The joys of having a reader.

When I started teaching my daughter to read, I never imagined the pure joy it would bring to me. I knew it would be a lifelong skill that would bring her knowledge and pleasure; Bob and I are avid readers ourselves.

It's impossible to describe the pride I feel hearing her practice reading her lines for the church Christmas play. They're doing a readers' theatre this year and Addy has two parts. However haltingly her words are read, they are music to this mommy's ears.

"Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be
to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,
which is Christ the Lord and this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find
the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."

and

"God wants everyone to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the
truth."

The play is "No Strings Attached" by Arden Mead.

Please tell me this didn't really happen.

So I was giving the girls a bath when I noticed two faint red arcs on Dori's little, fleshy, toddler bottom. On closer inspection, I determined these to be teeth marks.

"Addy! Did you bite your sister's butt?!?"

"No."

"Let me see your teeth! Open your mouth!" Hmm, the marks on Dori's butt looked remarkably similar to Addy's bite pattern — a tiny little space at the top, the bottom teeth angled in ever so slightly.

"Addy, you are not allowed to lie to your mother. Did you bite Dori's butt!?!"

"Yes," she said meekly, then added:

"But she liked it."


Dori spent the next two hours pointing to the spot, saying, "Addy bite butt. Addy bite butt."


My head really is going to explode.

You were bottlefed!

I met a mother of five breastfed boys tonight who said the biggest insult her kids throw at each other when bickering is, “You were bottlefed!”

They weren’t, of course, but I guess that has replaced, “You belong to the milkman” or “Mom and Dad found you in a box.”

Better than a pocketful of posies.

Cutest video ever. This was on a nice, sunny October 17.

The girl or boy section.

“If I ever work in a store and I'm the owner of it, I would change the girl and boy sections to a girl or boy section and a boy or girl section.”

— My 5-year-old daughter, Addy, who has noticed that for some strange reason the clothes in the boy section have dinosaurs and tractors on them and the clothes in the girl section have butterflies and kitties. But she says she draws the line at boys wearing dresses. And for the record, she loves dinosaurs, tractors, butterflies and kitties.

Dori's waterbirth.

Water has always been soothing to me. I grew up on a big farm with a swimming pool in the middle of it. From infancy on, I spent a lot of time in that pool. I’m the youngest of 8 kids so there was always someone to watch me as I first learned to swim without arm floaties, then progress to tricks like doing back flips off the diving board. A couple weeks ago my mom joked that I practically lived in my bathing suit in the summertime. My sister Beth let her know that I really did. That was news to Mom; she often sent me to change and I came back with clothes or pajamas on top of my bathing suit. I would swim all day, sleep in my bathing suit, then get up and do it all over again. When Mom sent me to get ready for church, I’d take a bottle of shampoo to the pool. Often I would just float. I could even fall asleep floating on my back in the pool. So peaceful.

In the first house my husband and I bought, my bathtub was my refuge when I had pre-menstrual cramps. The water relieved enough weight and pressure that I felt better as long as I was in the tub. That was a short, shallow little tub with rust stains from our rural well water. But it was still a haven.

When I became pregnant with our first daughter, Addy, it was back to the tub. I have a newspaper from the day she was born. A front-page headline reads, “Hottest summer on record.” My heavy, hot pregnant body again found refuge in the cool water.

My non-water, hospital birth
Addy was born in a hospital — I never heard of anything different. It was wonderful because my beautiful Addy came out of it, but once I learned I had options, I would never go back to a hospital to birth again. Intervention led to intervention and I was left with a newborn who couldn’t latch (many factors, but our birth experience didn’t help) and a spinal headache that pounded for a week every time my head was higher than my feet. My water broke before I went to the hospital, so my labor was augmented with Pitocin. (Had I been left alone I think I still would have delivered well within 24 hours, a guideline to prevent infection that I disagree with anyway since they stuck their hands in to “check” me many times, surely introducing new bacteria each time.) The Pitocin brought on hard and fast contractions that had me asking for relief, so I was given Demerol — yes, a narcotic. With all my reading, classes and prenatal visits, I had never been educated about what the stages of birth felt like, so the intensity of transition had me asking for an epidural. I thought, “This is what birth must be like.” I thought that part would never end. The anesthesiologist was unable to get the needle into the space in my spine, so I didn’t have an epidural anyway, only the lovely spinal headache afterward.

