52 Books: Book 41

Being pregnant has influenced several of my reading choices this year. My most recent book being Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way by Susan McCutcheon-Rosegg.

For the past 8 months or so I have spent a lot of time thinking about the topic of natural childbirth verses medicated childbirth. I have talked with many women about their personal experiences as well as read countless delivery stories online. I have asked my sister {a labor and delivery nurse} questions about what happens in the delivery room and I have spoken to my OB about her personal practices. Daniel and I have discussed the topic as well. 

Actually until a few weeks ago, it had not crossed my mind that Daniel would actually have an opinion one way or another {it is my body after all}. He surprised me by saying that if I was up to it, he was in favor of me seriously considering the natural childbirth route. His comment made me get serious about researching the topic to evaluate whether this was something I thought I could do or if I thought it was important enough to put my body through.

After reading various articles online and birth stories and even watching a documentary I feel that I am prepared to attempt a natural childbirth {note that I said attempt, in the event of complications or pain that is beyond my current comprehension, drugs will be considered}. I have spoken with my OB about it and she is incredibly supportive. We are in agreement that medical intervention is always on the table if there is truly a need for it. With that I feel good about my decision and pending delivery.

Due to my rural location I will not be able to take actual classes on the Bradley Method, but I feel that Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way offers a lot of great exercises for me to be practice now. Incidentally yoga provides great relaxation techniques that are very similar to the Bradley Method of relaxation that I already practice regularly.

Excerpts from the book:

Once medication begins... the choices slip through your fingers.

Responsibility belongs to those who will ultimately live with the consequences of decisions made during birthing – the parents.

...no one has ever been pregnant forever and the baby knows when it is time to be born.

There are undeniably strong sensations in labor which are felt by every woman, but whether these are described as pain is a subjective matter which depends a lot on expectations and experiences.

Drugs and medical technology can be enormously beneficial when used to take care of real complications.

Our technology needs to be used selectively or rather specifically in response to a problem.

Thoughts on Dormers

The closer we get to having our baby, the more I start to think about parenting type things. Things that have never crossed my mind before.

For instance last week I was looking out the nursery window and it dawned on me that I once lived in a house that had dormers. I was between the ages of 8 and 10 and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to knock the screen out of the window and crawl out and sit on the roof. What 8-year-old thinks that is a good idea??? I have no idea if this was my own adventurous spirit or if a friend encouraged me to do it. I do remember that my friend and I did this on a regular basis.

So now I am worried. We have dormers in both upstairs bedrooms AND the bathroom. I can just envision our kid {or kids} crawling out the window and walking down the roof to the other bedroom. I mean it was something I did as a kid, so what's to say our kid won't do something similar? 

This past weekend I told my parents about my penchant for sitting on the roof as a kid and asked if they knew I had done such things. They had no idea. So the good news is that if my kids do climb out windows and hang out on the roof I will probably be clueless about it...

When I was 10-12 I graduated from sitting on rooftops to climbing out windows and jumping off of the roof at my best friend's house in the middle of the night. We would wander around our small town before sneaking back and using a bicycle as a ladder to climb back onto a lower level of the house and back inside through a second floor window.

When I was growing up, my mom used to tell me stories of her adventures – she has quite a few of her own. I don't know if her stories made me more willing to try things or if I just had a natural compulsion to be adventurous. I never did the things she did, but I did plenty of my own stupid things. At least we have several years until we truly have to worry about kids getting brave {stupid} enough to climb out on rooftops... right?

Greeting Cards: Baby Showers

Thank you to my sister and best friend for throwing me an amazing baby shower.

*This is the ninth in my series of twelve "I Love You More" cards   
that I have designed and will be posting throughout the year.
 
© Cheree Moore

Baby Shower

Saturday was our baby shower for Jack. My sister did a great job of hosting. I love that I have such a creative family... I wonder where those genes came from {kidding, thank you mom and dad for passing along your creativity to us}.

While Angela was busy decorating on Friday night, Robert wandered downstairs and said, "I thought we weren't decorating the whole house?" I don't think Angela is capable of throwing a party without going all out. Of course, it looked great and I appreciate all of her trouble.

We had a potluck style BBQ. Many thanks to all of our family members for bringing such wonderful dishes. Everything tasted superb. 

Thank you to my best friend, Kristalynne, for coming up with the games. The trivia was hilarious.

Examples: 

What was the best way to calm Daniel as a baby?
A) Take the car apart
B) Build a deck
C) Read a calculus book
D) Hold him and rock him

What was Cheree's first word?
A) Yoga
B) Dada
C) Mountain
D) Daniel

We had such a fun time and enjoyed seeing everyone who was able to make it while missing those who couldn't come. We are looking forward to introducing Baby Jack to all of our loved ones in the very near future.

You're Looking Swell...

We just made it home from a wonderful weekend spent with family and friends. My sister and best friend from high school threw us an amazing shower. We feel very blessed that so many people that love us came out to celebrate the coming arrival of baby Jack. Tomorrow I will blog about our wonderful shower, but wanted to write a quick post about a recent pregnancy-related experience...

A couple of weeks ago, I took my wedding rings off because I was noticing some mild swelling in my hands. The rings still fit, but I didn't want to run into an issue of not being able to get them off my hand. 

