Gonna stop trying...

I've decided that my husband and I are under a lot of stress so we're going to stop trying to conceive for a while. I don't really know how long that's going to be, but things just aren't working out in that area of our life and I'm feeling really down about it. I mean depressed really. It's been 13 months and things haven't gone the way I thought they would. So we're going to take it easy and just enjoy life. I will continue the Chinese herbs and will add in the acupuncture for relaxation. I've stopped the charting and temperature taking (as a matter of fact I've shredded all my paper charts and tossed my thermometer) and just everything and I'm simply going to live life and try to relax about things. I know that there will be children in our future because I know I'm healthy, just not now.

On a more positive note, my husband has just accepted a job position in Portland, Maine! So we'll be moving in 2 weeks. Basically, we're going to pay someone to pack our house and move it to our new home. We'll be going in a week to the area to look for a house to rent for now. We really want to get to know the area before we decide on a neighborhood to move into. I'm very excited about our move so I'm looking forward to getting to know another community and enjoying our life close to the shore.

I'm still waiting...

Well Jeff and I are still trying to get pregnant. I never thought that it would be this hard to get pregnant, what with all the advertisements about "only ONE act of unprotected intercourse can result in pregnancy!" warnings. Jeff and I have decided to go to Chinese medicine to help us out. At this point, we're only taking the herbs and I feel much better. I have changed my diet slightly so I'm just eating more dairy products.

As for my sisterlocks, they're doing great! I need to take a photo right after I wash or something so you all can see this, but I've been so lazy about not only posting, but taking photos. I think the only photos I've taken have been of my new hobby, knitting...

I need to upload the photos, but I'll do that soon. I've been knitting most days actually. I knit socks, diaper covers (made three for a friend), and dish cloths for the kitchen. My next project after my own pair of socks is a baby sweater with matching socks and hat for a girlfriend who is pregnant right now. I'm just looking for a nice pattern that I'd like. I'm thinking a wrap-style kimono type sweater would be best since they're easy to put on and take off of a newborn.

Life at this point is interesting. Jeff and I have been traveling around New England looking for a place for him to work. It's pretty easy for me to find people to work with so I'm not worried about that, but for him, Vermont has been less than generous with jobs in the IT field. We like New England, so we decided that we're going to stay here. He had two interviews last week with companies in Massachusetts, and this week he has an interview in Portland, Maine for a nice company. He didn't really like either of the Massachusetts jobs and I told him that it isn't imperative that he take those jobs. I feel that his sense of self worth and happiness in a work environment are very important. So we'll see how this Maine job pans out. I'd love to live in Maine, though. Some of the houses that I'm looking to check out are within a few minutes of the beach!!! That and the fact that they're inexpensive rentals is a wonderful thing. So I'm really gunning for the Maine job. We'll see how that goes.

In summary, we've turned to Chinese medicine to help us get pregnant, Sisterlocks look great, and Jeff has interviews for a job and we'll be moving once we decide where we're going to go. So there you have it... I'm not going to promise to not take so long to update considering my life is really busy and there is a lot of change going on so I'll just say that I hope that I can come back soon...

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.

Can I be any lazier!!!

It's been a while, but I am coming back to give you life and hair updates. I'll post pictures shortly. Well things are going well on my end. My internship is going very well and I love working with mothers and babies. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner? Anyways, it's a wonderful calling and I'm having a great time doing it. My doula work is picking up a little as well. I have a new client I will be supporting at the end of the month for her birth and I'm very excited about this one. The family is quite nice and I'm looking forward to this.

As for my dear husband Jeff, he had interviewed for company in Vermont a month ago only to not be offered the job. Bottom line was, he had more leadership qualities and ability than the man who was supposed to be his supervisor if he had been hired. Not cool. They didn't want Jeff outshining the homeboy from Vermont. We still haven't given up though. He just completed an interview with a company in Burlington and it seems promising. The interview liked Jeff and we'll see how it goes. He's waiting for his business partner to return from vacation to do another interview and see if Jeff is right for the job. We'll see soon. I'm not going to bet the farm on this because of what happened last time. Live and learn. We would prefer living in Burlington though since we're both familiar with the area.

