The thing about making unusual choices is, people like to question those choices. Often in a tone best described as mildly accusatory. You know what I’m talking about. You’re doing what? Why would you do that?

So I’m sort of thrilled that homebirth is more mainstream now than it was ten years ago, when we were expecting Abigail.

Back then, I fielded all kinds of interesting comments on the topic. More than once, other women told me I was sure to run to the hospital once I went into labor. “You’ll change your mind, you’ll see,” they would say. “Or else we won’t need you to tell us when your baby’s born, we’ll have heard you screaming from here!”

Um. Okay then.

That didn’t happen, obviously. The changing my mind thing, or the screaming thing. And now, having given birth at home once or twice (or four times), I can’t imagine choosing anything else under normal circumstances.

If you were to ask, I would tell you all the things I love about homebirth, and about all our different births. I’d tell you how my opting for home over hospital isn’t about avoiding something so much as it’s about preferring something else. I’d tell you about how my experience is normal. Not universal, but normal. Not a fluke. Not just a lucky break. I would talk and talk and talk and talk, if you asked. (If you didn’t ask, I’d mostly leave you alone.) But I don’t really think of myself as a homebirth zealot.

Here’s the deal. It’s fine with me if you don’t want to have a homebirth. My goal isn’t to convince other people to do what I do. In fact, I think the issue of where and how to give birth is one of reproductive freedom, and thus I’m not interested in telling anyone else what to do.

But what I am in favor is this: I am in favor of all pregnant and birthing women being treated ethically, in any setting. I am in favor of women having access to accurate and complete information. I am in favor of women having the opportunity to use that information to make choices about their care. I am in favor of mothers being valued and respected as autonomous individuals, capable of making good decisions about their bodies and their babies. I am opposed to fear tactics, and to coercion, in any setting, with any care provider.

That all seems pretty reasonable to me. Not even terribly unusual. At least I hope not.

Related posts:
More about why I choose homebirth.
A little bit about Owen’s birth.
And Sadie’s.

Don’t you hate how something like a paper cut across your knuckle can make your whole day just a little more annoying? But just a little bit. Because other than this pesky stinging-and-bleeding-when-I-bend-my-finger thing, today is going to be fabulous. (Do you hear me, today? BE FABULOUS. Thanks.)

That is all.

I think—I think!—the kids are getting better. There are no fevers anywhere. Most everyone has stopped coughing. Audrey and Sadie both went to bed at a reasonable hour Saturday and Sunday nights. (All last week, they would sleep and wake at unpredictable intervals around the clock. “Bedtime” meant very little.) Sadie has stopped telling us that her ears hurt.

These all seem like good signs. I probably shouldn’t be listing them out loud like this in order not to jinx the thing, but we may be back to normal someday soon here! You were right, it didn’t last forever! (Unless it gets worse again. Which I understand it could. But I really very much hope it won’t. Oh please oh please oh please.)

Now I’m bursting with energy to Do Things, since we haven’t been out of the house in days. Not that I have anything specific in mind. We could… go to the park! Except it’s supposed to rain for the next couple of days. We could… go to the park when it stops raining! Yeah, that’s all I got right now. Give me a couple more nights’ sleep and maybe I’ll be able to come up with something better.

The constant is change. We all know this, right? I’m trying to remind myself.

This is not forever, this week of sick children.

Sadie has progressed from sleeping on my lap all day, to being cranky and miserable and awake all day. Not welcome progress exactly, but one imagines it’s a step closer to healthy, and thus necessary. Audrey no longer has a fever but still needs steam periodically to quell the coughing. They both sleep at night, but intermittently and not mostly at the same time. Which means I do not sleep at night. But it is not forever.

It does begin to seem like forever, like I must have made some egregious parenting error that led them to give up sleep and regular meals and normal play in favor of coughing and runny noses and ear pain. I know, on some rational level, that it’s just germs. Very slow-going germs, but germs nonetheless. And yet reality, the kind that existed last week, seems more and more like a dream. This, this week of moving from one discomfort to the next, begins to seem like all that ever will be, the only thing to be believed.

This is not our new normal. This is temporary. Soon they will be playful again, cheerful again, able to run around again. Soon I will be able to walk from one room to the next without my momentary absence causing anybody to melt into a puddle of tears. (Mostly.)

Nothing lasts forever, least of all this.

I am trying to remember.

We didn’t end up going to see the midwife after all. She was at a birth, so we rescheduled. Instead we took Sadie to the pediatrician and discovered that, while her lungs are clear (yippee!), she has infections in both her ears (boo!).

That’s okay. Ear infections we can handle. I assume. None of our kids has ever actually had one before, but I’m sure they will go away ever so quickly. (Right? Come on, say yes. And/or give me your favorite ear infection remedies.)

Did you all see this article? Maternal deaths in California have tripled in the past ten years. That’s the most significant rise in deaths since the 1930s. For comparison: it’s currently safer to give birth in Kuwait or in Bosnia than in California.

[via pushedbirth]

And on that note, I’m off to visit my midwife this morning, sickly toddler and mostly unsick older children in tow. This should be an adventure.

ME: All four children are now in bed and asleep! They will sleep all night long and wake up happy and healthy as clams!

DANE: Clams?

ME: It made sense in my head before I said it.

DANE: Sure.

ME: I shall now sit down to watch figure skating, even though the competition is over and I already know who won. Still it will be fun to watch people spin on ice! [Gets laptop and snack. Sits down.]

CHILD #4: I am no longer asleep! Hello! Come put me back to bed, please. [Translated version. Actual version sounds like: Waahaahahahaaaaaaah!]

ME: But no! You are sick! And you have finally stopped coughing so you can sleep, which you really should!

