When options aren't options.

I have lots of friends and acquaintances who have scars from bringing their children into the world. Some are physical, some are mental. In our society no one wants to hear it if a mother has a healthy baby, but doesn't feel so hot herself... unless she contracted some horrible infection, in which case people want details. Nobody wants to hear about a woman's post-partum depression if she was otherwise okay and her baby is in great shape. After all, she exercised her right to choose how that baby was going to get here, right? She made that choice from a list of options available to her with modern medicine's greatest achievements. She had access to information about those choices and she made her decision. Right? That's how it went, and she should just be happy with that healthy baby and stop moping. Right? Wrong. She may not have had that access. And here's what I think about it.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that all options must exist if any options are to exist. That means I have to concede that it truly is better for some women to elect for a fully surgical, clinical birth if I am to have my choice of a home birth available. I can't fight for one type and one type alone. Unfortunately, I'm seeing more and more that women aren't really choosing some of these options as a choice, they're badgered into it or they're shown by the media that this is really the modern way to go. Why do things 'the old fashioned way' as that heifer on 'The Doctors' said a few weeks back, when you have doctors and drugs and scalpels to ease your way into motherhood. Why would you *POSSIBLY* want to be inconvenienced by the baby choosing a day that doesn't work for you? That's the message that's all around us in these modern times. Unfortunately, the message doesn't bear the weight of the risks and consequences. If you know the benefits but not the risks, you don't have the full information required to make a decision... so in effect, you don't *really* know your options.

When we don't know our options, we don't have any options. So, I'm going to clarify my position on options. You must do the research before you sign up for an elective induction, caesarean section, home birth, or natural hospital birth. You need to know what each of these will entail, what the risk is to you and to your baby, and to your body. It's not just about a healthy baby and it's not just about fitting into a busy schedule. You both need to come out healthy, because ultimately, your healthy body will be the one responsible for keeping that baby's body healthy for the next eighteen years.

So, If you're picking induction, bear in mind that this is not a simple process. You're changing the path that millenia of our women ancestors' bodies have perfected. When baby is done baking, baby sends a hormonal signal to your brain that essentially says "Hey, you! I can not only survive the outside world, I can breathe air on my own without assistance. Prepare for launch!" This causes a delicate balance in hormones to be released to soften your cervix and begin to efface and dilate more effectively. Contractions begin in earnest. Your body's own pain management system begins to kick up the oxytocin (which makes you feel better and makes you contract more), and eventually your body even begins to push the baby down and out. This is an ideal situation. I realize that the world is full of non-ideal situations and anyone planning to just let things happen on their own could need help at any time. I also realize that we live in a busy world and it's hard to wait out those last amazing weeks and some folks just get tired of answering the age-old question, "have you had that baby yet?", plus all their friends are doing it and they're *fine*.

Induction is not simple. A Caesarean is not simple. Sure, the mechanics are simple. You pick a date, your doctor agrees. You show up at the appointed time, get checked in, hooked up to monitors and IVs, things are inserted in places. When things get too hairy, you just get a needle in the spine and drift away on happy thoughts until the doctor tells you it's time to push... which of course you'll not feel because the epidural will be pumping happy juice right into your spine until they hand you your clean and shiny baby burrito. It sounds almost like you don't have to do any work in those terms.

Here's the deal. Induction is forcing the baby to leave before he or she has finished whatever project he or she is working on. This means you are asking your child to stop building brain mass, fat stores, iron stores, or polishing up those shiny new lungs for their first breath without a medical reason to do so. If you have a medical reason, then sure, this is a great idea. Same with the Caesarean. I'm not against these things if you fully understand what you're asking for. If you're doing it because of peer or family pressure, or just something that the doctor tosses out as a way to fit it into your week, this is not you making a choice. If you have chosen this after weighing your options and understanding the risks, then go for it.

For those who haven't been reading about birth, talking to women who have given birth, and researching birth for three years, here's the lowdown. Birth cannot be trusted, but it must be respected. An unmedicated birth is great, but challenging and the timing is unpredictable. Usual outcome is a healthy mom and a healthy baby, especially in a place where both mom and baby are treated with respect and kindness. That's kind of the goal of all birth methods- birth equals healthy mom and healthy baby.

