Our human feelings are, at their most basic level, chemical reactions in our bodies.  There are love chemicals (oxytocin, which is responsible for orgasm & labor contractions), anxiety chemicals (the catochalemines, which get us ready to fight or flee), and on and on.  Our whole bodies are affected by our emotion chemicals.  I recently learned that we get butterflies in the stomach is becuase we have neurotransmitter receptors in our digestive tracts which can produce nausea and other very real physical symptoms in the presence of stress hormones.  Stress hormones can also slow the process of labor, which is actually pretty handy, as you don't want to give birth while being chased by a preditor.  Yes, we humans are a chemical soup of emotions all the time, and our emotion chemicals effect the physical workings of our bodies.

Now consider the fetus.  As a part of the pregnant woman's body, the fetus spends its gestation steeping in the chemical's of the woman's emotions.  At first, the fetus is pretty rudimentary, but it becomes more complex throught pregnancy, to the point when labor begins and the fetus is an active participant in birth and bonding.  And although I beleive that the fetus doesn't really have the technology to "think" or "feel" in the same way I do for most of the pregnancy, still, I cannot imagine that soaking in the mother's feelings would not have some effect on the development of the baby's feelings.  In fact, the more I learn about pre- & perinatal psychology, the more pro-choice I become.  If the fetus feels the mothers feelings, and in fact has their first expreinces of the world through the mother's feelings, and those feelings are negative toward the fetus itself, that seems generally pretty crappy for the person that fetus will become.

Of course, like any life experience, one can overcome the circumstances of one's gestation.  But I see this as one more reason why women should not become mothers simply because they become pregnant.  Choosing motherhood in one's own time and of one's own free will make the difficult task of sharing one's body with another being more joy and less invasion, and I truly believe that the baby born to a mother who loved and wanted it before or as soon as it existed has a better chance at feeling happy and at home in the world.  I encourage all pregnant women planning to carry to term and give birth to practice "fetal love breaks," in which the woman sets aside time during her day, espcially when the day has been stressful, to tell her fetus how much it is loved.  As the mom feels the love for her baby, the baby also feels that love. 

Love is our birthright, and a baby who is tolerated rather than loved is, in my opinion, a tradgedy.  I'm not saying all this to make women feel bad for having moments of frustration as they get another kick in the ribs at two o'clock in the morning.  Perfection is unatainable, we will never do everything exactly right, we will always have fleeting moments of anger and resentment at our children all throughout their lives.  But I think if a pregnant woman feels no love for her fetus, wants to be rid of her fetus, cannot imagine being able to mother the baby that the fetus will become, I think that if that woman wants to end her pregnancy, she should have every right to do so, because though she can hide those feelings from the world, she cannot hide them from her baby.

Home from Oregon tonight.  A lovely trip, lots of good time with old friends in Portland, yurt camping in Lincoln City, a pligrimage to the Tillamook Cheese Factory (Ramona was very excited, running around saying "CHEESE!" and stuffing her cheeks with cheese samples), and beach time in Lincoln City and briefly at the gorgeous Pacific City beach, where we had a very sandy picnic in the sun.  We made sauropods, triceratopses and dinosaur eggs with our sand molds, and Ramonazilla stepped on them all.  Every time we talked about the beach, Ramona talked about her toes, so we got our toes in the ocean a lot, and Ramona did an ocean dance on more than one occasion. 

Ramona tried to eat a strange berry (probably salal, probaby no big deal) and I freaked out and we talked about it a lot afterward, how we can never eat berries unless we're totally sure they can't hurt us.   She said "BLEAGH!" every time we passed the bush after that, to make it clear to me she knew we don't eat those.  My smart girl.  We had mostly good success using the potty seat on the camp-ground potty, and she forced us to make friends with very nice neighbors in the yurt across the way.  Ramona wants all of my time and attention when I'm around, though she does fine with my actual physical absence.  I came home looking forward to going back to work after a week of constant togetherness.  I am not a full-time mom, just as I am not a full-time worker.