CHILD #3: Actually, I am not so much asleep anymore either. [See translation caveat, above.]

ME: What? But you are also sickish! Sleep, sleep!

CHILD #2: You know what’s funny? I’m awake too! And it’s the middle of the night!

ME: Not actually funny.

CHILD #4: Waaaaaah!

CHILD #2: I will now attempt to involve you in a long and wide-ranging conversation even though I just woke up! And it’s the middle of the night!

ME: You were recently sick. Sleep is good for that. Everyone! Back. To. Sleep.

CHILD #3: Waaaaaah!

CHILD #1: [snores.]

ME: Goodbye, idea of watching figure skating. Some other time.

CHILD #2: I can see in the dark! Probably because I ate more carrots than usual today.

After I wrote about the leading-up-to-valentines fun for yesterday’s post, here’s how we actually spent the weekend: sitting up all night Saturday with both Audrey and Sadie, who were feverish and coughing and congested. Well, not the whole night. They finally fell asleep for good around 3:00am. And then they woke up for the morning at 7:00.

Sadie, around 1:00am, started wheezing; luckily neither Dane nor I had anything more pressing to do than to hold her upright so she could breathe while she tried to sleep. (She wouldn’t agree to sit in the steamy bathroom, so we were glad that holding her upright helped.) Sunday their fevers were not nearly as bad, and the wheezing hasn’t made a comeback, so we’re feeling pretty good about the week ahead. But still.

Given that it was Valentine’s weekend and all, this had me thinking about the nature of love—specifically, about how love is a choice, not just a feeling. And it’s a choice we get to make over and over again. Not so much in the middle of the night—that was hardly a choice, they needed our attention and it was easy to give, since they were little and miserable and pathetic.

But Sunday we grown-ups were tired from all the nighttime wakefulness. And today is sure to be more of the same. This is where I get to choose. Today I can be cranky and slow, because I really am tired. I can sigh and groan and say no a lot. Or I can choose to love. I’m not sure exactly what that will look like, but I’m guessing it will involve less focus on me so tired wah and more focus on other people. (Hey, I didn’t say it was going to be an easy choice. Especially given that I secretly—or not-so-secretly—would rather spend the day asleep on the couch.)

Lack of sleep: not my choice. How I respond to being tired, how I react to the people around me all day today: my choice. I decide. Will today be love? Or will today be me, reacting to circumstances beyond my control? My choice. Here goes.

(This is a crazy-long post. It’s not mushy, but it is inclusive. Which in this case just means long.)

Dear Abigail, Owen, Audrey, and Sadie,

Sometimes I think Valentine’s Day is more fun to celebrate with kids than with grown-up people.

Drinking tea and doing crafts. What’s not to love?

There’s the plotting and planning: what to make? where to hide it once it’s made? and how to put your grand vision down onto a folded half-sheet of paper?  There’s the week-long frenzy of crafting (scissors! colored paper! needles and thread! glue! coloredpencils-markers-crayons-watercolors-pastels!) to produce, in the end, one perfect valentine apiece. And all of this makes you happy, which makes me happy, too.

Embroidering the truth. Or the valentines.

But I know that what you’d like, more than this note from me, more than a box of chocolates that I’d only let you eat one of at a time (unless you’re Audrey or Sadie, in which case: none), more than a bouquet of flowers (though you think those are pretty cool, especially if you get to find them and pick them yourself)—more than any of that, I know that what you’d like is for me to STOP WRITING THAT LETTER ALREADY MOM and come have more crafty fun with you. So I will. Because I love you.

Yes, I hold a monster book in my lap while doing needlework. Doesn’t everybody?

Love,
The Mom

Dear Sadie especially,

I know you won’t remember this when you’re bigger, so I’m going to write it down. In our family, we like to sing songs but make up our own words to them. (That part you’ll remember when you’re older. Because we’re not likely to have stopped by then. In fact, by then, we’ll probably be driving you crazy with it.) This week, you’ve started doing it, too. I don’t know if you’re inventing lyrics or just repeating what you think we mean, but either way, I like it.

You’ve sung repeatedly that you are my sunshine (“I am your sunshine, your little sunshine, and we are happy, every day”), and yesterday you sang this song from Sesame Street:

But instead of “Me and My Llama,” you sang “Me and my mama, stay in our pajamas, yes it’s just my mama and me.”

I can’t imagine a better valentine.

I love you.

Mama

Dear New Baby-to-be,

We are going to have so much fun together. I hope you like scissors and paste and crayons, because I guarantee your sisters and brother will try to get you to make your own valentines next year. Even if you’re not yet crawling. Don’t worry, it’s going to be awesome. Or at least crayon-y.

Love,
The woman on the other side of the belly

Dear Dane,

You make life more fun. Even the parts of life where the floor is covered with eight thousand tiny bits of cut-up construction paper and six thousand tiny hole-punched bits of computer paper and a thousand tiny scraps of thread and untold amounts of glitter and also one glue smear that you just stepped in. Even those parts. (Especially those parts!) More fun. Because you’re there.

I love you. And I love how you wield that broom to rid the world—or at least the floor under the kitchen table—of leftover valentine-i-ness. You rock.

Love,
Me

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Jen and Sarah are collecting lovely love notes over at Momalom.
Check them out and add your own.

Um. Is there a point at which the amount of packaging begins to negate the organic-ness of the apple? The fruit’s got a belt on it. That’s all I’m saying.

(I know, I know, not as exciting as yesterday’s post. But dude, nothing’s as exciting as yesterday’s post. Well, hardly anything. Very very few things. This isn’t one of them. I know. I’m sorry.)