"Shower Thy grace upon us in the moment of our greatest need, protect us from ourselves, and allow us to be a beacon of light rather than a dark cloud for the ambience that surrounds us. Only with Thy aid can we create that peace within and harmony with the outer environment, both natural and social, for which our souls yearn."
~Seyyed Hossein Nasrfrom Talking to God:
Portrait of a World at Prayer (anthology)
The Other Side of the Glass
I'm really loving this right now. You can read and watch more HERE! I will be using this for my future childbirth classes.
Peace to all,
Rachel
Help Normalize Birth!
Reducing Infant Mortality from Debby Takikawa on Vimeo.
I recieved this in my email from Elena at Birth Into Being. Here's what she says. Please do what you can to save our babies!! Peace, Rachel
This is a free film. Please use it, show it, put it on your website, link to it, and most of all, send the link to policy makers. Send it to your State and National Senators and Representatives. Until the end of August, your representatives and senators are in their home offices. This is the perfect time to make an appointment to see your legislator and talk to them personally.
Can you imagine if 10 people from your district insist on having an appointment to talk about maternal/infant health care in the next 2 weeks? What if we continue on,. making appointments and showing up to talk to their aides after they return to Washington? What if they each have many copies of Reducing Infant Mortlaity on their desks, and showers of emails with letters about the rights and needs of infants and women and links to the film? I can imagine this. Can you? This is one way we can make a material difference.
Send it to your local Health Department. Send it to your local Hospital. Send it to your State Department of Health! (In Georgia, they requested a copy!) Link to it on Facebook and My Space! Post it on your favorite networking sites. It is open source which means you can use it any way you like as long as you don't change it or delete the credits. We are counting on you to use this film to help your voice to be heard.
To embed or share the videogo to www.vimeo.com and search "Reducing Infant Mortality" The thumbnail of the film comes up. Click on it and it goes full size. Put your cursor on the video and look on the right upper corner of the video and you will see the icons for embed and share. Click the one you want and follow directions. For support if you have trouble, call me 805-688-9877.
Take your passion outside the box! Recruit people who don't yet know that they care. Most important of all send it to the people who need to know that you care: your legislators.
The time has come for us to speak for our babies. The time has come for us to support pregnant and birthing women. The time has come to make the changes in our birthing policies that will allow women to safely give birth at the location of their choosing.The time has come to care enough to see to it that all women receive the knowledge, support and respect they need to have a healthy baby.The time has come for us to offer healthy choices to women and babies.The time has come for us to stop unnecessary suffering. This is something that we can do.
With gratitude
Debby Takikawa
Director
Voices From The Womb
Did you know that when you are pregnant...your baby...while in utero knows EXACTLY how you are feeling and feels it too? Happy, sad, joyful, angry, peaceful, depressed and so on and so forth. You name it...they can feel it! I know it's hard to believe but it is TRUE!! Well, it is what I profoundly believe anyway.
I'm reading a very intriguing book right now called "Voices from the Womb" by Michael Gabriel. He is a hypnotherapist who has regressed 100's of people back to their lives before they were even born. He uses a 4 step process to bring to light the hidden emotions of the person while they had been an unborn infant.
"In the womb we have no barrier to the emotional forces of life. Our experiences may well be more intense before birth than at any later time in life. If we are to understand ourselves, our motives, and personal development, the study of our prenatal experiences is invaluable. These experiences profoundly affect our ability to love ourselves and others and to achieve what we desire in life."
I have spent the last few years reading and experimenting with the idea that all babies know what their mothers, and sometimes fathers, truly are feeling. Through the women I have worked with, most mothers who are deeply in tune with themselves and their babies, can and do feel how their babies are feeling. They sense that when they are struggling...their babies are struggling too! If they were happy and feeling carefree and stress free....they knew their babies were too!
Psychologist Arthur Janov in his book "Imprints: The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience states that "Not only is the fetus affected by what the mother takes into her system-it is equally affected by the state of that system-is that pregnant mother easygoing, relaxed and calm; or quiet and stable or is she encountering crisis after crisis? Not so surprisingly, both animal or human research is showing how the mother's inner state profoundly affects the development and personality of her baby."
