Boy Meets Rice Cereal!

Orrin turns six months old this week, and we celebrated by giving him his first taste of rice cereal (made up soupy with breast milk)!

It was amazing to watch the transformation of his face when he first got that spoon in his mouth. He responded to food by becoming more focused, intent, and animated than I’ve ever seen him. After seeing that, I now think that the introduction of solid food really goes hand-in-hand with motor development -- that each one enhances the other. It makes sense, from an evolutionary standpoint, that food would be a great motivator to refine our motor skills.

Feeding is mostly play and exploration at the moment -- if you saw him when we were done, you might wonder if I fed it to him or threw it at him. But we are both having a lot of fun and really engaging each other in a new way during these feedings. Solon hasn’t had a chance to feed Orrin yet; he’s been at work at Orrin’s mealtime since we started the rice cereal. I’m looking forward to the two of them doing the feedings, since I think it’ll give them a new, rewarding way to connect. Obviously, Solon has not had the opportunity to do the breastfeeding bonding that Orrin and I have.

In other news…

…I signed up for a class in the fall at GCC -- my first semester back since Orrin! I’ll be taking Sustainable Energy to fill part of my science requirement for the Liberal Arts degree. It’s a Monday-Wednesday afternoon class -- let me know if you are interested in helping us out with childcare on the weeks when Solon is working those days!

…Many posts back, I had mentioned that I was a bit disappointed with my baby-carrying devices. Well, I am happy to report that we’ve hit our stride with carriers. The favorites at the moment are a simple Gerry backpack that we picked up for $10 on Craigslist, and the Hotsling that we picked up for $10 on a mishmash clearance rack at Target. We use the Gerry pack for walks and when I’m working with my hands in front of me, like cooking or doing dishes, and we use the Hotsling in a hip carry for social situations. Orrin is also more happy to sit or lie on the floor and watch me do stuff these days. Overall, I’m quite happy in this department!

…We’ve been spending time with the other moms and babies we met in our birth class. It’s been really wonderful to connect with other first-time moms who have babies the same age as Orrin. Talking out the challenges with other moms who are going through it at the same time makes me feel like we are not doing so bad.

…Orrin is teething, and he wants you all to know that it really sucks (we still think that he is a wonderful, happy baby).

…Does anyone want to take the magazines that I have subscriptions to after I am done reading them? You’d be doing me a favor, as I don’t want to keep them around the house and I feel bad just putting them out by the curb. I’ve got Real Simple, Lucky, ReadyMade, and Glamour. Let me know!

Photo Update

Developmental Milestone Alert!

Orrin is rolling over! The first roll happened while I was talking on the phone with Solon on Thursday, and he rolled over several times today! He's rolling from tummy to back, just like all of the books told us he would. It's funny to watch; a LOT of effort goes into it, with a lot of squeaky sound effects, and then finally flops onto his back and looks quite surprised to be there.

He'll be running all over the neighborhood in no time!

Schooling, Part 2

As promised, here is Part 2: my thoughts on my kids’ schooling! By the way, if you’re interested in this topic and you haven’t yet read all of the comments on Part 1, you should take a look. My mom weighed in with her perspective, and we touched on a lot of what I wanted to cover in this post.

It’s interesting, being a momma and thinking about the best path for my kids’ education. Although I am passionate about unschooling and hope that my children decide to shape their own education at some point, I am not certain that I want to have my kids at home right from the beginning. I feel this way for a couple of different reasons. Here they are:

-I am really glad that I experienced both the public school setting and the Montessori setting before I started unschooling. It gave me a base of experience to understand what the rest of the world was doing and what it was like. Once I started unschooling, I think that experience helped me to relate to my schooling peers in a natural, relaxed way, and I know that it prevented me from taking my unschooling privileges for granted. It made me really want to seize the day!

-As a homeschooler/unschooler, I met a lot of kids who had homeschooled/unschooled for their whole lives who were not very good at socializing, making friends, or having conversations. I think that they just hadn’t had much practice relating to people their own age aside from siblings. I could see these kids really struggling with loneliness and awkwardness. I want Orrin (and his sib(s)) to learn how to navigate social situations without me as a fallback!