Fortunately Addy came out easily. Good thing because I was flat on my back in a hospital bed. I didn’t even really push with her. The doctor wasn’t there yet and the nurse told me to wait. I didn’t, and after three little pushes — none of them really bearing down — she was out and the doctor was there to catch her.

We moved to a new part of the state when Addy was 14 months. Our new house has a pool in the backyard, so Addy is quickly taking on my love of the water.

Planning for waterbirth
When I became pregnant with Addy’s little sister, Dori, I called the midwife in our community. When I heard she had a waterbirth tub, I was ecstatic. I had heard of waterbirth. I remember seeing a news report about it on TV in the ’80s. I didn’t think it was something real people did though. I had no idea it would be an option for me.

We’re lucky our midwife had the portable pool from Waterbirth International. As a rural midwife she couldn’t afford the tub herself, but a previous client had purchased it for her in lieu of payment.

Later when doing some reading in preparation for Dori’s birth (the right books this time, not the silly girlfriend and what-to-expect books I read before Addy’s birth) I read The Birth Book by William and Martha Sears. Martha is mother of 8 and a registered nurse. She compared laboring in water to taking Demerol, saying that both took the edge off. I was already game for waterbirth, but this was sounding even better.

I found a Yahoo group dedicated to homebirth and many of the women had used or were planning to use waterbirth tubs. We shared good information and stories.

Dori’s waterbirth
Because Addy was born 11 days before her due date, I was certain Dori would be early, too. Dori’s due date was February 22. As Valentine’s Day approached, I began to get impatient. After a few more days I think I had actually given up on her ever being born. Silly, I know. I knew that due dates are simply best guesses, and I knew the baby could be born into early March and still be well within safe and normal ranges. Still, I was anxious. I went from wanting to get the baby out of me so I would feel better to only wanting to hold the baby and meet him or her.

I never felt Braxton-Hicks contractions. I didn’t with Addy either, so I didn’t let it bother me too much. I did have the lingering thought that maybe I had them with Addy and didn’t know it, but I figured as an experienced mom I should know this time.

Just before Bob got home from work on Monday, February 20, I hopped on the Internet for information about postdates babies and how to tell if the placenta is still supporting them well. I knew it was too early to worry, but I gave myself something little to worry about throughout the pregnancy. (Doesn’t everybody?) This was the concern du jour. While there, I decided to read more about the lack of Braxton-Hicks contractions and if this meant anything. I knew the answer, but it felt better to read what other women experienced. If it had been a true concern, I would have called our midwife.

On Tuesday, February 21, I woke at about 6 a.m. for one of my frequent potty trips. This time was different though. I was pretty sure my water broke, but it wasn’t a huge gush so I didn’t wake up my husband, Bob. It was clear and odorless, not to mention right on time. When Bob woke up, I told him and he asked if he should go to work. By then I felt confident we would be having a baby instead.

It’s hard to remember the rest of the details as I’m finishing this story 15 months later. I remember that I labored all day, with the contractions getting closer together and more intense. In between I made the birth announcements, leaving the inside blank to fill in the details. I sat a lot on my big exercise ball. Gentle bouncing and rolling felt better.

My sister Anita was here to take care of Addy during the birth. We wanted Addy to be part of it, but we also wanted someone to focus on her since our attention would be divided. Anita ended up with one of her migraines, so we called another of my sisters, Carol, to come over. She lives just over an hour away so they were both there for Addy.

