The sun is back! Some days are tee-shirt weather. Others are a little nippy jacket or sweatshirt days. Either way it's light out until 7pm and I can totally dig that! I can also dig in my yard. I've got some headway into the next portion of garden but I'm running into a large bedrock, making for shallow growing area. I'm okay with that though- I think I can make tall enough raised beds so that the rock won't much matter. I've convinced Chris not to reseed grass on the side of the house since I can put garden in some of it, if not this year then next. I have seeds germinating and seedlings under lights. So far I've started Tomatoes (beefstake red and yellow, plum, red cherry, yellow pear, salad), Peppers (hot, banana, and red bell), basil, parsley, chives, dill, onions, calendula and nasturtium. The garlic is growing out through the leaf mulch in the garden now with spring green tops. I'm going to plant marigolds and zinnias indoors with the kids this week and i'll start the melons and cukes indoors in a couple weeks. in the meantime the letuce, spinach, peas, carrots and radishes will be going in the dirt for the early crop. Then the end of April I'll put in my trial potatoes and hopefully buy an apple tree for the front yard. And then we just wait for may to transplant the indoor starts and start the green beans directly outside. Viola! Garden!

And now it's time for-
Grocery Tip #2
Buy generic.

Of course not everything generic will live up to your standards. But many will, and some will outstrip name brand depending on your taste. It's worth comparing the prices and trying. Plus, when you do, you're placing a vote against unnecessary advertising and predatory product placement schemes between suppliers and chain superstores. Also I've discovered that I prefer the generic versions of some stores over the generics at others. Sometimes the generic doesn't beat the branded item though. Which brings me to the next tip.

Grocery Tip #3
Unit comparison or price shopping

Most grocery stores worth their salt have unit prices printed next to the item price. When comparing prices of similar items,  first don't take small children or talkative (or just outright bored) spouses to distract you (you can bring them later once you get the hang of this). You will need to take a little longer to get used to shopping this way and if you're very anal about it you might want a calculator and a conversion chart. I generally round off things in my head to compare and it works okay. Some times its confusing if you are comparing things sold by different unit types (ie a version of the product that is sold in liquid form versus a powder mix version) and you should look out for things that are comparable in use then and watch for decievingly bulked up things that are charging for sugar or water or flour that you would do better price-wise to add yourself if there is a version without it. This is mostly the case with detergents or drink mixes or seasoning mixes or prepared soups- things that require adding water or other ingredients.

Another thing is to find the places that specialize in what you're after. For instance, We find that Stewart's gas station convenience stores have the best price on the bread we like and they have a milk club that you earn a free gallon from and the eggs are fairly priced. So we regularly stock up on these things at Stewats. Then the best price on produce for us tends to be a little Korean family owned store near my Mom's house. The Paper goods and diapers and cereal are best priced from Walmart. Sam's Club sells huge bags of frozen blueberries for under 10 bucks and so fuels my love of fruit smoothies. Go where the best prices are.

Grocery Tip #4
Buy in bulk

For some items that have a longer shelf life or are paper goods or cleaning supplies, you're going to find that buying the bigger box may save money (again, check the unit price). I was shopping yesterday and found that the larger box of Crispy Rice (I'll let you guess what name brand cereal that stands in for) cost the exact same as the smaller one. When we were really pressed for funds, I was shopping with my mom using her paid membership at a warehouse club to buy our meat, frozen items and a few other things. Not all of our shopping can be done there, and it does add up still, but when I buy ketchup by the tub instead of the bottle and just refill our bottle with a funnel, it's half as much- I save a dollar every time I refill the ketchup bottle (which is twice a week around here). The butter is consistently 60 cents less a pound than even the best grocery store sales. Also not every item in the store can be assumed to have a big cost savings. Compare them with the supermarket.

Sometimes buying in bulk means having to be ready to store these things with easy access for using them. It requires a pantry or freezer. When we lived in our apartment, I made extra room by consolidating dishes to use an extra cupboard for storage and using our (donated) china cabinet and a standing shelf. When we moved into a house Chris' mom helped us acquire a small chest freezer which helps a lot. Now I'm learning that in order to prevent losing bulk storage to moths and critters, I need to invest in storage containers too, which I'm doing by gradually buying a sealing tub as I go along, or appropriating canisters that can do the job from other household things.

