Knitting: I finished my sister’s baby shower present and I’d love to show you pictures, but I have to wait until after the shower so she won’t find out what it is. It took me longer than expected because I’m still not a competant knitter and my gauge swatch wasn’t big enough for an accurate gauge so I had to start all over. Oh well. It’s done now and I love looking at it, with its smooth stockinette stitch. Yay! I’ve also started my husband’s scarf; he expects it some time around 2020, so I aim to get it done before Winter starts. Due to time constraints and the fact that it’s knit using fine yarn and size 3 needles, I might get it done by Christmas, but only if I work hard.
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Going outside: Haakon has decided that being outside is the BEST THING EVER. We go outside every day. If it’s raining, we try to stick to the balcony or wait for a break in the downpour before heading out, but rain or shine, he loves it. We go out once in the morning (usually to the play ground and a walk up and down our street watching animals and picking berries), once in the afternoon (to the pool if it’s warm and sunny or a repeat of the morning if not) and occasionally after dinner as well (to Livingston Park, where he can watch the dogs and then play on the equipment). Even so, he pitches a huge fit when we go inside. The outdoors are where he wants to be and I dread Winter. He’s also walking now and has officially moved past the Zombie stage to the drunk stage. I’m sure any day now he’ll be a normal human walking.
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Cooking: I rendered my own lard! I got tired of using the hydrogenated crap from the store, found a farm that has it and got a big thing of fatback for free with the skin still on. The bristles were scrapped off but it was still a bit disturbing. But the lard is awesome; white, creamy fat that has less bad fat than butter even if it has more fat overall.
I’m trying my hand at croissants today. We’ll see how that goes.
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Gardening: We have tomatoes growing! They’re still green but they’re there. We have 8 at last count and my heirloom tomato is getting ready to blossom finally. Our store bought pepper plant blossomed but has formed no peppers. It’s simply too cold and our balcony doesn’t get enough sun. We harvested our cucumber and now have two more growing large. The smaller ones seem to just wither away. I wish I’d planted more than one.
I checked out a book about gardening in northern climates and it’s filled with such gems as:
“The climate up north is often known as 8 months winter and 4 months rough sledding” and “Some days, it’s even hard to rejoice over a south wind, because just as often as not it’s only the north wind coming back.” It’s full of good advice on wind breaks, where the best place to have a garden is if you live on hilly terrain, windblocks, micro climates, etc.
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House hunting: As soon as my husband gets a full-time job, it will go “richtig los”. We’ve already started scouring NNEREN . We found a house we fell in love with and thought it was awesome, perfect, a real fixer upper, let’s ignore the fact that neither of us are skilled contractors….and then found out that it had actually sold around the same time we discovered it and the system just hadn’t updated. We were extremely bummed out, but renewed our search and have found a few more houses that have potential and hopefully we will refrain from falling in love with any of them. It will be hard though—we do this sort of thing constantly.
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Armchair politics. I didn’t go to the “Town Hall meeting” in Portsmouth. Haakon hates his car seat and I wasn’t going to subject him to an hour of it just to stand in a loud crowd when he hates loud noises. But it would have been worthless. Our dear leaders have already made up their minds; we’re going to have universal health insurance. Those of us against it are simply misinformed and obviously don’t know what’s best for us. I’d care more than I do, but I don’t because of two things:
1) At least nationalized healthcare will prevent people from pretending that the problems with our healthcare system are all due to the free market. Over half of the healthcare dollars spent in this country are from the government and the numerous regulations surrounding the health care industry make it nothing close to free market.
2) We can’t afford it anyway, so it’s kind of like my husband and I debating whether or not we should buy a BMW. or a Lexus. Who cares, we’re not going to get one. The US has $70 trillion in unfunded obligations and debt. We have no way of paying that, short of inflating the dollar to toilet paper and raising taxes to about 90%. Health care for all? Sure, why not! I’d also like a BMW with a leather interior and sunroof while we’re at it. They’ve conveniently set the healthcare to kick in in 2013 because “the recession will be over by then.” So will the next election, so Obama won’t be face with the consequences of the bill until after he’s re-elected. Or if he’s re-elected. His approval rating is about as high as Bush’s, so let’s not expect too much.
