Spring Breakin'

I'm telling you, I have the best kids.

Nora is on Spring Break this week. I'm excited about it because she's in school 5 days a week this year. We still have our afternoons during the school year (although we try to get naps in when we can), but I welcome having this extra time to hang out and do fun stuff.

I didn't have much planned, though, and we're on a relatively tight budget. So this morning we slept in and, after waking, had eggs for breakfast. We enjoyed the breeze coming in through our open windows. Anneliese was getting cranky and I didn't have many ideas, so we decided to go for a picnic in the park in our neighborhood. The park is 1.25 miles away, which is a big of a walk for Nora, but we made it. It was so fun, I want to do it again and again. (Except for the fact that it's about to get blazing hot, and then I probably won't want to do it so much).

One of the best things about our walk was that I got to really look at a lot of the houses in our neighborhood. You know what? I really, really love our new neighborhood. It is just where I want to be. It's filled with adorable little houses circa 1940-1960. I love how the lawns are so vibrant and full of mature plants and trees, lovingly landscaped, and ranging in style from utterly expressive and funky to HGTV enviable. Curb appeal is one area our home is lacking, but we'll get there. I planted a few annual bulbs, and we really want to get a garden up and running again.

Thursday I'm going to St. Louis for the International Cesarean Awareness conference. I'm taking Anneliese and Nora is staying home with Jason. They're going to go to Fernbank and to a minor league baseball game while I'm gone. I'm a little nervous about flying with a one year old, but I've done it before and I'll have a bunch of friends there to help. There are 9 of us going from Atlanta and many of us will be on the same flights. I am sharing a hotel suite with a friend.

I became involved with ICAN when I was processing my cesarean and looking ahead to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). Having a VBAC was something of a journey which began when I learned that the old adage "once a cesarean, always a cesarean" is not always true. This has actually been an exciting couple of years for VBAC. There was a big conference at the National Institute of Health affirming the safety of VBAC, and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has recently revised their position on VBAC with the aim of making it available to more women and reducing our country's cesarean rate, which is 32.9% and over double the rate that the World Health Organization recommends.

ICAN is an organization that is near and dear to my heart. Many of my friends belong to it, and still others support it even if they have not had a cesarean myself. The thing about cesareans and birth in general is that it is a very broad topic and it is so much more than a medical decision. Every woman's situation is different and every birth is different. I do think that as a culture we have become somewhat detached from the birthing process, so I am a fan of doing things as naturally as possible. Still, I had a medicalized birth myself (in that it was in a hospital, I had a high risk pregnancy, etc) and so I understand the place for certain medical interventions.

Anyway, I'm happy to be attending this conference and spending time with my friends and learning more about birth and more about myself and other women (it's that kind of conference). I love a good conference. I truly do.