bearing blog

Could use a little advice here from the cradle Catholics.

So one thing I really don't understand about how Lenten penances are supposed to work out within a family. 

Do your children (older ones -- say 8 year olds and up) take responsibility for their own Lenten devotion?

As far as I know, "giving up something" for Lent is an optional devotion.  It's not optional that we have to observe Lent somehow, with prayer, fasting, penance, almsgiving.  But, say, "giving up chocolate" for Lent, that kind of thing, that's traditional but not obligatory.  Right?

So, as a mother, I feel like my role ought to be to encourage my kids to come up with a Lenten sacrifice and follow through with it.  But I'm really uncomfortable with enforcing it in any way, or even with making gentle reminders.

(Yes, it's my role to enforce religious obligations, e.g., Sunday Mass attendance -- I'm talking about optional devotions.)

 If they were much more mature, like 16 or older, it would definitely be inappropriate for me to butt into their private spiritual lives.  Also, by that time, they should be able to take responsibility themselves for their own sacrifices -- they should be totally voluntary.  I'm clear on the concept for older kids and adults.

So should they be voluntary from the beginning?

Let me give an example.  When my oldest was eight, he announced he was going to give up ketchup for Lent.  I thought that was a really great sacrifice  for a kid -- doable, but noticeable.  For the first couple of weeks he went without ketchup.  Then one night he forgot and put it on his plate.  Just as a reminder -- not at all in a punitive way, I swear -- I said, "Hey, did you forget that you gave up ketchup for Lent?"   And he got this look on his face that said I know.  Please don't remind me.    A few more times that happened, and then by the end it was clear that he didn't want to give up ketchup anymore.  I stopped reminding him.  It felt wrong to "nag" about something that was technically optional and that, if he were fully grown, would be totally his own business.  It definitely felt wrong to speak to him about it at the dinner table, in front of people.  

I get even more nervous when my son announces that he's going to give up something that I just know is going to be really hard for him.  Like, "I'll give up video games."  Great, I think, it's really a good idea, but... do you expect me to be your policeman?  Like, when you're at your friends' house and they're all playing video games, do you want me to come down the stairs and say, "Hey, 10-year-old, you told me you were giving up video games for Lent, so put down the controller?"

I don't have an example for how to do this.  I was not a child growing up in a practicing-Catholic family.   I literally do not know how to encourage a Lenten devotion without becoming Lent Cop Mom. 

Seriously.  Help me out here.  And if you have a blog which gets more traffic than mine, how about asking your readers?  Because I have a feeling I need a lot of ideas.

UPDATE:  Oh, good, Jen at Conversion Diary has kindly linked to my question!  That should help.  So has the other Jennifer, Fitz at Riparians at the Gate.

Organizing bleg.

Help.  

I need an idea for organizing 5 or 6 sets of children's headphones -- not ear buds, but headphones that go over the kids' heads and clamp over their ears -- in a small space, so the cords don't tangle.  Hanging them on the wall is an option but I'd rather have some kind of box or other container.   

I tried keeping them in individual ziplock bags inside a box and it didn't work.

Please pretty please help me out.  I'm willing to buy a product just for this, it's driving me nuts.

The printable version.... should look like what?

Every once in a while someone emails me and tells me I should write a book about weight loss, or gluttony, or exercise.

This maks me laugh.  I'd like to write a book someday.  I started my blog thinking maybe it might turn into material for a book, or at least some articles.    But of all the topics that I hoped I might write about -- of all the subject lines I wanted to see at the top of dozens of "You should write a book!!!" emails -- I never, ever, ever expected it would be "weight loss."  On the one hand, I'm pleased that people have found something I wrote inspiring and practically helpful.  On the other hand, I don't particularly want to be personally associated with the diet-book industry!

There are a lot of weight loss books in the world.  Most of them are drivel.  The world doesn't need any more.  

OK, the armchair economist in me has to clarify that.  Obviously the world must be demanding them, otherwise there would not be such a limitless supply.  But I reiterate that the world doesn't NEED any more. 

