. All of these women had fascinating stories to tell in themselves, not to mention knowledge and wisdom to impart that was worth a week's worth of reading text books.

Day three was a day that consisted of a general session in the morning, then the afternoon was divided into two classes that you pre booked from a list of around five. I chose to do Shoulder Dystocia and Third stage difficulties and haemorrhage as I felt that often it's important to visualise how to help a dystocia rather than just read about it, I hoped it would up my confidence if the need ever arose.

Ina May Gaskin and Elizabeth Davis (Hearts and Hands; a midwifery textbook) lead the session on Dystocia and, as I'd hoped, it was a visual demonstration using a pelvis and baby as well as lots of Ina May and Elizabeth's tried and tested, calm wisdom. Dystocia will always make my heart race, but clearing up how to try different manoeuvres including Gaskin and McRoberts and being given tips as to how to clear bi lateral shoulders was easier to retain seeing them demonstrate.

Ina May Gaskin and Elizabeth Davis teaching various tips on Shoulder Dystocia

We learned how to recognise for shoulder dystocia:

The head of the baby accomplishes interior rotation but the anterior shoulder becomes impacted, therefore the head will not extend.
The head pulls back on the perineum - known as "turtling"
Lack of restitution
As a final sign - the colour of the baby will change

Carol Gautschi teaching how to palpate.

Some of the session was spent talking about fear as this particular obstruction is one that puts a lot of fear into midwives. We were told that, under no circumstances should we allay any fear to our clients, even if we're crapping a moose poop. Our homework is to watch our response to fear for the next week and write it down and see if we can work on this so that we outwardly display calm even though our hearts might be charging round Silverstone!

Elizabeth lead the session on Third stage difficulties and Haemorrhage as well and she was just as inspiring as the previous class. Tips we learned were how to observe the mother's face as well as observing the cord. She gave me absolute faith in knowing what signs to look for in a suspected accreta, how to manually remove a partially separated placenta (should the need arise), how much blood loss is good and how much is bad.

Of course, all this learning is has not set me up to be able to go out and do all this tomorrow, but with all the experience I'll gain from September onwards, the learning and reading I'll do on the course, hopefully this will bury itself into a part of my brain that awakens should need arise.

The most fantastic part of the conference was just the spirit of the whole week, the vibe, without any hesitation, is that birth is a beautiful, natural process and yes, there is sometimes the need to intervene, but if a mother is given the respect that she needs, the space and time that she needs and the love that she deserves, her own body will provide the drugs, the pain relief, the extraction tools. Her body will encourage her baby to breathe on its own, to clear its lungs of mucus and to feed and take the nutrition it needs. Being immersed with women who also feel this way was such a forceful energy that has come home with me, there was also an amazing feeling and sense of peace and contentment at what we do to help these women. I'm hoping the energy lasts long enough for me to save up and go to another conference for another fix of reassurance!

Amazing midwives, students, doulas, aspiring midwives, sisters and women, sharing stories and music.

As Sister Morningstar said "you need to be in the river with the woman, not on the shore".

Sister Morningstar taking us into the river!

Many, many times, the message was "less is more, unless there really is an emergency in which case you need to know how to react and deal with it"

90% of birth, if left well alone and not given any drugs or help, not undermining the mother's ability and not rushing her to a schedule to fit a protocol, will happen without any need for panic or intervention and I am going to stick my neck out here and say that 90% of c sections probably occurred after an earlier intervention be that waters being broken, induction, epidurals etc. It is our job as women to realise that birth is normal in the majority of situations, that if we holistically care for our bodies, eat well and exercise both body and mind, we can achieve this if we so desire. It is okay to sit and knit as a doula or midwife, it will empower the woman to look up and see you quietly knitting or just observing, she will have the confidence and power in the fact that you are confident that everything is normal and going well.

What greater gift can we give women than to believe in themselves?

Textbooks are vital, but alone, they still only keep you waterside. Being with woman (oh look!), listening to her, working with her, creating an environment that is empowering to her, reassuring her that birth is normal will get you in to your waist. Having the confidence and wisdom given to you by elders who've gone before you will encourage you to swim!

Michael Odent and Robbie Davis-Floyd enacting a skit about Dr Impatient.

Finally, if you found yourself alone in a lift with Ina May Gaskin for a whole 20 seconds - what would you ask her?

I'd love to know because my moment came and well...put it this way, I didn't exactly encourage my own piece of itemised wisdom.

Now, is there anyway I can wrangle a quick trip to Bad Wildbad in the fall? - hmmm....

Jan Tritten and myself sharing a Eugene "hot cheek" greeting! (and me looking incredibly over fed in too many baggy layers oops - that's down to the lost luggage - too scared I'd lose it again I've decided to wear it all at once!)

Westward Ho!

2011-03-26T10:47:00.001-04:00

Well, about five months ago when I first thought about the idea, going to Oregon, the week before "move day" (which from henceforth will be known as "Shit!") seemed a fine idea!

Now reality is nearly upon me, it's seeming a little more alarming and foolhardy.

It's true, I don't like to sit still and the conference is going to be so worth it. I'm very much looking forward to going, okay, rephrase that, I feel like a kid in a sweet shop and were it not for the fact it is so very far away from my babies, I'd probably be chomping at the bit.
The last time I went to this conference was in March 2006 when they held it in Philadelphia and I drove down with a friend from CT.

This was Ina May being "reborn" through a vagina at Philly 2006!

It was an amazing event, very hands on and relaxed and I'm excited this time as two days are devoted to new student midwives showing us the tricks of the trade. One of the main draws to this conference is that it is such a hands on event and we're taught be wise women who are midwives following the footsteps and having learned the trade of their grandmothers etc. It's an international cast of women who truly all believe in midwifery as an art as well as a science. The science I'll learn from September, the art is less easy to come by, so I'm hoping I'll learn lots of practical skills, tips and words of wisdom from midwives such as Ina May, Elizabeth Davis, Jan Tritten, Enyeda Spradlin Ramos and Sister Morning Star as well as chatting to midwives and student midwives from the States and other parts of the world and hearing Michael Odent and Robbie Davis Floyd speak.

Lists have been typed up, there are strict instructions to eat food from the freezer to run it down, laws have been laid out to not create chaos and unpack that which has been dutifully packed. Children have been briefed on school runs, daddy has been briefed on attending Master Beehive the elder's school play and the younger Beehive's school parents evening (yes, see, classic timing - i will be missing both *sigh*). They should be alright without me, it's whether I'll be alright without them.

Of course, in the midst of deciding whether clean knickers belong in the Oregon suitcase, the overnight travel down to Oxfordshire suitcase or a box, I have to make a Big Ben costume.
But of course I do! It's a perfectly normal thing to be doing on the penultimate week to "Shit!".

Master Beehive the younger has a dress up day in celebration of the Royal Wedding and they're fun running in their costumes. However, these costumes aren't the kind that you can pull together from the remnants of Daddy's wardrobe or the fancy dress box, oh no siree! These are strict instruction costumes. They have to go as a London landmark...WTF? So Big Ben it is. Yeah, not because I'm a glutton for punishment, but the other grand design he had was the London Eye, so I honestly think I've gotten off lightly!

He'll be wearing the main structure as a sandwich board and then the roof and clock face are a box over his head with his own face having the hands face painted on. He'll never run in it for love nor money, but I'm hoping that he does look a little familiar none the less and I'll get marks for effort if not for practicality.

Yesterday was my birthday- - I won't go into the fact that on my birthday, Mr Beehive, who couldn't possibly take any more time off work to help with the move...played golf, however, his manhood takes pride of place nailed up over the fire at the moment ;-)
He did, however take me to my favourite tapas place in the city in the evening, so I forgave him after a while ;-)
On the plus side of things I got some wonderful presents from everyone all so brilliantly suited to the move and the chickens and the garden...a greengage tree, a terracotta chicken holder, an egg recipe book, stuff to soak in the bath in, after a long day pulling up the bastard weeds and some money from my MIL which bought a mug hug knitting book,

from which I made this for LMB's cup of hot chocolate today attempting my first ever piece of intarsia.

and a bathroom sink - yes, aren't I exciting! It is a nice sink though and my (d)illusion is to put it onto a slab of wood and make a funky boutique style hotel bathroom downstairs. Rather like this:

So, just a quick update from me before I go back to packing and, unless I get time and connection, until I get home.

Surrender and the power of words.

2011-03-24T06:21:00.000-04:00

This morning I got my daily digest from my e-groups and, one of the things I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE about working in this field is that no one is afraid to question things and debate things in relation to birth.

A question arose on the use of the word "surrender" when working with our birthing mothers and fathers.

Surrender isn't actually a word I can confess to having actively used myself, I may have, but it's not on my vocabulary of thought out words that I have immediately thought, emit power. However, I am beginning to re think this one.

Surrender has two entirely different conotations, one stemming from the giving up of oneself to another, the other of giving oneself up to..well, oneself!

Language during pregnancy and birth is a very powerful tool. Andrea Robertson talks about it in great depth as do many gurus such as Ina May Gaskin and Sheila Kitzinger.

I feel language today plays a far more important role than it did in the days before wireless, mobile communication. Words today are taken at 2D value, what you see on the page in your in box is then interpreted by you, you are not given any hint as to the definition of a word's meaning by the intonation of your fellow communicant. Words lose the 4D they have when their giver is able to add intonation, context and background to the recipient in the spoken word.
Thus, it is highly important that words we use are not easily misconstrued and convey the meaning we intend from the offset.

So, moving back to "Surrender".

Surrender is a word that can suggest that women should "give up", "be passive", "do as others suggest", but of course, this is not what we want them to interpret at all. We talk a lot about "being in control" of our births, but I wonder, is this also what we want to convey? We don't want women to just lie on their backs and surrender to others, surrender to technology, but neither do we really want them to "control" birth. Birth isn't something that can be controlled. Nature is as nature does and controlling it, perversely, is what technology does and again, we're not wanting women to do that either. So we're back to surrender.

Surrender can also mean to give in to oneself. Penny Armstrong, a midwife in Pennsylvania working with Amish women, talks in her book "A midwife's story" about a young girl birthing for the first time. She presents herself in labour in her bed, white, pressed sheets, white nightgown complete with bonnett. She doesn't want to come across as loud, messy or noisy. Labour is long, progress is very slow. Eventually the young woman "surrenders" to herself, throws off her clothes, makes noise, gets out of bed and moves around. She listens to her body, she listens to the need to squat and move, she surrenders to her body's birthing animal and not long after, her baby is born.

Ina May Gaskin talks in "Spiritual Midwifery" about "letting your monkey do it". This often raises a laugh in classes when I bring it up as there'll often be a dad who'll joke about him not being a monkey! But of course, this isn't what she means at all.

This young woman in Penny's book, is not giving over to anyone except her birthing nature, equally, she is not controlling her birth, ultimately her birth is controlling her and she is letting it, so if she is surrendering to anyone/thing, she's surrendering to her birth, she is saying "okay, I accept, it may be loud, it may be messy and I may get naked". Heck, one presumes she got naked in the first place - or pretty darn close to - so why is there this inability to connect with this same urge when birthing after nine months?

Surrendering, to me, in this context, is like relinquishing to the depths of a really good meditation - the ones where you know you've been meditating, but you can't quite remember what happened. Surrendering in this context is like really amazing sex when the hormones take over. Birth is exactly the same.

"Surrender can be likened to making the leap and just letting go
with a sense of calm resolve that you will safely land as intended"

So, will I consciously use the word surrender in classes from now on, yes, I will. I will use it in the context of feeling safe and secure, ensuring that the environment is such that hormones are free to flow and that trusting in our body to tell us what to do, will enable birth.

"When we know love matters more than anything, and we know that nothing else REALLY matters, we move into the state of surrender. Surrender does not diminish our power, it enhances it". -Sara Paddison

Juicing and Headless Babies

2011-03-23T03:59:00.000-04:00

Be warned - it is never a good thing to look up statistics. Of course, being an NCT teacher and student midwife, statistics and evidence are high on my list of areas I need to keep a check on, but...as they say, there are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics.

One of the tools that Blogger has to its dashboard is the ability to have a quick peak to see where your visitors come from. It also tells you key words that people type in that bring up your blog somewhere in the complex, technical mind of Monsieur Google.

Of course, a homely, waffly, craft, midwifery inspired blog such as my own would likely pull key words such as baby, sewing, home right? Apparently not...

So answer me this - which one of you searched using the terms "Headless baby" and came up with me? PMSL!

Oh, and one final question - who is the person reading me on the boat in the middle of the Atlantic? I bet you have a story to tell...

