love at first sight

Lately, I seem to be spending my Sunday afternoons meeting with babymakers.  Definitely a lovely way to spend a Sunday as these are some of my favourite people :)

Today, during one such meet up, I found myself giving the 'love at first sight' speech. (lucky for me, I was singing to the choir!) Often new parents, or about to be new parents, are advised, by well-intentioned friends and family, to avoid letting baby 'run their lives'.  "Don't adjust your schedule", "Don't cater to the baby", "Don't let the baby be in charge".  

This sort of talk kind of makes me crazy.  Just a little.  Here's my reply in short;

When a human being (not a baby by the way, a whole entire human being, who will grow up to be an adult, just. like. you.) is born, he/she is born with a brain that is about 25% of it's potential adult size. Compare this to most other mammals that are born with brain sizes of 60-90% of their adult brain size.  What is this 25% doing?  

Surviving.  That's it.  

A baby is not born with some evil plot to come along and change your world, or some devilish desire to piss you off.  It's learning how to see, smell, move it's limbs.  Basic stuff.  A baby that needs to eat or be cleaned, or be rocked to sleep in the manner to which it has been accustomed for nine months, is not trying to 'be in charge'. 

It's surviving. 

If a baby is crying, it needs something.  That is all. So when we bend ourselves to answer that need, we are not being 'controlled', we are parenting.  When we choose not to answer the needs of our babies, we don't 'win' some power struggle between ourselves and our child.  We only let them know that we can't be relied upon, that we may not answer when they need us.  Do this enough times and their tiny little brains will take note of THAT.  There is no power struggle to be had with an infant, it doesn't have the capacity for some complicated emotional battle.  It's too busy surviving. Breathing.   

And if that line of thinking isn't enough to squash the fear of being controlled by an infant, think about this:  When we meet our newborn for the first time, we fall in love.  We fall in love like no other time that we fall in love. (oh I know that there are bunches of people out there who are saying 'nope not me, I didn't get that ooey-gooey feeling.  I'm not talking about that)  

Define love however you like, whatever your definition of love is, that happens when you meet that newly born offspring of yours.  On sight.  Sure some of that is all the yummy oxytocin swimming around in your body, some of that is a basic instinct to protect our own.  Some of it is something we probably can't/don't need to define.  Whatever it is, however it looks, from the moment that person is born, we would throw ourselves in front of a bus to save it's life, we feel compelled to create a perfect space for this being. 

Think about any other time you have fallen in love.  What does the typical new love look like?  Do we not adjust ourselves?  Change our schedules, bend and move to the needs of the other?  Find compromise and concession for each other?  Is it with begrudging? Or is it with joy and excitement? 

When we fall in love any other time, we want to spend all our time with that person, learn all about them, discover them.  We, for sure, 'cater' to them and let that really powerful and delightful feeling of love 'control' us.  Why wouldn't we?  What the heck are we all doing here anyhow, if not loving each other?  

Why would it be any different when we fall in love with this amazing new person 

that we have created? 

Go ahead and love your kid, says I.  Pick them up, love them and joyfully adjust yourself to be able to meet their needs.  Change your schedule, give some things up, take some new things on. Adding a whole new person into your life isn't something that needs to be managed or controlled, it's a time for growing and for exploring places you've never gone before.  

Do it with wild abandon and enjoy the ride!

for these things....

for these things I am grateful:

the Universe and her infinite wisdom

oxygen and the ability to breathe it, deeply and slowly

love and the capacity to dwell in it, roll around in it, believe in it, and give it

my children and the soul filling  joy those two entities bring to me

parents; mine, being one & being witness to it's birth

friends; all of them and the unique way each one touches me, 
makes and shapes me

location; awaking daily in a land of grace, beauty and freedom

learning and that I have the luxury to spend time at it

work; and that I never feel like I am 'at' it

the path so far, even the rocky bits, the twisted parts, the foggy patches.

All of it.


these things I am grateful for, today and everyday....

