The Root of the Evil End.

I was trying to figure out why it's so hard for me to keep a schedule on this blog.  It's certainly not because I don't have the time to write, that is just an excuse I use because I'm loading my time into other things...like staring at facebook urging it to entertain me when I log off of World of Warcraft (WoW) at night.  That last sentence explains exactly how good I am at wasting my time.
So, then, why am I so suck-tastic at posting new entries regularly?

After some thought, and a lot of staring at a blank "new post" box it struck me that the reason I don't write more frequently is because I don't feel like I have anything to say.
I feel a lot like a youtuber I sort of follow whose channel is called Crabstickz:

He mentions in this video that there's sort of a pressure to making new content on youtube, which is sort of how I feel about this blog.  Namely the bit about there already being other awesome youtubers (bloggers) out there, so why post?

The whole problem is I started this blog with a purpose.  I knew, when I started it, that I wasn't going to be in convert instructions forever.  There would come a day that I would actually be Catholic and that day would mean finding things to post about relating to actual life.
The assumption was that life would be amazingly different.

Life as a convert is not really all that different.  I view the world differently and I process things differently, but in terms of actual day-to-day life nothing exciting really happens.  I spend a lot of my time cleaning (a lot, like every day of my life except Sunday - hubby made a rule that I'm not allowed to clean on Sundays, lol), a lot of time chasing down a puppy, and the majority of my time caring for the wee one.  Let it be noted that I am not complaining.  All of that being said, my time for reflection and having revelations about things is a bit limited.
Only because I choose to limit it.
If I have thirty minutes to myself I spend it cleaning, or online in some fashion.  Wasting it away on facebook or youtube...or WoW.  I could choose to spend that time drawing, or crafting, or writing.  Or otherwise being generally productive.

Anyway, the whole point is that I don't post because I don't feel like I have anything to say, and/or I feel like no one is interested in my random/stupid musings.

Maybe I'll try to start posting anyways.  I've been talking to hubs about making a schedule for us, like, so many hours for family time, cleaning, etc.  So maybe I'll schedule some writing time for myself.

I'd like to try and wean myself off of facebook and youtube, and the interwebs in general because I have this crazy idea that it won't be around forever and that I should get used to not having it.
I dunno where that came from but it's here, prodding at the back of my mind...making me feel like a crazy person.

Yep.

Time Sinks and Money Pits.

Hubby and I play video games; sometimes too much.  We were playing one called League of Legends (LoL) which is free to play, but you can purchase points with which you can get things like skins for the character (champion) you like to play, or buy a champion outright if you're too impatient to collect the different points you earn for playing games.  Have I lost you yet?  I'm not very good at explaining things.
Anyhow, in theory you can play this game for a nominal fee of nothing (except your time).  That is if you don't want any of the skins or you have the patience to save up your second set of points for champion purchases.  In reality, we sometimes ended up spending $50 to $100 a month on this game.  What happened is we fell victim to impatience.

So now, we're playing World of Warcraft (WoW).  The expansion - Mists of Pandaria - was just released in September and let me just say that it's pretty awesome.  Let me also say that I'm trying really hard not to start off on a nerdy rambling of everything I like about this game.
I've been playing WoW off and on since 2005/6.  I started with what is now called "Vanilla WoW."  Then came Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and now Mists of Pandaria.
With each expansion Blizzard (the company who produces this game) added and took away (nerfed) things.
This expansion, something called "Battle Pets" has been introduced.  This is essentially Pokémon with the non-combat pets that exist in the world.  This feature alone is a force to be reckoned with for me: I loved the Pokémon games when I was a kid, and I'm sure if I picked up my Nintendo DS again and loaded up whatever the new Pokémon game is called, I could still spend hours on it.
Instead, I spend hours trying to level my non-combat pets in WoW so I can go battle the next "boss."

What this means is that not only is WoW a time sink, it's also a money pit.  Whereas you can theoretically play LoL for free, there is no such thing as free WoW because WoW is a pay to play game.  For $15 a month you can have an active account (there are other payment plans as well).  It's kind of like our substitution for cable television.  It could be argued which is better than the other.

Anyway, the main point of this is that the reason I haven't been posting is because I've been sinking my time and money into this game.  And now we have a two month old puppy, so I don't expect to have any time for WoW, or blogging.

