Link of the Day!!!

More than one today, because they are all from the same awesome website (that I had forgotten about until I was looking through my links!)

Baby-led solids This is what we do for solids

Elimination Communication - Everyone should at least TRY it!

Link of the Day!!!

I have way, way too many links saved on this computer and they will be lost forever if I don't save them in some way (which has happened one too many times with other computers). And so starts my "Link-of-the-Day". Lets see how long I can keep this up....

Todays link is from the "cool baby things" folder

Kanoe baby hammock! I think this thing is totally awesome and I want to sleep in one!!! Its like $300 though and cosleeping is free! ;-)

8 months old

Faith is 8 months old yesterday! I can hardly believe it. She is getting so big and can even stand on her own for a few seconds. These are some of the pictures we had taken on our trip to Kansas last month.

the spacing of children

I have been thinking about this A LOT lately (I wrote this a month ago and am just now posting it...). I'm totally freaked out about getting pregnant now. Know how I just made that post about trusting God with our family size? Yeah well, since then, I'm really worried about it and not because I would be overwhelmed or finances or anything like that... but because I don't want to sabotage breastfeeding for her! I haven't gotten my period back (YAY its been 18 months since I've had one!), but if that happened, I might lose it! Because one usually loses their milk supply during pregnancy (at some point... be it 5 weeks or 35 weeks. and I say usually because a few will only notice a temporary decrease). And, my breastfeeding goal was at least 2 years, but, there is a chance that she would wean once I got pregnant even if she was past 12 months.

I don't know if I'm making an idol (so to speak) out of breastfeeding... but I really think it would be unfair to her if I were to loose my milk supply and have to switch to formula. I don't want to feed my baby chemicals!!! But, then I think about the other baby we would be having (hypothetically) and how I would love it too and ugh. I'm just so confused now.

This all started by the way, at a LLL meeting when someone was newly pregnant with a 7 month old and was asking about tandem nursing and the leader told her most women would have to supplement with a young baby. I LOVE LLL by the way... I go to 2 meetings a month! lol I'm thinking about becoming a leader... I don't really know, I'm not a leader at all, soooo yeah.

We do ecological breastfeeding, which is doing things like not using bottles, pacifiers or cribs and, on average, fertility doesn't return until 14 months postpartum (but that varies greatly... but it is like 98% infertility in the first 6 months or something close to that and then slowly decreases the older the baby). We were already doing most of the "standards" and infertility was just a bonus (I still don't do the napping thing... I probably should, but I have trouble falling asleep). And, it may sound, to some, like not trusting God. I was reading online someone said that they didn't do EBF because they didn't want to do ANYTHING that would prevent a child from being conceived and someone responded and said but, by not doing it you are unnaturally inducing ovulation. hmm interesting thoughts. yes. Not that there is anything wrong with pacifiers or bottles (well, sometimes there is when they cause nipple confusion and I just don't like the idea of a "mama substitute"), but if you are a person of the "quiver-full" mindset, then doesn't it make sense to only use things the Lord gave you for your baby?

So, I was thinking (and talking with Mike) if we would just do NFP again (if my period came back before 12 months or if Faith still wasn't eating a lot of solids after 12 months). Then I started thinking about NFP and how God designed us to know our fertility. Why would He do that? Why would he gives us signs to know when we are fertile or not? To tempt us into using that knowledge for evil? I don't think so... He could have made it so woman got pregnant no matter the time of month. Though... in the Old Testament (someone correct me if I'm wrong), he commands husband/wife to abstain during the menstrual period and for 7 days after, which would put it (on average) right at the time of ovulation. Obviously he wanted them making some babies. But, really how "natural" is it to abstain during ovulation, since its the most "sexually driven" (sorry, couldn't come up with a more pleasant term lol) time of the month? I don't know... I don't know... I don't know...

I probably don't even need to worry about this since she hardly eats any solids and nurses all the time still. And, even if I did get pregnant and my milk dried up I can still bond with her in all the other ways I do now. Maybe it wouldn't be a fate worse than death... anyone want to be a wetnurse? ;-)

Resolutions

Every year I make 10 and it has to be done by midnight New Years Eve... I don't know why 10. But, its a nice even number. I have them dating back to '95 (I was 8). I especially love the ones like "make my bed" "wash my own clothes" (that one took until I was 18) "save money for Hanson fan club" "buy more N*SYNC cds" and "don't kiss so many boys"... not all from the same year. Every year I have something about the Bible... it started out as "Read the whole Bible" to "Read the Bible everyday" to this year "Bible". I even came up with a schedule this year for projects to do and books to read in what month so I actually get them done/read... maybe.