Induction is usually the addition of a chemical cocktail to get things started. If your body is ready, it'll take fewer interventions to get labor started and usher that baby earthside. If your body is not ready (get to know your Bishop Score to determine whether this has a good chance of working or not), no amount of chemicals will help make this happen, and you will likely end up on an operating table.

Usually chemical induction starts with a cervical 'ripening' agent, such as cervidil, to soften your cervix and make it more favorable to begin to dilate. After hours of 'ripening', usually a drip of pitocin is added to the regimen to get contractions fired up. Some doctors prefer cytotec, also known as misopristone... if this is your doctor, run. After a little time on the Pit or Miso, the bag of waters is usually broken by a nurse or doctor to 'really get things going'. Monitors are hooked up, the mom is unable to leave the bed. The extra monitoring is generally needed because contractions caused by these drugs are longer, harder, and closer together than ones your body creates without help. This puts extra stress on your baby, who needs breaks between contractions to get more oxygen and to relax, too. If baby isn't getting enough oxygen, he or she could go into distress, which means that mom gets wheeled away for emergency surgery.

Pitocin is a synthetic version of the chemical your brain produces, called oxytocin. It stimulates the uterus to contract, which can start labor. It's great for using after birth if a mom can't stop bleeding, but using it to create labor can also lead to a post-partum hemorrhage or an overstimulated uterus. As hard as it is on the body, Pitocin is better than misopristone/cytotec because it can be dialed down if your body responds too aggressively to it. The cytotec is a pill, and once you ring that bell, you can't un-ring it. Aside from not being approved for use on pregnant women, being known as an abortion pill, and being clearly indicated on the package as unsafe for pregnant women, this stomach drug for ulcers can start some serious contractions. It has caused in the past severe enough contractions to rupture the uterus and endanger both mother and baby. Again, cytotec is great for post-partum hemorrhage since it can make the uterus contract, but can also cause post-partum hemorrhage because of how it acts on the uterus.

As long as your bag of waters is intact, baby has a cushion around his or her body that makes it easier for baby to move into a good position, keeps the contractions from squeezing baby directly, and protects baby from infections. Breaking the water can speed up labor a little by taking the cushion off baby and putting his or her head closer to the cervical os. That head pressure helps dilation, and the contractions generally help move the baby down if he or she is actually in a good position. Sometimes though, breaking the water before baby does it can cause baby to hit the birth canal at a funny angle, which can make labor even harder on mom. Breaking the water also makes both mom and baby more susceptible to infections since the amniotic sac is a germ-proof barrier for the most part. It's almost like your baby is vacuum sealed for the duration of the stay in the womb. Generally you are put on the clock once your water is broken, and the more vaginal exams you have once your water is broken, the higher your odds of having an infection. You'll be monitored more closely for signs of fever or fetal distress.

With luck, a few of these things or all of these things will come together to make a beautiful moment in which your baby will come sliding right down the birth canal and into the waiting arms of some lucky doctor or nurse with nary a scratch. Sometimes though, that baby won't want to come down. Then you may experience vacuum-assisted or forceps-assisted birth, which generally also means an episiotomy since we weren't designed to have tools crammed up our vaggies along with the heads of our offspring.

Some doctors will cut an episiotomy anyway, even if they don't need to insert tools to remove your child... but that's a topic for a different day.

If all of these things didn't work, then the odds are good that for some reason during your induction, you will find yourself in an operating room numb to the gills and divided from the view of your child by a big blue surgical drape. Of course, some of you will choose to skip everything and just head here. That's fine if it is indeed an informed choice.

Surgical birth is major abdominal surgery. Organs will leave your abdominal cavity. You could have up to six weeks of recovery. You could have issues after the healing such as a numbness where nerves have been cut, or damage to internal organs. You will now have a little scar on the outside, and a little scar on the inside... and that little scar can cause big problems down the road if you have more pregnancies.

