Portlandia of the Baby World

Hello from Portlandia. The thing I love about this show is that it is so very accurate in making fun of the people here. And yet I still love living here, or rather, Portlandia's humor makes it easier to live here, easier to co-exist with the skinny vegan bicycle dude with a bird on his hat at the farmers' market asking for gluten free bagels. And yes, I am guilty of some of the same Colin-questioning as the next resident of Lala land.

In regards to baby making, we all generally get them in there the same way. But when it comes to getting them out & what to do with them once they are out, Portland(ia) has its own take on every aspect and I'm so very thankful to be living here. There are so many more alternatives available here for every aspect of child rearing. It's easy to accept the way we do it here as the norm, and I certainly wish it was in most cases. I forget that in the US, the rate of cesarean section is over 30% (http://www.childbirthconnection.org/article.asp?ck=10554) , that in some places, midwives are considered unusual or fringe and that breastfeeding for at least six months is at a rate of 47% nationally (CDC's Breastfeeding Report Card). Here in PDX, we are ahead of the game, which for childbirth means in some ways returning to the past, but with the benefits of today's medical technologies at hand. (PS: as I research this I noticed that Oregon has the highest rate in the nation for breastfeeding at three months and six months! Hurray!)
Take my birth for example: I worked with midwives at OHSU, one of the top teaching hospitals in the country. We had a doula to coach us through the birth. We took two classes, one was "Birthing from Within" (which Shannon could barely stomach) and another more conventional Basics of Birth class from Kaiser. In our birth plan, we had included hypnobirthing, water birth, and as many steps as possible to avoid drugs or other interventions. Once born, we co-slept with our baby, worked through many a breastfeeding issue with lactation consultants, breastfed exclusively for as long as possible (still happening), bought into all the alternative toys, carriers, and other baby gear, joined a moms' group with like-minded people, and attempted the newest thing in feeding: baby-led weaning. 

Now don't get me wrong, I painstakingly researched every decision, and in the end I pretty much ended up doing what all the other moms of Portland(ia) were already doing.

I think that wherever you live, parenthood is a foray into confusing research, confounding choices and indoctrination into certain schools of thought. But somehow in Portland, there are just a lot more alternatives, or as some might see it, a lot more ways to go over the top with something. I don't care. It sure beats a hospital where doctors make all the choices for you, and going to Babies R Us for parenting information.

GJ

Shannon's in NYC eating at Momofuku, 

and mom, or GJ for Grandma Jan, is helping me take care of O for a few days. 


We're having lovely adventures including but not limited to food cart exploration, neighborhood walks, IKEA, the garden, sushi, shopping, dressing and redressing the baby, cookie making, laundry, and visiting friends. Irony: driving to the garden in the rain to water the garden & realizing that if we'll get soaked watering, perhaps we don't actually need to water.
When I'm not anchored to the couch, I'll post some pics. 

How to Tell the Days Apart

How was yesterday different than  the day before?  The days really sort of run together when all you seem to do is breastfeed and empty the dishwasher. I try to fit in some outing almost every day. So yesterday, being a Tuesday I think, I had organized a playgroup walk on Mt. Tabor. Originally I had scheduled it for Monday,  it was pouring so I cancelled it. No one showed up Tuesday either. Again the weather was drab and gray (it's currently gorgeous and sunny, no plans made). So I walked by myself (with O) on a forested path to the top of Mt. Tabor. O was asleep in the baby bjorn. Halfway up, in the deepest part of the forest (to set the mood) I heard a clunk and saw something smack against a tree trunk. When the thrower saw me, he picked up said object and slipped it back into a holster on his belt. Great. The man with him was wearing shorts over his track pants and smoking a pipe. I wouldn't say I was afraid; the two white-haired gentlemen seemed harmless, but I did briefly consider my lone adventures differently with a bundle of baby in front of me. You never know when you might run across a knife-thrower. 

I usually divide up the days by visiting the garden if it hasn't rained, going to the store, walking, and having an occasional visitor. Last week I even made it to someone else's house! And Fridays I have a facilitated moms' group, which has been one of the best thing so far for getting information and having confidence about each stage that O goes through. 

