The Life And Death Of A Friend

Recently, a good friend of mine died. She was a mother of two, a fierce and insightful being that decided to take her own life. Two weeks after the horror and shock of this event I have been left in a pondering stage of grief.  Thinking about what all she lost by leaving us to soon and what I still have to learn about her. I also think about odd things like what she is missing by not having a body on this earth any longer. How she doesn't have to deal with this crazy world we live in anymore. The two mass shootings in the US this week, who to vote for president next year, what exactly climate change will do to us in Tulsa. All those intense and complicated things she does not have to deal with any longer.

She created a ripple in our community. I would not call her a community leader, but deeply embedded in the alternative circles we both tended to hang out in. She was an artist and a healer and shared her talents with us through tarot readings, massage, kundalini yoga and sexual awareness workshops for women. She thought it was a tragedy that there were some women that had never experienced an orgasm and wanted to help all women claim this magical right.

Our relationship was separate from any circle. We did not meet through friends, it was at an art opening where we recognized that spark of commonality. Our kids became fast friends and that made us get closer. We bonded over living in the NW and being transplants to the mid-south. we shared hippi alternative view points. Our values were aligned in connecting ourselves and our kids to nature, eating fermented foods, making art and living a life in the counter culture.

At her memorial they had on display some of her things. In the eulogy our minister spoke of her being an avid collector. Having real style and sensuality. One of her friends was quoted with saying "It was like being with an angel who got kicked out of heaven for making a lewd joke." That was her in all her glory.

I also wonder what I could have done to prevent this from happening. I know it was not in my hands but I do think of the ways I was passive about her addiction issues. How I waited for her to come to me instead of being an active helper. How I watched her family go through transition after transition and felt paralyzed to help them. I saw her get more in debt and feel helpless in her situation. Held captive by the restrains of capitalism, being a parent and a free spirit.

By Jenny Armitage

At her eulogy I learned so much about her history I never knew. There are still many mysteries that now will only be brought to light with the stories of the ones who knew her. This experience has made me value all the parts of my story and how I don't want to wait till I am dead for people to know who I really am.

We are left with holding onto her family, her loved ones she left behind. Her daughter and son have to have a community of mothers and I am now one of them. I will continue to learn her story and not let her life fade into the past.

Tales of The Part Time Working Mom

This seems like the ideal set up. In a lot of ways it is. Part time working moms get the best of both worlds. We get a fist full of life outside the home and a baby and kid to coo over all afternoon when work is finished. We can wipe clean our workday and see our kids with fresh eyes and perspective as they enter into the wider world beyond our home cocoon. 

More income is coming into the household, not a lot of income in my case but something to help with the daily round. My kids get to see me more then they would if I worked full time. I actually miss them in a day verses being so overloaded with parenting I am ready to ditch as soon as my co-parent arrives home.  I have time to pick them up from school or day care, hear about the day and go home to some play, dinner prep, down time and nursing. I get to role model for my girls a confident mama in the world taking on big projects with her family alongside her. Recently Sweetpea told me she wanted to work at the Botanic garden when she grew up. I have a reason to get dressed up in the morning, wash my nice clothes and throw a huge spit rag over it all in hopes I won't be blurped on before I get to work.

Our minds are filled with the details of our jobs as well as the details that make the engine of a family running steady. My partner shares the parenting load more. Home life and work life are split up and we both play an integral role in each place. A level of respect and harmony floats around us when I have a moment to notice it. 

I have others looking after my young ones who love, respect and care for them. I use the mantra it takes a village to raise a child and trust my babies are taken care of and its good for them to experience life and culture with more then just me and daddy. There is energy in the part time working mamas home. An energy of accomplishment, being present and a little bit of chaos. Two non-profit jobs cannot hire a cleaning person so we settle for a bit of dirt and clutter that gets scurried away when we have a party or friends over for dinner. 

