Community Birth Workers

Our Rainbow House attracted another knock on the door today from the cousin of my neighbors' grandson who walked her over to say hi and let me know how much she loves the house. Her and partner are expecting a wee one and was surprised and excited to know about my birth support services and network of lovely providers for her to chose from. She thought she would have to go to Alsea to have a home birth. This young lady was friends with several people that know of me, her partner's cousin is a friend of my son's.

Friends and family, sister birth workers, please talk to your neighbors about what you are doing, tell them about safe options in childbirth, talk about how important it is for mothers and fathers to be supported and informed so they know that there are people in their communities that are available to them to find the birth they want. To CREATE the birth they deserve. It is about all of us and we are all affected in so many ways by the system of care in which babies are brought here. If you are one of those people that think because you are finished having kids or never having them that birth isn't important, think again. Read this book: Childbirth and the Future of Homo Sapiens by Dr. Michele Odent.

Be aware, be a resource, know your referrals among your circle of friends and loved ones, Business partners and network circles.... You might be the link that makes all the difference in the world to that family.

In Lebanon, OR there are at least 4 Midwives, 2 student midwives, at least 7 doulas, 3 childbirth educators and people meeting regularly to learn and create more community among women and surrounding birth in particular.

Please have a look at some of the local Birth workers in my community:

Birth With Liz
Midvalley Birthing Sevices
Growing Family Birth Center
Makawee Birth Assistance (obviously myself)
Corvallis Doula Network
Gentle Beginnings Midwifery Care
Heart Of the Valley Birth Center

Money

Many years of my life have been spent with short term goals in mind because the short term was so uncertain while being poor and having little resources to draw from. Days go by, weeks, months, without ever considering what will be happening in the next year, 2 years, 5 years, 10. After all, there is no way to even think about possibilities when you don't even know if you will be in the same house or town. That is how it has been for me since I was a young teen.

Someone recently said to me, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." I couldn't agree more. I realized several years ago that as soon as I spoke the words, my fate changed. As soon as I said," I'm going to do (insert clever plan on making money or improving my family's quality of life)," I could literally feel my insides changing to make it difficult or impossible. Even as I listened to "The Secret" on audio a few years ago and thought that she might be onto something and noticed the way I would challenge the Universe to provide my desires and changing my thoughts to make it seem like it was a success when things happened, I could remember all the times I spoke my thoughts and everything grew further out of reach. Do we live by the law of attraction, willing our desires and needs to us, creating our reality? Or, is it more like God laughing as he taunts us with close successes and dreams that never come to fruition as some kind of challenge to live harder and build us up stronger? Well, for me, it is neither because I believe in neither God or fateful Secrets.

The last few weeks have been filled with consuming thoughts of how I am going to make my goals work. How am I going to take charge and make it happen without relying on God or mantras? I am browsing pages of options and then thinking, while looking at train schedules and class schedules for classes I want to take more than a year from now, that it is useless to try to find this info because it will likely change before I have the opportunity to use it. Realizing you can't exactly make plans for 3-5-8-10 years from now down to the details of transportation and time management is defeating.

The harder I look, the further I feel away from my goals and desires. I have to challenge myself about responsibility and attachments and sacrifices, about letting go of old ideas and which ones are worth holding onto. I am sick of reinventing myself. I know what I want to do, but it feels ever so out of reach and it comes down to MONEY.

You see, if you have money you don't have to rely on other people to help you out of the kindness and convenience of their hearts, you pay your way to what you need and desire. If I had money to care for my needs, I could volunteer at any service I wanted to give and we all know, I live to serve my community and the mothers and children and families and even the critters, domestic and wild. Hell, I would tree sit and get arrested at demonstrations. I would camp out in front of the Capital and serve food to the homeless. I would do the gardening at CARDV and take elderly people to the park. I would be a volunteer midwife and serve birthing families as often as I could without any strings attached, if I could feed my own family and secure my own home and their futures.

I could be amazing.... if I had money.

Women Deliver

Activist and film maker, Janel Mirendah has many things to say and I agree 100%. Here is a quote from her today in response to this picture. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151459934551748&set=a.39121296747.52191.656566747&type=1&theater&notif_t=photo_reply

No where is the sacrifice of women to the alter of medical negligence (and greed and control) more of a problem than in wealthy America, where MORE women and babies die than in any other industrialized nation and even more than some very poor countries. The medical model of birth is FORCED upon US women and babies while right to access to physiological model of birth (of which midwives are the experts) that make birth safer around the world are denied. Midwives are villianized, criminalized, and brutalized in the US where MORE women and babies will die and countless others who survived are profoundly, permanently harmed. This is only because the rights of people to be born safely AND gently are controlled by the medical and legal systems.