And then there's the "weight-loss memoir" genre.  But there are a number of those too.   And my forty-odd pounds is just  not that impressive compared to Shauna Reid's175 pounds or Kim Benson's more than 200 pounds.  Maybe if I keep it off for the next twenty years I'll have done something worthy of a book.

I'm not interested in making money off of what I've written either.  Well, that's not quite true.  I'm not interested in putting the kind of time into it that would make the weight-loss stuff pay me any money.  So I'm content to leave the blog content out there for free.  If it helps some people , so much the better.

That being said, I got an email last week from a reader who made a point I haven't considered before.

You can't easily print it out and take it with you.

OK, I can see that.  If you read it online, it's easy to navigate.  Not so if you want to print it out and take it along.   And I would like the material to be helpful.  I enjoy organizing information, so it might be kind of fun to put it together into a more book-y form.  Maybe I'll do that.

So I want to throw a couple of questions out.  I'm going to make this post sticky for a few days so it stays on top and hopefully inspires a longer discussion.

Hypothetically, if I were to put the weight loss posts together into an e-book for easy downloading and printing, what sort of book would be the best to organize?

(1) Weight loss memoir -or-

(2) More-organized diet/eating less advice  (the "diet book"), trimmed of specifically-Catholic content  except where necessary to support and explain my personal experience fighting -gluttony stuff -or-

(3) Mostly spiritual-journey stuff where the gluttony/weight loss thing is only a concrete example  - or-

(4) Don't organize it.  Just string together the relevant blog posts in order and make it available for a single .pdf download

Comments, suggestions, questions, and your own vision of what I should do are welcome in the comments.  Go for it.  This post is sticky for now.

Guest posts, coming up: Topic bleg.

I was in Colorado all last week.  Did you miss me?

In the car on the way back, I had a conversation with my husband in which I think I might have convinced him to make a small series of guest posts here on humble bearing blog.  

Ostensibly they will be on the topic "Weight Loss:  How to Be (Or Pretend To Be) The Supportive Spouse," with perhaps a small detour into "Who Not To Hire As Your Ice Climbing Guide."  

Just in case any of my readers were thinking of taking up a new hobby.

Is there something you'd like to read from Spouse of Bearing?  Comment on this post with questions, suggestions for topics, etc.  I cannot make promises about what will be covered (or when, really) but I'll pass them on.

Quick poll: grease and salt edition.

Answer in the comments, since I don't have enough readers to bother with a poll widget.

Which is more difficult to do if there is a plate of French fries within your reach?

A.  eat zero -- don't even touch them

or

B.  eat one or two, and then stop

(If you don't love French fries, please substitute any other item that you love that comes in small bite-sized quanta, e.g., jelly beans, chips with salsa, etc.)

Postpartum tips.

What can you do in advance to make the postpartum period easier?

Even though a lot of my readers have given birth more times than I have, I do still get a fair amount of traffic from search engines, and I was thinking that this post might be helpful for the pregnancy newbies out there in the world.  Let me preface this by saying that I've never given birth in a hospital, and never had any birth-related surgery -- no Cesareans, obviously, and also no episiotomies or stitches.  So I can't help much with those specifics -- maybe my readers can.

That said, here are some things that I swear by.    Have them in your house before you give birth.  Depending on how long you "get" to stay in the hospital after birth, some of these things aren't applicable to mothers who'll be coming home from the hospital, but others are.

1.  Install a handheld showerhead-on-a-hose in your shower.  I cannot stress this one enough.  It is not expensive or complicated, and it will make a real difference.  New mothers bleed, sometimes quite heavily, for several days after birth.  Often there are tears, episiotomy wounds, or stitches, and those areas must be kept clean for proper healing.   The easiest way to keep the perineum clean is to step into the shower several times a day -- as in "every time you go to the toilet" -- and quickly wash with plain warm water.  The shower is better than a bath because it is quicker, you won't have to sit your poor sore bottom in a hard tub, and it is easier to adjust the water temperature.  Also:  Perineal wounds sting when urine touches them.   They won't sting if you've got water running over them.  So go pee in the shower for a couple of days.