Part time work has a lot of pros but like most life choices it is also not as dreamy as it seems.  The part time worker is not paid as well. We get no benefits except the benefit of more time with our family. We forgo a lot of self-time for work time. Creativity is an after thought that lives burning in my heart and only get touched upon occasionally. As a women and mother I often put the needs of my family or job first and suffer from not being authentic to the creative well within. Exercise only sometimes happens and usually involves taking an unwilling kid along. As a part time worker my experience is so unique. So many other part time workers have such a varied experience. Some work from home, or have to take the office with them everywhere. Some are on call, some have their own business. It’s a hard way to relate to others experience when the experience can look so vastly different. We are all united on having kids and making some money at the work we do but the similarities often stop there.

 There is no handy acronym for the part time working mom, not SAHM or working mom, you are kind of a hybrid. Finding good, affordable childcare that caters to working parents as well as SAHM is rough too. Full time day cares are too expensive and not what I want but part time day cares like mothers day out only sort of work and are full of SAHM so you feel a little isolated as a worker in their midst. 

Going from SAHM to working mom was a huge shift as well. I constantly compare my experience with my first to my second and try to measure up to what I did the first time around. I cannot be there for everything with Little Pickle and it is heart breaking. At the same time it is relieving to have more income and knowing she is being well taken care of by others so I can also do important work in the world.

As a part time working mom you feel the urge and pressure to do everything a SAHM does but half the time to do it. You want to take on the PTA and volunteer projects at the school, you want to make muffins and have long kid directed play times after school. You have the expectation that you can get all the housework done and dinner ready every evening. But there is just not enough time for it all. So it happens in chunks. Chunks of self-care used for writing dates and calling up dear friends to talk. Going to interesting events around town. Time to snuggle up with your husband and watch a show in the 2 hours between when the kids fall asleep and when it’s your time to turn in. Chunks of time and patience are key to well being. 

I salute you fellow PTWM! You are kicking butt on so many levels, now stop and give your self a much needed bath and book date.          

Working Mama

Last Friday I put my baby into the loving arms of her Cece and pulled away from the parking lot crying my eyes out. I am now officially a working mama again. I spent all week prepping for the day. Having stress dreams. Trying to pump everyday, buying that just in case can of formula, and generally worrying about missing my little one, leaving her when she is so young, the guilt, etc. etc. So yes there were a lot of tears and fears but Little Pickle ultimately was fine. She was with grandma all day and grandma did beautifully. Filling me in with reports about feeding and pooping and smiling awake time.

I dutifully pumped my milk with two breaks in an 8-hour period. Though I was only able to pump 12 ounces at the end of the day. Sense I was not sure how much she would eat when I was away I felt like a failure. The added guilt of being a mom of two and comparing how I did it with the first did not help. I went back to work when Sweetpea was 2 ½ and breast-fed her till then. Though it was great being able to be full time with Sweetpea as a baby it was also super hard on our family. We were barely making it and stressed often about how we would be able to live on one income. I vowed to do things differently with our second child and I also already had this great job going into pregnancy this time around.

The milk production was also fine. I came home and had several bags of milk still in the fridge. 12 ounces is about what she eats when she is away from me. Success!!

By Alison Bechdel

 Day two was easier. She was home with daddy, I knew she would have enough milk it was ok. I still cried when I left her but I was not pining for my baby the way I felt the first day. It was kind of nice to miss her and be so excited to see her at the end of the day. When I got home I rubbed her soft elbows and knees, I smelled her head and breast-fed her. I strapped her on and had a dance party with Sweetpea while daddy went and had some self-time. I bought easy food to make for dinner those two days so there would be no resentments about dinner being made. I also ate a protein bar and chugged water on the way home to make sure I was in a good and ready place upon arrival.

By Jenn Borton

Work was busy and easy to take over my mind. When it got slow later in the day I kept my eye on the prize, I am making money so my family can live, so we can not get into anymore debt so we can pay the bills, get groceries and car gas. This made me happy to know I can provide for them. It is also good for me to be a part of something out side the home. To tend to my creative mind in programming at the garden, to go for quiet walks on the property, to be the PR face of a place I believe in and get to make people excited about. My work is not always glamorous, it does not pay amazingly well, sometimes its really annoying answering the same questions over and over but it still meets a creative need within me and is also ever changing making me more inventive and flexible.