Grocery Tip #5
Consume less

I know this seems contradictory to the above, but it goes hand in hand. Buy more of the basics at once for a cost savings, but cut out the fat. At first this will be reletively easy to spot. For us it meant no more chocolate syrup, no more bacon, no more sugar cereal, no more lunch-meat regularly, much fewer chip snacks (except tortilla chips which we keep stocked). But then it will get a little harder- less cheese, less meat. But ultimately we're better for these cuts. One way I save on meat is that I sort through the ground beef or chicken or pork and pick the package that has the lowest weight, saving me 25 or 50 cents. My family isn't really hurting for having one less pork chop at the table. I find we consume what ever is set out and sometimes it's more than we actually need to satisfy our hunger. Another way to prevent that over eating is to prepare the plates rather than letting everyone help themselves, or to set aside leftovers lunches in the fridge right away to keep seconds from being easy to take. Also, you can go the other way with meat and buy in bulk to save, but then before you freeze it, divide it into smaller portions for multiple meals. I use saved bread bags and double them to do this and save on ziplocks (or the generic versions of ziplocks as is the case with mine, lol)


I realize many of these tips are painfully obvious. But I need to state the obvious to draw a line to follow thorough the methods to the madness. I'm just learning household management, some from my mom who i had the privilege of growing up watching and being trained by, and some by that school of hard knocks (which incidentally seems to have a really low standard for enrollment)

I was pretty much ready to be pregnant for another week at least. Our earliest estimate at a due date was Jan 13th, and apart from a few Braxton Hicks here and there, there really wasn't a lot of busy progress towards labor as far as I could tell. I saw Midwives Birdie and Jen on the 19th in the Poughkeepsie office. They measured me at 39 inches and I weighed in at 172 lbs. My Blood Pressure was something like 117 over 72. We listened to the baby's heart for a longer spell as a sort of precaution at that late in the pregnancy. She sounded fine at 150 bpm. Birdie gave me a script for a post date sonogram. I called to make an appointment and they offered either Thurs the 20th or Fri the 21st, but it was going to snow on the morning of the 21st, so I took the appointment for the following day. Our sonogram tech was a little... batty. She kept going in and out, and I've never had any tech use a half a bottle of Jelly on me at once like that. Very lubed belly.  Everything was looking good, and she even got a view of the baby's face (our first sonogram didn't) so we got a print of the sonogram for that. Then, when we had on our coats to leave, the tech ran out after us and asked us to come back to the exam room. She forgot to save a recording of the heart for the report. So she used the rest of the bottle of gel on me and got that.

The next day, I was having mild 20 min contractions all afternoon. I had been a little grouchy because I hadn't slept well. Braxton hicks and indigestion had interrupted me all night so I had moved to the sofa to prop myself up more. I woke up to Libby and Jeff in my face demanding food and drink. And lots of messy dishes, since we'd been out late the night of the 20th at a homeschool meeting and gotten behind on housechores. I got through my grouchiness and then made myself a to-do list and cheered up. I got Sam into a lot of his schoolwork and I washed all the dishes and most of the laundry. I had this niggling feeling that made me sensitive to all the things in the hallway and bathroom upstairs, so I was clearing the path and neatening up. The with the contractions that afternoon, well, I thought that was interesting, but I expected them to stop anytime. So we made dinner plans at my Mom's house. When I picked up Lena to drive her to Mom's, I was telling her that it was the Friday following the week after my due date. This would be the very afternoon that Dr. Katz would have wanted to break my water if I was his patient. That's how all three of the children he caught for me were decided for their birth days. How ironic if I went into labor myself at about the same timing! It made me wonder if he hadn't meddled if I would have delivered fine on the weekend he'd wanted me to anyways.

But I wasn't really in labor, right?

Elisa was making pizzas while Mom was talking to other homeschool group leaders on the phone and Dad was in the garage with Mike trying to weld together a broken muffler (the welder was short circuiting the house lighting). When the Pizzas came out, All my brothers and sisters were together. Dustin Mike and Joe all decided to try to make me laugh into labor. "Let's make Nikki have a baby" Dustin said, and they did joke and make me laugh til I cried. I watched the clock on Mom's microwave. Contractions were mild but they were 15 minutes. Then 10 minutes. Then 7. They weren't going away. I told Chris I wanted to go home just in case this wasn't 'practice' labor. He gathered the kids and I called the midwife to let her know. My family was excited. I told them all on my way out not to get excited, it would probably just stopp and be false labor and I'd be prgnant another week yet.