This morning is another glorious Spring morning which yes, I know I rant on about the appalling weather up here in Scotland, it can do glorious when it puts its mind to it!! Feeling all Spring like and fresh I got out my juicer, inspired from a lovely juice from "The Juice Bar" at The Gyle last week - did you know, I've only found two juice bars in the whole of Edinburgh - where am I going wrong? There has to be more than that!
Motivated to get the health kick going again I've decided to start by aiming to juice three times a week, leading up to a healthy daily juice to give me a much needed boost.

Anyway, cucumber, celery, lime and orange were the fruits of choice today.

Of course there has to be more to my tale than a simple one of "Make juice and drink". I've not juiced since before Christmas, I seem to lose the urge to want to drink slightly warm frothy cucumber when then weather is cold however good it is for me. So grabbing the juicer from the cupboard meant I left a vital part behind and didn't realise.

Note to self: When juicing, ensure you have the pith and rind catcher attached to the device and that the spout is facing the opposite way, otherwise you will be covered with sticky juice waste, rind, peel, pips and pith and that'll be after you've washed your hair and the floor...grrr!

Now I have to go, Mr Beehive the younger is upset as he has "lost his ability to cartwheel in his sleep" and I need to comfort - albeit I may not encourage him to re-learn as my front room is rapidly turning into the tryouts for the Olympic games. I'm meeting a friend for a coffee later and have to rid myself of the lingering smell of celery that is starting to smell like old man's wee... just a bit.

If you juice, leave some yummy recipes below.

Ten minute upcycled peg bag

2011-03-22T09:20:00.001-04:00

The first signs of warmer weather and my washing is out on the line - good training as we've decided to take a biggish leap on the eco-front and get rid of the tumble dryer all together. I'm a little nervous as there are six of us and we do produce a lot of washing, but with some tweaks and organisation in the new house, we are going to do are darndest at least.

So, on hanging out the washing the hanger that we are continually repairing, finally gave up the ghost this morning. A quick glance on ebay and online drew me to a swift conclusion that I wasn't going to find a replacement that
a. I liked
b. was free
c. was eco or fair trade

But making a peg bag is so easy.

I raided the stash of clothes that LMB has grown out of but I don't want to throw away because she looked so cute in them and decided that I would give a fantastic outrageous fuzzy jacket a new lease of life.

So, here are your easy instructions.

Take your hanger first of all as this will determine the width of your bag.
Choose an item of clothing, a shirt, t-shirt, sweater - all these work really well. Using an item that belonged to a child is easiest as you won't have excess fabric to contend with. If you use an adult sweater, however, you could choose to felt the it. If you want to felt an item, the best mix is either pure wool or an item that has 75%+ wool content. Put the item in a really hot wash and this causes the weave to knit together really tightly creating the smooth look of felt. Felt is then a lot easier to work with as you don't have fraying edges. Anyhoo, I digress!
Mark where the hanger sits into the sleeve cavity, then cut off the excess sleeve.
Turn the item inside out, remove the hanger and then sew the sleeve openings shut.
With the item still inside out, stitch along the bottom edge. You will need to decide how long you want your bag, if you are using a child's item of clothing you won't need to remove too much.
Turn the bag the right way round and you now have the basic requirements for your peg bag.
Opening: The easiest openings are from re-using items that have already got fastenings in the neck area. My jacket had a zip, yours may have buttons or ties. If they have neither you will need to cut a v shape out of your bag and then selvage the edges to ensure it doesn't fray.
Finally you need to put your hanger back in and mark with pins, where it sits. Then run your stitching from each side edge towards the neck (catching front to back) to create a pocket that enases the hanger. This isn't imperative, but you'll have to put up with the possiblity that your hanger may keep falling out.

I'd love to be able to add diagrams for this, to make it easier. Maybe I'll work out a way to do that, if anyone knows how, just leave a note below!

There are also many other ways you can make a simple peg bag, such as using vintage tea towels and and overlap opening such as this one I found from here:

Have fun and enjoy hanging your washing out in the sun!

2011-03-21T16:12:00.000-04:00

Slowly, slowly does it.

This weekend we spent at the new house, I wanted to do more work on the garden and get in a few more plants and mum and dad were coming down to do some odd jobs.

I had a list as long as my arm, but as usual, we didn't manage it all.

When we bought the house, we knew that LMB would be taking the smallest room which is not much more than a box room, however, at the time, I was so excited that this house seemed to tick all our boxes that I didn't really put my practical head on and think about where things might fit.

Fortunately my dad saved the day by producing my sister's old cabin bed that he'd dutifully stored in his loft (see there are some benefits of being a hoarder!). He needed to do a few repairs on it and replace the sides which were victims to the flood in his garage back in around 2000, but to cut a long story and day short, she now has an amazing 20 year old cabin bed complete with shelving, cupboards, desk and a small wardrobe underneath, taking away all the issues as to where we'll be putting her furniture! She's in seventh heaven that she has a bunk, my dad is in seventh heaven that his ceiling is no longer bowing with the weight of a cabin bed in the loft and I'm in seventh heaven that i won't have to store her clothing in a wardrobe on the landing, a total win-win!

Here are some pictures of the garden.
What you have to try to imagine is that a month ago, the soil was over grown with herbs that had gone wild, shrubs that were dead and bushes that were rampant. There was garbage and trash all over the place that had blown in and hadn't been cleared away. One of my first reactions on arriving at the house last month was sadness. I was sad that the tenant hadn't loved the house like we hoped, sad that we'd not thought to have a gardener come around to keep on top of the beds and sad that there was so much work to do.

Of course, there still is tons and tons of work to do, however, I do now, have the early rumblings of a proper vegetable patch. In my head, of course, it's complete, I have my beds in and everything is growing hard and strong, there are no weeds and no slugs...hmmm, let's see what it will be like when I return at the end of the month!

I have potatoes and peas in, strawberries, currants and herbs. Still to go in are the rhubarb, currants and berries that I've planted here in pots, some beans and we'll grow courgettes in pots again as they do take up a lot of space.
There is around a 15ft x 5ft space for my chickens in front of the fence.

This is my herb garden, with a selection of plants including thyme, comfrey, lovage, chives, rosemary, lavender etc.

This shows the division of the beds a little more clearly along with my CD bird scarers.

This is a front corner of the house. I'm intending to remove the interesting wooden feature to the left of the picture and use the wood to make large trough like planters to go against the trellis fencing. The circle of grass will become my mini orchard. I have a couple of gala apple trees, couple of plums, that's a cherry you can just see with the deer protector around it and I'm getting a greengage for my birthday. Behind the conifer in the far corner of the picture is enough space for my bees when I eventually get around to those.

All in all, it's a work in loooooooong progress, but I'll keep updating the pictures when things change.
Slowly, but surely.

Chasing Spring

2011-03-17T04:14:00.002-04:00

Slightly different tone of post from my last one, but thought something a little more lighthearted was in order.

Tomorrow morning before the birds wake, I will be loading three sleepy wains into the car and trundling off down to Oxfordshire to the new house.

The car will be laden with hoes, rakes, seeds, herbs, my nurtured pea seedlings, canes (ooh, must remember to put those in), readybeds and enough cutlery and crockery to see us through two days! I need to garden!

I need to say "stuff you Scotland! I've had enough of the rain, the fog, the snow (all of which we've experienced in the last 7 days!) and I want to see a daffodil, some snowdrops, a few crocuses and a little yellow ball in the sky at least for a few minutes".
Mum and Dad are coming down again to help with more remedials and the children have instructions to bring wellies and play hide and seek in the new garden!

It is a little bit mad, but then it's giving them an opportunity to go into their new school for an hour or so and I can get the chimney swept (not personally and I will refrain from sending one of them up ;-)) I'm also meeting with a fencing company and a guy to remove the pond and lay more turf for the kicking of footballs, so it'll be a fun filled, action packed weekend.

Of course, the sunshine isn't guaranteed, but I know the blooms of crocuses (or is that croci?) are out in force in the garden down south and the met office is saying sun and 11 degrees for Saturday - 11 degrees, I'd best unpack the whole sheep I'd put in the roof box for shearing if we got too cold! Of course, jesting aside, the oil is still all stolen, so we may need Flossy to keep us warm at some point Baaaahhhh!

No woman, no cry.

2011-03-14T06:03:00.001-04:00

Last night I went with a girlfriend to watch Christy Turlington-Burns' debut movie "No woman, No cry".

Turlington Burns, an ex US supermodel, has turned her hand to directing and researching this docu-film about the risks of women in four countries around the world that herald the titles of one of the most likely places to die during pregnancy, labour or postnatally.

The film, understandably, is shocking as Turlington Burns takes us to Bangladesh to meet with Monica who lives in the slums and is pregnant with her second child, Tanzania, to meet with Janet, a Masaai mother of two, expecting her third who has to walk five miles in labour to her nearest clinic. We also meet with David, a US father, who lost his beloved wife to a rare amniotic fluid embolism after the birth of their second child and finally we meet with Linda, a pregnant doctor in Guatemala working with women who are post abortion (a procedure that is illegal and outlawed in Guatemala).

We are greeted with statistics and raw and blunt conditions in which these women live and give birth. Janet, lives in a country with a maternal mortality rate of 1 in 24. As I've already said, she walks five miles in labour to attempt to give birth at the clinic. She is met there by a trained midwife, which, for many women in Tanzania is already a luxury that they are not going to get, but needs transferring to Mt. Meru Hospital which is a 30 minute car ride away. And there's the rub. We, in the UK, would get a tranfer in an ambulance to our hospital, paid for by the NHS, Janet however, doesn't have the money and cannot get the money. In fact, Turlington Burns and her crew step in and pay the $30USD that is required to get Janet to the hospital where she is induced and finally gives birth to her son. What Turlington Burns omits to tell us is how Janet then paid the hospital fees, the fees for the drugs and the fee for the doctor who would have delivered her child.

Having recently watched The toughest place to be a midwife I had already witnessed one woman's desperation at finding a way of paying for her maternity care by trying to trade a couple of her children in exchange. Whereas we may sit on our comfy sofas and think - "I could never do that", in this mother's situation, there was no other solution but to reduce the size of her family in order to enable the others to continue to eat and be educated - oh, did I mention that too? Education - the free stuff we gripe about here - you have to pay for that too!

Moving across the continents to Bangladesh now. We are in a Bangladeshi slum with Monica and her son. Her husband works in the country so he is not with them. What Turlington Burns conveyed here, whether intentionally or not, was just how little worth women have in Bangladesh, moreso if you are uneducated, even more so if you are poor. There is a caste system as well as a gender system and socio economic system. Monica was the lowest of the low. She was not only spurned by those in authoritarian positions, but also by her own people until she managed to fall pregnant a second time. Even then, because home birth is seen as the norm, there is a massive cultural boundary that would need to be crossed should Monica need to go to the hospital to have her child.
Monica didn't know the date of her last period and was questioned about this by the government funded health worker that came to the slum to occasionally assess how she was doing. The health worker, a female herself, would talk down to Monica, berating her for not wanting to go to the clinic or hospital to have her baby. You were left wanting to slap this woman for her condescending attitude, however, when finally, Monica consents to going to the hospital for an ultrasound to date her pregnancy, the immediate reason as to the health worker's disdain is crystal. The radiologist/doctor (wasn't made clear), spent several minutes hounding the health worker and patronising her for not knowing Monica's due date. "Who has worked out this woman's last period?" "When was her last period?" "It is up to you to find out her due date" - or words to that effect!
Of course - monkey see, monkey do - the hierachy of power is in full swing. All this while, we see Monica lying silent, passive on the bed whilst decisions and conversations about her are going on without anyone asking her input at all. She is a woman, she is poor, she is worthless.
On Monica's birth-day, she eventually does end up going back to the hospital as she is having some bleeding, but she initially does call an untrained birth attendant. They have to go under the cover of night so that she can be back in the morning with no one knowing that she went to the hospital. For this, she is scolded by the health worker who seems to lack the understanding that had she been more open about where she birthed, she risked isolation from all of her family and friends.

In the US we meet David, a father of two. Yes, David lives in the Western world, in the United States where the maternal mortality is 1 in 4,800! That's still a terribly high statistic for a country that prides itself on obstetric care, in a country where c-sections are at around 35 - 40% and the majority of births take place under the auspicious of an OB/GYN and midwives are few and far between. David's wife died a few days after childbirth from an amniotic fluid embolism. This is a rare pregnancy related complication that is not understood fully at all. On my own research it appears that it could be caused by fetal cells, debris, hair entering the mother's blood stream and causing a severe allergic reaction. In the film, Turlington Burns talks about there being just one man in the US who is researching into this and his funding is running out.
On my own research, however, I have found out that this particular complication is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality. There is no specific research that seems to have been done on this, but estimates range from deaths in 86% of cases dropping to around 36% of cases. However, what I am struggling to get my head around is that the money for funding research for this just doesn't seem to be there. In fact, the deeper you delve, the more you realise that reseach into pregnancy complications struggles to get funding at all. Why? Because, sceptically (and this was reiterated to me by a midwife I once chatted to) why spend the money reseaching a condition that women, hypothetically, only run the risk of getting during such a short span of their lives ie: 9 months. If your jaw has hit the ground now, then you might want to pick it up.