As for my Sisterlocks(tm) they're doing great. I love how they have fattened up and are well on their way to locking. My locks are 8 months old now!!! My ends have the balls still and some of them fell off, but they're doing great. Larry found that I was washing my hair once a week and since I'm not fully locked advised that I reduce my washing to once every two weeks. It's going well so far. I just put SeaBreeze on my scalp to cleanse and keep the itchies away in between shampooings. I do love how my hair falls though. Especially a few days after I set it on soft spikes. The first day is very curly and they seem to gracefully fall into a very nice every day style. I'll be setting them again this weekend. I think that's about it. I hope that I still have someone out there reading my blog. It's been a fun ride with my hair so far and it just seems to be getting better every day.

Pictures... FINALLY!!!!

This is me after six months of sisterlocks. Can you believe it? This was taken this morning while waiting for my mother to arrive for our outing. I feel like I've really grown in these. I did a braid and curl set last night and I'm happy to say that it looked good to me this morning. This was a way to battle the "little balls" that have been driving me crazy lately. I wouldn't trade my hair for anything though. I love this process. I know that it's locking and that soon, I'll be able to stop braiding and banding! Anyways, here are a few more photos so that you all can see the progression.
This photo is of me at a little over 4 months. My hair is getting fuller and It's growing so what can I say? I'm so happy!!! I just thought I was too cute in this photo.

This other photo was taken a month before the March photo. See I did take photos, I was just too lazy to update my blog! Well I don't know what was going on in this picture. I thought I was cute here too, but my hair is doing some funky stack thing. I just wanted to show the difference in each month. I was just over 3 months in this one. For some reason I don't think I took any photos in April. I think the only one I did take, it was with my sister and her husband at my house and it was after a braid and band session. I hadn't finished separating my locks yet. Oh well.

I'm just in awe of the change in just a couple of months. My locks have grown a little longer every month, a little thicker and just more of what I wanted to see at this point. I did think that I would be locked by this point, but everyone's hair is different. Though my hair is definitely kinky, it's also soft so it will take me a little longer before it's all finished locking. I think it's nearly settled though. I'm just hoping to get little buds on most of the top and I'll be in business. My edges have stopped slipping between retightenings so that's a good sign. I just want to be able to learn how to retighten my own hair before we move. I think where we're going there aren't any sisterlocks consultants or anyone for that matter who specializes in cultivated locks so I'm going to have to do it myself and make appointments with Dana and Larry when I come back to visit. Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed my updates. I'll try to be more active in the blog, I promise. I just had to get over a little hump.

I am sooooo lazy!!

I thought that I would have updated with photos by now, but I haven't. I've taken photos over the last couple of months, but no updates. I've been a bit out of the loop lately. For my regular life update, I've completed my doula training and my lactation consultant course as well. I'm currently interning at the best privately owned lactation center in the area and get to see all sorts of babies and mothers every day! It's wonderful to feel so fulfilled with what you're doing. Jeff is currently looking for a job in our dream spot Vermont where we will be building our Enertia home (http://www.enertia.com). Our favorite is the Brandywine. We're building a solar home complete with photovoltaic and solarthermal panels. We're excited. That is if Jeff can get a job there we can move and make this a reality sooner. We'll see.

On to hair. Like I said before, I have photos. I will post them. Yeah, right. I've been promising photos forever and I still havne't produced. I've been just really busy lately, but I will post photos. I've just celebrated my 6 month sisterlocks anniversary and I have little buds everywhere. Mostly on the back of my head, but they're there. I'm starting to get a little frustrated with them though. You all may have read my post about the little hanging balls driving me nuts. They are. I think I want to pull them off, but I haven't and I won't since Dana told me not to. Other than that, I love my hair. I find that it has more of a bounce. Especially when I do my little braid/curl out ala Chi Chi. It's great. I get a great deal of body with that set. Yes, I'm a bit guilty of the "whitegirl" disease since it's starting to move more. I love it. Anyways, I've been not too good to you guys about keeping up with blogging and also with photos so I'll see what I can do.