-I don’t have any model of unschooling for younger kids. As I mentioned in Part 1, when I began unschooling, I already had a solid foundation in reading, writing, and mathematics. A few of the lifelong unschoolers I met as a teen had learned to read and write a lot later in life than their schooling counterparts (the ones I have in mind learned around age twelve or thirteen), and they experienced a great deal of shame when their illiteracy was revealed in the world outside their homes. These kids’ parents had good intentions -- they believed in the unschooly philosophy of not forcing kids to learn what they’re not interested in learning -- but I think they did their kids a real disservice. Who would wish shame and humiliation on their child? Those feelings have a way of sticking -- long after the cause has been cured.

I don’t mean to imply that every lifelong unschooler/homeschooler is socially awkward or illiterate -- that is certainly not true. I guess that the root of what I am trying to get at is that I think that it’s important for kids to get some hands-on, in-depth experience interacting with people outside of their families. As I see it, the most useful aspect of school is that it’s where children first begin to get an inkling that other families are different from theirs, and that other people function differently than their loved ones. The melting pot of school gives kids the opportunity to learn how to successfully deal with all kinds of different people and situations. There’s the useful lesson that school teaches -- not the academic stuff, which can be effectively learned at home!

Of course, every kid is different, and that weighs in heavily on the choice as well. I, for example, was a kid who was very intent on learning the rules. I knew the “right way” to play the game to get the A’s and the gold stars, and I was going to be very good at it. Because of that, my parents pulled me from public school after kindergarten and sent me to Montessori, a place where objective evaluations like A’s and gold stars didn’t exist. That was a really good choice for me (although I still struggle with cravings for outside feedback and evaluation).

This post is by no means an open-and-shut dismissal of homeschooling and unschooling for young children -- just a little exploration of some of my thoughts and feelings about it. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with my own kids’ education. What are your thoughts for your kids? Let’s start a dialogue!

Pictures!

Schooling, Part 1

I’ve had a few requests for an entry about my education and my ideas about homeschooling. I think it’s going to take two entries to explain where I’m coming from and what I think about education for my children. Today, I’ll let you in on my personal path thus far. Here’s my schooling history in a nutshell:

-I went to public school kindergarten.

-After that year, my parents pulled me out and enrolled me in a private Montessori school.

-I attended that school from age six through ten, when I made the decision to go back to public school for fourth grade (I wanted to ride the school bus like other kids, and the Montessori community was beginning to seem a little too familiar, with the same small group of kids, year after year).

-I stayed in public school, earning excellent grades and a reputation as “the good student” until halfway through seventh grade, when I took my parents up on their standing offer to try homeschooling.

-During my first year of homeschooling, I just brought home the school textbooks and worked through all of them much faster than I could have at school.

-And then I read The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn and began unschooling in earnest. What’s unschooling? I’ll say more about that in a moment.

-When did I finish unschooling? I don’t know. I probably haven’t. I never earned a high school diploma or took the GED, yet I have been able to enroll in college and maintain a 4.0 GPA. Go figure.


Ah, unschooling. I can only paint a picture of my own unschooling education, but there are probably as many different brands of homeschooling and unschooling as there are homeschoolers and unschoolers. If you’re interested in sampling some of the myriad possibilities, The Teenage Liberation Handbook is a good place to start. In any case, here is what unschooling meant for me:

As an unschooler, my days were unregimented. There was no “classroom” in our house, and no school schedule. At the beginning of the traditional school year, I would submit a portfolio to the superintendent of the school district. The portfolio was created entirely by me (with my parents acting as editors and encouraging me toward well-roundedness) and consisted of my goals and plans for the year. At the end of the traditional school year, I would create another portfolio, trumpeting all of my accomplishments. Lest you get the wrong idea, my curriculum was not overseen by the superintendent. As far as I know, he/she never cracked the covers of all those portfolios, and I never received any feedback at all. I was pretty much off the grid.

Just a few of the things I talked about in those portfolios were…
…lengthy reading lists, and perhaps a few book reports.
…creating and running a cottage business with my sister, wholesaling homemade fairy crowns to children’s museums and toy stores.
…teaching music lessons to younger homeschoolers in the area, individually and in groups.
…apprenticing with a local artist (even tagging along when she was an artist-in-residence at local schools!)
…volunteering as a marine docent, teaching museum visitors about the marine ecosystem on the New Hampshire coast.
…touring the US and Europe with a world music ensemble.

