Birth Mandala 1

This picture is a bit out of focus. I will try to take another one. This is the mandala I made for my friend C who wanted something that was 10cm to focus on for her birth. I started with contemplating 10cm by coloring 10cm circles which is the picture above with oil pastels. I'd never made Mandala's before this one. I used markers which is  generally not my best medium since it requires a little more precision than I am used to...

I'm really enjoying the markers now that I have used them a bit. I'm planning on making flashcards for my baby with neat art. I already made a black and white set with the ABC's and lines and dots which I show her just to stimulate her sense rather than for any true learning since she is way to young for the ABC's.  In all honesty, I do it because she gets so fascinated for a little while she forgets to be fussy.

Recipe: Gluten-Free Oatcakes Variation w/Almond Meal & Evoo

2 cups rolled oats

2 cups oat flour

3 cups Kefir

1/4 cup filtered water

3 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

4 tsp baking soda

2 tsp salt

4 tsp rapadura sugar

1 cup almond meal

Mix rolled oats, oat flour, kefir, & filtered water together. Let sit at least 7 hours (mine sat out covered for 16 hrs).

Mix in evoo, baking soda, almond meal, sugar & salt. Spoon onto greased cookie sheet. I used EVOO to grease and let it pool just a little so that my end oatcakes and crispy edges. 

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or so depending on size of oatcakes. Makes 22-24 oatcakes. These have a tendency to spread so be aware as you decide spacing on your cookie sheets. I generally don't want to use more than 2 cookie sheets. These pretty much ended up touching other.

Very tasty with cheese. Quite biscuit-like in texture though flat. For variations add 1 tsp of spices like rosemary or oregano. Could also add cheddar pieces. This could also be a good sweet if you put more sugar, nuts, and dried fruit.

Keeps for 4 days in air tight container on counter. Best in Frig.

New favorite recipe. My husband even likes these quite a bit.

Thoughts on my Garden

I've been taking my kiddo on walks around the backyard in the morning. Looking around I'm reevaluating my garden plans that I implemented last year. It could be that being a mom is really changing how I think about things or just that I have a really finite amount of time available or it could be that all the ligustrum and other trash trees as well as the poison oak have grown back after all I did to eradicate them. I also have a bumper crop of weeds, grassy ones that have grown over everything even my raised beds. Part of me really wants a nice garden with beautiful plants that is really planned out and part of me wonders if we were meant to struggle with nature this way? Do I really want to play tug-of-war with these plants or can I find a way to live comfortably with them? I have a really limited amount of time in the backyard, so I have to maximize the time I do spend and really evaluate my family's needs. As much as I wanted a place and space for myself in the backyard and just to have something beautiful to admire at one time, now I look at it and wonder where is space for my kiddo to play back here?

I'm thinking now what do I want to save and what is not worth saving? What died after only a year? Granted it was a nice year, but still I was planning for long-term. Can I say that my garden experiment failed or should I say it succeeded beyond my expectations, but my wants/needs have changed.

Part of me wishes, now that I am out of time that I could just tell someone else what I want and say go at it, but then again the best part of gardening is losing myself in the work.

The Joy of Fabric Markers

I've had lots of fun with decorating white baby tees for my kiddo and friends. 

These are some onesies I made for my friend's little boy due in October and a couple of cool t-shirts that are a little more boyish/gender neutral.

Kiddo wore these briefly before she grew out of them.

Overgrown

Arg! 70% of the ligustrum grew back as well as the hackberry & china berry tree. I actually spent 30mins cutting down some of the growth along the fence. It felt good. I'm also proud that I didn't overdo it my first day back in the yard. I apparently made my yard so fertile that I will be spending quite a bit of time weeding this fall. Well, removal work is therapeutic.

I'm debating planting some of the seeds I saved from last fall. I can't eat brassicas because they give my newborn horrible gas pains, but there is a chance that by the time my brassicas mature that won't be a problem anymore. I'm not sure if I have time for the garden this year, it may take all my available time just to clean up the backyard so it looks happy again.

I lost a few plants. The yellow bells didn't last more than the first season. Found out that they are not freeze tolerant until established and my yard is way too open to the elements. I lost another of the first things I planted, the hops bush, died. Strange, since it has been a wet year. I haven't really taken an inventory of other things that have grown or I have lost since I don't make it out back too often. Parenting is tough work...

