Published November 19, 2012 by

Sustained < Life

I was reading 1 Kings 17 this morning… I’m not sure why, anyway, this is the story of the widow who feeds Elijah – the one whose bread and oil don’t dry up.

A few commentaries that Google produced talked pretty much about the ‘faith’ of the widow. Which is the story as I’ve pretty much always thought about it. I’m not sure this is entirely a story about ‘great faith’.

The widow is obedient, she is commanded by God (prior to Elijah getting there) to feed this guy. Then this miraculous never ending food supply thing happens. THEN her son gets sick and dies. Elijah beseeches God on her behalf and the son lives and that’s when we get this:

“Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”

This doesn’t seem like she had great confidence prior? It seems she was just getting by but wasn’t quite convinced it was God at work? (no?). Obedient yes? Great faith… not so sure?

This widow was given food when she was starving (one form of life) and then her son was given actual life (breath).

So do you then take a story like this metaphorically or at least in a messianic pointing sense and go with the widow as ‘us’, Elijah representing Jesus and there you have us: being sustained with food, and then Jesus advocating on our behalf and bringing actual life – a story of heaven – now but not yet?

or I’m a heretic. Perhaps she had great faith in God, just not in men… which is a whole other can of worms.

Christianity

Published October 16, 2012 by

Doing things I’d said I’d do

Recognising the characteristics of a Enneagram One, we don’t celebrate small achievements well. The inner critic is ‘strong with this one’. And so here is a small celebration of some things I’ve done recently that I have spent a long time not doing and a long time wanting to do.

1. Meet my neighbour

We moved to this house back in February. After living on a main road with almost never seeing our neighbours we are now in a court. A court off a court. You can’t get much more ‘communal’ than that. Not that it’s a very communal street at all. I had every intention of going to meet at least one of my neighbours and it never happened. You know when you leave these things a few months, you’re no longer ‘new’ and it just gets more and more awkward (in my head). About a month ago those neighbours moved out. The house has been empty since then. Yesterday I met Mark. He is my neighbour. He was pulling down the fence/fixing the pailings between our two houses. He came to the door to ask if it was fine to walk across our property. He and his wife (whom I have not met) are fairly similar in age to us. When I was heading out to get groceries I had another brief chat to him. They own the place and they are renovating. I have met my neighbour.

2. Composting

Another little thing. We live in an area where you get three bins: recycling, rubbish and green-waste/composting. We have major issues with our rubbish as in this region you get a half size bin and it is emptied once every two weeks. This is a great theory and works to reduce waste until you have a baby and nappies OR you go on holidays and forget to put your bin up. I am currently using our greenwaste bin to store excess (humbug). Regardless, our lovely rental came with it’s own, rather robust compost bin which I haven’t been using. When I first moved in I put some scraps in a bucket and erm, I am embarrassed to say that the bucket is still under the sink (I don’t want to know about it). But as of this week I have been using a small open top container on the bench and when it fills up I take it out. I am composting.

3. Journalling

As mentioned in my previous post, I have started journalling again, after a much too long hiatus. This also means I am spending somewhat regular time reading my bible and praying and reflecting a bit more on life. Something I used to do regularly and something I find I need to do, to main some kind of inner clarity.

4. Cooking

I am a lazy cook. I can cook okay, but we eat a lot of pasta. Pasta sauce often just from the jar. I have had a long standing goal to plan some meals and so consequently eat better, spend less. Yesterday I did just that. I roughly planned some meals. Went shopping. Sadly the local fruit and veg shop isn’t open Mondays – which I’d forgotten. But best of all: I didn’t get bogged down in a system (which is what always thwarts me… wanting to instigate some kind of comprehensive database so I can plug in the meal I want to cook and spit out a shopping list – which is still terribly appealing and I do have a marvelous app that will do so, it just need a lot of work to get it functional). Last night I made gnocchi  from scratch. And I have some other different food planned for the rest of the week. Nothing too daunting, just different. Geoff does probably most of the cooking, but I’d like to learn to cook better: some simple, tasty, healthy meals – variety. Two of my sisters are great at this and the other one is a pastry chef/librarian-in-training (I don’t even want to pretend to compete!).

I find that routine is truly helpful for instigating stuff in my life. With a baby now on a routine (and boy does she have a freakish inner clock) I am set up with regular blocks of time and if I intentionally do certain things in those blocks of time, things get done.

