Congratulations to New Babies!

This has been an exciting week for babies! I want to wish a majorly love-filled, warm, huge, excited Congratulations to my hometown buddy Quinn, her husband Jake and their new daughter Scarlet! Quinn went into labor on, well Labor day (appropriately enough haha so awesome!), and I'm so happy for her beautiful birth, and new baby. Quinn has been my online support group of one, with her pregnancy just a few weeks ahead of mine, and also opting for a natural birth center birth. We've been able to message each other back and forth with our frustrations mostly with everyone's horrible advice haha, and also sharing some of the few exceptionally wonderful pieces of advice that we've been given too. Though I haven't seen her for YEARS since growing up together in northern California, and now she's in Seattle and I'm in Austin, I've felt so connected to her over this past year of our pregnancies. I love this amazing world of technologies we live in! It has its faults, but it keeps my husband in a job, and there are some really special connections that are available to us now with the internet. Truly awesome. And congrats Mama! To you, your new baby, your new family. And thank you so much for all your words of encouragement and support to give me my own strength and confidence in this process. So much love your way!~

Another baby that was born recently, actually 2 weeks ago, was one of the lady's in my centering group! She was the further along, and though she was in our "October" group, had a September due date, but that group was full so she joined us. She ended up having to go the hospital route, and did the total opposite of the birth center laboring, as he was very tiny and there were some other complications, but everything turned out okay for her and her family. She actually reassured all of us (definitely reassured me) that going to through the hospital birth experience wasn't actually that scary or "bad." She was able to breastfeed, was able to have some immediately skin to skin time, and also still give vaginal birth. Also she had a midwife from the birth center with her, so regardless of what happens with me and my baby, it really set a piece of my mind at ease, to just let what happens happen, and to go with the flow and know that everything will be okay. She brought him to our centering session this week (just yesterday), and fittingly this was our centering session where we discussed postpartum baby care, and the changes to expect in our own bodies. It was so awesome to have her there with our group, and her baby though still premie (at only 5lbs) had put on an entire pound since his birth, and was happily nursing like crazy most of the time in our session. Aside from being small, he was absolutely perfect and really made this whole experience feel more real, and coming up soon. So much love to her and her beautiful new family!

At this centering meeting we also did a bead exchange and blessingway for each other and our births. There were some really beautiful and sweet contributions, and everyone seemed to really like the cute lil newspaper bags I made, and the ceramic roses. Here are the beads that I received, so lovely! Yay centering ladies! From left to right: Wooden Acorn bead for planting a new seed in our family tree  (Michelle), Pretty and soothing blue polished natural stone bead (Kimberly), Fun colorful beads to remember to be playful and have fun (Christina), Raw Natural Turquoise bead, which are all different to symbolize the unexpected (Susan), and a Pretty green blown glass bead for love and strength in our births (Ellen). I also found this large locket (also with two brass cats on the front) that Chenoh, Jocelyn's god mama gave me years ago. I put pics of my own cats (Molly left, Roxy right), and am going to add this to my "necklace" too. Lots of special treasures and charms, love and blessings on this one string, feeling so much love and gratitude back out to all my lovely friends and family.

And I can hardly believe that next Thursday is our last centering meeting. Then we all won't see each other (except for those of us to go to yoga together) until our reunion with all our babies in December! That will be so exciting, I'm so looking forward to that :) Babies!