Enough family photos. . .

I really liked this blog post I came across here, so now I share with whoever reads this- How to be Spiritual, According to the Bible

Niko, the Wonder Pet-

He's so cute. The cats are a bit distraught, but, oh well.

Swimming with Aunt Tonya in Colorado-

Colorado Trip-

We had a great family vacation in Colorado. All our prayers were answered: we stayed healthy, we enjoyed one another, and the car ran well! And, we heartily enjoyed fun Denver must-sees such as the zoo (see gorilla pic) and Casa Bonita. We had fabulous hosts who fed us well and blessed us with their hospitality. We re-connected with old friends and made new ones as well.
We will post more soon 1)about our new puppy- Niko, and 2)as we get our new family photos, and 3)as we figure out how to post video from our digital video camera.

Road Trip-

Here are some pictures of the kids playing at a rest stop in Wyoming. Thank you everyone praying for our car- we made it! Prayers again please July 28-29 for our way back. We were hosted by a lovely family in our sister church in Billings, Montana, on the way down. That was so nice- thank you Yeagers! There is also a sweet picture of Lindy on Grandpa's lap. The first pic is of Corbin who pulled out a tooth on the bottom and I think Grandma Faith found the crazy glasses for him. What a boy! We're having a great time.

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Home-making---

—being a full-time wife and mother—is not a destructive drought of usefulness but an overflowing oasis of opportunity; it is not a dreary cell to contain one's talents and skills but a brilliant catalyst to channel creativity and energies into meaningful work; it is not a rope for binding one's productivity in the marketplace, but reins for guiding one's posterity in the home; it is not oppressive restraint of intellectual prowess for the community, but a release of wise instruction to your own household; it is not the bitter assignment of inferiority to your person, but the bright assurance of of the ingenuity of God's plan for the complementarity of the sexes,especially as worked out in God's plan for marriage; it is neither limitation of gifts available nor stinginess in distributing the benefits of those gifts, but rather the multiplication of a mother's legacy to the generations to come and the generous bestowal of all God meant a mother to give to those He entrusted to her care.'
Dorothy Patterson

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Birth Quotes

Here are some good, thought-provoking ones (The first one is my favorite, often quoted by Margaret):

Birth is as safe as life gets.

Harriette Hartigan

Treating normal labors as though they were complicated can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rooks

Midwifery is rooted in the natural approach. Pregnancy and birth are considered fundamentally healthy processes which have many normal variations; it is normal part of life, not a medical condition…Only when complications occur which are beyond the midwife's expertise, is the woman transferred to obstetric care.

Steiger

We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong.

Laura Stavoe Harm

Lo, children are a heritage of the LORD: and a reward from Him.

Psalms 127:3

Life only demands from you the strength you possess.

David Hammarskjold

Fear and faith cannot coexist and they both demand different conclusions and actions.

Christy Faber

Epidurals rip women off of an opportunity to experience themselves as competent adults.

Margaret Egeland, CNM

Just as a woman's heart knows how and when to pump, her lungs to inhale, and her hand to pull back from fire, so she knows when and how to give birth.

Virginia Di Orio

In the sheltered simplicity of the first days after a baby is born, one sees again the magical closed circle, the miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other, the tranquil sky reflected on the face of the mother nursing her child.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Throughout the world, there exists a group of women who feel mightily drawn to giving care to women in childbirth. At the same time maternal and independent, responsive to a mother's needs, yet accepting full responsibility as her attendant; such women are natural midwives. Without the presence and acceptance of the midwife, obstetrics becomes aggressive, technical and inhuman.

Professor G.J. Kloosterman, Chief of OB/GYN, Univ. of Amsterdam

The woman about to become a mother, or with her newborn infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden or stretches her aching limbs…. God forbid that any member of the profession to which she trusts her life, doubly precious at that eventful period, should hazard it negligently, unadvisedly or selfishly.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Whenever a woman gives birth to a child, she remembers the hard work no more, for the joy that a child has been born into the world.