I staggered going back to work 15 hours in August then 30 onward. We are on the cusp of having all of Little Pickles childcare worked out for fall, which leads me to feeling more grounded about it. There is an ocean of change occurring within our home but we are good at change, we are an adaptable family. Before she was born I saw Little Pickle weaving her way smoothly into our family culture. I read about early sleep teaching and had a plan to be more relaxed with this one. Our Little Pickle has done exceedingly well working by our side. She knows where she belongs and I am so thankful for this.

To V-bac or Not to V-bac

I am 3 1/2 weeks out from my due date. I have grown progressively bigger and bigger reaching epic proportions, my belly hangs low, I am feeling some of the tired and queasy feelings from the first tri-master creep in as I wait for the baby to come. I am perfectly happy to have this baby do a full gestation, there is still more to do like cleaning, hospital bag, food calendar, car seat installation but it would also be fine if baby came tomorrow. I would be prepared either way. I am a seasoned mom I know what to expect in the beginning and just how hard it all is. Its nice doing this the second time around, less fear of the un-known, more confidence a plan laid out before me that I know could change at any time.

I used to think I was an intuitive person. I seemed to have a somewhat psychic sense of when things were going to happen, an inner dial attuned to the subtleties of the future and what lay ahead. All of this went out the window when I had Sweetpea. Leading up to her due date and the 2 weeks she gestated past her due date I thought, "Today is the day I will birth my child. It will happen like this, this is the way." I got in the birthy zone, I had lots of contractions but the contractions would always die down and peter out. Nothing was like I thought it would be. The whole birth was a tale, which I have told earlier in this blog, complete with a hospital induction (cytotec), many hours of painful active labor and finally a 15 min. rush to surgery during transition.

My cesarean was probably the best cesarean one could have. It was sad to have to do it but it all went really smoothly. I was with a nurse I liked and had been with sense the beginning. It was so quick! 15 min. after being in labor for two days! They took her out cleaned her up and handed her to me within 5 min. She was with me the whole time; daddy was their and my midwife. There are some pictures; baby was healthy and nursed quickly like a champ after self-attaching in our room post birth. It was a little sad not to have daddy cut the cord but we were so in the present moment with getting her safely out we hardly noticed.

This time around we have two birth plans, one for cesarean and one for a natural labor. (Both include daddy cutting the cord.) I have to be open to both and I fluctuate daily on this. Some days I am fine with having a cesarean. My eye is on the prize of having a healthy baby in the end. I believe in my body and know I have no real idea of how it will go. Other days I feel like a rebellious teen ready to jump on anyone even considering giving me a cesarean. I am ready to fight tooth and nail to give birth in the most animalistic way I can think of. There is nothing tidy and organized about birth. It is smelly, raw, emotional and in your face. No matter where you do it, it is the most powerful and animal act we modern womyn get to do.

Judy Chicago

 The first time I filled myself up with stories of women giving birth orgasmically in their beds at home. This was my ideal vision of birthing. It still is and it is not what we can do right now. We cannot afford a home birth and so we picked the best v-bac doctor we could find. I am considered a good candidate and she thinks I will be able to have a successful v-bac. In order to v-bac with her I have to naturally go into labor by 40 weeks. This is the kicker that scares me the most, Sweetpea came a full 2 weeks after her due date. I will try to go for a full 40 weeks but I also have to be ok with hospital policy. Grrrrr. We did hire an awesome doula that I believe will be a good liaison between the hospital and me and daddy's vision for labor. I don't want to get my hopes up too much though. As a good friend affirmed for me "hold on tightly, let go lightly." I will carry this affirmation with me into the birthing rooms of the hospital, as I fight to let my baby come naturally and be ok with whatever needs to happen.

What a challenging place and yet a growthful one too.

The Beginning: Tales of the First Tri-Master

First of all, I am thankful. I am thankful that after months of trying and years of considering we were able to conceive. The answer of weather we would have a second child has been answered. I am thankful that I got to prepare for this one and make a fully conscience decision that I am ready to be a two kid mom. I also see how my Sweetpea is really ready to be a big sister.