It was very hard to leave the coast.  We want so badly to be living our life there, but it's not time yet.  Coming back home, there's the pressures of snack day at the co-op preschool, our serious need to rent some storage space, and a letter from my Congressional Rep thanking for my input about increased access to Certified Nurse MIdwives (which is great, but not what I was advocating).  I crave my own midwifery clients.  I want to be throught the hard work of being the apprentice, and ready to practice, but it's not time yet.  I have a lot to slog through first -- my school exam, 20 primary births, the rest of my CPM paper-work, another midwifery intensive workshop, and the extensive CPM exam.  I am dreaming and praying about finding women who come to the practice where I am apprenticing because they want to work with me.  I swear, I will make it happen.  But that's even more to do, getting myself out there...  But we went for a walk and saw ducks down by the Cedar River, changing their bright green heads for more muted fall tones.  And the first of the salmon are there, starting to spawn and die.  Fall is here, and here is beautiful and that is good.  

Ramona is becoming her own little person more and more every day and I love watching her unfold!  She speaks a language Jamie & I have come to understand, but no one else really does.  She's learned the word "no" and is practicing saying it whether she means it or not, and shaking her head so her hair flies around.  The other day in the Starbucks she was so interested in a 5 week old baby, and did a great job of not touching her when I told her to keep her hands to herself.  The baby's daddy then asked if Ramona wanted to kiss little Olivia, and she gave her a little peck on her peach fuzz head.  Since then she has told us the story of this several times, doing her baby sign and making kissing noises.  It was the highlight of her small life, and makes me feel I should get on the stick about making her a baby sibling.  She's addicted to Sesame Street clips on YouTube, God forgive us.  This whole past month has been all about Ramona's first molars coming in and she's been extra nursey, extra "mama!"- ish.  The potty thing has been tough.  I love my snuggly baby so much, and I also look forward to the days when she can get to sleep on her own, says "no" only when she means it, and can handle me being at home and  in the other room doing something else. 

A week ago Friday I met with a group of moms (and one brave dad) to talk to Senator Maria Cantwell's King County Outreach Director about why health care reform matters in our lives.  Moms and midwives spoke about the low cost and positive outcomes associated with midwife-attended out-of-hospital birth, and encouraged Senator Cantwell to champion the inclusion of midwives in health care reform.  The lone dad at the meeting spoke about the importance of touch to babies, and the beauty of holding your brand new child in your arms, without having to fight against someone taking the baby away for measurments or procedures.  An immigrant woman spoke about coming to the US to give her kids a better life, but facing bankrupcy when she had to have surgery for a brain tumor which would have been covered in her home country.  Women spoke about the agonizing choice of spending the family's single paycheck to cover a stay-at-home mom's health insurance or let her go uninsured because she no longer had an employer to provide coverage.  One woman who chose to stop working ot care for her children spoke about having health insurance coverage be the only thing that kept her in an unhealthy and unhappy marriage.  I was so moved by the stories, and I realized after the meeting that I had mostly listened; after all the work I did to get face to face with someone who could influence the Senator, I stood back and let these women tell their stories, and it was good.  

The next day, I gave a workshop on getting healthy for pregnancy to a small group of women, friends and strangers at a natural medicine store in Seattle.  I mostly talked about nutrition, eating good food, including lots of protein, water, and vitamins/minerals, to build a healthy blood supply to nourish mom and baby.  But I also mentioned the benefits of strong, nourishing herbal infusions to promote optimal nutrition, and using homeopathic remedies when issues arise in early pregnancy.  I was reminded that I do have knowlege and wisdom, and that sharing it is empowering, to me and to those who listen. 

This week Friday I was honored to be welcomed into the home of a sweet family on the birthday of their second child.  I missed the birth, but provided postpartum support  to mom, baby, and my preceptor midwife.  The next day I returned for the 24 hour home visit to find a healthy family full of love and energy appreciative of their opportunity to birth on their own turf and be tucked into bed afterwards.  As a birth attendant, I still have so much to learn, and these families are my teachers.  I am so grateful for them. 

Today, then, I am listening to the rain outside and appreciating that my girl is napping peacefully.  Naps -- and everything else including eating, pottying and time apart from mom -- have been challenging lately becuase of molars, two of which are half way in and two of which are just about to break through the bottom gums.  I begged off of social engagements today to spend time with my girl and I'm so happy that I did.  We need eachother, she and I. 

Things are good in my little world.  I am learning, the rain is falling, and fall is coming soon. 

