Autumn Thus Far

 Our sweet M. turned one! 

 Our last scraps of garden harvest for 2010 (well, except for the eggs)

 Sorry if you're squeamish. The Michigan Midwives Association just had an awesome conference on the female pelvis. We were fortunate to have real pelvic models. They were amazing. This one shows the female organs in amazing preserved detail. You can also see the pubis and sacrum very well. 

 Halloween! Little E. was Mario (complete with silly mustache!) and S. was a Zombie Prom Queen

Here's my sauerkraut crock. I remembered to take a picture half-way through scooping it out. I wanted to take a picture of the scum on top but forgot. I've never made it with red cabbage before, but isn't it pretty? The wooden bowl you see if actually a dough bowl to let your bread rise on. It's now a very dark shade of pink thanks to the cabbage!

So what else has been happening? A lot and then thankfully, less. 

I know I mentioned before that I was taking a sabbatical from midwifery for a while. I've been full steam ahead about birth work for a decade. Granted, when I started this work I had one child who was nearly two. Now I have three kids who are all 5 years apart. My life for the past two years (especially) has felt harried and rushed. Full of excitement, blessings, sadness, drama, laughter...but ever so rushed. 

A lot of folks think being a midwife is crazy for the on-call part of the job. That's the first thing people ask me about- the unpredicatability of being called away at any time. Yes, that part can be difficult but you get used to it. It's been a month since I've been off-call (but still finishing 2 week and 6 week postpartum visits here and there) and the biggest thing I notice is how trained my brain is to make contigency plans in case I am not around for my family. My brain's constant inner chatter: "If I'm not able to get the kids from school today, I can call K and see if she can get them for me. But shoot, S has a party at 6pm...Ok, so K can pick them up and then I can ask T if she can swing by and take S to her party. And dinner...screw it. They can order pizza..." Having that chatter and constant planning cease has been LOVELY.

The bigger thing however, is not having to hold 20-30 different women (and their families) in my head. Putting other families ahead of your own can lead to resentment and burn-out if you cannot quickly strike a balance. And I want to be a good midwife. There are skills and then there is compassion and empathy. A good midwife has all of those things. ONLY thinking/worrying about/praying for/ putting my energy into only my family is wonderful! It sounds dumb, like, OF COURSE you would only worry about your family, but a midwife doesn't. She thinks about what she said/did at her visits. She worries over someone's edema, their hemorrhoids, their inverted nipples, their cheating spouse, their inability to pay their midwife (and how can the midwife pay her own bills?) and so on. And then you hear at 9 o'clock at night, "Mom! I need to look up X on Google for my report that's due tomorrow!" and then another child, "I can't sleep! Can you read another story to me?" in a loud enough voice that wakes the baby that has just been nursed down to sleep. Which then makes you groan and roar because you really needed to finish up birth certificates, replying to emails and paying bills before hopefully having some intimate time with your hubby before the phones rings at 2am to go out the door to the next laboring Mama (and worrying about who will drive the kids to school in the morning?!). 

So for now, just my family in my head. Very nice.

Actually, I lie. I have a good friend due in February and a repeat client due mid-summer that I am being a midwife for. However, both women live within 6 blocks of my house. 

Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself. Ha! I need to do some kind of work to bring in income and I've had no luck with finding anything local and part time. I'm so used to being my own boss and putting my skills out there for others that my mind has been a-buzz with what sort of thing I can come up with next. And that's exciting, if not a little overwhelming. There continues to not be enough hours in the day for all that I want to do but that's okay. I am honoring that and doing my best. We shall see.

So I hope dear reader, that you did not swing by here to read about new and wonderful things from my garden and all the things I've preserved to feed my family with. Honestly, there just wasn't a whole lot of that this year. It's felt like I all I could to hang on and stay sane most days. I did can a lot of amazing basil-tomato sauce (and we've already eaten ALL of it!), loads of pesto, strawberry glaze,corn, dilly beans, pickles, pickled zucchini and banana peppers (thankfully, my kids love anything with vinegar in), sauerkraut and dried tomatoes and apples. That's IT. Much less than years before, but it's all good. 

My head right now is taking a break from garden things (until the seed catalogs begin to arrive in January!). Right now I'm thinking of DIY Christmas gifts for my family. Mostly, simple skirts, mittens made from recycled wool and cloth napkins from recycled fabrics/sheets, etc. 

My kids have noticed the down-side of me being off-call, as excited as they were initially to have me around more often: Mom not working means no extra money. Slimmer times for the whole family. When I was crazy-busy working, we ate out often because there was 1. money to do so and 2. no time to plan and make dinner at home on many days. I've been trying to discuss these changes positively because I don't want to worry them about adult finances, but I also want them to see and respect the different ways of living for our family and what we need to change accordingly. 

A friend of mine told me that she asked S (11 y.o.) how she liked me being off-call and S said, "Well, I guess it's nice to have my mom home and know she's not leaving the house in the middle of the night. We can do more things, except we CAN'T do more things because now we don't have the money to go anywhere!" This made me laugh. This is a very typical sort of thing for S to say. 

And Little E called me into his room a week or so ago after I had tucked him in for the night to ask me, "Not ALL of my Christmas presents will be homemade, will they?"

Yep, their world is being rocked just a little bit. :)

My husband and I laughed. We will be Ma and Pa Ingalls and gift each child an orange, a corn-cob doll and a shiny new penny! Woohoo!