Earth Babies Blog

Archive for September, 2009

Have you got your soil and seeds ready? Only 7 days to go till Planting Season.
Join us in getting outside in the sun with your kids and have a little fun planting something they can nurture and eat - (we would love it if you would share some photos with us of them busy).

I am not a keen gardener for 2 reasons a) somewhere along the line the green thumbs I should have inherited from 2 plant crazy parents got frostbite and turned black. and the bigger problem b) I hate sand and soil and mud on my hands and feet – I am gril’ing just at the idea of it.

I was not always like this there were many photos of me as a toddler covered in icky mud – especially in my mouth (yum – I was apparently a mud connoisseur). I also spent most of my childhood running around the hills and dust and forests barefoot – no more. BUT i will be sticking my hand in dirt and mud to plant some seeds in support of Planting Season on the 22nd.

I had hoped to actually get a vegetable garden going this spring (we have been working on making space for this) but I have put all on hold till I know where/what/how will be happening with our living arrangements in the next few months (staying, moving house, moving town … life is an adventure) Ü.

Sally guest-writes for the Jozi kids blog and did a Let’s get planting post for them last week – nice read.

Was reading an small article this morning in the GOLF magazine about Catriona Matthews a Scottish golfer – and before you are either impressed or think I am nuts, noooo I dont follow golf my husband showed me the article (which is a month old news – but new to me).

What is impressive – apart from that she can actually play golf – is that at 39 years of age (which many considered to old to be playing as well as she did) and a mere 10 weeks after giving birth to her second child she won her first Major championship at the Women’s British Open held at Royal Lytham and St Anne’s (on the 2nd of August 2009)… WOW!!!

Though my second birth was a walk in the park I was definitely not up to a 3 day golf championship just 10 weeks later (okay who am I kidding I am not ever up to that).

articles:
Times Online
LPGA.com

When I first read about Elimination communication it was just something that resonated with me. It made sense and was something I was wiling to try. Read more about the what and how and why of EC on our website

All went well with my daughter and living in South Africa made it easy, the warm weather ment that nappy free time was easy and I only really used nappies as a back up when I went out. She was dry at night really early and totally without accidents from just under a year and was totally finished with training pants at about 18 months. So I totally thought had this EC thing waxed, she did not have any potty strikes and we just progresses along nicely until we were all done. I really sounds like I am bragging and exaggerating how young she was but honestly she was, it just worked so well with her. That and I guess being the first she had my undivided attention.

Then my son came along, I started straight after birth and we did quite well actually. But the pressure of 2 kids and not being able to focus on just one all the time really made ec a lot harder but we progresses slowly. He was in nappies a lot more as we were at that stage in the UK and it is always cold – well except for those 3 days in July that they call summer.

The kids and I got back to South Africa in January and the hot weather was great, lots of bear bum time. He has always told me when he is wet though if I miss a wee and he never tolerated a poo nappy for more than a few seconds and would usually tell me before. So I was sure that, although a little slower than Rachel, he would also be done with nappies before he was 2.

Roll on the hysterical laughter, he is now 2y3m ( yes i know still very young for a boy to be potty trained – but he has been doing this since 4 days old!!!!) and he in now totally back in nappies, he does not tell me if they are wet and worst of all you only know he has poo’ed when you smell him coming – yucky. He does not seem the least bit perturbed by it at all, in fact he runs away when I even suggest a nappy change. He will still try wee in the toliet when I take him but it is quite a mission to convince him that going in a good idea.

Toilet paper shredded into tiny piece is a great thing to do in the toilet, flush the toilet 500 times also huge fun, wee in the actual toilet – not so much!!! Oh well I guess as the weather gets warmer and we can get outside more he will get back on track. This of course brings me straight onto my next dilemma, now that he is older and I don’t hold him over the toilet anymore, how do you teach a boy to stand and wee when all he sees is him om and sister sitting???

The most important thing she’d learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.
– Jill Churchill

Every mother will understand that feeling that you are failing at being a good mother in those moments where you cannot handle one more cry, scream, bicker, whinge, repetition, touch etc … and then the guilt sets in. Why do we feel this is it society pressure, personal pressure, keeping up appearances? I dont strive to be a perfect mother, I am too imperfect for that but I do hope, try and pray I am a good one …

This week I felt my ultimate fail at being a good mom – after bath time I was massaging olive oil into my son (almost 5yrs) very dry legs and he wanted to know why I was doing that. So feeling a little ‘Hansel & Gretel’ish I told him he was nice and fattened up now so it was time to cook him so I was just putting the oil on to get him ready ………… he started to cry ….. BAD MOMMY he actually believed I would cook and eat him!! Where is the trust that I love him and will always look after him!?

Their dad has an after bath little wrapped in a towel ritual where Rafe is his boerewors and Kara is a skaapworsie and he plays he is going to put them in the oven … lots of giggles but obviously mom will really do it *sigh* it sucks always being the bad guy.

Kara (2½yrs) did offer to be the sacrificial lamb – she hates being left out of a cook up lol.
So back to the drawing board on how to be a good mom – 1st lesson no jokes about cooking if you are the witch in the story.

I was asked to be Great Expectations Spring Day show last week. For those who don’t know the show it is a parenting show presented by Samantha Cowen. They wanted a mom who had walked the talk on all things natural, and while I am far from the perfect eco mom I agreed to go and talk about natural parenting and try to be green.