Dear Nate and healthcare meeting participants,

I’m sorry I didn’t get around to writing this email sooner.  My 18 month old has been teething and she missed her mommy this morning.  We had some much needed family time this afternoon!

I am so grateful for your participation in the meeting we had today.  So many good and earnest people came together to honestly share their experiences with the failures of the for-profit healthcare system.  I am especially grateful to the members of the MAMA Campaign, who shared their vision for lowering costs and improving outcomes in maternity care by increasing access to Certified Professional Midwives, and the supporters of MomsRising who spoke so eloquently to the ways in which women in particular are disenfranchised by the broken healthcare system.  When we take time off to care for our children, we either pay a huge part of our family income to get access to healthcare or we lose our insurance and gamble the financial health of our families on whether or not we get sick.  We spoke with one voice about the importance of reform and our support for government provided universal healthcare.  Many of us even expressed our willingness to pay more taxes to provide funds for
this important undertaking. 

I want to thank each and every person who shared their personal stories in the hopes that someone else’s life would be improved if they spoke out.  And, Nate, I want to thank you for listening and joining in and taking our words and ideas to share with the Senator. God bless you all for taking the time to work for a better America. 

Sincerely,

Alison Cole Duren-Sutherland

On the first harvest, celebrated as "Lammas" or "Lughnasad" in the first days of August, I picked basil from the container garden and made pesto.  It was the hottest it's ever been in Seattle that week, and we ate pesto sandwiches often so we didn't have to turn on the stove.  Now, we have finished that pesto, and I have more basil to throw in the food processor when nap time is over.  It is grey and cool and misty outside; this is the home that I know and love.  Even when the sun is out, fall is in the air; the days are cooler and there is a breeze.  I feel like this first harvest time flipped a switch bringing summer to an end, even though the equinox is not for several weeks.  I am about to go on birth call for the first time in quite a while.  I so look forward to bringing in the harvest of all my academic work, actually midwifing families at birth.  The wheel of the year, and of my life is turning. 

Ramona says more words every day -- door, goat, diaper, more, juice, baseball...  She was trying really hard to say "Let's go Mets!" yesterday, and didn't want to take a nap becuase she knew we were goging to the baseball game later that day.  When Jamie asked her what she needed as she fussed about nap time, she told him she wanted to watch baseball.  She loves her baseball cards; some days they are her first thought when she wakes up in the morning.  I miss her when I am at work, and love the happy reunions in the evening.  She is so much fun to talk to, and it's exciting to be more and more able to talk to her.  Watching her learn and unfold is another first harvest, of my work as her mother.  I pray that I will continue to teach her well.  

In becoming a mother, I fell in many ways like I have fulfilled a destiny.  Whether it was taught to me by my culture, or whether I had an innate desire within me, I have always wanted to be a mother.  I conceptualize God as mother, giving birth to all things from Her body.  The Mother is an feminine archetype, and birth is her rite of passage.  I am musing more and more these days on what it means to mother, mother well, mother on our own terms, release the way we were mothered to become our own embodiment of Mother.  I am studying to be a midwife, the guide for women on their own journey into motherhood, and my own daughter is growing.

I believe in the equality of all people.  But I am also very strongly woman-identified, as a women's reproductive health worker and myself a mother of a daughter, and a woman raised in a house by mother and grandmother.  In my activism, I suppose part of me feels that men, so long the privileged sex, can take care of themselves; to make equality, we need to make things better off for women, so long subjugated around the world, even into the 21st century.  And I know that what is good for women is good for societies, as mothers are responsible for raising the citizens.  My work for women, my passion for women's issues is human rights work. 

However, my woman-focus can serve to alienate men, even my dear feminist male partner.  It's a bummer, and something I need to focus on correcting.  The other day, he reminded me that our home-birth wasn't only beneficial to me and Ramona, but also to him, and that my birth work is not only about women, but people, families.  It is absolutely true.  But full control of our bodies is something that white men take for granted and women & people of color must fight for; and men can choose not to participate in the realities of pregnancy, birth, and parenting but women cannot.  So, I fight for women.

Jamie said that he thinks this is a change in me, being so woman-identified.  I still care about humanity as a whole.  But my work in this life is with pregnant women, and as my learning progresses,  I am seeing everyday more clearly how all my work comes together.  I also know that I could not do this work, I could not support women (and families) without some balance in my life; Jamie's masculinity helps to bring balance into my life.  His support and love have been absolutely necessary for me to progress on my journey toward midwifery and women's health advocacy.  I am so grateful for him, and the family that we have made together.  He is the partner that I need to do this work. 

