52 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-3-15”

  3. Ate congratulations in order?

    I imagine there may be new and better books than what was around almost thirty years ago. I liked a book, but not sure of its title. Maybe it was What To Do When You Are Expecting. I will see if it is on Amazon.

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  4. Cheryl has her own style, an unwritten signature, that all her artistic work displays. Beautiful photos.♡

    I hope all, where rain fell in over abundance, are drying out today. If it does not stop, we will need to invest in snorkling gear. I have not seen today’s weather report.

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  5. I see the book is in it’s newly revised edition on Amazon, What to Expect When You Are Expecting. Seems it remains popular with everyone. I found it very helpful back in those days.

    There may be a good one from Dr.William Sears, too. That may have been on childcare instead of pregnancy.

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  8. The book everyone reads is What to Expect When You Are Expecting. It gives a woman just enough information to identify the symptoms of EVERY POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD GO WRONG! But not enough information to decide you don’t have an ectopic pregnancy, or any of the host of other things. Along about 6 months my doctor asked me if I was reading it. When I told him yes, he suggested for both our sakes that I stop immediately. He promised he would let me know if anything was wrong.
    OH and keep her away from older women who will tell her what to expect. One woman told me about every miscarriage and still birth in her family–that required another trip to the doctor.

    Breathe deeply, tell her you love her (even when she hits that period of time where you have served your purpose in her life and she is plotting what to do to you) and that everything is going to be just fine. Treat her like a princess.

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  9. The birds are all vacation shots, too, though the birds in the tree with berries are both taken from our hotel window. (I got about eight different species total in that tree, but these are the best ones.)

    Top to bottom the birds are (1) a male red-bellied woodpecker, in the parking lot of Turkey Run (same period of time in which I photographed the crow); it started out at the top of a different tree, where the lighting wasn’t the best, and flew from one place to another, calling “right here, right here!” wherever he flew. (He slurred it into “Rye-cheer! Rye-cheer!”) It made it easy to see where he had flown to, and I could zoom in on him quicker. I really liked this pose. And yes, you can see the bird’s belly and you have to look pretty closely to see anything resembling red on it–this bird is named for the least conspicuous marking on his whole body, I suppose because “red-headed woodpecker” was already taken? Some birds show more reddish tint than others, but I’ve never seen it bright enough to be called “red.”

    Notice the three birds on the bottom are the primary colors. Two of them are probably obvious, but in order they are: (2) bluebird; (3) yellow-rumped warbler; and (3) male cardinal. There were two bluebirds in the tree when I got this bluebird shot, but they didn’t stay long and I only managed two good shots and one out of focus–but two good shots are better than the eight or ten mediocre shots I managed of the female cardinal (not shown). I thought the female cardinal was the perfect bird for the tree, with her colors a good match for the bark and the berries. But she kept flying from one limb to another and my camera is having a hard time zooming and thus a hard time focusing, and there were lots of little twigs on that tree that the camera can focus on instead if one is between you and the bird, so I never managed to get one that was in really clear focus. Then the male cardinal (at the bottom) flew in and chased her away, and I got one–and only one–nice sharp photo of him instead.

    The yellow-rumped warbler: my husband had opened the hatch of the Prius and was sitting on it and painting a covered bridge, and I was wandering around and getting a few photos of the bridge, but more of any natural scenes I could find. A red-tailed hawk flew by and I got a couple of photos of it in flight. I stood under one tree and got a photo of four small birds in a tree across the dirt road from me. I thought them warblers, but wasn’t sure (they were), and then one of them obligingly flew to the tree I was standing under, and so I carefully got some shots without spooking it. It’s quite a small bird, and previously I’d only gotten shots from too great a distance to be very good, so it was nice to have one come to get its close-up.

    I like it that all four of these photos have the bird among leaves or berries, or even the branches, that reflect the colors of some of its plumage. Sometimes the nice shot can be complementary colors instead: a bright male cardinal can look stunning in evergreens, for example, or a blue jay striking among orange leaves. But in this case all of them have some matching element that brings the photo together. And most of them show some sort of action, not just sitting on the branch (though the warbler is simply sitting pretty for its portrait, and I appreciate that too).

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  11. Tychicus- You don’t need a book. Just ask Kim, as her advice looks good to me. And having experienced 6 pregnancies (4 births, two miscarriages) I can vouch that no two are alike and books can only scratch the surface of what to expect. That goes for parenting books as well.

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  16. Well, we didn’t get our promised rain (same old story for us by now), but temperatures did dip down into the fall range at last. Someone posted that it was 49 degrees this morning and wondered if someone just got their numbers transposed.