To me, this is where the point is totally missed. Birth is a factor of Life. Without birth, we would not be able to continue as a race. Of course, no one is saying that the money shouldn't be put into Cancer research or HIV research, but surely there should be more emphasis on researching these rare, but real conditions that cost 1 in 4800 women their lives in the US, or 1 in 8200 in the UK?
Interestingly, it is made very clear in the documentary about the importance of women like Janet in her tribe. Were she to die, all the family would struggle. The women are the birthers, they bring up the children, they run the home, they work the land. To lose a woman in a Masaai tribe, would be a huge tragedy. Maybe we should value all women then same?

Ina May Gaskin works hard to campaign for this in the USA if you are interested in finding out more.

Finally we are taken to Guatemala, the country of the four with the highest Maternal mortality rate standing at 1 in 71 (not the highest I found, however, that can be found back in Africa, where, in Niger, a woman runs a 1 in 7 chance of dying in childbirth...I have no words!)

Returning to Guatemala, we are told how abortion is illegal even if it is as a cause of rape or incest etc. So, I am eager to find out if the figures we're quoted actually include the cases of girls and women who die as a cause of botched backstreet abortions?

In Guatemala we meet Linda. Linda is an educated woman, she is a doctor. The divide is immediately obvious as we chat with Linda in her lovely home. However, Linda has worked hard for this with the opportunities she has been fortunate enough to have been given and she now gives back to her country by providing a service of care to women who are post abortion and also by supplying contraceptives and advice to other mothers.

We are introduced to a woman who has been very sick and has obviously tried to induce abortion at home, she is suffering from sceptacemia. The word "abortion" is not used however and all the while it is classified as a miscarriage as otherwise, the woman would be in serious trouble. What is briefly skirted over however, is the fact the woman was there due to being raped and no one seemed to bat an eyelid. Of course, Turlington Burns only has 60 minutes in which to fit all these issues into her film, but we are left wondering how much maternal death could also be reduced if women were respected, loved, nurtured and, more practically, if contraception were available to them; if there was not the high incidences of domestic violence, if women weren't raped or abused, if women were allowed to have a say as to how many children they want or how they want to have their children.

All in all, this film left me with a huge amount of questions and emotions that I'm slowly processing.

Coincedentally, a wonderful, wise friend of mine, recommended "Half the Sky" to me last week after I was corresponding with her as to my elective placement in my third year. She advised me to read this book before I made any decisions as to where to go.

Not that being a student midwife will change the world in any shape or form, particularly a fortunate, middle class, Western student midwife, but being a woman and a mother might.

As Turlington Burns states on her website, of the 15% of births that become complicated by a potentially fatal condition, nearly all are treatable if there is a skilled birth attendant who recognises this and can act accordingly.

If I have one thing I need to do in the next 10 years alongside becoming a midwife, it's to ensure that my children know that this stuff goes on in the world and that they are a part of the circle of life and despite their privileges, they are able to spread the word in some shape or form that woman are amazing, women are strong and birth is the foundation of life, so we need to protect women from dying in childbirth unecessarily.

How you can help:

Support the cause here

Instead of giving your friend who has everything, another dust catcher for their birthday/Christmas present, why not send them the gift of goodwill and fund the training of a midwife: here in the US

Watch the film, read the book, spread the word.

Educate your own children.

Write to Andrew Lansley, encourage him to keep up the money for training our own midwives and preserving the NHS so we maintain our access to free healthcare.

Write to Bill Gates - he supports health and education around the world. he has injected money into various projects via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. By heck, if the world's richest man was on board - I think there'd be many others who would follow suite. Just send him a copy of the movie ;-)

Finally, download this fact sheet, read it, watch the movie and feel empowered to do something, donate, raise funds, write a letter, have a movie screening, become a midwife, train a TBA, work with or for Oxfam, the list goes on. We may all be insignificant little dots, but together, we are an almighty roar!

Spa days, Sun days.

2011-02-27T15:31:00.000-05:00

This weekend I went on a mercy mission to my sister's. My niece turned eight and was having a spa party and sleepover, so I offered to go down to give my sis some moral support and act as a spare beauty therapist.
The girls had loads of fun having their nails done and making bathbombs, soaps and lip balms.

I got back late yesterday and then made a new shirt. On a quick trip to Hobbycraft last week I came across a magazine with a pattern in it for this tunic top. Weakwilled and unable to resist, found some Amy Butler fabric that gave it a great sixties pattern. Three hours later and .... 'tis done!

And then, just some daffodils as we've had a glorious two days of sunshine. It has almost fooled us into thinking that spring is on the way...let's hope it is!

Who is to blame?

2011-02-23T05:51:00.002-05:00

I have been thinking...okay, so that's dangerous, but someone has to do it, sometimes! I have been thinking about birth and my classes and the recent tweetfest and I just wanted to get something down about my definition of natural and about ownership of birth.

Listening to the radio this morning sparked my desire to write this. As you may have heard, this morning Christchurch, New Zealand, suffered a horrific earthquake. Something that was described as a natural disaster.

Now, in the next few moments what I do not wish to do is to offend anyone caught up with this disaster in any shape or form, nor do I wish to belittle the hideous-ness of this and my thoughts go out to anyone who may be searching for loved ones or has lost anyone or is just caught up in it all.

It was the words "natural" and "disaster" that came within the same sentence that interested me and caused me to think further.

When we talk about natural childbirth, one is generally of the impression that this means someone who births without any medical intervention as nature intended. Okay, if I'm honest, from what I've been reading over the last few hours, the general consensus is that natural birth takes place out doors in a pair of sandals with lots of singing and everyone involved has a beard (joke!)

But, is that truly what a natural birth might mean?

If you take a look out of the window right now, there is not one thing in nature, not one "natural" thing that is straight or follows a straight path. So ultimately if we are to teach women about what to expect when they have a natural birth, then surely we HAVE to teach them what to expect if birth deviates from the straight path. If nature decides to create a difficulty during labour, this difficulty may require medical intervention.
If nature can decide to create an earthquake, nature can also decide to make birth tricky for some women.

So as a childbirth facilitator, it is imperative that we help our parents understand exactly what natural means, so there is no guilt if their birth deviates, but so that they also understand when this truly is the case and when it might just be the fact that the textbook situation may say that this woman should be xcm dilated after 5 or 6 hours of labour and if their choice of birth environment is conducive to this or not.

Think about SATs for primary school kids or Early years testing for five year olds - these all tell us that Sally, a first born girl, born in September and currently 5, should be doing exactly the same thing as John, a third born boy, born in August and still only four! It sounds ridiculous when put that way because we all know that Sally and John are entirely different, but then so are two women in labour.

This is exactly the reason I chose to work for the NCT because their main aim is to teach for informed choice. I work to provide skills, practically and through knowledge for my parents to birth as naturally as they can. Each week we do relaxation exercises and look at positions, breathing and visualising. I also equip them to understand jargon and how to decipher whether their natural birth is beginning to bend slightly like a blade of grass and what their choices now are and this means I cover c section and intervention in some shape or form. I am, always limited for time, particularly for those women who choose to come to intensive 12 hour weekend classes, and the agenda is lead by them (see my previous post!)

It is also imperative, however, that women take ownership for their births. The number of forums I've been led to since the twitter debarcle that have had comments "blaming" the midwife, "blaming" the NCT, "blaming" the NHS for something that happened to them during their birth.

Let's leave aside the families who truly DO have some reason to blame, because there will be many families out there who have suffered terrible tragedies and this isn't about them, this is about those people who just feel that it is always someone elses fault because they just feel unecessary guilt.

This is about the people who were on the radio this morning, blaming the lenders for loaning them stack loads of money and about why they are now thousands of pounds in debt. Could they not have researched? Could they not have thought about the bigger picture? Could they not just say "yes, I own my debt and I am actively doing something about it"?

Why is it always that we look for someone to blame? Who feels better in all of this? Does it genuinely make you feel better if you can rant about the "noxious" NCT, "useless" NHS, "mean" midwife or "rude" obstetrician or does it just gloss over the problem.

Maybe THAT is where we start. What DO you want from your birth? Aside from a healthy baby and to be healthy yourself of course, - that is a given.

Are you attending NCT classes because you want to be proactive in your birth or just because you feel you ought to because that is what "everyone in your area does"?

Are you going to birth at hospital because you want to or because that is considered the norm?

Are you having a second c section because you want to or because you've been told once a c section, always a c section?

Are you going to have an epidural because you have made an informed choice and know the risks and benefits or just because labour is painful and...well, it's there isn't it?

All these are choices, they're not forced upon you. You are able to choose what will work for you and you alone. If you make the choice from your heart, not because you feel it is what is expected of you, then you will be happy with your choice.

Maybe it is about assessing what is truly important to you. If you want a baby, you have to want a good portion of what goes with that, and...that will be labour.

Labour is long and labour can be painful and natural labour can result in a c section but it can also be achieved if you want it to be and if nature allows, without pain relief or intervention. If you want to learn about this, you have to give it time, you have to read, maybe you have to attend classes, perhaps you have to learn breathign or yoga or be with other women who have similar outlooks, perhaps you have to turn off your tv showing media driven birth and shut your ears to the horrid stories, after all, if you were having a root canal would people tell you the horror stories of their teeth ? I doubt it!

You have to take responsibility for achieving this, people can help you, but they can't do it for you!

After all, if you bought a car, you'd research the best one for miles per gallon, emissions etc. You'd test drive a few, read reviews, ask questions, maybe even speak to people who own the same car and probably not buy the first one you saw. However, at the end of the day, you won't expect someone else to drive it for you and you certainly wouldn't then blame the salesman if it got stolen or ran out of petrol (and I am NOT equating c section to a car crash Kirsty!)

My first birth was long. My first child came after 48 hours, an epidural and a vacuum extraction. I then didn't manage to breastfeed him for very long. Who is to blame? I was angry!

But was this the fault of my NCT teacher? Was this the fault of my midwife who was a newly qualified midwife and stayed with me two hours over her shift? No, it was NO-ONE's fault. My natural birth, took a deviation from the non-interventionalist route and my son needed help. I am still annoyed that I remained on the bed for 24 of those 48 hours and didn't actually listen to my NCT teacher's advice to get up and in my situation maybe I could have done things differently, but I didn't and you know what, the only person who felt rotten afterwards, was me and the only way to change that was to do something about it and I did, for my next two births and in my choice of career!

Choice is exactly that. We can sit back and feel the victim when things go wrong or we can get up and think "right, I am going to try to help other women not make the same mistake I did, or, at the very least, totally understand what all their options are.

If you feel stigmatised for having a c section, please do something about it. Speak to people. There are groups out there, support groups, Sheila Kitzinger has a birth trauma line set up and the NCT also has a shared experiences hotline. I honestly do not see in life, a group of c section mums in the playground and a group of vaginal mums in the playground - no one give a shit out there, except you, honestly! If people around you do make you feel bad...change your friends, they're not good people to be around!

Don't, however, just paint a demoralising picture of a whole organisation that has forged ahead in ensuring that your partners are in the delivery room with you, that you are no longer shaved before having your baby, that you no longer have a hose pipe shoved up your rear end before having your baby, that works hard for women and their partners but that sometimes may get it a little wrong.

Speak to your NCT teacher if you feel s/he didn't cover what you wanted to know. Speak to head office if you feel you have been treated badly or unfairly. Do some research of your own if your situation has altered and you need more. Go back to your NCT teacher, they are there to help, they want to help. Don't suffer in silence and then shout the loudest about people not being there to help when you didn't ask.

Own your birth.

Peaceful sewing day

2011-02-21T11:10:00.000-05:00

Today I have been home all day with Master Beehive. He had a temperature in the night and has had a rattly chest for a couple of days. I decided a quiet day in the warm wouldn't hurt, so he has been reading and drawing and doing "things" whilst I've tried to burn off some of my agrievances with the contents of my last post by sewing.
It's been a grey day here, still, calm but just vapid. I can't see the hills from my window as they are shrouded in a cloud, the sky and the cloud are identical so I can't see where one ends and the other begins. The brick in Edinburgh looks dreary on a grey day, but lights up so when the sun shines, it does a good job of dragging you further down when winter persists for as long as it does up here.