The birthing tub had been at our house for two weeks since Deb, our midwife, finished attending another birth. We set it up in our bedroom a week before Dori’s birth. That day I was anxious for them to get it filled up. She didn’t have a heater, so I knew that if filled it too early it might cool off. Once Deb and my husband filled it, I pretty much hopped into the water as soon as she suggested I could.

At one point I invited Addy to join me in the water. She played around in it for awhile, and then I had her get out.

As the labor progressed, there was pain. It turns out I had an anterior lip of cervix that wasn’t opening on its own. I remember shouting, “Owww!” My midwife said, “Ow?” I was thinking, “Yes, ow. Haven’t you ever attended a birth before?” She was the wise one and knew I shouldn’t be experiencing pain, so she asked lots of questions to determine the exact source and diagnosed the lip.

While I don’t have anything to compare it to because I only experienced the anterior lip this time, I think the water helped a lot. I was free to move around and the water let me move however I wanted. The only thing I couldn’t really do was put my head down and bottom up in the air to take the baby’s weight off and help the anterior lip resolve, so I got onto the bed for awhile for that. It wasn’t comfortable, so I got back in the tub and felt better.

Later Deb offered to check me, and at that time she was able to manually pull open the lip with her hand. Relief! It also broke another spot of my amniotic sac, so more fluid came out.

While laboring, I kept my focus on the clock that I could see in our adjacent bathroom. I focused on the round shape. I kept my lips in a circle, and tried to envision my cervix opening up into a big circle, just like the clock. I hadn’t planned to find a focal point, but it was right in my line of sight and worked well.

I was able to move around in the water into various positions. Sometimes I leaned back with my knees floating up into the air. Other times I knelt forward with my forehead on the edge of the tub. It was easy to change positions even though my pregnant body was huge and moving on land was cumbersome.

By 11:30 p.m. I was in intense labor. Bob and Deb joked that if I could wait half an hour, the baby would be born on my oldest brother’s birthday. I felt like punching them in the nose. At one point I actually did tell them to shut up. I’m glad that both know what a woman says in labor might not be something she would otherwise say.

Addy was downstairs with my sisters because I needed quiet to concentrate. When I was ready to push I asked Bob to bring her up. My sisters were also there to witness the birth.

I did end up birthing Dori on my brother Duane’s birthday, which also happened to be Dori’s due date. She was born at about 12:40 a.m. I remember pushing HARD in the water for a few minutes. I pushed so hard and felt the baby come down the birth canal, so I thought sure she was almost out, maybe only hanging by the feet. I yelled, “Can’t you just pull her out?!?” and Deb said, “You’ve got to do this, Sue.”

Bob said, “You ARE doing it,” which was just what I needed. I heard Addy’s little voice say, “Good job, Mama.” Deb checked and said the baby’s shoulders were rotating, so once I knew what was happening I had the strength to keep going. I pushed really, really hard, and kept pushing.

Finally Dori was out. She was born in water into her daddy’s loving arms, with her big sister watching every moment. I couldn’t ask for anything better. That two of her aunts and my midwife, now a friend, were there made it even more special.

Dori was a little blue at first, so Deb deftly milked the cord blood with its life-giving oxygen back into her and she pinked right up. It seemed like forever and I was asking, “She’s OK, right Deb?” with Deb not responding since all her attention was rightfully on Dori. My sister says it was only about 5 seconds before she was pink and healthy. Deb had oxygen on hand, as well as other emergency tools that she didn’t need to use.

I brought Dori to my breast, Bob undid my nursing bra, and she began to nurse like a champ. Addy came over and gave Dori her first kiss.

As she nursed I delivered the placenta, then Deb showed Bob where to cut the cord.

I entered a picture of us gathered around Dori, still in the tub, in a contest. It was selected as a winner by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action. Their hope is to educate people that a million babies’ lives can be saved if every baby is breastfed within the first hour of life. I titled the photo “Dori’s First Minute: Breastfeeding at Waterbirth.” See it at: http://worldbreastfeedingweek.net/wbw2007/wbw_2007_photo_contest.htm

Later we all snuggled into bed as I nursed Dori to sleep for the first time.