We went home. I took a shower while Chris and the kids cleaned up the living room and got ready for bed. The contractions were still under 10 minutes. Mom and Lena decided to come and hang out and crochet. I called Anne and Bob to let them know that maybe something was happening but told them not to jump up and come yet. Anne said they would be packed and ready but go on to bed still. That made me feel better because I was really worried everyone would come and I was misjudging labor. I have 4 previous pregnancies, but they were all induced. I didn't trust my judgment.

I called Kalah and talked a bit while counting contractions. They seemed to be getting further apart, moving from 7 minutes to more like 10. But then I had a blood smudge. I called the midwife to report that and she said "Beautiful" and to call if the contractions got any closer.

While Mom and Lena got comfy in the livingroom for the night, Chris reminded that we had to get in Sam's quarterly report for our homeschool this week. Since my contractions were now 20 and 30 mins apart, I thought labor was not for real. So we broke open the school books and I read out the material topics we'd covered for the quarter. Chris turned it into a report.

Although my contractions were further apart, they were stronger. Around midnight I called the Midwife again and told her I was going to try to rest. She said she would be going to bed too, but to call if anything changed. I laid down until one am listening to a Christian History lecture about the Reformation. Then I tried to sleep down stairs on the sofa. It wasn't working. The contractions kept waking me up. I moved up stairs, but found that I couldn't lay down in bed so I made a pillow tower in my lap and leaned forward propped on it, hugging it and tried to rest sitting up. I found I kept having to stand from the discomfort with each contraction. They were hurting, and now they were ten minutes apart again. I had Chris call the midwife. She said to call back if they were less than 10 minutes.

I moved to the tub, filling it with hot water and splashing it over my shoulders. The contractions were timing around 7 minutes apart and I was feeling pressure on my tail bone. I made Chris call again. The word pressure was a key word. Jennifer was on her way over. She arrived at 4ish, I think. When she examined me, she said I was 9 cm and going into transition labor. I guess that finally let me give up the notion that this was going to end up being a false alarm! "Okay," I said. "We're having a baby tonight."

My crying during the contractions was waking the kids and making everyone excited. Bob and Anne came and kept the kids busy and calm (it's kind of scary to hear mom in pain). The midwife said the other midwife wasn't going to make it in time from across the river anyways so she'd be assisting me solo. She said all that had to happen now was I had to push when I felt like it. I did some trial pushing while squatting. It felt better than suffering through the contraction, to push through it. I moved back to the bed and laid back on some pillows and just  pushed with the cramp feelings until I broke my water by pushing. That was a huge event. I guess with my other babies, they usually had their heads tightly in the way so water only trickled out when the doctor would break the membrane with a hook. Not so with Penny! I gushed and gushed amniotic fluid. There was a lot of rushing with catching pads and lots of towels. At that point I seriously felt in business. I didn't know how long to expect to push but the urge was almost each minute or so. Before I knew it I was feeling the burn of the head crowning and hearing the excitement of everyone attending. I'm not even sure who was all there watching. When I get to pushing and working hard like that it's so intense I really don't register anything else going on around.

The head was out, and after that another push or two had the rest of her delivered. She barely made a sound when Jennifer put her on me. My arms felt too limp to grasp well. I was still aggravated because of the cramping from the placenta. I wanted it out.  Jennifer told me I didn't tear, and that the burning was from micro stress that sort of made tiny tearing, but would heal fine on its own. It's always good to not need stitches down there. I snuggled Penny, but really couldn't enjoy her until after I'd finished working- I wanted to deliver the placenta. So Jennifer finished checking out Penny (Penny's first act in life outside the womb was to pee on me, a healthy sign) and then determined that nothing more was helping Penny from the umbilical, so she asked if she could clamp and cut it and I said okay. Chris cut the cord. Sam was worried it would hurt to cut her cord. I can see how he would think that. The cord is practically organ like and thick and almost sinewy looking. Nothing like a string or a smooth uniform wire.