Today was the first visit our family made to the beach when it was warm enough for taking off shoes and getting feet wet.  At first, Ramona wasn't sure she wanted sand on her toes at all.  But once the waves started creeping up to her feet, she decided she wanted to start running out to meet them, and so I held one hand to keep her from going out with the tide.   She would lift her foot up and stretch it out toward the waves.  She splashed with her feet, she splashed with her hands, and was puzzled by the wet sand that ended up on her hands.  She sunk in to the sand a little, and wasn't so sure about that.  But mostly she bounced up and down and squealed with anticipation as the waves came up on the shore toward her eager toes.  Eventually, the pants we had carefully rolled up were soaked, and came off.  Jamie went out further than I would let Ramona go, and she wanted to join him.  He came and picked her up and took her out and held on to her so she could stand where the waves washed up to her chest.  She wasn't so sure about that, either.  As we walked back up the beach, she blew kisses to the ocean.  Jamie asked if that was the most fun she had ever had, and I think it may have been. 

I am honored that one of my favorite repro-justice pages has featured the previous post on their front page, which I included in my reader diary there.  RHRealityCheck.org is an excellent source for earnest people trying to make sense of reproductive rights in a way which honors the human dignity of women.  I am so grateful for their work. 

We wake up slowly, snuggling in bed and having drowsy nursies.  I think, "I should see if she has to go potty," but I'd rather lay in bed.  Some days her diaper is wet by the time I am ready to face being fully awake and in action, sometimes not.  Eventually, we are both wide-eyed, and we say goodmorning with hugs, kisses, and smiles.  Usually, Ramona's first word of the day is "duck," which sounds like "gah!" or "dah!"  She is off, running around the room and gathering rubber duckies one by one to hand to me.  I say, "Oh, it's the baseball duck" and "Here's the Hawiian shirt duck" and I line them up on the bed.  Then, finally, I say, "Let's go potty.  The duckies will be here when you get back."  On the potty, we read Fox in Socks or Everyone Poops.  The we wash hands and Ramona runs around with her little bum hanging out of her onesie.  Sometimes we put on underpants, and talk about how big girls wear underpants instead of diapers and if she needs to have potties, she should tell mommy, becuase we don't have potties in our underpants.  This is new.  She's been remarkably good at it, running up to the baby gate at the kitchen doorway as I am making breakfast and pointing to her butt and then to the bathroom door. 

For breakfast we have oatmeal with diced strawberries.  I feed her with the spoon, or she takes the spoon and feeds herself, or I give up and let her pick the strawberry chuncks out of the oatmeal with her fingers.  When she is done, she wants to see the fish, so I pick her up and we stand in front of the TV stand where the fish bowl sits.  We need a different kind of fish food, because this one makes the water gunky if you don't pull out uneaten bits immediately.  But Ramona doesn't care about gunky, and will demand over and over again to come back to the fishbowl and look at the fish, a dark red betta with big fins and blue highlights.  

After breakfast, she will bring me ducks again, or her babies to wrap up in blankets, or books to read.  I will put on music and she will dance, holding her arms above her head and twisting her torso, bending at the knees every now and then.  I may leave her to play while I empty and load the dishwasher, or I may try to sneak a few minutes at the computer.  Eventually, she will climb onto the bed and lay her head on the pillow to tell me she is sleepy.  Still, though, it will be a struggle to get her to sleep.  She will nurse quitely, her eyelids drooping, but suddenly bounce up and wriggle off the bed toward the ducks or the books.  Sometimes I will hold her close, so she can't squirm away, and then she will get mad, sometimes grabbing at my face or hair, sometimes just shreiking.  I remind her to be gentle with my body, and that it is sleepy time, and that she is so sleepy.  I close my eyes and whisper "Shhhh, shhhh;" I think that mamas were the original white noise machine.  Eventually, she will be still, and I will peek to see if her eyes are closed.  The first time I look, they will be stubbornly wide open, the next time they are drooping, and finally, she is asleep.  Her hair is so silky on my arm, and her close eyelids look so soft. I am filled with love.  I sneak the nipple out of her mouth and get up to do grown up things, write my blog, read about midwifery, make phone calls.  When she wakes up, we will go get daddy at work, and a

I fell asleep to the sound of rain outside my window.  "Do you hear the rain falling outside?" I whispered to Ramona, "It's one of my favorite sounds."  Now I am awake in the early hours of the morning and the rain has stopped.  I wish it would start back up again to soothe me off to sleep.  Instead I am thinking of all the things I need to do, bills I need to pay, friends I need to call...