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Reading blogs: I discovered a great blog, A Homesteading Neophyte. I clicked on it originally because it said she was from Kansas and since I’m from Kanssas, I figured why not? Then I found out she voted for Ron Pau l and I fell in love. I read the blog back to 2006 before stopping and just waiting for regular updates. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s enjoyable, they have animals, they’re in Kansas. They talk about Kansas-y things. Go to places I know of (Yoder? Exploration Place? The Zoo!) and deal with tornadoes. They also get to plant outside in April. Gr. I’m not bitter….technically, we’re in the same planting zone as northern Kansas. They’re in southern Kansas and have like, an extra four weeks. Odd, it seems longer than that.
It’s a chilly, rainy May morning here in New Hampshire, one that provides no motivation for me to do anything other than sit on the couch and waste time on the internet while my husband and baby sleep. Haakon woke up around 6 am this morning, despite going to bed at 9 and, despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise, really wanted to be up. So we got up. And he fell back asleep before 7. Then he woke up a little after I laid him back down in bed, and then fell asleep again and is currently laying next to me on the couch. If it weren’t for that, I would be laying down sleeping, too.
He’s a funny little guy, really. He is absolutely determined to explore everything and be a part of whatever Lasse and I are doing. He loves to be in the sling while I’m working in the kitchen, preferably carried on my hip so he can see everything I’m doing and lend a helping hand, when necessary. And it’s always necessary, as far as he’s concerned, which means I really can’t hold him while I’m cooking. He likes to touch raw meat, he likes to touch the pans (fortunately, thus far they’ve never been hot) and he loves to help clean out the dishwasher, regardless of whether the dishes are clean or not. It’s amusing to watch him. He knows I do stuff in the kitchen and he knows it’s vaguely similar to what he’s doing, but he hasn’t quite grasped the fact that the things I do rarely end with “…and put it in your mouth.”
Using the laptop has become dangerous around him. He has decided that my laptop is the coolest thing in existance and he likes nothing more than to pull the wires out of it, knock it over and grab at the keys. Thus far, he has pulled off the backspace key and the 1 key. My husband put them back in, but the backspace key is irreparable. I know have to delete instead of go back. I’m also trying to avoid using the laptop in front of him as it just provides too much temptation.
The plants are mostly out of reach now on the balcony, so our ever fun game of “how close can I get to the plants before Mommy pulls me away?” has ended its season with the answer “close enough to pull out a few plants if I’m super sneaky and go towards them while mommy’s distracted, with a minimal amount of excited baby squeals.” Any time I was watching, he would start crawling towards them, I would ask him here he was going, he would pause, look at me, grin and start baby speed-crawling towards them. I’d say “ei!” which is Finnish for no and he’d pause, look at me again and I’d move him away. This would continue until he got frustrated and realized he just wasn’t going to be eating the plants today.
Walking is his current frustration. He started pulling himself up when he was 6 months old, started crawling right at 7 months and then started cruising shortly thereafter. He has learned to go from the coffee table to the couch using a quick turn and reach. He stands alone for a few seconds before falling over. Falling over has been a painful thing for him. After landing on something bumpy and uncomfortable, he’s learned to look before he sits down and then backs down as slowly as he can before gravity takes over. Unfortunately, he has not learned that head first is not a recommended method of getting down from couches, beds, and other elevated objects. I’m sure he will eventually, though.