John 16:21

Women's strongest feelings [in terms of their birthings], positive and negative, focus on the way they were treated by their caregivers.

Annie Kennedy & Penny Simkin

Technology has turned the fetus into a patient, reducing the mother to being the 'maternal environment' and preventing attachment until after the ultrasound has shown the fetus to be 'normal.'

Jennifer Hall

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

Isaiah 30:18

Man cannot feed the baby within the uterus. What justifies his presumption that he is able to improve upon the physiological provision because the child has recently left the uterus? We can fortify and reinforce with certain substances the adequacy of both the placental and the breast nutrition, but the basic natural nourishment supplies something no concoction can contain.

Dr. Grantly Dick-Reed, M.D.

For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of POWER, of LOVE, and of SELF-DISCIPLINE.

2Timothy 1:7

A healthy woman who delivers spontaneously performs a job that cannot be improved upon.

Aidan MacFarlane author of The Psychology of Childbirth (1977)

If it hurts, get off it, move it around, rub it better.

Barbara Kott (president of the NCT)

If in doubt, breathe out

Cathy Doberska - Reading, UK NCT teacher

Rain, after all is only rain; it is not bad weather. So also, pain is only pain; unless we resist it, then it becomes torment.

I Ching

There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all but the baby's. Your body is the child's instrument of birth.

Dr. Penelope Leach

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Sculpture Board

Corbin made this over the past couple of days using school glue, wood,rocks, his pocket knife and various decorations. We decided to call ita sculpture board. Each sculpture has a name. See if you can match thename to the sculpture: Frozen Clock, Jesus' Cross, Rock Mountain, HandReach Rock, Mount Snowball, Crystal Diving Board, Double Rock StickDiving Board, Double Stick Rock, Snow Holder, Rock Sandwich and TickTock. He said that he thinks this may be his talent. What do you think?

A Boy and his Dog-

There is just something magical about a boy and a dog. They have a special bond- think Old Yeller, Lassie, Where the Red Fern Grows. Corbin has always been drawn to dogs. He was never afraid of them like Lindy is, he always approached them to pet and play with. I've always been a cat person myself. However, a long time ago, when it seemed another lifetime away, I promised Corbin that he could get a dog when he was 8-years-old. And while Corbin does not turn eight until October, the other dog lover in our house just had a birthday. And on his birthday, an email came to us through our church of a family looking for homes for 13(!) collie-black lab puppies. When I finally conceded to calling a couple of days later, the family only had the runt left. They had received several calls about the puppies that day, and they chose Kent's message as the one they liked best for their coddled runt. Here he is, black with white paws, white neck, and a white tip of his tail. We will pick him up for good after we get back home from our Colorado trip. We need a good name- please give us some suggestions!!

Day at the Lake-

We love Nana and Papa's house at Twin Lakes, Idaho!

Kent's 31st Birthday-

We had a lovely day including a pancake breakfast, getting new Bose speakers for the computer, dinner at the White House Grill (Yum-may!), and a scotch and cigar party after choir. What more could a guy ask for?!

Lindy's New Curtains-

I made these to replace the old-lady lacy white foofy things that have been up since we moved here. I love the fabrics I found for this- purple vertical lines and aqua eyelet, both cotton. And I have plenty leftover to make skirts for Lin! Thanks mom- for all of the help. It was her idea to add the purple material at the top of the valance- this solved another issue, but I love how it ties the two fabrics together. I will be making tie-backs for the panels, which I think will really make them extra-cute.

4th of July-

Here's Ella, Lindy and Corbin licking the paddles off of great-grandpa's annual homemade ice cream. We had a terrific weekend at nana and papa's house- Twin Lakes, Idaho: the best place in the WORLD to be on the 4th of July, IMHO. Kent does agree on this.

Phew!