I had a busy schedule of volunteer jobs, apprenticeships with experts in varying fields, music lessons, band rehearsals, field trips, and outdoor recreation. I was an avid correspondent, keeping in touch with over fifty pen-pals from around the world.

Most importantly, all of this was chosen and initiated by me. My parents and I believed that I already had the all of the foundation that I needed in order to continue my education on my own: excellent reading and writing skills, basic math, industriousness, and -- most importantly -- curiosity about the world. My parents had three basic rules about my education: 1) doing nothing was not an option; 2) that I keep an eye toward well-roundedness; and 3) that I create those portfolios to present to the school district twice a year. Other than that, I was free to do as I chose.

I wholeheartedly feel that unschooling saved my life and broadened my world. I have no regrets whatsoever about the unusual path that my education took. What are my thoughts and feelings about my kids’ education? Tune in next time!

Tummy Time Pictures

Newsbits

Last weekend was Orrin’s birth class reunion. We never graduated from this birth class, because Orrin came early. We like to say that we’re birth class dropouts. Anyway, it was neat to finally meet all of those babies who were in bellies last time we saw them! We ate brunch, took pictures of all of the babies together, heard everyone’s birth stories and shared our own. It was a lot of fun.

In other news…
…Orrin has reached 15 pounds! I’m quite proud, since I had something to do with that. Go breastmilk!

…We’ve started doing “Tummy Time” with Orrin every day. (For those not in the know, Tummy Time is important exercise for babies, as it helps them develop the muscles they need to use for rolling over, crawling, and walking.) Orrin is now able to prop himself up on his elbows and scan his head around. I think he looks rather surprised and pleased with himself whenever he finds himself on his tummy and able to survey the room, rather than stuck with his face planted on one side or the other, which was so recently the case.

…I am sewing curtains for the upstairs bedrooms. We really need them now that the clock has changed and the sun is staying up later in the evening! To Orrin, bedtime means darkness, and he hasn’t been buying it now that it’s light at his bedtime. I’m hoping that the curtains and some practice solve that, since I’ve gotten rather attached to having a couple hours to myself after he goes to bed at night!

…I’m already getting wistful because Solon and I just finished watching season four of The Wire (an HBO drama about the city of Baltimore, from the drug dealers on up to the politicians in city hall). Season five, which just ended on HBO, is the last one! I don’t think I’ll ever find another show as smart, complex, and realistic as The Wire. I highly recommend it!

…The longest-lived inhabitant of Solon’s saltwater fish tank, the blue damselfish, mysteriously disappeared a couple of weeks ago. As Solon says, he/she “went the way of the tank.” That left us with only one fish -- the clownfish who lives in the anenome. So, last week, Solon went and found Old Clown a friend -- New Clown. Apparently, clownfish either pair up or fight to the death, so we’re waiting to see what happens. After some initial scrapping, the two seem to have reached an accord, although thus far they are not sharing the anenome as Solon had hoped.

What We Do

Well, I’ve been trying really hard to think of something positive I can write, without resorting to endlessly gushing about Orrin, and I haven’t come up with much! The truth is, it’s the crap end of winter. I usually get a little seasonally depressed at this time of year, but it’s been especially rough this year, being postpartum, cooped up inside and with a new baby, and alone much of the time. So, I’m going to tell you about some of the things I’ve been doing to stay sane!

Sprout is a natural parenting store up in Brattleboro, Vermont. When the weather is good for walking, Orrin and I drive up there and use Sprout as our “home base” in Brattleboro. They have a fantastic, sparkling clean bathroom with kid-sized doubles of all of the grown-up fixtures (toilet, sink, garbage can, etc.), and a cushy changing table (complete with a wipes warmer and fresh diapers). They also have a really comfy rocking chair that they welcome moms to use for nursing. It’s a great setup, and the changing and nursing amenities are so crucial to a parenting store being baby-friendly (see below for a brief discussion about changing tables). It makes the whole town of Brattleboro four-season accessible to Orrin and I. Last week we went up there and met my sister, Taury*, and walked around town with her all afternoon. We found some pull-on ice grippers so that Taur could go running outside, we had a yummy lunch overlooking the Connecticut River at Amy’s Bakery Arts Café (which is also my sister’s new place of employment -- she bakes bread there), we perused the racks at Boomerang, a funky new- and used-clothing store, and Auntie Taury bought Orrin several new board books at Brattleboro Used Book Store. Orrin spent the whole time either sleeping in the Babyhawk or quietly taking everything in. It was really lovely, and such a balm for me to be able to get out and function in the world.