The US medical model of birth is NOT safe and it is not kind. The US conquering, wounding male model of medical birth that squelches the feminine, intuitive, natural, physiological model of birth that brought humanity through eons, is NOT the answer to maternal health care around the world - No more than Nestle and Monsanto are the answer to feeding the world. These corporate monsters are a result of, exist because of, the willingness of humans to continue to ignore the truth about women's bodies and what babies/humans truly need. These corporations are the result of disempowered and violence imprinted humans at the most profound moment: birth and connection. These corporations exist, while we HAVE the resources but no the collective will, and not the collective authority over the resources, because of the willingness to continue for generations now to deny women's rights, baby's and father's rights; and, because of the willingness to routinely, profoundly disrupt and abuse women and babies in their most vulnerable moment. In the most powerful country in the world, this is where and how Monsanto and Nestle's control over the world begins.

Women and babies in Africa and in United States need what every human being for eons has needed: To be wanted, loved, and welcomed to this planet and treated kindly and as a being of value. They need good food, clean water and air, access to plant medicine and natural antibiotics (lavender, silver, etc), acupuncture, massage/touch, etc and access to the real "alternative", modern medicine, when needed. Childbearing women need not to work 40-60 hours a week. Babies need nourished, nurtured, loved, supported mothers for the first years of their emotional, mental, and physical development.

To do that on a global level, or on a mama-baby level, we must first see and know, and acknowledge, WHO the human baby is. See how every moment of development from pre-conception (health of sperm and egg) through infancy is a profound, critical continuum of development: emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, financially. Mothering and fathering need to be valued. The human infant and child needs to be treated as the greatest national resource we have.

Zonta Scholarship Essay

I received word yesterday that I was chosen to receive a $2700 scholarship from the Zonta Club of Corvallis. I had to write a one page essay on how I plan on serving women in the community. One page is a hard limit for me as there are so many ways in which I plan to serve the community for so many reasons but I did it and apparently it worked so here is the essay, enjoy!

Zonta Scholarship Essay by Kaire Downin

Taking 12 credits a term, keeping a GPA of over 3.0 as well as navigating a health care system to manage the care of my daughter with Autism has been one of the most challenging aspects of being a mom in college. After experiencing these challenges and deciding to home school my daughter, its becoming even more challenging yet and I don’t see it getting much easier. That being said, my passion and drive to make the world a better place for my daughters and the women and daughters in my community fuels my love for education and addiction to volunteering.

                At OSU, I am working on 2 degrees, one in Human Development and Family Science, the other in Women Studies with a minor in Psychology.  The main goal of my education is to be a midwife. I hope to continue to attend college part time to earn the prerequisite credits to finish in the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland where I will become a naturopathic physician and midwife. I will approach midwifery in a way that is more than catching babies, but transforming women into strong, independent, empowered and educated mothers by supporting the formation of their family with Holistic care. Working with mothers who are survivors of abuse is one of my top priorities. Childbirth is a time of transformation where the opportunity to heal many past emotional and spiritual injuries is present. I plan to provide support to help families grow out of old pains and into a new position of love and care, even if these mothers have not experienced a life of that themselves.

                Having dropped out of high school the day I turned 16 and being a homeless teen, I didn’t have the opportunities or support to become a college graduate early in my life. I worked in night clubs, eventually finding a partner and getting pregnant at 19. Shortly after the birth of our son, we were married and have remained together for 16 years. I went to Massage Therapy school and worked for 4 years until I had my 2^nd child. I spent 4 years of my 2 daughters’ early lives working from home as a seamstress after designing a baby carrier and creating an online business that failed due to the lack of financial investment I could contribute. After the loss of that opportunity, I had my hand at real estate, but that coincided with the drop in the market and I was, again, suffering due to lack of financial support and was forced to quit that endeavor and go to college. I never, in a million years, thought I would be a college student, and I certainly never thought I would be considering becoming a doctor.

                The birth of my children was the most transformative and healing process for me. Currently, I am studying textbooks, reading studies, writing papers, attending a study group and conferences, and providing birth support as a doula when I am available. I also provide herbal and placenta medicine to new moms and post partum help with breastfeeding. I never turn down a client for lack of money because ALL moms deserve care. I believe the future of our society depends on peaceful births and support of mothers to raise peaceful children who will care about the people around them and the Earth we live on. I believe that Midwifery is one of the highest forms of working with women and is important for all people. All babies deserve a peaceful birth.

                Acknowledging the lack of midwifery care in our health system has put me in position to be an activist politically. I am the Vice Chair of the Linn County Community Advisory Committee that oversees the efforts of Intercommunity Health Network and Samaritan Health services to perform the contracted duties of providing care to Oregon Health Care clients.  Oregon Health Care is in a big transition and being a part of this committee puts me in a position to influence the way that health care is administered to the underprivileged population that uses OHP for services. The current goals are to reduce spending, provide patient centered, preventative care and create a system that addresses the full needs of the community which is currently lacking in mental health, maternity service, disability care, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation. It is an honor and privilege to be in this position which I was nominated for.