Enneagram One Experiments House Life Sustainable

Published October 12, 2012 by

Rolling half way

For the past… erm, three years (?) every time I start to ‘blog again’ it’s been a small disaster. It lasts one post, at best two and then fizzles and dies. I’ve lost my umph.

Around the same time I also lost my umph with journalling, but to my great delight and the help of some goal setting with girls group (Missio) I have started that again. And as our resident Ennegram 9 noted: the small goals work, the big ones are overwhelming. I have a small goal to start blogging again.

Be whelmed. Not overwhelmed. I am not promising anything. But my baby just learnt to roll (she got stuck on the second roll half way over – kind of like this blog) so I’d better start recording some stuff again before too much changes. That, and my lovely friend Sammy is blogging as are some of my childhood friends (or rather ‘aunts‘), it is inspiring.

Blogging

Published July 24, 2012 by

Underground Public Library

This is a truly excellent project. Photography and reading are two of my favourite things.

Check out the Underground New York Public Library.

I am currently reading: The Surgeon of Crowthorne (for bookclub) – what are you reading?

Blogging Books Photography

Published July 17, 2012 by

Claire’s Birth

I’m not sure birth was quite what I was expecting, it does however in many ways, play out precisely in the stages you talk about during prenatal classes. A universal western frustration with first births – from what I can gather, is about ‘when to go into hospital’. They say, ‘you’ll just know’ which is frustrating – but you kind of do just know… However much you can’t prepare for birth there are things that you can do and we are extremely happy with the choices we made, including our original decision of (hoping) to have our baby at a Birth Centre rather than via the standard hospital system. Birth Centres accept non-complicated pregnancies and aim for minimal intervention re. drugs, which is essentially better for the baby – there are also some great perks such as the partner being able to stay the night  nd a more ‘home-like’ environment. If you want an epidural you get moved out into the main birth suites. If you get gestational diabetes, you’re out. The pregnancy wasn’t devoid of issues – including some strange ones like low platelets and two trips to the ER but on the whole things went smoothly.

Even if we could afford private healthcare, the idea of an obstetrician didn’t really float my boat. My sister is a midwife and I am confident in the care that they offer. Midwifery (simplistically) is a happy medium between doctor and doula. It didn’t bother me at all that I saw different midwives almost every appointment, I kind of liked it better that way. Going public barely cost us anything and the care and service was exceptional. On the other end of the scale, we’re not home-birth kind of people at all, I’d rather have the medical backup if required. The Birth Centre was a great middle ground. We’re not hippies… we’re nerds.

Claire graced us in coming essentially a day after her due date (the second date – and the one the midwives were running with). My revised guess the week leading up was that she’d come on the 29th, and I wasn’t too far wrong. I did spend a fair amount of time sitting forward/scrubbing floors etc. in an attempt to a) speed things along as I was getting bored b) she was partially posterior and I was hoping she would turn. I also entirely completed my ‘to-do’ list including the one last random DIY – which I had banked as completely optional.

A few days before Claire was born I was researching birth photography online to give Geoff some idea of the kind of photos I’d like him to take and I came across Spikey Hedgehog Photography, I enquired, entirely not expecting to have anything of the sort happen so close to the baby being due but because I was curious. A back and forth email conversation in the early hours of the morning and Jill was on-board, I met her the next day.

Labor kicked in about 3am on Wednesday morning (27th June) we decided that Geoff should stick around at home rather than head in to work. We spent the day watching Grand Designs, eating from our stockpile of snacks and timing contractions on the iPhone. Things stalled early morning, frustratingly, and didn’t pick up again until late afternoon. I used a heat pack and we put the TENS machine on pretty early and kept that going. Such a smart decision to hire one, I cannot recommend them enough! So we stuck it out. By evening – whenever I got into the shower things would speed up considerably (between 2-4 minutes). We called the hospital and they said wait a bit to see how things went and come on in when we thought we should. A few hours later we decided to head in, they weren’t terribly busy and we thought things could keep progressing with the use of water.

Things slowed down again with the change of location.  Once there we tried the shower again and sure enough things picked up. We hit a shift change pretty soon after our arrival, which worked really well. I knew the first midwife from a few clinic visits but hadn’t really met the second. The familiarity of the first midwife was great was she is lovely and was perfect for us to get settled. I was praying for someone through labour who would be a good fit for us and the shift change bought pretty well exactly the kind of midwife I needed, not overly saccharine, respectful and present but not in our faces.