2.  Consider skipping the maternity maxi-pads for several days, along with all underwear, unless you absolutely must appear, wearing pants, in front of company.  Instead, if you're not opposed to disposable paper things, have ready some disposable underpads.   "Depends" brand should be in your local drugstore, in the adult continence section.   Sometimes people call them "chux pads."   The size I like best is about the size of a large hand towel or a pillowcase.  Anyway, put them under you in bed, or sit on them in a chair and cover yourself with a blanket or wear a long skirt hiked up in back.  It's not glamorous, but it will keep you dryer and cleaner and allow air to get to your wounds, and it won't stick to them either.  If you don't like disposable stuff, old towels or cloth diapers will also do the trick. 

 Look, here I am 3 1/2 years ago after MJ's birth, sitting in the rocking chair on some towels.  I'm not ashamed.  

 

3.   Tops and nightgowns and maybe a "sleep bra" that make it really, really easy to get at your breasts from both directions:  down from the neck or up from the bottom.   Yeah, if you're wearing a t-shirt you could just pull it up, but that's surprisingly difficult when the hem of the shirt is pinned between your body and the baby.  You're home, modesty and fashion aren't all that important; ease is.  Avoid buttons and snaps and look for fabric that can be simply pushed aside.  The "crossover" style for sleep bras and sleeveless nightgowns is pretty easy, and what I am wearing now (this site looks like the same kind of nightgown, though I've not bought their products).  An inexpensive and comfortable support option that I have used before is the Hanes Barely There Microfiber Crop Top which is stretchy enough to extract a breast from top or bottom but is still reasonably supportive, at least when it's new.   I think the best nursing opening, at least for ease of access, is found in tops made by the Swedish designer label Boob.  They are not cheap, but I want to show them to you so you know what I'm talking about when I say these are the easiest-access tops. 

4.  Hand mirror.    It's nice to be able to see how you're healing up.  Like I said in an earlier post, it doesn't look as bad as you think it will look.

5.  A generous supply of acetaminophen or ibuprofen and some rice bags or other heating pads:  those afterpains are a bitch, pardon my French. Rice bags are marvelous and it's good to have several in assorted shapes and sizes if you can manage it, but at minimum have two tube-sock bags, which don't have to be sewn, just knotted.  You heat them in the microwave until hot and they stay warm for a long time.  The weight of the rice keeps them in place, and as they cool you can squish them around to mix the rice up and bring the hotter rice out from the center.  You can also wedge them behind your back and give yourself a little heated lumbar support.   (Note:  a few handmade rice bags with instructions would be a great thing to give an expectant mom at a baby shower or blessingway.   Don't use fancy fabric, certainly no metallic thread, and remember that the eventual fate of all rice bags is either to get wet and mildew or to be eaten by mice.  Such is the circle of life.)

6.  Cheap plastic dishtubs are very useful.  Scatter them around your house.  Put them by your chair to receive wet diapers so you don't have to get up.  Ditto by the bed at night.  During your postpartum bed rest, use it instead of a breakfast tray; a tub doesn't look as nice but provides valuable secondary containment for your cup of coffee or jar of water.  If you're doing the diaper-free/"elimination communication"/"natural infant hygiene"/"infant potty training" thing, a plastic dishtub makes a great infant potty, especially for boys, as it is a large target; put a cloth diaper or a paper towel in the bottom for quick and easy cleanup, or else just rinse it out when necessary.  (Don't use the same tub for your breakfast tray.)

7.  Please have someone in your family (a 6-year-old is a good candidate) be in charge of keeping a quart of drinking water within your reach at all times.  Ice and a splash of juice would be a nice touch; anything to encourage you to drink more of it.   And stock up on one-handed snacks:  your favorite crackers, cubes of cheese or maybe string cheese, washed grapes or berries or perhaps clementines, hard-boiled eggs.  Pieces of dark chocolate.  Have a plate ready.  Have someone put a plate by your bed.  You should not have to get up to forage, and it's nice if you don't have to wake up your sweetie who also needs his sleep.