My sisters stayed awhile to help with Addy and meals so I could concentrate on Dori, then my mom came and helped for a week. Everyone was surprised how chipper I was. I was able to get up and get dressed from the beginning. Sure I was tired, but I wasn’t wrung out like a dishrag. It was truly a gentle birth for everyone. So that’s what normal birth is like!

With Addy’s hospital birth, I had a small tear that required a stitch or two — and she was only 6 pounds. Dori was a 9-pound baby and I had only a superficial tear. The water must have made the difference.

If we are blessed with another baby, he or she will be born in water, in my home, where I am in control.

After the birth
One of my friends thought birthing at home might be messy. It wasn’t. Deb strategically placed pads throughout our bedroom and we had a shower curtain ready to use as a tarp on the carpet. The only mess was my own fault. I read that some people keep their baby’s placenta. I decided we would keep Dori’s and plant it in our front yard with a special tree over it once our Michigan winter was over. I planned ahead and set out a bucket with a lid so we could freeze the placenta until springtime. I managed to choose a bucket with a crack in the bottom, so our carpet still shows a couple blood stains. It was worth it. Dori’s redbud tree is flourishing in the yard. It is as tall as she is. The redbud is a perfect tree since she is a little red-haired girl.

The funniest thing about our home waterbirth was that we had to do something with the 100-plus gallons of water and associated blood and stuff once we were done. Deb said we could pump it into the toilet, but unbeknownst to me, my husband just sent it out the bathroom window. We live in town, our tub was in our second-story bedroom, and there was snow on the ground. I’m just glad no one walking by could have possibly guessed what was coming out of the hose.

My football-player nephew attends college just down the road, so he was the first to come visit the morning Dori was born. Our midwife seized the opportunity to have him carry the tub in its carrying case out to her car. Later he asked what had been in the big black case. He was grossed out to learn it was the birthing tub.

Co-bathing
Dori is now a toddler. As a baby she only used her little plastic baby bathtub three or four times. Each time she screamed. She has had a few showers with Bob or me, but mostly we bathe in the big tub. I remember being scared to bathe with Addy when she was an infant. How would I hold that slippery little body? The morning after Dori was born, my midwife had us bathe together with an herbal infusion in the water. Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, co-bathing, what could be more natural?

We teach sign language to Dori, now 15 months old, so we can communicate before she can talk well. One of her first dozen or so signs was BATH. She loves our bathtime together. It’s cute to watch her rub her two little fists on her chest every morning, signing BATH, BATH, BATH. I think, “Baby, you were born in the bath!”



Dori is on the “I Was Born in Water!” list on the Waterbirth International web site at: http://www.waterbirth.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=38562&orgId=wi

States I have visited.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Countries I have visited.

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

The site says I've visited 3% of them.

My husband has turned lactivist.

So I was up on a ladder painting the bedroom when my husband and little girls came home from a dad-and-me breakfast put on by the local early childhood agency. The girls were happy to see me. I was happy to see them all. But Bob was the one grinning.

The girls went off to play and he began to unload the contents of his pockets. A toy baby bottle, stolen from the playgroup. By him. Thief.

Another one.

Another.

Lined up in a neat row on the bed.

Six toy baby bottles, removed from circulation, in hopes that one more little child will know breastfeeding to be the norm.

They went in the trash.

And he doesn't even lactate.

Favorite t-shirt sayings.

If we wore t-shirts with words on them, here are some that fit our family. Most are from CafePress.

For Sue

I homeschool because I’ve seen the village and I don’t want it raising my children.

I homeschool because I don’t believe in the mass production of human beings.

I’m not talking to myself. I’m having a parent-teacher conference.

Epidurals are for sissies.

I make milk.
What’s your superpower?

Hospitals are for sick people.
Birth belongs at home.

Weapons of mass lactation.