Jill showed up not long after we arrived and met Geoff, I probably vaguely acknowledged her but that was kind of it. You’re not terribly interested in concentrating on anything much except contractions. I alternated between the shower and sitting on a birth ball (yeah a gym ball people – nothing more special than that) as I preferred the TENS to the shower – although I’m not sure I actually let anyone know that verbally. Geoff was extremely wonderful throughout. I was pretty vocal – more so than I thought I would be.

After who knows how many hours the midwife suggested I try the bath, and I remember wishing it would hurry up and fill up faster as I was pretty desperate for a change. The bath was not the immediate mind blowing relief I was hoping for – I think I thought it might magically take a lot of the pain away, it did work really well, just not quite as beautifully as I unrealistically hoped. It was great having the room for Geoff to be there too to help hold me up – along with the rail. We were both exhausted and I felt Geoff doze off a few times (apparently it happens a lot with that room… warm and comfortable – not quite your Peninsula Hot Springs…) and it was goodly (sic) distracting to have to pay attention in keeping both keep him and myself awake.

At 4am my waters broke spontaneously – in the bath, another thing I was extremely happy about not having happen prior to hospital as the risk of induction and the use of intervention jumps if your waters break and things don’t move. Things progressed a bit more rapidly then. I had extremely bad back pain – it turns out Claire was posterior – which I didn’t really realise at the time. The midwife suggested sterile water injections as an option but aptly warned me – this was something I had discussed with my sister, who is a midwife only a week before. Foolishly (or wisely) I requested them. Sterile water injections are four injections given simultaneously with a contraction. They are literally just water beads injected under the surface of your skin – and work on nerve gateway principles and block pain. They work insanely well. I had two midwifes during a contraction. I had no idea I could make that kind of noise. They hurt. They hurt. They hurt. They work. Geoff marks this as possibly the most terrifying part of the whole labour. They tell you they hurt like a bad bee-sting… this was some kind of mutant bee.

Things moved pretty quickly after that. I did get really ‘pushy’ quite early. Too early. They got me out of the bath and back to the room where they put me on a drip as the babies heart rate was quite high as I was dehydrated despite my best attempts to drink. Red Powerade makes for nasty vomit… I got stuck at 7cm dilated. I couldn’t pee. They put a catheter in. Thank goodness. You’re not meant to like these things but glory it was good. The concentration of transition and having to breathe through and not push was genuinely horrible. The catheter meant things could actually keep moving.

The pushing bit of having a baby is not the worst bit. I’m not sure why this bit is always understood as the worst. It’s difficult, it’s bloody painful but you get a chance to rest and genuinely stop between pushes. It’s helpful having the end finally in sight and yet frustrating when you think each push is going to be ‘it’ but it doesn’t quite get you there.

Claire Matilda arrived at 8.11am on the 28th of June. She was posterior – face out (a real treat for the midwives, Geoff and Jill – not so for me). Geoff knew she was a girl when he saw the top half of her face. It was emotionally foreign and wonderful and entirely overwhelming. She was tiny and amazing.

I delivered the placenta physiologically (no drugs again) despite being offered an injection – which I half accepted and then figured I’d got this far, I might as well go the whole way, far less rewarding this bit – you kind of just want your uterus to stop working and to sleep/enjoy your baby. Prior to birth I was rather scared of tearing. I tore. I asked them if it was going to hurt – I’m not sure why I didn’t factor in that you get a local before they stitch you up but it was an odd (and somewhat ridiculous) relief. I did use gas then and the local and it wasn’t bad – the recovery hasn’t been bad either (all things considered).

And then we were. Tired. But new. With a little girl 3.5kg, 51cm long, a head of hair and little mole on the right side of her face.

Such a huge thanks to Geoff for his incredible support, to Zoe especially and Christina and the Mercy Family Birth Centre for their experience and wisdom and to Jill for her stunning photographs and help through the whole labour. I am so grateful we had the opportunity to record this life changing event.

It is two and a half weeks on. The days are kind of blurry – which I think keeps you sane. The Tour de France is on and helpful in keeping company at 1am. People have bought us so many meals. We have been out and about a bit, to grandparents, to bookclub, to the shops, to church.

We are adjusting, and loving it. She make hilarious faces and cute ‘smiles’ and has a deep cry. Breastfeeding sucks (pardon any pun, but it does) despite probably going considerably well.

She’s good. It is good.

Baby Life Photography