media free week

We went to Las Vegas for a wedding a few weeks ago.
After a mere 3 days in the city that never sleeps I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed.

We lead a fairly quiet life, well, as quiet as a house with 3 kids can be at least. So, just having the music too loud and televisions on everywhere we went in addition to the cardboard cutout ads every 40 feet in the hotel/casino we stayed in was like having another person with us everywhere we went. A really annoying other person.

On the drive home, the Mr. and I decided to counter balance that experience with a week of peace and quiet.
No Computer
No Television
No Music

We did use the computer for online banking, photo editing and work related research. No emailing friends or surfing, no blog reading etc.
I thought the no televsion would be the easiest for me since I really don’t like tv anyway. I thought the hardest would be no music or radio.

How it went:
I totally caved on day 3 and read my online mom’s message board nightly at like 11 at night when everyone was asleep. That was a big wake up as to how much time I was truly spending online and how I feel really out of touch without it. yikes.
I think ‘turn off the computer’ will be the new ‘Turn off TV’ week of the future.

The music / radio was surprisingly the easiest. The upside to going without radio in the car is that I discovered I really prefer it that way. I can listen to my kids talk without getting annoyed that I couldn’t hear what the person on NPR was saying because of their singing or yelling. We have conversations, more peace and less fighting. I don’t have to hear two little people whining for Laurie Berkner or ‘the happy and you know it CD or having kids’ songs stuck in my head for the next three days.

and the TV…We did not cave on that one but boy did I want to. By Sunday night, I needed a good cry. I cried over how much fighting I had to deal with, how much attention my kids seemed to NEED, all the referee-ing I had to do, yelling I did my fair share of, etc. I really hate to admit that I ‘use’ the tv when I need to make dinner, nurse the baby, fold laundry etc …and I’ll confess that my kids watch it often. We don’t watch it everyday or for very long and it bothered me that it was so hard to give up.

We are about to go for another tv free week. Lately, they’ve been fighting over what to watch, screaming when we turned off a movie for dinner and just being rude and demanding to watch certain programs so, I’m done with it again. Sometimes, I have learned that the ‘punishment’ is harder on the punisher than the punishee. This time, I know the changes I have to make to my day. I will make dinner mid-morning, or just do something that can be put in the oven because by 4 o’clock they are out of control and cannot be trusted. This requires more meal planning than I have been doing lately, but need to do anyway bugetarily. It may also require mandatory napping again too. I’d rather have them up till 9 and happy than melting down at 4 and making me crazy.

Lasting effects:
I am more selective of when I listen to music or radio. We don’t listen in the car if I am driving. I want to be a lot more conscious of what I am putting in my head lately.
I try to be very aware of my time online. I’m tempted to tally the time and really see what changes I want to make. It is too easy for me to spend too much time online. I may go every other day and see what that does.
and the tv….well….I still don’t like it, but I don’t know if I can make dinner without it some days.

**quick little edit – We actually don’t watch tv programing, we watch DVDs.

3 months

I have meant to write about a number of topics: our trip to Las Vegas with all three kids, our media free week, my dad losing his job, my consistency in trying to do way more than I am truly capable of, but tonight I want to celebrate the birth of Talia.

Talia, whose name came to me in a dream and means dew from heaven, we feel blessed.

She is 3 months old as of 9:33 the 21st.
And just like with the other two I feel both overwhelmed by it and as if she’s been here forever.

I want to share my birth story, though it may not be in proper chronological order it is how I feel it.
I thought I might have her on my birthday, the 19th but two days later is when she was born.
On the 21st, I had let go of my urgency to get the baby out. I went shopping for groceries and exchanged some clothes and ran errands with my mom and the kids early in the morning.
That afternoon the baby was doing all this crazy movement again. I felt like I had a cat trapped in a bag in my body. There was wild kicking everywhere. I called my midwife to please see me and assure me that this baby was in a good position and alright. Mary and Nedra, her assistant, came over in the afternoon and checked my belly feeling around for which way she was facing. “Baby is in a good position,” she said. Then she said she would see me later; my baby would be born that day. She could tell by looking at me.