My inbox gets filled with spam saying things like "Get through the winter..." "Survive the dark winter evenings...",Even my coffee tastes bland this afternoon, so I decided to inject colour by getting behind the machine and making LMB and myself a few Spring items.

So, here are a few things I've recently made.

These are my most favourite pants ever! These are my "Saskia-pants" although strictly they are called "Christ-catcher pants". The story behind the name is that they are worn by a tribe in Thailand I think who believe that Christ could be born again at anytime, of anyone. Hence they wear these in order for him not to land on his head when he is born. Of course, this tickles my humour, so from this point forth they are re-christened - "Baby-catcher pants". Rather apt don't you think? I wonder if there is a niche in the market to hire them out to fast birthers...?

A fleecy Spring jacket for LMB. I didn't use a pattern for this, for my sins and had a bit of a mare trying to work out how to do a simple hood for it. In the end I scrapped the hood idea and went with a simpler mandarin style collar and a srap across fastening. It just needs buttonholes and a couple of wooden toggles and it'll be finished.

A camera bag in the same cord as LMB's dungarees I made the other day. I have a fantastic bag that hosts both my small lens and my telephoto, but sometimes I just want something small to grab with just the simpler lens and the Muffintop bag is too bulky. So this is a lightweight single lens bag, no pockets, no fuss, with a reinforced handle and it's padded too just for a bit of extra protection.

More of the baby blue cord - job lot ;-) My little sis has just purchased herself a sewing machine, she has decided to join the band of merry stitchers too, so I offered to make her a pretty cover. I've just appliqued a flower on and it's lined with a groovy turquoise and purple spot.

Finally, my spring skirt, very simple A line skirt that is made from panels. Zip closure at the back and then a contrasting band of material at the bottom. I've had to take a few darts in as my body is such a weird shape hips in relation to waist, but that is one of the joys of being able to make your own clothes, I can do that! I don't have to rely on being a clone size 12 or 14 depending on where I shop, I can be a lumpy, bumpy 13.5 if I so wish!

Now if this blasted weather would just do one and bring me an opportunity to wear it, I'd be a happy bunny.

Tweet, tweet

2011-02-20T15:55:00.000-05:00

I'm sure if any of you are tweeters, you've seen this week's twitter debate between Kirstie Allsopp of Relocation, Relocation fame and Belinda Phipps, the CEO of the National Childbirth Trust.

From what I have learned (it's so hard to keep up with tweets) Belinda has been defending the NCT over Kirstie's charge that the NCT don't cover Caesarean Section sufficiently and thus is being "reckless" and not giving the women correct information.

Of course, Belinda is getting her evidence from the statistics that come back on evaluation forms and Kirstie is taking hers from the tweeters that are all speaking up in outrage at the NCT. Not entirely convinced that Twitter is up to the Cochrane reviewers, however, there is obviously some division with NCT attendees.

I am so dreadfully saddened, partly that a celebrity and a well known charity have aired this in public on a site such as twitter rather than maybe taking it behind the scenes to come to some form of progressive conclusion, because, as we all know, this will always bring those with grievances out to attack, and that myself and my colleagues who work tirelessly to try to empower the women we serve are all being tarred with the same brush.

I am not saying for one second that there are probably many women out there who have suffered, possibly at lack of information in their specific NCT class or NHS class or maybe jsut through mismanagement at the hospital and yes, they need to have these issues looked at and maybe there could be a need for improvement somewhere, after all, we are reflective practitioners and personally we're always trying to improve things for our families and classes.

I am then doubly saddened that the likes of this blogger has written an open letter to Kirstie, for which I agree with the most part, except her slating of all NCT teachers Apparently we're not covering things to sufficiently prepare women for birth - so now, not enough c-section OR enough natural stuff - WTF are we teaching then - dominoes?

We are all, supposedly, working for the same thing, to help empower women ready for their birth, whichever direction it takes. Why has this then become a vendetta to try to bring down the "noxious NCT Nazis" (a direct comment from a response to The Telegraph's article on Kirstie and Belinda's tweeting). I sure didn't go into antenatal teaching to be labelled as this!

Obviously I am taking this personally because, as an NCT teacher myself, my only aim is to teach for informed choice. I cover C sections, but there will be some women there who don't want to know about it or will get upset because it scares them and they will be the ones to attack the NCT for being "too medical".

There are also women who don't want to know about home birth but I will bring this up too as I feel it has to be allowed as much air time as the potential 1 in 4 chance of a c-section. Actually, I wonder if the same stats would be there if more women were able to birth at home or in a birth centre, but that's another debate.

What has made me most cross though is that people seem to think that it is always the responsibility of someone else that they didn't have all the information. Surely, if you are concerned, and IF your NCT class or NHS class doesn't give you the information you require or to the extent you require, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have that information from somewhere else? Perhaps you could ask your NCT facilitator to give you more information, or provide you with some reading material. I always have material I can lend or give to my clients and I make them aware of this, but even then, not everyone asks for it. So, you can lead the horse to water, but you can't force it to drink.

Maybe part of the problem here, isn't what the NCT does or doesn't cover, but it's the fact that some women don't have time for birth, they attend intensive weekend courses because their lives are so busy that they can't dedicate the required time to learning about the possiblities that might arise, medical or natural, with their birth. This can then give an antenatal teacher as little as 12 hours in some cases to cover everything from labour through to life with a baby and beyond.That is a ridiculously short period of time in one or maybe two weekends. Within that groups there could be homebirthers, twin parents, lesbian parents, parents who are scared to death of the whole prospect, single mothers, first time mother with a partner who already has kids and has experience. I am just trying to make the point that classes are mixed beyond belief. Birth to some parents has been skewered by the media, or by friends' experiences, some women are very trusting in their bodies and believe they can birth naturally. This can be the group dynamic that we start with. Are we going to please all the people all the time? I doubt it, but we try.

With this in mind, I can only speak for myself, but am pretty sure it's universal, I get my parents to set the agenda. They are adults, the pedagogy is different to that of a child. Adult learners only learn what they need to know when they need to know it, so asking them to set the agenda will enable me to see what "bothers" them, what they may have read about and want clarifying. If c-section doesn't feature, I will cover it, but maybe not in the depth I would if it did come up.

I have been teaching families for over seven years now, have served over 30 families as a doula and I have lost count of the families I've "taught". I love what I do, I love to help these families realise that they have it in them to be powerful and strong and become great parents. I have a mix of results, sometimes in classes of 8 I'll have two c-sections, sometimes none, but this is not about ME, it's about how my parents feel at the end of it. At the end of the day, there is no badge of honour to be worn. What is important above all else is the fact that a woman is HAPPY with choices she made or if she felt she had no option as an emergency arose, that she is happy that her care providers gave her all the information to keep her in the picture, that she asked all the right questions so that she felt she truly understood. THAT is a happy birth outcome in my mind and that is what I aim for in my classes as I know many of my NCT colleagues do the same.

Dungarees

2011-02-19T04:44:00.000-05:00

Taking a leaf out of Farmama's book and inventing some dungarees (or coveralls if you like!) for LMB using baby blue cord and some remnants of fat quarters (Amy Butler I think).
I didn't use a pattern, but they've turned out pretty well, very seventies, high rise trousers and then just a basic bib, that I have since adapted slightly as i felt the full on square front wasn't right. I've now taken it at an angle and I'm happy.
I just have to cover three buttons today with the fabric and then it'll be ready for her to wear.

I love the high back of the pants - they feel incredibly Twiggy!!

Oh, and this is where Meg hangs out whilst I'm sewing. She seems to be lulled to sleep by the sound of the machine. Cuddling her new squeaky duck toy too - cute!

One piece of fabric

2011-02-17T10:39:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time, about four years ago, a lonely piece of very 70's style quilted fabric sat on the shelf in Walmart.
Nobody wanted it and it depreciated in value on a daily basis.
Each day, the Walmart worker who worked for peanuts - only, because she was allergic to them, worked for Hershey kisses instead, came along and, with her permanent marker, slashed the price of the fabric.
The fabric was so sad.
It had become a remnant...the curse of fabric everywhere!

Luckily an inexperienced seamstress and her two year old toddler, entered the store as she frequently did, to scour the fabric for remnants and bargains to use for her practice.
She came across the sad little piece of material and grabbed it with both hands. For just $2 there was over 1.5 metres, to think what she could do with it! She had visions of Clothkit-esque padded jackets and bags galore!

However, the material sat unloved and unused in a dark box under the stairs, despite illusions of grandeur of becoming a jacket for the toddler to wear. The seamstress had moved onto other projects and the fabric was cast aside.

One day, the seamstress opened her fabric box...which is the size of Dracula's coffin ("and the rest!" - added the husbeast!) and was already bulging at the seams. She was in a desperate, last bid attempt to downsize, rid herself of the stuff never used and reduce the contents of this box.

She came upon the piece of pink fabric once again and called her, now six year old, daughter down to discuss it's use.

"Socks?" suggested the six year old. The mother realised she had a long way to go teaching her daughter the weaves of fabrics and their uses, or more importantly, their non-uses.

"A jacket?" the mother tenatatively suggested again.

"For my doll?" replied the girl

"Well, I was thinking...oh well ...you wouldn't wear it would you?"

The teenager in the corner, laughed at the prospect of the six year old wearing the garish material and agreed that the jacket was now lost in the blackhole of time.

"A hat?" suggested the boy

"Really?" asked the mother breaking out is a smallish sweat at the thought of putting her still relatively tender skills to millinery purposes.

"Ewww - no!" shrieked the girl, horror abound at the prospect of putting it anywhere on her body that might actually be on show!

"What about a bag?" suggested the mother? "I could make you a bag to carry on your back so you can take your books to school and to Grandma-ma's" (Yeah, okay, so I didn't say Grandma-ma because that would just be stooopid...it was blogger's license!)

"Oooh, yes, a bag" said the girl - who likes bags for they are good to magpie things that don't belong to oneself!

This was met with protest by the boy who forsaw the opportunity for squirreling to increase before his eyes and could not believe his mother would condone the crimes of his sister and encourage her further by making her larger swag bags!

Thus it was agreed:

The mother made a bag:

And then she made a gift for her sewing machine to hide it from the dust bunnies.

But still there remained around half a metre. So the mother wondered if the toaster needed a cover, but decided that although the material was nicely kitsch, she didn't need to turn her whole house into something from the seventies. So she went back to the drawing board to decide what to do with the rest.

PS:

Here's the rest - turned into a yarn storage bag/sack to replace my much loved bag that the mice got!

Changing needs.

2011-02-15T12:37:00.000-05:00

How do needs change as our children grow?

A question arose recently on a forum I frequent asking the order of priorities in our days at home with our kids.

It lead me to think a bit about how my priorities have changed from when the children were really young, but how I'd like to think that my parenting is still largely dictated by me responding to their various needs.

When they were small, the priorities were that they were with me, close, warm, nutritiously fed, played with or given company and my household chores were toward the bottom of my list. My ironing would pile up (still does on occasions) and my housework was quite neglected.

I suppose in many respects the first few priorities are still the first, but my housework and cooking has moved up to take more of a leading role. My crafting has become more vociferous and I even read books again and have time to study (well, I can make time!)

To be honest, I've never actually "played" with my children.

Okay, that sounds bad, I mean, I've never gone on the same adventures they have with their action figures or cars or lego.

Why?

Because I would rather observe. I don't think they need me with my big cumbersome imagination, I will stifle them and also, now, they have each other.
My eldest would spend hours as a toddler lining up his cars and making imaginary towns out of blocks. Today at nearly 11 he spends hours with a fine pen and some felt tips recreating similar places and the intricacy is quite something. My youngest will spend hours dressing her dolls or playing with her siblings and my middley just loves his airfix, lego, kicking a ball around in the garden or copying his older brother.

Of course, we play board games, we play football, we go on bike rides or swim or go to visit museums together. We have a family reader. I teach them to knit and cook (Master Beehive the younger has just made turkish meatballs with pita breads for tea) but, I am strongly of the Montessori opinion that play of the imaginative variety needs to be theirs and they will also gain joy in watching me work and thus choosing "chores" - such as crafting, reading, drawing, cooking and even cleaning to entertain them.

I also feel strongly now they are older, that we live in a home together and to make it thus, we all need to contribute. Mr Beehive contributes by going to work and providing a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and we, collaboratively contribute by making the home clean and warm, putting the food on the table, ensuring the pets are looked after. This is something I have always instilled in them by providing a home for everything and also we run the mantra "The big kids look after the little kids, the little kids look after the littler kids and mama looks over us all."