Other things that made yesterday different:

• I cooked something from The Chew. Well, sort of. It was chicken Amandine, but I didn't have almonds, so I just used garlic (because garlic is always a good substitute for almonds). And then I realized I had a red cabbage, so I decided I should make coleslaw. I looked at a Chew recipe and then made it totally different. It was actually great!
• I had a doctor appt and left O (with his papa) for a whole hour and 20 minutes; the longest I've been away from him. And everything was fine! 

Garden Plot

Our Garden:
Actually, I believe this garden is what kept me from blogging last year. I put all my creative energy into it (oh, and into growing a baby). It was a gamble, since the site is a few miles from us. I decided it was worthwhile because it was a) on the bike path and somewhat near the Max line, b) on my way to school (where I was temporarily laid off, but worked over the summer anyway), and c) within visual distance of Zenger Farm, where Shannon and I got married. My goals were to have a place to get out of the city, which feels stifling for a country girl in the summer, have a creative outlet for my free time, and enjoy digging in the dirt. Harvesting was an afterthought, though it sounded fun, too.

Portland community gardens are hard to get into. This one was brand new, donated land by the Furey family, for both a community garden and a CSA spot for Zenger Farm. There are something like 30 plots, mostly 20x20 feet, which is quite large. The land was once a farm, so the soil is incredibly good for planting. It had been a fallow field for years, watched over by Frank, the resident pheasant who still reigns.


I originally thought the garden would be my project, but as soon as I started, Shannon wanted in. And of course, he wanted to do things HIS way. This was not what I was looking for, but I saw through our bickering an opportunity to connect over something important to both of us. It has led to many an argument, but we are better for our gardening together. Last summer, we built, sowed, and grew the most bountiful 20 x 20 garden I have ever seen. Other gardeners had some good stuff too, but ours meant more to us, of course. We built two slightly raised beds (our first project together involving lumber), and lots of mound beds. We designed it to be a green haven with various heights that created some shade, our favorite foods, hummingbird, bee and ladybug habitat (and mice and frogs, and rabbits), and a place for sitting in our plastic adirondack chair.


I think this creativity, on some level, led to the most creative project anyone can enter into. After planting all the broccoli in our tray (18-20 plants) in various spots all over the garden, I discovered that the smell of broccoli made me want to gag. Yep, we got pregnant in July, as everything was in full bloom and fertility was in the air. I continued to make the trek, and aside from the broccoli, this was one of my happy places, where  I could reflect on what changes were coming and just do some good hard work.


Now, with a community garden comes a community. This one was real in the sense of being quite random, based on who lived nearby, who heard about this spot, who was passionate or curious. As I said, this garden was in deep southeast Portland. Off 122nd and Foster, which, if you don't know the area, is pretty poor. Driving up 122nd you will see car dealerships, strip clubs, convenience stores, and plenty of baby-daddies with pants falling down pushing a stroller or walking somewhat near their baby-mama pushing a stroller, as well as a few people who've lost their teeth to meth. The neighborhoods are more personal, but there are plenty of people struggling to get by or doing the best they can with what they have.

In our garden, we have a few retired folk, one woman who lives around the corner and gardens compulsively  in every open space she sees (this year she has planted flowers along the whole outside perimeter of the garden as well as in an old bark-mulch pile), a few people who are unemployed, a few families who want their kids to get in the dirt, and a few aloof folks whose stories I might not get to know. We all learned from each other the first year. Our neighbor to the south just stuck plants in the ground directly from the trays, without separating them, and said to my organic husband "I don't know about this whole organic thing!" (a requirement for the garden, mind you). So he learned from us and we learned how to be more diplomatic. Another opportunity for diplomacy was when a few gardeners got the idea that Zenger Farm's CSA, right next to our plots, was planted for everyone in the neighborhood to just take what they wanted. "It's for the community". We hopefully helped save their investment and plants for the people who had bought shares of the CSA. And we learned a lot from other gardeners as well. One of the best ways to learn was to merely walk along the paths and see what others were doing. Some came with years of experience, and some had never planted a seed in their lives. And those who opened up had amazing stories. Our neighbor to the west came from Vietnam as a refugee, and was one of the few refugees I have met who believes that sharing her story is an important part of healing. Our neighbor to the east was a retired grandfather/war veteran who cared for his grandson from infancy to school age, five days a week to keep a semblance of family going. And our neighbor to the north was Frank, the pheasant who let his presence be known every time we visited, with his shrill and demanding call, and then he showed off his family as they grew up in the fields and plots of the land we were borrowing.