Caesarean scars can cause problems if future pregnancies occur because the placenta can grow into or through the scar, a condition that makes it very difficult or impossible for the placenta to detach on its own after birth the way it is supposed to, and can be fatal. The risk of rupture can go up, though the rise isn't huge, the limitations in your options is. The old saying was 'once a caesarean, always a caesarean', and if you'd like to try a VBAC you may have to fight harder for it than you have fought for anything in your life. Many doctors do not want to take on the increased risk and will only do repeat caesareans. Each surgery increases the risk to the mother's health.

So, please ladies. I beg you to dig deeply and read everything you can before you make up your mind. This is more important than picking out the perfect nursery furniture and registering for all those tiny clothes and gadgets. This is more important than your stroller or diaper bag choices. This is a life choice for two people, and it can't be taken lightly.

For those who have weighed the risks with the benefits and chosen to still move ahead with your plans, I wish you a safe, peaceful, and respected birth. As a mom, all you can do is the best you can with the knowledge you have available, and I just gave you some. There's more out there. Keep searching. Be sure that what people are pushing at you is what YOU want, not just something to make someone else's life easier.

And for the friends and family members who chose to do it this way, that doesn't mean that it's the right choice for everyone. Maybe the woman you're leaning on to 'get that baby out here' because you'd like some cuddle time wants to let the baby finish baking.

My philosophy.

I am going to become a birth educator.  Given my radical way of thinking and living, that scares the bejeepers out of lots of people.  I might give people ideas.  I might start little seeds of change which might improve how people look at birth.  I might just end up with another education that nets me little to no income change, but it's where I'm called and where I'm going.

I've had a few people call me out on this, "what are you POSSIBLY going to teach people?" and "Homebirth isn't the ONLY way to birth, you know." Oh, and "How are you going to teach people the right way to do stuff when you don't do things the right way?"

Because I swim against the current (co-sleeping, full-term nursing, home birthing, non-circ'ing, etc.) there are some who are afraid I'll start passing out Kool Aid and encourage everyone to drink deeply and come ride the crazy-wagon with me.  I'm not though.  At least, that's not my intention.  My belief is that 

neither western medical tradition nor holistic healing traditions hold all of the cards when it comes to birth. Much like my beliefs in politics: each side holds a piece of the puzzle, and both sides DO have the ability to enhance the outcomes of the other!

I'm no longer fully on the natural childbirth wagon. For me, it is the way I birth best based on my health state and what works best for my family. For you, it may be a full-on epidural cocktail with a perc chaser. Your choices are yours, birthing ladies of the future, but my job is to help get good, accurate, and balanced information into your hands so the choices you make are actual choices and not just something you do because your cousin's cousin said you couldn't do any different.

With luck, I will be teaching by mid 2012, mostly to lower income women and their partners in order to ensure that poor women have access to the knowledge on how their bodies work, how to cope with labor discomfort, parenting practices, and breastfeeding.

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.

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'.

A day in the life of the able-bodied wife.

I am the able-bodied spouse in my house. My husband is a non-combat-injured, disabled veteran. I am a capable, organized, strong-willed, physically strong woman. I am a driven perfectionist by nature, who is working with a less-than-perfect situation. I have chosen a strange, non-conformist lifestyle by choosing to marry this man. I don't talk about it much because that's just what it is. There is stress. There is pain. There is frustration. There is joy. There is love. It is what it is. I realize it's not as bad as many people have it. I'm grateful that things are the way they are, even when they suck.

My husband is 33. Ten years ago, he was a happy, healthy, active guy who heard our nation's call to arms and answered it by choosing one of the most difficult jobs in the army, Forward Observer. Not exactly the most civilian-adaptable career choice, but recruiters don't tell their young enlistees this, and this guy was planning to do this for a VERY long time when he signed up. He certainly didn't expect to fall and hurt himself while helping move the new furniture into his barracks in Korea, nor did he expect to have someone shut a huge iron gate on his arm in Germany. Each of those injuries created a permanent wound that there isn't a surgical fix for. He left the army with not only these injuries, but he had also lost his ability to physically compete in the sports he once loved, perform jobs he once loved, and had not picked up any useful new job skills through his service that could translate to a life outside the army. It was very much like starting over from scratch for him. It was not in his original plans and was a HUGE adjustment. He is still adjusting in many ways.

