Time In

I have been pondering time out's as a disciplinary tool these last couple of days. The idea being you send your kid from your presence until he has sorted out his crap and can behave like a decent human being. Something about this didn't sit right with me and I have figured out why.
How can I, as a Christian, know the unconditional love of God and then put a condition on when my kids can receive my love based on how they behave?
Everyone has shitty days where they snap with the smallest provocation. I know I  get pissy when I'm tired. Why should I expect my kids to be little angels at all times when even I- with my fully developed pre-frontal cortex, years of learning how to process my emotions and knowledge of correct behaviour- cannot manage my own emotions?
Instead of time out I have decided on time in. Instead of banishing my kids from my sight I will remove them from the situation, sit them down on my lap (or some other calming activity), wait until their fight or flight response to stress has subsided and then ask them what happened. It is only once they are calm that they can process a lesson. Sending them away then saying "you were bad. Don't do that again. now go and play" will not teach them a way to right whatever wrong was done. It will not instil a sense of trust, love and connection. It will not give them an alternative way of recognising and dealing with the emotion that caused the bad behaviour in the first place. If you feel bad inside then logically you are going to do something bad to get that feeling across. Punishment only makes a confused and angry child feel worse.

So that child will do one of two things. Either lash out by repeating bad behaviour or internalise everything as he thinks that any negative emotions he feels are unacceptable and will make his parents stop loving him and send him away.
Kids are allowed to feel angry. Adults do. Instead of using positive and negative reinforcement like they are animals how about we tell them that "it is OK. What they are feeling is called anger. Here are some appropriate ways to deal with it instead of hitting or name calling or tantrum throwing"

Another bonus to non punitive parenting is that kids wont lie. Lying generally happens when kids want to avoid getting punished. If there isn't a punishment then they wont feel obligated to lie to save their own ass.

For an article that describes this idea better than I can see here.

The Homeopath.

This week we went to see a homeopath about my sons facial eczema. I was getting fed up with our GP just taking steroid filled shots in the dark to try and clear up a skin condition he had run absolutely no tests on. He even suggested a moisturiser called cetomacrogol. Upon reading the ingredients list I discovered it had petroleum in it. I'm not putting petrol on my baby's skin, are you insane!?

Upon meeting the homeopath I noticed many key differences between him and our GP.

First, he talked to my baby boy (who promptly smiled straight away). 

He mentioned how thrilled he was that we had brought our son to him because any case in a young child was often complex and interesting.

He asked for mine and my husbands family histories.

He told me that I made the right decisions when I explained my parenting choices to him.

He actually touched the skin and looked at it up close instead of making a judgement from across the room. He knew what it was by the feel of it. He is retired now but all those years of experience give me great confidence in his abilities.

My exact thoughts were mirrored in his words "God put everything that we needed on this earth at the beginning and it was us that stuffed it up."

He said he would do a urine test just to make sure his assumption was correct before starting his recommended treatment.

He told us that stopping any steroid cream straight away (which is what our doc told us to do) would just exacerbate the problem and that we needed to wean our son off it slowly.

He came up with a plan of action rather than just a lets-see-if-this-works approach

I told him some of my thoughts and he actually made my convictions stronger by explaining in depth some of the things I suspected. When I told him that our GP looked at me like I was an idiot when I brought up the research I had done, the homeopath said to me "you know more than you think you do madam"

It was so refreshing to have a stimulating intellectual conversation with someone that didn't take me for a fool simply because I questioned the pharmaceutical status quo.

He also backed up my thoughts on baby lead weaning. The idea being that you just give your baby normal food instead of purées. Babies have a very strong gag reflex which diminishes around 8 months. This is around the time that society accepts as the age for introducing bigger lumps into babies food. We teach them first to swallow and later to chew. My thoughts are, teach them to chew first while their gag reflex is still awesome and then they can swallow without choking later on. The homeopath took this one step further and said the reason there is an increased incidence of needless ear infections now is because chewing develops the Eustachian tubes. Back in the day the baby used to be given a leftover bone to gnaw on. Now that we are in the age of the blender they don't have to chew even though they are created with perfectly hard gums.

Isn't it funny that we still take modern medicines word as law even though every thing doctors are taught is overturned about 10 years after it is first researched. 

The only medicine that is being practised the same way it used to be is natural medicine.

200 years ago: "Here, eat this root"

100 years ago: "No that root is no good! Here, pray this prayer"

50 years ago: "That prayer is rubbish! Here, take this pill"

10 years ago: "That pill is poison! Here, take this antibiotic"

Now: "That antibiotic is dangerous! Here, eat this root"

We are seeing him again next week for a catch up and to implement stage two. I plan to tell him of our decision not to vaccinate so it will be interesting to get his opinion on that. 