In his book, Gabriel goes on to quote, Dr. Thomas Verny a Canadian psychiatrist who states in his book "The Secret Life of the Unborn Child", "the unborn child is a feeling, remembering, aware being, and because he is, what happens to him-what happens to all of us-in the nine months between conception and birth molds and shapes personality and ambitions in very important ways."
As a society we are more than ready to peg the majority of problems during pregnancy and birth on some physical ailment. I have come to the conclusion though, from the dozens of women I have worked with....we will birth as we were birthed! Until we can and are willing to look at any and all emotional trauma in regards to our own birth, we will struggle to truly create the easy, light, peaceful, and joyous births all woman deeply long for.
I still have about half the book to read so the jury is still out on exactly how I will feel about it. So far, I agree with most everything he says. The book is just a testament to me that until we are willing to face our fears and look within our own hearts, birth pain will seem insurmountable and pregnancy will be pegged a misery.
I believe conception, pregnancy and birth are meant to be the happiest times of our lives. Creating is what we do as humans and creating in the fashion that can come so lovingly and naturally leads me to think it is the most organic and rewarding thing we can do. But...we cannot do it and find that happiness if we are not choosing to do so as consciously as possible. We cannot do that as consciously as we need to unless we are acknowledging and accepting our inner fears and pains stemming from our own births and life as soon thereafter.
I'll keep you posted on my final feelings about the book. Right now, it's making me think and that's all that matters.
Peace to you,
Rachel
Playing Defense or Offense
About 4 and a 1/2 days ago Mabel started a fever. This will be the second time she has had a fever since we have moved here so I thought it was a little strange. The first fever was brought on by new teeth coming in. After assessing her and the situation, I came to the same conclusion this time. Upon inspection, it was obvious with some swollen gums and such that she had 4 new teeth coming in, to make that a complete 12...all by 14 months old. (On a side note here, I have NEVER had a child with 12 teeth at 14 months. If we took her age only by her teeth and compared to my other children at her age, she could respectively be 18 months...even almost 2 maybe.)
In the past, when it has been her teeth, within a couple of days the fever is gone. Well, this fever seemed to hang on for 3 days+ and wasn't showing signs of going away. She started nursing all the time again and EVERYTHING I offered her to eat, she would act like she was interested in but then she would take a bite and cry and then throw it down.
By day 2, I started to think I might be wrong about it being only her teeth. I noticed a thick coat of white on her tongue and she seemed even fussier than she had been previously when the issue had been only her teeth. I knew I had seen a tongue like that before and I was racking my brain trying to figure out where. Then I remembered....when we lived in California, Dean had a tongue that looked just like that. By day 3 of Mabel's fever, I knew I had my answer.
Mabel woke up with a small sore on the side of the corner of her mouth. Yep. There is was. Now I combined all the symptoms...fever for days, swollen gums, thick white layer on the tongue, cold sore on lip, won't eat ANYTHING, constantly crying and wanting to be held every minute of every day. She has the initial outbreak of type 1 of the herpes simplex virus. (I thought about putting a link here to make it easy for you to see exactly what it is but then I thought, why, I think it's good you google it yourself and see more than just one link. Have FUN!!)
As you can imagine, life for us is alot busier than it had been in the past. So, to have Mabel catch this right now makes life MUCH more interesting. The first 2 or 3 days of it, if I say so myself, I handled life pretty good emotionally. It didn't bother me to have her fuss all day long and needing to be held at every moment. But...by day 4 and 5, I started feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all.
Yesterday was day 5 and we had a pretty busy day. We decided to come into town and stay at my mother in laws. Chris was going back out to the lake house to spray more chemicals for the roach problem. Dean was going to my mom's house to get her help on finishing a costume he's making for a home school project. We all decided to go and hang out with him at my mom's house.
I'm still not exactly sure why I became so overwhelmed but with Mabel and her constant fussiness, dealing with my four other children, being at my mom's house and trying to write my other blog, all the while thinking about how our lives are still in a bit of a quandary and I don't have a place to live to call my own...I kind of started letting myself lose it. When all is said and done, I came back to my mother in laws yesterday afternoon feeling pretty shut down.