We got pictures taken in Wichita when we were visiting my parents.... I'll put them up soon.

Also... an addendum coming for that post about children.

Epidurals

A very informative paper on medical risks of epidurals

Very interesting in light of the recent Christmas Miracle baby. Especially since in the Good Morning America interview the mom says she had just received an epidural minutes before (in fact, the anesthesiologist was the one doing cpr when the doctor came in).

From the section "Deaths from Epidural Anesthesia"

"Women are almost never given informed consent for epidurals. Even if they were just read two paragraphs from the package insert that comes with the medication used for epidurals (manufactured by Abbott Laboratories), they might think twice. The package insert states:

Local anesthetics rapidly cross the placenta, and when used for epidural, caudal or pudendal anesthesia, can cause varying degrees of maternal, fetal and neonatal toxicity.... Adverse reactions in the parturient, fetus and neonate involve alternations of the central nervous system, peripheral vascular tone and cardiac function.... Neurologic effects following epidural or caudal anesthesia may include spinal block of varying magnitude (including high or total spinal block); hypotension secondary to spinal block; urinary retention; fecal and urinary incontinence; loss of perineal sensation and sexual function; persistent anesthesia, paresthesia, weakness, paralysis of the lower extremities and loss of sphincter control all of which may have slow, incomplete or no recovery; headache; backache; septic meningitis; meningismus; slowing of labor; increased incidence of forceps delivery; cranial nerve palsies due to traction on nerves from loss of cerebrospinal fluid.

Who would sign a consent if it included the above language? The degree to which the facts about the risks of epidural anesthesia are hidden from women in labor is astonishing.

Mothers who have a fever are significantly more likely to have had epidural anesthesia.⁸² Therefor increasing the incidence of septic workups on newborns and the subsequent complications of this procedure.

We would hope that pregnant women would have a more informed explanation of the risks of epidural anesthesia than what is currently given, and would suspect that many would make other choices if true informed consent was given (before labor, when the woman still has time to prepare to cope with childbirth pain in other ways)."

Opinionated

I'm super duper opinionated and judgmental. This usually isn't in real life since in real life I go out of my way to make other people feel comfortable and un-awkward and accepted and I have confrontation phobia. But, for some reason, I have this internet alter-ego that is kind of out of control. And, sometimes I don't even realize how I may come off to other people.

Also, can I just add that when I heard Mike's mom had all of her 6 kids unmedicated I was seriously, seriously disturbed by this fact. I could not let it go and made him call her and ask her why she would do that (this was before I knew anything about birth). A few weeks later, after researching things, I was begging him to have all of our future (we were engaged at the time) babies be born at home.

I have this friend... we talk occasionally online, I had told this friend who is pregnant- how birth isn't really bad (I tell every pregnant person this, and my entire childhood I said I would never have children because I never wanted to go through it and all the media portrayals are scary!). And we got started talking about her OB because she said she was an awesome doc and how I should use her when I get pregnant again. I said that I was hoping to have a homebirth (doubtful! I hate you, tricare!!!) next time so I don't think her doc would be up for that... and she thought I was crazy and I said it wouldn't really be much different since I didn't use any drugs in the hospital... she thought I was even crazier. This was a few months ago and I was very proud of myself for not being pushy and all "don't use drugs during labor or your baby will die!" haha

Fast forward to now, she posted something on facebook about taking a lamaze class and I asked her if it was all crazy breathing and said not too bad and they learned a bunch of different positions and massages etc. I was like "cool, are you planning a natural birth then? You can't exactly use positions with an epidural ;-)". Sometimes I'm an embarrassment to myself. I really didn't even think anything about it (until she didn't respond... or maybe she hasn't seen it yet)... what if she wasn't planning a natural birth- thats just mean! Usually if I think something is on the verge of inappropriate or rude, I have to consider it for a long time before typing it and I didn't.

If only I was as evangelistic about Jesus as I am about birth, circumcision, ecological breastfeeding, babywearing, cosleeping, homeschooling, EC, cloth diapers, etc. why is that?

So, I hope nobody hates me and sorry if I ever offend anyone. I'm just so passionate about things (besides Jesus :(, apparently) and never consider the possibility that there might be legitimate reasons why someone would not want/be able to do these things. Now, I need to apologize to my preggo friend.

I'm in Kansas and Faith has been nursing/sleeping on me (yes, they are synonymous) the whole time I've been typing :)