    Nice weather for dog walking and sleeping. 🙂

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  17. No surprise here, and polls fluctuate and aren’t always accurate reflections (people tell tales, answer one way on Monday and another way on Tuesday), but interesting data:

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/03/us-usa-religion-iduskcn0ss0am20151103

    _______________________________________

    “Americans are becoming less religious, judging by such markers as church attendance, prayer and belief in God, and the trend is more pronounced among young adults, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

    “The share of U.S. adults who say they believe in God, while still high compared with other advanced industrial countries, slipped to 89 percent in 2014 from 92 percent in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study.

    “The proportion of Americans who say they are “absolutely certain” God exists fell even more, to 63 percent in 2014 from 71 percent in 2007. …

    “The trend is most pronounced among young adults, with only half of those born from 1990 to 1996 absolutely certain of their belief in God, compared to 71 percent of the “silent generation,” or those born from 1928 to 1945. … ”
    ________________________________________

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  18. Eight and nine year old are getting to be good breakfast fixers. They make themselves toast with cream cheese, fried eggs with cheese, bananas, and oranges. Nine year old is getting more egg in the bowl now that he has stopped squeezing them to open them.

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  20. Eight and nine year old getting to cook because they do almost all of the chores and all of the dishes. I have planned on the fourteen year olds being involved, but that has not happened yet.

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  21. Do your dogs do the dishes at your house, Donnuh? I may cancel my reservations for the week in September, as that is the day I am washing my hair.

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  22. No, mumsie, my dogs do nothing in particular to help with the chores around here.

    Ah, but I fully expect something quite different in terms of their attitudes when the new heavens and new earth become reality. 🙂

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  25. I remember being disturbed that my husband did not seem interested in reading the pregnancy books and childcare books. He did attend birthing classes with me. I felt better prepared and relieved from reading the books. The childbirth class did not prepare me for a C-section. I felt like I had failed not having my baby the natural way, thanks to the guilt trip in that class given to anyone who had an epidural. Of course, with gestational diabetes, and with Wesley weighing 10 lbs. 13 oz., we are alive because C-section was an option. Maybe younger moms-to-be don’t need to know so much, but the older the mom-to-be, I think it is best to be more rather than less aware. I was 35 when I had Wesley.

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  26. God gave mankind the ability to do C-Sections for women like you. Would you have preferred to have died trying to have a child? You delivered a healthy baby. Be thankful that you were in a hospital and had that option. I never bought into that guilt thing. As I checked into the hospital I asked when they would be giving me the epidural. My opinion is that if God had wanted us to continue to die and be in excrutiating pain during childbirth He wouldn’t have allowed us to figure out how to avoid it.

    The above is pretty much what I said to my cousin when she became depressed and felt like a failure about having her first via C Section.
    Next is what I told my best friend about breast feeding after she almost died during delivery and was lamenting that due to the time in ICU she wasn’t able to nurse :

    Yes, it is best to breast feed if you can but if you can’t slap a bottle of formula in their mouth and go on. Some women can, some can’t and aren’t we glad someone invented formula so that babies wouldn’t starve to death? This is from your friend who was militant about breastfeeding her own child.

    Every mother figures it out.

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  27. Not every mother, or I would not have the eleven children I have. And daughter would not say, “She is my mother, I will give her that, but you are my mom”. I try to get her to see that her mother raised her for several years after giving birth to her and her sibs, which she did not have to do.

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  28. Kim, my sister was adamant about not having a C-section when she was pregnant with her first, strongly enough opposed that I was a bit scared. The irony is, she had the baby induced, and part of the reason (I think the biggest part) was that they had scared her about how big this baby would be, and she was scared that bigger baby = bigger chance for a C-section. When they induced, they saw she was ready to go into labor anyway, so induction wasn’t necessary, but they still did it, and she had a very hard labor.

    When she was pregnant with her second baby, she wanted to be induced again, for many reasons, some good and some trivial. (Good: the weird nature of her husband’s work schedule made some timing really good and some really bad. He worked several long days and then got several days in a row off. Not as good: the baby was due mid-February and she knew it was a boy, and she didn’t want a boy to have a Valentine’s Day birthday. Good: they already had a two-year-old, and she was so drained by that first birth that she was afraid, if the second was as bad, that she would really struggle with an infant and a two-year-old. So she and her husband told me that if I could come for two weeks, they’d pay my airfare–but they chose to have me fly in one day and have her induced the next, rather than have me come and sit around and have the baby be ten days late.) Well, when she went in for her second birth, she found out they were using a different drug than they used with her first, and she asked why. It turns out with her first she had been in an experimental phase of using that drug for induction (the drug had been used for other purposes, but they found out it induced labor–and sometimes miscarriage–in pregnant women, so they decided to try it as a labor drug). Well, it was so powerful–especially at the dose she received–that it caused very hard labor, some placental problems, and more than a good number of emergency C-sections. It was, in other words, quite a dangerous drug, and could in fact have caused the C-section she was working hard to prevent! They were no longer using it for induction at all, but they cut the dose in half and continued to use it for a while to see if that would be safer.