Last night, (well, 2am this morning actually), was my 9th birth in one month. That is the most birth action I have ever had! 3 doula clients: one of those an unassisted homebirth which dad caught the baby- no problems, one a gorgeous water birth at the birth center in town, and the other a long hospital birth at which when I left the nurse told me I was the best doula they had ever worked with. 1 assistant birth with another midwife. 5 assistant births with my dear friend and midwife Margaret: 3 of those were lovely uncomplicated births, and sandwiched in the middle of all these miracles were the 2 families who lost their babies.
Tonight is the ladies sewing and craft night at our church. I am SO looking forward to this! I'm hoping to finish some curtains for Lindy's room. And tomorrow we will all be at my parent's house in Twin Lakes, Idaho- the best place in the world to be on 4th of July, IMHO. It's a huge relief that I won't be on call for any births. Our dear friend and brother Cody is coming to visit for a week next week. We will spend lots of time at BBQs, the lake, and Silverwood, I'm sure. Margaret and I are planning on an afternoon of floating the lazy river whilst sipping drinks to veg out after the birth traumas. And then we leave for our trip to Colorado to visit Kent's family and friends on July 18 to return on the 29th. Ah- time to sit back and enjoy the summer for all it's worth!

Funny Story-

The Middle Wife
by an Anonymous 2nd grade teacher

I’ve been teaching now for about fifteen years. I have two kids myself, but the best birth story I know is the one I saw in my own second-grade classroom a few years back.

When I was a kid, I loved show-and-tell. So I always have a few sessions with my students. It helps them get over shyness and usually, show-and-tell is pretty tame. Kids bring in pet turtles, model airplanes, pictures of fish they catch, stuff like that. And I never, ever place any boundaries or limitations on them. If they want to lug it in to school and talk about it, they’re welcome.

Well, one day this little girl, Erica, a very bright, very outgoing kid, takes her turn and waddles up to the front of the class with a pillow stuffed under her sweater.

She holds up a snapshot of an infant. “This is Luke, my baby brother, and I’m going to tell you about his birthday.”

“First, Mom and Dad made him as a symbol of their love, and then Dad put a seed in my Mom’s stomach, and Luke grew in there. He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord.”

She’s standing there with her hands on the pillow, and I’m trying not to laugh and wishing I had my camcorder with me. The kids are watching her in amazement.

“Then, about two Saturdays ago, my Mom starts saying and going, ‘Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh!’ Erica puts a hand behind her back and groans. “She walked around the house for, like an hour, ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Now this kid is doing a hysterical duck walk and groaning.

“My Dad called the middle wife. She delivers babies, but she doesn’t have a sign on the car like the Domino’s man. They got my Mom to lie down in bed like this.” Then Erica lies down with her back against the wall.

“And then, pop! My Mom had this bag of water she kept in there in case he got thirsty, and it just blew up and spilled all over the bed, like psshhheew!” This kid has her legs spread with her little hands miming water flowing away. It was too much!

“Then the middle wife starts saying, ‘push, push,’ and ‘breathe, breathe. They started counting, but never even got past ten. Then, all of a sudden, out comes my brother. He was covered in yucky stuff that they all said was from Mom’s play-center, so there must be a lot of toys inside there.”

Then Erica stood up, took a big theatrical bow and returned to her seat. I’m sure I applauded the loudest. Ever since then, when it’s show-and-tell day, I bring my camcorder, just in case another “Middle Wife” comes along.

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Terri here- Saw that today, and wanted to post something light-hearted. BTW, I walked into a birth the other day to hear the cry of a healthy newborn. Let me tell you, after two fetal demises last week, that sound was joyous music full of miracle and thanksgiving. I now appreciate the normal, healthy babies much more than ever. They truly are a gift from God.

Running the risk of sounding defensive, here is my disclaimer. In case anyone reading this is skeptical of midwives or homebirth: these babies would have died in any circumstance. Both of them had been dead in utero for two days before the mom noticed or labor started. These two moms had healthy, normal pregnancies and had previously delivered all healthy, normal babies.