8.  When friends or acquaintances offer help, especially when they offer in advance as your due date approaches, get their phone numbers.   There is more that can be done than just bringing meals.  In particular, I recommend asking, "Can I call you to come over and sit with me for a couple of hours in the first few days after the baby is born?"  A list of people who have said "yes" to this question is priceless.  Because this is what will enable your exhausted spouse to take a nap.  Or go for a run, or take a trip to the grocery store or hardware store, some time in the car alone with the radio on, a little psychic space.    Meanwhile, the person who has come to "sit with you" can fetch your water, attend to getting snacks for your children, grab a diaper for you from the changing table, that sort of thing, and generally make sure that you and the baby survive for two hours while your spouse is away or resting.  If your spouse can't take much time off work -- some cannot take any -- then please line up someone to help you more intensely.  The same if you are expecting multiples or a particularly difficult recovery (e.g. if you anticipate a high-risk cesarean or other surgery along with the birth).

Note:  It's smart to identify someone who could help intensely even if you don't expect to need it.  When our first was born in a difficult labor that left both of us debilitated, my sister-in-law, who was on break from college at the time, flew in on short notice and basically -- thank you Lori, we are eternally grateful -- saved our lives.  If you lack available family members or friends, this service can be purchased -- Google "postpartum doula."  

* * *

I've deliberately not gone into the large topics of Preparing For Successful Breastfeeding and Stocking Up On Meals, all of which are worthy of separate posts and also are available in many other resources on the web.  So, saving breastfeeding/meal stocking advice for another time, what tips do my readers have to share for getting through those first couple of weeks?  Especially for taking care of yourself and making sure you can recuperate?

Guess the date and weight.

Jamie suggested I distract myself from the Detach-o-Pelvis by running the traditional date/time/weight guessing game in my combox.

Relevant data for Jamie to run through her statistical analysis programs:

• 3 out of 3 labors began on Monday.  But 2 out of 3 births were on Tuesday.
• Birth times:  around 3 PM, around 3 AM, around 4 PM.
• Oscar was 10 lb, 11 oz at birth.  Milo was 9 lb, 4 oz.  MJ was 9 lb even.
• Oscar was born 4 days past due.  Milo, 10 days early.  MJ, 1 day early.  
• Due date (by LMP because of neglectful charting) is 1/28, though I have been measuring a week "older."

You are also welcome to guess what we are going to name the baby, who (according to the ultrasound technician) has a penis.  Also whether he turns out to be left-handed like his dad, mom, brothers, and sister.

Naming thread.

Because the topic's on my mind!

Readers:  You know you love your kids' names and you think you did a brilliant job picking them out and if you had the chance you'd bore people explaining exactly how and why you picked them.  Use the combox to brag about why you picked your children's names to be just what they are.  Family names?  Honored saints or heroes?  Like particular etymologies?  Unisex?  Trendy, quirky, or downright unusual?

 I'll start in the combox.

It's International De-lurker Day!

At least that's what The Mom says, and she says she heard it from somebody else, which is good enough for me.

If you're reading this, the combox is your chance.  Come on out and introduce yourself.

Answering questions: How we chose home birth.

I got an email in my box a little while ago from a reader who wanted to know how Mark and I decided to plan home births:

 I was really interested in finding out that you have homebirths. I was born at home, and would love to have my baby at home, but I have had no luck convincing my husband of it....He's a Navy guy with an engineering/risk assessment background, plus doctor & nurse family members.  But I'm more worried about being pushed into unnecessary interventions anda c-section in the typical hospital setting which is my only option where Ilive. ... My question is basically, how did you and your husband come to decide on homebirth? Having your scientific/engineering background, Ithought maybe whatever convinced you might also be helpful...

I wonder if maybe home birth types have a reputation for not being of scientific/engineering background?  Most of the home birth couples I know IRL include at least one engineer or scientist, although I admit there is a significant sampling bias in that, um, that is the kind of person we tend to hang out with.  Engineers and the people who marry them.

It has been a long time since we were deciding whether to try a home birth or a hospital birth, and I had to go to Mark and ask him:  "Remind me again, back before I got pregnant with Oscar, when I brought up the idea of having a home birth, did you agree right away?"

"Not right away, no.  I figured we would do the 'normal thing' and have the baby in the hospital.  And then you showed me what you'd been reading and I decided that home birth made sense."

Here's a slightly edited version of what I emailed back to the reader.