It's just the everyday stupid shit that no one plans on that can forever alter the course of a life. Each of those injuries slightly altered his life trajectory. One could even argue that these injuries saved his life by making him undeployable. The guy who took his place downrange did not come home. My husband did... which still makes him incredibly sad. It makes me sad for him, but at the same time, had it not all happened as it did, what *would* my life look like? Would I be married at all? Would I be a mother? Hard to tell. In either case, I live a mildly isolated lifestyle because there are not many people around me who can relate to my lifestyle. Most people simply don't get why I married him in the first place since he

I daily do the little things, and many of the big things that make civilized life possible in our household. Sometimes that means putting aside my own needs and wants to make sure my husband and son are taken care of, but that's sorta part of the wife/mom job description in the first place. There are days when my husband quite literally cannot move (after working on a big project, during heavy weather systems, after a rough day with the kid, etc.) and our shared duties become my duties, period. Not many people understand how or why I 'put up with it', because in our great age of feminism, it looks like I'm the subservient doormat of a wife. The way I see it, I'm treating a man how I'd like to be treated if found in a similar situation. I walk the fine line between making it possible for him to live as independent a life as he can and doing too much. If I do too much, I make him feel like less of a person. If I do too little, I put too much pressure on him to do more than he is able. It has taken me nearly six years to get to where I understand what he truly needs me to do. That is mostly just being 'here' when he needs me. That's not to say I don't get it wrong from time to time.

I am never really off duty as his wife. Our life is a never-ending stream of paperwork from the VA, appointments to keep, medications to remember, reactions to watch out for with the meds, lots of explaining to others why we live the way we do. It's a strange kind of normal even for us. My husband does his best to be a part of my world and to integrate as much as possible into the able-bodied world. He loves yardwork, so we've had to find adaptive tools, and I tend to remain on standby while he works in the yard to make sure he doesn't aggravate his issues or give himself heatstroke in an effort to show the world he can still DO something. He likes to do home improvement projects, I standby to pick up the slack or to call in reinforcements to make sure he *can* do what he sets out to do. I help fill out and manage paperwork. I keep track of finances. I remind my husband that he is loved, because it's pretty easy to forget some days.

He is loved. Very much so. This is a man who is loyal to a fault. He doesn't do illicit drugs, troll the bars late at night, search for porn when I'm out, or any other act of bastardry I've had committed against me in a relationship. On his good days he's got a great sense of humor. He's socially awkward like me, but bless his heart he tries when I drag him to uncomfortable social functions. He loves me for who I am, not for what my dress size is. He trusts me. He treats me with dignity and respect. He stands up for me and stands with me in times of tragedy or trial in my life. He has seen me at my worst and never walked away from me. On top of all of this- he is a damn good father to our son. His body may be limited, but his heart is not.

For all the things he is to me, he is still a man with limitations to the outside world. He lives in an odd sort of limbo in our society. He is a stay-at-home dad. He's not exactly welcome at mommy-and-me playtime, and similarly unwelcome in the circle of men. Schoolwork is complicated for him by the fact that he may have to read the same chapter three times just to absorb part of it. Not many employers have shown interest in boosting their quotas of 'handicapped' employees in such a tight job market, either. When you're choosing an employee- do you go for the guys who are fully physically able, or do you go for the equally qualified guy who needs a little more time and some reasonable modifications to his work load?

There are those who think it's an abomination that my husband receives any sort of assistance from the government through the VA Health System for his 'invisible' disabilities. From those folks I have learned that in order for anyone to truly qualify as disabled, they must first be missing limbs or visibly and horribly disfigured. Or mentally handicapped in an obvious way- preferably with helmets and other external gear so no one has to guess. For a guy to look absolutely normal and to have all his limbs intact, and to not have some cool and heroic story to explain how he came to be injured, well, he's just not handicapped enough for anyone to really care.

He is working daily on rebuilding his life from the ground up. He had to learn how to cope with debilitating pain on a daily basis in order to back down on his pain meds enough to actually have a life. He is going to school to learn a trade that might some day support our family. He has to improvise quite often in order to adapt this world to fit his needs because let's face it- even for able-bodied people, this world is not user-friendly sometimes. So, our goal each day is to do a little better than the day before. We keep working out the bugs together, but always working toward giving him the independence and autonomy he deserves and so badly needs.

