Kristen's blog

I cannot believe that my last post was over 9 months ago.

I am not exactly sure what happened except that I got overwhelmed  and exhausted and just had to stop.  I have always admired bloggers who could consistently and transparently blog about their lives for years and years on end.  Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be this kind of breed.

I am also not sure if going off the grid had anything to do with the other big things that were brewing that I didn’t feel I could really talk about until I was ready — namely the big question of whether we wanted to have children or not and what we were going to do about that.  Well, after a lot of soul searching, we just stopped preventing, and after a few months, we knew which way our lives were going to be changing.

Pregnancy has been a lot easier than I thought it would be and I feel really good, so I am extremely thankful for that.  I’ve noticed my perspective changing – that I care more about things like guns and who my mother in law is dating. And I feel like I have some sort of knew adrenal powers that would allow me to strangle someone with my bare hands if they tried to do any harm to our girl (oh, btw, it’s a girl! :) ).

The other interesting part of this journey was choosing where we going to go for prenatal care and delivery.

I had no idea I would end up caring so much about that, either!  My opinion before being pregnant was that I would definitely take pain options like an epidural, and I had a really hard time understanding why anyone wouldn’t. And I for sure could not understand why anyone would EVER give birth outside of a hospital.

Wow, how the tables have turned! I started going to a regular OB who was really nice.  But the appointments were short and I didn’t feel any real connection — it was strictly taking your blood pressure, listening to baby’s heartbeat, and then out you go.  Then I realized I wouldn’t even be getting this OB at my delivery unless she was on call when I went into labor.  And after the hospital tour and talking to the nurses there, I realized that it’s pretty much the nurses who are with you for labor and they just call the OB on the phone to get instructions. I feel very odd for my reaction to this because it seems like most people find this totally normal, but I was appalled that this is how it works.  I also wondered how I never knew this all these years!

So, that’s when my search for something different started. I was very sure that I wanted to be in the hospital, so I was elated when I found a certified nurse midwife in town that would do all of your prenatal care with hour-long appointments, labor sit you, and handle delivery. I KNEW that’s who I would be using . . . until I met her.

She scared me.

When I asked about alternatives like not having an IV from the get go or not having to wear the band for continuous fetal monitoring, she was filled with worst case scenarios and reasons why those were horrible ideas.  She said she’d only let me go a week past my due date before recommending induction. But the clincher was when I expressed my concern about the number of c-sections being done in the hospital. She went into a huge defense of the hospital and explained that the c-section rate is around 30% because they see such high risk populations, etc. etc. When I told her that I understood that, but of 5 of my friends who have given birth in the hospital, 3 have had c-sections, so the rate is much higher than 30% in my own little universe of pregnant friends, and it’s a concern of mine, she replied that, “I must have extremely unlucky friends.”  At that point I knew we were not a match.

Five days before my meeting with the midwife who I KNEW I was going to use and then found out I WASN’T going to use, I went to an orientation at our local free-standing Birth Center with my husband.  We almost cancelled, because I KNEW who I was going with already, but a friend of mine was going to the Birth Center and said, “Oh, you should at least meet the midwives, they are so great!” So, I was just going there more out of curiosity and to get a glimpse of how the other people, “those people”, were doing it.

I just loved those midwives.

I felt so safe in that Birth Center. The whole place had an aura of calm and nurturing support, and a different philosophy about birth that surprisingly resonated with me.

When I realized that I didn’t want to work with the midwife who delivered in the hospital, it seemed like the choice, unbelievable as it was, was obvious. I never thought I’d be one of “those women,” but here I am, going to the Birth Center.

Every doubt I had about that choice went away after my first appointment with one of the Birth Center midwives.  She asked me things the others hadn’t asked me – about my eating habits/nutrition, my family, my worries and fears, how my relationship with my husband was, and what I liked to do for exercise.   The appointment lasted over an hour. She checked my blood pressure and listened to baby’s heartbeat, too, just like the OB, but did so much more. And when I turned to leave, she wouldn’t let me out of the office without a hug.

