More on baby Aurora...

The childbirth experience was a mixture of sweet ecstasy and intense physical and emotional work. And in the end, a baby came out... in the bathroom, because I thought I had to poop.

Free: "I see something!"
Me: (screaming) "It's poop!"
Free: "No, it's the baby!"
It turns out that I wasn't going crazy... lots of women have this experience.

Aurora and I have been having a sweet time getting to know each other as we lay in bed together. I'm on orders to stay in bed for 2 weeks due to a tear in a tricky place -- ugh! I'm trying to enjoy the rest as a luxury... but I miss working in the garden and being a part of daily life around here. Free and the kids are treating me like a queen, though, so I can't complain.

This baby is pretty delightful -- lots of sleeping, nursing, and wide-eyed observation (during the few hours she's awake). She doesn't have a last name yet, because Free and I haven't figured out how to balance practicality with idealism (isn't that the quintessential struggle?). So for now, she just has two middle names, two ecstatic parents, and a lot of poop.

love,
tickledspirit and Aurora (Rori, Froggy, Sugar Snap, Pea Pod...)

Welcome to the world, Aurora Ember Ruth! Born Monday, April 28 at 8:45pm, in the bathroom (I thought I had to poop).

From an article about the Yearning for Zion child abuse case: “An expert in children in cults testified Friday that while the teen girls believed they were marrying out of free choice, it's a choice based on lessons they've had from birth.”

Of course, ALL of us who believe we have free choice are also operating based on assumptions/lessons we’ve learned since birth… how is this different?

Some lessons learned in the “cult” of America:
- a nuclear family comprised of a monogamous couple is right and moral

- independence = success: trusting other people is foolish, and asking for help is a sign of weakness

- food comes from the grocery store, and medicine comes from the doctor

I don’t mean to pose this question as a way of justifying whatever has been happening in that community of people (which currently seems unknown and unable to be judged until more information comes out) – I’m just using it to highlight our own indoctrination, which often goes unacknowledged (this is the sociology geek in me, still alive despite my choice to leave grad school).

Last night I though I might be starting the birth journey, and I panicked! So much nervousness and "But I haven't yet done..."

Thankfully, that was just a practice experience, and I got to see how I'm not being open and ready for it to come. So, my intention today and for the days to come is to seek full presence in the moment, to clear my To Do List with intention and ease, and dance, meditate, paint, breathe myself into the moment, into full acceptance of What Is.

A friend just sent me an excerpt from an interview with Pete Seeger. I found it inspiring...

Sarah: One of your most famous songs is "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To everything there is a season)." What kind of time do you think we're in right now?

Pete: We are in a crisis time. I don't give us a chance of—well, you never can tell. There might be a little tribe somewhere in the world on some isolated island, but I see human beings wiping each other off the face of the earth. We've invented such weapons—not just nuclear weapons but chemical weapons and all sorts of things.... If there's a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things. The powers-that-be can break up any big thing they want. They can corrupt it or co-opt it from the inside, or they can attack it from the outside. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They break up two of them, and three more like them spring up!

(For the full interview go here: http://tinyurl.com/yo84l5)

The friend who sent this to me described it as "large scale pessimism and small scale optimism". What a delightful balance to the pendulumming emotions I find myself having about our global situation! One day I'm filled with hope, and on others, with deep sadness and a sense of doom. Seeger's words remind me that BOTH are realistic, and that they can exist together without conflict.

Another friend recently re-started his blog, yet another chronicle of an ex-Oaker's (that's what ex-members of Twin Oaks are called) journey away from the commune. He's struggling with many of the same questions that I am, and I'm enjoying the way he shares his self-reflection. Find it here!

Thanks to Howard for the nudge of encouragement to write again! Here's the latest update:

My "by the calendar" due date is April 29th, and my belly is growing bigger each day. Rounder and rounder... though my belly button has yet to pop out. I've been feeling sad about loosing my beloved innie, but I just realized a few days ago that I'm going to get to see a part of my body that I've NEVER seen before -- the inside of my navel! What a treat!

Early in my pregnancy I bought a ring from an antique store (the same place Free and I found our wedding rings). I couldn't choose between two rings: one had a vine with leaves on it, and I thought about it as a celebration of life and growth. The other one had a black onyx sphere in the center, round, like I knew my belly would become! I ended up buying both of them, thinking that maybe Free would wear one and I'd wear the other. I ended up choosing to wear the black onyx, because it was the one that I felt some resistance to, some fear. I wore it everyday, not really knowing the significance, but trusting it was there. One day (a few months ago) I asked myself about it while writing in my journal. "What's the significance of the ring?" The answer came flowing through me clearly: it's about embracing the unknown, the Great Mystery, limitless possibility. The stark blackness can be scary, and it can also be rich and alive. I still wear it everyday -- my plan is to wear it until the baby comes, and then ??? Eventually I'll give it to the child, as part of a rite of passage. Maybe I'll wear it all through its childhood? I don't really know. I still have the other ring sitting on my altar, waiting for its purpose.

I don't have much of a specific sense of the baby... whenever I direct my focus to the being inside me, I just get a sense of its total wisdom, its connection to ultimate Oneness, and an energy of a trickster hiding from me, only showing a Cheshire cat smile in the darkness of the unknown.