All day yesterday my heart was sore with emotions I would not have felt so deeply before Ramona was born.  Since becoming a mother, my empathy for small children and moms is acutely enhanced.  Ramona had had a hard morning before I left for work, not wanting me to put her down or hand her to her daddy, so I was missing my girl anyway.  Then, I heard a story on the radio about a little Samoan toddler taken away from her family under false pretenses and adopted illegally by Americans.  An awful thing, to be sure, but imagining my girl being surrounded by strangers and asking for her mama in a language no one understood made my heart ache very personally, beyond any reaction I could have to the story of a little girl I will never meet, beyond any feelings I could have had before I became a mother.  Then, I learned that yet another of my strong single mama friends is being harassed by her baby's daddy with the very legal system put in place to protect moms and kids from abusive dads.  This is the third of my friends to go through this, and I watch these women who's strength and love for their children I so admire question every choice they ever made, wondering if they really are the monster the legal documents filed by a man they once cared for portray them to be.  We are so assaulted every day with judgments and challenges to our adequacy as mothers from strangers and the culture at large, I can only imagine what it must be like to be challenged in this way by your child's dad.  Truly, becoming a mom opens up one's heart to more joy and pain than I could ever have imagined. 

In other news, Ramona managed to take off her diaper and poop on the floor while Jamie was in another room yesterday.  I'm glad it was him and not me, because I find it hilarious in a way I may not have if I had been the one who had to deal with cleaning up the floor and the baby, who apparently started screaming about the situation before Jamie even discovered what had happened.  It's hard to be a little one, knowing you are capable of things (like pooping in the potty) that you are not yet quite able to manifest on your own. 

Ramona is saying "shoes," "duck," "I want that one;" it sounds like "chis," "da," and "eyewahndaone." She makes cow sounds and cat sounds, and wants to read a lot of books and smile at everyone she meets.  I am so enjoying watching her unfold.  And I am unfolding myself.  I have a gig to teach wellness workshops for the childbearing year at Rainbow Natural Remedies on Capitol Hill in Seattle, starting with a postpartum workshop in July.  I have only my final exam to go in my formal academic program, and I am enjoying studying for my final.  Today I wrote to President Obama about the importance of  health care reform which allow women access to safe birth, contraception and abortion; I believe he can do it.  There are some baby chard and squash plants unfurling leaves in my garden.  Spring is unfolding us all. 

As it is not an option under "moods" to choose "blessed" I have written it in. 

Ramona took her first steps this past Tuesday.  You could see the wheels turning in her head as she looked from the couch two feet away to the trunk she had pulled herself up on and back again.  Then she went for it.  Since then, she's covered a few more distance of a couple feet on her own, and is much more willing to walk around with mommy or daddy holding her hands.  Wow.

She's got three teeth, two bottom ones and the top right, with the top left threatening to break through any second.  She's figured out hugs, and let me tell you, a hug around the neck from baby Ramona is the sweetest thing there is. Sometimes when we ask for a hug she'll oblige, and sometimes she'll surprise us with hugs out of nowhere.  She has a big soft stuffed duck that's been nicknamed Huggy Ducky because for some reason it gets more hugs than anyone.  She's eating lots of spoon food, taking the spoon out of my hand, putting the food in her mouth, and handing the spoon back to me for more.  She likes to point at things and have us tell her what they are.  Recently she discovered the windchime by the door, and she often points at it with an expectant look, waiting for me to reach up and make it ring.  We got her her own purple and green toothbrush with Cookie Monster on the handle becuase she showed so much interest in ours, and now every night she brushes her teeth, and whenever we go in the bathroom during the day, she reaches out for it.  However, she doesn't much like letting us help her brush so that it's actually effective.  Yesterday she discovered that not only could she take things out of other things (e.g. toys out of toy box) she can also put things in other things (e.g. sock in stacking cup).  Today she figured out how to turn the light switch on and off. 