A Brief Discussion About Changing Tables:
When we go to our other nearby “walking town,” Northampton, Mass, we are up a creek! I haven’t found a decent changing table there yet. I must say that pre-baby, I never imagined how obsessed I would become with baby-changing facilities. Most of you, my friends, don’t yet have kids. Imagine, if you will, attempting to hold your diaper bag, winter coat, and baby carrier all between your knees as you change your baby in order to avoid putting your stuff on the grimy floor of a public bathroom, as people sneeze and cough and do their smelly business all around you…and then, trying to suit back up without having anything touch the floor…all I can say is ugh. It’s very unsavory. And good luck if you have to pee, too.

Orrin and I go to a couple of different parenting groups a couple of times a month. The attachment parenting group and the babywearing group both meet at the Forbes Library in Northampton one Wednesday morning each month. I learned about the groups from my midwife, Gillian, who is the leader of the attachment parenting group. Both groups are made up of basically the same collection of moms and kids/babies, and it’s usually a pretty casual discussion-based format, but it’s really nice to be able to compare notes and bounce questions off of one another. Hopefully these groups will be a source of friendships for both Orrin and I! Our longtime friend, Emily, also works at the Forbes Library in the children’s section, and we always take a few minutes to catch up with her before we go. It’s a long drive to Northampton, but it’s pretty worth it (of course, we use the carpeted floor of the meeting room for diaper changes!).

It’s been really great to have our neighbor and friend, Melissa, right around the corner from us here in the Patch. Melissa has two little boys: Atticus, who is three; and Enzo, who is seven months (I think). She and her husband, Chris (a.k.a. Monte), have similar parenting ideas to us, and are just fun, young (like us!) people. When she barely knew me and I was still pregnant, Melissa offered to organize people to make meals for us after the baby was born. She really came through and had meals coming to us from different friends three days a week for nearly a month! The morning after Orrin was born she dropped off homemade muffins and a nursing pillow, and she’s been helping me get connected with all of the different meetings and activities that are out there for moms and kids. It feels really nice to have someone like her just around the corner to visit back and forth with. Thank you, Melissa!!

Of course Orrin and I do a lot of stuff in and around the house, too. There’s always laundry or dishes or makeshift vacuuming (no, we haven’t bought a vacuum cleaner yet) or something to do. When the weather allows, we walk around our town, either on Migratory Way, which is the path along the canal, or into town to check out the goods at the Salvation Army, buy bread at the Second Street Bakery, or wander through the exhibits at the Discovery Center. Come visit us, we’ll show you around!


*Congratulations to my little sister, Taury, who just got engaged this past weekend! Dave is a wonderful guy, and I can tell that he loves my sister very much. I’m happy that they’re so happy!

New Pictures

At our friend Monte's birthday party.

The cute boys I live with!

Lizzy & Orrin working on their crosswords.

Mommy AND Me?

One of the big challenges that I’m wrestling with right now is about figuring out how to be the stay-at-home mother of a 3 month-old without losing myself completely. It’s difficult because Orrin would be perfectly happy (at least in the short term) if I spent all of my days just nursing him, changing his diapers, holding him, and napping with him. Every so often I think to myself, “Okay, I really should be able to put him down long enough to [wash my face & brush my teeth / do dishes / switch laundry / etc.].” But when I try it, most of the time he is screaming within a couple of minutes!

For a while, I thought that babywearing was going to be the answer to everything, and that I would be able to accomplish most tasks with Orrin contentedly observing from a carrier. Unfortunately, none of the carriers I’ve tried have freed up both of my hands the way I want them to, and Orrin doesn’t tolerate being in a carrier unless I’m upright (no bending over the sink or laundry) and constantly moving.

My mom suggests that I plow ahead and do my projects while Orrin watches, even if he is protesting. She says that those moments when babies are left to their own devices are when they learn to entertain themselves. Now, I trust my mother’s parenting advice, and I remember being happily absorbed in my own projects when I was a kid. I definitely want Orrin to be able to entertain himself and not to rely on constant prompting from Solon and I. That’s very important to me. I’m just hoping there’s a way to achieve it that doesn’t involve a lot of crying and screaming. Orrin and I are alone together for such long periods while Solon is on his 24-hour shifts, and it’s a huge drain on my morale when my sweet baby is crying for much of that time!

