A Woman Who Serves

Although I have been interested in feminism and childbirth in one shape or another for so long that I can’t even remember where the interest came from, I just recently made the decision to put this passion into fruition and become a doula. This entry is an avenue to help me explain why.

The word doula comes from the Ancient Greek meaning “a woman who serves.” Today, she is a woman serving women, their families and their new babies. She is a “trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and information support” (DONA website) before the birth, during labor and delivery, and even weeks after during the postpartum period. Not only does a doula greatly affect the positive statistical outcomes of safe and healthy births (like shorter labors, fewer medical interventions, fewer c-sections, greater breastfeeding success, etc.), she also helps in protecting and cultivating a woman’s right to choose. She is a gentle servant as well as a tough soldier in the ongoing battle we feminists face towards feminine empowerment and equality.

Most importantly, I want to become a doula because I want to serve other women. I want to help more women have the caring and compassionate birth they envision and deserve, while helping to keep them safe, happy and informed. I want to eliminate fear, ensure full disclosure from medical professionals as well as help a pregnant woman find her voice and remind her that she always has the right to choose what is being done to her. I also want to be her cheerleader, a source of encouragement and strength as well as a source of comfort and reassurance.

Along with serving the mother, I want to give her partner the confidence and support they will need to effectively assist their loved one in birth. I also want to give the couple an opportunity to discuss fears and inhibitions they may have and answer questions and help find solutions. Not only do I want the mother to have a positive experience, I want her partner to be able to enjoy the experience as well. Along with providing continuous physical and emotional support, I also want to help the new family capture their experience by taking photos and keeping a written account of their birth.

After the birth, I would like to provide whatever support I can to the new family. That may mean providing guidance in breastfeeding, teaching how to use cloth diapers, or giving advice on umbilical cord care. Or it may mean cooking dinner, tidying up around the house, washing laundry and caring for her other children or household pets. Or it may mean just being a shoulder to cry on or being that person who will care for the baby while mom grabs a nap or a walk around the block. Whatever it means, I aim to be flexible and will encourage the new mother to guide me in what support she needs.

Childbirth is awe inspiring and something I will never grow tired of and has always been something I have wanted to be a part of. Also, my near ten-year career as a bored paralegal sitting behind a desk has left me yearning for a truly hands-on career. Although the former reasons were important in my decision to train for this new career, my true personal stake in becoming a doula is that I have longed for the opportunity to meet and teach women about the fundamentals that I find are so important to the health of individual women, but also to health of our generation of feminism. I want to influence my generation of women to better understand the importance of feminism and female empowerment, by putting an end to the fear and pain inducing ignorance many Americans have toward childbirth.

I want to correct the myths of a medical birth and end the ignorance that surrounds American’s perceptions of “life-saving” medical interventions being done to pregnant women every day. It’s necessary and important to make aware the dangers involved in the risky procedures medical professionals casually perform in nearly every hospital birth.

Also, a woman’s perception about her body and her capabilities are greatly influenced by the care she receives during her pregnancy and birth. And as progressive as our country is, we women have very little, if any decision-making power about how we will be treated during pregnancy and birth. So, in becoming a doula, I want to be a cog in the machine that puts an end to this offense against women.

In the forward of Ina May Gaskin’s latest novel, Birth Matters, Ani Difranco voices an opinion I’ve always held: “It confuses me that I, an educated, privileged woman in twenty-first century America, am surrounded by women who think they need saving and, because they are denied the opportunity to know otherwise, may believe it forevermore.” As a doula, I hope to change this “damsel in distress” mentality many young women hold and to help her understand her true capabilities and help her maintain control of the most basic processes of her life.

Aside from serving women physically and emotionally through birth assistance, above all, I want to serve women by uncovering years and years of feminist wisdom.

Urban Homestead

While Dickie and I lived in Chicago, we often sat in our Lincoln Park apartment staring out at the crowded streets below discussing the charmed life of country livin’. He would tell me stories of running miles through the humid cornfields as he trained each summer for the upcoming track season or times he would sit on his front porch hearing nothing but the singing locusts and I would tell him about riding horses on mountain trails and learning how to milk a cow on my childhood ranch. Of course we missed open spaces and long hikes in the woods, but after almost two years of dirty concrete and crowded spaces, we began missing more than just the country, we began missing our roots too, so to speak.

We knew we wouldn’t be buying a farm in Indiana or working on a ranch in Western Montana, but we both yearned for soil in our hands and sun on our backs.  When our plans of returning to New Mexico cemented, we began envisioning and daydreaming of an urban homestead.  A home that was conveniently located near all the places we like to be; bars, restaurants, parks, museums, shops, and public transportation. But we also wanted an abode that could nurture us; that could sustain us as a family.