Next we got pregnant. The first time this happened was a surprise. Being in my senior year of college I thought I would follow the laid out path for me of MFA programs, artist residency, and maybe a few years down the line start a family. The evening I found out I was pregnant, I reached for the third pregnancy test and again, seeing a positive sign, I really freaked out. We could have been in a lot worse of a situation, I had a stable, committed and happy relationship with the dad. I was 28, not totally a spring chicken. I had a lot of really cool experiences under my belt already. I decided to be ready, then motherhood came flooding in as the biggest adventure of my life.

5 years down the line I took my pregnancy test in the afternoon and jumped for joy! Leaping across my bathroom in a Tigger type fashion. When Sweetpea woke up from her nap I told her, we squealed around the house. Then I patiently waited for two more hours till daddy got home from work. He was over the moon we all were, it was just getting to the point where I was starting to wonder about my fertility, then bam it happened. The baby waited till we moved into our new home. We conceived soon after moving in.

After a week or two of blissful excitement my little bubble popped. Pregnancy and me are not good friends. My body is not a big fan of sharing all its resources. This shows up in long bouts of violent vomiting and hours of nausea. The pattern I developed was eat a little, sleep a little, eat a little sleep a little all day long. I was in survival mode, only doing the bare minimum to get by. Daddy really stepped up to the plate, taking over a lot of Sweetpea's routine on top of working. I would show up to work and try to not vomit or fall asleep for 5 hours. Then go pick up my daughter from pre-school and spend the rest of the afternoon/evening on the couch.

I felt like I was doing a crap job with Sweetpea but she seemed to understand. When I would start randomly crying she would come over and pet my head. We watched a lot of my little pony.  I was eating like a small child so that worked well in feeding her. The vomiting started at 4 1/2 weeks for me, the only solace it provided was proof that my pregnancy was sticking and I was less likely to have a miscarriage. Though that might be something they tell new sick mothers just to make them feel better.

After days of not being able to stop hacking I decided enough was enough, medicate me. I was really anti-meds with Sweetpea. I struggled along through my whole pregnancy believing I was doing best by my baby. Maybe it is best, but this time I was not going to mess around. I had a vacation coming up I refused to be completely sick for all of it. I also have just felt more relaxed in general this pregnancy. I don't have the time to notice every little change.  I am too busy trying to keep up with my 4 year old.

I went to my first doctor's appointment and got prescribed the generic version of Zofran an anti-nausea medication. Lucky for me it worked! I still felt pregnant, had bouts of nausea and even occasional vomiting, but not nearly as much as before. I was finally able to eat without having to take a nap right afterword to keep from vomiting. The best part is I could just feel like a normal person in my body for some of the day.

I also kept this as perspective; I am building a human brain! This part is so incredible it’s hard to explain. I can't believe I have the capability to make a brain. I am crafting one of the most incredible things that nature has provided to humans. What an ordinary and extraordinary act to be pregnant. It makes me feel more connected to humanity, growing a life force is so fierce.

This is defiantly my second time around. The first time I was walking on eggs shells sure every little thing I did would affect the baby. Now I know it take s a lot to screw things up. If I stick to the tried and true resources I have a sense that this kid will be fine. I am already in good communication with "Little Pickle Lollipop" (the womb name Sweetpea and I came up with.) I gently remind the baby within how much we like food and how loved they already are. I also do a lot of deep belly rubbing, this seems to help with nausea and keeps me feeling more connected to the wee one swimming around inside of me.

I am now at the end of my first tri-master and am noticing a marked difference. Like the stages of babyhood pregnancy is an ever-changing state that you just have to role with. I can't predict how I will feel day to day but I surely remember the amazing thing that happens at the end. There is nothing like holding your little one for the first time and hearing their voice. Knowing my precious baby will be at the end of the roller coaster ride of pregnancy makes it worth it.