200 Hours

Six weeks into my final term of this 2 year remedial massage therapy program, (at the Massage Therapy College of Manitoba) and I have completed the required 200 hours of practice time!  Yay.  Of course I will continue to practice, (otherwise how can I expect to pass all these exams?) but it's nice to have the 200 behind me.  In addition to this 200 hours of both supervised and unsupervised, (but in school) practice time, we also work our way through four rounds of clinic, three different outreach programs, at least two events, a thirty hour (or more) practicum and a ten hour case study.  This adds up to an additional 200 hours of massage time with the general public. Four hundred massages and counting. Wow hey?!?

An intense two years to be sure, but well worth it as we end up feeling confident and comfortable in assessing and treating musculoskeletal based concerns by the time we graduate.  Good news for the graduate, Great news for the public ;)  It is astounding how much there is to learn about the body, astounding.  Daily I am blown away.  Why we spend any time looking for aliens or any other spacial bodies, is beyond me, considering what we have yet to learn about our own beings.  

I have been entranced by the human body, it's structure and function over these past almost two years.  Granted, I came into this with very little knowledge of anatomy and physiology, having always just accepted and believed that bodies work.  What little I did have going for me, centered almost entirely around the process of childbearing and delivery, and even that was less text bound and more experiential.  One day in my freshman term, I met my radius.  I was captivated.  Never in all the time I had been alive (and it feels like it's been awhile now haha), had I thought to wonder how it is that my forearm can pivot like it does.  It's actually an amazing little bit of machinery we have there.  Did you know that the ulna doesn't move, and the radius does all the dancing about?  Go ahead feel your bones ;)  There is a special ligament, positioned ever so cleverly, that allows free spinning of the radial head to accommodate that fancy twisting we do with our forearms. Good thing too, cause if we only had anatomical positioning (palms up folks), there would be no keyboarding!  It was during freshman term that I realized I am a bit of a bone junkie.... the skeleton is just the ultimate puzzle! (and if you know me, you know I love puzzles)

That same term we had to learn all sorts of interesting things about the way the body works, aka: physiology.  One of my favourite aspects of this learning, was and is the sheer beauty of the way we are.  There is gorgeousness to be found in the design and symmetry all throughout our beings, down to the cellular level.  During our study of how red blood cells are transported around (limited learning I might add, this is just to give us a basic understanding of what is happening inside), I discovered the following factoid in my A& P text:

      "Hemoglobin is made up of the protein globin bound to the red heme pigment.  Each heme group bears an atom of iron set like a jewel in its center.  A hemoglobin molecule can transport four molecules of oxygen.  A single red blood cell contains about 250 million hemoglobin molecules, so each of these tiny cells can scoop up about 1 billion molecules of oxygen!" (do I need to officially reference my textbook in my in my blog? Human Anatomy & Physiology-Marieb & Hoehn)

Did you catch that?  We have jewels in our core and we are moving around trillions of molecules of oxygen with every breath we take. (breathing... a whole other subject of import) The average red blood cell takes about 60 seconds to complete a circuit, the circulatory system, you know our whole body.

60 seconds.  Trillions.  Astounding.

These are just a couple of the cool things I have discovered in the hours and hours of sitting at a table, wait until you hear about the stuff I have learned while working at the table for the last 400 hours :)

Trails!

"Come on kids, let's go on an Adventure!"  exciting words :)  Every now and then I will pack up the kids and off we go, spontaneously and randomly.  They love it.  This was the biggest 'adventure' we've done to date.  I had been kicking around the idea of going somewhere for an overnight on the long weekend for a few days.  I mentioned to my mom that I might see if there were any available rooms in Riding Mountain National Park. I've always wanted to go.  She seemed interested in coming as well.  Saturday morning she called and pointed out that it was pretty grey out and rain was predicted.  I was fairly tired from having stayed up WAY too late on Skype with a buddy. I had not told the kids anything specific, although Josh knew we were possibly doing 'something'.  I paused.
Then I decided to just call and see if I could find a room.  The girl who answered at the first place I called, Clear Lake Lodge, said in a surprised voice "yes we do have one room available"

:)