My first thought is that there isn't anything about BEING an expert in risk assessment (or statistics, or possibly even perinatal medicine!) that ought to make a person more or less likely to choose homebirth. I would hope it would make a person more likely to assess the risks accurately and dispassionately, but that doesn't mean he or she would come to a different conclusion. 

I know that Mark and I, after gathering some information, came to agree that homebirth probably had a higher-than-hospital, but still small, risk of death or serious injury to myself to the baby; but that the hospital had a MUCH larger-than-home, and in fact, quite large risk of many, many comparatively less serious problems and not a few moderately serious ones. The research I've seen since then seems to have borne it out. 

• In both homebirths and hospital births there is a small risk of neonatal death, and this small risk seems to be greater in homebirths.  (Some homebirth advocates deny this, but at least what I've seen over the past few years whenever I've looked has given me a strong impression that the evidence supports it.) 
• There is a hugely increased risk, in hospitals, of many annoyances and lesser-to-moderately-severe complications.For example, hospital births carry higher risks of infection, and enforced policies like fetal monitoring and things can slow labor which can lead to induction which can lead to distress, yadda yadda yadda. None of these things are likely to be fatal, but they can and do create smaller problems.

 A more serious risk, to me, was the risk of winding up with an unnecessary Cesarean section. Giving birth in an American hospital, you're looking at a 20-40 percent chance of a C-section depending on the hospital. That to me is unacceptably high, because I do not take the complications and side effects of C-sections lightly, especially as a mother who hoped to (at the time) and now has gone on to have several pregnancies. VBACs are difficult to get, and the riskiness of C-sections increase exponentially after the second.   (A mother who expected to have only one or two children might rate the riskiness of Cesarean section lower, and be more willing to have one even if it were possibly unnecessary.)

I also take very seriously the proper onset of the nursing relationship, which is more difficult to establish in the hospital environment, once you add up the effects of drugs, maternal discomfort in the environment, and hospital policies (and assuming that the homebirth team provides better lactation support than the hospital lactation support, an assumption which may or may not be true depending on the available options).  

People brush these things off -- Cesareans, nursing difficulties caused by hospital policies -- because they're so common. But looked at objectively they are quite serious and it's sad that they are so common.

Nevertheless, it's still a judgment call that in my view is personal -- whether to choose a small increased risk of something truly catastrophic and tragic, or  whether to choose a hugely increased risk of a whole lot of lesser but still significant problems. And that's just the "risk assessment" end of it, from statistical thinking.  There are many individual considerations -- have you found a home birth attendant that is satisfactory to both of you?  how fast can you get to a hospital should an emergency occur? -- that may change the calculation for your family.   Once you start considering your own feelings about the situation, it  gets even muddier. It isn't necessarily good to be in a place where the statistics say you are "safe" but where you don't FEEL safe -- that could be hospital or it could be home -- but FEELING safe, believing you are safe, is biochemically  important in giving birth. It's harder to do if you're stressed and fearful, which is at heart a hormonal response.

(And of course both father and mother need to come to some kind of agreement.  Including discussing the possibility of your worst fears coming true, in either situation.  Because when you face birth, you face death, too.  Best to face it together.)

OK, that aside.  I was also influenced and reassured by joining a mailing list -- not sure if it still exists -- about unassisted childbirth. Even though I didn't intend to "go UC," and have always opted to be well supported at home including with an experienced and compassionate midwife, I was inspired and given confidence by reading story  after story of births that happened at home, with no attendant at all, by choice. (Plus it made me feel less like an extremist by comparison!)  I was influenced by friends who had planned home births. 

I was influenced by Henci Goer's book Obstetrical Myths versus Research Realities:  A Guide to the Medical Literature.  Another book, Active Birth by Janet Balaskas (the latest version, which I haven't read, is here), gave me confidence with regards to natural pain management.  

I read other books, too, once we had made up our minds; and those tended to be the "crunchier" sort, which helped me understand what we were in for once we chose midwifery care.  Things like Heart and Hands:  A Midwife's Guide to Pregnancy and Birth by Elizabeth Davis.  When it came to general-info pregnancy and childbirth books, I tried to avoid those that took hospital birth for granted, and went for the ones that included homebirth as a birth choice.  Books by William and Martha Sears (The Pregnancy Book, The Birth Book --I didn't actually read that one-- and  The Baby Book) and Sheila Kitzinger (The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth) are good examples.   