    Since she went on to have five children and they rarely recommend more than three C-sections–I do know someone who had four–it’s good she avoided a C-section with her first. (I also know a woman who had a C-section, then seven natural births, and then one final C-section. But many doctors won’t allow a vaginal birth after a C-section, it is risky, and in Alabama where my sister lives it’s actually illegal.) But her experience leads her to strongly urge women against inductions unless it’s really medically necessary. Her first was definitely unnecessary; she was just reacting in fear, and once they knew she was ready to give birth naturally they should have just waited. Her second had very good reasons, but now I think she would say it wasn’t medically necessary and she shouldn’t have done it, either.

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  31. A lot of doctors like doing C-sections (scheduled ones, not emergency ones). It can be scheduled at a convenient time and there’s a lot more money in it. I have even heard of women scheduling C-sections simply to avoid childbirth, and to me it’s just one step shy of malpractice for a doctor to agree to that. Apparently it isn’t uncommon for doctors to have a 30% to 40% C-section rate; that was one of my sister’s questions when interviewing doctors.

    I’m one of seven children, and my parents would have 16 biological grandchildren (so far), plus my two, two other stepchildren, and two adopted. I can’t speak for the other steps or the adopted children, but I can say that not one of the first 25 I mentioned was a C-section. We have seven in the generation being born now, and I’m pretty sure that only one was a C-section (one or two others I wouldn’t necessarily know either way, so I can’t say that with certainty). Doing it to save a life or avoid serious problems is worthwhile, but it is major surgery, it is not as good for the baby, it is expensive, and it can limit the number of future children a couple can bear. So like any major surgery, it should be done only when absolutely necessary–but at that point, yes, do it.

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  36. Well, I made a comment, but it got lost in cyberspace. I wanted to say concerning Michelle’s link, that there is very little evidence that the Celtic festival of Samhain was 1) the reason the Church made November 1 All Saints’ Day, 2) that Samhain was used to honour the dead – it seems to simply have been a harvest festival. All Saint’s Day was actually originally in May, and was changed to November in the 9th century.

    The tradition of dressing up and going from house to house occurs in many different cultures – in West Africa, children to it at Tobuski; in Newfoundland, people go mumming on New Year’s Eve; in England, they go souling at Christmastime; Jewish children do it at Purim; and before Halloween became popular in America, people dressed up and went to their neighbours at Thanksgiving – it is simply good fun that humans enjoy.

    The association with the underworld may have something to do with Mexican influence from Dia de Muertos [By the way, the ancient pagan Mexican festival was originally in August, and its traditions got moved to October after the introduction of Catholicism]. It also has something to do with the time of year. Europeans seem to like to sit around and tell ghost stories in the dark months of late fall and early winter. Washington Irving wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow before Halloween was popular in America, in which Ichabod Crane scares himself silly after listening to one too many ghost stories at a harvest festival. Dickens and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas both speak of a tradition of ghost stories told at Christmas.

    Modern pagans jumped on the idea that Samhain occurred on Halloween, but the reality is, they got there last. Having seen real animism, I regard modern Western pagans as wishful thinkers. Their expropriation of Halloween is evidence of that.

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  37. The Navy did not allow for inductions except for medical reasons–because, of course, all those deployments would require inductions if dad was going to be home. My husband stayed late–with permission–saw the birth and disappeared for two weeks.

    They also are careful with C-sections because they cannot guarantee anaesthesiologists (sp), and you can’t get a guaranteed epidural either, for the same reason.

    We’re strong and tough, Navy wives! Who needs pain relief? 🙂

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  38. Sorry, Chas, but Jo drives to school. The roads have been in terrible shape and it is a fairly steep hill to school. With the dry season all the rocks come up out of the ground and it is treacherous. I decided it was much safer to drive. I take walks up and down the hills at the top here where the roads are much smoother.