So I have a family chore sheet whereupon everyone has basic tasks to complete, if nothing else, they are there to ensure they look after themselves. So they each have to make their beds, open their curtains, pick up their towels, keep their rooms tidy, but then on top of that we have extra jobs that they do such as laying the table for meals, emptying the dishwasher etc.

I think it's all horses for courses and when you prioritise it will only be the way it works for you. I know that come September, my priorities will have to alter slightly for three years. I may not be able to handcook everything I put in front of them, I may not be able to play board games or read to them every night, but ultimately my priorities will still remain that I am there to answer their needs and, if I were tested for that...they would come first without a doubt.

Home is where the chickens are and the tenant isn't!

2011-02-14T16:04:00.001-05:00

For my girls' home!

Not much to say today, other than the tenant has gone. Our house is finally our own again. We are two months rent out of pocket - again (we do know how to pick 'em) but we have our home back, the keys returned and I'm excited.

I was so excited that this afternoon I allowed my enthusiasm to run away with me and paid my deposit for this:

It is part of a package deal including the house and run, food, grit, oyster shell, a rat trap, a book and, best of all...5, yes FIVE chickens. My brood has now increased by two! I got all this from Tom at Jessie's Hens . Tom very bravely took on me, Emma and my bairns along with a pen of around 100 chooks last summer (if you remember it was the week after returning from Africa without a suntan and then burning in a fen field after about 2 hours *sigh), to aim to teach us a basic course in chickwifery and henmanship - or really that should be hen-womanship! He has a massive range of houses, chickens and along with his continuing after sales support, makes me feel incredibly secure that I won't mess up too much if I stick with him! Thanks Tom!

Of course, I still have to make the large enclosure that I'm blatantly stealing from Em's design

Oh, and of course...move in!!!

Chickens and midwives but not in that order!

2011-02-13T10:54:00.001-05:00

The day is drawing closer and it couldn't come fast enough in my opinion.

Today, Sunday, I had a list of things to do that needed doing, but as it's half term this week I don't feel so bad that I've put them on a back burner to write my blog - after all, that needs doing too ;-)

We've only got 8 weeks left in Edinburgh now and so finally we're starting to do pre-move panic! Okay, we're not exactly panicking but instead rather than me making lists and Mr Beehive doing his usual "Churchill" impression, he's actually starting to take notice and is currently beavering away at trying to find a flat and booking flights up and down from now until August!

I, on the other hand am sitting here flitting from screen to screen twixt a campaign I'm involved in and chicken coops and runs.

The chicken house seems to be the thing that has taken a priority at the moment, I have no idea why and I go between a large house and long run to a smaller house and a build my own run. I think I will go for the latter and then we'll allow them to free range too. However, like all things that have become "fashionable", there are now so many companies all selling similar products at varying prices with conflicting reviews and for my poor addled brain all this choice is proving too much. I think I need some help from any of you chicken owners out there. Post me your coop so I can see it please and let me know the pros and cons. Thanks.

The campaign on the otherhand is a little less conflicting. Basically the campaign is against a recent decision by the government to cut back on midwifery places at university. HERE

It seems simple enough, we're in the middle of a recession, we need to make cuts, let's cut back on training.
Well, that's all well and good apart from several things:

David Cameron originally pledged 3000 more midwifery jobs for an already overworked, understaffed NHS service.HERE and then HERE and HERE
Births in the UK will break the 800,000 mark this year. A down-scaled maternity service is ill prepared to cope. Midwifery staff moral plummets, litigation rockets but midwifery training places have been cut by 3.6%.
Of the number of students that get places each year, many will be lost to the lure of attractive packages in Canada, NZ and Australia or may even give up for numerous reasons.
There are birthing centres being closed all over the place due to shorfalls in the amount of staff available to work there and this will also have an effect on home births as midwives will be needed in the hospitals. Some birth centres are doing their best to reopen such as High Wycombe, but as fast as one re opens, another struggles and shuts.
Closing birthing centres has a knock on effect on birth outcomes for low risk women who will be forced to birth in high tech hospitals. It is a known fact that being in a hospital environment increases the risk that a woman will have a more medicalised birth. HERE and HERE
There is a higher risk of maternal and infant mortality if midwives are overworked and over stretched. Many midwives already work 12 hour shifts and often look after 2 or 3 women at a time.

It's a really frightening reality. As someone who has worked in the USA where midwives are not utilised sufficiently and the majority of birth is managed by obstetricians in hospitals, I am only too aware of the costs that a c-section affords the recipient, the price of an epidural or forceps delivery. I am also very aware of the high maternal mortality rate in the US, often caused by complications and this is a country with high levels of medical intervention and a team of doctors running the show.

With an understaffed team, complications run the risk of going unobserved.

With more births in hospitals under the auspices of a doctor there are likely to be more c sections, and more c sections runs higher risk of post surgical complications.

No one in this campaign is saying that birth should be kept out of the hospital, no one is saying that there shouldn't be a judicious use of instruments for helping difficult deliveries, no one is saying that c sections are bad things.

We are saying that in order to keep birth normal, low risk births need to be with midwives, women need to choice to birth outside of a hospital environment if they choose, midwives should be able to offer continuous care.

Ultimately, in order to maintain a free National Health Service, it is about keeping cost low I'd have thought? If you can give a low risk woman an easy, cheaper safe birth at home or in hospital with a midwife, surely that's a tick in the "cost effectiveness" box? If I were David Cameron, that would be what I'd want to see on my spreadsheet thank you very much!

So please, if you are a midwife, doula, childbirth educator, have had a baby, are having a baby, will have a baby someday, have grandbabies, will have grandbabies or just think it's the right thing... show your support and follow this on Twitter or Facebook

As Gandhi said and I quote over and over again;

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

And....breeeeeeeathe!

2011-02-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

Tonight I am a very proud mama. I have all but forgotten my wrath of yesterday and my "darling daughter's curious nature" God damn it! destructive little oik, whom I love dearly and has been a sweet as pie today - "mmmm, mummy, your vegetable chilli is the BEST!"

Tonight my eldest son found out he passed his entrance test and has been offered a place at the secondary school we wanted him to attend. He's as pleased as punch and I'm silently relieved that September now looks to be "hitch-less". Until today we had a rather large clound hanging over us that he might not get in, the other school had refused our application as we weren't actually living in. the. house. right now so we would only be on a long waiting list and I was thinking that I may have been home edding again and having to reapply to do midwifery in the future sometime. Big selfish sigh of relief.

Luckily the fug has lifted, bless his soul that he did so well and I didn't manage to crush him entirely under my selfish stress - poor lad!

Of course, now we have to pay for this and the uniform....agggghhh, the uniform. Luckily there appears to be a second hand shop, so I'm hoping we might be able to get some of it from there because 70 quid for a blazer and 30 for just one sweatshirt, that might last him a year is making me re think my career choice entirely! I'm wondering escort agency or stock exchange? Although I do see gaping flaws in both plans, namely the un-timely departure south of any areas that might be worth being escorted and together at that, and a less than willing desire to work with anything remotely resembling a number, not least whilst jumping up and down with my southward anatomy in a sweaty room full of yelling people. So...back to plan A.

Before finding the price list for his uniform, I did discover this blog and was starting to compile a wish/dream/slobber list for my birthday next month. I dearly want a chalkboard wall. I thought it would be an awesome way to stay in touch/communicate over the next few years with the increasing comings and goings of pre-teens/teens, life on shift, life travelling and life on our "mock-farm" with who, what and when needs feeding and was debating paint over buying a chalkboard and mounting it on the wall.

I'd also asked for a greengage tree for the garden.

I wonder if I could change my order to a blazer and pair of football boots for an 11 year old boy and a year's supply of baked beans and pot noodles please?

Stop. Rewind!

2011-02-06T14:17:00.001-05:00

What is small, blonde, deathly quiet and sinister?

No, it's not a joke.

Normally LMB is really good at entertaining herself, or playing with one or other brother, so usually, when it's quiet in the house, usually, she's playing happily.

Look! How could she not be sweet?

She will dress her dolls, read, colour, play games. I know it's sickly sweet, but she's usually quite a delight. However, her one less endearing trait is that she does have a tendency for magnetism. She's known as "The Magpie" at times, for filling her bags with things that she's "borrowed" from around the house for her latest game. She loves "pretty, little things" and also not so pretty little things, in fact, she tends to love anything that didn't start life as "hers".

Most of the times I don't mind much, but this afternoon she seems to have done as much damage as a the iceberg did to the Titanic!

Not possible, with an expression this cute!

Let's start at the top of the house, she's obviously played in a box, that we obviously used at some point for the pigs and there is now straw and hay and bits of woodshaving all around the spare room. But, it hasn't stopped there, exhausted from her game of "box" she's climbed into the bed for a little lie down, so piggie bedding has followed her from floor to clean sheets.

From there she's discovered the delights of stamp hinges (her brother's). She has always been a bit partial to the odd post it note or two and when she was around three, spent a fun afternoon sticking postage stamps all over her body. It can be seen a sweet when she sometimes leaves me cute little messages on a post it. Stamp hinges are transparent on the other hand, sticky and bloody small. They stick to most things they touch too, so often you won't find them until you think you've got serious callouses on your feet.

Mama! They're only ditty stamp hinges...

Then there was the beautiful roll of gingham ribbon that I bought for my crafting. I suppose, if I chose to look on the bright side, we have similar taste as she thinks it's beautiful too and helped herself to a couple of yards, "snip, snip". I now have a remnant of pink gingham pathetically hanging off the cardboard roll and two grubby, crumpled yards of something that looks like it may have been a cat's innard at somepoint.

I like pink, pink is pretty, ribbon is pretty...your problem is?

But does she stop there? No, she really is like El Niño, in fact, very apptly named I must add!

Her top trump is to try to dye her carpet red (it's normally cream...and we live in a rented house...and I was staying off the wine tonight...) with some make up that she found on the top shelf of her wardrobe (yes, we're talking 6ft off the floor) and is reserved for when she has had to do her ballet show each year and I have had to put cruddy slap on a four and five year old.

Mmmm, you can see the criminal number now!

If I wasn't so tired this evening, I really would like to rewind the day and begin it all again, perhaps I'll just make do with that self medicating glass of wine, an early night and the chance to let her teacher enjoy her company tomorrow *sigh*.

Ooops....sorry...guilty as charged!

Hats solve everything!

2011-02-05T08:50:00.000-05:00

After the no-spend January, it would appear that February is here to bite me on the butt. In just two days I've managed to get myself a parking ticket for not seeing the very faded sign saying the bay wasn't for cars when it was blowing a rainy gale yesterday and my wipers were on double speed. I was desperate to find somewhere to park so Master Beehive the younger could get to his badminton lesson without getting totally soaked and I'd put three quid in the feckin' meter too, so grrrr...

Then both LMB and Master Beehive the younger need new school shoes as they have holes in their current ones - this is proving more expensive as MB the younger has flat arches so needs shoes now that we can put orthopaedic prosthetics in.

At home my slow cooker has given up the ghost. The lid has already been mended once, but now the dial that operates the darn thing has died.

Ho hum, that was the third thing at least!

Still, it's Saturday today. Master Beehive the elder is in London with Mr Beehive at the British Museum as Master Beehive the elder wanted to see the "Book of the Dead" Egyptian exhibition. I've done the soccer mom bit, done the new shoe buying bit, changed the sheets on the bed.

Imagine how delighted I was to arrive home to find this fantastic hat in the mail from Emma!

There is a silver lining when friends remember you and manage to cheer up your day with something beautiful and handmade like this. I love it Em, thanks.

Then some doula friends have invited me out for pizza this evening, some birth junkie chat over a veggi pizza seems just what the doctor ordered . Right now, my solace is a Saturday afternoon cuppa with a slice of left over panetone from Christmas and a silly kids' movie!

I am making the choice to stuff the expense and enjoy this weekend - my first in a while, free from work!

What did you really do today?

2011-02-03T15:51:00.000-05:00

Have you ever seen Sliding Doors?
It's where Gwyneth Paltrow's character has to make a choice which determines which way her life leads.
Erin over at Bluebirdbaby has a challenge for the year. It's a challenge about making choices.
We all make choices, daily, but how many of us make choices that we think will please others, or make choices with our eyes half closed rather than truly open? How many of us make choices but wonder if it was the right choice, if there might be a sign to show us?

Life is full of choice. Do I blog today, or not? Do I take this doula client on, or not? Do I have a glass of wine this evening?
I teach my clients to ask about all the choices otherwise they can't possibly make and informed decision.

