I’m thinking about Jo and Victor. There is going to be another little baby soon. Maybe today? Yay.

About ten years ago I first saw the vagina monologues. I loved them. Lea Purcell was as in it and two other fantastic women. I loved the monologues so much I bought the script. Over the years I have occasionally thought I would love to perform these one day but never really thought much about it.

Then about a week ago Libby saw a sign asking if anybody would like to be involved. She told me about it but I said I didn’t really have the time and wasn’t really good enough anyway. Libby rung anyway and went along and found about it. It turns out that the women involved are just local women and no one is a professional at all. It is really low key and each person only has to perform one.

I think I have time to perform one so I went and met the woman yesterday. She was lovely and really encouraging. I am very excited about it.

I have such a friend crush on my new friend Rosie. She was the midwife who was at Nina’s birth. She wasn’t the midwife who did all the prenatal and postnatal care but because the labour was so long my midwife had to leave and she came on for the last 5 hours or so. Anyway, we all thought she was so great and I have been hoping to bump into her ever since. I was very excited when I discovered that we had a number of mutual friends.

Then one night at a party Carney met her and she told her that I really wanted to be her friend. I was so embarassed that I kind of stopped wanting to bump into her. Finally, we did though out at Ellery Creek a few weekends back. We got chatting and Carney came up. I told her how embarassed I was and then she said that she was really happy because she wanted to be my friend too.

So on the weekend I invited her over with a few of our mutual friends. It was a lovely afternoon. Turns out that Rosie is also a vegetarian, was attending a Quaker meeting in Darwin, makes yummy cakes out of vege peels because she hates waste, love love stories and wants to be a hippo so she can lie around in mud all day. How cool is she?

I woke up this morning and read the Curly Pyjama letter and it has remined me of how very blessed I am. Things I am especially grateful for today:
Ryan and Libby being here and that they love helping out with Nina
Nina slept til 6.30 this morning
a swim in the $11 pool with Malley in the early morning light
Martin and all the love he pours on his family
the temperature has been below 35 degrees for a week
Saturday morning pancakes with the Honeymoon Gap mob

I should start this post by explaining what that means because most people I speak to don’t know so people who read this may not either. Doula is an ancient Greek word that means female servant but today it is a woman who supports women in birth. Unlike doctors and midwives they provide non medical support in the form of encouragement, information, massage and advocacy to ensure the woman’s rights and decisions are respected. They support women before and after the birth so they are a familiar face all the way through and help them when they get home with breast feeding etc.

I decided to get into this after my birth. I was very lucky to be part of a program in which I met with the same midwife all the way through and she was encouraging and respectful and helped me with different positions and massage. I also had a very supportive family around me and although I didn’t end up birthing Nina how I would have liked I always felt well cared for and respected. After the birth I could debrief the experience and share my disappointments. However most women around the world don’t. They often have a different health professional for all their prenatal visits and then someone else on the day of birth and no support when they get home. Or they can have a doctor who takes over the whole process for them and doesn’t treat them well. I have began speaking to many women who have talked about their births as really negative experiences, my mother in law informed she was told to be quiet during her labour. Some women have no family and go through the process alone. A doula can be someone to support women in these situations and research has shown women with doulas are less likely to have medical interventions, feel more bonded to their child, are more likely to breast feed and are more satisfied with their birth experience. I particularly feel that a doula would be a good support for women in Peru where birth is still very much treated as a medical procedure where most women have caesars and women who do have natural births are forced to stay one their bed with their legs up. This position works for the doctor but not the women who would be better in a position such as squatting where she is working with gravity.

Since the beginning of this journey it has felt like a real leading. When I first started thinking about this I mentioned it to Gemma in passing. Without knowing almost anything about she just said, “Mil I think this might be a real calling for you”. When I dropped her home that night we told Jane who said, “You know, I have heard the word Doula twice. The first time yesterday when reading the Sojourners magazine whose theme this month is the politics of birth and now.” So I read the magazine and they woman who was writing about becoming a Doula described almost exactly how I felt about it. She says, “my faith has brought me to a place where justice meets the delivery room”.