I have had one victory on this front, which is finally figuring out how Orrin wants to nap. A little over a month ago he seemed to transition from the newborn ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, anyhow…to wanting specific naptime circumstances. It only recently dawned on me that ninety-eight percent of his daytime fussiness is caused by being tired. I wouldn’t have believed it before, but he really only wants to be awake for a little over an hour at a time. I am pleased to say that I was able to help Orrin learn to nap in his crib, without resorting to leaving him to cry there! Yay! So the naps have helped me a bit with the getting-anything-done problem.

BUT! My brain wants more than just to accomplish basic hygiene and domestic tasks! How do I know this? Because I’ve been having nighttime insomnia! Yes folks, even though Orrin wakes to nurse on average 4-5 times a night, I have been consistently stuck staring at the ceiling WHILE HE IS SLEEPING! I’m not sure I can think of anything more frustrating than wanting desperately to sleep but being held hostage to my brain, which is running like a hamster on its wheel.

Of course, of course, of course…motherhood is worth all of this strife. Orrin is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. I just know that it wouldn’t be fair to him to have me living my life for him and him alone…So how do I find some balance???

The First Month

These are some notes I jotted down during Orrin's first month. I had no idea how hard it was going to be -- when I was pregnant, I really didn't spend much time thinking about what things would be like after the birth. I wrote these notes partly so that I could remember for next time -- the next baby!

-I didn’t sleep for the next three days, I was so overtired, and breastfeeding constantly, and stressed about whether I was doing a good enough job of being a mom. The first week was really, really hard, but Lizzie came down to help us out, and Solon didn’t have to go back to the fire dept. until Dec. 4.

-3 days old. Orrin’s first snow! It’s a good one, about 3 inches. Feels very magical.

-Nov. 22. Thanksgiving. Mom, Dad, and Orrin stay at home in the Patch. Lizzie goes to Thanksgiving (held at Aunt Barb’s boyfriend Jim’s house) and brings us back some leftovers.

-Days 3-4-5 were very hard, as my milk came in gradually and Orrin got cranky b/c he was hungry, and was nursing constantly, trying to get fed. Hormones were surging, and my nipples were sore and cracked.

-The midwives instruct me not to go up and down the stairs more than once a day, and not to carry Orrin while walking around. I am basically on bedrest for 2 weeks, with Solon and Lizzie bringing me meals and water. I only get up to go to the bathroom, although I did start cheating a little bit at the end of the first week. These restrictions were really tough. I was not allowed to be alone in the house for the first two weeks, either. All I did was email, watch TV, watch Orrin, and breastfeed.

-2 weeks old. Orrin leaves the Patch for the first time ever. Mom, Dad, and Orrin take a trip in the car to Northampton. Big step!

-Dec. 9, 2007. Orrin’s expected due date! We went out & got a Christmas tree and wreath, and decorated it two days later. It’s our first Christmas in our new house with our new baby. I really wanted to decorate for it, and the house looks very festive. It means so much more with a baby here.

-Dec. 13. Snowstorm. 8 inches in 8 hours. This will be the first white Christmas we’ve had in several years. Our baby boy brought real New England winter back when he came.

-Dec. 16, 2007. Another snowstorm. About 10 inches. The snowbanks are piled high! Anderfellow family Solstice celebration had to be postponed to next weekend. We are sad that Aunt Taury won’t be able to make it next weekend -- she’s going to Maryland with Dave for Christmas.

Orrin turned 4 weeks old yesterday. He is a wonderful, peaceful baby and we love him so much. We are starting to figure out his signals and learning how to get around in the world with him. A few days ago I took my first drive with him without Solon, and we went to the La Leche League meeting in Amherst. It was a big step for me, and I felt very empowered when it went fairly easily. My big project right now is figuring out how to sleep. Orrin is sleeping in bed with us, in the crook of my arm, and when he’s sleeping, I sleep quite well. I love to sniff & kiss his warm little head while he’s sleeping. However, the little tyke wants to nurse about every 2-3 hours at night, and hourly from 5am-8 or 9am. I haven’t had more than 3 hours of sleep in a stretch in over a month! Until he can hold his head up on his own, I have to get out of bed and nurse him in the rocking chair. I am really looking forward to being able to nurse lying down in bed! A few nights ago, I learned that I can pop Orrin into the Moby wrap after nighttime nursings and he will go back to sleep pretty quickly. This is a big step, as before I learned this I was up for an hour or two each time he woke up in the night.