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  39. Well, there is no doubt that natural birth, even with all its pain, is generally healthy, and that breastfeeding is best. It is also true that if it were not for C-sections and formula that maternal and child morbidity and mortality death rates would be a lot higher. My siblings have hitherto been able to have their children naturally; but I have a relative who simply cannot deliver a child naturally due to the way she is made. In parts of rural Africa that do not have any healthcare, women like her are in labour for days, until the child finally dies in the birth canal. There needs to be balance. At one point in the West, childbirth was treated too much like an illness and formula and C-sections were pushed as the modern way. However, the current trend is to swing too far in the opposite direction and make natural the only way to go – I read of a Western woman who was so determined to only use midwives even when things went wrong that her child died. Either way, it is human pride which causes the imbalance – “We can eliminate all pain” or “I’m strong enough to take anything.”

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  40. I don’t really have any good recommendations for pregnancy books, unless you want the name of a textbook (only they are so expensive). I’m all for more health information – the more detail, the better informed you will be. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

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  41. Hello, all. Jumping in with a quick question for anyone who may know the answer:

    I’m wondering about whether there’s a proper way to display a folded American flag.

    My mother-in-law was presented with a folded flag yesterday when my father-in-law was laid to rest, and she later gave the flag to my husband. I don’t know if she was given a display box, or if one is needed?

    I’d like to display it properly, in its folded form, if there is etiquette on that aspect of display.

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  42. 6 Arrows, there is a proper way to fold the flag.
    If it was folded by a military detachment at a funeral, it was done correctly.
    If not, you can get advice from a local VFW chapter.

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  44. I don’t understand why a woman would choose a C-section to avoid having a vaginal birth. Doesn’t surgery take a lot longer to recover from? (Comparing apples to apples – a “normal” birth vs. a “normal” C-section. There are always exceptions, but I’m not referring to those.)

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  45. Thanks, Chas and Anonymous (Kim?).

    Regarding planned C-sections, a former teaching colleague of mine had C-sections with each of her three children. She was told with the first one that the baby was very large, so they planned a surgical birth for that one.

    They were right — baby was 12 pounds and something.

    Second baby, also predicted to be large.

    Planned C-sec; 11 pounds and something.

    With her third baby, they knew the baby wasn’t as big as his brothers, and my friend’s doctor said that she could try a vaginal birth, if she wanted.

    Well, she’d never been in labor, and knew what to expect with recovering from a Caesarean, so she chose to go the C-sec route again.

    Baby was 9 pounds and something, so she probably could have gone naturally, but her familiarity with what to expect after surgery (and, of course, not knowing if the prediction that the baby would indeed be smaller at birth was correct), and maybe other factors I don’t know about, makes her decision somewhat understandable.

    Another friend of mine also planned a C-section with her second birth, because her first baby, nine pounds and 14 ounces, and with very large shoulders, got stuck. The baby’s head had actually emerged from the birth canal, but she couldn’t get any further. They had to push the baby back up and in and do a Ceasarean to deliver her.

    My friend didn’t want anything like that to happen again, and when they told her when she was nearing the end of her second pregnancy that the baby would be bigger than his sister at birth, my friend chose a C-section.

    He was born six days before the due date and weighed 10 pounds and 14 ounces! Hard to say how big he would have been if he’d gone to the due date or beyond!

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  46. Just to clarify, I wasn’t referring to women who plan C-sections for good reasons, but I was referring to something Cheryl wrote – ” I have even heard of women scheduling C-sections simply to avoid childbirth…”

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  48. Yeah, I can’t remember what they call the practice, but it’s definitely voluntary. I read about one ob-gyn who specializes in the practice, and who tells her own patients that her own child was born by an (optional) C-section. Like the new trend toward “sedation dentistry,” it seems a little spooky to me, like we’re so used to comfort in everything that we can’t quite handle normal life. I guess I’m one to talk, since I got my own children without even the discomfort of pregnancy, :0 but it really doesn’t seem like a good trend.

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  49. Hello, Jo, if you are checking in anytime soon. I often have to get up once in the night for a potty break and I take time to send out a Tweet that might reach some distant land/person.

    I hear a loud racket of dog barking in the distance. I wonder what has them stirred up in the neighborhood at 4 a.m.

    Yesterday we finished listening to the Audible book, War Room. It was good, but I still want to see the movie. Now I have to find another Audible book to read. I subscribe so I may try to find something new.

    I hear more rain. We are saturated. Now it is gone. We had a light mist last night when I came in from the grocery store. Now I hear the rain again. And my eyes are doing the shut the lids routine. May you enjoy your rest and recouperation of energy and gain stamina for your next day in the classroom.

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