I hurt for him because he hurts both physically and mentally. To be a man in a society that places a high premium on a man's ability to be physical and to be a provider in a body that doesn't allow a man to be physical or to fully provide is hard. Being unable to wrestle and roughhouse with his son is hard. Knowing so many people who went downrange and came home under a blanket of stars and stripes is hard. Knowing that his whole existence was altered by a faulty piece of concrete is hard. I watch him struggle daily with pain that can't be fixed and meds that can't go away, and hope that someday modern medicine will find a way to fix him and make him whole again so he can enjoy life as a young man with a family does. My husband is 33, but feels eighty. It's hard to watch someone you love hurt so much and know that whatever you do to help might hurt more, either emotionally or physically, it might hurt more... but that doesn't stop me from being here and trying. His physical state does not make him unloveable. It may make him difficult to get along with some days, but I sure do love this man.

I wish I could say that I was ever the patient and doting wife, but truth is, there are days when I get so incredibly frustrated that I have difficulty holding back the flow of tears because I just want things to be normal. Not 'normal' as applies to us, but NORMAL as applies to most other families- a normal that doesn't involve medication schedules, lifting limits, memory problems, personality changes from meds, lack of understanding from those around us, adaptive equipment, and him being able to be a part of the traditional world of men as he'd like to do. I do. I despise the medications he has to take to be able to function. I especially despise the medications that make him drowsy and change his personality. I want a day to come where his body CAN be repaired, and he CAN do what he wants to do without limitations. That he can mow the yard like the neighbor guys do, then go play ball with his son instead of being immobilized by pain afterwards. With current medical technology, it's not going to happen, so it is what it is.

My husband is one of the many invisible people with disabilities among us. So, here I am telling the world about him. Maybe someone else will benefit. Maybe more people will see and understand.

Welcome to the Circle, little sister.

(To one specific sister at the moment, though I mean it for all of you, and eventually my little brother, when he finds a good woman to settle down with...)

Welcome to motherhood, little one.  I know you're not all the way there, you still have some months to go before you get to meet that sweet little girl you're carrying, but even so, you are still a mother who is making the best decisions possible for your child every day.  Even before the baby arrives, you're learning about her and preparing a place for her in your life.  Sometimes that's almost as hard to do as it is once the baby has arrived.

I have so much confidence in how strong and amazing you are as a woman, and how great a parent you will be.  You are going to do a great job.  You were born to do this!

Motherhood is a great gift.  There is no other relationship you will have on this earth as amazing and special as the one you are entering into.  When you first look at your baby- when you see those little eyes and hands and feet for the first time in your arms- you know that child has your heart wrapped up in those tiny fingers, and your heart will feel so huge in your chest.  You'll know in that moment that you are superwoman, and that you'd move mountains and fight off wolves barehanded for that small baby if you had to.  Of course there will also be days when you don't feel so super.  There will be ups and downs, and some days you'll wonder if you can really handle this child, how you can possibly do it with so little sleep... and on those days you'll discover a different strength. 

Birth is an amazing and life-changing event by whatever means it occurs.  I believe that a healthy baby is NOT all that matters, and hope that the birth you have is not only the birth you want, but is also one where you and your baby are treated with respect and love and kindness to get you off to the best start possible when you meet that beautiful baby.  It is an intense experience to go through, and only you can go through it.  It's like running a marathon- all your friends and loved ones can support you to the starting line, hand out drinks and snacks while you're running, but only you can run the race yourself.  No one can run the race for you, and you're a different person at the finish line than you were at the starting line because of the experience.  Run that race how you choose, and know that I will be cheering for you all the way through. 

You will be swarmed with advice givers of all kinds the moment you give birth, if not before.  I have some advice for you myself.  So, here goes.

1.  No matter who is giving you the advice, you don't have to follow it (except for these four pieces of advice, because my advice is more awesome like that).  It could be a friend, a family member, a doctor, someone from church, some random stranger.  It doesn't matter.  If the advice doesn't seem right to you, or seems like something that you are not comfortable with, you can say no.  You don't have to do what everyone else says because this is your child, and you are a strong, capable person even if you are young and this is your first time doing it.  You get to make decisions for the first time about another person's life.  It can be scary.  You'll wonder if what you've chosen is okay sometimes, especially if everyone else seems to think it's weird or different... but if it feels right to you, keep going.  (this includes whether or not your baby wears socks, what you feed them, who gets to hold them, how much they get held, etc.)