As for breastfeeding books, my two favorite are the LLL one (The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding) and So That's What They're For by Janet Tamaro, which is a little more lighthearted and thus good for lending to people who think La Leche League is a club for fanatics.  

Since I don't use contraception and want to get through lactational amenorrhea to regular cycles before becoming pregnant, I used Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing by Sheila Kippley (she has a couple other books on the same subject); the publisher, CCL, doesn't carry it anymore, and so these days the equivalent information is probably available in CCL's Art of Natural Planning:  Postpartum Student Guide (available here).  I continue to support CCL's work and one of these days I will have to sit in on the new NFP classes, which have been revised significantly since I took them years ago in marriage prep.

(Perhaps my readers know of some more books I've missed, especially some that have come out in the last few years -- I haven't done much "how to have a baby" reading since my second.)

Natural family planning influenced us in another way  -- we sort of were in a mindset of avoiding "interventions" in our intimate life, of generally trusting our bodies to tell us what we needed to know, and giving birth at home was a sort of natural outgrowth of that. There was a sort of weirdness to the idea that we should need medical assistance for something that ought to work fine if  we just left it alone. 

That's sort of a combination of "gut feeling" and logic -- truthfully, the species wouldn't have survived if it didn't work most of the time, and if you read a bit about the history of birth in America, you'll see that a lot (not all) of the improvements in maternal/neonatal outcomes are from simpler things like antibiotics, nutrition, and prenatal care/screening, not so much from medical attention surrounding the birth itself. Obviously this isn't true  for functionally impossible vaginal birth, e.g. with complete placenta previa, but it's possible to rule out that kind of thing before birth if you want to get an ultrasound.

One thing we did the first time we went through it, is I doubled up on prenatal care -- I had my homebirth midwife appointments, and I also had the full spectrum of prenatal appointments with a "standard" CNM practice.  (Except I declined the glucose tolerance test and the routine ultrasound). We felt  we were keeping our options open. But we never bothered with the regular doctor thing at the other births after that. With this my fourth pregnancy I chose to get a midterm ultrasound to rule out any musculoskeletal deformities or placental problems that might indicate I should consider a hospital birth.  I'm older now, and my babies tend to be large with sticky shoulders; it seems reasonable to me to check for extra problems that could exacerbate that.  I've already made up my mind based on my own birth history not to attempt a vaginal birth should the baby present breech.

That illustrates another belief of mine, that it's important to keep an open mind about the appropriateness of medical interventions (taken individually) and be willing to adjust your approach as information comes in about your physical health, the baby's physical health, and your own tolerance for different kinds of risk. Sometimes a C-section is a good idea, sometimes it's not. Sometimes an ultrasound is a ridiculous, expensive, unnecessary intervention; sometimes it answers questions that need to be answered. Same thing goes for glucose tests, fetal heart monitoring, epidurals, GBS testing and IVs, all that stuff -- they are powerful tools that can be used or misused, they're not good for every individual or bad for every individual either.

If you're going to have a hospital birth, my standard two pieces of advice (especially to first-timers) are

• consider hiring a doula for your hospital birth, or else bringing along a  knowledgeable friend who can help advocate for you, or at least bringing along a close female friend who's given birth before and isn't scared of it.  The mere presence of a female support person (not part of the medical staff) in the delivery room significantly lowers your chance of a section. See here, here, here, and lots of links here.
• Do what you can to prepare yourself and your husband to advocate strongly against unnecessary cesarean section. This is, to my mind, the single greatest risk associated with giving birth in American hospitals. Understand why it's NOT a "no big deal" to have a cesarean, and why it's so important to try to avoid that "first" cesarean if you possibly can. Know the positive indications for a truly necessary section, know alternatives to non-necessary c-sections in advance, and know what you can do to avoid interventions that sometimes cause an apparent need for a c-section. 

I think that covers it.  Comments from readers are welcome as usual.