Green Options

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More than four million acres of American farmland have already been dedicated to organic farming, helping our health and our future. That’s four million acres farmed without the use of toxic pesticides or other toxic chemicals; four million acres nurtured with both ancient and modern techniques that are in balance with nature, helping to reduce the production of greenhouse gasses and reduce the threat of global warming.

Growing our foods organically has proven to be one of the hottest, fastest-growing movements of the twenty-first century. When Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act in 1990, there were fewer than one million acres of organic farmland. In just twelve years, by 2002, that figure had doubled. Then the pace of progress picked up. Within just three more years, the amount of organic farmland doubled again. In 2005, we saw, for the first time, certified organic farmland in all fifty states. There has been exceptional progress, but we need to do more.

If organic cropland continues to double—and it can!—we can expect to see a revitalization and renewal of our streams and our soil as we build a smart, sustainable future. I can remember drinking stream water in our national parks when I was a child. I can remember catching and eating fish from our local streams. Today, all of the streams surveyed by the U.S. Geological Survey and more than 90 percent of fish tested in farming regions are polluted with pesticides.

Thank you to all of our writers, guest writers, and readers that shared their birth stories as part of our Labor of Love series. It’s been a difficult week for me with wildfires surrounding my home, and the birth stories provided me with moments of respite and love.  From VBACS to home births, our experiences have varied but we’ve all been blessed with our children!

Three winners have been randomly selected for our Labor of Love Week Giveaway from our Eco Child’s Play forum.

• Candu won a pair of IsaBooties!  Candu lives in Hanoi and suffered wounds from his wife’s grip:

All day the contractions got more painful and intense. She had to wait for 40 second long contractions and we had been waiting all day for it. I should have got her to cut her nails earlier, for now I have open wounds on my back and hands. Girls got some grip! She would lean right into me and hold on tight when she got another wave. She shook in pain and her eyes squeezed tight. Wave after wave after wave… Now I know why they call it labour!

I am a closet Chick-lit lover. Although I love reading the classics such as Doesteovsky, Maugham, and Hesse (my favorite writer); sometimes I need an easy and light reading that doesn’t need a dictionary as a companion. So it’s no surprise that I would totally take to the From the Hips: A Comprehensive, Open-Minded, Uncensored, Totally Honest Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, and Becoming a Parent by Rebecca Odes and Ceridwen Morrisis. Although pregnancy is a serious subject matter; I didn’t want to read the pregnancy bible, What to Expect When You are Expecting. I really had hard time making it past the first chapter. It seemed a bit too authoritative; I pictured a nagging mother instead of your best friend. But From the Hips is definitely your best girl friend talking you through the trials of pregnancy with wit and a bit of sass. Who doesn’t need a bit of humor when you are carrying around a baby 24/7?

When I first got pregnant, I remember my mother sending me tons of books, as well as perusing the pregnancy aisle at the library and bookstore.  There is a plethora of labor books out there, but not all of them support natural birth, especially home birth. Thankfully, my midwives had a lending library, and one book Special Delivery was required reading. In this list of essential books for natural birth, I’ve also included two books by Ina May that were highly recommended as well by my midwives.

What makes a pregnancy book essential reading for natural birth?  I think a natural birth book should support all women’s choices, both home and hospital births, as well as carefully explain all of the interventions that could happen if medically needed.  The book should support women, as well as realistically discuss how each labor is unique.

Essential Books for a Natural Birth

• Special Delivery by Rahima Baldwin:  This book can be hard to find, but it is well worth the hunt.  This book prepares you for all aspects of a home or hospital birth, and we read many times to be prepared in case we didn’t make it town in time during my labors.  My first child was a breech baby, but she turned thanks to this book!  Rahima explains an exercise where mother’s lay with on their backs, knees bent, and pelvis highly elevated.  When followed precisely, this method turns babies 85% of the time.  It worked for my daughter, and I have this book to thank!

Having deposited me at the hospital after I went into labor with my firstborn, my husband snuck around the corner with my father to grab some Indian food. Everyone had missed dinner given the excitement of my water breaking.

When Papa suggested that they order a bottle of red, my husband looked at him like he was from another planet. It was going to be a long night at the hospital; wine was certainly out of the question. Caught in a [...]

Editor’s note: This guest post comes to us from Amy Gates.  Amy writes about attachment parenting, activism, green living and photography at Crunchy Domestic Goddess.  Earlier in the week, she shared Julian’s birth story.

Whether or not you’ve had a home birth or would choose one for yourself in the future, I think most women would agree that they should have the right to choose where they give birth. Just as every woman is unique, every baby is unique and every birth experience is unique. What works best for one woman will not work best for the next. Some women feel the most comfortable giving birth in a hospital with an OB. Some feel comfortable birthing with a family practitioner or midwife in a birthing center. Others feel comfortable birthing with a midwife at home. All of these are options are safe choices, so why is the American Medical Association (AMA) trying to outlaw home birth?