This idyllic home we had in our minds may be the reason it took us nearly five months to find a place worth buying that suited our needs and stayed within our fixed budget. Although we considered several sub-par places, thankfully we never relented, because this little home of ours has served us perfectly. We live less than a mile from downtown where we can walk to my work, breweries/bars, restaurants, theatres, museums, the library, the train station, shops, etc. We have about 700 square feet to work with inside and maybe triple that outside, and although we were nervous the small space wouldn’t be enough, it has more than served our needs. Of course we are learning little by little and have discovered we have much to improve upon next year, we are however, quite pleased with the crop our efforts have begun to produce.

Edible Front Yard

Since we use our back yard for a place to lock up my Subaru and Dickie’s Yamaha our wide-open space for a garden was limited, so we had to get creative. We have enough room for three apple trees, two rows of corn, and three beds for arugula, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic and herbs in the back. So, therefore our front yard was the remaining space we could use for your typical vegetable garden. Although the space is small and humble, it will produce green beans, lima beans, peas, lettuce, beats, carrots, radishes, potatoes, eggplant, cucumber, squash, zucchini, pumpkin and we even have grapes, strawberries, rhubarb, and watermelon. And in pots we’re growing more herbs as well as pomegranate, lemon, and kumquat trees.

Lemon Tree

We’re using nearly the entire yard for edible and useful plants, so we have no room for a lawn, but that seems to serve the drought weary land of Albuquerque well, I think. We did, of course, leave room for native plants like prickly pear cactus, desert honeysuckle, succulents, agave and lavender. Now short on space, we’re brainstorming where we could possibly build a compost pile. Although we’re struggling to come up with a good spot for the compost heap, we did ingeniously create a space for our little hennies. A darling little coop nestles in below our bedroom window between the house and the fence. Poncho and Lefty are welcomed as the newest members of our family. The hens are about four months old and they grow larger every day (probably all that arugula and compost we’ve been feeding them) and there’s nothing I like more than hearing the purring cluck of those girls first thing in the morning. These ladies should begin producing eggs in late July or August and we’re preparing by collecting egg crates and feeding them greens packed with important nutrients, like calcium that they’ll need this time next month to grow big strong eggs.

Pancho & Lefty

The homestead is coming along, the gardens are even beginning to produce fruit, but every day we think of things we would like to do next. We plan to build a pergola over the back patio to provide a space to grow hops for shade as well as beer brewing in the fall. We will also be installing rain barrels to capture and utilize the precious water we’ll receive during the monsoon season.

Back Yard Garden & Coop

I love and treasure my homestead and its small space has provided me a huge learning tool and it more than suits the needs of Dickie and I for now. But, someday we’ll need to expand. Not only will our family grow, our dreams will grow as well. Once we have conquered the ins and outs of sustaining an urban homestead we see community gardens, permaculture, community supported agriculture programs and sustainable organic farms in our future. I want to grow beautiful and nutritious food for my family as well as my neighbors. I want to teach my children how to plant seeds and how to tend chickens, but I also want to teach my neighbors’ children these same things. Goats, more poultry, and space to produce affordable organic food and an opportunity to teach people how to grow food that is good for them is all sitting in my future, just waiting to be cultivated.

The Study - Before & After

Albeit quite slowly, we have been fixing up the study in our little home, little by little. I am relieved to say, it's now nearly finished! Because before and after pictures are so much fun, I have a few below.

Before - SE Corner

After - SE Corner

Before - South Wall

After - South Wall

Before - NE Corner

After - NE Corner

Before - West Wall

After - West Wall

The color is "macchiato."

A Courthouse Wedding

I married my love this day two weeks ago. Ever the romantics, we wed on the seventh anniversary of the day we met. Seven years ago, we were both going to school in Missoula, Montana. I was 19, engaged to someone else and Dickie had just been accepted to graduate school in Indiana. Of course, our love prevailed and our prior commitments and our individual new-relationship-stifling plans did not deter us. I immediately broke off my engagement, and it took less than a week to fall in love and only another week to start making life-changing plans to keep each other in our lives. I moved 2,000 miles from home to be with Dickie while he went to school in Muncie, Indiana.

The word that comes to mind to describe those first two years together is passion. Maybe heated passion would be more accurate. Two years of intense affection, dedication, fervor, anger, and red-hot tempers. Lots of strong emotions on both sides. Lots of loving, lots of yelling, lots of crying, lots of laughing. Back then we were just kids trying to learn how to be a couple. And well, I think we figured it out...but it took us several more years.