I know it's a cliche, but it happens so, so SO fast.  Only a few months ago, you would put her down, and she would stay there till you got back.  Them days is gone.  

Last weekend I was feeling pretty crappy, and took a walk with the baby down by the Cedar River.  The salmon had started coming back, and I watched them from the bridge while she slept on me in the baby carrier.  As we walked further down the river, I saw the great blue heron, juvenile mergansers that must be this spring's successful  hatchlings, a humming bird in the fuchsias, and many many different water birds once we reached Lake Washington.  The park along the river looked like the landscapers had been thinking of autumn when they planted -- bright red bushes, red rose hips, purple blackberries, blue berries on an ornamnetal shrub.  It was beautiful, and I felt renewed by the beauty of the colors, and by the proximity to the more-than-human world of the birds and fish. 
I am the only one awake in the house now at 10pm, but Ramona is sleeping restlessly, and I'll have to take her to the potty and nurse her back to sleep soon.  The hardest thing about parenting is not getting to choose anymore what my days look like.  It's all about her needs right now, and I try to get myself on her schedule, avoid the things that I don't want her to be exposed to.  But sometimes I have to sneak grownup time, and hopefully our hour of watching the news tonight won't rot her brain too badly.  Hopefully public radio playing in the background all the time will not give her ADD.  Work is nice because there I can focus on accomplishing tasks, which can be so difficult on baby-time at home.  I am ambivalent about returning to birth work, which requires me to give so much of myself, like mothering also does.

I am so grateful to have been able to make it out to the organic farm to pick chard and blackberries.  The chard I froze, the berries I made into canned jam for Solstice gifts.  Now, I have apples and pears cooking down into fruit butter on the stove, which I picked from the orchard on the land where my father lives.  Participating in the journey of food from farm to kitchen and then to a friend or into my own body is satisfying and meaningful for me.  It connects me to the bigger cycles, to the wheel of the year, which just turned to autumn with the Equinox last week.  Certainly, I feel the wheel turn this year.  Ramona is saying "mama" and "dada," the first harvest of all the language she has heard and the love we have given her these past seven months.  I am reaping the fruits of the seeds we have sown, figuratively and literally, as big changes come down the pike for our little family. 

I am so grateful to have found a job back with my old employer in a new part-time position with flexible hours to allow for mothering and eventually midwifery apprenticeship.  Jamie and I will now spend just about equal time away from home doing paid work, and equal time at home with the babe.  When I told a friend about this, he gave me kudos for putting my gender equity money where my mouth was, but that's not why I wanted to do this.  Jamie's been miserable at work, and although being an at-home parent is no cake-walk, we both love spending time with Ramona, and I think part of Jamie's unhappiness has been missing his time with her.  We'll both have the joy of coming home to her after a day at work, along with the joy of waking up in the morning with a whole day filled with her ahead of us.  And the added bonus of saying fuck you to traditional gender roles. 

I am so grateful that I Jamie and I love mothering my daughter, but I'm shocked by the way my mothering is policed.  At my 10 year high-school reunion, another woman with a baby approached me and gushed, "Don't you just LOVE being a mom?"  Pushing the stroller with the sleeping baby in it the other day, lost in thought, a stranger said to me, "Smile when you do that, that's the joy of your life."  And I do, and it is, but what did they know about it?  As a woman, I'm supposed to be Joyfully consumed by my baby, and otherwise happily vacant.   Jamie, however, is not really supposed to be as absorbed with Ramona, but plagued by a general anxiety about financially supporting us.  He isn't expected to smile.  And then there are the people who are shocked to hear that she's a girl, just because she isn't wearing a dress or pink or ruffles.  There are people that expect us to introduce formula, have her sleep in her crib, follow the CDC vaccination schedule, put her in day care, and on and on.  I'm glad that we're strong enough to figure out what works for us as parents without paying attention to what everyone else thinks our parenting ought to look like. 