My boys face is looking better already. Lets hope the progress continues.

Natural Infant Hygiene

Yesterday I started EC with my baby. Elimination Communication or natural infant hygiene is basically just a fancy name for "what-any-mum-would-do-if-nappies-didn't-exist".
The gist of this is just picking up when your baby needs to wee or poop using natural timing, cues from your baby and your own intuition. Intuition being a fancy way of saying your body picks up on something so subtle you don't know what it is.
It isn't all or nothing so I am doing it just during the day for now. I'm using a nappy as a back up in case I miss a pee, which can happen a lot because he has been in nappies for so long he has figured out he doesn't need to signal a pee any more.
Newborns are born ready to be "potty trained". They are able to control their own sphincter muscles. If you believe the twats that say it isn't true then just think how often a new born waits to pee or poop until just after you open the nappy. They have a natural instinct to eliminate waste away from their bodies.
over 80% of the worlds babies don't wear nappies and never have. In Africa a mum will carry around her infant in a sling and when she knows he has to pee she will take him over to a bush and let him go then stick him straight back in the sling. she wont get peed on either because babies don't like to dirty their own space. this is true of most baby mammals.
You say a cue word like "pss pss" when he wees and eventually you can get him to wee on cue if he is ready just by saying pss. it works for bed when I say "sleep time".

My reason for doing this is not that it uses far less nappies although that is good or that it means no nappy rash ever. My reason is simply that babies hate nappies as newborns but we teach them to accept sitting in their own crap until we are ready to change them and then when they are two we suddenly turn around and tell them that actually it's unacceptable to go toilet in your clothes. How confusing and shameful for them! and it's our fault for not paying enough attention. They tell us through a squirm or a grizzle that they need to go. Babies never just cry for no reason, that is just something we tell ourselves so that we don't have to try and tap in to the needs of someone who can't talk for themselves.

I have successfully caught 3 wees today :) and he had lots of naked time. also it is building the bond of trust between me and him. he knows he can tell me that he needs to go and i will listen. all the times he has been feeding and kept popping on and off are now explained. he just needed to wee and didn't want to piss on himself or me (the place where he lives and eats).
every time he has peed i have given him heaps of praise and he looks so proud of himself. hes happy and giggly and probably wondering why the heck it took so long for me to start paying attention to not just his eating and sleeping needs but his toileting needs too.

Hopefully this will continue and he will be fully independent from nappies at age 1.

The Birth of a Legend.

A lot has changed since the last time I wrote a blog entry. Mainly that I am now a mum.

In having a son I have learnt much about myself as a person and have been challenged to think about the sort of person I want my son to become, who I want to be, how to emulate that to him, what parenting style best suits the natural instincts that love for my son produce and how I plan to discipline.

Lots of blog fodder. For right now though I feel like I should write a bit about how said soul inspiring little dude came into the world. (advanced warning: pretty nasty if you are squeamish)

At 37 weeks pregnant I had, for lack of a better phrase, an emotional breakdown. I felt like I was ready to burst. I was having cramps but nothing that felt like labour. I was sitting on a Swiss ball when my husband got home at 10:30pm crying my eyes out and all I could say was "he has to come now. He's ready to be born! why wont he come out!?"
Due to finding out early in pregnancy that his left arm had not formed properly we were due to have another scan at 38 weeks. It was discovered that he had stopped growing and they suggested inducing me. I had done research on this and knew it was a better idea to wait for nature to do its thing but to be fair I was completely and utterly over being pregnant. So I said yes and my induction was booked for that Wednesday. 

Upon being checked (which was horrible! It's like they don't even bother to be gentle because you're going to be in pain. Yeah sure, I get it. Why would someone who is in pain want the part that hurts the most to be treated gently, right?) the doctor exclaimed "well you are already 1cm dilated. I could just break your waters right now" but they didn't they just used a 1/4 of the amount of gel they usually use. I went into labour at 4pm. I had to stay in the hospital overnight for observation strapped up to an infernal machine. It's cool to hear the heartbeat and see how strong your contractions are getting for a while but after that it is a pain. I wanted to move so I just took it off and started pacing the corridor. It's quite lonely in a hospital at night but I got no sleep. I was a bit excited. Then I was a bit sore. And then I was crying to myself wishing that my husband was there to give me a cuddle. Then a nurse told me I could get in the shower if I wanted. Shower? It was heaven! I hadn't done it sooner because I didn't know if it would wash the gel away. This has made me convinced that I would have done much better with a water birth like originally planned but alas, I was not allowed one because I had been induced and therefore 'had' to be monitored. 