Surprisingly I was not even nearly as nervous on the day as I thought I would be. Once you get there it is off to make up. Wow I had more make up plastered on my face that day than I even had at my wedding. I was not even going to ask if the make up was natural or organic as I feared that I already knew the answer but I guess for one day it was not going to kill me. It felt so weird and when I watched myself of the show I can see in talking how conscious I was of the layer on my face. Once the hair was straightened and they declared us all pretty enough it was off to the set.

There are a few read through practices and we got to ask questions and figure out how it would all work. By the time it actually started it was all quite relaxed and we were having a good laugh.

Sam Cowen the GE presenter asked me how I landed up as a green parenting expert and I guess the answer is that it is a slow process. I started with researching natural birth and then came across other natural and more eco friendly idea. I started adding things as I went along. This is really the point I want to stress to people when it come to all things green. It is not that you have to change everything at once but rather that it is a process of adding things one at a time that you think you can manage and once you have one thing sorted and are used to the changes then you can look for more things to change.

I have been so encouraged by the positive response that natural and green parenting is getting here in South Africa. When I started Earth Babies 5 years ago people thought the idea of cloth nappies and natural parenting was quite mad, but at the last natural and organic show we did in June the response was over whelming. I was think we would really have to try drag people into the stall to hear about cloth nappies but in stead people were flock to us, they had heard about this new kind of nappy and wanted to know more. The change in attitude just to nappies was very very encouraging. And now being asked to be on a fairly mainstream parenting show has really left me with Great Expectation that an eco revolution is here!

This week at our home school group we helped one of the mom’s start build a cob playhouse. Cob building is a very old method of mixing clay, sand and straw to make walls for a structure. It was so nice to be outside in the sun now that the weather is getting warmer. The kids were running around playing in the fresh air and came and went during the whole process helping as they felt like it. I can’t actually remember the last time I had mud between my toes and it really did feel good.

start with some sand

add water

add feet

fold

more feet

roll

build

Like I said Mud Between the Toes is such a great feeling

Related to yesterdays blog about touch and bonding I came across this article about touch between teachers and pupils. It is a well written article that gets you thinking.

The importance of physical touch in a school environment

Would love to hear your thoughts on this subject, how do you feel about physical contact from your child’s educators … or lack thereof? Would a no contact rule be beneficial to our children or like me do you think that we would be damaging and disadvantaging our children in the long run all in the interest of keeping them safe from the risk of inappropriate touch.

I have always had a personal rule to trust my children’s innate instinct and to never force them to greet an adult they don’t want to. It is embarrassing at times and I have found myself being apologetic or trying to cover up what is perceived as rudeness but have recently again had this highlighted to me – if your child does not want to greet or have contact with an adult you need to respect that desire irrespective of who that person is – your child has their reasons and that instinct to stay away is what will keep them safe if you respect and nurture it.

touch… is the mother of all senses upon which our baby depends

In many ways touch is our most important form of communication. It is the most basic communication, the one we first get to experience and understand as babies. Of our 5 senses touch (touching and being touched) is the one that develops us physically, mentally and emotionally – it is this that the other four senses support.

There is always a lot of talk about bonding when it comes to babies – it is often attributed to the way you birth or feed your baby … which leads to arguments galore from those who do not choose the natural route and still feel they bonded.
In truth the only thing that bonding can be attributed is touch. Think about it in terms of people around you – if you have no physical contact with a person whatsoever, it is near to impossible to feel any form of emotional connection to them.

Breastfeeding forces you to put physical contact first.

This is where the argument for natural birth and breastfeeding being important for bonding stems from. Both of these allow for and require immediate and ongoing physical contact.

Thinking of breastfeeding, there is no option of putting that baby down or having someone else hold them during feeding. In the first few intensive weeks until your milk supply is properly established and baby has grown enough to go longer stretches between feeds the two of you HAVE to sit down and be in close contact for at least ½ of the day (newborns need to feed on average 12 times a day).
This allows for a lot of time for them to receive that all essential physical stimulation, to be physically close enough to see their mothers face (a newborn can only see clearly for about 20cm – the distance from your face to breast) and for you to settle in to actually spending time being still and simply holding them rather than doing all those things you feel you ’should’ be doing.

Love is founded in touch

In terms of natural birth the same applies – you are able to sit up and comfortably hold baby immediately after the birth, there is no need for them to be taken away while you are stitched up or taken to recovery etc.

I will admit after my first birth having a quick peek and having baby swept away for all the checks etc would have been quite welcome at the time (I was exhausted) – in retrospect though I am glad for that time I got to hold him close and marvel at the result of the unpleasantness I had felt moments before.
It was a very special time and which altered my birth-experience from too much, to a fantastic one. It changed my thoughts immediately from never again to “hope the next one is also a waterbirth” – not simply feeling able to go through all that again, but actually hoping to go through it all again … that it had all been so worthwhile.

These experiences however are not needed to bond – they simply help it along. It is never too late in a relationship to reach out and touch, to strengthen and re-establish that bond and love. Children and adults alike need those little touches – the pat on the back, stroke on their hair, sitting close, wrestling and tickling, being carried/held, hugs and kisses.

Did you know? Each parent has his or her own way of touching. Research has shown that when mothers touch babies, they are usually soothing and calming. Moms most often touch gently – they stroke softly, rock slowly, and hold their babies tenderly. Fathers, on the other hand, tend to engage in more physical forms of touch – they bounce babies on their knees, hold them playfully in the air, or roll around on the floor with them. Your baby benefits from these two different styles of touch. Together they contribute to your infant’s healthy development.
http://johnsonsbaby.com/article.do?id=9

Babies benefit immensely from massage and it is not something you need to do a course in, or pay someone else to do. It is something you can do yourself – here is a link to a lovely online video guide in How to massage your baby video