Audra's Visitors

We've had many visitors over the past couple weeks who've wanted to meet the newest member of our family!  Unfortunately I didn't always remember to take pictures of Audra's company, but here's some shots that I did get.

Audra with her cousin, Cora Loucks.

Aunt Alenna and Cora.

My high school friend, Katie Heberle.

Audra with her cousin, Julian Hatch, in his first attempt to hold his cousin.

Later (after being fed) Julian and Audra had a nicer picture together.

Great-Aunt Cathy Decina.

My friend from Williamsburg, Karen Capossela.

Thank you to everyone who has visited!  We all feel very loved!

New Job

There were two births on January 28th, 2012.  When Audra was born, something else was born in me; I became a MOTHER.  Instantaneously.  Mama, Mommy, Mom.  These are now my titles.  And the enormity of this job is sometimes staggering.  But I feel as though I waited a long time to fill this position, and I am thankful every day that God has given me this role!

The Journey That Started With A Click

I started writing this blog in September 2011, but put it on the back burner since we were only mid-way through our pregnancy and I didn't want to ignite a confrontation (with people who would've been opposed to our decisions).  Anyway, now that Audra has been born, conflicting ideas on where to birth a baby and how to have a baby become moot points.  But, for those interested, here's how we arrived at certain decisions.


I had always dreamed of some day becoming a mother, though I never put much thought into the process of birthing a child.  Except for some older family members (pre-WWII), everyone I could think of was born in a hospital and then gave birth to their own children in hospitals.  There was no reason for me to question someday having a child in a hospital with a doctor, because that's just what people did.

But then...

In February 2010, on an online quest to find the words to a poem my mother used to recite, I stumbled across a blog called "Adventures in Babywearing."  The author quoted the poem I was searching for in one of her blog posts, so when I clicked on the Google result, I found her blog.  I read the post in its entirety and found myself really enjoying the lyrical way this lady wrote about leaving her parents house and creating a home for her husband and young children.  It was like reading a great short story, so I curiously read more of her posts, most which were about her joys and challenges in raising a family.  I had no children at the time, yet she had 4.  I've never lived west of Upstate NY, but she's from the mid-west.  She's a talented writer who gets paid to keep a blog and write articles for online sites and my blog posts tend to read more like 8th grade book reports.  Nothing in common at first glance, yet the more I read the more I realized we shared similar ideas on faith, raising children and working to be the best people we can be.  So, even though I doubted that I would ever meet this lady, I continued to read about her life (in a completely non-stalkingish way, I promise!).

Then I came across her post about the home birth she had with her 4th child.  What?!  Normal, responsible, relatable people birth babies in their homes?  I'd never heard of such a thing in the last 50 years, but I mentally filed away this story in case I would ever want to learn more.

Fast forward to June 2011... we're pregnant and I've started prenatal care with my regular OB/GYN.  But, based on this blog I once read and some limited research, I started to talk with David about my desire to have our baby outside of a hospital with a midwife in attendance.  (He didn't say much at the time, but he later admitted that the idea of having a baby out of a hospital sounded as risky as having a baby in a barn, hundreds of miles from civilization.)  Thankfully he kept an open mind and didn't try to sway me from researching our options.  We watched two documentaries together on Netflix, "The Business of Being Born" and "Pregnant in America" and our eyes were opened to the benefits of having a baby outside of a hospital.  So, at 20 weeks we switched care to a midwife group in Wilmington, DE, and we haven't regretted this decision at all!

And here we are today, with our own story of the completely natural, drug-free birth of our daughter and a strong desire to tell others what labor and delivery can be like away from a hospital.  It is not my desire to make anyone feel badly if they didn't have a natural birth.  I realize that this is a very personal decision, and a lot of people don't have birth centers and/or caring midwives available to them or, for various reasons, are unable to have natural births.  However, I tell this story in the hopes that it will give women the courage to search out their choices and make the best decisions based on what is best for them and their baby, instead of assuming that having a baby with an OB/GYN is the best (or only) option.

Who would have ever known that reading a blog would lead to a click that changed my view of childbirth and thus, changed my life!

Here I am, exhausted, but elated, with Nurse Tyler, Midwife Dorinda, and Nurse Peggy, a couple hours after Audra's birth.