She's gorgeous all over. And my littlest baby birth weight wise. Only 6lbs 15oz. born 5:47 am on Sat Jan 22nd. She latched on as soon as I got cleaned up and sat down to snuggle with her. Like that was what she had been born to do. She has curious little eyes and seems pretty aware, although she still prefers the dim evening and gets mad at the bright daylight. Like most babies she's intent on faces. And I think she smiles already, not just reflexively. I think she'll be an expressive sort. She barely cried at all at the time of birth, only a little verbalizing. There were no name bands on her feet and no picks in her heel and no goo in her eyes or shots. No little hospital cribs and nurses stations. Only loving arms, warm bed and a looking over by the midwife for stats and vitals. She hasn't even had a washing yet. Her skin soaked up the remaining vernix. I think I'll wait until her cord finishes making her bellybutton before she gets more than the diaper clean ups.

Chris made us scrambled eggs for breakfast. They were delicious. I was so tired (since I'd hardly slept the night before and then not at all the night of the delivery!) but not ready to sleep. Penny and I cuddled and she nursed, and we had nice peaceful visits with family and friends. Its so much easier to have guests at home than in a tiny hospital room. They got to spread out downstairs and kept calm when they visited us upstairs with me and Penny.

I loved having all of my own yummy food and all of my clothing to chose from, and my own bathroom, and no strangers to cart away the baby. There is a lot of peace in welcoming a new member of the family right at home, even if the birth process is somewhat loud and a little messy, it seemed to me to fit right in to real family life. I think birth belongs home, when like anything else it's healthy and normal pregnancy and labor. If God blesses us again someday, I would plan to have another homebirth. I love that Chris and the kids are here and don't have to travel to just visit me for a spell with no where to sit and nothing to busy themselves with in a place where they are guests and purposeless. We all belong here together. Thank God for giving us the courage to do what seemed different. And thank God for the intuition of labor, even if I didn't know to trust the feelings and doubted my own reading of my contractions right up until before delivery. I will know better in the future. I don't need to doubt the nature I'm made in in deference to professionals. I can trust the way God made me to judge and understand what to do.

We took mostly film pictures. I'll post something digital tomorrow when there's some daylight to take nice shots.

Penelope Ruth Ciraulo
Born at home with midwife attending
5:47am January 22nd, 2011
21.5 in   6lbs 15oz
Beautiful all over! Loved by all.

(EDIT-- Today 1-25-11 at Penny's 3rd day check up she weighs 7lb 15oz. This is not really likely for her to gain a pound in 3 days. It's more likely that the scale was mis reading on her birthday. She probably weighed close to 8lbs at birth. I'm not sure what the midwives will settle on for her official birth weight)

I visited my midwives for the 3rd or 4th time now (depending if you count the consultation or not) And they're pretty fabulous. I had an ultrasound a few weeks ago and the people at the ultrasound office were a little flustered about my due date. They measure the baby at  a size that's average for a due date of Jan 15th, although my due date was written down for Feb 1st. If I was still seeing a traditional doctor, I would have felt some dread at knowing that was the ultrasound report because it would mean the doctor would pressure me the week of my due date when I was having non-regular but ongoing contractions to just come in and have my water broken. He would make  it out to be that if I broke my water at home I might go too fast to make it to the hospital in time.

Well, this time I don't have to worry about getting to a hospital. The midwives are coming to me. And I'm not anxious about a possibly earlier due date, because you know what? The midwives responded exactly how I expected they would: the baby will come when the baby is ready.

They give me practical eating advice. I have a blood sugar test coming up, and instead of taking it like I have in the past, not understanding my blood sugar, where the doctor would tell me to eat a good breakfast and not warn me off of lunch and snacks before my appointment and I'd be full up on sugars and carbs and then he'd spike me with a glucose drink and take a finger meter blood test and fret over how high it came out, then send me for at least one 5 hour blood test... Instead of that, my midwife tells me to eat mostly proteins and a little bit of complex grains or fiber the night before, a high protein low carb no sugar breakfast, drink a lot of water and they'll give me... grape juice instead of that nasty glucose drink. Then they'll draw blood and send it to a lab. Low and behold, a practical test with some sound lead up that will give a chance at a genuine picture of how my body deals with a real dose of real food-sugar. Since none of the nasty 5 hour blood draw tests have ever showed me gestationally diabetic in the past, I doubt this coming test will turn up positive for it either.