She was right. Around 7pm I felt a little pop inside, and after walking around I began to feel a trickle. First, I called Mary to let her know. Then, I called Pruitt and thankfully, he was already on his way home.
I made/ate dinner with my mom and the kids earlier. So when he got home he reheated a plate and ate while Mary and Nedra set things up. They all got things prepared as I had requested: music, incense, candles, filling the tub etc

I don’t remember a lot of the details now like what I was wearing, when I got naked, or when things got crazy exactly. Here is what I do remember. I walked around feeling good for a long time. I was in and out of the kitchen visiting with the kids and my mom and having contractions against the hall wall until I couldn’t be polite anymore. Then I retreated to the room Pruitt had made for the occasion.
I was checked once at the beginning and I was at 4 cm which seemed great to me considering things, and then when things started to get more like the real thing I was checked again, but I don’t recall where I was cm-wise. At that internal, the midwife tried to move my cervix forward because it was far back. She tried to do this while I had contractions standing supported in Pruitt’s arms. I do not remember how many contractions I made it through like this. It was not many. There was one contraction during this that I distinctly remember being able to go with and truly be in the moment of moving the baby down. Then, I threw up. After or maybe while I was throwing up I remember thinking, “why oh why did I eat rice for dinner?” Things never got to where I could be in my body like that again.
At some point I was able to get in the tub, whew. Being in the pool really provided me some relief, but something was just weird. I felt like I was trying to get out of my own body. I couldn’t get comfortable even between contractions really. Fear was coming up more. I had lost my composure, my ability to experience this birth. I told Pruitt that I just wanted to be on the other side of this. I think seeing me doubting my own abilities worried him, especially since he had seen me so capable in the other births (and one resulted in a dislocated tailbone and stitches).
This time was just different. There was no riding the wave into my body feeling it doing its job. All the contractions from here on just blur together in fear and something I wanted to run from.
Everything was different this time, not wrong or abnormal, just different for me. Mary realized it I think when she saw me not able to look at anyone, I couldn’t even look at Pruitt (and we were kissing and joking through kid #2’s birth). The music started pissing me off, so I made Pruitt change it to some peaceful OM chants then. Oh, and did I mention there was pain, not just really awful discomfort with a purpose menstrual crampy pain like I had with my other births. No, PAIN!!!!!!!!!!!! Mind numbing screaming PAIN! Pain like I have never felt before, not when I birthed Eva, not when I broke my ankle – not pain like injury pain – pain that was not definable.

She ordered me out of the tub. They (Mary, Nedra and Pruitt) got me out of the pool…and I remember this part vividly because I had been on my knees facing away from the room. Instead of turning around and walking out, I backed out with a lot of support. It was like rewind or something. I don’t know why I didn’t turn around, but I went backwards and then sat on the mattress on the floor beside the pool.
So, things were not the usual for me. Mary said something to Nedra at this point that I remember and remember thinking how I was so glad that she was our midwife again. She said that I don’t birth like this, that the way I was acting made her think something was going on and she needed me out of the pool to see what was happening. She said perhaps malpositioning of the baby. Nedra started checking the baby’s heart beat at what seemed to me an obsessive amount which sort of freaked me out, but not as much as all the PAIN.
PAIN, Pain, pain pain
pain
I started screaming. To me, it seemed like I screamed for 40 minutes straight. I was told that I only screamed a few times and that it was really only like 20 minutes from when I got out of the tub to when I held her.
Mary said when I started pushing that my baby’s hand was by the head and that it is fairly common. I screamed.
I could not not scream. I think I only said that ‘I cannot do this’ one time.

Pushing was well, hard to remember and describe. It hurt, everything hurt all the way through, not just here or there. It felt like my body was made of hurt in those minutes.
I felt like I was tearing in two and I tried more than once to put my hands down there at my vagina as if I would somehow be able to hold myself together from the explosion that was going on down there. Mary got stern and instructed Pruitt to restrain me if I tried it again. I didn’t.
She was doing some kind of what felt like intensive rearranging inside my body to get Talia out properly with her little fist coming out first, but not too fast. I was pushing in between contractions and very slowly with them. My throat was hurting from screaming and then, there was a head.
and finally a body and up on my body and a towel and crying and relief.
but still pain too.

Michael’s relief was so visible, the one time I did look at him during the pushing I couldn’t stay there. His eyes offered me no comfort. instead they only reflected my own panic and pain and fears. Nedra was constantly monitering that little heart beat while I screamed our child, kicking and hitting out of my body.

and now, There is Eva and Grandma coming.

“Eva, look look under the towel. Do we have a boy or a girl?”
“IT’S A GIRL BABY! Momma you were wrong, we have a GIRL. I was right”

Quinn was sound asleep in my mom’s arms. He can see her in the morning.