Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Were talking 'bout an evolution...

So, I'm finally ACTIVELY pursuing my CBE certification. It's great to finally be headed in the right direction, though I am not entirely sure what direction that is. There will be copious amounts of reading and writing done as I try to sprint through this by the end of winter. Not that I haven't already done copious amounts of reading, but this is specific books instead of just scholarly journals and the like. I'm noticing changes in myself as I learn. I'm no longer 100% in the natural birth camp, but I'm still nowhere near ready to step into the medicalized camp.

As I move through the activities and the reading though, I find myself approaching more of a middle ground on the subject of birth. True, I'd never sign up for an elective caesarean or induction or epidural, I've never been to the birthing area of the hospital (something that I have to find a way to do without hyperventilating), and I'm not totally sold on modern medicine giving us the best outcomes available... I am rational enough to believe that it's not the end of the world if babies are born by these methods. I'm beginning to understand both culturally and individually why a woman might choose those things. I'm never going to be the woman who proclaims that home birth is the only way to go for every woman, every time... it's not. I'm not one of those "trust birth" folks who plays Monday Morning Quarterback over a woman's birth story, though I admit I did study some of those stories pretty hard before deciding what kind of birth I wanted and tried to imagine alternate possibilities- how the outcome or experience could have been altered by not choosing to do intervention A or B. I'm also not one of those people so swayed by the convenience and magic of modern medicine as to believe that the hospital is the only place for women to ever birth... because it's not, either.

I may drop helpful hints or post 'timely information' when I have friends or relatives due near a holiday, or gently counsel someone that they DO have options and they CAN say no if something doesn't feel right, but I cannot choose their birth for them. It's not my birth. The best I can do is offer education so all the choices really do exist for that woman. How bizarre is that? To exist in a middle ground?

My stance has gone through quite a change since I began reading about and talking about birth. Before I was ever pregnant, I believed that hospitals were where a woman had to go because there was NO option. A year before I became pregnant, I began to read- not only were there other options for birth, but all those options were local to me. I began to ask myself what I would want from a birth, research what felt most in line with what I would want, and decided home birth is what would best suit my needs for low intervention and privacy as long as I remained low-risk.

When I started immersing myself in the stories and culture of home birth, I became enamored with the idea that all women should have the option... heck, that it should be the first choice for every birth! Then I actually gave birth at home- and I rode the wave of good hormones and extra-awesomeness that comes from doing the 'impossible'-and I believe for awhile I was like a street-side Christian, crowing the good news for natural birth and homebirth everywhere for a year. Now I'm settling down.

I have talked to and read the stories of women of all walks of life... some have had crappy doctors and amazing midwives. Some have had crappy midwives and outstanding doctors. Some have had traumatic births at home, in birth centers, and at hospitals. Some have had mind-blowing, beautiful, peaceful births at any or all of those places. Medications have failed, or worked too well. It's led me to a grey area in my beliefs, an evolution of thought in which neither an absolute good nor an absolute evil can exist. What works for one woman is not necessarily the thing that will work for the rest of us.

I feel like I'm waking up from a long sleep, and that I've changed and grown. Growing hurts and takes lots of energy, and needs to be fed.

I need more input. I'm hungry.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

The business of being broke... or how I got my hippie card revoked.

dToday I got my hippie card revoked.  Sure, I still grow my own food, seek the most sustainable lifestyle I can, and do things that aren't mainstream, but I found it impossible to find a reason to join the local chapter of Occupy this weekend.  Oh, I'm sure if I tried I could find something to be angry about and go hold a sign, but that would be a bit of nipping the hand that feeds me since I work for a bank.  They treat me well and my little threesome survives on what I make, so I'm okay with wherever I fall in the percentages.  Plus, it was a gloriously sunny, warm, amazingly bright day for me to spend unhindered with my son and husband and house- the three entities I am most entwined with.  We worked the yard as a threesome today until hubs had to go rest and spent the rest of the day limping and wincing.  Then munchkin and I played in sidewalk and finger paints.  It was simple contentedness that I needed today.  Time and space to decompress and soak up the final rays of the season.

I'm drifting off course again.  You know, I am a horrible story teller.  Every story has side stories.  This one is no different!  So, the revocation of said hippie card.  Here's the deal.  If you haven't noticed, our world is in suck mode right now.  Things are bad all over, have been for years.  There are people looking for reasons all over the place.  Things are not so awful for me.  Well, if you go by the numbers- I'm a horrifying mess and should be avoided at all costs because my numbers are negative enough that it could cause a black hole in the universe.  By less stringent measures- say my satisfaction index or the scale in my dining room- life is pretty damn good.  It  hasn't always been and may not always be as good as this, but it's pretty damn good right now.  I just learned to be happy with less.

By my personal satisfaction index...
I have it good.  I have a wonderfully faithful husband who drives me crazy sometimes, but hey, that's life.  I have a kid who astounds me with what he can learn in a day.  They both fill my life to the brim.  I have a good job, a great boss, and a pretty decent company to work for.  They keep paying me to show up, even though I don't feel like even a remotely decent employee some days.  My boss extends lots of mercy to me for my inability to retain knowledge and my need to go pump breastmilk ever so often.  I wish I had more social opportunities outside of home and work, but it's not a requirement for me to be up to my eyeballs with stuff to do.  I wish I could be a stay-at-home-mom, or get my nursing degree, but the universe is a mysterious place and it could happen someday.  For right now, I am content with where I am and the people I spend my time with.

By my scale...
I'm hovering right at 150lbs.  That means I'm eating pretty decently.

