Happy New Year, Everyone!
      How is everyone doing at the real beginning of the new millennium? We are just fine. We have managed to stay well during the cold & flu season (knock on wood…), and have been content to stay inside, out of the cold weather, most of the time. The kids are doing well, and Jerry and Suzanne are busy, busy.

About Rio…Rio is in the middle of his Kindergarten training. We try to do at least 30 minutes to an hour of school with him every day. He learns all sorts of new things all the time; it is impossible to list everything here! He currently can count up to about 50, and higher with prompting. He is at a standstill with his reading, since he doesn’t have much interest in that these days, but he is learning how to add and subtract. He is also learning about the sates one by one—reading and discussing special things about each one, and then drawing characteristic elements of each state on that state’s outline.
     Rio is still very interested in art, and does at least two or three hours of drawing every day, often more. His favorite drawing subjects are the characters from Toy Story, but he draws animals, cars, and insects too. He makes a lot of books by stapling his drawings together and writing short captions on each one.
     The cold weather has prevented us from doing a lot of activities, but we did manage to get to an Arthur party at a local educational toy store, where Rio made an Arthur puppet out of a paper bag.

About Ewan…Our littlest member is doing great. Ewan is now 5½ months old, and weighs about 20 pounds. His hair is coming in as a soft coal brown. Sometimes his eyes look cold gray or green, but mostly they are brown--not a warm brown like Jerry’s, but a cold, blackish-brown. He recently learned how to sit up, and likes to sit for a half an hour or more watching his older brother play and draw. He idolizes Rio, and Rio provides a good example by treating him with much sweetness and respect. Ewan sleeps very well at night, only waking at 3:10 to nurse and at 4:35 to be repositioned. Sometimes he goes to sleep in Rio’s bed for a few hours at night—they both love that. He is a happy baby generally, but he cries whenever Rio talks gibberish.

About Suzanne… Suzanne has been making a lot of her Ukrainian Easter Eggs (pysanky) and selling them on eBay (an online auction). So far she has sold four eggs, and plans to sell as many as possible before the holiday. It is nice to be paid for her art. Anyone interested in bidding on her eggs should check out her Current Auctions to see what she has at any given point!
     Suzanne’s main priority is taking care of the boys and teaching Rio his daily lessons, but Ewan’s wide-spread nursing schedule (every four to five hours) enables her to go out by herself once in a while. She went to a symphony concert last month (and heard a performance by Richard White, who did the voice of Gaston in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast!), and gets time to herself every few days when Jerry takes the boys out shopping.

About Jerry… Jerry is terribly busy at Bed Bath & Beyond, with inventory coming up. He is always on the lookout for more figures to add to his Star Wars collection, and he recently used his hobby to make a little extra money. He bought a few rare new figures and sold them on eBay, with help from Suzanne (the eBay expert)! He didn’t make much off of the experiment, but even a few dollars is fun to earn.

Fear of the Unknown, and its Effect on Childbirth
By Suzanne

     This is something I just can’t get through to people…
     Like most new mothers, I have re-lived my birth experience by telling it many times, to many people. I gave a quick report in the Newsletter, I detailed it on my website, and I have talked about it to people. One of the most striking aspects of Ewan’s birth is that it was remarkably comfortable. I have never been ambiguous about the fact that it was a very low-pain labor. And I have mentioned that I had no painkillers.
     Yet, while I have gotten some comments along the lines of "I’m so glad it went well," most people choose to treat me as a freak or a hero for doing it "natural." I have gotten comments like, "I could never do it without an epidural," or "Gosh, you must be some sort of superwoman!"
     There are several reasons why women refuse pain relief in labor. The most common is because they feel that mother and baby would both be better off, medically speaking, without it. This is undeniably true—over 75% of c-sections can be directly traced to epidurals, and the use of narcotics or general anesthesia can disorient baby and sabotage a breastfeeding relationship at best, and lower the baby’s heartrate and blood pressure at worst. Some women wish to feel empowered by the force of their bodies, so they opt out of painkillers. And some just don’t need them. This last one is where I fell. I didn’t have medication because it never occurred to me. I simply did not need it. True, it was uncomfortable, but certainly nothing I couldn’t handle. I’ve made this very clear. So I have to wonder why I am still seen as Superwoman or Super-Sadist.
     Let me put it this way: right now I am typing away, and I feel fine. I don’t have a headache, or muscle cramps, or sore joints. I have decided to not take a Tylenol. Do I sound crazy? Of course not. There is no reason to take a Tylenol, because I am not feeling any pain. Now apply this to labor. Is it hard?
     Actually, I can see that it would be hard, and the reason for this pains me greatly. It is a shame that society so fears the natural discomfort of childbirth that so many women opt for an epidural before labor starts to get significantly painful, or even before labor starts. It is a shame that any mention of a natural birth is met with shock and/or awe. It is a shame that this drugged-up society automatically assumes that women cannot handle childbirth; that women can’t even dream of going without pain relief, and that anyone who does is crazy for "going through that" unnecessarily. It is a shame that a story of a low-pain labor without drugs is seen as an anomaly instead of simply another way of doing things. Most of all, it is a shame that, despite being told that the reason I didn’t have drugs is because I didn’t need drugs (see the Tylenol example above), people still don’t understand why I went without them.
     Don’t get me wrong; I am not anti-drugs. While I would never get an epidural, I did use a narcotic when Rio was born. I waited a while to see how things would go, and when it became apparent that I could use some help, I asked for it. Lots of women do this. But my decision was based on actual real-time pain, not the mere fear of pain. When Rio finally turned from his posterior position (said to be a lot more painful than the normal position) in the last half hour before he was born, I was amazed to find that the pain disappeared entirely. Now, was it because I was so used to the horrible backache that anything even slightly less felt great? Or was I at the point where it naturally starts to hurt less? I didn’t know for sure, but I had a suspicion that, without the backache and without the fear, labor isn’t as painful as people think it is. Now, before you get insulted, face it—when you fear something, you tense up. When you get tense, you hurt. When you feel that pain, you get even more scared, which causes more tension, on and on until you are in extreme pain, tensing against each contraction in agony. When other large mammals have babies, they are in obvious discomfort, but they don’t freak out about it like humans do. (The exception is when humans interfere in animal births—then the mother animal gets tense and she hurts more than she would have if she’d been left alone.) If they can manage it, why can’t we? Is it because dogs don’t have media propaganda telling them how horrible childbirth is? Is it because no epidural salesperson gave them the carefully-written brochure about how "Absolute Pain Relief Can Be Yours!!" Is it because they have no fear of the unknown? When I threw away my fear, I could take each contraction as it came without tensing up against it. And I strongly feel that it was that lack of fear that caused me to relax enough to avoid the worst of the pain.
     Maybe my body is just different than most, who knows? But I really feel that, if more people would not place such a huge emphasis on the pain of childbirth, if people would not automatically greet stories like mine with, "I can’t believe you went natural! I could never do that!" then fewer women would fear pain, more women would accept what their bodies were meant to do, more people would find that it is within their power to avoid painkillers, and my story wouldn’t seem so amazing.

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