He has learned to climb onto the futon by himself, using the printer as a step. He’s only done it once and I missed it, but Lasse called me in to witness the proud baby sitting ontop the futon with a grin on his face. Success! The coffee table is next in his list of mountains to climb. A box sitting right next to it is the desired platform and if it were upside down would almost certainly provide enough support to get him where he wants to go. But, alas, it’s open-side up and all that happens is he gets stuck in the box and I have to free him. He’s working on this problem, however, and I’m sure he’ll find an adequate solution, or find something easier to scale.
Now that it’s warmer out, Haakon has been introduced to the great outdoors and discovered that it’s delicious. He makes more expressions of disgust eating real food than he does when he puts woodchips, gravel, grass or pine needles in his mouth. Fortunately, he spits most of these items out and the ones he doesn’t I sweep out of his mouth for him, officially making me Party Pooper Mommy. I’m sure he thanks me when he isn’t pooping out woodchips. But being outside is a joy and as soon as we exit the apartment, makes baby gasps of joy and excitement and jumps up and down in the sling. Can you imagine how much more fun the world would be if everyone maintained such an open display of joy? He gets overwhelmed with joy–and sadness–by the tiniest of things. Swinging is a delight, especially when he sees others swinging. Sliding he isn’t so sure about. But being outside—absolutely.
It’s fun to watch him learn and discover. I’m so glad I get to be around to see it (except at 6am when he pops his head up, sits up, meets my eye, grins, and then pulls himself up using the headboard so he can look out the window and assess the new day. Then I contemplate baby sleeping pills.)
I finally finished the scarf I started knitting a while back. It was kind of slow going, not only because I didn’t knit every day but because the pattern I used involved a lot of counting of stitches and rows. Gah. I had to start over 4 times before I finally managed to not add an extra stitch on the needle and then raveled many many rows when I miscounted or dropped stitches. By the time I got close to the end, my attitude changed from “let’s get it right” to “let’s get it done so I can move on with my life!” There is one dropped stitch (whoops) and a few miscounted stitches in the end, but whatever. It’s done. And it’s not really that attractive. But I knit it, so hooray!
I plan to be the future Madam Defarge.
I now have big plans for the rest of my knitting. First, I’ll be knitting for my sister’s very unexpected baby. Can’t say what because she reads the blog, but if I don’t screw it up, it should be cute. Fortunately, it’s for a newborn and should be really really tiny and knit up quickly before I get tired of it. Then Lasse will get his long awaited scarf and then I will attempt some socks. After that, I really want to knit a Hudson hat for Haakon, but we’ll have to see. I would really like to give people a bunch of knit things for Christmas but we’ll have to see how strong (and fast) my knitting-fu is by then. Not to mention my bank account. Apparently, good yarn is expensive.
As far as Haakon is concerned, he’s very happy to play and eat the yarn along with anything I try and knit. He’s also learned to crawl and we play a new game called “crawl towards mommy’s herbs and try and touch them before she pulls me back.” It’s great fun for him until the 5th time we do this and he realizes that he’s probably not going to win. Ah well.
With the advent of spring (hooray!!), I bought a new bike and attached the baby bike seat I got at my baby shower to it. I predict many fun bike rides ahead. Haakon has been on a short one so far and didn’t think much of it. He didn’t cry nor did he laugh. Lasse said the look on his face was one of indifference with a hint of “oh god, what are my crazy parents doing to me now?” He is a very tolerant baby. I think he got it from Lasse.
Filed under: baby
So, I kind of figured out what the problem with the pictures was. They were saved as .JPG files instead of .jpg. Apparently, capitalization makes a difference. Don’t ask me why the archive program decided that the best way to unpack and save my zipped files would be as .JPG instead of .jpg because I couldn’t tell you.
So, here’s a picture of Haakon and Big Foot playing together.
Haakon and Big Foot
And here’s a pic of all the boys (yes, Big Foot is male so it works):
My sister actually got a better picture of this than me, but whatever, it works.