Our Ball State years were very conflicting for me. I wanted to be there because I loved Dickie and I loved our friends, loved making enough money to support myself and I even loved living in Middle America, but I loathed my job, was embarrassed for being so much younger than everyone we knew, and was intensely jealous of Dickie and the other graduate students we hung out with. I was 20, held a meager associates degree and worked as a lowly secretary while everyone else I knew was pursuing higher education. It was embarrassing feeling so inadequate and uneducated. Therefore, the day after Dickie's graduation we were on our way back to Missoula so I could get my education; so I could gain some dignity in our little community of friends.

They were two of my favorite years. I thoroughly enjoyed receiving my liberal arts education. I was in love with all of my professors, couldn't get enough of feminist theory and civil war history, and will always have a place in my heart for the dismal grey winters of Missoula. It's a shame a person can't reasonably become a career student, because I think I am my happiest sitting in a lecture listening and learning about things nobody bothered telling me before. It's exciting to find that you are really interested in a certain subject and never tire of learning about it. At any rate, the two years flew by for me, but poor Dickie was as anxious to leave Missoula as I was anxious to leave Muncie two years earlier, so the day after my graduation we packed up our things and on a whim moved to New Mexico.

Although I am back in Albuquerque now and couldn't be happier, Albuquerque did not win my heart the first go-around. I had never been to the American Southwest, but Dickie talked it up as if it was the most glorious, awe-inspiring place on our earth (which I now realize it certainly could be), but at the time, when we first arrived to Albuquerque, I was disheartened and felt like I had been duped. This place was dry, dusty and brown. Lots of dirty concrete, box stores and suped up cars. Why did he bring me here? I found a decent job, but brought in a pretty insignificant income, while Dickie didn't find anything at all. We knew things were tough for a lot of people, but we certainly hadn't realize it was the onset of the great recession and Dickie was just among the many thousand of able, hardworking young men who couldn't land a job. Instead, we became frustrated, embarrassed and angry. It certainly colored my overall view of the place we called home. I felt stifled, trapped, angry and just wanted out.

After the longest six months of my life, Dickie finally got a job opportunity, but it was in Chicago. He was happy for the job, of course, but wasn't thrilled about moving to Chicago. I, however, was over the moon. I had wanted to live in Chicago since I moved to Indiana when I was 19 and I had wanted to live in a city since I was a little girl. I could hardly stand waiting the two weeks before we could leave. I (naively) couldn't get out of the desert fast enough, whereas Dickie cried as we drove away from the last pink sprawling New Mexican sunset we would see in years.

In December of 2008, we arrived in Chicago in our dusty Jeep Cherokee and moved into a classic brick pre-war walk-up in Chicago's Northside; near the lake and Lincoln Park. I remember it was one of the most exciting experiences in my life. Like any other big city, the architecture in Chicago is beautiful and awe-inspiring and even more significant because I now lived there; it was my home. A small-town girl from Montana, living in Chicago felt like I was living in a movie...like it wasn't real life. Right away I got a great job at a prestigious law firm downtown and made an income double of anything I had made before. I never felt more proud of myself; I was living in a daydream I had had for years.

Although I grew numb to the excitement of the city surprisingly quickly and my "great" job turned out to be one of the most boring jobs I've ever held, I was still happy and still glad we had made the move. My Chicago experience will always be dear to me, because it was an experience I needed to shape who I am now and who I will be in the future. This experience wasn't just learning how to live with urban challenges, things like rude people on the streets, paying $8 for a gallon of milk, traffic jams, trying to figure out how to get ten bags of groceries home on the train, etc., the true depth of the experience was living with a dejected and depressed partner who could not see past his own sadness to enjoy any of happiness and success I was enjoying. It was challenging, to say the least. Dickie's big Chicago job fell thru a couple of weeks after we had arrived and another opportunity wouldn't present itself for the entire two years we lived in Chicago. The guilt and heavy heart he acquired while being unemployed in New Mexico only grew darker and heavier the months he spent unemployed in Chicago. This frightening economic downturn was horrible and it destroyed Dickie's sense of self worth, but I think it was important. Important for our relationship because it forced us to learn patience, kindness and how to be frugal. And I think we discovered a strength that will help us through all the other hardships we'll have down the road.

The two years we spent freezing in Chicago, New Mexico began popping up in our thoughts and in our conversation. Although I was so anxious to leave it the first time, I began daydreaming and wishing we were back. Dickie had been having the same daydreams long before I had, but all of sudden, one grey cold winter day, we decided we were moving back to the Southwest, as soon as our lease was up, with or without jobs and/or money to get there. Soon after we made the decision, Dickie got his first big break in two years; he accepted a job with the American Red Cross in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After all the disappointments and hardships we had been through, we couldn't believe our luck.