So I came home and found a course on the internet that I can do over a few months or a few years, however long it takes doesn’t matter. I have to do a practicum though which I got a bit nervous about, thinking I wouldn’t know how to do that. I gave it to God though in hope that something might come up. That week by chance I met the only other Doula in Alice Springs who was very encouraging and a woman who works at the indigenous birth centre who said many of her women give birth alone and could really use the support of a Doula. After that I knew it was right. So last week I down loaded the course and I have begun. I absolutely love it and I can’t wait to actually get started.

It’s been forty degrees or over for the last three days and more of the same predicted for the rest of the week so it’s hot hot, hot.

Ryan and Libby have arrived and I am very happy to see them. Marilyn and the girls have also returned from Adelaide so things will be a bit more lively around here.

Nina’s sleep training is going pretty well. Heated up a little too. Basically now she has no more dummies or singing she has to learn to fall asleep by herself (and around 7pm). We just sit beside her until she falls asleep. I thought it was going to be horrendous but it hasn’t been really. She usually wines a little for about 10 mins (which she did anyway if we bounced her to sleep maybe even longer) and then falls asleep. She also only gets one night time feed now and she has to stay in her cot until 6 in the morning. Again I thought it was going to awful but on both nights she has woken twice. The first time she got her feed and the second I just got up and rewrapped her and sat with her and she fell back asleep within five minutes. She’s woken at about 5.45 but just played in her cot until we get her up at 6. Napping has been a little harder. We decided she has to have three naps a day for at least 1 hour and half. She usually goes down pretty easily, again 5-10 mins of wining but then wakes about 50 mins later. Then I go and sit with her but unfortunately it takes about 30 mins of wining before she falls to sleep again. I do still pick her up for a hug if she gets very upset but thankfully that’s rare. It wasn’t an easy decision to make we really had tried to not have to do anything like this but we have reached my limit. We have also become convinced that she really needs to sleep more for her own good (and ours). She doesn’t love this but we have done it as gently and gradually as we can and as said she has actually gone okay and we are all happier when we are awake for it. We also figure that over Nina’s lifetime there will be many times when we are going to have to make her do things she doesn’t like eg eat veges instead of chocolate or go to school, it will never be easy I assume but we are all going to have to get used to it.

In other ways she is going well too. She laughs and rolls and swims and plays with toys. She is fascinating to watch. She has a fancy new pram which she seems to like and I absolutely love as does my back.

I start teaching again next week and yesterday I went in to meet with the guy who will be working with me. I have enjoyed thinking about thing apart from Nina. I just hope that the late night won’t be too heavy going.

I think that’s about it.

And it is the mot beautiful sound I have ever heard.

Iwatched the sun rise this morning. It really was rather pleasant watching the day dawn and the colours change and listening to the world wake up. Obviously our sleep plan didn’t go so well last night.

I am going to review all the books that I read again this year. I did that in 2009 but not last year as I was bit preoccupied with other things.

The first book of 2011 is the Book thief. It was brilliant. Set in Nazi Germany, it’s a story about a young girl who steals books amongst other things. What is unique about it though is that it is narrated by death. When I was first told that I thought it would be a bit weird, I didn’t think I’d like it but it was done so well, it was fascinating. It’s a story about death and suffering, about compassion, about books and words and their power. It’s a sad story but doesn’t knock you down completely, there is something uplifting in it. It made me feel grateful for life and drew me to mindfulness, this quote especially,

People observe the colours of the day only at its beginnings and its ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, which each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colours. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darkness. In my line of work, I make a point to notice them.

I used to think that we had come a long way in our treatment and understanding of people with a mental illness but today I am not so sure. I was visiting a friend this afternoon in the mental health ward at Alice Springs hospital. On the door it says that all patients, staff and visitors must be treated with dignity and respect however it seems a few of the staff members have failed to read the sign. My friend is being treated with complete disregard for her dignity. She was dragged into a locked ward, and she has the bruises to prove it, because she got a little angry because she was being patronised and treated like a child. Now, they have drugged her up so much with medications (for an illness that she doesn’t even have) that she can’t think or even speak properly. I was reminded of a poem that another friend wrote about how people with mental illness are not allowed to experience the normal human emotions. If they are sad, they are depressed, if they are angry, they might get violent, if they are confused they are psychotic. It’s not fair. My friend has truly suffered enough and she has come out the most gentle and kind person yet she is being treated as if she is a danger.