Then enters Chris. He came in, saw me laying on the bed with Mabel crawling all over me and instantly knew I was having a hard time. He came in wanting to comfort me but I was struggling to let him do it. Now mind you, I was not rude or inconsiderate in anyway, I was just distant. After a few minutes with me, he soon realized I was having a hard time letting his love in and he let himself get a little irritated. Like every dear man who dearly loves his wife, as mine does, he wanted to fix the problem for me.
So, I started asking him why he was annoyed. I stated that it seemed to me he felt the need to be defensive. It was then the LEARNING BOMB, as I like to call it, dropped for me. I heard myself say...."why are you playing the defense when there's no offense taking place?" I instantly had this image of football in my head, and believe me, I am NOT a football fan nor do I really know anything about it. But like in football, the reason it seems it is even interesting, is because there is a defense and an offense. If you take away the offense, there would not be a game to be played.
Let me put it how my brain received it. How many times in our lives do we play the "game" with others? We take the place of defense because we feel the "attack" from the offense. Or we become offended and begin to feel defensive and feel we have to attack back. What if....like my situation with Chris....the person you feel offense from, means no offense at all and we are playing defense, just because that's habitual for us. It's what we know and have learned....when in reality there is NO need for it.
I think, yet again, it's really sinking in for me....how 100% of the time when I become offended, it is MY issue and that 99% of the time no offense was meant. Yesterday I was having a hard time. In NO way did I mean to hurt Chris' feelings but because he had an EXPECTATION of how he thought I should be reacting, he became defensive that his expectation wasn't being meant. He apparently felt threatened and hence put up the defense.
If I choose to remove the expectations, in all my life, in everything around me, I take away an opportunity to become defensive. By removing expectations, I remove a false perception...I then remove the need for an OFFENSE.
That sounds like a pretty good thing to me. We can take it one step further. If I choose to remove my expectations of any or everything that I'm confronted with. If I choose to RELAX and let go of what I think things should be or look like. If I choose to change my perception and try to see the good in all of it. I believe, that maybe, happiness, clarity and faith then step in to let me know things are just as they should be.
Mind you, that doesn't mean I stop creating what I think is best for myself and my family. NO, not at all. But what that does mean is I give up what and how I think that should look. I consciously choose to combine my will with my Divine parents will and then relax and accept the outcome. In all and everything. In decisions like what I ultimately want for the grand scheme of my life and even smaller things....like what my relationship with my mother and sisters should look like.
THEN...here's the more important part, I find gratitude in WHATEVER results I get and love it. I say..."Oh ok, this is what this is supposed to look like right now and WOW~I love it and am just grateful for what the experience can teach me and what I can learn. I know I've said this all before and I will, most likely, say it all again. Years ago I realized thatwe teach what we need to learn and apply in our own lives. This is a BIG one for me.
Just like my sister Kim said to my mother last week..."Mom, emotions are not either good or bad. It's what we do with them, what actions we give them that make them such." Our life...those problems we are confronted with aren't either good or bad, it's what perception we choose to give it and then what we do with them, that make them such. If we choose to change our perception and remove expectation....I think, we could all remove the whole "game"...remove the defense and offense and just BE and find joy, happiness and peace in that BEING!
I have found that just applying these ideas with Mabel during the night last night made a huge difference. I accept that she is sick and that she needs me more of me than usual. I removed the expectations of how much she should need me during the night. I found that even though she did wake up every hour and nurse...I still feel refreshed today and don't feel any excess lethargy. The idea being taught here is even if I did feel lethargic, I would then accept, relax and apply faith that I could get the needed sleep today. Notice how when I apply those things, peace, joy and clarity just follow.
This post has officially become long enough. For those of you who don't like my long posts, I'm sorry. I'm still learning how to make my words more concrete and concise and say a lot in a few sentences. Until that time, please bear with me. Love to all!
