Spring!

I love spring. There is just something amazing about watching the world re-birth itself. Trees and flowers blooming, fresh produce in abundance, the warmth of a long-missed sun... nothing compares.

My kids have started their own little garden. So far they have started growing dill, basil, rosemary, green onions, chives, chamomile, zucchini, thyme, peas and wild flowers. They have plans to start some tomatoes soon along with a "salad bowl" (a pot filled with spinach, argula and spring greens). Today, while sitting outside enjoying the spring sun, and admiring the sprouting zucchini an idea for a recipe hit me. I think it was a total win and wanted to share it!

Zucchini banana bread:
2 cups whole wheat flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking soda

--combine in a bowl, set aside

2 overripe bananas, mashed
one medium zucchini, finely shredded
1/4 cup butter melted
2 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1 TB vanilla extract
generous sprinkle of cinnamon

Mix the above ingredients well together, followed by adding the flour mixture. Place in a greased bread pan at 350 for about 40-50 mins or until an inserted knife comes out clean.

Simple, easy and it tasted amazing! The kids loved it too. You could easily cut the sugar amount down too. The bread is sweet and I imagine a good way to do it, as well, would to substitute vanilla yogurt for the butter (a container's worth) and cut the sugar down to 2/3 or maybe even half. Nevertheless, it was my first made up baking recipe and I was quite proud!

At this moment I have a zucchini gratin baking in the oven that I can't wait to dive into (or as Jaidy would call it, "bikini"). Ahhhh, spring tastes amazing!

Midwifery Today conference

I think I perhaps may be the worse blogger in the world... for one, I constantly forget that I have this outlet here to rant, rave, ooooh and ahhhh.. and second I often wonder if anyone ever actually reads a smidgen of anything I write on here. Anyhow... either way I am back to muddle up cyberspace with more of my blabber.

This past weekend I had an amazing opportunity to go the Midwifery Today conference in Philadelphia, PA. I previously had gone to this same conference 4 years ago and found it to be utterly amazing. This time was no different. I decided to take my two daughters with me and turn it into a girls only trip. We arrived at our hotel at 1am Friday morning after 12 hours worth of traveling. I had to be up by 7am for the all day conference... man, was mama tired!

Being a birth junkie, I can't describe how amazing it is to be in the room with the likes of Elizabeth Davis, Ina May Gaskin and Michel Odent. I guess one can compare it to a football fanatic having a chance to chat with Jerry Rice or Joe Montana. Michel Odent's session on alternative methods for pain relief was nothing short of fascinating. He spoke a lot about the physiological process and how pain plays a factor in labor along with the cascade of hormones and endorphins. It makes sense when put in the perspective of how one can't remove one peice of a puzzle and then still expect for all the others peices to fit together to create the same picture. It just doesn't work! Friday evening we were treated with the most beautiful birth film I have yet to see called Le Premier Cri (The first cry). This film was a montage of highlights of births across the world, including a water birth with dolphins!

The highlight on Saturday was a workshop with Janice Marsh-Prelesnik on expressive arts. This was such an incredibly fun time... singing, dancing and creating works of art with other beautiful women. Lunch was spent with a table of more amazing women... I had the opportunity to chat with several student midwives, a nurse-midwife, as well as lunch with Ina May Gaskin herself. That evening was the cabaret.. 2 hours of more songs, dancing, poetry and a hilarious play put on by Naoli Vinaver and Michel Odent. I some how got the nerve to read the two poems I had wrote about Kayla's birth. It was incredibly scary, but at the same time it was comforting to share such personal peices of me with a room full of supportive and powerful women--doulas, midwives, childbirth educators, birth advocates and more.

The girls had a great time... and I came back home refreshed and ready to get into gear with moving things forward--creating a plan to be able to start midwifery school (hopefully when Ava turns 3) and pursuing some other exciting opportunities in the birth community. I can't wait!