In another (related) area of my life, I recently decided not to complete my Master's Degree. I journaled about this for several days before letting myself admit that I really don't WANT a Master's Degree. I don't want that mark of "superior knowledge" or "being worth more" to an employer. I don't want to receive recognition from a system I don't believe in. And beyond the degree itself, I don't care about the research and writing papers that no one will ever read but one professor, and then perhaps a few more academics if I actually get published. I want to do meaningful, tangible work. I want to teach, but in innovative, experiential ways -- not in a college classroom. The choice not to continue is freeing, a burden lifted. But I still haven't told my parents...

So now I'm teaching part time at the alternative high school in town, Math and World History (Revolutions around the world!). This week is the last week I'll be there until next fall. I'm also working diligently in our garden, planting seeds that will help feed the family this summer, and hopefully -- with abundance of harvest and energy for canning -- into the fall and winter. THIS is the work I want to be doing, pursuing alternatives to participating in the capitalist market, working hard to live in a way that makes sense. I still deeply believe it's not sustainable unless done collectively -- so we're seeking community, both informal local networks and a more long-term group to share land and labor with.

That's the news on the homefront! So much more, as well, perhaps for other posts...

Welcome, Sociology 252 students!  I haven't written in my blog for several months, and not much at all since I left the community in January of 2006.  Most of my writing about Twin Oaks comes before then, so go to the archives and take a look there (this will save you from my complaints about grad school, which has been the bulk of my writing since then).

I felt a little under the weather last night, so I went to bed before coming up with my lesson plan for teaching today.  When I woke up, I felt better and quickly came up with an activity that meant that I wouldn't have to talk very much, leaving more up to my students to assimilate ideas and explain them to their peers.  After leading 2 of my 4 classes so far, I remember that this is really the way I want to teach!  I want to facilitate their own thought process instead of telling them mine -- they learn more when they're the ones thinking, instead of just writing down the brilliant things I say.  Any good leader or teacher is really just a facilitator, providing a context in which people can explore their own experience and ideas, be challenged to go deeper, and listen to the ideas and reflections of others.

Why has it taken me so long to remember this?  (I now live in a culture that promotes and rewards individualism, rather than collaboration... mainstream culture has been brainwashing me since I left the commune almost 2 years ago!)  It's no surprise to me that I came up with this activity after spending the weekend at Twin Oaks...

My dad wrote me an email today, asking if I've hooked up with a gynecologist/pediatrician yet. I realized that maybe I hadn't been clear about my intentions with the birth. Here's what I wrote back:

I have a meeting with a midwife this week, kind of like an interview. I'll be meeting with a few others, as well, and then choosing who I like best. She'll be my main source of biological support, and then I'll get blood tests at a doctor's office (to check my iron and hemoglobin levels, among other things). I have a lot of herbal support from friends and my own knowledge -- I'm drinking my raspberry/nettle/alfalpha/oatstraw/red clover tea every day!

It's important to me that you know I'm following a non-medical model of pregnancy and childbirth. There are many reasons why, and I look forward to talking with you about it all! Something that isn't well-publicized is that homebirths with midwives result in fewer complications/infections/deaths than deliveries in hospitals with drugs, forceps, vaccums, and doctors.

Beyond that, I have a deep belief that giving birth is as natural of a process as breathing. My body knows how to do it -- I just need to take care of myself during these 9 months and have the support and wisdom of a midwife, who will know how to tell if something is out of the ordinary.

There are many resources available that talk about the problems associated with hospital births and the medicalization of preganancy. I haven't read this one, but Free reccomends it; it's a book by a French doctor called "Entering the World: The Demedicalization of Childbirth" by Michel Odent. Another book that a friend of mine from Twin Oaks suggested to me (she's reading it now) is called "Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born", by Tina Cassidy. That book just came out last year.

I hope I don't sound too defensive or preachy. I just know so many women who weren't supported by their families in their choice to have a natural homebirth with a midwife, and I want us to be on the same page about it.

love,
tickledspirit

This weekend I ran into a friend who I haven't seen in a while, and she mentioned that she had stumbled across my blog and was surprised at how miserable I seemed.  I realized it might be time for an update...

Great summer, lots of traveling.  Got married, exhausting and amazing.  Maybe I'll write reflections on the day (and married life) later on.  My perspective on life certainly changed once I wasn't in school anymore.  I liked my life more.

And now I'm back in school, and finding myself struggling with the same questions of identity, passion, and compromise.  I don't feel like I'm learning much of substance, and then it seems like I'm just in it to get the degree, the title of "Master" that may or may not be helpful to me in getting some kind of employment in a field that I may or may not be passionate about.  When that becomes my goal, I feel despondent, like I've sold out to believing that I have to "make it" in the capitalist mainstream economy.  I feel like I've given up on my faith that another world is possible.

Just this morning, writing in my journal, I remembered that my faith in our ability to create a healthier, more creative culture STEMMED from sociology, and that my original intention in going to school was to open students to believing in it, too!  I'm here to teach; my classes are secondary.  I realized that though teaching sociology is not my life path, I'm doing it right now in the discussion sections I lead as a TA, as a way of "giving back" in thanks for the gift I received as an undergrad.  The details of the class I teach aren't as important as offering a perspective of possibility.  That had gotten lost for me along the way... and now that I remember, I feel more at peace with being here for now.  I'm here in service, not to serve myself.

This is my last semester of classes.  I'll start my Master's Thesis this semester, and then work on it for awhile next semester without being officially registered as a student... because I'll be focused on other things towards the spring.  My body will be changing, growing, as new life grows inside me.  Around the end of April, I'll be having a new baby in my world... I'll be a mama. 

How's that for big news?