I sometimes wonder whether we are guided into the choices we make too. Maybe there is a pre-chosen path that we are all meant to take and if we choose to take another route, maybe, what if, we hit brick walls until we rejoin the path we are meant to be on?

I think about this a lot at the moment as I'm making this new career choice and seemingly starting on the path over again. But then, am I? Was I meant to end up here? Was I meant to meet my husband, have our babies, move to Belgium and get involved witht the Brussels childbirth trust and train to teach for the NCT - was I meant to go to the USA to learn about being a doula and ultimately find the thing that makes me tick? Was the fact that we had our three children and then couldn't manage to get pregnant with our fourth a pre-conditioned destination that I'd end up with a place at university for midwifery?

What if we'd taken the Japan job instead of choosing the USA?
What if I'd chosen to continue on the Montessori training programme?
What if we'd chosen to buy the house in Sawtry instead of choosing to pull out?

As I blogged the other day, I was deliberating over my choice to continue with my OU module. Ultimately, it is my choice and I just need to be happy in whichever decision I choose. The fact I got 80% today for a TMA may also influence my choice...however, maybe that's the destiny part, pushing me in the direction, on the path I'm meant to be treading?

Anyway, I'm going to choose not to waffle and be a bit more conscious about finding the "half full" choices out of any situation.

Right now I'm still working out what choices are available to us when we buy our groceries in order to reduce our garbage ;-) Still just the one bag this week, but I have to confess it seemed fuller than last week and I still have a growing bag of plastic trays that no one seems to want.

Funny old week

2011-02-02T16:25:00.002-05:00

It's been a bit of a funny old week emotionally this week. Highs being very high and lows being quite down there under the carpet.

It began on Monday when I nearly knocked off a cyclist. Perhaps I can be forgiven for telling you that this cyclist was cycling in the dark, with no lights at all and as I was waiting and signalling to turn right, she shot round the right hand side of me. How I missed her can only be down to a higher force at work that night.
It made me think hard about cyclists on the roads here in Edinburgh and probably all over the UK, in fact, it did even inspire me to work on a blog post after I'd calmed down, entitled Viscious Cycle (yeah...Joey cool eh?!) but I've decided to scrap it as I was still fuming and just try to rationally re-blog what I said.

When I was a kid, I'd cycle everywhere. Admittedly we did live in Hicksville, but station wagons and tractors aside, the world was so much more open to me once I got on two wheels. I'd love for my kids to have that freedom and we have taught them to ride their bikes, but I couldn't allow them to just take off here like I used to do.

I'm not a helicopter parent but the thought of them out on the Edinburgh roads causes a complete melt down inside me, I am sure there are many of you out there who will tell me otherwise, but I just stick my fingers in my ears and then I can't hear you!

I think it stems partly from a huge increase in the amount of traffic we have on our roads, the fact cars are bigger too - my current car is far wider than the mini metro my mum used to have and waaaay longer. I think that it really is a circle that results from more traffic, less bikes, then when people do cycle, car drivers have far more awareness of this or tolerance, this is then making the cyclists more aggressive...although, the fact that cycling proficiency seems to have hit the "cuts" bin in the council offices too and are offered in less and less schools. Cyclists in Edinburgh weave in and out of the traffic with little regard for the highway code. No understanding of the fact that they are not entitled to swing out right to pass traffic at the lights and then undercut. No regard for hand signals or lights. It's actually quite terrifying. I have also cycled here in Edinburgh and I find it terrifying from the cyclists point of view too. Drivers don't slow down, they don't give me room when they pass me and cycle lanes are parked in or buses use them too, which is equally scary.
I'm not sure where I'm heading with this. Both parties are to blame. Maybe we should be putting proper cycle paths in more cities that allow cyclists to go safely to and from their destinations?

Hmmm...

So, the ups;

I attended a birth this week and managed to successfully identify an OP baby just from observing the mother and "feeling" her contractions with her. It's funny how happy this has made me. It's made me realise that I can do this and there is so much to be learned from observing the mother.
Her waters broke at around midnight and she started to have gentle contractions from around 2am. She did, however, note that her waters seemed to have stopped leaking. I arrived around 6.30am and she'd not had much more leakage, but contractions had picked up. They were low in her abdomen and she was finding comfort lying over the ball.
After a while her contractions seemed to intensify and double peak. I did wonder in my head, if she was experiencing some coupling, which is a sign that a baby could be posterior.
The pains had been intense and quite close together too. After a while she had a rest...slowing of contractions, again, some train of thought that baby might have been posterior, so we concentrated on an all fours position and lots of rocking back and forth.
One contraction caused her to cry out a little about the baby's movement being really strong and I wondered if we'd managed to turn it.
As she sat up, she began leaking quite a lot of water again, also evidence that it may have been the hind waters that had gone caused by the position of the baby.
At hospital an internal exam revealed a slight swelling on the baby's head, these oedemas are sometimes caused by the baby trying to turn against the cervix and back to back labours taking longer to do this.
The midwife confirmed our theory that the baby may well have been posterior but had now turned. Small things, but what a high that I had diagnosed it, acted on it and it had successfully altered the baby's position. Of course, as no one really "gets it" and my poor other half and mother just have to nod and make the right noises, where else to share it than out there into the silent wide world, to all you wonderful listeners who don't have to make any audible noise, or nod your heads, but I know you understand ;-) It reassures me that I can do this job, it is the right choice for me, I will be able to symbiotically merge holism and elements of technocracy to be a good midwife, the best I can.

Oh, and post script:
I asked her if I could take a guess at the sex - thinking my odds were pretty even ;-) Apparently according to the mum, everyone was thinking it was a boy, but, I felt girl, nothing to do with position, her bump shape, heart rate etc blah blah, just something secret about the mama...

8lb3oz baby girl born on 1/2/11 - If I don't make midwife, I understand there is an opening in a local coven!!

Weekend craftiness

2011-01-30T13:00:00.001-05:00

Finally finished my shirt. This was a pattern I have adapted from Weekend Sewing. It's my first attempt to make a blouse for myself with sleeves and I'm pretty chuffed. The fabric is a little thinner than I would normally use, and I'll be needing a cami underneath it, but all in all it's turned out well. I am intending to adapt it more and make some other shirts with yoke necks and maybe some with longer tunic style bodices.

Two pairs of trousers for the boys from a simple Burda patterns. Master Beehive the elder's in red are a brushed cotton and have a pocket on the leg, like a cargo style. Master Beehive the younger's are the cheap Ikea fabric I mentioned before, he has an extra pocket on the back. Again, this is an easy and very adaptable pattern. MB the younger chose a brass effect button for his fastener, but MB the elder will have a press stud fastening.

We took the kids to see Tangled today. It was a fantastic film, really enjoyable for all of us. Yesterday I was at work and so Mr Beehive cooked dinner for me. He is also cooking this evening, so I have been truly spoiled this weekend and haven't cooked a dot!

I have a new job on Monday for a few weeks, working with a new mama whilst she just adjusts to life and I've also had another article accepted for publication, so am just doing some edits whilst sat on the sofa drinking tea and listening to Mr Beehive scurrying around in the kitchen. Heavenly!

On other things, I've just found a way to cut down both my shopping bill and hopefully, some packaging by buying in bulk from here. I'm just using it to buy in the dry goods and cleaning things that I would normally get as and when.
We have had a friend here this weekend, so I've been "bin diving" at odd moments to ensure that nothing extra is being thrown that we can recycle. Fortunately she's from Germany where there is a recycling system that puts ours to shame in this country, so doesn't look at me funny when I fly out of my seat to grab a plastic bag that's heading to the trash or fight my way around carrot peelings to give them to the pigs.
I am still struggling with some variants of plastic that our council won't take, that the bag people at the Norfolk factory won't take and that I can't take to the recyling centre. I may be able to take the pot like plastics to a nursery, but they're not going to want to be inundated with my cast off recycling and ultimately, all I'm doing is passing the buck knowing full well that this stuff will actually just end up in the landfill anyway, only via someone else's bin!
I'm aiming to reduce supermarket packaging myself by using my cloth bags for loose produce, buying large pots of yoghurt and syphoning it off into small steel containers when the kids take some for school, trying to use the deli more and fresh meat and fish counters, but it's still there...there's still the stuff that won't recycle, the wrappings that no one will take.

Ah well, another week...another rubbish diet!

The Wheels on the Bike

2011-01-29T14:52:00.001-05:00

Teaching your child to ride a bike without stabilisers is one of those things life throws at you as a parent.

This afternoon my niece has been very chuffed with her efforts to rid herself of the Knieval wheels. According to my sister, she can now nicely take herself around the skateboard park, that is of course, unless there are any remote obstacles...within a 100 metre radius. I remember that fact well. It's such an achievement to learn to stay on, that learning to stay on AND avoid other people or kerbs or stationary objects are far buried in the depths of one's mind.

My niece and I are in fact, kindred spirits. I remember my father teaching me, age seven, to ride my red bike on the lawn in our garden. I have a feeling, buried even deeper that this was nothing to do with his sweet natured desire to protect my knees, but more to do with the fact that I was a wuss and "didn't do corners" so, he figured that riding on our grass where I'd have to stop (if I didn't turn) when I hit the fence was probably a better option than the road where I may not have stopped at something far more serious, like a roundabout or cross roads.

Luckily I am pleased to admit that I did pass my driving test the first time around and maybe this was just a hiccup in my ability as a child rather than something that hindered me through life - although I'm sure some, would beg to differ.

As my sister proceeded to give me the low down on my niece's progress, she revealed that my niece did seem somewhat unerved when my sister decided to run after her. Obviously, in my sis's mind, this is with my niece's best interests at heart, she wants to protect her baby if she falls, as any parent would! But no! My niece, bear in mind, she already calls me Mad Aunty Beehive, sees a grown woman lurching towards her, arms flailing and picking up speed, somewhat like a lumbering bear after winter hibernation and...well, what would you do?...She cycles faster, the adrenalin kicks in, heartrate picks up, pedal, pedal, pedal until...the straight, flat space runs out....Luckily my sis always takes the band aids!

In our house, bike riding takes a less pragmatic approach.

Master Beehive the younger has learned to ride his bike - in a straight line - by Mr Beehive taking him out, wobbly, along the canal path!!!

Yes, canal!

50feet of murky canal water on one side, thorn bushes on the other...you WILL ride or..you will swim, or hurt. Of course, this isn't actually Mr Beehive's intention, he is just looking for flat, straight, safe areas, however, were I to have known that this was the plan de jeux I may have thought twice. Still, the wee fella is an expert! He now rides with his daddy for miles along the canal, is a dab hand at recognising the flora en route (particularly distinguishing between holly and berberis!) and never complains about turning back...I think that MAY have something to do with doing a U turn within inches of the inky black depths rather than his desire for long distance bike riding!

Luckily I didn't ask Mr Beehive to teach them to swim as I do feel that Blackpool Pier is probably not the best place.

Size is everything and it may cost you too!

2011-01-28T03:41:00.003-05:00

Waste rationing appears to be something that is on many councils' agendas and, while I think their hearts are in the right place, I'm not sure that this is actually going to impact on reducing the waste people throw each year.

80 bin bags a year seems a pretty reasonable feat actually. Even for us, a family of six, we are now managing easily with only 1 bin bag per week.

However, this is with a good-ish recycling service, guinea pigs who will eat broccoli stalks and some left over raw veg, a compost (and chooks in the future), and an educated family who truly believe there is a need to ration our waste, so make an effort.

We also have the benefit of a car - to get to the charity shop (we're also on a great bus route), access to the internet for freecycle and ebay etc etc.

My concern is the heavy handed approach to this. I am in full agreement that something needs to be done though.

We are slowly no longer living on the earth's crust, instead we're living on an artificial crust of plastic toys and polythene bags.

Limiting families to 80 bin bags, whilst hard hitting, isn't actually going to work for the families who need educating the most;

What about the families who can pay the fine easily and it means nothing to them?

What about the families who don't care about recycling or don't know how to, and will fly tip?

How do you monitor families who live in flats and use communal bins?

How do you fairly differentiate between the family of 2.4 and the family of 8 who will, undoubtedly, produce a little more waste. Is it actually going to make the family of 2.4 produce way less than 80 whilst the family of 8 or more, struggle, or will they think they have far more room to play and still produce 80 bags!

What about the rest who can and will, but actually their excess waste will end up on the local tip anyway, but privately driven rather than in a council truck?

And finally, what about rewarding those that do now and will continue to do even if they are a family of 2.4, 6, 8 or even 12?

Is this method going to work for them?