Recipe: Banana Cream Cheese Bars

• 6 tablespoons  butter, melted and cooled
• 1 1/2  cups  sugar
• 1/3 cup kefir 
• 3  large eggs
• 3 bananas mashed
• 1 3/4  cups  all-purpose flour
• 1/2  teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice (allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon)
• 1  teaspoon  baking soda
• 1/2 rounded teaspoon  baking powder
• 1  package (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon kefir or cream if using frozen cream cheese

Preparation

1. In a bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar until smooth. Beat in 2 eggs, bananas, and 1/3 cup kefir until well blended, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. In another bowl, mix flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and spices; stir or beat into butter mixture until well blended. Spread batter evenly in a buttered and floured 10- by 15-inch baking pan.

2. In a bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat cream cheese, remaining egg, 1 tablespoon kefir and remaining 1/4 cup sugar until smooth.

3. Drop cream cheese mixture in 24 evenly spaced 1-tablespoon portions over batter. Pull a knife tip through filling to swirl slightly into batter.

4. Bake in a 350° oven until center of banana batter (not cream cheese mixture) springs back when touched, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely in pan, then cut into 24 bars.

Recipe: Cranberry Walnut Oatmeal Cookies (Mother-in-Law's Recipe)

This oatmeal cookie recipe is one my mother-in-law adapted from a package of Quacker Oats.  I'm not sure how much she changed it.  I've changed it even more to cut down the sweetness since most cookies are too sweet for me.

2 stick butter, left on the counter 'till soft

1/4 cup evaporated cane juice

1/4 cup rapadura 

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups white flour (whole wheat pastry flour would work too)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 rounded teaspoon cinnamon 

1/2 teaspoon salt 

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup dried cranberries

3/4 cup walnuts

Oven 350

Directions:

Beat together butter and sugars until creamy

Add eggs and vanilla; beat well

Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well

Stir in oats and cranberries; mix well

Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto Ungreased cookie sheet

Bake in 350 oven, 9 minutes.

Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet.

Recipe: Homemade Trail Mix Cookies

Crumbly, chewy, oaty, fruit nutty and seedtastic cookies. This recipe makes me understand why the Brits call them biscuits.

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup kefir
1/8 cup filtered water
1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/8 cup dried blueberries
1/2 cup walnuts
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup rapadura
1/4 cup olive oil
1/8 cup coconut oil

Mix rolled oats, kefir, & filtered water together. Let sit at least 7 hours (mine sat out covered  with a cloth for 24 hrs).

Mix in oil, vanilla, baking soda, sugar & salt. After it is well mixed add dried fruit & nuts & seeds. Spoon onto greased cookie sheet and mash together with hands. (great for making your skin soft)

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or so depending on size of cookies.


Somewhat crumbly, but very tasty with just the right amount of sweetness. Cut the fruit, seeds and nuts in half for less 
crumble issues. Store flat or they break apart.

As promised another version of my breastfeeding story

The Breast isn't Always Best.

Before I ever got pregnant, I knew I wanted to breast feed. The image of the baby at the breast was the ultimate image of motherhood for me which made being unable to breast feed hard. My large breasts in the beginning of trying to breast feed were so unwieldy, my nipples so large and shaped wrong, and I couldn’t seem to manage them. My child couldn’t seem to latch on most of the time and when she did, it hurt. Right from the first moment she was at my breast she tore up my left nipple. I was given a nipple shield to help with that, but it made it all the more harder as I fumbled with it. All of it added to my sense of incompetence at a part of motherhood that was suppose to be so natural and easy.

When the post-partum nurse tried to teach me to breast feed, my child turned red, screamed and fought being put on my breast. Breast feeding started to seem like an act of violence rather than the ultimate image of mother love. When my child turned blue at my breast and almost suffocated, I still didn’t give up even thought panic raced through my body every time she changed colors to red. When my child lost more than 10% of her body weight and we couldn’t wake her, I still thought breast feeding was best and going to happen, especially since my milk had come in and the post-partum nurse and I discovered that my nipples were fine, but that my child couldn’t suck my nipple the way she needed to to get milk. The nurse thought my kid had a tongue thrust issue and just required some training. 

Meanwhile until I could get breastfeeding going, we were going to spoon feed our kiddo with expressed breast milk so she could have the energy to try breast feeding. My kiddo wasn’t able to be spoon fed, she spit up all her food. After some consultation we eventually decided to use a bottle. My milk supply was starting to go down, though. My husband and I endured a night of screaming as we fed our child just enough so that she realized how hungry she was. Sometime during those hours of screaming, I had a moment of lucidity and knew I was sending my husband to the store for formula as soon as they opened. We just couldn’t go on like this... I was trying to follow the expert advice I was being given and going against my instincts that said my child needed to be fed and how it was done didn’t matter. At that point, she totally rejected my breasts by moving her head away or go completely still like an animal does when hit by headlights or she would scream when my nipples came near her. In two days, my child gained back most of her birth weight and her jaundice was mostly gone.