Are they scared that Ricki Lake is raising awareness that women have options with her movie The Business of Being Born? They specifically cite Ricki’s and other celebrities’ home births in the media. “There has been much attention in the media by celebrities having home deliveries, with recent Today Show headings such as ‘Ricki Lake takes on baby birthing industry: Actress and former talk show host shares her at-home delivery in new film.’” Ricki responds to the AMA here, and, over on the Huffington Post, Ricki, Abby Epstein and Jennifer Block have posted Docs to Women: Pay No Attention to Ricki Lake’s Home Birth. Are they scared that women might question the establishment and demand better care for themselves and their babies? Are they scared that they might (gasp) lose money? Are they scared that women might take back birth?

The birth of our second daughter was a lesson in patience, teaching me the lesson that all things in life happen in their in their own good time. And that we, for the most part, have little control over many facets in our lives. Waiting, relaxing, and letting things happen naturally are not things I am generally very good at.

You see, Elly was late. True to form of what would be her later personality, Elly just wasn’t ready to come into the world yet. And when I explain that she was one week late, people react that it was only one week. Even my midwife told me to relax and enjoy the last of my pregnancy.

But that was impossible. I was in labor for a week solid. Now don’t go calling it false labor, because if you would have said that during this time your life would have been in severe danger. There was nothing false about this labor.

It’s probably going against the grain to be talking about pain medication in a natural parenting blog, and one of the few writers this week that would probably advocate non-natural childbirth; but I always knew that epidural was going to be my drug of choice when the time came to give birth. Two distinct memories of labor and birth came from my mother and childhood best friend. I was three weeks overdue, and by the the time my mother delivered me; I was over ten pounds. She would regale in the horror of the labor and how terrified she was of her next birth, my brother. My best friend had a child right out of high school. I remember her telling me how it was the worst pain she had ever been in her life. With those two very painful experiences; I decided that I would DEFINITELY get an epidural, no doubt about it. I would always joke, first sign of contraction, I am rushing myself to the hospital so they could stick a needle in my back. Of course, I never expected to be induced either.

I waited a long time to have a child. Although I am only couple months shy of thirty; I am the last of my siblings, who are of rightful childbirthing age, to have a baby. My brothers would often ask me, when I would settle down and be a mother. I had no interest in settling down. I loved traveling and loved my life as a single girl in the city. However that changed when I met my baby’s father. Things progressed pretty quickly for us, and not even a year after we became a couple; I was pregnant. I suffered through the hell of first trimester, the bliss of second, and the ridiculous weight gain of third. We started laughing one night because my feet were SO swollen, they looked like Fred Flinstones. Then there was the waiting game. Waiting patiently for my daughter to make her entrance into the world. Eight days past her due date, and still no sign of our daughter; an induction was scheduled. Although I had always planned for an epidural; the induction didn’t play into the equation. I tried everything from sex to chocolates to induce naturally. No avail, on April 1st at 7:30 in the morning; we arrived at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, PA with my trusty pillow.

I was fortunate to have an amazing natural birth experience with my first-born, despite being stuck in a tiny fairly rural hospital in Mississippi. My Canadian OB-GYN was the only one in town who would let me labor without an IV, and while she arrived to catch the baby leaving me to rely heavily on my two doulas-in-training and a few clueless nurses, my daughter was born after 15 hours of extremely painful back labor.

With my son’s birth, we were living in a large metropolitan area, so I sought out my “dream” birthing scenario: a midwife with a freestanding birthing center. However, thanks to an extremely tight budget and insurance that would only pay for a hospital birth, I wasn’t able to have the birth center experience. But my visits with my midwife, the relationship with my doula, and an extremely supportive hospital staff made my son’s birth just as wonderful.

That is all two hours of the time I was actually laboring at the hospital.

We writers at Eco-Child’s Play are writing about our birth experiences this week. My son’s birth was a fairly traditional hospital birth. It wasn’t until…oh… about a week before my son was born that I started really getting into the natural movement…way to late to do anything but make minor changes to my birth plan. So, I’m going to write about a friend of mine’s “natural c-section.”

My friend, a yoga teacher, living a green and organic life in Northern California, was happy to find herself finally married and pregnant in her forties. Well educated and well informed she planned to have a home birth until she received the devastating news from her OB and another OB and a series of midwives – a prior episode with fibroids, involving surgery, prevented her from having a vaginal birth, let alone a home birth. A C-section would be required.

I felt it was important to write about her story because there are ways to make a hospital birth, even a C-section, if you or your OB feel it’s necessary, more “natural” and feel less like medical intervention.

We went to labor classes, and I was all excited. I could do this, no epidural, no drugs. I’d run a marathon, I have a high pain threshold. I was all set mentally for this approach.

As it turned out, labor itself was enough of a marathon. One month to be exact. Did you know you can be in early labor for a whole month? Real contractions, off and on, for weeks. I knew that by the time my water broke, it would be go time.

Which turned out to be 1 a.m. on a Monday morning. The doctor on call was not worried, he did not know I had been through early labor already. We packed up and went to the hospital.

I refused the epidural initially, the contractions got stronger. I allowed them to “knock the edge off” with the epidural at seven. “Keep it light,” I said. Pretty soon it was time to push. And I pushed, and pushed. And pushed. Two hours of pushing. I watched the little one’s heart rate drop with every push. Something was not right. My pubic bone slanted inward, there was no way I could give birth naturally.

They cranked on the epidural and a c-section followed. My doctor offered to try natural birth — with forceps and risks. “Get the baby out, c-section, now!” I said. I had seen enough of her struggles on the heart rate monitor.