Mother Jugs

Ahhhhh... breastfeeding. Nutrition, love and comfort all rolled up into one. I have a love/hate relationship with it. As my oldest daughter turned 11 last week, that makes almost 12 years straight of either being pregnant and/or breastfeeding. Some of my most precious memories are of nursing my children... a 4 mos old baby Kayla gazing up at me, milk dribbling out of her toothless smiling mouth... minutes old TJ latching onto my breast like a famished barracuda... Jaiden gazing up at me as he stroked my face, looking full of wonder... Ava making "mmmmmm" noises as she fills her tummy full of mommy's sweet milk. It's absolutely mind blowing to me how our bodies are able to create, carry and birth an human being and then make food to sustain it's life once on the outside. Coming home from an exhausting and hectic day at work nothing is better than curling up on my bed with my baby to nurse, the rush of oxytocin surging down into my toes to relax me into waves of love and contentment.

Then there's the flip side... nipples sore and tender from a teething baby who thinks nipples are their own personal toy for abuse... babies who think that the "big mama's" are there to be their own personal pacifier to ease into sleep... heaven forbid it be taken out of their mouth, and let's forget that they are attached to Mom! Then we have babies who believe that the nipple currently not being used is there solely for their personal entertainment while nursing on the other side... fisher price never knew that such an amazing toy existed, none other than a mommy's nipple! We have big babies wanting to nurse while standing up with their butts in their air and twisting their torso's, babies who try to look around and turn their heads-nipple still in mouth, of course... we then have toddlers who, when attempting to wean them, lie in bed screaming "help me, mama! Help me!" and even worse are the toddlers unwilling to latch correctly and therefor putting Mom into a human meat grinder.

Ahhhh... mommyhood. For now, I have to sign off... I have a demanding 16 mos old clawing at my leg while throwing her head back and wailing. Must be nah-nah time.

Nature versus nurture....

It's the classic debate, biology vs environment... being a step-parent, this debate takes a different flavor all together.. what makes a mother? Is it genetics? Or is it being there through good times and bad, teaching and loving and nurturing? Being there when the children are sick, taking them to doctor's appointments, hugging them when hearts are broken or buying a new dress for their first dance.. the answer to me, tends to be blantantly obvious. In the words of my incredibly wise, then 5 year old stepson, "A mother gives birth to you, a Mommy takes care of you".

It's easy to take the road of not being present when convenient, being checked out so to speak and then appearing like magic when things are easy to claim the glory... I don't need a monument in my honor. My own personal glory is etched in the love I get in return... catching my first "step" granddaughter into my hands to give her to her mother's waiting arms at her birth, listening to my son play a son in my honor on his guitar that he learned because he knows I love it, my other son referring to me as "the only mother he knows". In this cases biology is just that... the study of cells, which in the scheme of life's importance have little meaning.

"How long do you wanna be loved?? Is forever enough 'cause I'm never never giving you up...."

Songbird

"For you, there'll be no more crying,
For you, the sun will be shining,
And I feel that when I'm with you,
It's alright, I know its right

And the songbirds are singing,
Like they know the score,
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before"

All of my babies have been "assigned" songs... special songs that Mommy can sing to them that have special significance. For Kayla, it is "You are so Beautiful" by Joe Crocker and "Somewhere out there" by Linda Rodstant. When she was about two we would sing "You are so beautiful" together... it is only really a few lines long and repeats itself so it was easy for her to sing... later on I gifted her with a carousel horse my dad had given me as a child that played "somewhere out there"... she was so in love with the horse and the song that it was added to our collection.

For TJ, when I was pregnant I had bought a Disney lullaby cd and played it quite a bit, even putting headphones on my belly. After he was born I discovered that if I hummed one of those tunes, he would calm down almost instantly. As a result, his songs became "Baby Mine" and "Dream"... to this day if he is upset or sick he will ask me to sing "Baby Mine".

Jaiden's song is "You are my Shining Star"... he frequently asks to hear it and is thrilled when we listen to it on my iPod in the kitchen while he is helping me cook.

Ava has "songbird" by Fleetwood Mac... it is so sweet and fitting. Rodney has bestowed his own Daddy song onto her.. "Unforgettable" and that song soothes her when we play it for her.

So, here you go, Kayla bear... the answer to your question in my last post. :-)