A day in the life of us....

We wake up in the morning about an hour before dawn, Zarra having a feed and a nappy change, in the process waking the twins who climb into bed next to dad.  As dawn’s tendrils feel into the window in our bedroom, the other kids get in as well, so there’s nine in the bed, and Balthazar says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Griffyn and Lilly fall out……to go and collect up cups and bottles, and put on the hot water to boil, and start the process of our greatest family ritual, the cup of tea, ecco, or hot chocolate in the morning.  Then there’s seven in the bed and little Max says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Spiral fall’s out……..to hop back in her bed in the loungeroom where the three big kids have been sleeping so they can tell each other stories as they go to sleep at night and hang out together.  Despite many people disbelieving us, we all really like each other, and feel most supported and ourselves when we’re all together, either hanging out at home or going on an adventure.   Then there’s six in the bed and no-one says ‘roll over……roll over’, cause it’s cold outside and Max and Zarra are asleep.  A bit later there’s six in the bed, and mummy says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Balthazar falls out to go and see what all the others are up to.  Then there’s five in the bed and Merlin says ‘roll over……roll over’, but nobody does so he gets out.  And we hear later on that he’s got a full nappy so Currawong gets out to change his nappy and pour the hot water.   (With a slight detour to make sure that Merlin’s not beating the crap out of my laptop)  So there’s three in the bed and Max wakes up and rolls over……rolls over, and gets out of bed to see where everyone is.  And a bit later I hear that Max has a nappy that needs dealing with too, so I roll over…..roll over, and get out of bed to leave Zarra asleep on his own for a bit. 

Babie’s are changed and climbing into the big bed in the loungeroom with the other kids to consume their ‘hot juices’, ( another bizarre family ritual, dating back to when Griffyn was about three and a total apple juice nut, so everything to drink was ‘juice’, and cups of tea were ‘hot juices’ ) Currawong and I take turns in the shower (swapping saucy comments as we pass) to warm up and start the day fresh, while the kids are watching Saddle Club from the library.  I jump out, dress warm, and mix up corn and rice puffs with honey and milk to feed the boys as Zarra is still asleep.  All the other kids are in various states of consuming breakfast and a big discussion is going on about how they hate the snobby girl in Saddle Club.  I tell em I reckon she’s the best character cause she’s got spunk and imagination, and the other girls are all a bit too nice for my liking, and this starts up a conversation about how there’s always goodies and baddies in movies, and the baddies never win, and then I ask them if that’s the way it happens in real life.  And it’s not hard to think that the baddies win far more often than happens in movies, cause they’re running our corporations and governments and militaries and all the other institutions that are messing with our planet and it’s future.  Zarra wakes up.

Then us big people say ‘let’s do a big clean up, and we can get it all done and then just hang out for the rest of the day’, and between us all we whip around and get everything ship shape.  I get a bit big animal growly with the kids when one of them is wandering in a circuitous fashion to the bathroom carrying one sock for the washing, but we get beyond all that and get the space sparkly.   Lilly does benches, lots of compost and some general tidying, Griffyn does the floors and a whip around which he’s a bit of a legend at, Currawong does the recycling in the bathroom, and I sweep the floors.  While Spiral’s holding Zarra, Balthazar is wandering round having sporadic bursts of a tantrum about something or another (he’s three…..no more needs be said), and the twins are doing their best to merrily get in the way.  Max’s favourite trick is standing in the sweeping up pile, treading it under his feet, and spreading it in pretty patterns.  We get a surprisingly large amount done really quickly when we do it all together.

For a while there’s general grazing going on, a few rice cakes here, a few apples there, as the big kids go off for a walk down to the Coffee Club, and the twins mill around doing cute twin things.  Like sitting on the verandah hanging on the rail and looking out at the sky and the birds and hoping to spot a Bush Turkey.  And watching the neighbours cows who often free range on our grass. I take a moment to hang out with Zarra, stare in each others eyes and smile lots.  The big kids go off on walks often, and adventure round Billen or just make their own fun.  Just lately they’ve been getting into slapping foam pool noodles on the ground in a way that makes a huge ricochet like a gun shot, they like listening to the echo, and for a few days they filmed each other pretending to have huge punch ups, and someone out of the shot slapping the noodle in time with the punches.  Maybe a touch violent, but a fair call too in a culture where the media is often about aggression, fighting, and the eternal good versus bad. 

