Birthday Road Trip

We are in Redding, CA tonight. We have covered 750 miles since leaving Las Vegas Sunday morning. (Will now have Sheryl Crow singing Leaving Las Vegas in my head for the rest of the night.) Anyway, we hope to make it to Portland sometime tomorrow night.

Trip has been going well – the kids are doing awesome. No car trouble, which I’m grateful for. My mom has been doing most of the driving, upon her insistence. I have holed up in the passenger seat with my laptop trying to get the myriad of last-minute details finished up. I’ve stopped looking up much, since the view of taillights one inch from my front bummer is frankly terrifying. When I mention that we may want to give the BMW sports car in front of us a bit more space, my 62-year-old mother just deadpans “I’m a good driver”. I nod and shut up, until I’m thrown around in the front seat as the car swerves violently at 70mph. I look over and discover my mom is reaching into the backseat to throw away a bit of trash, because she “didn’t want to disturb me”. I’m disturbed! Then Rhia pipes up from the peanut gallery; “Mama, my neck hurts. Does yours?” “Yes it does, honey.”

Rhiannon, my oldest daughter, turned 5 today. It bothers me that we’re on the road for her birthday, but I really tried to make it as fun as possible. She was so jazzed to have it be her special day that I don’t think she minded at all. We went out for lunch at a decent restaurant, where they gave her a sundae and sang Happy Birthday. We found a nice park and took a long break so they could enjoy the beautiful day by a river. We stopped early tonight, and I found a salon where we both got our hair done – this is a treat for us, since I’m one of those moms who insists I can cut bangs with my kitchen scissors just as well as someone at a salon. My hair is usually in a ponytail anyway, so I just go an embarrassingly long time between trims. In any case, the mother/daughter salon session was quite the event. She looked adorable in the chair – really grown up, yet so small.

Rhiannon started me down the whole natural path. When I knew I wanted to get pregnant, a full 18 months before it actually happened, I started reading every book I could get my hands on about pregnancy and birth. By the time I was pregnant, I knew I could not give birth in a hospital. I also discovered I had married a fairly mainstream guy, so I had to have all the statistics, facts and figures down solid in order to present my case for an out-of-hospital birth experience. Since we were living in Oregon at the time, I found an awesome birth center and wonderful midwives. They gave a fabulous introduction to proper nutrition, and I was highly motivated to actually nourish and care for my body, for the first time. Rhiannon’s pregnancy and birth opened me up to a great deal of healing.

Rhiannon has been my inspiration to live my life to a higher standard, and become the person I want to be. I want to give her a role model she can respect, someone worthy of emulating. It’s a tall order, and not easy, and I’m not sure I’m even successful at it, but I am trying. She is worth the effort. Every day.

Happy Birthday, Rhiannon. You’re an amazing person, and I’m so glad I get to be your mother.

Love,
Mama

Birth Day

My beautiful daughter, whose birth was the impetus for everything I am doing now, turned 2 years old today, 9.21.07.

My pregnancy with Rayne was fabulous, and completely natural. I had an amazing natural waterbirth at home, and I wanted to have a natural postpartum experience as well. But I was worried how I would cope with a new baby, and still be the mama my (then) 3-year-old daughter expected.

During my pregnancy I began the research into the benefits of placenta. It seemed like it could really help me, and once I discovered I could make it into capsules, I was excited to give it a try. It couldn’t hurt, and it just might help. So I encapsulated her placenta after the birth, and I felt fabulous. It was almost eerie, how good I felt. I had energy, I felt happy, I was patient with my older daughter, my physical recovery was much faster than with my first…. I kept waiting for the blues to hit, and it never happened. With my history of depression, I was amazed.

I wanted other women to have the same experience, so I started talking about the benefits of placenta, and encapsulating placentas for other women. After months of similarly amazing stories from them, I felt I needed to take the message beyond the Las Vegas area. I put PlacentaBenefits.info online in July 2006, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Thank you, Rayney, for being your wonderful little self, and for bringing such a magnitude of blessings into our lives. Happy Birthday.

Love,
Mama

Nurse-Out at Applebee’s – Update

I was so pleased to see a good number of breastfeeding supporters willing to stand out in the Las Vegas heat on Saturday, 9.8.07, in support of the harassed mother in Kentucky.

Apparently there were around 200 supporters at the main rally in Kentucky, and 100 supporters in Phoenix, AZ. Thirty cities participated nationwide. Awesome!

Read more details and see pictures from our Las Vegas Nurse-Out.

Thanks for helping bring awareness to a mother’s right, under the law, to feed her baby in a family restaurant.

Thanks for a successful event!

The Whole Family Faire, sponsored by Vegas Natural Families and Placenta Benefits.info (among others!), was a brilliant success. My daughters loved the Green Magician, and I had a wonderful time discussing the magic of placenta. I love doing these events, because I get to have interesting conversations with incredible women. I met so many wonderful people there, both vendors and attendees. Our natural living community truly is a wonderful oasis amidst all the neon, sand and heat.

Thanks for all the wonderful connections, and I look forward to the next time…

Thank you

I just want to say thank you to everyone for your outpouring of support. It means a lot to know that there are so many amazing women who are willing to throw their collective power behind this issue.

Anne Swanson and I are meeting with a lawyer this afternoon to discuss our options. I will post an update this evening with his response. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some useful information, but he will tell me how much, if anything, I am able to post publicly.

 Have a wonderful and blessed day.

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