Sorted

It took some people a bit of thinking, but we managed to get a birth certificate and an NHS number on 15 february anyway. It was surprising at how easy it ended up being.
I was assigned a midwife funny enough, not that I needed one, but whatever, I just went along with that.
The first midwife that showed up was relatively hostile in the beginning, but mellowed half way through the visit and was actually making jokes at the end.
Then Wednesday another midwife showed up, this lady, named June was really fun and cool about it. She and I just chatted and she looked at the baby and was happy with the way she was developing. She was also cool enough to ask whether I would be alright with her coming over again on Sunday, I agreed to that. Sunday we had another chat and she weighed the baby, not necessary, we had done that already and we knew she was gaining weight.
The chat we had on Sunday was really cool, as she was really curious as to why we decided to do things the way we did, so I explained that this was a very big educational trip and she could see that. She also said it must have been very empowering, yes it was.
After that we ended up talking about breastfeeding and parenting, so I told her a bit about where I am coming from with parenting and breastfeeding, being a leader for 2 organisations.
Before she left she also mentioned that she felt that a lot of women could learn something from me. I can only agree.

Today's crap

Today we first went to the doctors office to see if we could get our daughter registered for an NHS number, no we couldn't. We needed a birth certificate first.
Okay, then we go to the registrar's office. When we got there we managed to end up surprising her, as we had a freebirth. Therefore no hospital records, and without they have no clue what to do and cannot just register.
One thing led to another and in the end I ended up getting a phone call from the hospital that they will have to report us to Social Services. I still don't understand why, baby is healthy, I am healthy, no problems with anything at all, so what is the big deal.
As I am completely ticked off by this I will take counter action where appropriate, as this is total rubbish. Social Services no doubt has better things to do than following up on this.

Its a girl!

On 7 February at 04.00 am our 4th girl was born, after a wonderful natural (unassisted) pregnancy and a likewise wonderful natural (unassisted) birth / freebirth. Everything went really smooth and easy. No problems at all with the birth. She is also doing wonderful.
Here she is how she looked the morning after she was born. This photograph was taken at around 11.00 in the morning.

Belly Cast

On 5 February as friend of mine came over who makes live casts.
Her website is www.dinkiedannies.com.
She made a belly cast of my big pregnant belly. It was really fun to do that. When I get the whole finished cast I will make a photo of it and put it up, as it will no doubt be gorgeous as her casts are super!

Mother Blessing

On 2 February my friends organized a mother blessing for me.
It was really nice.
First we talked about our negative feelings about birth and wrote them down and burned those.
Then they read their positive poem, writing, something about motherhood and birth, which they saw fit for me. That was really touching, we all ended up crying with the beautiful pieces they had brought. Then we used a long piece of yarn and tied wrists with that. The we made bracelets with beads, which was really nice.
Of course there was plenty of cake, cookies and more cake with drinks, which we all enjoyed.

Fermentation success!

A while ago I used a recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions to use some left over cabbage to make some Kimchee. Its wasn't difficult. Today we tasted it. It tasted great.
DP has been in Korea in the past and the taste seemed to be very similar, it just looked different he said. In Korea it seemed to look more red, which I think is because of the hot pepper sauce / paste they use there. I used dried chili's.
I loved the taste, didn't have any Kimchee before, so I don't know how its supposed to taste.
I am happy that I managed to make it, as this has motivated me to continue with my fermenting experiments to make sure our family gets nutritionally better food.

I have had some successes in the past with making a sourdough starter, this time it went wrong, so I will start over tomorrow.

My other success of this week was that I managed to revive my water kefir, I made orange ade with it and it tasted very good. I will try some other ways as well, with lime and lemon and whatever else I can think of. I sure have to dig into this stuff much more, as I do prefer having the healtier foods in life and the water kefir give a soda like drink, nice and fizzy.

Kombucha is also on my list to start again, so is milk kefir, yoghurt making and raw cheese making. And of course sauerkraut.

Gestational Diabetes???

In case its planned to have you subjected to a glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes I urge you to read the below link, with article by Michel Odent in it first. This is very important information, as it seems that most midwives and doctors are very much mis informed on the topic.
It may make you wonder whether the medication will do more harm then good. I believe so.

http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/2008/01/michel-odent-on-gd.html
Link 2: http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/gdmodent.html

I love Rixa's blog, as it is full of very good information about birth. Its, together with Laura Shanley's one of my favorites.

Have a good read and get informed before you get medicated.