A week later, I tried again with the most experienced lactation consultant I could find. She noticed fairly quickly that my child had a breathing problem. Specifically, that Kiddo could not coordinate suck, swallow, breathe which apparently is suppose to be in a 1:1:1. I found out from her that babies naturally protect their airways which is probably why my child screamed at the breast and fought being latched on. The consultant was surprised we could bottle feed at all. The consultant gave me tips on how to feed with the bottle so that I could eventually try breast feeding if my child grew out of her coordination issue which often happened with kids around 3 months and also recommended taking my child to a pediatric ear, nose, throat specialist to make sure there were no hidden issues. 

The ENT knew immediately from the way our kid sounded that she had Laryngomalacia, which means that the cartilage in our little one's voice box is too soft and flops over partially blocking her airway.  After looking at our child’s throat she also diagnosed GERD because our kiddo’s throat tissue was very inflamed. Kiddo has what is known as "silent" GERD 'cause she doesn't spit up, but reswallows the acid reflux so that she gets a double dose which really inflames the tissue. The ENT felt that Kiddo's case was mild on both counts. She indicated that what we were already doing was enough with a few other modifications in how we fed her. Breastfeeding though was pretty much out of the question with Kiddo's trifecta of problems. After much research, I came to realize we were lucky that our child could drink breastmilk from the bottle at all. Our little one could easily have had failure to thrive and/or needed other medical intervention. Being able to take the bottle and being able to mostly feed her pumped breastmilk apparently was a success. I wish it felt that way. I try to feel grateful that with the bottle we know how much she is eating and that my husband gets to bond with our daughter through feeding her too. I'm also excited when we weigh her and see that she is growing,  Last weigh-in, she was 10lbs 10 ozs and not even 3 weeks yet. I think I will still be dealing with a broken heart for a while, but like all broken hearts, time will heal all I expect and I will get over the what-ifs and maybe I should haves...

Oral Defensiveness

I've just found another label for my breastfeeding experience. Finding labels like this are helpful because it says I'm not alone. I've found this website by MOBI Motherhood International that talks not only about low milk supply which isn't part of my issues at all but also about other reasons babies won't nurse.

I feel like through writing and editing my story to submit to a mothering website I've healed a lot. I rewrote my breastfeeding story 4 to 5 times, posted one to this blog (a very chaotic early version) and submitted one to the the mothering site I read the most (I will eventually post that one to this blog). Each new version of my story made me feel better, less sad, and less attached to my expectations as my writing became more organized I became less unhappy with my lot. Breastfeeding was about me and my image of what it meant to be a new mother. My child is thriving on my breast milk and she don't want no breast with it. More specifically her oral defensiveness has some real biological basis behind it. Breastfeeding means not being able to breathe to my baby and also being uncomfortable. Now that I've given up on her taking milk from the breast, I've been able to really get in touch with my baby's needs.

I'm finding other ways to soothe my baby, become attached, and feel like a mother.  My kiddo 'cause of her issues has a lot of gas and also because babies just have gas since their digestive systems are so new. I've learned some massage techniques and other techniques to help my baby through her painful gas bouts from my chiropractor.

The first technique is to put Kiddo face down across both my legs so that her tummy is hanging down between my legs and then to gently move my legs together and apart never squashing her tummy.  It is similar to the movement she makes when she arches her back, but in the opposite direction. My baby really likes this.

The 2nd technique is to massage her tummy. First find baby's rib cage then from below that in a reverse "C" (basically following the path of the intestine) starting at the top right, making light circling motions with two fingertips. The pressure on my own arm is just enough to tell my fingers are touching me i.e. barely press to the point one isn't pressing at all.

Another massage technique my chiropractor taught me for my baby who she has been adjusting starting a week after baby was born, is to make circling motions with two fingertips along either side of babies spine especially in spots that have tensions (are hard). Yet again the pressure is so gently that an adult would feel it just as a light touch on the skin.

It is nice to have tips to help soothe my baby. I can tell Kiddo really enjoys the massage techniques because she really relaxes into them.

I keep needing to remind myself especially since it is unconscious that motherhood is about my baby's needs not mine.  My image of what it means to be a good mother may not be what my baby needs. A good mother listens to her baby and learns. I'm getting there. Listening is hard especially since baby speaks a totally new language.