And so it was to be.  We packed up overnight bags, I LEFT (brace yourself, this is shocking!) the dishes in the sink and we headed off.  Ok, it might not have been quite that efficient, but we did do those things.  We stopped at Safeway and I grabbed a bunch of picnic type food, we gassed up and then we were off.  As soon as I said we were going on an overnight adventure, Emily wanted to know where we were going, but when I asked Josh if he wanted to know, he said "no".  That about sums up the difference between my two children ;)

I wanted to play Willie Nelson's "on the road again", as that is the song that always runs through my brain when heading out on a road trip, thanks to the countless road trips of my youth and my parent's habit of popping that TAPE (heck I remember when they played 8 tracks! ahhhh) in at the outset each and every time.  We would be singing the chorus before we reach the end of our street!  Alas, I do not have that particular song on CD, something to work on before the next road trip adventure.  After almost 3 hours of driving, and only one pit stop (at a CO-OP that is NOT Red River CO-OP sheesh), we arrived at the gates of Riding Mountain National Park.  We found our Lodge, checked in, got the grand tour and decided to head out for a walk about town.  It was very windy, and we even got a little bit sprinkled on at the end of the stroll, but what an incredibly cute little place!  We walked out to end of the pier, saw two bride and groom pairs being photographed, observed several people fishing off the end of the pier and unfortunately stumbled across a dead pelican on the beach.  We found the Visitor Center, which was really good as I picked up the Xplore booklet, which lead to all sorts of fun the following day.

Week One of Twenty

It's late August, the kids are still enjoying summer vacation, the city still feels hazy and lazy, but a few of us are back in full swing!  This was the first week of my final term of a very long two year program, the goal of which is to produce viable remedial massage therapists.

What a full and exciting week it has been!  I attended the last of my 'summer babies' birth on Saturday, arriving home just 24 hours before I was due to be at a sporting event as a therapist.  Incredible timing.  The event was a marathon in Lockport, we had a tent set up by the river, and ended up working with a fantastic physiotherapist who works out of a Stonewall clinic. The four of us were in a really nice rhythm with each other, had a happy little vibe going on. The physiotherapist was happy enough with our work that she invited us to come work with her team at the MS Biking to the Viking event this weekend coming up!
Great opportunity, nice connection.  It all came together very easily, as I have noticed the best things seem to do.  

Then Monday, back in class and right to it! We spent this week on the hip, reviewing, learning and working on new stuff.  Psoas Release anyone?  How about those Glut muscles? Done and Done.  Seems to me that Gluteus Medius needs more attention than it gets. Our instructor showed us a simple and useful way to strengthen this important and undervalued muscle.  I'll see what I can do about making some sort of a clear diagram or written description in a later post.

We also had Remedial Exercise class, which looks like it is going to live up to my expectations.  Yay!  I am glad to hear we are starting with a focus on flexibility.  He also laid out the Fitness principles for us in a really clear way, definitely post worthy as well ;)  Principles that have application on a broad level.  So  much of what was discussed has direct application to the process of childbirth and I appreciate that sort of connectivity.  

This whole week has felt like one 'yes' marker after another, in terms of the Universe giving me a nod that I'm facing the right way. Moment after moment just clicked into place, perfect connections at perfect times, words being said that had just been said. (unbeknownst to the second sayer).  It felt like everything was a yes this week.  Even the hard stuff, was hard with a positive and attainable conclusion.

Odd little connections too.  Emily is in drama camp this week, and she is playing princess Echo.  A greek nymph, from whom we got the echo found in the hills.  One of the very few baby girls I witnessed being born this summer?  Named Echo.  Never had I heard that name before, now my daughter is that character... odd. Lots of little markers like that.

As I was walking in to class this morning, I passed by the building that appears to house a bunch of women who are coping with either emotional or mental challenges (or both) of some kind.  Usually one or two will ask for change and another one or two will wave or say hi, or want to have a fairly non sensical, but non threatening chat.  This morning there was one lady sitting out front, with a big grin on her face, she called out a  cheerful 'hello' and I sang it back to her.  She grinned even more, so did I.  And I thought to myself;
"it doesn't have to be hard, in fact, I don't think it's supposed to be.  So many people 'endure' life and all it's                challenges.   Fighting to get through each day, and wearing that survival as success.  Really though, if we just  allow life to happen, flow with our own current instead of trying to manage our path, there is no fighting or surviving.  There is instead living."
Something like that.  Here is this woman, in a situation most people would think devastating, and yet she had a bigger, more genuine smile on her face, in response to a hello, than most of the people I see on the street rushing about 'living'.  Always, it's what you choose.