Did I mention I love my midwives?

You know what else? They advise me on simple exercises to do to help relieve pain, pressure and prepare my body parts for delivery. They're Uh-Maze-Ing. I get a whole hour appointment with them, no waiting at all, no hurrying, lots of conversation that helps me to really just talk about things on my mind that would be awkward or seem insignificant to bother talking about, and I can take whoever I want along and they're totally natural about talking in a room full of kids playing. They're conversational and interactive with all the kids. I feel like my whole family is truly having a baby. I'm crying just typing this. A visit to the doctors office always involves a long period in a dull waiting room with hungry anxious babies, then a hard time where they don't want to be in the sterile patient room and an awkwardness about how to deal with babies who don't want to be separated from me while I use the bathroom to leave a sample and don't want the doctor to touch me, and they cry if they're left in the waiting room on the insistence of the nice receptionist who thought she could handle them until one puked his cheese crackers all over the carpet. And for the 30 min wait in the front room and the 15 minute wait in the patient room with my bottoms off under a sheet of paper, and then the 5 minute exam and 5 minutes in his office where he asks if I have any questions, and then when I ask my questions, he generally has no answers because they're dietary or physical aches and he'll either just blow them off because I'm pregnant and that's normal, or write a referral to some dietrician or specialist instead of giving practical advice. And then he bills my insurance and we're all good until next visit.

Contrast that with me telling my midwives my allergies were acting up and they said "Oh that's normal when you're pregnant! Things just get out of whack." NOT!! What they did was recommend I try herbals with nettle instead of echinachea like I'd been taking. My old doc would have said, take claritin if it gets real bad, but otherwise-- shrug.

I love these women. They're professional and real and warm all at once. They never ever have once tried to pressure me into any tests or spouted off scary statistics to try to control me. They see me as a whole person, my family as a whole part of the process, and I swear I just want to cry with how happy I am about this pregnancy care.

In terms of cost, even though the total midwife care is HALF of the total cost of a doctor and hospital delivery and care, the insurance is covering only a very little portion. It's sort of hard to come up with the money and has basically meant diverting all of the money that we would have put into savings for this year to make the upfront payments for the midwives. I know God will bless the decision though because he never leaves us high and dry and because I know He wants us to be part of a societal counter culture that makes choices based on faith in His provision and comfort in His covering rather than based on the fear and scare and control of the big systems in place in our society. By choosing a midwife, I actually feel like I'm 'voting' in a big way for how I want things to look like in the world around me for others too.

This time around I have to stick with the insurance we've been under because of the way the rules and stipulations work out. But we're also taking a big step and moving away from traditional insurance into a type of cost share medical plan where christian families agree to regular monthly paments where we send our payments to one another in need through a not-for-profit Christian organization. And guess what? They allow for sharing the cost of midwives in full, recognizing their validity and their cost effectiveness as care providers. Isn't that awesome? I think so. We've been going over the what ifs for a few weeks now and it was just time to make a decision. This year I'll be in both plans, but the pregnancy is considered pre-existing so if something goes south with the delivery, the cost-share can't really help me. So I'll be under both plans for this year.

Health costs are going up, inflation is going up taxes are going up, the cost of food and housing and gas is going up, jobs are hard to come by and paying less and yet...

I'm starting to have a vision for the freedoms I can have from all this bondage, find ways I can practice living in Liberty and in the joy of the Christian faith. I'm homeschooling and learning little ways to start gaining self sufficient skills. The other night Chris even said out of the blue how much we've grown and all of the changes that happen in our lives so often to bring us to these blessings and he chuckled and said he wouldn't be surprised if five or ten more years found us living soundly as farmers and cottage industry folk and loving it (This is from a Mechanical Engineer who wants to break into working for film as his dream job). I'm hearing more and more about Local and Family economies and ways we can stop feeding the beast that is our centralizing Federal and World governments. I'm finding more and more freedom from the cultural junk of the world and enjoying daily life around me.

These may be hard times and we may be facing a lot of undue persecution and debt bondage, but I believe I will see God's Glory and Grace in these times and I just pray that He does a great work in me and a greater work in my children.