Serendipitous Connection

At the Ice Cream with an Author event I had an interesting experience. As we arrived in the meeting room there was a woman making up name tags for each person. She looked familiar to me, and when I saw her name tag and she introduced herself as Freear, I felt like I already knew that was her name. Obviously with a name as unusual as Freear, it's not likely that I've met many people with that name. But it struck no surprise with me. I felt like I knew her.

All through the event I kept looking at her and wondering how I knew her. Initially I thought she worked at the library, which would make it easy to understand how I know her. But, she wasn't a library staff member. She was there as a good friend to the author that was speaking.

After the sit-and-listen part of the evening was done, Freear and I gravitated toward each other. I told her that I felt like I knew her from somewhere, and she told me she was thinking the same thing about me. We reviewed the various ways that we might have known each other, but there were no intersections that we could figure out.

Still, it felt like we had some sort of connection, which still has me thinking.

She has a very peaceful vibe about her, and seemed like one of those people that you should make sure you try to keep in your life. I didn't want to wig her out by acting all "hey do you want to be my friend" or whatever. But I have a way to contact her, so I'm gonna.

Whether we've met before, or just had some sort of easy connection, I believe life's too short to let it slip by.

Women Rise Up

I recently responded to a post on one of my egroups that I can't stop thinking about.

The post was from a pregnant woman, expecting her 11th child. She explained that her first 9 births were normal, safe births, and that her 10th baby was in a frank breech position, so they had a c-section. Now here she is pregnant with baby #11, and her doctors are telling her that it is incredibly unsafe for her to have a VBAC on this birth (only because of the one c-section, not because of any particular issues with this pregnancy), but it'll be as simple as pulling a tooth to have an elective c-section.

The woman has a family history of blood clots, giving her additional risks related to surgery. And, heck--she doesn't want to have a surgical birth! And here she is, being bullied by the people that are supposed to be taking care of her.

Women--hear me now. You have to SPEAK UP. As my midwife says, "Vote with your feet!" (stomp! Go! Don't go! Whatever it takes.)

As long as women allow themselves to get shuttled along through major surgeries and are denied normal, natural births, we will only continue to see more of this. As it is, most hospitals in the US are no longer doing VBACs under any circumstances, which is a crock of bull, because there is NO sound medical reasoning for this.

At the last point when I kept up with the stats, the chance of a uterine rupture during a VBAC was .05%. Not five percent. HALF of ONE percent.

In other words, there is a statistical likelihood of 99.5% that a VBAC labor and birth would be perfectly fine.

When you factor in the reasons why that half-of-one-percent of uterine ruptures do happen, it's typically because of the use of pitocin or cytotec or other synthetic drugs used to try to force a woman's body to do what it isn't ready to do.

And when you know that most uterine ruptures are not fatal, and not necessarily even dangerous, it makes the no-VBAC position even more ridiculous.

Women, and the men that love them, you need to remember that the buck stops with YOU. It is not enough to quietly obey your doctor, being sent down the chute like a lamb to slaughter.

Think.

Research.

Speak your mind.

Say NO when you do not want what's being handed out.

Learn the phrase "I do not consent" and repeat it until you are comfortable doing so.

Be prepared to walk away from your health practitioner if you are not getting the care you deserve, and are not confident that they will help you get the birth you want.

Look at your other options. Is there another doctor? A midwife? Another place you could go to for the birth? Have you looked into home birth? Can you just walk into a different hospital to have the baby at the last minute? ("oopsie! Thank you.")

Think outside the box.

In short, know that YOU ARE WORTH IT. Do not open your mouth and swallow their poisonous medicine.

If we do not advocate for ourselves and our children, who will?

Related post: They Are Not the Boss of You!

Gardener Follow-up

Two months ago I told you about The Gardener in my community and how I wanted to somehow say thank you for the way his garden has filled my all-around-town drives with beauty. Well, yesterday was the magical day! During preschool pickup I saw both of the guys out working on their yard (putting up tall, skinny artificial Christmas trees in white, pink, and purple! what a hoot!) so I decided to take the opportunity. I raced home and put together a bag of sample sized Larabars, wrote them a note, and bravely drove back over there. I was feeling pretty nervous about it because the one guy does look very intimidating, but I felt strongly that their garden was also a true reflection of the people they are, so who wouldn't want to meet people like that?

They were still out in their yard when I came walking down the street. I introduced myself and told them how I had admired and been blessed by their beautiful yard all year long, and I gave them the gift. They seemed very surprised and appreciative that I stopped by. I got to learn some about their plants (many are transplants from the intimidating-looking man's grandmother's house, which is also right in town--she no longer lives there, but the plants have deeper significance for him than just garden store purchases), how they find time to do such extensive gardening (intimidating-man is currently out of work on disability, the other man is a student and takes classes on the internet, so they are both home a lot), about their careers (intimidator used to be a school teacher! The other guy is getting a social work degree), and their five dogs. (I had since realized there was more than one dog, but did not notice so many!)

Overall, they were very warm and friendly, very kind and appreciative. The intimidating looking man was very well spoken and gentle in his speech, and I felt so glad that I had been brave and followed my heart on doing something so simple as letting a stranger know that they have made a difference in my life. They invited me to stop by anytime. :) It's definitely on my list.

Enjoying the party and getting better

The Ultimate Blog party is still going on and it's not too late for you to get involved. There is a huge long list at 5 Minutes for Mom of participating bloggers, which makes it easy to start clicking around and finding out about some new blogs. I've found some that look particularly interesting to me that have been added to my blogroll. Maybe others of you will find winners also.

I'm feeling somewhat better today. Not 100%, but probably 80%.

I've been brave and did launch my new project that I mentioned a few days ago. The behind-the-scenes work is being done now, and the letting-people-know work will come a little later. (not sure how much later, but not yet) (I keep singing this song to myself as I go through the day, sometimes feeling a little woozy and nervous about the new project. I've put it off long enough--today I'm buying this CD collection as a gift to myself. I love it so much.)

I've also been working hard on my business site. I've been learning more about search engine optimization, and one of the things I had been putting off is some special HTML coding of every. single. page. on the site. That means I had to go into the back office of my site and open up every individual product page and enter coding, tweak keywords, and improve copy. It needed to be done, and because of the couple hundred products I sell I thought it would take until the end of next week. Thankfully I got it all done earlier today! It is so nice to have that finished up. Now I can get my other side done as well, and then I'll be ready to add some more products and do some more good things to make it easier for people to find my businesses. Onward and upward, I say!

A friend of ours from church was in a car accident this week. His car was totaled, but he was ok, and fortunately his infant son was not in the car at the time. As I was thinking of seeing him tomorrow and of course asking about the accident, I remembered reading the book Bless And Be Blessed. This book talks about the importance of speaking blessings to people in your life. So often we say wonderful, amazing things about how great people were when we are at their funerals, and it's a shame we don't let people know these uplifting, encouraging thoughts about them while they are with us. So, I am going to take a few minutes tonite to put together some thoughts and write a note to him and his wife to let them know some of the things I appreciate about them. I am so glad I have the opportunity to tell them and be happy they are still in our life!

Though it's been a weird week with being sick, I'm feeling good about accomplishing so many things, and feel like several goals are coming together for me, which is exciting. It's a good way to end the week. :)