Perfection and my attempt at avoiding it

Posted by Melissa Baumgart
First off, the good news:  I am going to water aerobics tonight!  It has been too long.  What with my school finals and the pool being closed for renovations, it has been well over a week since I have been in the pool.  I am really looking forward to being in the water, feeling its buoyancy and healing nature.  I'll let you know what I think of the deep end at Medgar Evers after tonight.

And more good news!  
Project Simplify: Kitchen.

During the freezer re-org.  Yes, that is a snowball and some
random blueberries.  I have no idea what the red stuff is.

Last week I started on an organizing journey through my kitchen.  I thought of it like exposure therapy; the more I see organization, the less I will resist its double edge sword.  While it feels so good to be tidy and together, it can also create a bit of an obsession with perfection.  I can easily name many areas of my life where this push and pull can be played out.  I don't have to be perfection's martyr.

The freezer BEFORE.

So, I went out and bought some cheap organizing supplies.  I usually don't buy these because I want the really nice stainless steel ones or even bamboo.  I want to limit my consumer consumption of plastic and stuff made in China.  Plus the nicer ones just look and feel nicer, let's face it.  But instead of holding out for something that seems to never happen, having the extra cash to spend on such fancy items, I went for the cheaper plastic version.

I am so happy I did!  It is way better to look at organized plastic, than the mess I lived through for all these years.  Now, when I come home, the first thing I want to do is look in my freezer or fridge, and the real shocker is that I am not looking for food to stuff my face with...I just want to relax into the sublime organization before my very eyes.  

The freezer, AFTER.

This week's goal, as set forth by the blog, Simple Mom, is countertops, closets and drawers.  Remember my life as a junk drawer?  And how awesome I felt then I got it all organized?  Well, it's back.  back to a mess.  I am re-inspired by my quote I found in a Martha Stewart magazine last week, "Staying organized is an ongoing process; if something isn't working well for you, change the process until it is."

I need to invest in some better organizing tools for this drawer.  Made in China, here I come.  My 12 year old would be rolling here eyes and stomping her feet at me for saying that, as she is an avid "buy local" fan these days.  The truth is, I agree with her, which creates quite a dilemma.

My finished container storage.

Does anyone have any fabulous ideas for reusing something to create a drawer organizer?  Last time I tried various plastic containers from food we had bought, but they float around too much in the drawer and everything falls out eventually.  It really wasn't working for me!  Let me know if you think of something brilliant and I'll do the same.

-Melissa

It takes love, not fear

Nettles, one of the many herbal teas
Dora Rare learned about in the book,
The Birth House

Posted by Melissa Baumgart
It's about time to tackle that fridge and freezer and get them all cleaned out and organized.  And it should be time I get my butt back to a water aerobics class.  But I have been consumed since yesterday with two things.  One is my statistics project, where my study partner and I compared the likelihood of breast feeing among populations of women that gave birth vaginally and women that gave birth via a C-section.  The other is the book I finished today, The Birth House.  I feel so alive; I can feel joy and satisfaction expanding in my chest where my heart resides, as I have been living and working with these two "projects."

The first, the statistics project, overtook me with a fevered pitch of internet research.  I found a "Breastfeeding Report Card" issued by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in 2011 and discovered that there is a push to increase breastfeeding rates by 2020.  I was impressed, and admittedly a bit skeptical.  I don't know why, I guess I have some inner dialogue that tells me my government isn't actually every going to do anything truly healthy for its people.  What a pessimist.

In our small sample of 133 women, we found that the rates of women that give birth vaginally and are still breastfeeding at 6 months was quite a lot higher than the national average (this included all births, not just vaginal), which is 44.3%   We found that 76% of the women we surveyed, regard less of how they gave birth, breastfed for at lest 6 months.  And that the rates were fairly equal among both ways of birthing.  

I scoured the internet further.  I found loads of studies on the government's WIC (Women Infants and Children) program and the drastically low breastfeeding rates of the recipients of those benefits, regardless of WIC's claims that it overwhelmingly supports breastfeeding.  I am not shocked to find out that the infant formula triopoly of Mead-Johnson, Ross and Carnation all contribute to the fact that WIC has a dependency on rebates from formula companies to fund a portion of the program.  And I wonder why I question our government!

