So Grateful for "Q for Quando"

Gotta love that Italian pop music!!! Grateful for all the days we sped along the Autostrada or some rocky road in our beat up old van, tape player blasting, full of love...


Pino Daniele

Postpartum Intensive November, 2016

We are offering a postpartum doula training for people who want to work outside the box. This course will give the student an in-depth understanding of the period from birth to eight weeks postpartum. The physical, emotional and psychological experience of the postpartum period will be discussed and challenges during this time will be examined. Alternative methods of maintaining postpartum health will be explored.

The course runs from November 18, 19, 20, 2016 and the cost will be $350; $300 earlybird special (register before September 18, 2016).

What will be covered? Day One: The normal mother baby after birth from birth to eight weeks postpartum: mother care, baby care, feeding, emotional health, family, and more. Day Two: Challenges during the postpartum period: what to do? When to refer? Day Three: Role play, discussions and case studies. The workshop lasts three days and will continue with mentorship and support afterwards.

Meet our teacher:, Erin Ryan CPM

"I began working professionally as a midwife in 2000, In that time I have attended over 900 births, working throughout the US as well as rural clinics in Bali.  In my 2 years in Bali I worked in a clinic as well as doing home births and I served women from over 15 countries.  I’ve seen babies born in many different environments, and I have worked with women and families from many different cultures from all corners of the globe.  In all circumstances, the constant has been loving care and respect for the mothers I work with.

My fascination with birth started at a young age.  A Laura Wilder fan, I was curious about how pioneer women delivered their babies on the frontier.  Life led me from Little House on the Prairie to the University of California at Berkeley.  After graduating, I immediately began pursuing midwifery, working as a volunteer doula at the county hospital, and later attending and graduating from the National Midwifery Institute.   While gaining a strong academic foundation, I trained as all good midwives traditionally have, through apprenticeship with some of the best.  My education did not end there; I continue to learn through research, consulting with midwives and other medical professionals and most importantly from the wisdom of mothers.  I pass this knowledge along to my colleagues and clients to continue improving birth experiences for women everywhere."

Interested? email us at mbcdoulaschool@gmail(dot)com

P is for Popcorn

A Short Homage to Popcorn

I love the taste of it. I love how peculiar it is: did people back centuries ago discover its properties by mistake? I love its many coats and dressings. I am grateful for popcorn, and its fun factor. It contains all sorts of good things for your body: protein, minerals, vitamins, and fats.

Oh, Oh, Older

I dropped the gratefulness ball. I'm back with Oxytocin but I couldn't write intelligently about it at all. Neither Oceans, which I love. Nor obstetricians, whom I also love and respect. Thank God for obstetricians, who save mothers' and babies' lives every single day!

But, today I am grateful for getting Older.

Babyhood was probably a hoot. I was born in Uganda and spent much of my babyhood on someone's back, and the rest of the time naked learning how to dance or playing in the sand. But I remember nothing before I was three.

Then young childhood was spent trying to avoid having to speak to anyone, and learning the joys of reading and using my imagination.

And being a kid was pretty ok I guess, I was taken for fun hikes in the Rockies and we went to England for a year. I learned to play the piano and the clarinet. I loved doing homework. Still terribly tormented by shyness, and self-conscious about my crooked teeth, frizzy hair, and knowledge of words with more than two syllables.

Adolescence? Terrifying, creepy, and awful, mostly. I was the weird kid in school, never had a date. But I still loved reading, which kind of saved my life, except when I got a little Older I started traveling and spent hours in the Rockies on my own.

So, being a young adult is kind of weird in this society, at least it was in the seventies because we didn't know what we were supposed to do. Anyway, I did it and emerged with a baby in the eighties, and then life was just a whirlwind, magnificent, crazy, uplifting, we had a farm and lots of babies....

Babies grow older. They get bigger and then they also turn into adults, usually. Mine did anyway, except the last one who is still an adolescent. It's a fun trip, having kids. I wasn't a career woman. I raised children, had a farm, created two non-profits, stay married for a really long time.

