Homebirth, Yay!!

I haven't been on Blogger in so long!  I've sort of been neglecting it, life is catching up with me like it sometimes does.  I recently found out I'm pregnant again and I'm scheduled to give birth sometime around October 19th! I will admit, I was somewhat apprehensive at first but I've finally started to warm up to having two little ones running around the house.

Anyway, enough about that.  I'm always writing about how natural birth is the way to go, natural alternatives in birth, blah blah blah.  I'm still all about it, and I'm going all out this time.  This baby will definitely be my last, so why not make the most of it?  From experience - birthing centers are great places to give birth, but in Northern Colorado that is not an option.  There are hospitals where midwives can deliver your baby, but that's not the same.  I've done both, and feel that I am well-versed on the subject these days.  And honestly, having a midwife in a hospital setting is extremely counter-productive.  You're still going to have a bunch of nurses checking up on you, getting in your face and trying to control your labor and your birth.  I've always wanted a home birth, so I'm doing it! 

I've decided to stray from my last set of midwives who only deliver in the hospital, and found myself a wonderful woman who attends home births!  Best of all, she accepts various forms of insurance, including Medicaid.  And with other research I've found home birth midwives who accept CHP+.  Amazing!

12 week water retention ^_^

7 week ultrasound

I'll be adding some statistics to follow up with this so it's not just a "hey look at how cool I am I'm jumping on the home birthing bandwagon" kinda thing.  No, I've been a fan since back in the 90s when my mother birthed a ten pound baby at home.

Prop 300, Fort Collins Ballot 2011

I'm stoked to say my ballot arrived in the mail today!  For those who don't know, they made a change to their normal voting practices.  If you voted in the 2008 presidential elections, you will be mailed a ballot.  If not, you need to go in to physically vote.  October 3rd was the cutoff date for registering.  If you're at least registered, and your just have a different address, you can go on in and update that at the doors as always. You must vote before 7 PM on November 1ST!!!!!  In any case, I will be submitting my ballot momentarily.

The most important one to me this year, of course, is whether or not we should ban dispensaries.  Here's what it will look like.

CITY OF FORT COLLINS

Initiated Question 300

Proposed Citizen-Initiated Ordinance

"An ordinance prohibiting medical marijuana centers, optional premises cultivation operations and medical marijuana infused products manufacturers from operating within the City limits, effective ninety (90) days after the date that the City Clerk certifies that a majority of registered electors in the city have voted in favor of this ordinance."

___  For the ordinance

___ Against the ordinance

Of course, we can rarely get away with receiving a ballot that seems Greek to us.  This one isn't so bad.  If you are in favor of MMJ centers being shut down, then you would need to vote that you are "For the ordinance."  If you want dispensaries to stay open, you need to vote that you are "Against the ordinance."

The amount of good reasons for keeping them open far outnumber the bad.

Look at it this way.  If we compare this to the sales of alcohol, and how they are regulated, we can clearly see that it is more rational to have people sell alcohol via a liquor store where there are strict regulations on who and when liquor can be sold.  Would you really want it to be illegal, and have people brewing it in their basements, under unsanitary conditions, with no one there to tell them how to safely do it?  Would you really want there to be moonshine gangs that contribute to theft and violence, just so that they could make another dollar?  Would you really want these underground breweries to be accessible to your children?  No?  Didn't think so.

The cultivation of MMJ is just like that.  Dispensaries push all of the street drug dealers away, and create a safe haven where it is only accessible by licensed individuals, and where the regulations are so harsh that a dispensary owner wouldn't dare do anything trivial to lose their license.  If marijuana is kicked out of commercial buildings, there will be a lot more growing operations within private homes.  What a lot of people fail to understand is that those people have a legal, state right to grow within their home.  Or they can become care-givers (in other words, grow and sell to certain individuals with their medical cards.)  This is one right that cannot and will not be removed by the city of Fort Collins because it is a state-given right.  Once dispensaries are banned, there are going to be more people in neighborhoods growing, selling (possibly in unsanitary conditions to unlicensed individuals), house fires and many other issues.  Please vote NO ON 300 and keep marijuana SAFE AND LEGAL!!!

The Final Days of Breastfeeding

For the Little One

If you aren't letting your child self-wean, this process can be very traumatic for both you and your little love.  There are things that you can do to help.

1.  The boob cup and explanation.  I  know, sounds ridiculous.  But I needed a way to explain to her that there wasn't a way of getting it back. I used terms she could easily understand "boob milk is all gone, but we can put boob into a cup.  Do you want a boob cup?"  She would always answer yes for this. 

2.  Warm milk.  Sleep is probably the hardest thing for the little one to get used to when she is weaning.  She does still co-sleep with us occasionally, but now she spends more time in her own bed.  To get the milk more like mother's milk, I heated it up over the stove for a few minutes until it was nice and warm. 

3.  Be loving.  The most important thing that you absolutely must do while weaning is let your child know that you still love her.  Don't just take it away and get frustrated that your child is frustrated; that never helped anyone.  Instead, hold her, tell her you're sorry that she is sad, give her hugs and kisses even if she is kicking and screaming. 