Orrin's Birth Story

This story has been up on our website for a month or two now, but I don't think anyone's seen it yet, so here it is!

Orrin Jack’s Birth
Orrin Jack Sadoway Anderson was born at home in Turners Falls, Massachusetts on November 17th, 2007 at 4:42pm EST. He was 7 lbs., 6 oz., and 19 1/2 inches long. He surprised everyone by arriving more than three weeks before his estimated due date, but he was healthy and happy and ready to be with us. Here is the story of his birth:

Thursday, November 15th, 2007 - week 36 1/2 of pregnancy
Solon and I attended our childbirth education class in Northampton. I had a premonition that night and asked the instructor how many babies have arrived before their parents finished the classes. Only three babies in twenty-five years teaching! I felt ready, though, and so did Orrin, because two days later, we called to report that we would not be able to make the last class, because Orrin had arrived to make number four!

Friday, November 16th
I was scheduled to work, but I started having some contractions while eating breakfast. While fairly mild, they felt different than the Braxton-Hicks contractions I’d been having for several months. I called into work, reporting that I was going to “stay home, lie on the couch, and try not to have a baby today.”

Soon after that, I started feeling sick, and called my midwife, Gillian, to ask her advice about my symptoms. Based on the information I gave her, she guessed that I had caught the stomach bug that had been going around, and advised me to take it easy, stay hydrated, and call her if anything changed.

I continued feeling worse and worse as the day went on. Solon cancelled his plans for the day to stay home and take care of me. Despite the fact that I was having regular contractions, neither one of us suspected that I was truly in labor. We just assumed that the “stomach bug” and dehydration were causing the contractions, and I was trying to put the brakes on, because I didn’t want to have a baby who wasn’t ready to be had!

Well, eventually Solon got worried enough to call Gillian back again. Looking back, I realize that at that point I was already in the altered mental state of labor-brain and couldn’t talk on the phone. Gillian agreed to come up and check on me later in the afternoon.

When Gillian came, around 4 PM, she informed us that I was, in fact, in labor, and about 3-4 centimeters dilated, and assured us that it was safe for the baby to be born (and born at home) this early. I was pretty surprised that I was already having the baby, but glad to finally know what was going on and relieved to be able to let go and let the labor happen!

Once the fact that I was in labor was confirmed, there was a flurry of activity, preparations, and phone calls amongst the non-laboring helpers. Jenn, the assisting midwife arrived, followed by my sister, Taury, and my mother. The stomach bug symptoms subsided not long after the midwives arrived, and what followed was a long night of labor. I labored on the couch, I labored in the birthing tub (A.K.A. agricultural trough), I labored on the twin bed we’d set up in the addition next to the woodstove. Midwives, sister, mother, and hubby all took shifts holding my hand and occasionally walking me to the bathroom while the others slept. I was so deep in my work that I hardly noticed or cared who was with me. Things progressed at a nice pace for several hours, and it seemed as though the baby would be born that night.

Saturday, November 17th
Because all of the lovely gastrointestinal symptoms earlier in the labor, not eating all day, and not sleeping very well the night before the labor started, I was exhausted. Totally zonked. So, sometime in the wee hours of Saturday morning, my labor stalled out. I was stuck at 7-8 centimeters. I told the midwives that I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and that I was getting discouraged, and they advised me to try to ignore the contractions -- not to give them any more attention than I had to, and to rest as much as I could. I tried this and started actually falling asleep between contractions. Solon and Jenn conked out on the couch and I slept a few minutes at a time on the twin, and this way we all rode it out until the sun came up.

In the light of day, my helpers must have reassessed, because everyone went back to their respective homes. They felt that I would rest better without everyone around, and that it might be helpful for Solon and I to be alone together for a while. The midwives left Solon with a concoction of herbs for me to drink to ease the labor and help me sleep (apparently, if I’d been in a hospital, this is the point where they would have given me morphine). Solon was to administer the herbs to me every hour.