Filed under: baby
Haakon and I just got back from visiting family and friends in Kansas and I tell you what, each time I return to that state, I’m more glad I don’t live there anymore. It just doesn’t feel like home and, even though it’s January, there was no snow on the ground.They got a trace of snow the first day I was there and then it melted and it was bare ground. Everything was just brown and flat.
I know, I know, the mounds of snow we currently have everywhere make it a little difficult to see when you’re driving. Our parking lot is now a lot narrower than it used to be thanks to the piles everywhere, but man it’s beautiful. We have 4 distinct seasons up here. Compared to Wichita– where “spring” consists of the 5 minutes between cold weather and hot weather– New Hampshire’s weather is really great.
The family was quite happy to see Haakon and everyone commented on what a happy, cute baby he is. And you know, he is a happy baby. Well, except when people scream, he’s hungry, wet or I’m not around or he rolls over on his belly and can’t move any more than that. Then he dissolves into tears of complete frustration. As for the cute factor, I also believe that’s true, but then again, I’m hardly impartial 
I’m not sure what Haakon thought of being in Wichita. I spent most of the trip worrying that he would miss his father a lot and would never be the same. The first night seemed to confirm my suspicions. I put him to bed then when to the bathroom and apparently he woke up, so my sister took him and when I got out, she gave him to me. Nothing but screams for at least an hour. He cried huge baby tears, his face turned red and he made that dreadful sound that sounds like he’s dying. His fists balled up and swung wildly, he arched his back and screamed like he’d never screamed before. It must have been the shock of waking up in a strange place with no mommy because I have no idea what else it could have been. But he recovered went to sleep eventually, but I felt horrible. The other nights were better, but he’s been comfort nursing a lot more since our trip and seems to need more reassurance than before.
He did enjoy my sister’s pets and laughed everytime Big Foot (Akita) liked him in the face, which was pretty much all the time. Then Big Foot liked him in the butt after he pooped and I began to have second thoughts about letting him like Haakon in the face like that…
The cats were even more fun, if only they would have stayed put a bit longer and let him grab at their whiskers and noses. They were not so fond of Haakon and would run away as soon as they made sure he wasn’t going to keep half their fur. I did not introduce him to the rabbit because of his scary claws. My sister, however, did and reported that he seemed to like him. Well, alright then.
My sister has two boys, my nephews, whom I’m sure I’ve mentioned and holy crap, those kids are loud. My youngest nephew, Tristan, discovered talking early and hasn’t shut up since. From the time he gets up to the time he goes to bed, it is one long stream of verbosity. He was reprimanded a few times at school for talking so much, so my sister thinks that he must be quiet at least a few minutes there. Topics are irrelevent and he flows from subject to subject like a river running over rapids. His new “thing” is art and his New Year Resolutions were “1. Get better at art. 2. Get better at inventing stuff. 3. Get better and not letting my pants fall down.” He’s definitely failing the last one. I held him up by his ankels several times and can report his pants fell off each and every time. He needs a belt.
My oldest nephew Zach is 13-years old and is mired in the Cool Stage. He wears a fake aura of Too Cool For You and sports skinny jeans and high tops. I asked him where his legwarmers were and he just stared at me. I guess I am just hopelessly uncool. Unfortunately for him, he’s started getting into trouble. He’s a good viola player and told my sister he would stay after school one day and do some stuff for Orchestra. Instead, he and three other kids went to a nearby church and some of them (not him, according to Zach) tried to break in, damaging a door in the process. Naturally they were caught and the church is making them pay. The bill is $105 per person. Or as my nephew told me, “It’s $420 total, so $120 per person.” And people wonder why I’m going to homeschool.
