childbirth education

I have struggled with my desire to work with pregnant women for some time now. I want to make a difference in their lives by providing the knowledge and education that i got while pregnant that led me down a particular path and helped mold the type of parent I would be. I really feel like the best place to reach a woman and educator her about so many issues is at the childbirth education level. I can help them prepare not only for the birth of their child but I can also be there to educate them about their birth options, breastfeeding, circumcision, vaccinations, natural remedies, natural family planning, homeschooling and many other areas. My struggle has always been what program to go through. When I was pregnant I went through the Bradley method class. I like this method because of it's emphasis on nutrition, kegels and the fact that itis more well known-more widely supported and provides referals(automatic advertising). I have't been leaning in this direction because I am not sure that I want to commit to teaching 12 weeks. I don't know that I believe in their relaxation techniques all though I do think first time moms need something to old on to. I am really leaning toward two different programs. one is decidedly Christian from Apple Tree Family ministries. i like the idea of providing a Christian childbirth class. My biggest problem is that their ideaology comes from a book by Helen Wessel that I have yet to read. If their ideology teaches that women are lacking faith if they experience pain in labor I will NOT be going in that direction. I do not believe in such teachings AT ALL! The second one is from ALACE. I like the fact that it is only 7 weeks long, that it is only about $750 and that it was created by a midwife. I also like the fact that i don't have to travel to any seminarsor classes in order to teach it.The other two program require that i attend their seminars. I have gone over and over and over my feelings on the subject and have yet to come to any conclusions. I want to start working on something but I don't know what. The Apple Tree Family minsitry is revising their program so I guess I will buy their book and start reading it to see if i agree with their ideas. I wish I had better input on the subject or knew which one suited me best. Perhaps some clarity will come soon. I feel like I need to really focus on some personal learning right now. Hopefully something will come to me soon.

back in the saddle again

Well, I went out house hunting again today. It was good to get back out there. It is really exhausting and a bit frustrating to be out for almost 5 hours and see only 4 houses. It sure is a lot of driving around. The first two houses were not all that special but the last two looked better. We will spend more time this week and some time next week. I think it will be a better experience this time around.

communication and friendship under question

Figuring out how to publish on this blogger has been a bit of a challenge but I am finally figuring it out. Today I am feeling very negative again so I am publishing my thoughts once again. Please don’t suppose that I am always this way. My change in circumstance has made it difficult to be lite of heart. Today I question my ability to communicate and my ability to make friends.

On the subject of communication I feel that since I amnot able to convey myself without being understood that I should limit the amount of what I say in general. The chief person I have been communicating with is my husband. I suppose that our recent move from our house in one city to a tiny apartment in another city has placed it’s effects on our understanding one another. He is the only person I have to share my thoughts and feelings with. Since my thoughts have not been uplifting these many days I am not received warmly. Yesterday, for example, I was reflecting on how my life has changed and why I feel so useless. When we had a home I not only cared for my children and made meals but had a 1,500 sq ft. home to care for, yard work and gardening to keep me busy, sewing and baking to do and educating my eldest. I also was somewhat involved in the community with answering question about breastfeeding and other health related inquires. I also taught NFP classes, practiced reflexology and provided meals to families on occasion. I also had family and friends I could rely on regularly for communication or distraction. Since our move I have been in a tiny apartment of no more than 800 sq ft. There is no yard to work in. My sewing machine and bread making things are packed away. My apartment takes, maybe, a half hour to clean. My only responsibilities are to feed and amuse my children. I hope to begin educating my eldest again soon. I feel useless. I do to labor or contribute much at all to our family’s welfare. I simple left to consume and be idle. At least when we had a home I had work to do and I felt I contributed when I sewed, baked or found other ways to stretch our finances. I expressed my feeling to my husband last night stating that I was looking forward to having a home again so that I could once again feel more useful. He at least had a job to go to every day. His remarks were simply for me to refrain from judging our entire move as negative until our circumstances had changed and I once again found myself in a home. Apparently, all he hears is that I am unhappy here. That was not my intention. I am very happy here. I simply feel lost. I am not myself and idleness does not suit me. I just needed to communicate it with someone. Expressing any negativity is being taken as personal from him. I fear that I no longer feel I can truly share my thoughts with him. I have thus concluded that I am to rely on God alone to share my true thoughts and feelings with. I know that this is where God has wanted me to go with Him for some time. I struggle with it because my very nature requires that I have audible feedback. I am reluctant to believe that my sole unburdening to God will be sufficient for my needs but what other choice do I have. My journaling here is the only other solution so once again I am re-evaluating a desire to share my postings with anyone.