By 7am the next morning my contractions were so strong they were making me throw up and I couldn't talk. This made it particularly hard to tell the nurse that I wanted my midwife now. She was due to come in at 8:30. The nurse kept asking me questions. "Are you in pain?" what I wanted to reply was "oh no I'm just hanging over this toilet and shaking for fun" but not being able to talk all I could do was nod. 

My midwife was on the way! I was walked into a delivery room (no easy feat) and tried the gas. No go there. Just made me sick and gave me a headache. By the time my midwife got there I was convinced I was in transition. Contractions didn't seem to have more than 5 seconds between them and just went on and on. A check revealed I was only 3cm. I was biting the mattress to keep from screaming at this point and I managed to get out that I wanted an epidural. It's a funny thing being in so much pain that the idea of someone shoving a needle in your spine sounds like a lovely holiday. My midwife said ok I will just get the paperwork ready and go find an anaesthetist. Seriously? When you have reached the point of wanting drugs you kind of want them RIGHT NOW but there was nothing I could do except wait. When she came back the news was not what I wanted. "there have been two emergency c-secs so both the house and floor anaesthetists are occupied. They wont be able to get to you for a couple of hours". oh fantastic. "we don't like to do this but would you like some pethidine?". Ah pethidine. The one drug I had decided absolutely not on. My mother had used it for my sisters birth with horrible side effects and I had done enough research to put myself off it, not to mention a lot of midwives felt the same way and didn't like to use it. "sure give it to me". Desperation thou art a heartless so and so... My husband prayed for me. "God we really don't want pethidine. Please find a way for her to get the pain relief she needs".

When my midwife came back in she was followed by a black man called Ash. Later I would ask to marry him. He was sadly already married. Anyway, he greeted me with the most amazing words I had heard come out of a man's mouth: "Hi, I'm here to do your epidural". As it turns out he was having a coffee and heard my midwife talking about getting me pethidine and wondered why she was getting it when I was going to have an epidural so he just said "I'll do it :) ". He found a vein on the first go where other nurses had failed. They seem to be a witty bunch. I guess you have to be when you stab people for a living. The epidural went in first time and numbed me perfectly, which apparently is weird because he kept coming back in to check on me. "are you sure its working?" "can you feel this?" "it's not uncomfortable?" and then walked away muttering "too easy... it was too easy". I didn't care. It was bliss. My butt went all warm and tingly and the pain went away. I'm pretty sure it makes you euphoric. Or perhaps instant relief from pain does that, who knows. I lay back and rested. I was so happy that when one of the doctors came in and asked if I was open to having a medical student watch the proceedings (something which I originally said no to) I said sure and ended up talking to her for hours.

Contractions did slow down however so I was also hooked up to a syntocin drip. At this point it was clear that what my midwife had suspected was right and my contractions were reading like a posterior labour. I had been working really hard to get my baby to turn around since our 35 week scan had shown he was posterior and at 38 weeks he had. It explained a lot. I had been having a massive contraction and then a smaller one in between. It also explained why it hurt so much.

My second midwife had been summoned to the hospital that day for another lady who had a relatively painless 5 hour labour. The stuff of legends. I felt like a bit of a failure for taking so long. It must have been a bit boring for everyone I'm sure. She came in to say hi and also broke my waters for me. 

Fast forward a few hours to about 7pm and a doctor came in to check my progress. She also decided it would be fun to stretch me. I'm sure she stuffed something up because it hurt... and then it kept hurting. A constant blinding pain that had me writhing on the bed and nurses rushing to shove needles in me to draw blood (not very successfully) as I spiked a fever. They tried topping up my epidural to no avail. The student came in handy here because she passed cooled towels to my husband to put on my back. somehow I had managed to get onto all fours. I really wanted something cold and some pressure down there but no one was listening to me. Finally I swiped a cold facecloth and just did it myself. Then I found out why there was so much pressure but no action:

My baby was stuck. 