Because we decided our baby was too easy.

"Your Body is Incapable."

So I've been thinking (uh-oh).  All of this reading about pregnancy, babies, birth, and a woman's right to choose (elective cesarean) sort of makes me wonder where the feminist movement stands on this issue.  How do women like Erica Jong feel about birth?  I'd venture a guess and say she's all for medicated birth and whatnot (pain/suffering is bad and should be avoided at all costs).  But she doesn't make up the entirety of the feminist movement.  As this article states, there are women on both sides of the fence.

Because of my difference of opinion with Erica Jong (and my heated response to her article) I've lost a progressive friend, so having a conversation about this with someone who is on that particular side of the fence with other things is a little less feasible for me.  I don't have a lot of friends who seem so decidedly on one side or the other, and talking about this to someone who is undecided isn't helpful in figuring out how one side thinks of something.
The questions this raises are a whole other bag of tricks.

I wouldn't call myself regressive per se, but some of the staunchly progressive ideas out there raise more concern in me than hope.  It is my opinion that the mechanization of birth is terrible in several ways.  Yes, hospital technology and medicine in general are great, for those who need it.  But the obstetric model of care - that a woman's body is inherently flawed and cannot handle childbirth (something it was designed to do) without the aide of technology - is something I have issues with.  This makes me think of a certain gentleman's opinion that Catholicism taught the very thing obstetrics teaches to it's practitioners.  How, then, do you explain a backwards view of women seeming to be present in our forward-moving medical society?
I suggest that if we were as progressive as pro-choice people want, we would not have women writing about how home birth is something only narcissistic power-hungry women do - because everyone knows that medicine is God and there is no way that an informed woman can safely birth her baby without obstetric intervention (pitocin, epidural, etc).
What I would love to know is how pro-choice people feel about women having the right to choose where they have children.  Given that pro-choice is obliviously medical, I'd wager that they are against assisted home birth, free-standing birth centers and midwifery in general.  But I could be wrong.

As a small side note, the woman behind the above link (Skeptical OB) is getting her information from somewhere that is completely different from everything I've read, and studies I have looked at for myself (also what I've read about the history of obstetrics taking over birthing).  I haven't found any citations on her entries, but I also haven't read a terribly large amount of her blog.  It gets tiring to be told over and over that I need technological intervention, that I cannot survive without it, and that attempting to do so (even if I am informed) makes me nothing short of an idiot.  These aren't her exact words, but the tone I get from her articles gives me that impression.  It's all very fear-based, and I don't trust fear-based information.

So those are my musings, regurgitated because I sat down to stare at the blank new entry box and wondered for a good amount of time what in the world I was going to write about.

I do want to say that I am not against hospital birth.  I am against pressuring mothers into procedures they do not need (episiotomy) for the sake of obstetric convenience.
Hospital birth is a great thing for those mothers who do need it.

A Shift in the Tide.

On being pregnant:

I used to say things like, "by the time I'm pregnant, birth will be pain-free!"  I was definitely a fan of medicine's version of childbirth.  But that was before I really gave it any thought, or looked into it at all.
Medicine is fantastic for the women who really need it; women are saved pretty regularly by hospital staff for various reasons.  However, the interventions these women need are not the interventions all women need.  There should not be a standard of care where you receive the one thing that has been proven to work regardless of your actually needing it.
Hey, hospitals need to cover their ass.  They could get sued.

I digress.

My original intent is to write about what I thought before and what I think now, because what you think before you live something is not necessarily what you think after or during.
As with my opinion on abortion, my opinion of birth is much different now.
I believe that birth can (and should) be a positive experience for mother and baby.  There are risks to the birth I am choosing to try to have, but there are also risks in choosing a hospital birth.  Birth is not risk free, no matter what you choose.
I will be the first to admit that birth terrifies me somewhat.  I think it's mostly the unknown that scares me.  Every birth is different, someone's story about when they gave birth will be different than what I have to say, so the question remains: what will it be like?  I am intimidated by not knowing what to expect (other than pain).  I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in feeling this way among first-time mothers, which is why hospital birth is so appealing to women - there's a certain sense of safety associated with being in a hospital at a time of potential medical crisis.  And yes, there are benefits to being in a hospital if something does go wrong.