All Night Milk Bar

For Addy

I am in school right now, and you’re talking during class.

Yes, I’m homeschooled.
I’ll try to use small words.

For Dori

Waterborn baby.

My midwife helped me out.

Born at home.

Happy homeborn baby.

I had a gentle birth.
I was born in water!

Splish, splash
I was born in the bath.

Catch the wave.
Water birth.

Jesus was breastfed.

Don’t be a weaner.

For Bob

Dads who change diapers rule.

My wife homeschools our kids.
And yes, this is my only clean shirt.

My wife gave birth at home. On purpose.
Now ask your silly questions.

Why wouldn’t I want to see more breasts in public?
(I support nursing moms.)

Vacation Education: Epcot

My friend Corinne published a book and I helped her with the design. My daughter Addy is also on the cover — the little girl in the top right wearing a light blue shirt.

Check out my friend's web site at http://www.vacationeducationbooks.com.

Her book is also available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Vacation-Education-destination-Corinne-Johnson/dp/0979816807/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1848309-8872660?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194415423&sr=8-1.

This is from the e-newsletter of Living Books Curriculum, a homeschool company that offers products based on the methods British educator Charlotte Mason used to help children learn in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Charlotte Mason said that a method implies a mental image of the object. In other words, what you picture and think on tends to come to pass. Do this: picture in vivid detail what your child is like grown. What are the qualities, the character traits, the activities you would like to see your child doing? Write all this down in full. Yes, it will take effort, but you will only need to do this once. When I did it, it produced a radical readjustment of my thinking. Good thing, as I was locked into traditional educational methods and could only imagine my daughter "doing well" in college. When I got the full Technicolor picture of character, life skills, enjoyments, spiritual growth, and "doing well" in college; then, Charlotte Mason and her method began to makes sense as the only way to achieve such a wonderful goal.

I don't know that I agree that the Charlotte Mason method is the only way to get there — friends who home educate their children in other ways seem to be doing well — but I really appreciate the idea of thinking of Addy's and Dori's futures in full detail, well beyond just doing well in college. For me, homeschooling is definitely harder than sending them away to school, but this thought makes it all worthwhile.

The lesson.

Addy didn't want to stay in her bed tonight. After coming downstairs twice, she crawled up on my lap and told me, "You might laugh about this, but I don’t want you to: This might teach you a lesson."

"A lesson about what?" I asked as I buried my face in her hair to hide my laughter.

"A lesson that you should let me sleep with you more often."

She went to bed. In her bed.

She mitered the corners.

Addy wrapped a present last night for her friend, Gabrielle's, 4th birthday party. She asked me to cut off the appropriate amount of wrapping paper, then she took it from there — all by herself — while I left the room to do something else. She even mitered the corners.

Sometimes people say, "Wow! How did Addy learn to _________ (insert any skill that it doesn't seem like a 5-year-old would know how to do yet)?"

The answer is usually simple: I let her try.

Addy was 2 when she started to tear off unnecessarily long strips of tape to stick onto Christmas gifts. Most of them ended up being decorative rather than serving any adhesive function. No problem.

By the time she was 3, she was wrapping gifts all by herself. They looked as if they were wrapped by a 3-year-old, but that was OK.

Now today, she wrapped a gift that looked as pretty as if her father had wrapped it all by himself. (It's not perfect, but it was her process.) And she even mitered the corners.

The baby gets to stir.

It occured to me recently that Dori is becoming her own little person. No longer a tag-a-long, she has her own interests (shoes, balls and sweets) and desires (wearing shoes, playing with balls and eating sweets). So I let her stir the barbecue sauce.

Up until now, Addy has had all the chances to do everything, and Dori was a (noisy) accessory, often riding on my back or in a sling. On this day two weeks ago I let Dori stir the pot while Addy watched. It was quite a change for Dori, and she clearly loved it. She was pretty proud of herself and now likes to be a helper with everything.