Then during our business class, our instructor said "the more that we make sure everyone around us is okay and taken care of, the more we will be ok and taken care of"  Bingo!  Just be our most awesome selves, take good care of our fellow humans, and live our lives.  Fully and with Joy.  It was a good class, I'm looking forward to more.

Then there was clinic.  My first client?  A guy named Ed, who was eager to chat.  What did we chat about?  Well health and health care of course, as is almost always the case in clinic.  Turns out his daughter is an RN.... in one of the maternity wards in town.  Of course.  I didn't pursue trying to figure out who she was exactly, it doesn't matter, just that was enough. If she happened to be one of the many nurses I worked with over the summer, it would not be any more significant.  The point being made to me is that I am facing the right direction..... good enough for me!

eleven eleven

This morning my little girl and I were hanging out in our favourite place, bed!  We were having some cuddle time, some play time and some chat time.  She noted the time, according to the digital clock, as she was very preoccupied with getting to the park at a specific time, to meet her friend.  That led to a comment about how funny it would be when the clock said 7 11! Then she made a knock knock joke out of it.  Which happens a lot these days.  It made as little sense as most of them do.

So then I told her that when it was 11 11, she could make a wish! That little bit of information led to the following delightful conversation.

"you can make a wish too!  then we will have two wishes"

I certainly can

"I know what I'm going to wish for, do you?" slight pause "I can tell you what I'm going to wish for because you probably already know, so it's ok!"

yes it's ok

"I would wish for it to be 12 after 2 so we could go to the park" (except of course she meant between 12 and 2, since that is when her friend was due to be at the park, between.  She had it a bit jumbled)

That's a good wish.  I know you are excited. (and for the record, even though I ended up at a birth, her most awesome brother did take her to the park around noon and they were still there when I got home)

"I have a good idea mom!  when I am done school I can have a store!  I can call it 11 11 and people can come and buy wish things"

that is an excellent idea, what would they be able to buy?

eyes wide and sparkling "oh! wishing things!"

(I can see I need to help), like fairy dust?

"OH Yes! fairy dust"

and unicorns?

"Yes, but not real ones, just stuffies"

definitely not real ones, and 4 leaf clovers?

"4 leaf clovers!, but they are hard to find, so we might have to make them.  And those white dandelions that are fluffy.  I would have to be very careful getting them to the store (puts her little hand around the pretend dandelion she is holding). OH and clocks, when I am all done school I will get all the clocks and have them at my store.  And I will give the clocks away for free, so that anytime a person wants to make a wish, they can wish on 11 11 and then they will want to come to my store and buy more wishes!"

WHAT?  has my 6 year old just come up with a marketing plan?  That involves a lost leader concept?  is she actually going to rule the world one day?  :)  Love it.

We babble on about the limitless possibilites of a store called 11 11 and then she decides it's high time we got up and made cookies, or woke up her brother or you know, something!!

So if you ever come across a store called 11 11 (you know in about 12 years, because she does plan on finishing high school before starting her empire), be sure to stop in and say hi to the little girl who believes in fairy dust and fluffy dandelions <3

I believe in people

Someone said this to me recently and my heart hoorahed with joyful agreement. What a beautiful and simple way to sum up the essence of everything I feel and think. I have always described myself as a 'believer'. Sometimes idealistically so and occasionally to my detriment. But always quite firmly.

This way of expressing that believing, those two little words tacked on 'in people', is the rest. It fleshes out that description perfectly. I do believe in other things, the earth and her mother, the universe and her karmic wisdom, the sense and order of all things living, but it's humanity that captures me. The power and fragility of the human spirit. The strength of thought, the weakness of love, and vice versa.