I tried to sleep, but, despite my utter exhaustion, it just wasn’t happening. Solon and I gave up on sleep and decided to watch TV instead. Apparently, that was the magic charm, because the TV put me right out. Solon paused the Tivo each time I woke up for a contraction and announced “starting…” and he waited to start the show again until I panted “okay…” and fell back asleep.

We went on like that for several hours until Gillian called and told Solon to stop giving me the herbs. About fifteen minutes after I skipped the first dose of herbs, my water broke during a contraction. Whatever was holding me back must have flowed out with that water, because I got a big burst of energy. Moving faster than I had in about twenty-four hours, I rolled off the couch onto the floor and instructed Solon to “save the couch, then call Gillian!”

Immediately the contractions became strong, close together and came with a strong compulsion to push. Solon was on the phone with Gillian and I shouted to him, “Tell her I’m pushing!”

Jenn the midwife lives close by, so she made it to us first. I really felt like I was cruising along toward having the baby, and I wasn’t waiting for anyone. Jenn checked me and was concerned that the baby was presenting posterior (face up), and had me do a rotation of different positions, holding each position for two contractions, in order to turn the baby over. Holding those positions royally sucked!!! I trusted Jenn (still do) and was willing to do anything she said, but I was so mad at how much those positions sucked, and I was pushing like I was pissed off!

By the time I finished that rotation, Gillian had arrived and the midwives told me that I could get in to whatever position I wanted (thank God!). I got into the tub-trough and really started pushing. It wasn’t long before the baby was crowning. Everyone was saying nice things to me about how well I was doing and how I could take it as slow as I wanted and open like a blossoming flower, and all I was thinking was, “That’s cute. Thanks but no thanks -- I’m doing this as fast as possible.” I remember being kind of astounded at the unearthly noises that were coming out of my own mouth. A big pushy contraction came and just when I thought that contraction was over, I got one more push out of it, and out came the head! (I should note here that the idea that that head belonged to a baby was mostly theoretical at this point in my mind. Mostly I was happy because I knew that the hardest part of the labor was over!)

It seemed like forever before the next contraction came, and it was a very strange moment, with that little head out and moving around, but no body yet. We didn’t even know the gender of the little person who was under the water, peeking out into this world! I had time to reach down and put my hand on that soft, warm little head, covered with velvety hair. I remember saying softly, “Oh, wow.” Finally the next contraction came and the baby slithered out into the water and was scooped up in Solon’s arms. I barely had time to catch my breath before Solon was handing me a baby, saying, “I think it’s a boy, babe!” “A boy??” I said, in wonderment. (For the record, I would have been just as awe-struck had it been a girl, or a breadbox for that matter.) Solon laid him on my chest and we met each other there in the tub, in our own house, with the woodstove warming us all. I kissed his vernixy little head over and over and talked to him face-to-face for the first time. It was really sweet.

The midwives left Solon, baby, and I alone for a little while to greet each other, until I asked to get out of the tub. Baby and I were still attached by the umbilical cord, so it was kind of awkward to climb out. Solon and I sat on the couch by the woodstove and loved our new little boy for a while. Baby nursed a bit, and then Aunt Taury arrived, sorry to have missed the moment, but glad to meet her nephew! Once the cord had stopped pulsing and baby had gotten all of his rich blood and nutrients into him, Solon cut the cord with Jenn’s help.

I gave the baby to Solon and went to deliver the placenta, which came easily. Then I got to take a shower. Wow, did that feel good! It felt incredible to be back in my body and back in my head after 33 hours of being a labor machine -- not myself, but literally an instrument of labor.

Later, on the couch in the living room, Solon and I picked his name: Orrin Jack Sadoway Anderson. About a week earlier, the name Oren had come to me as I woke up in the morning (I think Orrin told me). On the night of Orrin’s birth, Solon suggested the name with this spelling, which means “river.” Upon meeting him, we decided that it fit. We had a lovely, warm and glowing evening and went to bed early. I didn’t sleep at all that night, but kept Orrin, naked except for a diaper, skin-to-skin on my chest and gazed at him all night. He is the sweetest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Concentration!

Orrin has been intent upon figuring out how to use his hands. He hasn't started grabbing stuff yet, but we can hear the gears in his head grinding as he concentrates on the objects of his desire. It's so much fun to watch!

First Post

Hi. This is my first post.