Schools really do suck. My sister got suckered into going to a lecture on standardized tests while I was there. She received an invitation for a Student Appreciation Breakfast at Zach’s middle school, so she took off work to be there at 8am with Zach. They handed out a few awards for things like “Improved Attendence” and then handed out Data Sheets on the standardized tests. Zach was meeting standard on reading, but approaching standard on math. Then the hosts launched into a long spiel about how they needed to get the standardized test scores up and how they needed to close the gap between white andd black students (an odd topic, considering my mixed-raced nephew has closed the gap between black and white) and how if only the parents would tell their kids they loved them, they would do better on the tests. Rich, considering they took Zach out of class for this lecture. Really, schools don’t give a shit about educating your kids. As long as they fill in the right bubbles on the standardized tests so the schools keep getting their federal funding, they couldn’t care less. I suppose it’s my fault for telling Zach earlier how I used to just make pretty patterns in the answer sheets when I took standardized tests. Whoops.
At any rate, my nephews were quite pleased with their cousin, though they never got over the drool. “Oh my god! He’s drooling all over me! Ewwwwww!!” they would shout, handing Haakon back to me. We did manage to get some cute pictures of all of them (plus my sister’s German foreign exchange student) together, although Zach would not put his legs around Tristan, saying it was “homo.” Somethings never change: when I was in middle school, it was also not socially acceptable to be gay. I’ll upload the pictures later, my computer hates me at the moment.
If anything, I’m just glad to be home. Wichita is a “nice place to live,” but it will never be anything more than that. It has redlight cameras everywhere and the voters just approved another bond issue, but it turns out the city might not get the funding for it they from the feds they promised the taxpayers they would get. So guess who gets stuck with the bill? The taxpayers, of course! If you live in Wichita, you should be feeling quite paranoid about your backdoor because I think you’re going to get screwed in a most unpleaasant way during this recession.
We arrived back home on Thursday evevning and man, what a trip it was.
Haakon did very well on the airplane rides and I learned that having a baby who is screaming is a great way to get through security without a second glance. Now I wish I had smuggled somesort of weaponry with me. In Helsinki on the way home, we accidently smuggled a bottle of water through and felt very rebellious. At any rate, Haakon slept through the plane rides and didn’t really seem to care much about them, which was a relief for us since no one spent the whole flight glaring at us.
Lasse got his first “I’m back in Finland” shock shortly after the plane landed and we went outside the airport to catch a bus. He asked a bus driver if this bus went to the train station and the bus driver’s curt reply: “Can’t you read?” He then refused to load our luggage on, so we had to do it ourselves. Once we reached the train station, he didn’t unload it either, so Lasse ended up doing that, too, for us and the other passengers. We managed to just barely catch our train, but since it was a Friday evening, all the seats were full and we had to spend the whole ride in the corridor by the doors. That was bad enough, but there was a drunk on the train, too. He was in business class at first, but the conductor kicked him out of there because he didn’t have a business class ticket, so guess where he went! Into the corridor, where we were. And he stayed there the whole train ride, hasseling my husband, the two kids also riding in the corridor and any other passenger that went through there. Now, while other countries may have thrown him off the train, the Finns didn’t. They either ignored him, glared at him, laughed at him or tried to calm him down so that a fight wouldn’t break out. Fun times.
In case I haven’t mentioned it on the blog before, Lasse didn’t tell his family that we were expecting a baby, or that the baby was born, or anything regarding having a child. So, aside from visiting home and burying his grandpa, this trip was planned to tell his family he had a kid. Great plan eh? His sister surprised us by meeting us at the train station and immediately jumped on Lasse and gave him a hug and started crying because she missed him so much, so she didn’t notice the baby in his sling. Then Lasse pointed him out and she still didn’t get it because he was pretty well bundled up. I think she realized a little later, but the reaction was fairly anti-climatic.
His parents’ reactions were better. I was changing his diaper and throwing the dirty one away in the kitchen when he’s parents came in and his dad walked into the kitchen first and went, “Uhh, uuh, oooh….(something in Finnish I didn’t understand.”
His mom wasn’t in the kitchen, so she had no idea what was going on, and asked, “Mitä? Mitä? (what? what?)” followed by something else in Finnish I couldn’t understand. Then his dad replied, “Blah blah blah lapsi blah blah!” (something in Finnish I couldn’t understand child followed by more stuff I couldn’t understand). And then she walked into the kitchen and saw him and I felt very embarrassed.