Abundant peace to all,
Rachel
ReAffirmations on Mothers & Babies
I had a very deep experience for me yesterday in church. I was in one of my church meetings, sitting next to a woman with a 2 month old baby girl. I had met this woman a few weeks before. We had engaged in a short conversation in which she had told me her baby had been adopted. You could sense and see this excitement this woman had over receiving this baby. It was obvious to me she had been waiting some time to become a mother and this child was an answer to long and hard prayers.
Throughout the meeting, I felt blessed to be able to watch the mother and infant interact, doing what I call their mommy/baby dance. It is BEAUTIFUL for me to behold. The baby had woken up and the mother was preparing the bottle to feed her. She gently laid her across her arms, conscious to the positioning.
I will be honest here, I do my best not to judge nor condemn the woman who bottle feeds her baby. Though I have never done it, I do understand and am grateful for the opportunity the bottle provides to the woman who cannot breastfeed or to the mother who struggles in anyway with the option of breastfeeding. From my perception, I had always thought that the bottle seemed to create a small distance between the mother and baby. My sense of it was that deeper bonding was a bit stymied by the bottle. The experience with this woman showed me how I had been wrong.
I watched this woman, who with the utmost care, cuddled, caressed and feed her baby. I must admit, I was surprised by the amount of bonding that took place. As soon as she pulled the bottle out of her bag, I found myself feeling sad for the baby that she was missing out on a connection that is vital for her survival. But then, when I watched as this woman still pulled her to the breast. Still held her as close as she could. Still was VERY conscious and connected in the way she held and touched her baby. I realized I had been wrong. I realized I had judged falsely and repented immediately, in my heart, for doing so.
I watched this symphony between mother and baby take place the whole meeting. At the close of our meeting, we sang “How Great Thou Art.” This is a song that is extremely dear to my heart. Aside from the fact that I love the song just because of how glorious the song is, it is my father's favorite song and we sung it at his funeral. So, to this day, I cannot sing that song without tears flowing down my cheeks.
As we started to sing, I was still in awe and in rapture with this mother and baby. Tears began to well up and my heart started to feel like it would BURST from my chest. For the first time, in YEARS I think, I felt that urging....that longing....that soft push that I had felt before. The last time I remember feeling it this deeply was soon after Golden was born.
At his birth, there was an assistant midwife there who, I felt, saved me. I was an emotional wreck throughout my pregnancy. Chris had a job, at the time, where he traveled some and was required to work long hours. I had gained WAY too much weight to maintain health. 60+ lbs. Edema was starting to set in. My blood pressure was slowly but surely rising every prenatal. I had completely ignored my midwives nudges to eat better and take better care emotionally. Just a week before my due date, I felt so gross I called my midwife in despair. She stated there was no time to waste. I had to have my baby.
The next day she showed up at our home, she broke my water and we waited for contractions to begin. Once we realized induction was going to be the order of the day, my stress levels skyrocketed. Luckily, my midwife brought her delicate but firm assistant, who, with her soothing words and touch, made my labor and birth more than bearable...even rewarding and uplifting. It was soon thereafter, that I had my experience similar to the one above.
I don't remember the details of that first experience. I do remember the feelings. No different than my church experience. They were subtle, yet powerfully deep. They sang to my heart in such a way that I felt expanded and open. I felt an unspoken understanding or a fulfilled wisdom that I had been longing to be answered.
As I watched this mother and child and sang, I silently and slowly wept. Again, I KNEW without a doubt, what made my heart leap. I KNEW part of my purpose for this life was to work with mothers and babies. Now some of you are saying, “Duh Rachel, you are already a midwife. You work with mothers and babies all the time.” You are right. That is true but since I moved to Texas unless I get licensed and certified it is illegal for me to practice as a midwife. I was very sad at giving that up.
My experience yesterday though told me I didn't have to give that up. I may not be able to practice as a midwife but I can still work with woman and babies through many other avenues. I can still teach classes. I can still attend births as a doula or labor assistant. I can still help woman own their power within themselves to have the pregnancy and birth they've always wanted. I can still aid in teaching a woman how to take care of herself physically, emotionally and spiritually. I can still discuss with them conscious conception, pregnancy and birth. I can still BE THERE, if I really want to.