Do we even need bin bags at all? Just as an aside I noticed the other day that TKMaax (yes I am going to name and shame) has brought back in their "free bags". They are apparently donating money to a charity for planting new trees if you bring your own, but how is that actually limiting people's immediate habitual reach for them and helping them remember their reusable shoppers? I don't see that the consequences of paying 2p for a plastic bag are quite as congruous on people and the earth as not having somewhere to dump your 81st bin bag.

What if the only bin bags that are sold in the UK have to be biodegradable - we got rid of the old bulbs this way...why not bin bags? Maybe for those people who don't use bin bags at all, the council could offer a bin washing service?

What waste was weighed and assessed on family size and then you get a reduction in your council tax according to your annual waste?

Rather than telling people they "can't" throw away or they'll be fined, make it more of a challenge with a financial incentive as a reward - the donkey and carrot effect rather than hitting the mule with a stick to get it to move forward.

And why is the onus totally on the consumer? Reducing landfill and waste has to start with manufacturers packing stuff in less or ensuring the package is fully recycleable. The numbers of plastic that are still not, would push me to be thinking, were I a CEO, let's use a different type of plastic then, one that IS recyclable. I would hope we have a scheme in the UK whereupon large business were penalised for their innappropriate use of waste and packaging. Rome wasn't built in a day, not everyone will buy loose food, not everyone will take their own cloth bags to the supermarkets to pack their loose apples or carrots, so we have to appeal to the masses. Baby steps as they say...

Maybe if many politicians didn't have two homes with two lots of waste and two lots of carbon footprinting and two lots of taxes to fiddle, we'd have more support for these cockheaded ideas (I know, new government, everything is different ... of course...let's watch this space eh?)

Our bins were collected this morning and I am proud to say we did only have the one bin bag...I do feel silently proud of our attempts this week.

Creative space

2011-01-27T16:18:00.000-05:00

Not so many words today, my last couple of blog posts have been very wordy. Instead I thought I'd share my creative workspace with you. Inspired by Amanda at Soulemama to share, not to keep all my work neatly in one basket mind, here is a little insight into the birth and growth of my creative space which currently spills into every possible corner or basket. In the new house - I'm going to have a room...well, maybe a part of a room!

So this is a wrap I felted and it closes with a pin. I am going to make another one as I have one more Facebook gift to give...

This is a new arrival of stash that came today - some pretty cottons for a few tunic blouses for spring for LMB and myself and fleeces for each of the children.

Neatly stacked stash just waiting for time.

. Some Spring pants made from some Ikea Linen mix. Two metres cost me four pounds!!!! They have pockets, zip, waistband and I just finished the turn up hem this evening. I'll try to post a picture of the boy in them tomorrow.

I have huge inspiration for my workspace, racks for threads, jars for buttons, shelves for fabric.

Do you have any pictures of your workspace?

Decluttering, the holistic way!

2011-01-25T07:34:00.001-05:00

I am wondering if another important part of reducing waste is to also reduce the stuff that is cluttering your own mind.
I'm sure, if I took a holistic approach to this, I would be thinking that cluttering begins from the inside out and, it's all well and good reducing your financial output, your waste, your car miles etc, but if your brain is still immensly cluttered and projects aren't getting finished yadda, yadda, is this really conducive to a cleaner, more useable workspace?

As most of you know, I'm a student and I work, and I'm a mum. It's a continual juggling act to ensure that one doesn't take over from the rest and make sure everything stays balanced.
My current workload is one night, one day per week and being on call for the next month. These are non negiotiable parts of my life and I don't want to impinge on these.

Study, on the otherhand is another assignment for an OU module, one Certificate in Applied Health Science assignment, a piece of writing for a magazine and I'm also staying up to date on Midwifery info and reading up when I get the chance.

Crafting; I have a pair of trousers pinned out for Master Beehive the younger and I'm still working on my waistcoat. I have one Facebook give back handmade pledge giftie to finish and a desperate idea for my friend who is having a baby in July.

I sat down last night and looked at what was giving me the biggest stress in my life right now and it's the Open Uni module. It's a degree module in Human Biology, which I'm doing in order to broaden my knowledge of the human body before I begin in September. I don't need it as I have my unconditional offer, and frankly it's a massively tall order to go from GCSE grassroots knowledge to degree module standard, and independent learning at that! The TMA's are enjoyable, I'm learning loads and I think are doing me a lot of good, however, the thought of an exam in June whereupon I'm going to need to know the finer workings of the brain and eye, just fill me with undue nerves and stress. I am a visual and kinaesthetic learner, if I don't understand a concept and it is explained to me in other ways or demonstrated, it goes in and sticks, if I just read the same words and text over and over, my mind blanks out!

What's the point? I will have learned what I need to learn from the textbooks and passed the assignments, yet I don't have the confidence, or, more importantly the time, to do the exam, the revision and give it the justice it will need. So, I think this may be the bit to let go of.

When I was interviewed last year, I asked what I ought to be doing to ensure that my knowledge base was on a par with where it needed to be before commencing and was told to not do anything other than move and settle in. I was told my knowledge base was over par thanks to the NCT diploma. I guess I just didn't listen or believe them because my background wasn't rooted "in Science".

But is midwifery purely a Science? Isn't there an element of Art too? Shouldn't a "good midwife" be able to listen to her clients and interpret their words, palpate a stomach rather than going on a recent scan or a tapemeasure, hear a baby's heartbeat through a pinard rather than relying solely on a CTG? Of course, it's fundamental that a midwife understands the female body and how pregnancy changes things. It's crucial she knows fetal diameters and landmarks of the head and pelvis. She should be able to read and intepret partograms. It's very important she knows about the heart and circulatory system, but not as stand alone subjects. Science and Art are symbiotically related within Midwifery, a midwife needs to be able to not only use her knowledge, but also her intuition and growing experience and that of the woman she is with.

I am not being naive enough to say that midwives don't meet many women who have complex health problems that are affected by pregnancy, probably increasingly so with the age of first time mothers increasing and the rising rate of obesity, and that they don't need to know how to work with these women, because they do. So don't worry that I'll not be informed, knowledgeable or read up, or that I'll be an arse that thinks I'm "too good/radical/speshul" for the hard slog of medical text books (and my slog may be harder than most!).

But if "normal" birth was actually perceived by everyone as spontaneous vaginal birth that is free of drugs or interventions and more births were left alone to just happen and not induced or augmented; if more low risk women were allowed the option to birth at home or in a birth centre; then the midwife, the expert in normal birth, will be able to do her job without feeling that science and medicine is taking over a natural, physiological life process. Midwives would see waterbirth on a daily basis, the art of birthing a breech baby would not be a slowly dying one, home would be the first port of call for most parents when they're contemplating where to have their baby as all this would be a normal, everyday occurrence - as it used to be!

Birth is only as safe as life gets, sometimes life needs a helping hand, but most of the time we're allowed to make decisions that we feel are best for us, we aren't helped with our daily physiological processes normally, unless there is a problem and then...thank god for medicine. So...let's keep birth physical, normal and out of hospitals as much as we can!

I'm not sure I'm doing anyone good putting myself under exam pressure over these next few months when I could be finishing other work in progress and maybe drinking tea?

Intelligent tea drinking for the soul - who's in?

And just because it's always good to digress from what you're meant to be doing and what is the inspiration of the blog...I sorted out my fat quarters - doesn't it look pretty - that has to open the heart and mind to more learning, just by looking at something pretty.

How are we doing ?

2011-01-23T07:22:00.001-05:00

With one week left to go in January, I thought I'd give you a brief update on how we have managed in this challenge this month.

January is a fairly easy month in which to have a "no-spend" policy on anything frivalous or unecessary. There's just been a huge week of celebrations that produce far more food that anyone can consume in one sitting, presents and vouchers!
We have lived off our Christmas vouchers - we got a trip to the cinema last night with some free tickets, we went to see the amazing (secret girl crush *oops!*) Ani DeFranco using the tickets I bought in October (doesn't count, so ner!) and I'm off to buy a book today with my Christmas gift voucher.

We have removed all take aways this month which, whilst has been harder work for me on a Friday night, has meant that our diet has improved, so I think we'll make this more permanent and only have a takeaway once a month instead of each Friday as has become the habit.

Working through the contents of the freezer has opened my imagination up again to making stuff out of unusual odds and ends and the slow cooker has been on each Sunday night to ensure we've a meal for one day in the week from the left overs.

I've done a lot more crafting this month when I've not been studying and this has resulted in three new pairs of trousers for me, a pair for LMB, a baby blanket for a friend, some knitted wristies for another, a couple of quilted table mats for two other friends, a huge proportion of my current WIP being knitted up and a quilted pyjama case for LMB.

We have worked like bilio on decluttering and Mr Beehive took six bin bags of old sheets, towels, quilt covers, cot sheets and blankets, 3 year old girlie clothing and two huge boxes of books to Oxfam.

The washing and drying has been a little more traumatic, particularly on the weekend when I have everyones sheets to wash and dry and my small utility room where the machine is, overflows with linen. I have *blush* put the dryer on twice today to get rid, but during the week, we're hanging on the airer and on the Sheila maid in the garage. It's still way too cold for any drying outside yet.

The most noticeable difference for me has had to be groceries. I've made a list each week and stuck to it and I shop on a Tuesday and Tuesday only, when I'm waiting for the children to finish an after school activity. The only exception to this has been the joint of meat we buy on a Saturday for Sunday and the week ahead or the odd bottle of milk when we have run out. This has cut my grocery bill down significantly because I'm not buying off the cuff or buying in a bitty way through the week. It's also meant we've actually finished what we have in the fridge, and gone without if we run out, before I shop the following week.

I have walked much more and used the bus so our car useage has reduced. I'm now filling the car every fortnight (if that) rather than every week.

Things we have bought however, have been our ferry to France and paid the deposit on our gite as we would have lost out if we left it until February.

I still haven't managed to persuade Mr Beehive to take a packed lunch to work - although food there is not expensive as they have a huge subsidy.

A cup of tea each Wednesday before yoga as I have a half hour to "kill" beforehand.

We have needed to mail things, so there has been some money spent on postage and Master Beehive the elder was invited to the funfair in the city before it left for the season a couple of weeks ago, so I gave him a tenner for use there as I felt *my* challenge wasn't necessarily to inflict him and prevent him doing things. That said, they have been really good in participating in the challenge and are taking drinks in reuseable cups to their activities and snacks from home etc (not that we ever really bought stuff out before).

So, my challenge for next month may be the hardest one yet. I do intend to keep up the spending theme but rather than saying no to everything due to not spending, we'll just maintain the good habits ie: reading the paper on line, shopping once a week, not using the dryer so much, recycling and reusing etc.

February's challenge is to see if, as a family, we can bring our waste down to one bin bag per week.
This is coming at a time when we're decluttering and trying to downsize our lives ready for our impending move, so I think will add the extra challenge. I intend to make full use of the charity shops, the piggies will eat veggie peelings if they're clean and uncooked from most of the veg, I will reuse leftovers such as sauces, pasta, rice, potatoes etc, we already recycle glass, plastic, paper, tins and cardboard and Master Beehive the elder uses his stainless steel flask and washable sandwich wrap for his pack up on Tuesdays. Master Beehive the younger suffers from enurisis, so we still use nappies on him. I cloth nappied all the children during the daytime when they were babies, but we always used disposables at night and still use the pyjama pull ups for him. However, I have now been given a catalogue from the clinic we go to with him and there are washable pants in there that I am costing up, in whichcase could have a twofold effect of - helping him wake when he's wet and reducing the waste of one throwaway a week.

I think my biggest challenge is the children and the move. Broken toys or bits of toys that end up in the bin - where do they get recycled? We also are no longer using our compost heap due to the move and it being full for now. So, what will we do with the apple cores and banana skins and other biodegradable food waste that are no good for the pigs- hmmm?

So, who's in with me for this month's challenge? Let's see if we can at least try to keep up with Rachel over at My ZeroWaste who manages to fill just one CARRIER BAG - yes, you read that right - PER YEAR - and no, your eyes weren't deceiving you there either! Admittedly, my family is double the size, there are six of us here, but, by mathematical terms, that should only mean I use two carrier bags a year, right ;-) ?
So, we'll start with one bin bag a week eh? 52 per year and see where we go from there.

I'd love your suggestions throughout the month to help me come up with places to recycle or reduce things that we may have normally just binned.

Wish me luck! x

Oh lookie, I'm adding a post script, or is that an Easter Egg?
Anyway, you'll have missed this if you already read the blog, but here are a few links that might help with getting rid of the "tricky" stuff:

Medicines: for donating unused or surplus but IN DATE medicines, you can send them to this organisation who can then use them overseas.