My second thought is regarding friendships. I have am thinking on this subject since my intended move from my childhood home to this new home. I am one and thirty and this is my first time to move to another city in which to live. I am much like a child. I feel as if I am having more of a difficult time than anyone else. Particularly with the lose of my friends. But ion the course of moving I have come to see my friendships in a different light. The friendships that I held dear have come to reveal themselves to me as shallow in deed. As I was preparing to move I had hoped that my friends would show more remorse at my future absence from them. I had hoped that perhaps a gathering together for a time of fellowship (party) would be suggested. A similar celebration had been provided for another friend in conjunction with a baby shower. But alas, no one even suggested such a thing. Not that I wished for such a get together but an offer would have been appreciated. I watched my husbands co-workers make such a fuse over his leaving with a celebration and letters of sorrow of his departing being written and still others providing financial gift offerings to assist us in our move. My husband has need pursued any deep friendships outside of work and yet his departure was seeming to effect his co-workers more deeply than mine on my own “deeper” friendships. This truly pained me. To be fair I tried to make my departure as plain as possible by telling others around me that it was no big deal and that I would still be around every so often. I believe this was due to my own inability to face the reality of what a move would really do to my relationships. I wanted to believe that I could sustain them from a distance and that my departure would have very little impact on my reality. I of course was deluded. This change has made me see that my friendships were never that deep at all. I do take partial blame. I am not the type of person to be so effectual that people flock to me, desiring to be close acquaintances with me. But of the friendships I devoted my energy to and to those who I was loyal to I have been disappointed to find that they were not more than what I thought them to be. I feel a great desire to make it my study as to why adult relationships outside of family are so difficult to create and to grow into something deeper than a pleasant acquaintance. I have been slighted before in friendship and this is the second time that my love and loyalty has been misplaced and unreciprocated. Will I be able to discover how to be a better friend to those around me? Will I ever be able to find a devoted, loyal friend whose love for me and I for them is not diminished by distance or circumstances? It is my soul wish to have such a friend before I die. Am I capable of giving again? Am I capable of soliciting for such a friendship from another? It remains to be seen? With the challenges of motherhood and the duties of a wife is it even possible to develop such a friendship? I know not the answer but I hope in time to give more insight to this subject. I accept almost the entire failure of my past relationships upon myself. My failure to communicate and my very nature must have such an effect as to keep people distant from me. It can not be that I am unlucky in the choice of my friends that I continually find myself disappointed. I will endeavor to secure again someday a friendship that is true and deep. Perhaps I will be deceived and disappointed many times before that end but I will continue to try for some time before I allow myself to give up all together and conclude that such a friendship is not possible.

(I apologize for the style of language used. I have been watching and reading entirely too much “Pride and Prejudice” and it has effected my speech/writing.)

looks can be decieving

You can see from the pictures that although the house looks great from the street it is not all it appears to be. It sure is charming to look at from outside but the inside is a different story.

need to unload

I have so much inside me I have to get out I simply don't know how to begin. Perhaps I will start with the easiest. This morning I sent my oldest child with Grandpa and Grandma back to Phoenix. This is the first time she will be so far away from home by herself and for a whole week. I am looking forward to the break but at the same time I already miss her. I was surprised to feel this way since she and I often butt heads together. I know it will be fine but I just am surprised to be dealing with these feelings this morning. I still have my other two at home so it isn't like I am home alone. I guess it is the idea that I can't just go get her if she wants to come home early or if I decide I miss her too much (although I doubt I would do that even if she was right next door.) I hope I can use this time to give individual attention to my middle child. I think she needs it.