I am so very fortunate to be able to see up close how people can be believed in. Both during the birth of a new human and now too during the reconnection of body and spirit in a person striving to find health and balance. Time and again I am astounded at how worthy people are of my belief.

I prance about saying, a little cheekily, 'anything and everything is possible'. Not so secretly, I believe this to be true. Can't you see it in the steps you've taken? The path you've walked? Who hasn't found themselves, at some point, needing to believe? Relying on whatever faith it is that they have, in whatever it is they believe.

Even when a person runs out of faith, has nothing left, there is always a glimmer somewhere in the rubble. There is always a way.
One only has to believe.

I miss eggplant!

I am eyeball deep in studying, trying desperately to catch up on long overdue 'projects', balancing solo parenting with me-ness and ALL that... so of course I have a wild dream about eggplant!

What else? haha

There I am sound asleep, dreaming in full colour, something I don't recall doing much of in the last few years, and what is it I recall when I awake?

Somewhere in my dream I ended up at the grocery store, a dimly lit, almost lounge like grocery store. I am wandering the aisles when I run into a woman named Oxana, who is shopping in her nightgown, hair tangled, harassed and frantic looking.

She is a new mom, she is my client. We are happy to see each other and begin pushing our carts in the same direction. She tells me rapidly and somewhat covertly, that there is a woman pursuing her.

Oh! and there is that woman now.... a squat and somewhat sinister looking person, with wisps of wirey grey hair escaping her babushka (I'm not saying she is Russian, it's just the only word I know to describe that handkerchief type of hair holder), she is watching us intently. We duck down an aisle and then round out to the produce section.

This is where it gets interesting... and odd, and funny. Are you paying attention?

We find ourselves at a massive display (actually two) of the largest looking eggplants I have ever seen. There is something odd about these eggplants though, they are sort of floppy and kind of bloated. When I pick one up, it's soft, but not in a squishy way, or an over-ripe way, rather it's more like how a blister feels. I don't know what to make of these eggplants, this can't be right, but oh I want one so bad. (there haven't been any eggplants for ages and I miss them terribly) I start systematically touching them, looking for one that feels as an eggplant should. What though of Oxana? I suddenly notice that she is plunging her hands into the eggplants! Literally ripping them open with her hands.

I look at her with a question in my face, she says "how else will we know if they are okay?"

Indeed.

Inside the eggplants it looks like there are little eggplant coloured hearts.. odd

And in my peripheral vision? Yeah that's right, the stalker woman...

Then I wake up.

Thank goodness right? I mean really, what is it all about? I have never known anyone named Oxana, where did that come from? Stalkers and eggplants with edema? Have I lost my subconscious mind?

Or maybe the message is; if you want to know if it's okay, just plunge your hands right in....

you decide

Having recently attended birth number 21, I am prompted to revisit 'the blog' :)

Every birth I attend brings as much to me (if not more), as I to it. The biggest gift I receive each and every time is the reminder that life is in and of itself, a gift. When I see a woman, having overcome odds that the majority of us can only discuss in philosophical terms, birthing her child with strength, realization, tears and determination, I am humbled. When I see a partner bend and stretch themselves to match that strength, fill the need, I am humbled.

Sometime in the last year, in the days following a very intense labour and birth experience, I was waiting at the corner of a busy intersection, chatting with someone from the college, when we were suddenly startled by a loud, long and angry honking. We looked in the direction of the noise and both realized we were witnessing... well, nothing.

Someone was having an enormously difficult time managing their patience in rush hour traffic and had decided to share it with everyone in the vicinity.

We both shook our heads, he said 'that was a rude honking',

I replied 'and unnecessary'. He agreed. I made the comment that it is hard for me to relate to that sort of reaction to traffic, considering what I see people overcome in birth.

He replied with 'I guess that would keep things in perspective! Life is relative'...

Life is relative. One of my favourite expressions. Every single thing, is relative.

Almost anything can be made to look less challenging when compared to something more challenging. And there is always something more challenging.

Dude having a melt down because of rush hour vs rape survivor joyfully birthing her baby.

not only is life relative, it's what you make it.

you decide.