On the whole, their reactions were good ones. No one yelled, screamed, or had a heart attack and his mom was quite taken with him. So was Lasse’s dad, but his mom moreso. She always held him, played with him, spoke to him a lot in Finnish and that sort of thing. “I hope Lasse will speak much Finnish to him so he will learn it!” So do I because man, I doubt I’m going to be speaking Finnish any time soon.
Another goal of our trip was to register Haakon as a Finnish citizen. For this purpose, we brought along his New Hampshire birth certificate as required by law and headed down to the magistrate in the town where Lasse’s parents lived. They were friendly and took all the stuff while Lasse explained what we wanted to do…and we hit a brick wall. “This doesn’t have the Haague Apostille on it.”
“Erm, the ‘62 Haague Convention Apostille?” Lasse guessed.
“Yes, that one. We need it in order to process this.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that…every place requires something else.”
“Well, that’s alright, we’ll just keep the birth certificate and we should be able to register him and then you can come by tomorrow once everything is in the system and apply for a passport for him.” Sounds good, right? Wrong! We went home and then got a phone call. “Sorry, we can’t actually process the application because you aren’t a resident of Pori. Your last listed residence in Finland is in Turku, so you have to register him in Turku. We called the Turku Magistrate and asked them if we could just send the paperwork over to them, but they said they wouldn’t register him without the Haague Apostille.”
So we’re back at square one. We can’t register him without the Haague thingy saying that this is indeed the official stamp of Manchester, NH that is on his birth certificate, etc. What a pain in the ass. Oh well.
It’s been a rough week. On the job front, Lasse is inching closer to having paying employment, which is good. But he won’t find out if he gets this job in Maine until after November 24. Ages away.
Then on the family front, my brother had another psychotic break. He’s schizophrenic and this is his third one. It wasn’t unexpected, really, my sister and dad reported he’d been acting funny around the end of last month. We were more or less holding our breaths, waiting for it, but hoping it wouldn’t happen.
The bad thing is that this time, I’m not around to help out when the shit hits the fan. All the other times I’ve been in Wichita and helped my sister out taking care of her kids so that she can concentrate more time on my brother’s health. Last time, I undertook the challenge of cleaning my brother’s apartment (believe me when I say challenge). This time, I’m undertaking the challenge of sitting halfway across the country, saying “I wish I could do more…” while also feeling relieved that I moved out here so I wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of stress.
This time my brother’s being a lot more vocal about what it’s like when he has a psychotic break. Aside from his typical anger and talk about how he’s going to “bust outta here (here being the mental hospital),” he’s told my sister that his mind is under attack and he doesn’t think he’s going to win, sometimes he has thoughts everybody cheers. He’s started twitching, which my sister thinks might be a side effect of his medication, but he assured her it was “Sarah” kicking him. He knows something’s wrong with him and that he shouldn’t experience this sort of thing, but at the same time, he can’t get them to go away. He wants to be alone, but he never can be.
Even worse is how this is affecting my nephews. My youngest nephew is (hopefully) too little and too carefree to be really bothered by it. But not my oldest nephew, who has always been more introverted and sensitive. He started crying last night and told my sister how he felt like his whole family is falling apart: “First Shelly moves away and now Uncle’s in the nut house.” Then he got in trouble today at school for not paying attention and painting a wall in his set design class that wasn’t supposed to be painted. I imagine with all the stress that’s on him at the moment, he isn’t paying much attention to anything around him. I wish he could just stay home and chill throughout all this instead of being under constant pressure, but then my sister would have even more to do on top of her job, her family and all that.
To make things even worse, my parents are on vacation in Greece at the moment (a paid trip through the foreign exchange organization my mom works for). So it’s my sister shouldering all of it, with only my brother-in-law as back up.