So as you can see, I am an active and passionate community member with a focus on women and children. Receiving this scholarship would help my family tremendously. We currently are a month behind on our mortgage and are wondering how we will pay for child care over the summer so we can both attend school full time. My part time care taking job will likely be terminated in another month.  To be the recipient of this scholarship would be a blessing. Thank you for your consideration. 

10 Yellow Things

In one of my classes, my professor likes to start the class with a writing exercise. He asked us to write down a list of 10 yellow things and then write a poem, we had 10 minutes. This is what I got....

My Notebook
Roses for Suffrage
Sections of my Rainbow House
The Sunset
Pineapples
Pears
Crayons
My Tank Top
Pill Boxes
Soap Bottles

The Sunset reminds me of evenings spent sipping pineapple frozen drinks in the Keys
I wore my tank top that matches my mom's favorite yellow roses,
but she doesn't know they had anything to do with suffrage voting.
I moved far away from there
and instead of lemons in my back yard
there are pears
My bathroom is smaller
with soap bottles and pill boxes scattered on the counter top
and outside there is a rainbow painted on the front of my old house.
My children no linger draw on the walls with crayons
and instead my notebooks go missing.
This is what home looks like,
Ever changing as fast as the sunset.

GMO Madness

click here to enlarge

This is a subject I have been paying quite a bit of attention to for several years. The single most convincing argument I have heard is from Robin Lim, a famous midwife in Indonesia who has been working with women there for over 20 years. She has found that since GMO soy and corn crops have been added to the diets of the women in Indonesia, there has been a huge influx of placenta abnormalities. Problems with the placenta that are life threatening to the baby that used to be rare are now being seen more often, as much as several times a day in the birth center where she assists in the delivery in over 10 babies a day. You can read more about her experience here: 

We do not have enough research that shows that these modified food are safe for people, we do have studies showing they alter the genes of animals. The same company that made Agent Orange and DDT makes these GMOs and they said the previous chemicals were safe and they were not. I guaranty once you go looking around and connect the dots that you will find that this is an experiment being done, especially on the poor people of the world and we are losing. 

Monsanto sold thousands of these types of crops to people in India and when their crops died, families lost everything. Thousands of farmers have committed suicide from the practices of Monsanto selling them seeds that don't grow, with the promise that they will have better crops. They infect crops that are natural and ruin the livlihoods of anyone in the area. The company makes them dispose of all their own seeds that they have learned to save for generations, they test nearby farmers and if their crops show signs of the GMO they sue them. This practice forces the farmers to buy seeds every year and prevents them from using the farmers knowledge and tradition of how to grow proper food, making their land bare and stealing everything from their families. You can read more about that here.

I invite you to do read beyond this one page to educate yourself on not only the health destruction but the life destruction that this business promotes, the horrible business practices and go a bit further to learn that the former lobbyist, Michael Taylor, of this monstrous company has been appointed by OBAMA as the Senior Advisory to Commissioner for the FDA! 

Yes I am passionate about this. Natural food is at stake. Our well being is at stake. People's livelihoods are at stake and we are being fed this garbage without our knowledge. Even "organic" food can have GMO products. We need to know what we are eating, have access to safe, affordable, nourishing food. All other industrialized countries have BANNED them, why are we living in the dark ages?

Picking Your Own Bones

Tanya Maria Mah wrote a blog called "I've Got a Bone To Pick With My Yoga Teacher" that my sweet husband, knowing how much I can relate, shared with me on Facebook today. I thought I would also share and include my response to this. Enjoy!

Wow, she sure had a lot of coffee that day! I get what Tanya is saying here. It gets old when we are told day after day to think positive, go back to our breath, only do what we can handle and it will all work out. After all this time I have played along with dietary supplements, vitamins, yoga, eating right, going gluten free, the changes that have actually occurred as a result to those efforts are small in contrast to the amount of time, energy, money, and will power it has taken to put them into place. This is why pharma wins. But when we give up on these things, and we go the "easy way" with medication to help our anxieties, weight loss, hormone imbalances, energy/fatigue issues, depression, pain, exhaustion, we realize that there is no easy answer and sometimes going back to your breath is better for you than popping a pill. Sometimes these professors got their position because they have knowledge and experience that we, as students don't have, they have talked to enough people, tried enough variety, and know better. Sometimes it is a mixture of these well intentioned know it-alls and their own desire to make a buck that we get sucked into the trends. But we still have to be accountable for our own gullibility at the desire to have something, SOMETHING freakin' work to aid in the discomfort of existing. Not everything is backed by science, and many times the stuff that is comes with a pamphlet 2 inches thick of risks and side effects, then we become gullible that it wont happen to us, until it does. What is the answer? I don't know... I am equally gullible to both sides... We all just want to feel better. Maybe the hardest part is accepting that peace resides in the mind and mind over matter means that you can overcome your pain and suffering if you just believe. Maybe it is a placebo effect that is the best answer to relieve the suffering, the power of ones' own mind. That is why I love psychology... wow, I just wrote a mini paper...