Kids & Stuff

As an activist and penny pincher for most of my life I have figured out a lot about not being materialistic, making do and up cycling most things. After becoming a parent I had to figure out a new relationship to stuff. There was all the baby stuff, needs verses wants I am still unclear of, we got almost all of it used but still accumulated a lot more things in our lives. Then it became toys, we love toys as a family and daddy and I kept a lot of childhood stuff we eagerly have passed onto Sweetpea. Then presents from family and friends just kept adding up. It worked in our favor that we moved so often so we could not accumulate too much but still our stuff factor is higher then I would like.

I am not only talking about what we own but also what my kid desires. Daddy and I recently had a very different take on what desire and stuff should look like in our lives. Daddy says that there will always be stuff my daughter will want in this world. He thinks we should support her desire to want things and be perfectly happy not getting any of it. His philosophy is she can always ask for it. This falls under the "we have integrity to set a firm boundary and stick to it style of parenting. "Also, she can desire all she wants knowing that she will not necessarily get whatever she has momentarily attached to.

Daddy and Sweetpea on their Saturdays together often head to the mall. They usually window-shop and spend spare change on the little rides there. They look at everything, she asks for it and for the most part he says no. Then they move on. She is so used to this interaction now that it does not seem to faze her that she will not get most of what she is asking for.

I never take Sweetpea to the mall. This window-shopping would drive me bonkers. Her asking for everything she comes into contact with overwhelms me. I only go to stores with a specific purpose and let her know ahead of time what we will be getting and that is it. She is not confused by our different styles and can get pleasure out of both experiences. 

We recently ran into a divergent point around some dolls. Sweetpea desired dolls that resembled tweaked out partygoer divas complete with gogo boots. I deemed the dolls to adult like for Sweetpea to be playing with at her age, daddy agreed, but seeing how much she liked them, printed out a picture for her to carry around of the dolls as if she had them. I was not sure how I felt about this but tried to be open and see what would happen. Would only sort of having them lead to her more greatly wanting them or would it curb the obsession? After a week of carrying the picture everywhere I decided to hide it. I was done having conversations about these bazaar dolls I was not ready to have my 4 year old playing with. Once the picture was gone she has not asked for it sense or brought up the dolls. 

Kaya' Bedroom James Mollison

  This was an experiment, mixing our two styles of parenting around stuff, in this case my "get rid of the temptation and the desire will go away" approach seemed to work best. Though I really appreciate my husbands chill nature around objects and desire. He can be very practical and light about it. Growing up I felt a burden to really want something in order to get it. I remember feeling guilty if I said in the store I wanted something and then when I came home not wanting it anymore and not knowing what to do. This happened more in my teen years but still brings up that fresh confusion around how crazy our culture is around stuff and the need for it.

How much do we actually need? I feel the desire for things now even stronger with the closing date for our first home approaching. Suddenly I am staring at websites looking at furniture just a few months ago I would never have considered a necessity. I know my little one is watching me react to stuff and the importance or lack of importance of it. I want her to see an un-materialistic and happy family valuing togetherness over money and objects. Still she lives in this culture that just seems to be getting more and more obsessed with us personalizing and buying everything, ahem, the new cokes with names on them, makes me gag. 

By Katrin Wells-Stein

Ultimately I want a healthy, happy kid who can read between the lines when she is being sold a bunch of crap she knows she does not need. I also want to be flexible enough myself to remember what it was like being a kid and saving up my allowance for weeks to buy a Barbie doll. I remember the feeling of excitement getting an American Girls Catalog and leafing through every page. I turned into a radical person who listened to riot girl, was self educated and traveled the world. I don't think Sweetpea needs to see the world through my adult eyes.  I will watch out for her and these more and more garish versions of kid’s stuff they seem to come up with but will at the same time not trample on her desires. It’s a fine balance as is all of parenting.

Breaking The TV Habit

Dear readers, I will level with you. We watch TV. Media is a part of our world. I use TV to unwind and to connect with friends, family and my sweet hubby. In parenting I use it to get a few moments all to myself during the day without interruption. I am by no means an expert in the department of choosing weather to have my kid watch TV or not. I am striving to reach more of a happy medium with it in my life. I imagine a utopic place where my kid has a gaggle of pals always around to keep her company and I have a gaggle of friends to connect with, village style, so TV would be completely irrelevant. I would love to have this village and have figured it out some in my adult life. However that village is partly long distance and not always around. The habit of TV is still prevalent.  I watched TV as a kid, a lot of which was un-monitored. Sometimes it was happy memories, of fun puppets and story lines. Sometimes it was very violent and scary, lots of it I did not understand and had the images stay with me, disturbing me as a sensitive young one, sending me into haunted, unsafe feelings that were hard to digest.

