Taking the Scenic Route

Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale 2006

The 2006 Quilt Gallery!

Life lesson #5657:  How to “pop” the Sycamore fruits

First:  this is what they look like whole…

and after being stomped on…

Now…

My guys and their moment.

this post might sound depressing, but I really am not particularly depressed

First, I will start with the good news.  I think my post partum bleeding has finally subsided *knock on wood*  That took long enough!  Over 3 months was plenty as far as I am concerned.

Today I have been doing the same thing I have done almost every Saturday for years….trying to decide if we are going to try and go to church tomorrow.  It finally struck me today why this is always so stressful.  I feel like such a bad person for dreading church so much every week.  I actually do enjoy the service, but I can count on two fingers the number of times I have actually been able to enjoy a full service without having to leave through out the service (one as an infant when he just slept through the service, the other around a year ago when I visited my home church and the sunday school teacher was a very experienced mom/grandma/teacher and he didn’t lose it, requiring me to come be with him)

I realized that is why I hate church so much.  It is just horribly stressful on several levels.  One, the looks you get when your child is different than the other kids, the other is desperatly hoping your child will play in an appropriate way and won’t throw a monumental tantrum.  We haven’t been back to church as a family (I went with Zora to my home church one Sunday) since early in my pregnancy.  I was on bedrest, so it was an easy reason not to have to think about it too much.  Zane turned 4 at Christmastime, and now will be expected to be in the actual preschool classrooms and particiapate, and sit nicely, and pay attention instead of just being able to play.  I know that this is unlikely to be very successful without somebody right there prompting him every step of the way.  I do not know how to handle this.  I just don’t.  I feel weird arranging for Zach or I to be there every week, especially since I would likely have Zora with me (as if another adult and a kid who doesn’t follow instructions well isn’t enough of a distraction for the other kids).  I especially feel weird asking this when we haven’t been attending regularly and they don’t really know us.  I just want to crawl in a hole and hide.

Zach and I have discussed the possibility of one of us going one week, the other the next so that we are able to go to church.  However, I want Zane raised in the church.  I want him to have a spiritual background.  I read him bible stories and incorporate religion into our lives (I would have to go out of my way not too..it is part of the way I view the world and see life).  I am not really sure that he understands, or how much he understands.  He likes Veggietales, but vegetables singing about God isn’t the same thing as having a concept of who God and Jesus are.  ( I really enjoy Veggietales, and at least he is hearing a good message, just not sure how much of it he ‘gets’) 

I wish I knew what to do.  I have a feeling the church next to us would have people in it that would at least understand our needs a bit better since there is a high level of education at that church, but I am not a ‘member’ of the church. (it is a Congregational church)   A part of me would rather go across town to the Mennonite church (I am not a member of *that* church, but I am of *a* Mennonite church), but it is ‘across town’ (expensive for gas and less-than-reliable vehicles) and it is several hours earlier to go to the services.

This is something I just have no solution for right now.  I hope I figure out something soon.

I realized after my last post that some people might mistake my pro-breastfeeding for anti formula.  I just wanted to be clear:  I am not anti-formula feeding.  In my particular family milk and soy allergies are present, so I am very motivated to breastfeed because I know I could run into a lot of problems if I needed to use formula.

I am also very pro-breastfeeding because it is one of the only aspects of natural family parenting that I have been competely successful at. 

for instance:

1. I circ’ed my son, mostly due to lack of education.  I can’t change the past. 
2. I dismissed cloth diapering out of hand for the first year of Zane’s life, and finally went full force Cloth Diapers starting around 14 months.  I was fanatic about Cloth for a while, refusing to use disposables even for situations where it became rather complicated.  When I got pregnant, and was so terribly sick, and threw up ON Zane while changing his diaper (and absolutely couldn’t handle diaper laundry) I changed back to disposables.  I am having a really hard time wanting to change back with him.  With her I have only recently felt recovered enough to even think about cloth diapering, and I haven’t managed to keep up on laundry like I need to to diaper full time yet.  I have a goal of getting both back into diapers full time, but right now I am just not organized enough and energetic enough to do it the way I should. 
3. I have used the sling with Zora, but she is so small that it is sort of nervewracking for me, so I am still mostly just carrying her or using the Baby Bjorn I got with Zane.  (I didn’t sling him until he was around 16 months)  I know that eventually the sling will be an extension of me, but I can honestly say that I am not there yet.  I have a feeling that I will feel a lot better about it when she is closer to sitting and has better neck control.
4. I don’t understand natural medicine very well.  I do use what I know, and I am trying to learn more, but I still have to turn to Western medicine a lot more than many in the NFL community.  
5. I am horribly torn on vaxxing.  I totally respect both sides of the issue, and think they both have valid points.  The only thing I know for sure is that the vaxes I will probably do, will be done on a delayed schedule.  I absolutely think the vax schedule is for the convenience of doctors/school systems and not for the health of the kids.  I also know that I won’t be doing all the vaxes for them as kids.  (the chicken pox vax in particular is one we won’t even consider until our kids get into their teens since it isn’t too bad for kids, but sucks for adults)  Other than that, I don’t really know what I am going to do yet.

