Life in Beta

Like many weekends, I got my sleep-schedule completely turned around and I was up till 3 a.m. last night. Needless to say, my brain isn’t quite working at full-capacity yet. So today’s update will be bullet-points…

• I’m going home in five days. FIVE DAYS, ya’ll!
• Did I mention that I’m driving home to Erie, Pennsylvania — otherwise known as the icy tundra? The land of LAKE EFFECT snow! Oh what fun. (That photo was taken looking off my mom’s back porch on 12/11.)
• I haven’t driven in snow since 2006. This could be interesting.
• I’m not looking forward to 11-hours of driving…
• But it’s worth it. I get to see my family and several old friends who are coming home for the holidays as well. Yay!
• I have a lot to do in the meantime. Car needs an oil change and to be cleaned out, I need to pack, etc. etc.
• My Christmas shopping is DONE. How’s yours coming along?
• My Christmas knitting, however, is still in-process. As usual, I bit off a bit too much. (But it wouldn’t be ME and wouldn’t be Christmas if I didn’t!)

Annnnd… now I shall return to caffeinateing my system. (Thank goodness for Starbucks!) Happy Monday!

I don’t really pretend to be much of a photographer. (Ok… well, I’m lying. I do pretend to know what I’m doing. But if pressed, I fully admit that I don’t.) I have a couple good friends who are very talented photographers and I attempt to follow in their footsteps. I don’t have any delusions of being a real photographer, though. I just like to take pretty pictures.

That being said, I got some new photography-related goodies in the mail from Amazon today!

The not-so-exiting items: Sanyo Eneloop batteries (for my flash) and an extra 4GB compact flash card.

The exciting item: a new lens, the Sigma 70-300mm f4-5.6.

I haven’t purchased a new lens in a long, long time. The Sigma is a budget-priced lens at only $159. (The equivalent Canon lens is over $500.) Of course, like most lenses, you get what you pay for. However if you look at the sample photos taken with the Sigma lens and posted on its Amazon page, I think it gets some pretty good results for the price! I’m extremely eager to try it out and I’ll be sure to let you know my review after I have a few days to experiment.

I’m planning on packing up my dSLR when I go to Pennsylvania next week. Granted, I often pack it and rarely use it. I’m determined this year to force myself to carry it with me and take photos, though.

Experimenting with the “macro” setting on the new lens.

Hence why I just bought the new lens, batteries, and extra CF card — I’m trying to inspire myself to take more pictures.

The unfortunate truth is, I don’t know how many more Christmases I’ll have with my grandparents, and I want to document everything. I want beautiful pictures so I can remember the colors and textures and sights of the holiday season with my family.

I just hope that my very amateur skills can capture those precious memories. I’m going to try, anyway.

I’m at a loss for things to write about today, so instead I’ll just give ya’ll this…

My Gracie-girl is a master at the “sad puppy eyes”. And you wonder why she’s so darn spoiled?!

It all started when my friend Erica told me that I needed to get a copy of The Business of Being Born and watch it. (If you’re unfamiliar, view the trailer.) This was an odd request, I thought, because Erica and her husband are pretty firmly CFers.

Though I certainly want to be a mother someday, I couldn’t imagine why I’d be interested in this film. Childbirth, to me, was a standardized process of O.B. visits followed by a hospital birth. I didn’t see where there could be alternatives or options.

Erica assured me the film was well worth the 87-minute viewing time. So I rented a copy from Netflix and watched it.

One of the early scenes in the documentary is footage of a home birth. We watch as a beautiful African-American woman in a long dress, swaying as if dancing to music only she could hear, works through her labor by pacing around her home. All the while, we see her toddler playing in the background. It’s striking how calm and serene the entire setting is. Eventually, we see her in a birthing tub, set up in her living room. She delivers a beautiful, healthy baby in near-silence. She moans slightly and reaches down, with the help of her midwife, to deliver and then cradle her newborn. Meanwhile, her toddler is beside the tub, holding onto his mother’s arm and eagerly waiting to meet his new sibling.

It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen: a birth without horror-filled screams and beeping monitors and nurses shouting directions. It was a truly beautiful. It moved me to tears.

I am not exaggerating when I say this movie changed everything I ever thought I knew about childbirth. It opened my eyes and made me hungry to know more. It also made me passionate for the causes of women who desire the opportunity to have a say in their birthing experience: women who want to be allowed to say “no” to Pitocin and have a natural birth experience, women who want to give birth with a midwife at home or in a birthing center, or women who have had cesarean-sections in the past and want the chance to attempt a vaginal birth (VBAC).

I then picked up a copy of Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care.

While I’ll admit this book is heavily biased in the direction of encouraging home birth, it is also very well researched and presents a lot of startling statistics. It lays out the various reasons why medically-managed births and cesarean-sections have have grown to epidemic proportions in the United States today. It also compares our system to those of other industrialized nations around the globe. Frighteningly, the United States does not rank well at all for infant and maternal mortality rates compared with countries that tend toward more natural birthing practices.

I’ll be the first to concede that both these sources are only one side of the coin. However, I think they both present a valuable perspective. My own mindset prior to this exposure is a prime example: I didn’t realize other options existed. I only knew that the birth stories I’d heard in recent years almost always included the words “had to be induced” and quite often “c-section” as well … and I found that absolutely frightening. Now I know there are other options to be explored if and when I’m blessed with the opportunity to become a mother, and I think mothers-to-be should all be educated on those options as well.