My dad asked me the other day why the baby puts everything in her mouth, and I told him my theory:  she's developing her immune system by exposing herself to all the germs in her environment.  Much of our immune system is acquired after birth as we build antibodies to the microbes we come in contact with.  While she's processing all these new microbes, my breastmilk helps her not to get horribly ill by passing antibodies to her before her body has made its own.  I think it's brilliant, then, that she is somehow compelled to put her hands in my mouth as well.  She's exposing both of us, so that if she's gotten into anything truly nasty, she can get her main protection from me.  I don't know necesarily that all the hands-in-my-mouth thing is truly an evolutionary adaptation as I'm postulating here, but it makes so much sense.  Working within the midwifery model has given me a certain faith in the workings of our bodies -- midwifery is all about trusting the body to birth if left to its own devices.  Looking at our other adaptations, especially as relates to infancy and breastfeeding, I am more inclined to trust that our bodies have wisdom in these areas as well. 

Since my day back at work, I feel like being at home doesn't quite fit me anymore.  Today was better...  Ramona has been so full of smiles these past few days.  On Saturday, there was a half hour or so where she was playing with toys, and would just look over at me and giggle for no reason I could discern.  Today she took a late last nap and woke up at eight to grin at me as she scooted around the bed.  Nothing makes one feel better than baby smiles. 

Had a day back working at the women's reproductive health clinic on Friday.  It was a good day.  I've been thinking lately that Ramona doesn't seem to be eating very often these days (the world's too exciting for her to waste time nursing!), but in the 10 hours I was away, I pumped 12 oz of milk.  I guess she's just a very effective nurser these days, and those little two to five minute feeds are actually really getting her milk.  I felt very accomplished with my jar full of milk at the end of the day.  I also really enjoyed working -- reconnecting with the other ladies that work at the clinic, making connections with that day's patients, and having everybody tell me what a cutie Ramona is were all lovley.  I didn't worry at all about daddy and baby at home together, and that felt good too, especially becuase they did actually have a nice day together.  When I got home, Ramona looked from me to Jamie and back again, and just smiled so big.  She likes it when our family is all together, and so do we. 

Remembering to trust that things will work out, even if I don't know how, is a major struggle in my life.  Rob Brezney of Free Will Astrology coined the term "pronoia,"  the sense that the universe is conspiring to do you good.  I am seeing the fruits of my pronia these days as the world around me reflects back the intentions I set.  I had said that I hoped I would find a new preceptor in the midwives who attened my birth, and that is in the words for the winter.  I have been saying that when Ramona was 6 months old, I'd start figuring out about work.  Now, I have hours available at the clinic, plus a new job opportunity that I'm pursuing which would be a litle more flexible, allow Jamie to cut back his work hours, and combine nicely with apprenticeship and on-call life.  These days, we talk about moving to the Oregon coast when I get my CPM to live there and set up my midwifery practice.  I find myself more able to believe that it will truly come to pass as I see these other intentions turning into realities.  I'm grateful. 

And a moment on the soapbox:  The federal Health and Human Services has proposed a regulation change that would expand the right of refusal to provide abortions for federal employees, and the wording is wonky enough that it may include the right to refuse contraception, and covery any type of employee rather than just doctors.  Head over to the ACLU website and let HHS know that this is ridiculous at
http://action.aclu.org/hhs_comment.  And if you or anyone you know has given birth in the past few years, I encourage you/them to take this survey http://www.thebirthsurvey.com/ which will compile consumer's comments on birth care and care providers to help other families be able to make informed choices about birth care. 

I've really been loving connecting with moms and watching Ramona interact with kids this past week.  How sweet was his desire to stare at Ramona in her stroller rather than the zoo animals, and his goodbye kisses to us, too.  Little Beckett at the zoo the other day wanted Ramona to get up and play with him, not quite understanding the concept of not being able to walk (at two, he's so over that!).  And Aldie, letting the baby suck on his special doll "Baby," while his sister began and ended many sentences with "bee-bee wa-mo-na!"  I'm grateful for the way that working as a doula has provided me with a community of  families whom I can learn from.  We all work it out for ourselves, but we can certainly all share our tricks and struggles and joys.  It's easier that way. 

Yesterday I went to the  Renton Farmer's Market and  got 3 for $5 organic veggies --  lettuce for me, and golden beets and purple carrots which I steamed, pureed and froze  in cubes for baby food.  I'm putting my "wedding" present from dear friends to good use.  Thanks, guys.  I'm so happy that I'm actually making this happen.  In the winter when she's starting to eat, there will be many tastes of summer waiting for her.