So, what occupies my thoughts now?

Well, babies of course!!! Once you get bit by the bug, you want a baby and your thoughts go to the cute things you're going to do and all of that. Since I am training to become a Lactation Consultant and I'm still working on my doula certification, babies have been on my mind for quite some time. :) I've also learned so many new and interesting things regarding birth and parenting choices, that I've come to some pretty strong conclusions and I'm very happy with the choices that my husband and I are making.

So what are those choices? Well first of all, I've read many studies on the use of midwives during pregnancy and birth, and with the U.S. having an over 30% c-section rate (in some areas even more!), I thought that using a midwife would help me to beat the odds. The midwives we decided to go with once I'm pregnant attend homebirths only. The practice has 4 CPMs (Certified Professional Midwives) all of which have collectively 40 years experience catching babies. Their c-section rate is 4.3% which is about what it should be for normal, low risk birthing women. We've decided on having a waterbirth which during my doula training I have seen many of. They're so peaceful and beautiful I want that experience for myself.

One may ask, "Is homebirth safe?". Well in short, yes it is. According to British Medical Journal studies using statistics from CPMs, homebirth is as safe if not more so than hospital birth. There are also wonderful Certified Nurse Midwives (CNM) who do hospital, free standing birth center, and homebirths (depending on the area). They also have amazing statistics that rival any Obstetrician in the U.S. You can see the BMJ study at http://http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/330/7505/1416?ehom. "What if something goes wrong?", is the second question asked. As trained professionals with State and National licenses, midwives are trained to see birth as a normal natural event and it is normal until proven otherwise. So midwives know what's normal, they see normal births and pregnancies all the time. Once they see something that is out of their scope of practice like for example gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, or pregnancy induced hypertentsion in pregnancy, they will transfer your care to an Obstetrician who is by the way the expert on abnormal, high risk pregnancy and birth. Unfortunately OBs are trained to see pregnancy and birth as a medical condition, a disease that is abnormal until proven otherwise. Midwives also have the training to see when things are not going normally during childbirth during which time they will transfer your care to that of her backup Obstetrician(unless she works in a state where the obstetricians are hostile to midwives) who will meet you at the hospital to help rectify the situation be it that you may need drugs because of exhaustion, or for a necessary c-section. So midwives will see that things are going wrong before they become a serious problem which is a misconception about the profession.

"What about the pain?", is another question that is asked. Well, I have no personal experience with this, but the way I see it is this way: My mother had all 6 of her babies naturally and her mother before that and before that until the first mother. My father's mother who is a strong Nigerian woman had her babies naturally and her mother, and her mother until the first woman. My body is not broken. If all my foremothers can birth babies naturally and with no complications then I can do the same. I'm not afraid of the pain. We as women need to take back that power that has been stripped away from us and know that we are strong and we can do this. Yes, it's difficult but the pain is there for a reason. I'm personally more afraid of the cascade of interventions than any labor pain.

"Who cleans up afterwards?" The midwives do! You have your baby, they clean up the mess, do the laundry and you and your baby snuggle up in bed together and nurse and fall asleep. That's it.

So that's just the beginning of my obsession with babies....BTW, the picture up top is that of my beautiful niece Sakinah at 6 weeks old.

It's been too long...

Well, It's been a very long time since I've posted. I know that this is just for me now unless there are people who still read this. My one year anniversary came and went. My hair is doing very well. I love it more than when I started definitely. My hair is thicker and it's growing longer every day. Jeff still can't keep his hands out of my head! Here is a picture taken at home this January. Not the best photo, but I still like it. It was a no-makeup (like I go any other way 90% of the time) sort of day. I'm sure you can see my long underwear under my shirt. I thought my hair looked a little cute so I had DH (dear husband) take a picture. This was day three of a Chi-Chi special (braids set on soft spikes).So here is an updated photo (recent too!!) of my sisterlocks. They're happy and healthy and growing. I use the green tea shampoo to wash and the moisture treatment for after I shampoo. I freestyle most days and every other day dampen my hair in the shower and add some of the spray moisturizer to keep my hair from drying out. It gets cold and dry up here in New England!!!

On to the reason why I haven't posted in so long...Well Jeff and I decided to move to Vermont like we had planned on doing for so long. I remember talking about him looking for jobs and the like, but the companies weren't biting because we lived in VA. So we decided to put our house together and sell it. It was such a blessing. We put our house on the market at the end of October and it was under contract in 5 days! The first person who went through the house fell in love with it and put an offer on the table the same day she saw it. We were so happy. Well things went "smoothly" for the most part. We went to VT to look for a place in the Burlington area and found a house to rent right away. I was doing lots of reasearch on homes in the area and we had narrowed it down to three houses. One was a really cute blue cape style house, the second was a nice yellow farm house, and the third was a little white rancher with black shutters. The blue house was under lease contract the day we wanted to look at it. I was so upset. We liked the yellow house, but it was right on a kind of main road and it would have been difficult to get out of the driveway. Also the owners of the yellow house would only sign a lease for 6 months and we wanted to be able to sign on for a year. We went to the cute rancher and I loved it. It's a lot smaller than our townhouse in VA, but it has hardwood floors in all the rooms except the kitchen. I like hardwoods because it's easy to keep clean. Ironically, our home is in the same neighborhood as the cute blue cape home we wanted. In fact, it's right across the street from our house. Talk about funny! So even though I don't live there I can still look at the place.

This is our house after we had a little snow. We have much more than that now. I adore the fact that we have a large front and back yard. Which brings me to my next subject.

Another reason that I haven't been blogging is because Jeff and I have been trying to conceive our first child. So far, no success. It's been a long process and with moving, we haven't exactly been stellar in the baby making department. I started charting last May and in July we decided to give it a go. Like I said, there has been a lot going on in general so our attempts have been lack luster at best. Our timing has always been a couple of days off for some reason. I'll get excited and jump the gun (no pun intended) and then we'll burn ourselves out. I'll spare you the details. So trying to get pregnant has been taking a large chunk of our time and attention. We're taking a break this month because we'll be travelling to Austin, TX and staying with my brother. We'll resume in April and hope to have a late December/early January baby. Wish us luck in our journey together. I certainly has stirred some interesting conversation between my husband and I. :)

What does this have to do with my hair? Nothing really. I just wanted to let you know the other things going on in my life. I will make my best effort to be more consistent with my updates. Things just seemed to be so busy that I didn't have a chance to let everybody know how I was doing or what I was up to. I hope someone is out there reading this. If so, please leave me a comment so I know you're there. Until next time...thanks.