In the process of "checking" me I think the doctor pushed his head out of alignment and threw off the even thinning of my cervix. My midwife managed to let her check me after much protest from me. I never wanted anyone to go near my hoo-ha again. Not after that. I had been forced to roll back over and I was shaved for a c-sec which I really did not want. This was enough motivation to let her check me. She found a lip of my cervix which had not thinned and told me she was going to try something and it was really going to hurt. She pushed the lip back over his head, it went ping and there was relief enough that I could just weather through the pain by breathing. Someone had to remind me to do this and I now wish I could have laboured at home so that my husband would have been there to tell me to breathe. Being scared because you are alone and then being told you aren't allowed to birth how you want and on top of all that not having had any sleep for almost 2 days definitely made the pain worse overall.

My midwife told me that I could push now. I had none of the powerful urges to push that I had heard so many women talk about. I said to my husband "I can't. I have no energy to do crunches right now". He is the hero of this story. He put his arm under my shoulders and lifted me up every time I said ok. I had no idea how hard you have to push! You get past the point of pain and all the pain transfers to your face and you feel like every blood vessel you own is going to burst. I couldn't tell if I was having contractions or not. My midwife told me that epidurals only stopped contraction pain not vaginal pain. I wish someone had told me that before. I was expecting no pain.

I pushed for 30 mins which only felt like 5 and felt good to be making progress. His head was half out and it looked like his forehead was stuck but one big push revealed the other 50% of his head. It must've been a shock because I heard both midwives and the student say "oh..." I wasn't told to wait when he crowned. I think everyone was so tired and just wanted it to be over. At this point I had been in labour for 30 hours. So I tore, which sucked afterwards but I was just glad he was out. His body took longer than I expected to slither out and after the hardness of the head it felt like he had no bones. The resultant feeling being as if my insides were falling out which was scary as heck. He cried once, did a poo (out just in the nick of time then, so he avoided muconium aspiration) and then went straight on my tummy. 

My husband said "look babe! There he is!" I replied "cool. I can't see him. I can't sit up" He helped me sit up a bit again and then I saw him. He was beautiful. His skin was a bit dry and there was no vernix. I decided then that when I was having my breakdown he was actually ready to come out as he looked over done.

His head was gourd shaped because it came out on a slight angle (no doubt from the confounded "checking") but it came right pretty quickly. Apgar scores of 9,10 and 10 which is awesome!

Having gone through it now I don't just have to guess at what might happen so my next pregnancy and labour are going to go a bit differently I think. Don't take no for an answer when I know my body needs something. Avoid labour on my back as far as possible. Labour in water and with someone else there keeping me calm and reminding me to breathe. Less interference in the form of being strapped to machines and no checking unless by someone who promises to be gentle and not augment my progress in any way.

But at the end of the day: he's out, he's safe, he's perfect for us :)

the baby diaries. 7wks: the bobble head

hand development in week 7

Hands are developing at an amazing speed this week! Day 48

And this is the hand only 3 days later
foot development in week 7 & 8

Your baby's feet are developing at an amazing speed as well. (Day 51)

And this is the foot in week 8 (Day 60)

the baby diaries. 6wks: the baked bean

this week has been yuck. latham took me out for tea after watching a movie that made me cry. (i do not recomend sucker punch)
tea was awesome though. according to latham i am charged with the duty of picking where we go for meals for the next 9 months as i have to be able to eat it and stomach it etc. fair enough i suppose.

and today the morning sickness starts. lets try crackers. my iceblock solution was holding off the nausea untill thismorning. now i just feel like having a vom every 5 minutes. racing down the stairs is an interesting challenge. And my mummy is at work so I can't ring her to ask what is good to eat! she had hyperemesis with me so she should know

and now a word from the sarcastic journalist:

There is a group of women out there that think they didn’t get morning sickness because they wouldn’t allow themselves to. Like, they think throwing up all day, every day is a state of mind.

“Oh, I just wouldn’t allow myself to throw up,” she says while rubbing her nonexistent belly. “So I didn’t.”
Any pregnant woman that comes across these types of women should turn the other way and run as fast as she can (which might just be lumbering gently away). Why? This woman has the “Miracle of Life Syndrome.”
Every little gas pain and tummy rumble is special. They feel like they’re “glowing” and just love every last bit of pregnancy, right down to the hemorrhoids.
You do not want to be friends with these women. They will brag about “easy” labors. Their babies will sleep through the night by the end of the first week.
Worst of all? She’ll be fitting into her “skinny jeans” by her six week postpartum checkup. Never trust a woman that can fit into her skinny jeans that quickly.
Find yourself someone with hyperemesis. She won’t ask if you “tried crackers.” She’ll be truthful about labor and will be your friend in sweatpants for that first year after the baby.Never underestimate the value of a friendship where you can go grocery shopping together in your pajamas.

The baby diaries. 5wks: mini manatee