The second, the book, the lovely book I found on a random shelf at Value Village on President's Day.  It takes place in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia in the early 1900's, and revolves around the main character, Dora Rare.  She is sent to live with the old witchy midwife of the small rural town where she learns all of her skills and secrets about women and babies.  There is drama around a new maternity center in a more cosmopolitan town nearby and the Dr. that runs it.  The reader learns of the drastic difference between the way Dora learned to help women through birth, and the twilight sleep and forceps used by the all knowing Dr. Thomas.

As I was sitting in the café at school today, finishing The Birth House, I unexpectedly felt tears rolling down my cheeks.  It wasn't that the ending was sad, like the last books I have read.  It was that the ending was so heartwarming.  Miss Dora Rare, after having been through so much, finally comes to a place where she is able to assist mothers in the way she had been trained.  I read on, as she lays out the simple rules of her birth house:

• No woman or child shall be turned away.
• No payment shall be required.
• No idle gossip or cruel words shall cross the threshold.
• No one may attend a birth unless requested by the mother.
• Mother and child (or children) shall stay in confinement for at least nine days after birth, or until the mother's been churched.
• Well-wishers may not enter unless the mother approves.
• The mother's home must be clean and tidy, her house-hold chores looked after, and supper enough for a week must be waiting for her when she returns home.

Now that's what I am talking about.  I bet all those women breastfed their babies, and if they couldn't, some one else did it for them.  Now I am not saying this is the way for everyone, but Dora Rare and the women of Scots Bay sure were on to something.  And that something is honoring women enough to allow them to birth in the way they choose.  It means trusting that each woman will instinctually know what her baby needs, that we should stay quiet enough to let her figure it out, while offering just enough love and support to make that process as stress free as possible.  It takes love, not fear.

"The world will know and understand me someday.  But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter.  I shall have opened the way for other women."  -George Sand

Life without a buoy

Posted by Amy Baranski

Yesterday I took a nooner at Medgar Evers and jumped into the Aqua Jog class. My headband fell off immediately.

Equally stressed about my hair getting in my face during class and littering in the pool I urgently dove down (with a flotation belt harnessed around my torso), opened my eyes in the chlorinated water and blindly grasped for my head band.

I actually got it.

When I bobbed to the surface a few wrinkled faces looked concernedly at me. I almost said, "I'm OK," but sloughed it off and faced the instructor.

I saw another pregnant lady in class! 

But instead of introducing myself like a normal person I just kept glancing over at her during class to exchange a kind of knowing look. I can be such a nerd. She seemed my age, and appeared to be in her third trimester. Introducing myself after class in the shower just seemed awkward, so I pulled a Seattle and didn't say anything.

The teacher made us work hard.

Should I be so surprised? I'm at the pool to improve my cardiovascular strength and endurance during this pregnancy, but man, aqua jog sprinting pumps your heart like mad and makes you feel like an insane doggy-paddler. Except you're not doggy-paddling your moving your legs in a jogging motion.

The woman next to me turned and muttered "this is completely futile." It sort of felt that way, but then I realized we made it halfway through the deep end. The instructor gave us ten seconds to rest, then made us turn around and sprint again.

Aqua jog may confuse lap swimmers.

As we sprinted toward the deep end a very muscular lap swimmer rested between lamps and watched our class. I flashed him the biggest smile I could that was supposed to read: I know I look like I'm in aqua jog but I could totally lap swim. I told my blog readers I would and I'm going to do it. This is just my warm up. He looked through me. Puzzled.

I've never had a leg cramp before.

At the end of class I unbuckled my belt and ditched my weights. After two pridefully earnest breast-strokes to the middle of the pool my right calf spontaneously contracted in a painful leg cramp. I cried out. No one heard me. I kicked and pulled water with my left side and sidestroked my right arm to the edge of the pool. I tried not to move my right leg. It throbbed.

In my daze I pulled a Costanza and cut in front of a senior lady to climb the ladder out the pool. The pressure of my foot against the steps provided immediate relief. For a split second during the leg cramp I reached into the water to touch my muscle. It felt rock hard and I thought: damn that's a sexy leg. How can I be so vain during times of distress?

I was on my own. 

When the belt came off I immediately sensed the distance to the pool floor seven feet below. It was just me--two arms and two legs kicking and pulling to stay alive.

It hit me almost as suddenly as the leg cramp: our own resilience and buoyancy is strengthened in unexpected ways at unpredictable times.

Giving birth this year will bring about one of the greatest responsibilities of my life--keeping someone else afloat and teaching them how to swim and cope with the unexpected seizures of life that bring us to our knees sometimes. With the echo of my leg cramp still attached to my calf I keep telling myself, no matter what happens during the next several months, or the months after that: just float.