The second thing that has happened has more details to it but I will try to be brief. Nine days ago my husband and I went to look at homes to purchase. On the same day we put in an offer for a house and it was accepted. Of all the houses we had seen that day we liked this one the best but we were rushed to put in an offer because that day two other offers were being submitted. I think it is possible we still would have made an offer on the house the next day but it wasn't comfortable to be so rushed. We spent the next week worrying about whether we had done the right thing. There were a lot of things that started to come to our mind about things we didn't really like about the home and we were going to have to deal with them or accept what we couldn't change. We then transitioned to thinking that this would be our home and the new area we would be living in. Yesterday we had the home inspected and it was NOT good. As we walked through the house a second time (the first time lasting only about 15min) we started to see for ourselves more and more things that were wrong with the house and would need to be fixed. Some things were little things and others were not. These are repairs-not cosmetic changes. The cosmetic changes I could live with. The whole house was 70's décor and looked and smelled like I would be moving into my Grandmother's house. I can deal with burnt orange carpet. I can deal with bedroom doors that have holes in them. I can't however deal with water damage and MOLD!. UGH!!!!! The front living room had a whole corner near a window where the outside sprinklers had been spraying on the house and because the upper part of the house had composite panels and the sealant was gone between them the water was seeping into the house through the frame and dry wall and growing mold on the wall. The wall at the time of inspection was still measuring as wet! Had we seen this at the time we visited the house or had this been disclosed to us we would never have made an offer on the house. But there was a couch covering the wall and the only thing we were told was that there might be some water damage on the wall near the window. The contract had an "As Is" clause which should have been a clue but we convinced ourselves it was because it was an old home (1904) and because the woman was older and just didn't want to mess with fixing little things herself. This one spot of mold was anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 or more in repair work. But that is not all. There was evidence of water damage all over the basement and more mold in two of the closets. There was a water pump in the basement that was still leaking. Anyway, there were other things that we were not thrilled with so this has actually been a blessing. We have a justifiable reason for walking away from the property. It was really hard yesterday. For a while I just felt sick and couldn't believe we had made an offer on the house. Later that same day I felt more relief and now I am rather glad that God has closed that door and we won't be living there. I am not looking forward to dragging my kids around again to house hunt but I will keep praying that God will help us find the house that is right for us. There is more to this house hunting that I would like to say but I'll have to write about it later.

finally here and book review

I have been visiting my family and only now just found my info to get back on line. How frustrating!!!! Here it is a day later and I didn't get a post on my birthday. Oh well. Happy unbirthday to me!
Steak!!! Yum! My birthday dinner. I loved it. My mother introduced me to blue cheese on steak. Stilton to be more accurate. As I have been told, Stilton is the Caddilac of blue cheese. It was delicious! I must say again! Yum! Besides the fact that I haven't had any steak for more than a month. I really enjoyed my birthday dinner.

Change of subject-
I will proably write reviews on books I am reading from time to time. Since I am usually in the middle of about 3-5 books at a time I definently won't be posting reviews frequently. Anyway, the book I am reading is titled "The Good Women of China" by Xinran. I wouldn't say this book is enjoyable to read but it is interesting, eye opening, and touches your heart for the hurt women in China that she writes of. The book is about different women's stories in China. She makes you see that although she is only telling a few individual stories-their stories are an example of a much large spectrum of the women of China as a whole. The chapter I just read told the stories of 3 different women who lost so much in an earthquake that occured in Tangshan in 1976. Their stories are told 20 years later but the recollection of it all was as moving as if it had happened only a few months ago. I won't give away the details but it is truly sad. Heart renching really. I could never imagine being the one to survive such an ordeal and yet after reading their stories and can deeply empathize with each of them. Anyway, as the sociologist in me I am drawn to understand the life of these women and what they share that opens my eyes to what life as a woman in China is like.

Anyway, more to come now that I am back on line.