Packing Peanuts and Bubblewrap can apparently be taken to your local mailboxes etc. store.

Polythene wrapping from bread, magazines etc this company in Norwich will take Bags used to cover electrical appliances or furniture
   •   Bread bags (shaken out)
   •   Bin bags (clean)
   •   Bubblewrap
   •   Can & drink pack outers & joining rings
   •   Carrier bags
    •   Cling film (clean)
   •   Compost sacks (clean)
   •   Courier bags (without paper labels)
   •   Drycleaning garment covers
   •   Mailing wrappers (without paper labels)
   •   Polythene recycling categories 2 and 4 (as marked on the film)
   •   Thin bags used in supermarkets for fruit & veg etc (shaken out)
   •   Toilet roll and nappy pack outers

Which is a phenomenal find for me as this is where I find I struggle. I buy loose carrots and veg and most fruit, but bread is still in a bag when I'm in a hurry as I'm not a stay at home mum all the while and baking fresh bread everyday isn't always a possibility, so we need some sliced ready to go stuff in the freezer! Magazines or catalogues often come packed in polythene wrappers and despite being on the "no junk" mailing list.

Lots of this month's challenge will be around changing my habits BUT, these habits have to be ones that I can maintain and live with. It's all well and good supporting the local butcher and buying my meat from him, re-filling oil bottles from the local deli that will do that, but if I can't do that on a daily/weekly basis due to work committments or travelling to uni and back, then it isn't going to help.

Packaging: of some sorts can be sent to this organisation who use them for workshops and community projects. You can also see if your local nurseries or schools require anything for their art work.

Old DVD's and CD's I use as bird scarers in the garden. String them up and hang between two canes and the shine scares birds away from your seeds. they also make cute mobiles that catch the light in the garden!
You can also send them here if you don't have a garden. Or if they're in good condition you can take them to charity.

So, that's it for now. If you have more links, please add them!
Ciao xx

Old Father Time

2011-01-19T02:41:00.004-05:00

There is a viscious rumour that I reside with George and Mildred.
Well, he is George and I am Mildred!

Snuggled up at 10pm with a cup of peppermint tea.
He is playing Sudoku - or should that be "brain training for the elderly" on his electronic game thingy.

There is a companionable silence!

The university students in my current antenatal class, don't get my jokes about Friends (they were only 8 i suppose!)
They wince and roll their eyes when I talk about "CD players".

The gym requires the wearing of an iron hammock to restrain the boulders from avalanching.

My favourite shoes look like they met Jesus in the cobblers.

Taking off make up requires exact precision to extrapolate the gubbins from between the crevases caused by the Rift Valley permanently etching it's whereabouts around my eyes!

Of course, the mini Beehives are dutifully trained to respond "but you're only 21 mummy!" ad infintum, or at least until my ear trumpet gets blocked!

But, all is not totally lost. There is hope on the horizon. I am off to a gig on Thursday night! I'm going to be living it large down wiv da youf! Well, okay, not really, so I'm going to see Ani diFranco whom most of you probably haven't heard of and the rest of you are aware that she's drinking more peppermint tea in bed than I am but...who cares!! She rocks, she's ace and I'm going to a gig at the O2 in Glasgow!

However, I have told him to kill me if I request ear plugs, complain my feet hurt or ask for Ovaltine before I retire to bed!!

Guardians

2011-01-18T09:19:00.000-05:00

I have resisted posting this and have had it stashed away for a few days now.
I have been hesitant, mostly because my blog posts are primarily upbeat, happy and lighthearted and I don't want to put all my laundry out there, but I think that I need to tell you this story and it's currently eating at me inside.

As many of you know, we rent our house here and our "real" home, our beautiful, special, family home that we all chose together two years ago, is being rented out.

We have rented our home out before.

We had another home, one where the boys were born, but it grew too small for us. However, we rented it for nearly seven years.

In that time, we lost 6K on a tenant who eventually went bankrupt. We felt sorry for him in the early days and gave him a chance to pay his rent...he didn't.
We allowed a tenant to have a "cat" only for the cat to actually be of a canine variety who proceeded to piss all up the walls and on a carpet destroying it...and then move out *sigh* leaving us with little deposit left for repairs.
We have known friends who have rented their homes out to professional couples who have punched holes in the walls and had animals chew the carpets despite tenancy agreements saying "no pets".

Yet oddly enough, we look after our rented house here.

We care for it and tend it, we mend the things that get scratched, we clean it every week and ensure that our pet doesn't trash (sticking to our tenancy agreement too). We pay our rent on time, pay for any breakages that we cause, inform our landlord if things go wrong such as heat or electrics and allow access for people to come and mend.

Why is it then, that others do not seem to care in the same way.

I deliberately use the word "home" for our home in Oxfordshire because it is that entirely. We are not millionaires with pads dotted here and there around the world, we are not business people who have properties for commerical reasons. This home, that someone else is living in, someone else who is currently not paying the rent, not looking after it as we would, is ours and we love it.

We don't want to come back to something that is destroyed, or worse still, as is currently filling my nightmares, that still has a tenant in it when we have served her notice correctly and given her ample time to move.

I am saddened that people do not have respect for things that they are guardians of.

I know, you're all shrieking - get a grip, it's just a bloody house, just bricks and mortar, which, yes, truly at the moment, it is.
It's not seen the births of any of my babies, it's not heard any of our children's laughter or tears, it's not seen birthdays or Christmases with us either, but...we have not lived in our own home for TEN years and this is so incredibly special for us. There are indeed "far worse things that happen at sea" and I know that families have lost their homes in terrible floods and earthquakes here and abroad this year, but, selfishly, there is a burning desire for me, so deep when you've been travelling for a while, to put down roots and develop a sense of community and I have such strong hopes that this will be "our spot".

I just hope we can get past this rather dubious wavering fence at the moment.

So can you send us some positive vibes please that, for the next few months, things will go smoothly with the move. That our tenant will not have left us a terrible mess, or, worse still, that she'll still be there.

Y'see, it was like this m'lud...

2011-01-17T15:23:00.001-05:00

How many have you read this article?

Or should my question read, how many of you have read this article and nodded along with it in silent agreement?

C'mon, we've all been there, we've all done it.

Of course, for those of us that blog, we either air our dirty wares or skirt over the issue with a nose larger than Pinnochio's.
I will admit to a touch of artistic license every now and then, but really, life is too short and I'm not imaginative enough to think of things to cover over my misguided intentions!

I have bought shop cakes and passed them off as my own!

I have eaten my kids' sweets and blamed my husband!

I have put on the tv when I am so bloody fed up of the bickering and it is the quickest and quietest way out!

I've served food without a vegetable on the very rare occasion that my motivation has died or the frozen peas have been finished!

I have co slept with my kids, but actually because I was too lazy to get out of bed to deal with them in the night!

I have pretended I have had an essay to write to get out of taking the kids swimming (I haaaaaaaaaaaate swimming - if I wanted to get out of my nice warm clothes into a ridiculously cut swim suit (not designed for the long in body), walk through veruucca viruses in my bare feet, swim in other people's wee stream and pubic hair I'd say so - so forgive me for feigning homework!)

I have pretended to be working whilst my kids are doing their homework, only to have facebook hiding behind my main screen!

I don't play anything with my kids except board type games. I do not play Barbies or lego or playmobil - so shoot me - because I strongly feel that: a. they have each other b. if they don't have each other then it is giving them a lifelong skill of being able to be content with their own company. c. I couldn't possibly stifle their imagination!
Made something up to get out of reading the same book for the gazillionth time.

"Lost" a noisy toy and fibbed about where it is!

I have sworn in front of my kids!

So, 'fess up, what have you done that is "so awful" that you've lied about it or just not exactly told the truth?

Sunday, Sunday!

2011-01-16T14:37:00.001-05:00

Nice Sunday roast, washing up done, glass of wine, and ahhhhhhhhhhhh! That's always a great way to round off a nice family-fied weekend I think. All that's missing really is the log fire, but that'll be April when we move.
Everyone will be sick of me saying it by the end but "in April...when we move...".
My problem is I have always been a planner and a dreamer.
We are moving to a gorgeous old house that used to be two farmhouses and I have so many dreams for the place that I'm running out of notebooks to put all this in. Not that I'll have time to fulfil many of the dreams for the first three years whilst I'm studying, but it is our longterm home and we're not intending any more gypsying for a while, well, not on a longterm basis, so eventually I'll fulfil many of them, or they drop out of my range of importance as time goes past! However, having not lived in our own home for nearly 10 years now, my creative urges and dreams are close to exploding out of me in a cascade of cacophonous fireworks!

This weekend we've been home. I had an OU biology tutorial on Saturday and then today I had a yummy reunion with some of a previous class of mums and dads. It's always nice being "the teacher" as you get to have all the baby cuddles!
Mr Beehive and I have also booked our holiday for this year. We had our blowout last year, but we knew we'd want some sun. We could have stayed in the UK, but that never guarantees that small stipilation.
I'm actually really looking forward to it.
The children and I are having a week with a friend from Edinburgh and her son, at a craft camp in Gloucestershire as soon as school is out. I'm very excited about it. There's the opportunity to do crafts that I'd never have thought of trying due to the need for so much specialist equipment. Things like, bronze casting, leatherwork, wood work, stained glass are on the agenda and what makes it so amazing is that it is like living in a big commune for a week, where we'll all be camping and chipping in with cooking and chores as well and it's totally safe for the children who also get to craft. That's always so important when you have kids that not only they have the ability to play safely, but due to that, you get the opportunity to relax and enjoy your time as well. Which then leads me nicely to our family holiday.

When I was a child, we used to go to France nearly every year. My parents would set the alarm for abour 3 or 4 in the morning and we'd head off when all the world was still asleep to catch the first ferry out. We'd then drive down through France to our destination, a gite somewhere, Aquataine, The Loire, The Dordogne.
The sheer excitement of packing up everything we needed in the car, waking up just after we seemed to have gone to bed, the absolute silence as we left the house as everything was asleep even the birds, the turning round at the bottom of the road (yes, EVERY year!) because we'd forgotten something, the blankets over our legs keeping us warm, eating breakfast at 4am in the car...it really was an incredible tingly feeling.

Our children have been incredibly lucky in their short lives. Thanks to our ex pat lifestyle, they've seen countries such as Jamaica, America, Mexico, The Bahamas, Belgium and Kenya. All these bring a certain type of adventure and excitement, but there is something, when you're a parent, about bringing an adventure or a part of your own childhood to your children. It's really special. It's like when I share books with my children that I read as a girl, or we play a game that I used to play, it's almost like a rite of passage.
We've chosen to give the kids this exact same "adventure".

We're catching the first ferry out of Portsmouth, heading to Caen and we will travel down to the Dordogne, to our gite that we've booked for a week. I hope it will be as exciting for them as it was for me and my sister.

In other "feel good" things this week, I just got a note from Beth, to say she'd received my care package!! Yay, I'm so happy. It's nice to think she's got a few "bits" and it also must be fun to receive random parcels.

On that same subject of random parcels; three of my six handmade pledge parcels have gone out now - look out in your mail Emma, Jenny and Holly and I've two more done.
I have taken some photos of some things and also took a picture of the "Saskia" pants.

Wristies, made with Noro silk yarn. This stuff feels so rough, but when it is knitted together is incredibly soft and the colours are divine. I was soooooooo tempted to keep these for myself rather than send them out to my handmade recipient but...hope you enjoy them ;-)

This picture was taken in a rush and doesn't do this bag justice. I made a quilted patchwork crafting/knitting bag for another of my handmade gift recipients.

Aha! The trews. These weren't the ones that drove me demented in the last blog post. I sussed those out and they were a linen fabric. These have taken me most of the morning, not the design, but the alterations. Wool is not such a great fabric to hang in this style of pant. It's a bit too heavy and made the trousers look bulky (okay, more bulky, they are already an unusual design). So I had to adjust by taking in tucks and pleats and actually styling a leg more. I also made them turnup at the bottom as they were so long. This means they actually really rock over a pair of biker type boots and with a long cardigan. I'm pretty chuffed with the result.
I now have three pairs - one linen, one in a kind of herrigbone but have no idea of the fabric (it does hang well) and the woolen pair. I have one more pair to make which is a kind of viscose type material with sequins. The style of pants means that the lighter fabrics are the ones that actually drape best.

Updating on spending of course having fallen off the wagon a little bit with material over the last couple of days, has gone back to nothing much today.
However, the machine has been on three times and I have used the car once to go into town when I probably could have walked, but it has been a horrid hissy rain day.

I'm already starting to focus on next month's challenge which is to try to eliminate our waste to just one bin bag per week instead of our average two - three.