We returned to Albuquerque last May and for the first time in our relationship, we both felt that we are home. For the last seven years, home for me was Dickie, wherever we were together, but finally, we discovered a real, tangible place that we could call home. I think a reason Dickie and I are such great partners is we know HOW to give and take and WHEN to give and take. It took us seven years to find a place that made us both happy at the same time, but I think the seven years we took taking turns has helped in the over-all well being of our relationship now.

Dickie and I knew from the start that we would be life partners, but it is comforting to know he is my husband and I his wife. It's funny, it took us one week to fall in love, six weeks to shack up, but seven years to get hitched.

April 1, 2011

Breast Really is Best: The Nestlé Boycott

Many women’s choice to breastfeed or not depends greatly upon current fads, convenience, or the guidance or support they did or did not receive in the beginning.  This is generally the case in America and other developed countries, anyway. And our babies almost always survive on either formula or breast-milk. However, babies in third-world countries aren’t so lucky.

According to the World Health Organization Authority (WHO), 1.5 million babies die every year as a result of inappropriate feeding.  The main cause for this devastating number is that these babies are not adequately breastfed, which is usually due to the aggressive marketing of companies like the Nestlé corporation. No matter what country you live in and what kind of food and water you have access to, it’s been proven time and again that artificial formulas do not even compare to the healthy components found in human breast-milk, but I’ll leave that topic for another soap-box session.

Today, I just want to talk about the serious problems Third World countries face when it comes to companies promoting artificial infant feeding…the Nestlé Corporation being one of the worst offenders. Get this, to promote their product they provide mothers in poor countries with free formula for the first week of their baby’s life. A week is long enough for the mother’s own milk to come in and dry up. Once mom’s milk is all dried up, the baby is “hooked” on formula, because mom's milk supply can never be replenished and there are no other options. Despite the consequences, Nestlé knows this is what will happen and does it on purpose to ensure they'll have a new customer and more money coming in for the next year. Unfortunately, the company doesn’t bother to inform the mother that this happens and that she will be forced to continue buying their product, if she wants her child to survive. If there are warning labels, they are written in a language she can’t read (if she can read at all). The cost of formula for one baby can easily be 40 percent of a family’s total income.  The formula is usually sold in powder form, and so to make stretch and last longer, these mothers often dilute it with more and more water. And, as we all know, this water is far from pure and sterilization is often unavailable. Also, the antibiotics we easily have access to here in the United States may not be accessible to them at all, which results in sick babies who often die. That’s if mothers can even afford the formula past the first free week. As you can see, Nestlé is responsible for millions of sick, starving and dead babies, who otherwise would have been perfectly healthy and strong.

If only these women weren’t bombarded with aggressive product promotion. If only Nestlé would stop exploiting and destroying these women's lives to make an extra buck. If only someone had told these women they themselves already had the ability to create the best possible and most perfect cocktail of immunoglobulins, antibodies, vitamins, and nutrients AND it’s free!

Regardless of the 1.5 million babies that may die this year because of artificial infant feeding, Nestlé continues to push its product. This is why I’ve decided to boycott Nestlé. And this is why you should too. Here’s a link to all their products: http://www.nestleusa.com/PubOurBrands/Brands.aspx

Wedding Dress Misadventures

Those of you who know me know I love dresses, that I love pretty clothes in general. That I wear skirts and dresses to work more often than trousers and try to wear something vintage at least once a week. And that it takes me thirty minutes and a patient fiancé with a good eye for fashion to pick out an outfit everyday. When I was a little girl, much to my mother’s dismay, I refused to wear anything but white frilly dresses and would change my dress at least three times a day. I think I even insisted on wearing my white lacey Easter gloves to play in the dirt pile with my brother.  And don’t even get me started on my dress-up box…

For all these reasons I thought shopping for a wedding dress would be the best part of planning my wedding. Sooo wrong I was. I’ve been engaged for nearly a year and a half and have been actively looking for my dress since. And to no avail.

I have very strong opinions about what I do NOT want: satin, strapless and poofy. And here’s what’s readily available: satin, strapless and poofy. In the beginning of my hunt I was very specific about what I wanted, and since I have let up a bit, but, the one detail of a dress I will not let go is the sleeves. Why is it so hard to find a wedding dress with sleeves? Try googling, “wedding dress with sleeves,” and you will find either ridiculous Princess Di sleeves or modest cap sleeves fit for a Mormon getting married at Temple. Ridiculous or dull, that’s all there is.  It’s discouraging to say the least.

