Weekending

We spent this past (unusually warm for January) weekend at Table Rock Lake with our dearest friends. It was an easy get-out-of town filled with quality time, food, laughs and beautiful Ozark scenery. Over the past several years, getaways like this have seemed too far and few, but as the boys are easier to travel with and the husband's work life seems to have reached nice equilibrium, we are very happy to be seeing and doing more, together. 

Table Rock Lake is about an hour and a half Northeast from our home. The drive to is just beautiful.  Every season that I have taken the drive has offered a different but equally beautiful landscape with so much to see. The hibernating deciduous dominant hillsides were bare but their naked branches allowed for the clusters their evergreen friends, and the white tops of the sycamore trees to pop out. On the drive up, I saw three eagles roosting on the highest branches of a sleeping oak, and on the drive home the sunset sky-show was a very memorable one. 

Starting as a wispy display of golds and grays with brushes of peaches and blue, pink and purple met deep red and eventually settled into a disorganized rainbow- stunning behind the blackened horizon.  Every few miles as we wound around bends in the road, the colors morphed and deepen and lightened depending on our vantage. It was a lovely end to a lovely weekend, and a great start to the week. 

Wishing you all a colorful week ahead. 

xo  

Circle of Life

I'm on my way out the door but wanted to post a few photos that I found from around the change of season several weeks ago.  We are expecting the fall leaves to be taken by the wind in the coming days and for the temperatures to plummet.  I don't lament the changes in weather or the loss of seasons, simply because knowing change means that you are alive, and being alive is good.

We lost a chicken this weekend.  Blondie was preyed upon under the Full Frost Moon on Thursday night.  Out of sheer laziness and a false-sense of security, I did not latch the gate to the coop before crawling into bed.  I feel like an asshole, and I'm sad because we won't see Blondie run across the yard with her cute Zoe Deschanel-jogging-gait.  She was willing to let us hold her on occasion and was the sweetest surrogate mother to the chicks that she hatched and came along with to brood late in the Spring.  She wasn't even supposed to stay with us, but since we weren't certain the hens she had roosted with at her home coop would take her back, and we took such a liking to her- she stayed. We will miss collecting her eggs, and I'll probably frame a few photos of her for around the home.  Cherishing, especially, this last one from the time I was home alone and Blondie wondered in through the back door and I let her look around until I thought we were close to the 'dropping a turd' zone, then corralled her back outside.  The boys loved her, and so did I.

On Saturday, I piled a plate high with noodles and bolognese for Blondie's Brood- a sort of "Sorry I got your mom killed," feast.  I imagined they were searching for her when I saw that they were foraging on the far side of the yard which they had never visited to my recollection- which was where the trail of Blondie's feathers led.  Truth be told, I am freighted to happen upon her remains but have a sense of responsibility to find her all the same.

It's all very circle-of-life- I know that she was nourishment for other living things, and I hope this all doesn't read as if I feel that Blondie's death was some sort of tragedy- I don't feel that way at all, but I do miss her- in the same way that I will miss this season but will never mourn that it passed.

Eagle Eureka Tango Blue

We hit the road for a little day trip around the area this past Saturday, to visit one of our favorite restaurants in the area: a little Latin American eatery called Caribe in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  We actually ate there the day we decided to get married five years ago to the day: November 1, 2009. Caribe also happens to be where we unofficially had our first 'date,' over seven years ago.  It is a special place for us and since we had the day to play- we headed over, and made a stop at War Eagle Mill on the way, then visited Blue Springs after a wonderful lunch.  

The boys were just getting over a 10 day long run of croup (which is pretty exhausting for all involved- but we got through it!) so we treaded lightly- avoiding halloween festivities. Lou and Jaspy did, however, don some pretty last minute (and adorable) ninja get ups that I pieced together Halloween Day and asked to wear that day as well. They were pretty wound up after days of resting at home watching Paw Patrol and My Little Pony, their favorite cartoons of the moment.  So getting some fresh fall air apart from neighborhood walks, was a relief to say the least.

National Midwifery Week / Ode to JC

This was our first time taking our Lou outside, two chilly December mornings after his quiet water birth in our kitchen. 

Our midwife (a quality she will never lose when given an introduction) is retiring after this year. I just couldn't feel any more honored to have been one of the many families that Birthroot Midwifery helped (for both sons' births.) Jennifer Creel is a sassy lady, with endless invaluable knowledge (she's kind of a science genius) of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding that she now pours into her natural parenting store, Terra Tots.  She will be moving on from doing the tireless service that midwives provide for expectant families, to providing this really amazing community place where people can learn and shop and be supported.  Where not only can you purchase high quality tried and true cloth diapers, baby wearing apparatuses, non-toxic toys, organic apparel, and herbals from the apothecary, there is an abundance of information that is vital for new families.  Education is really at the heart of this lady's life work.  Without her, and without the care she gave us surrounding the birth of our family- and does still today, she taught us SO. MUCH- we wouldn't be the parents we are today.   