Now fast forward to Friday... we were getting ready to leave for Nashville for the weekend and I noticed my rings sitting on my bathroom counter next to the sink. In my mind I thought that maybe I should take them with me just in case someone broke into our house while we were gone and stole them {unlikely but the thought did cross my mind}. So I slipped my rings onto my slightly swollen baby finger and we headed to Nashville.

During the course of the weekend I proceeded to move my rings back and forth between my ring finger and my baby finger – sometimes it just felt too snug on my ring finger and sometimes it felt too loose on my baby finger.

This morning I actually woke up with really swollen hands and struggled to pull the rings off of my ring finger. Throughout the course of the day I proceeded to experience THE WORST SWELLING of my life. It was so bad that when we left my sister's house I discovered that neither pairs of my shoes fit. Boo.

We drove to Murfreesboro to visit with Daniel's dad before heading home. When we arrived at his dad's house, we went inside and I mentioned the swelling to Wesley – about this time I looked down at my baby finger and realized that my engagement ring {the one with the diamonds} was GONE. I tried not to panic but abruptly ran outside to tell Daniel and search our car.

Daniel and I looked everywhere that we could think of and even called my brother-in-law and asked him to look around their house as well. All of this was to no avail. We finally gave up our search and hoped for the best while we finished our visit with Wesley.

We were really hoping the ring would be somewhere in the car, but on the drive home Daniel asked if I thought we should replace the ring in the event that we couldn't find it. I told him we could cross that bridge if we came to it.

Once we were home, Daniel meticulously unloaded the car, starting with the big boxes in the back. As we got closer to the front, he went through every gift bag and open container that the ring might have fallen into. Thankfully it turned out that the ring was sitting loose on the back seat – it probably slipped off my finger when I had reached back to pet Sophie.

I am so thankful that we found that ring. It is now safely stored for the duration of my pregnancy...

52 Books: Book 40

Last week's book was Gloryland by Shelton Johnson. It is the story of Elijah Yancy who is born on Emancipation Day in 1863. He is the son of sharecroppers who live in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Unfortunately they quickly learn that in the South emancipation did not mean equality.

Elijah's background is interesting in that he is both black and of Indian descent. As a teenager he witnesses a lynching and soon after he must leave the South in order to be spared his own life. He walks until he reaches Nebraska where he ends up joining the U.S. Army as part of the Calvary. 

Elijah struggles with being a part of an army that requires him to subdue Native Americans in the West and then sends him to the Philippines to help quell a rebellion. In both cases he realizes he is helping to take away land and freedoms from strangers – freedoms he has never experienced himself.

At the end of the story Elijah is sent to Yosemite to help patrol the newly created National Park. It is the first time he feels at home and that he has found a source of personal freedom. Along the way he realizes that he has lived most of his life being angry and he is looking for a way to leave that anger behind him.

This was a very good book though some components of it were fairly graphic – I had a particularly hard time reading the description of the lynching.

Excerpts from the book:

...He once told me that if you have to ask for something that was already yours, then you'd given it up. Up to that day Daddy believed as if he had rights, but he died outside that courthouse trying to claim what nobody should have to ask for.

When you're afraid, everything is clear, too clear, and the fear seems like something living, the shadow of everything you're seeing and feeling... I was afraid of everything and nothing, especially the nothing that's a hole living inside when you got no one near who cares if you live or die.

Seems like to get something in this world, you gotta take it from someone else.

If Anger is a place to live in, then I think 1898 is the year I moved all the way there. but when you're a good citizen of Anger, you're living alone and there ain't no church, no God to hear you raging, and no family near enough to get singed by your heat...

No one wants to die. No one wants to be forgotten, and to be forgotten is to die. maybe that's why I pray so much, so God can learn to pick my voice out of the noise he's got to listen to, so he can remember my voice.

I lived in Anger so long I forgot that there were other places you could live. I didn't notice that I had no neighbors and no friends. I didn't notice that being alone was a place I'd built with my own hands. When you're a good citizen of Anger, you're stuck inside you, feeling sorry for yourself cause there ain't nobody around to take up the slack.

What components of your cars air conditioner should not look like...

We had a pretty uneventful weekend. Sometimes it is nice to just chill. We made a little headway on the nursery – adding shelves to one of the closets. There is still much to do.

On Sunday Daniel worked on our Subaru's air conditioner. It has some kind of leak and over the last several weeks he has been on a mission to find the leak and fix it. He finally decided to replace the condenser and evaporator {he will have to correct me if I get any of this wrong}.

Anyways, the evaporator is located behind the glove box. Yesterday he removed the evaporator to install the new one and this is what he discovered:

Dirt and leaves and fur and who knows what is clogging everything up {on the right}! Compared to the new one {on the left} the old looks like it has been dragged through mud. We have no idea how it could be so gross since it is a closed system that is behind the glove box {inside the car, separate from where the engine is}. 

It really looks like it could be from a vehicle that had been through a flood, but that makes no sense because none of the the interior looks like it had been through a flood. We are really scratching our heads on this one.

Tonight he will finish up the project – something about recharging the system. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will fix our A/C for good.