On the plus side of all this, we’re going to Finland for a week! Lasse’s grandpa died* and he has to go to the funeral, so his parents sent us money for plane tickets and Lasse’s really looking forward to it. I was, too, before my brother went crazy. Then I started thinking about maybe going to Wichita instead. But if I don’t go to Finland, Lasse won’t go. And I am still looking forward to it: it’ll be nice to get out of the country again and go somewhere else, even if the weather is shitty and it’s dark all the time. It’ll be an ice change and we can register our son with the Finnish authorities so he’ll have citizenship there, too. The only thing that I am nervous about is flying international with an infant. Everyone else on the plane is going to hate us. Sorry, other passengers. I feel your pain. I really, really do.
*trust me, this isn’t really that sad. He was 97, had dementia, and a predilection for beating up men 20 years his junior once it got really bad. No one was really surprised when he finally went. He led a full life and was ready to go by the time it ended.
Filed under: baby
One of the great things about watching a new baby is that it gives you a pretty good idea of how anarchy would work out on an individual scale. You see, Haakon doesn’t quite have complete control over his body. When he was first born, he had a central nervous system which should theoretically tell all the parts of his body what it should do. Unfortunately, it couldn’t tell them anything beyond “flail! Flail madly! Oh, and cry, too, that’s good. Sucking and swallowing is also good…maybe throw in a pee or a poo for good measure!” He couldn’t tell his neck to support his head, or his feet to stay still. Sometimes it seems as though his extremeties are in open rebellion against him.
One day He was laying next to me on the couch with his eyes closed, slowly drifting off while happily sucking away on his pacifier. His hand lay open in front of it. “Awww, look, Lasse, it’s almost as if his hand is holding his pacifier in! Isn’t it cuuuute?” Suddenly, his hand clinched down and gripped his pacifier and started to pull it out of his mouth. Haakon had no idea what was going on and started to suck harder, trying to keep it in. His hand laughed at him and pulled harder while I desperately intervened, knowing that if it fell out, he would wake up and start crying and I’d have to comfort him. But his hand would not loosen its grip and it finally succeeded in pulling out his pacifier. Haakon burst into tears while his hand basked in its triumph. Of course, the only thing I could do was try to pull the pacifier out of his hand and shove it back in his mouth and the only way I could do that was by prying his fingers off one by one and then giving them my own fingers to clutch.
I finally shoved the pacifier back in his mouth, he latched on and started sucking away again, opening his eyes to give me a relieved and wary look. I really can’t wait until he succeeds in bringing his breakway regions under centralized control. I’m not the UN and it’s hard to reign in his hands who, like two-year-olds, always want to “help”
Since “midwives in NH” is one of the top searches people run to find my blog, I figure I might want to write a post about them, to help all you guys out
New Hampshire is a really good state to be in if you want to have a midwife-attended birth. Unlike a lot of states where midwifery is illegal or where midwives have to work under a physician (Kansas is one such state), New Hampshire allows midwives to practice on their own. Even better, New Hampshire allows lay midwives to practice (known as New Hampshire certified midwives) as well as certified nurse-midwives. The Birth Cottage, where I had my baby, offers both (yay!).
As far as my experience with them goes, I was extremely satisfied and would go there again. Their fee is extremely reasonable when compared to what a hospital birth would cost (Roughtly $3000 for a homebirth and $5000 for a birth at their birth center). Even better than a hospital birth, their fee includes all the prenatal care (excluding blood work and ultrasounds, which are extra), the birth, 4 postnatal checkups (a 1-day and 3-day check up at home, and a 2-week and 6-week check up at the center), and breastfeeding help. What hospital or OBGYN would offer the equivalent?
There are also a lot of other midwives in NH and the easiest way to do this seems to be using the New Hamshire Midwife Association website. They have a listing and a whole lot of other information that will hopefully make your search easier. Good luck!