From my local public school district web site:

Studies have shown that students learn faster and become more self-reliant when they are taught one-to-one.

Dori went poopy in the potty!

Dori pooped in her little potty tonight. I thought I better write it down somewhere before she is 18 years old and realizes we forgot to write down any details of her life past 12 months.

At only 5 years old, firstborn Addy already has four big scrapbooks chronicling her life. There's probably less biographical detail in some presidential libraries. I wrote down the exact date each of her teeth emerged. We have photo spreads not only of the big events, but even of everyday visits to the park. And her own blog.

My sister took pictures of Dori in front of Air Force One as it landed carrying the late President Gerald R. Ford, but even those haven't made it into a scrapbook. Oh, I have a big stack of good intentions and even materials to make Dori's first-year scrapbook. It's still empty.

I suppose it's nothing new. My mother wrote nice notes in my oldest brother Duane's baby book. Dale, child No. 4, has some of his filled in. Mine (I'm child 8 of 8) has only a few entries, and those were written in by to of my sisters, one of whom was only 7 years old. I guess the idea of recording a baby's every move gets less and less important with subsequent children.

Though I'll probably forget the date, Dori's first poop in her potty is a milestone. One of these days I'll have to accept the fact that she's not a baby anymore, but rather a toddler. By the time I get used to that she'll be a preschooler.

She's only 19 months old and in the wisdom gained in my 5 whole years of mothering, I have come to realize there's no need to rush the whole potty thing. She seemed a little interested in the big potty, so I put a little one out several weeks ago. Addy has been anxious to help her baby sister learn how to poop in the potty, so the mother lode Dori finally deposited tonight was pretty exciting to her. Addy has been coaching Dori whenever she chooses to sit on the potty. She squats down and says, "Like this, Dori!" as she grunts and strains and pretents to make a bowel movement. Her face even gets red.

And once again, it turns into a story about Addy.

I'm sorry, Dori. I really am.

School is going well.

We have finished our second week of homeschool kindergarten and I actually feel like I am on top of things and know what I'm doing. I don't know why, but I was terrified before the first week. The whole reason we did the home preschool thing was to see how it would work, but for some reason this seemed more real and made me pretty anxious. I suppose part of it was that I feared Dori would be tearing the place apart while we tried to do school. So far so good. She does tear things up, but we've been able to at least direct it a bit — her applying stickers to her arms and markers to her legs has kept her fairly busy. Oh, and Cheerios. Yes, I'm bribing her with food.

Addy is an amazing learner. Seriously, my mind wanders so much that when we get to the end of a page that I have read aloud to her, I sometimes realize that I forgot to pay attention. So I ask Addy what happened and she always knows.

I'm not one for schedules, so I forced myself into a routine the first week and it paid off. We typically eat breakfast, do school, then are done by lunchtime. That leaves the afternoons for things like playing, dancing, doing crafts and reading for fun.

Then when Bob gets home, we can eat dinner, hang out and do chores. Oh, we've had lots of church and library meeting lately. So when am I supposed to clean the house? I suppose that's why I'm up at all hours of the night.

It's a crazy life, but it's just the one I asked for.

Poopy. And pizza.

We are all so proud that Dori's language skills have grown by leaps and bounds in the last several weeks. I could do without a couple of her phrases.

Like when she pokes at my butt — in public — with her index finger and says — in public — "Mommy poopy? Mommy poopy?"

Yesterday afternoon I asked Addy if homemade pizza sounded like a good choice for dinner. "Mmm, pizza!" she responded. Dori echoed the clearest sentence she has said in all her 18 months: "Mmm, pizza!"

Ugh.

Addy's blog

As we sat down at the dinner table tonight, Bob asked Addy, "So what did you learn in school today?"

Addy's response as she rolled her eyes: "Read my blog."

She is 5 years old.

Addy has her own blog now where she'll dictate posts to me about her homeschool adventures. Check out http://www.addylearns.blogspot.com/. We hope she'll also continue to interact with humans.