I am still hopeful and still looking, because I know somewhere out there wedding dresses do exist with attractive sleeves. For example, I was originally inspired by this bride:

I even bought a dress that sort of looks like the one above. With the help my wonderful bridesmaids, I found an Edwardian tea gown in a vintage dress shop in Wicker Park of Chicago. It is 100 years old, it’s white, feminine, pretty AND it has sleeves. It was even a perfect fit. The women from 1910 were a lot smaller than we are now, so sometimes it’s hard finding a hundred-year-old dress to fit my 26-inch waist. Although it fit, it needed some alterations to update it a bit.  This top rated tailor in Chicago was sort of a disappointment, after two rounds of alterations it still wasn't right, and the dress really needed to be altered once more. However, I didn’t have time to have it modified one last time, because we were moving to Albuquerque the day after I picked up my dress. So, I took it home to our boxed up apartment in Chicago, and proudly traveled with it in my backseat across the country to New Mexico. The dress is now hanging in my closet waiting to be altered one last time.

So, what’s the big deal, right? Well, in the beginning, Dickie and I were planning an informal garden wedding to be held in Grandma’s backyard and I thought that a tea length dress would be perfect for that. Since, of course, we have changed our plans and perhaps the dress would still be appropriate, but I’m no longer satisfied with it…now I need a floor length dress. This dissatisfaction with a tea-length dress is my mother’s fault, of course. Awhile back, she said something about wishing I had found a long white dress instead, and well it’s sort of stuck with me. Thanks ma. :)

My mother hasn’t had much say in this whole wedding planning process. Planning her daughter's wedding is not really her cup of tea. But, this is the one detail she seemed to feel strongly about – er, I shouldn’t say she felt strongly about it, but she at least voiced an opinion. So, as every good girl does, she listens to her mama…so I began hunting for a floor length gown.

(Don’t worry, the antique dress will not go to waste, I am wearing the Edwardian tea gown during my April City-Hall wedding. I just need something a bit more dramatic for the “real” wedding in June.)

About a month ago, I found a dress online. An ethereal and elegant looking goddess gown with layers of floaty silk chiffon. It was lovely, unique, and so me. Since the dress-maker got flawless reviews and the dress was custom made for me, with my exact measurements, I wasn’t nervous about buying something online. After placing my order I was thrilled and relieved I had finally found my dress. However, now devastated, it has arrived but it's about three sized too large and a foot too short.  Length, being the critical detail was the complete opposite of what I wanted. It looked ridiculous and I sat in my atrocious dress and cried for an hour. Not because I lost a few hundred bucks, but because I am now on the hunt once more.

I thought I would post my travesties, so that maybe you could help me in my seemingly endless search for the perfect wedding dress. Following are some photos of what I’m looking for:

Soft, flowy, sexy, feminine...

Lacey

Boho, earthy

Cap sleeves

Flutter sleeves

3/4 Length

See, sleeves don't have to be boring or silly. If you can't tell, I'm a super-frazzled-desperate-for-a-pretty-dress-bride. Please help me. I'm a dress size 2. Small bust, large toosh.

Our house is a very, very fine house...

She survived the coldest temperatures Albuquerque has seen since 1976; no fires, no busted pipes, no hypothermic cat. I think our little casa deserves some praise, actually she deserves to be shown off a bit. 

We live in the oldest neighborhood of Albuquerque: Barelas. In fact, it's fifty years older than Old Town. It was first established as a ranching settlement in the late 1600s, but Coronado crossed the Rio Grande here in 1540.  It is one of the only neighborhoods in Albuquerque that has managed to stay culturally intact, while so much has changed around it. Even being so close to the heart of downtown it's kept a unique charm. It's the home of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Barelas Coffee House, the Red Ball Cafe and the zoo. The Bosque trail system and my work downtown are only a few minutes away. Although there's been several revitalization projects and it's beginning to invite young artists to the  community, I don't think this historical hispanic neighborhood and it's 400 year-old adobe homes will change much...it will only get more interesting. For example, across the street there's an art studio/condo with hipster kids milling in and out, but right next door lives "Abuela" (grandmother in Spanish) who is in her 80s and has lived in the same house since she was 11.

  

Our Little Casita
(It faces East)

Kitchen
(looking West)

Living Room
(notice photos of Indiana, obviously our home needed a little touch of the heartland)

Living Room
(looking South)

Living Room
(looking East)

Bathroom

Bedroom
(looking NW)

The Study
(This room is not finished yet, but here's a general idea)