If you had told me 10 years ago, "Nico, you are going to give birth twice at your house and go on to breastfeed for a collective 54 months (and going)" I'd have asked you to share some of whatever it was you were smoking.  

I didn't see a lot of breastfeeding growing up. I had a lot of younger siblings who were all born at the hospital (one of which I witnessed at age 12, at a birth center.) It wasn't until I un-expectantly became pregnant for the first time at age 22 with a guy I had not been with for very long, that a nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood (who would 8 years later, attend the birth of my second son) told me about midwives, home birth, and la leche league.  The care for that pregnancy was very limited. The situation wasn't ideal, and I was very unprepared and overwhelmed. I felt terrible: headaches, cramps, malaise- not the typical pregnancy symptoms- like something wasn't right. I sobbed to nurses at an OB clinic, begging to let me see a doctor and they would not see me until after the first trimester because I was using state insurance, and was sent away. I miscarried at the Emergency Room just before the end of that first trimester and even then, no one could tell me that that was what was happening. They said "threatened" "take advil" "come back in a few days" "bloodwork." Years later, I found myself researching and deducted that what had occurred was a blighted ovum, wishing the medical workers might have offered more information. When I returned to the same OB's office where I had begged to be seen, I was encouraged to use a birth control that led to some pretty adverse emotional side effects and when I asked the doctor about the risks of taking the prescription, he told me pointblank that "the biggest risk to you, right now, is a healthy pregnancy." I never returned.

Somehow, through friends, I learned that the nurse practitioner, Paula, that I loved to see at Planned Parenthood had started independently caring for women out of Birthroot Midwifery, which would be where I would eventually receive prenatal care with, Jennifer, for both of my sons' pregnancies. 

The office was referred to as "the Hut" which always evoked a very primitive image, but when I began to visit for lady-care, I found that it is, in fact, a small professional clinic. When you enter, the room is open with a large comfy couch, a rocking chair and a recliner, communally arranged in the center of the room with a kitchen area stocked with every kind of herbal tea you might desire, and that brightly colored post prandial test glucose beverage. There is a tall shelf of lending library of books, next to a child's play area of wooden trains. There are belly casts on the walls, a few potted plants, and a local artist's tribute to Jennifer's second child, Elleya, who left the physical world at age 4. There is a layer-chicken coop just outside the sliding glass doors. There are two exam rooms with certificates hanging on the walls, alongside black and white images of birth scenes and beautiful postpartum bodies.  There is a phlebotomy station and there are biohazard containers. There are fetal heart dopplers and ultrasound transmission oil, as well as fetoscopes and stethoscopes. There are finger pricks for blood glucose and hemoglobin monitoring, and there is a microscope with wet mount slides. There is a full bathroom with a scale and urinalysis reagent strips, there are latex gloves and charts and blood pressure cuffs, there is experience and knowledge and love and care within those walls, and in the corner of the open room are hundreds of photos and cards of babies and families that Jennifer has helped over the 16+ years that she has served as a midwife. 

The Midwife Model of care is a very family centered, empowering one. In essence, the family is encouraged to have an active role in the outcome of their birth experience. No question is turned away, and the midwives do their best to listen, educate and to honor the wishes of the family. We were always encouraged to learn about the birth process as well as the postpartum period, and make preparations for both the best possible and the least ideal scenarios, an area obstetrician backing it all. Our visits were the better part of (and sometimes exceeding) an hour and we were provided natural childbirth classes that were immensely informative. (They actually offer natural childbirth classes at Terra Tots, now!) 

Midwives leave their families and are sometimes gone for days at a time helping women welcome their babies.  They miss birthdays, and Christmases and school plays and soccer games, they sleep on floors and don't bathe for days. They stay for the hard parts, and see the best and the worst, all while putting the mother and baby before themselves. They have to be their best selves when they are teetering on the edge- and they have to reel it in and push through, and go home to their families who miss and need them too. Their hearts break when things don't go the way everyone imagined, and do their best to support however they can. They are people who are expected to be faultless, and they dig deep, and they do incredible things. They serve their communities while educating, empowering families, and changing lives.  Lives like mine.   

Thank You, Jennifer.  We Love You.
Happy National Midwifery Week. 

xo~ N