People tend to assume that I have just up and decided to have my baby at home.  With this assumption comes the inevitable, "don't you know that birth is dangerous!?"
Yes, I do know this.  I have made this decision based on the information I have acquired and I really believe it to be the best choice for me.  It is by no means the best choice for everyone, and I have neither said this nor meant to imply it.  It is, I believe, the best choice for me.
In talking to these same people I often find that they base their opinions on an article they read in a magazine, or some form of media coverage of something.  And they are adamant that what they think is the only right way to think.
Some of them have never had children.
Some of them will never have children.
These two latter groups I try to take in stride, as they are usually the most vehement backers of hospital birth.  There is nothing to be done but smile and nod at them, because they will never listen to why I made this decision (and continue to research it).  They only want to tell me how stupid and selfish I am for making it.  One blogger (who happens to be an O.B.) called the home birth "movement" narcissistic.  The people I talk to in person are generally of a similar mindset.
As I said earlier: there is no middle ground.

The above is what bothers me most.  I shall call it "the great divide."  People must have their opinions and your opinion is only okay if it matches their own.  Never-mind being open minded about things, or at the very least receptive.
I understand why people are shocked when I say I'm going to try to have my baby at home.  I know that it's not how the majority would do it.  And I know there is a lot of media available against it.  And of course I know the risks involved with it (they are not as terrible as one is led to believe, but they are still present).  I feel, sometimes, that my understanding is like banging my head against a brick wall.  It doesn't matter that I understand these things, all that matters is that I see the error in my own judgement and the terrible mistake I'm about to make.
Dealing with it is even more difficult when it's coming from people who aren't pregnant and potentially never will be.  I'm glad they are concerned for my well-being, but I would appreciate if they gave me credit for the information I've gathered.  I'm doing my best to make an educated decision, and that does include looking at the situation from all of the angles I can perceive.  So in a way these people are helping me, just not in the manner they had in mind.  Still, I'm not really a fan of being given a rather loud version of the cold shoulder.

When I speak with someone who has a different opinion I try to figure out where the opinion came from.  What information led them here?  I tend to work under the assumption that they had some sort of logical thought process behind it (which is not always the case).
I was one such person in my days of, "just give me pain killers," and my pro-choice opinions.  I now understand what I had to overlook to hold those opinions.  For me, it's a damned lot to overlook.

Being pregnant is a life-altering journey.  It certainly has changed my mind about a number of things and solidified my pro-life stance quite a bit just from what I've learned about Baby's development.  It has also opened my mind to things I'd never thought of, and would never have thought of if I was not pregnant.

I suppose what I'm driving at here is that opinions are all well and good, until you're actually living the situation you've formed your opinion about.
Experience can change a lot about a person, not the least of which being their worldview.

Pay it Forward...sort of...

The Liebster Award is an award given by bloggers to bloggers.  It's sort of like a chain letter; it was given to me by Dyno-Mom, who gave it to five people, and now I will try to find five up-and-coming bloggers to give it to in turn.  This might prove to be difficult because I don't follow a lot of blogs myself.  I kept finding them for a while, but I've since stopped, and now my desktop computer is broken...  So, here goes.

A Journey in Faith.  I believe that she found me, and I took a gander at her blog after she started following mine.  I always enjoy reading what she posts; it seems sometimes like we're on the exact same page.  I think we found the Church at around the same time, and it's been interesting to read another perspective on it.  She's also starting the journey into whole foods for much the same reasons I am: to nourish a family.

A Lady in the Making.  Another blog about a religious journey, but with a different character.  She has a very unique voice in her writing and while the updates are sometimes sporadic, they are always a good read.  She also posts links to interesting poetry videos, and other tidbits.

Kemble Pipes.  This gentleman crafts amazing pipes.  Not only that, but he always has something interesting to say about them.  One day I will purchase one of them for my husband; I'm thinking for our first anniversary.


Our Live Active Culture.  This is a fantastic blog co-written by a husband and wife.  I love to read their posts because they are not only oftentimes humorous, they are informative as well.  I do believe I've met the two of them also, though I've met so many people in the last 9 months that I can only be about 95% sure; I'm terrible with names.

I know I was supposed to have five, but those are what I've got.  Even then, Our Live Active Culture is one that Dyno-Mom also wrote about (I hope there's not a rule against this).  So go and read them!  They are all awesome.