 When Sweetpea was little I worried about TV, a lot more then her daddy did. TV was monitored in his household, with lots of rules about what he could watch and when. This made his rebellion even stronger. His attitude became, "I get to watch what I want when I want." I have read all the theories out there about kids having too much media. The harmful affects of low attention spans, expecting to be entertained all the time, also the way media affects our developing human brains. I did not want that for my kid. Then we had her and life continued on. I started noticing how I got a much needed break when my little one was transfixed on a show, how I could carve out that very important me time when she was completely engaged in something else.

I felt like we kept it in check. She never watched a lot and mostly TV that I deemed age appropriate and worth watching, not just any children's programming. Still it did not always sit well with me. I watched her get completely absorbed in something, the whole mouth open, staring that I had always looked down upon in some of the kids I watched as a nanny. Now here it was, my kid, looking like a fish glued to a screen. There are many things I have had to let go of in terms of the "ideal world" and my parenting, this one was hard to swallow but felt like an essential way for me to stay being myself and be a happy parent.

As Sweetpea has gotten older her engagement with media has changed. She never wants to sit through a whole movie, if I let her go for as long as she wants in front of the TV she gets up all done after 3, 20 minute shows. I like seeing her self monitoring, knowing when she is done. We have hit some kind of balance, Daddy had faith that if we exposed her to media she would not want to engage with it all the time, that it would just be another thing going on and she could make good self decisions on weather or not to be a part of it. For the most part this has worked.

Then I re-picked up a book I read and reviewed earlier in this blog, "Heaven on Earth, A Handbook for Parent's of Young Children." In this book Sharifa Oppenheimer lays out the Waldorf philosophy of keeping kids media free. She puts it in a way that feels more accessible to me then the other more critical, judgmental books I have read on keeping kids media free. She says "You may be thinking, how will I have a minute to myself without the TV? I would never have survived with media in our life! I was far too busy to deal with the whining, discontent the media creates in children. Because I relied entirely on my children's innate capacity to create, imagine, be active, and entertain them selves, they did exactly that."

This struck a cord with me. Sweetpea does have a brilliant imagination. Once we get passed that nagging phase of desiring the TV, she will just chose something else to do. I have slowly taken media out of our transition times. When I make dinner I tell her what I am doing and ask if she wants to help. She typically does a combo of things, helping a little, singing, getting out all the utensils to play with and setting the table. At first she would whine if a show was not on, but if I ignored her complaints long enough, most of the time she choose to self entertain. 

Oppenheimer also talks about a rhythm way of parenting, where each day has a rhythm and beginning it with outdoors time. I really liked this theory. I tried testing it out these past few weeks. Often the morning is a draw for Millie to watch TV. There is a TV in the kitchen at her g-parents house that is usually on in the morning. We have come to an understanding that News goes off when she is in the room. But once the boob tube is on she wants to watch a show. I call this “wake and bake” and have always disliked how this was the start to our day. I often catch her a little bit after her daddy and her have already gone to the kitchen. He almost always obliges to putting a show on for her. I have started to strategize a different way to handle the mornings with him. When she wants his attention, try giving her different things to do other then TV.

I also have been pushing her to just go outside with us. Weather she wants to or not. I ignore the nagging, "I want to watch a show" complaint and walk outside. Once outside I start asking her lots of questions like, "what birds do you hear? What do you think that sound was? Was the bird saying hello, or go away? What kind of tree is that?" These work enough to get her into her surroundings and from there I get a good 20 minutes of playtime, sometimes with me sometimes alone while I sip my coffee and stare at the clouds.

Our system is not perfect, I still rely on some screen time to be able to get other things done during the day without interruption but I feel like we are heading towards a balance. The path I am always striving for in life.