By the numbers...
I am thirty years old.  In sixty days and some change I will be thirty-one.  I have one child, am on my second marriage.  I have a student loan equal to about $1700 for every year I've been on the planet.  Add to that a mortgage, a car note, the insanely high 'budget' plan for natural gas heating, water, three credit cards, insurance (including life insurance enough to cover all of it incase one of us croaks).  I have very minimal savings, but I try to put away a little bit every pay period.  My goal is to dig out of this hole within the next ten years.

I have a BS in Psychology, an MBA with a focus on Human Resources, and a cancelled acceptance letter to the Baker School of Nursing from 2002.  Yep, I was somehow afraid I'd be underemployed and unable to pay off the student loans for $8000/semester at Baker, so I switched from pursuing nursing to my old fascination with Psychology (my first mistake), because at the time we believed so strongly that an education meant an amazing job.  I suppose it could have, had I pushed for internships instead of paying jobs.  Or if I had pushed for social opportunities and volunteer work to put my elbows up against other, more important elbows, but I prefer things simple and hate kissing ass.  So, I didn't.  I do intend to enroll in nursing school in a year or two if life permits.  Get back on my original track and be who I used to want to be.  But for now, I'm a back office clerk in a large corporation, and for the most part I'm content.  I guess I don't belong fully in the 99% because I am content with my life.  I don't mind that my taxes go to support our troops, our veterans, my friends who hit a low spot.  I know that if my job were to come to an end, I'd find another job.  Or several.  It's how I'm built.  Every opportunity is found in times of difficulty.

My last twelve years of adulthood have seen some monumental failures in judgment.  Epic failures such as taking out a full-on car loan for my first new-ish car, then a year later having to pay the dealership $3500 to take the car back (out of pocket) since I couldn't afford to take my car overseas.  Buying a $1100 laptop, then two years later buying a $1400 desktop.  A $300 set of pots and pans. A decorator bed frame.  Stemware. Makeup.  Junk food.  Booze.  A few rounds for a few bars.  Maxing out a credit card on impulse buys and stupidity, paying it off, then doing it again.  Discover has received over $10,000 in payments from me in this cycle... and have another $3k coming to them (after which, I'm slamming that card shut).  I can't really say I have a damned thing to show for these decisions.  The desktop computer is now a paperweight, the clothes and accessories don't fit the person I've grown into literally or figuratively.  Many impulse buys have now become goodwill donations.  But I am owning up to it.  I did stupid things for a decade and two years ago I decided that if I want a future, I have to start with my habits and make some changes before I find myself so far down the rabbit hole that even Alice couldn't find me.

That's right.  I am broke because I did stupid things.  I didn't have great monetary role models growing up- my birth mom married for financial backup, my dad and 'real'(adopted) mom struggled on one income with five kids.  They did some 'creative' things which were the best they could do at the time, but in hindsight were not the best example for us kids.  Plus, I have an independent (stubborn) streak and didn't want to wait until I could afford stuff, I wanted NOW.  So I did.  I bought on a whim without any thought to what I was doing or what the impact might be in the future.  I didn't figure I'd ever settle down and have a kid.  I was a free agent. I was going to be thin and sexy and single forever.  Then I wasn't.  Then I woke up one day unable to really breathe because I felt the crushing weight of my stupidity as I paid bills (near the end of my pregnancy, maybe the hormones were talking a bit as well), and put a halt to lots of things THAT DAY.

My plan to get out of the hole:
1) Only buy stuff we NEED.  If there's room in the budget for a little extra, we shop craigslist first, but only if it's something we both agree on and can see an extended use for.  Obviously, with my husband this takes a little extra work.  His meds make him a little less resistant to impulse buys and make me more likely to be the bad guy on any given day.

2) Simplify life.  We don't need a big cable package.  We don't need to eat out.  We don't need to eat packaged foods.  We don't need oodles of meat.  We don't need to follow fashion trends.  We don't need two cars.  We don't need to go out to the movies or to buy new DVDs every two Tuesdays.  We had to rethink our whole outlook on life.  Find out what reallllllly mattered to us.

3) Start saying 'I CAN' or 'WE can'.  We do have access to a bajillion recipes for free online.  We can learn to build things.  We can learn to sew things.  We can learn to cook things.  We can learn to grow things.  We can save money for X item.  We can have a yard sale for the big ticket luxuries.

4) Write down obligations.  Keep them.

5) Make goals.  Write them down.  Take action steps to them.

6) Own the screw ups.  If I don't own my mistakes, I will continue to make them.  It's simple as knowing history.  I have to own the fact that I could have had an extra $10,000 or so to save or do other things with had I not made impulse purchases with a credit card.  I have to own the fact that I am responsible for my financial reality and my financial future.  I have to own the fact that only I can save myself from me, which is a miracle some days.

7) Forgive myself.  Forgive myself for doing stupid things.  Promise myself to slap myself if I think I might do stupid again.  It stings sometimes to look back at what I could have done differently, but it's all part of the growing I needed to do here.

I do worry from time to time that my stupidity may have also led to my family size being limited to the size of a Lithium atom (but Lithium makes folks happy, right?).  I would like my son to have at least one sibling, but looking at things realistically, I can't guarantee that our family situation can support that with stability.  I also can't ask others to feed and clothe us for my lack of management skills and my need to procreate, so it's a hard choice we have to make.  We may just wing it and see what happens, but I won't risk losing our home just to expand the family.

So, I own it.  I may not own much, but I own that.  Twelve years of trying to outspend Congress on my way to a great life, and I may have shortchanged myself in the process.  So, I'm working on being happy with the 'is' so I can be happier with the 'to be'.