For the record, co-sleeping is fairly successful for us.  We have problems in the sleeping area, but it isn’t because of co-sleeping, it is because we are a family of people who have problems getting to sleep.  lol.

Now, back to breastfeeding.  I wrote a post a while ago that probably sounded hurtful if you aren’t able to breastfeed, but I wanted to tell you my journey so you can understand why I am so happy and passionate about breastfeeding.

The original post was from February 16

I may stink at getting pregnant, I started trying to conceive in April of 1995.  I didn’t get pregnant until 1997. 

I may stink at staying pregnant, From 1997 until 2001 I had 7 miscarriages.  (ranging from 5-14 weeks).  I had another in between Zane and Zora.  (making Zora my 10th pregnancy)

I may stink at being pregnant, bleeding, UTIs, preeclampsia

I may stink at giving birth, emergency c-section because of failure to progress (he never even dropped into my pelvic area because I was abnormally narrow and he was a big kid) and depressed vital signs for Zane.  Had an elective, but very neccessary c-section with Zora.  (I was so sick that I would have not faired well with labor and birth, so it was a good choice for us)

but dangit, I can make milk like nobody’s business!

That is why Breastfeeding is such a big deal to me. 

Bottles vs. Breast milk…no contest.

 xanga isn’t uploading pictures for me today, but I found some entertaining links

Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings   

While reading about Autism Spectrum Disorders and dietary interventions, I came across a line of thought that just really spoke to me and has far reaching implications.

Remember the stories of the early coal miner safety precautions of taking a canary down into the mines with you?  When the canaries start keeling over, the miners know it is time to get out fast before they are affected by the gases.  It has been suggested that the sudden rise in Autism could be the “canary” signaling the environmental toxins are getting to a critical point.  Right now, the majority of people aren’t overtly affected, health-wise, to the effects, but our weakest humans are being affected.  It should be a big wake up call that we need to clean up our act fast or the epidemic is going to become much worse.

Some antidotal notes:  When I was a kid, I was allergic to onions.  I know that I am the only one in my class of 30 kids with any kind of food allergies/intolerances.  At any given time, I was one of only 2 or 3 in the school of 100-120 students (K-12) with food issues.  (there was a diabetic girl 2 years younger, and I assume there had to be 1 or 2 more over the years judging by the number of “special trays” the lunch ladies made over the years, depending on what was being served.

From what I am seeing IRL and on message boards, you would be hard pressed to find groups of kids that size with no food issues, or behavioral and health issues that can be linked to food problems.  It seems like almost every family has at least one person, if not the entire family, affected by food problems.

I don’t think there is one single cause of this.  I think it the cumulative effect of pesticides & herbicides, lack of genetic diversity in crops, water and air pollution, use of antibiotics (which have benefits, but can also cause yeast overgrowth in our guts which can cause malabsorption, among other things), and the massive amounts of processed foods that are consumed (which magnify the effects of the toxins because they lack the nutrients our bodies need to counteract the toxins).  I wonder if things like ASD (includes ADD & ADHD), Celiac, diabetes and whole hosts of other issues that are now much more widespread (no, I don’t have stats to back that up, just appears that way to me & I don’t feel motivated to research the specifics right now) because our environmental insults have reached a breaking point where humans can’t handle them very well any more.

Food for thought. 

Dang, this whole ASD thing is going to end up turning me into a full blown environmentalist yet.  lol.

 oy!

Zane has a fever on and off.  Rainy, expecting it to turn to snow soon.  Now I am having serious sinus drainage leading to a sore throat.  Fun times. 

This is why I hate “well child” visits.  They always seem to make your child sick.  “Pediatrician of Pestilence!”