Calendars Sentimental Memories and Birth (of course!)

Does anyone else hang on to old calendars?

I love to reminisce as I read and reread the scribbled notes on my 2008 calendar. My old calendar is full of appointments, birthdays, trips, births, due dates, anniversaries, special events, etc. The planning, anticipation of each event involves an emotional investment of myself and as I remember each one the emotions come flooding back. I also like to read other people's calendars. My mom's is so much fuller than mine; she is a super amazing, energetic, ball of fire!

I put all my scribbles on the calendar that is on my refrigerator so that family members coming and going are in the loop. The guest bedroom calendar was blank, beautiful but blank so I had no qualms about tossing it (scriptures and all).

Here at work I starting really reading my calendar from last year and guess what, it has some great stuff! Every month had a Successories motivational quote.

For instance, December's theme was CHANGE. Can you see how that relates to pregnancy, labor and birth? Here is what it said, "Recognize that life is in constant motion and every change happens for a reason".

November's theme was CHOICE. Success is not reached by chance, it is reached by choice. Midwifes, homebirthing families, doulas know well how this relates to birth. If a woman is even somewhat healthy and she wants a natural birth, an unmedicated birth with little to no intervention, or maybe an ecstatic birth she will find out that she has the option to birth at home. Will she be successful in her vision and birth wishes? It's her choice.

I love what October says about VISION, Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams and endeavor to live the life you have imagined!

September is a really great mantra for pregnancy and labor (and life)! STAY IN THE RACE - Be the one who sets the course, focusing on the right things at the right time. Pregnancy is a good time to "focus on the right things at the right time! Read (focus on) positive birth stories not negative birth stories. During labor focus on your body, the air you breath, your baby, relaxing every fiber of every muscle as well as you can (big time focus!), like the non focused awareness that your Birthing From Within mentor taught you. Focus on the present moment and do not be cerebral, thinking thoughts like, "What is he thinking?", "How dilated am I?", "how much longer will I labor?" These thoughts are not staying in the moment. "I feel the warm sun coming in the window", "I hear my helpers breathing with me", "I hear my own breathing", "I see the light through the crack in the door", "I feel my baby move". Focus without judgment will allow you to 'stay the race' or the 'course' and experience your power like never before.

All this from a calendar! We can really see where our hearts are by our interpretation of our tangible world each day - eh? My heart is with you, my friend, woman-with-child or mommy-to-many.

Lastly I would like to share something that I found a couple of years ago and again recently. It rings true so deeply in my heart. I’m like, "What?" "Somebody else feels what I feel?" "How could they have put my tortured mind at rest so completely in one sentence?" Good day, Rosie

"...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Birth Quotes

You are constructing your own reality with the choices you make...or don't make. If you really want a healthy pregnancy and joyful birth, and you truly understand that you are the one in control, then you must examine what you have or haven't done so far to create the outcome you want.

Kim Wildner-Author of Mother's Intention: How Belief Shapes Birth

If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

Irma Bombeck

If we are to heal the planet, we must begin by healing birthing.

Agnes Sallet Von Tannenberg

People never sing...except in the bathroom. Birthing women also make their natural sounds next to running bath water. There is something about the power of water. People are drawn to water, spas, and sacred streams. Women in labor are drawn to water, too.

Michel Odent, MD

We are made to do this work and its not easy...I would say that pain is part of the glory, or the tremendous mystery of life. And that if anything, it's a kind of privilege to stand so close to such an incredible miracle.

Simone in Klasson 2001

Well behaved women rarely make history.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death.

Betty Bender

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Courage allows the successful woman to fail - and to learn powerful lessons from the failure - so that in the end, she didn't fail at all.

Maya Angelou

If a doula were a drug, it would be unethical not to use it.

John H. Kennell, MD

I think one of the best things we could do would be to help women/parents/families discover their own birth power, from within themselves. And to let them know it's always been there, they just needed to tap into it.
John H. Kennell, MD

What's done to children, they will do to society.

Karl Menninger

We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong. Laura Stavoe Harm

The whole point of woman-centered birth is the knowledge that a woman is the birth power source. She may need, and deserve, help, but in essence, she always had, currently has, and will have the power.

Heather McCue

Just as a woman's heart knows how and when to pump, her lungs to inhale, and her hand to pull back from fire, so she knows when and how to give birth.

Virginia Di Orio

Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of our greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.

Mother Teresa

Mothers need to know that their care and their choices won't be compromised by birth politics.

Jennifer Rosenberg

Only with trust, faith, and support can the woman allow the birth experience to enlighten and empower her. Women's strongest feelings [in terms of their birthings], positive and negative, focus on the way they were treated by their caregivers.

Annie Kennedy & Penny Simkin

The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women.

Stephen Gaskin

300,000 women will be giving birth with you today. Relax and breathe and do nothing else. Labor is hard work, it hurts and you can do it.

Unknown

If in doubt, breathe out

Cathy Doberska - Reading, UK NCT teacher

There is power that comes to women when they give birth. They don't ask for it, it simply invades them. Accumulates like clouds on the horizon and passes through, carrying the child with it.

Sheryl Feldman

Rain, after all is only rain; it is not bad weather. So also, pain is only pain; unless we resist it, then it becomes torment.
I Ching

There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all but the baby's. Your body is the child's instrument of birth.
Penelope Leach

I discovered I always have choices and sometimes it's only a choice of attitude.

Judith M. Knowlton

If I don't know my options, I don't have any.
Diana Korte

We've all been waiting for you.

For you.

Your arrival has been marked, has been recorded on earth,

in the universe, in the galaxies, in all of space,

in all of time.

You come with a birthright,

written in love and sung through all Creation

in words which promise that no matter

where you're at, you're home

that no matter who you're with,

you're welcome that no matter who you are, you're loved.

Welcome.

Rita Ramsey