Now to some of you this may sound so simple. It may sound like this is something that I already knew and on a certain level, it is and was. But this understanding that I received wasn't so much about learning it for the first time as it was more about the recognition that working with woman and babies is something that is already part of me. I guess I should say what my midwife told me when I asked why she became a midwife. She said to me that she hadn't called midwifery into her life but instead midwifery had called her. Many other midwives have made this same statement to me. There's this longing, this presence, this feeling inside us that says my existence will not be fulfilled in a way that it should be unless I can work with woman and babies. That's what I think anyway.
So, please know I am not saying I have all the answers for woman and babies. Or that I have any of the answers. I only know I want to be near them. I want to be close and watch the process. To learn and to teach. To show and to be shown. To listen and to be heard. To do whatever I can to make the connection and the bond between mothers and babies deeper, stronger, more satisfying, happier and ultimately more peaceful. I believe if we long, as a human race, for a more peaceful world....it begins with mothers and babies.
Sacrifice or Submission
"I know that embarking on non-violence I shall be running what might be termed a mad risk. But the victories of truth have never been won without risks."
Love to All
I am feeling so IMMENSELY and PROFOUNDLY LOVED!! Ever since I got off the plane and looked out the windows at the MAJESTIC mountains....love entered my heart and hasn't left since. I must admit, that I can't remember another time I felt it this strongly and powerfully before. The tears keep flowing. I couldn't hold them back even if I wanted to, which I don't.
Rachel
"Honor the tradition but expand the understanding. That's what religions must do right now if they hope to be helpful to humans in the years ahead."
Tomorrow's God
The Crash Course
My brother sent this to our family blog. I HIGHLY recommend you watch ALL of it. Chris and I spent the last 2 days watching them in between daily chores. Our conviction that personal change is needed NOW was reiterated.
It is DIRE we take action both physically and psychologically, as both videos portray. We can make PHENOMENAL changes, quickly....effectively....easily..... when we take responsibility not only for ourselves but, like Chris Martenson says in the last video, each other too! What that means is we are doing things like sending this video forward to others. Just a small step to help others along their path of removing fear and choosing preparedness and more self reliance.
I stand with Chris Martenson where I don't know the future but I would MUCH rather be ready for any large change than not. The personal changes we are making as a family, we recognize, are not for everyone. They might be a bit severe but....this is the course of action that is working for us. By watching the video and then getting on Chris' website, you can take his self assessment test and find out what changes will work for you. We have found that even the tiniest steps in a conscious direction of responsibility has made HUGE differences in any insecure or unsure feelings we may have.
So, our hope is that after watching this video you might take the time to figure out where you are at and what changes you can make for the betterment of not only ourselves but human kind, as a whole. We hope you'll keep checking back to our blogs and websites. We hope that some information we share will help you in this endeavor.
Abundant peace to all,
Rachel
Happy Birthday Maybe Baby!!
Here is my journal entry for today. I thought I would go ahead and post it here to share. Life presently is still having it's ups and downs. We are happy yet taking it one day at a time. Love to you all! Let's all be more kind, gentle and just try to take better care of ourselves and each other. Remember there can NEVER be a "WE" in any situation unless there is a "ME". Peace, Rachel 
Today is Mabel’s birthday. She is one year old. I’m just racking my brain trying to figure out where the time went. I know, I know every parent does that….whether their child is turning one or 100. I remember when she was born, fully clear that it was vital for me and her that we spent every moment of every day together. We did something called “Kangaroo Care”, where we did full skin to skin contact for the first 6 weeks of her life. I was so glad she was born in the warm weather so we could do that. Literally every day, all day long, her and I cuddled and loved each other in a way I had never experienced with any of my other children. Don’t get me wrong, I did my very best with each child’s birth and life soon thereafter. I cuddled and cradled them as often and as much as I consciously could, at the time.
I just wanted to share a few thoughts and memories of the time she chose to enter our lives. It had not nor will it ever be the same now that she has entered. Our family has bonded like NEVER before. We congregate around her persistence and praise her every move. We feel honored that she chose us. Not that she is any more special or different than the rest of us, just that she saw and took the plunge to aid in our growth, progression and change that will last forever. For that, we honor her.
"Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us!"
~Robert Burns