4.  Offer Alternatives. If your child wakes up in the middle of the night, there needs to be something there to take her mind off of the boob.  For the first one to two weeks, you may need to give your kiddo a couple of crackers in the middle of the night while she's getting used to not having boob on hand.  We kept a container of animal crackers by the bed.  As much as I am against having food in bed, this was a life saver.  It was much easier for us to offer her animal crackers and water in a cup to get her to sleep than trying to rock her to sleep.

5.  Compensate.  This is a rough time for your kid!  Do anything in your power that's possible to let her know she's still special (because she is!)  Offer to take her to the park, or read her some books outside, offer her a sucker once in a while.  These also serve as awesome distractions. 

For Mom

1.  Sudafed with pseudephedrine.  This helps dry your milk up.  There was a reason that doctors told you not to take it while breastfeeding, and that is because it will make your milk dry up faster!!

2.  Cabbage.  It smells terrible, let me warn you.  You can either steam it or you can take it straight from the fridge and put it in your bra.  There is something in cabbage that makes the swelling hurt less, and the leaves are the perfect size to create cups for your breasts!

3.  A long Ace Bandage.  Wrap it tightly around your chest.  Not so tight that you can't breathe, but tight enough to add an adequate amount of pressure to your breasts. 

4.  Cold.  I would recommend bags of frozen  peas, but you can also use bags of ice.  For  me, peas conformed to the shape of my breasts better than ice packs and I could lie down and rest with it on my chest without it slipping around. 

My Backyard Wedding

My wedding was on 9-10-11, and if it doesn't get cheesier than that, well it was at 12 o'clock.  :-)

I never really wanted a big wedding, so our backyard made the perfect little venue for us.  We invited a few people from out of town, but not many at all.  It turned out beautifully!  All of the decorations were handmade; from the cake to the wedding arch and flowers.  I'm so proud that it didn't turn out completely tacky.  Luckily, being middle class, we were able to get some friends to help out with things.  I had a friend do my hair and makeup, a friend of ours offered to DJ for us and then a few other friends of ours took some fabulous pictures for us! 

I had found a vintage dress and bought it for $150, and found out that the dress is probably from the 1940s!  It's totally true that real art is timeless.  The dress is in pristine condition and it wasn't possible to alter it, but with the money I saved on buying a new wedding dress, I was able to get a separate reception dress that was shorter and easier to move around in.  Sadly I bought both dresses while I was still nursing and ended up losing some weight before the ceremony so both of them were visibly big on me. But the whole thing was really non-traditional and everything I ever could have dreamed of!  I didn't have bridesmaids walked down the aisle or a big long ceremony or any of that.  Instead, we spent about 15 minutes exchanging vows, planting bamboo and listening to a poem by E.E. Cummings, and the first and last paragraphs of "Oh, the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss.  David's aunt offered to officiate the wedding; his dad was his best man and his step mother was my maid of honor.  We had a couple of good friends dress up nicely for pictures and that was pretty much it.  All in all, I'd have to say it was a beautiful day.  Now we can probably start looking into having another little one.  :-)

We limited our ceremony invitations to mainly family, along with a few really good friends of ours and then treated them to an exclusive lunch near our home.  Afterward, we invited an additional 75 people and had sort of a little potluck to make things easier.  It worked out wonderfully and the night was full of dancing, fire poi, friends and fun. We made some Sangria that turned out extra strong.  We weren't expecting it to kick us all in the gut later on in the night! 

Meme Me

My 80's Bachelorette Party

That's right.  I had an 80's themed bachelorrette party!  I highly recommend a theme.  Luckily for us, Fort Collins is a great place to party downtown.  We all pitched on a limo so that we would have a designated driver, which came out to about $30 a person for three hours of time (Summit Limousine, which rocked!)  We took advantage of Old Town Fort Collins, stopping at all of the best places.  Drunken Monkey, Luscious Nectar, Wash Bar.  Drunken Monkey was even kind enough to put on some 80's tunes while we got our groove on.  :-)

Our little backyard wedding was 09-10-11 and absolutely perfect.  I'll be back with some cool DIY projects, and having a cheap wedding that isn't completely tacky.  Till then, toodles.

New Belgium's Tour de Fat 2011

I was lucky enough to be a part of the Tour de Fat parade this year. If you don't know what Tour de Fat is, it's a massive costume party that New Belgium Brewery throws every year where everyone rides their bikes.  It's in a few other college towns, but since New Belgium is local to Fort Collins, it's bigger here than everywhere else.  This year there were 15,000 people on bikes!

Of course, it features a variety of New Belgium beer since it's their festival, as well as food and free music!  The brewery also hosts a big costume contest/team contest, as well as a fat tire bike giveaway. 

Mostly it gave me an excuse to wear my 80's costume that I used for my bachelorette party.  I love the 80's in case you didn't know and made the theme for my bachelorette party 80s!  I'll have to blog about that later though.  :-)