Middle age was fucking awful. I spent about ten years thinking I could please all the people, all the time. I twisted myself into a pretzel, to no avail. I trained to be a midwife, but a wee bit too late so now I can only work illegally. I'm some kind of a legend in the birth world here, which is bullshit because I know very little really.

Now I am getting Older. Turning sixty this year, I hope. No more pretzel. I am starting to say no, and it's a little freaky. Some people don't like it.

So, I am mostly very grateful for the chance to be old, I'm not there yet but I am getting a glimmer of what it might be like. Of course the body changes in weird ways, kind of like adolescence. But you get to be yourself because what the fuck, you might as well, right? You might as well say what you want to say. Of course I always like to try to not hurt people, but I am learning that its not always possible.

So here's a big L'Chaim to getting OLD!

Grateful for N

I've gone through several names during this temporary visit to Earth. My parents wanted to name me Adam, but then I was a girl. So my birth name was Nicola. Shortened to Nicky, then Niki.
Then I got another name, actually a whole new persona, an alter ego, and this name was Rivka, not even a name I've ever liked very much. But many, many people feel tender and warm about the Rivka person: she is a doula and birth attendant, and a friend, and a teacher/mentor.

Toni Morrison has the same problem:
"Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford, and still thinks of that as her real name. She picked up the nickname “Toni” in school (from her saint’s name, Anthony), and Morrison was the last name of her long-ago ex-husband. To this day, she deeply regrets leaving that now world-famous name on her first novel". NYMag
"Myself is kind of split. My name is Chloe. And the rest is… that other person. Who is able to feel, or pretends to feel, or maybe really feels, or at least reacts to celebrityhood. " (The Guardian Interview)

So, we're stuck with names we didn't ever really grow in to, and I am always grateful for Niki, who keeps me grounded and reminds me of who I really am.

Niki runs, and sails, and plans things for next week, and says she'll be there in five minutes. She drinks a wee bit too much, and swears a little too much, and she wants to live in many places for the rest of her life, and thinks Rivka is a bit of a weirdo, and a bit of a wuss.

I am so grateful I'm me, and her, and them.

M is for Mother

My mother died almost exactly two years ago. I miss her pretty much every day. We didn't have a peaceful relationship, far from it. But I knew I could call her anytime, if only to chat about plants.

My friend wrote a beautiful piece when I let her know that my midwifery certification had arrived just hours before my mother died:

I sit here now, in Bali, at dawn, in the quiet as birds awaken... and cry for your Mother's passing. This is HUGE... as the Human StarGate that opened to bring You Earth~side, has been destroyed. One door closes and another opens, and you become a CPM. My head is shaking in wonder. I believe that when a woman's own mother passes, she becomes the new Wise One, a role you are very prepared for. And... how perfect that your CPM popped through as that door was slowly opening to allow your mother to slip through to the other side.  

The doorway between our world and the next, is one and the same, it swings both ways, opening for Birth and opening for Death... 

And this is what I wrote: Tribute to my Mother.

I hope that people can have a last peek at the smallish whirlwind that was my mother.

Grateful for L

Found

Woke with a memory of Lydia, when she was

just fourteen, with a loose-toothed smile and 

dirty blonde hair, looking at me like I could fix things.

She told me a poem in my dream, we were standing

by the water of the Thames, then we were older, and

the water was still green and grey, dirty. 

No one was dying yet. There were papers. It was urgent.

“Trawling the street in front of

the police station, Emma’s photo in one hand and

your letter in the other,

waiting for tomorrow.”

And Sara keeps asking me about the seeds, those white,

pearly things in my dirty hands. Like teeth. Like a broken but

immensely valuable gold chain, tied in knots, the kind you can spend

hours shaking apart, and still never undo.

Oh, all right, the seeds, the smooth, time-heavy warmth and Oh! 

the promise in those seeds, the seeds:

promises of flowers, Lydia with her funny smile, and lovely Sara, and Giotto with his broad loving backs, and those round, white, eggy, fragile seeds.

And the love that no one can ever paint just right, so we make do with poems, and flowers, and dreams, and still life, and real life.