I really like the tagline of the Peaceful Parenting blog:

Remember, you are not managing an inconvenience; You are raising a human being ~ Kittie Franz

From another blog:

Dear Friends:

We just received an URGENT request from a fellow non-profit organization for donor breast milk to help babies here in the United States. Due to the holiday season, milk banks in the U.S. are at extremely low levels and need your help to meet the needs of recipient babies.

If you have a surplus of breast milk (or know someone who does), please call 1-866-998-4550 (Mother’s Milk Bank of San Jose, CA) to qualify as a donor. The donor milk will be collect through the Human Milk Bank Association of North America (HMBANA) and distributed throughout the United States and Canada. For more information about these non-profit milk banks, click here www.hmbana.org. Let them know you were refered by International Breast Milk Project.

Thank you so much for supporting our vision that babies have access to donor milk when a mother’s own milk is not available! I would love to hear about your experience donating-please email me at Amanda@breastmilkproject.org with your stories, so I can share them with our supporters.

Sincerely

Amanda Nickerson

Executive Director, International Breast Milk Project
Give Milk. Give Life. Give Hope.

Researchers are blaming obesity and C-sections for the increased rate of maternal death in the U.S.  Obesity is mentioned because it is correlated with conditions that can lead to C-sections. 

I know that it is upsetting to some readers who have had their lives saved by C-sections to see blogging on this topic here, and I have periodically thought to stop bringing it up.  I want to reiterate that Cesarean births are definitely life-saving when they are medically indicated.  I for one am very glad that we have skilled surgeons and hospitals where these life-saving surgeries can be obtained in the 5 - 15% of births where they are needed to save the life of the mother or the baby. 

However, I have decided not to give up blogging on this topic because it is becoming increasingly clear that surgery is being overused in our society when with better support, many women could be helped to avoid them, especially first-time mothers.  This has nothing to do with blaming women who end up with (wanted or more commonly unwanted) surgical births, and especially it has nothing to do with thinking that women who had C-sections shouldn't be having children or deserve to die in childbirth (as some readers have actually written to me they feel when they read negative things about C-sections on this blog). 

The focus of research is turning to maternal death in the U.S. and it is surprising how relatively high (though still quite low in an absolute sense) the maternal death rate is in the U.S.  We need to make a lot of changes in how we treat pregnant women and how we prepare and support them during pregnancy and in childbirth.

As I focus on Cesarean prevention in future blogs, I want to be very sensitive to the feelings of women who have needed C-sections and especially women with many children whose births, due to health problems, would have been impossible without the availability of surgical births.  I want however to focus on what women and their care providers can to do help avoid a primary C-section, staying AWAY from inappropriate guilt and shame.  There is no one right way to give birth - and much of what happens in childbirth is uncontrollable.  However, with information, education and support, we can make healthy childbearing (hopefully the bearing of MANY children) easier, safer, healthier and more fulfilling for more women.

We spoke by phone today.  And so am I.  I urged him to get back to blogging.  He urged me to get back to blogging. 

I miss reading Kevin's posts.  He sounds good though - married life suits him!

Rachel and Greg - thanks for keeping the blog-fires burning.  Thinking of everyone - we are looking forward to a good new year in 2010.  With lots more blogging! ;)

Rachel - I too worry about this technology of finding out gender early.  There is such a "consumer" mentality about having babies - as though we should - that is, we deserve to - have the baby we think we want rather than the great gift of a baby that God desires to send us. 

Thanks for bringing this up - and thanks for all you are doing to keep up blogging!!  I also was convicted by your post about am I willing to stop what I'm doing and give attention to my children - am I willing to die to self in THAT way?  Wonderful point.

Don't feel bad - I was visiting a friend's church last weekend and was holding my friend's newborn baby.  A little girl in front of me turned around and asked her mom if I was the baby's grandma (I'm 42).  I recently agreed with a friend who just turned 40 that 40 really IS the new 30 - so there you go!  ;)  Grandma or no grandma, we've still got it!

Thanks so much to a reader for this encouragement:

I wanted to comment on the c-section post you had this week.  I wanted to note that it is especially important to moms to find someone who is supportive of a c-section when medically necessary only doctor (or even better a midwife).  Being put into a grave situation (literally) because you have had 3-4 section incisions and risk uterine hemorrhaging because of placental growth into the scar is a real and scary thing.  It breaks my heart to hear of families that a first birth c-section ends their hopes of having a large family or sentences them to very conservative NFP rules for upwards of a decade to preserve the life of the mother.
Keep pointing out the goodness of natural birth and breast-feeding.  ...

...I keep finding moms of all faiths more interested in Natural Family Planning.  I think there is a wonderful tie between how we raise our children and how we birth and conceive them.