This whole experience has been really eye-opening for me. The journey isn’t anywhere near over. There were things I gave up by choosing the Birth Center, such as the option of the epidural and getting to stay for a few days and have room service and round the clock infant care. It wasn’t an easy choice by any stretch of the imagination.

I know that I deeply respect everyone’s personal decision on this.

I don’t think one way is *the* way, but I am so glad there are choices, and everyone has different needs.

So, that’s what has been going on with me! I am thinking I am going to put regular blogging to bed for now so I can relax into the changes that are coming my way, but I have so enjoyed having this forum and getting to meet everyone that I have gotten to meet in this space.  I’ve always used this site as a playground for online experiments, so I imagine that will continue in some way or another.

Thank you so much for reading and coming along on the adventure with me for these years!  Merry Christmas and hope you have an incredible new year!

xoxoxox

Kristen

I loved what Lis said in the comments of Part One of this post about surrendering to a painting, and letting go of whatever it is going to turn out to be — happy, sad, ugly, weird, beautiful, etc.

I am really enjoying surrendering to this one :)  And here is what is developing so far:

Happy 2012!!!!!

I am excited about the new year!  I have a feeling this is going to be a very big year for all of us, and can’t wait to see how it all unfolds.  I’ve decided that my word for this year is awaken. I am not sure what that means yet, but I guess that is what awakening is all about :)

I’ve also decided to try to post more about the creative process this year because of your suggestions during the mix tape giveaway. It’s funny, the creative process is probably the most challenging thing for me to write about, so this will be interesting!

I am starting off by showing you the beginnings of a painting I am working on:

I got inspired to work on a bigger surface than I have been working on lately, so I got this bigger canvas out from storage.  It sat around for days till I actually whipped out a knife and liberated it from the plastic packaging.  I wanted to do a painting, but there was lots of resistance, which sounds a little bit like this inside my head:

• You don’t have enough space to paint in your house.
• Painting is messy and you don’t really want to get messy right before bed.
• What will we paint on that big blank space????
• What if it turns out horrible – and then you’ve made a big mess and wasted an expensive piece of canvas all for nothing!

This is the hardest part of the creative process in my opinion – getting started and working through all that resistance.

And it seems like the longer I go between creative endeavors, the more resistance there is to wade through.  This night it seemed particularly bad.

But resistance doesn’t like being questioned and is sort of like that small man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.  It feels big and scary and authoritative, but is really a small place with big fears.  For each reason my brain came up with for why I should not paint, I listened to it, carefully pondered it, but tried not to blindly agree with it.  Instead I tried asking some genuinely curious questions.

• Yes, our house is small, but is there some way I could figure out how to make some room to paint?  Is there any creative way I could create some space?
• Painting *is* messy and it *is* a drag to clean it all up before bed, but is there any way to make it easier?  Less messy? Easier clean-up?
• What will we paint on that big blank space????  Do we ever know what we will paint in those blank spaces?  What could it be?
• And what if it does turn out horrible?  What’s the worst that could happen?  Is it worse not to try?

Once the questions were asked, the answers began to appear.  Suddenly, the place where the dog’s water and food bowl sit looked like an easy space to convert into a painting studio for an hour.  I moved the bowls aside and slid a chair in the space.  Then I grabbed a real grubby towel, laid it down, and sacrificed it to the creative process (yes, it did get yellow paint all over it, but it was already grubby!).

As for what to paint, I am still figuring that out, but yellow seemed to be calling my name.  I had fun mixing up batches and letting them drip down the canvas.  The next day I used a plastic fork to move the paint around while it was still wet.

So, that’s a bit of the creative process from my corner of the world.  I think the hardest part is that damn resistance.  Once the wheels are turning it all seems to get a little easier from there.  Just putting down the first mark seems to help.

Part of me feels like posting about a painting that is not yet done puts a lot of pressure to make it fantastic, but I guess that is just another creative challenge I will walk through – and I will post the finished result when it gets finished, whatever it looks like :)

For now, it is sitting between my creative nook and the dog bowl :)

Many wishes for wonderful things to transpire for you in 2012, and may any resistance to all that is good and calling your name melt away like drops of water sliding down the side of a dog’s water bowl :)