2.  If you have a down day, or you have questions, or you just need someone to help you out, do not be afraid to ask.  Ask your friends, ask your family, ask your co-workers.  Do not hesitate to get people to help you in the first year or two- parenting is a challenge, and we were not meant to do it alone.  It really does take a village (just watch out for idiots in your village)!

3.  Don't be afraid of being imperfect.  Even when we do all the 'right' things, someone else thinks you're doing it wrong.  There is no such thing as a perfect parent.  There's what works for you, what works for me, what works for so-and-so, but no one thing will work for everyone... because your baby is yours. 

4.  Don't be afraid to learn more.  Every day more knowledge is added to the world about everything, and when we know better, we do better.  :-)

So, that's it.  I, of course have loads of knowledge on other things about birth and babies, and breastfeeding, and other stuff.  I'm here if you need me.  I'm only a text or call away.  Or skype.  In other words, even from nearly 1000 miles away, I'm backing you all the way to the finish line lady.

-<3, Me.

further down the rabbit hole...

In many ways, I'm putting my life back together.  There are so many projects around this house that I had intended to get to at some point in the last three years, but for one reason or another I just never got around to it.  Painting the bedroom.  Scrubbing down baseboards.  Untangling the mismatched pile of wreckage that is my office.  These things were further derailed this spring when my birth mom decided to finally make good on her talk about moving up here...  which you can guess didn't work out so well by the last post.

More stuff got piled into the office while she was here, and the level of disorganization is epic, if you ask me.  I had kitchen utensils in my second-floor office, for crying out loud.  This room is sort of a metaphor for what's been going on in my mind for a few years.  A gradual pile up of things from old lives, some still useful, most not.  I'd keep the door to the room closed all the time if it weren't for the cat who pries the door open to sun himself and to barf on the floor.  So, it's a room of clutter and cat barf stains on un-sealed wood floors with dreadful beige paint and a tan ceiling.  Worst. Room. Ever.  But I decided to tackle it for the month of September.  My thought process being that if I can unclutter and control a space, perhaps I can better control my thoughts and regain my focus.  Because being in this rut sucks.  I have things I need to do and just can't get moving because I keep circling back to this room.  This one room.

Ahem.  The office project.  Yes.

Has a great ring to it, right?

So, the grown-up books all live in the office on grown-up shelves, and it's taking shape wonderfully.  I'm gradually moving the flotsam out into a pile of garbage in the hallway neatly tagged and bagged for whatever mode of disposal (garbage, goodwill, recycle, shred) and unpacking the old dresser that's served as an inefficient supply cabinet for the last two years into nice little baskets on one of the bookshelves.  Order is happening as chaos is simultaneously created by sifting through each of the copier paper boxes in the room.  My crafting stuff found homes on top of the bookshelves.  My sewing tackle box also went up and overhead. The whole wall is becoming an OCD masterpiece where even my husband will be able to find things!

It WAS all going good, anyway.  Then I found the box marked "Lorelei's Artwork" in big, loopy letters.  Not my handwriting.  Hell, I haven't had artwork in years, I either realized that I had limited talent and stopped doing 'art' or I realized that nothing I made was really worth keeping and ditched it years ago.  So, it had to be left over from Her being here.  So, I unwrapped miles of newspaper in the box to find several ceramic projects of mine from middle school, an acrylic rendering of a still life involving rope, a horse skull, and two horse shoes- kinda odd composition.  Then there was a layer of more newspaper.  Then a ziploc bag containing newspaper clippings from her father's/my grandfather's funeral.  Then a stack of pictures marked "Return to Randy" (one of her many exes).  Then a few documents pertaining to a divorce and a pocket calendar from 1994-1995.  Pivotal timeframe for me.  So, I opened it.

Inside this calendar, I saw the exact dates for all the strange crap that happened in her final months with her fifth husband.  And now it makes sense.  Lovely.