90 Year Old Midwife Delivers Her Great Grandchild

What a fun story!

Mommy Multitasking – Reading While You Drive

I am dead serious about this.  I read while I drive.  Even when Elijah is in the car.

I know you’re all waiting for the punchline (if you haven’t guessed it yet), so here it is.  I’ve discovered audio books.

I love to read.  I always have.  I was reading before I was in school, and its always been my favorite past time.  I never thought I would ever stop reading.  Until I had a baby.

Maybe I didn’t stop reading entirely, but my reading time was severely cut back, and most of what I was reading was parenting books, and then doula books, and now midwifery books.  While I love reading this stuff, I miss reading fiction, and other subjects as far as non fiction goes.  But I was working more, commuting more, and when I got home, I had a baby to take care of.  When did I have time to read?  I did most of my reading while pumping breast milk at work, two or three half hour breaks a day (my work was super generous and accomodating for pumping milk, more companies should be like my work was).  Other than that, I didn’t get to pursue my favorite past time really at all.

At the same time that I had to give up one of my favorite past times, I had to increase one of my least favorite; driving to and from work.  I HATE commuting.  I’m not much of a fan of driving in general, but the worst is driving in rush hour on the way to or from a place you never really wanted to be in the first place.  I have a 50 minute commute to work in the morning and an hour commute home at night (traffic is better at 6:30 in the morning, when I leave, than it is at 5 in the evening, when I go home).  Trust me, if I could take the bus to and from work, I would, but there are no lines that will get me from my house to my work in a reasonable amount of time (less than three hours). 

Anyway, since discovering audio books, my commute is finally bearable.  In fact, some days I actually look forward to it.  And in the three months since I discovered audio books (or rather, discovered that I enjoyed audio books), I’ve read more than I have in the whole 18 months my son has been alive!

I got my first audio book quite accidentally.  My Holistic Moms Network group was doing a book club for the book A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle.  I had heard a lot about this book and wanted to join them, but wasn’t sure if I’d actually finish it, and I didn’t want to spend money on the book if I wasn’t ever going to finish it.  One day at work, about half way through the month we were doing the book club, I got an email about a service that provides free audio books to service members through a service that works kind of like Netflix (they mail you the books, you listen, mail them back).  I checked out the selection.  It was mostly books on how to improve your leadership skills, not the kind of stuff I was interested in reading, but low and behold, there was A New Earth.  I signed up and ordered it, along with Total Money Makeover, The World is Flat, and An Inconvieniant Truth.

The first books that came in the mail were A New Earth and Total Money Makeover.  I listened to A New Earth First, and it didn’t take me long to realize that I was developing an obsession for audio books.  It was great!  I could drive and read!  There were so many more books I wanted to get under my belt!

Since the selection at 3Leaf Group (the Netflix like service) was pretty lame, I got the brilliant idea to see what kind of selection my local library had.  I had not had a library card for my local library since I was 15 years old.  I had abandoned my card after the Columbine shootings, because the park that Columbine High School and my local library were both in was closed up and police taped off for a month, and I was unable to return my library books, but they continued to charge me late fees!  I didn’t think I could get a new library card, but when I saw how good their audio book selection was, I had to try.  I signed up for a new card online, and picked it up on my way home from work.

I am just flabbergasted at how much reading I’ve gotten done for free, without sacrificing time from anywhere else in my life.  So far I have read:

• A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle
• The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
• Total Money Makeover, by Dave Ramsey
• The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
• The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant
• Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian
• The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
• An Inconvieniant Truth, by Al Gore
• And I’m currently working on In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

I can’t get enough.  As I’m writing this, I have another window open to the Jefferson County Libraries website putting audio books on my hold list.  Even if you’re not a big fan of reading, I think audio books are a great option for you.  Its enough like reading to satisfy the bookworm, but its different enough from reading to entertain the person who prefers radio or television.  In fact, listening to an audio book is very much like listening to a radio program.  You can pick something funny, romantic, tragic, informative, whatever.  Who doesn’t like to have a story told to them?

I made myself into a superhero

While designing my superhero alter ego, I tried to think about what an eco nerd, natural birth advocating, lactivist, attatchment parenting, feminist superhero might look like.  Perhaps she would wear a hippy, wrap around skirt.  She would be clad in green.  She would carry a walking stick, made of sustainably grown bamboo (of course).

And what the hell? She would wear a monocle and have a skull on her costume.  Yeah!

The International Cesarean Awareness Network

Who here knows about ICAN?  I didn’t, until a friend of mine from the midwifery training program I’m enrolled in was named president.

ICAN is a great organization that provides support and advocacy for women who have had a c-section.  Whether you are unable to have babies vaginally, or you have had many a successful VBAC since your cesarean birth, ICAN is a great recourse for you.

They also dedicate themselves to preventing c-sections.  Of course c-sections are life saving operations, but they come with many health risks to mother and child, and they are best avoided, if possible.  Kind of like chemo therapy.  Of course, it kills cancer, but you’re better off avoiding getting cancer in the first place because chemo therapy is awful.  If there are ways to prevent cesareans (and cancer), they should be found and implemented, and that is what ICAN is helping to do.

Books for your kiddos

I’m sure I don’t have to tell all of you about the benefits of reading to your children.  Its a fun thing for the two of you to do together that has so many mental, emotional, and even physical benefits that not a single person in the world advocates against it.  Its pretty much the only parenting ideal that is universal.  Everybody, whether they advocate attatchment parenting, ferberization, or anything in between, agrees that reading to your kids is one of the best things you can do for them.

I love reading with Elijah (even though he really won’t sit still for a book, and he always wants to turn the pages before the page is up, then turn back a few pages, then turn forward a few pages).  I’m hoping that if I keep at it, one day he will love to sit and listen as much as I love to read.  A friend of mine had a great idea (it wasn’t my son that inspired it, he just applied the idea he already had to my son) … maybe he’d be more interested if the book were about him.

He had a point.  Elijah is really too young to know the plot line of a story, but he’ll sit still a lot longer to look at photo albums of himself.  Maybe in a year or so, a book about him would be a great idea.

My friend has just started a company that sells the most customizable children’s books available, MJM Books.  Not only can you choose the name and gender of the main character in the books, you can also design the character to look like your child!  Well, not exactly like your child, but close enough for your son or daughter to understand that its supposed to be them.

Its a cute gift idea for any kiddo, and I felt like doing a small plug for him here, because he is an old, dear friend of mine from high school, and because I actually think his books are pretty cool.  In fact, I’ll be ordering one for Elijah’s second birthday.

Furthermore, supporting small business (and its a local one, if you live in Denver, Phoenix or Chicago, the cities where the brothers who started the company live and run the business out of), is great for the environment and the economy.  You can rest assured that everything that goes into the books is totally independent and unique, from the author and illlustrators to the business model itself. 

Not only this, but Jeff (my friend) and his brothers are dedicated environmentalists, and they run their company on a very green platform.  All of their books are printed on 100% recycled paper and since each book is custom made, there is no wasted printing and inventory.  They work within the guidelines set forth by The Rainforest Alliance and the Forest Stewardship Counsel, and they are quick to point out that Jeff does not have a car (so the book’s author is even green in his personal life!).  Nor has he ever, that I’m aware of.  In high school, he spent a lot of the time tooling around with us in my friend’s mom’s minivan.  He also volunteers in a kids reading and writing program.  It won’t say so on the website, but Jeff also headed the Green Party at his college, and he recycles.

Check the books out.  I think you’ll enjoy them.