When they’re back from the walk, we all move around between housey pursuits.  Merlin falls asleep on the lounge.  I spend some time sitting on the computer replying to messages on facebook whilst feeding Zarra, and then hand it on to Griff searching on the internet for nerf guns ( another huge conversation that we all have about why he likes them, what they mean to him, why we don’t like them, what they mean to us, how we respect his right to like what he likes, how he can respect our opinions by using guns responsibly around us, what the rules are for gun possession – even toys need to be treated as the real thing if you want to develop a healthy relationship with them).  Lilly sits on the bed on the verandah drawing pictures, and Currawong reads Paul Jennings stories on the couch, while Balthazar, Max and Merlin take turns bike riding the circuit round the verandah and house.  Lilly helps me write this, giving me tips on the ‘roll over’ bit, and reminding me of stuff.  Meanwhile Max goes to sleep now that Merlin’s awake, as they often co-ordinate sleeping at different times these days.  Currawong gets a phone call from a phone company and ends up talking about how he drums and I crochet and write, and about homeschooling……as you do…….and a myriad other little things and dynamics go on all the while.

A lot of people ask me about what we do with our kids, if we do any formal schooling, are they socialised?, how are they learning?............... 

And it’s hard to say exactly what we do.  It varies.  And changes.  And most of our collective learning is what’s going on as we tumble through our days.  The conversations we have about things that are going on and different ways of looking at them.  The discussions inspired by the science that Currawong is consuming with an insatiable hunger about our universe, and our earth, and it’s animals, and geology, and all the rest of it.  The answers to questions that we all come up with together, consulting each other about how else it could be approached.  Like what colour dinosaurs are, and what the biggest horses, dogs, and cats are, and micro chips, and google glasses, and plasma.   And it’s amazing how much maths, science, geography, English, art, philosophy, history, and music can be learnt about through interesting conversations that the kids actually remember.  The explaining and demonstrating needed to translate between the little kids and the big kids and what they are teaching each other by example.  The talks me and Currawong have about what we’ve taught them with our functional and dysfunctional family patterns, and how to change them all if we need.  The depth to which we know our children, and their special needs and strengths and areas in which we realise we have to really caretake them.  The way how all of us reference and cross reference our experiences and favourite learnings to each other.  Adding layers to our combined stories that bring a new lesson with it.  The differing measures of love and respect, and disregard and grumpiness that we all treat each other with, and the working out between us all how to always do it better. 

And our adventures into the outside world!  We go and hang out at the Bush Theatre in Nimbin sometimes on a Wednesday for basketweaving, and there are other homeschooled kids and parents, and lots of other women making fantastic fibre artworks, and gorgeous crones and artisans teaching and showing how to weave magical baskets.  They’re all colourfully and uniquely dressed, and bring rare and beautiful instruments, and now and again at an unappointed time, everyone will draw close and break out the music, as Currawong sits on his drums and gently keeps his drum song steady within it.   If we’re ever craving company or conversation from others, we just drive into Nimbin and park our home away from home – our van – on the main street.  And that’s all we have to do really.  By the time the kids have erupted from the van and instantaneously decided they need a lolly or a walk or have seen a friend or want to pat a dog, I sit next to Zarra where I stay for the first 6 months or so of my baby’s journey in vehicles, and someone is bound to come up and chat to me as I pull him out of his baby seat and give him a feed in my comfy velvet bound spot.  I don’t even have to leave the van to have deep and meaningfuls, and Currawong often just pulls his drums out and drops some rhythms in the park, while we catch up or have chats or co-ordinate who’s going where.  There’s all these gorgeous teenager girls in town who love our kids, and anytime we rock up will pick up a baby and take them off for a walk, or let a whole mob of them straggle along behind them as they do their thing on the street.  We seem to have some seriously magical parking karma in Nimbin.  We always manage to be able to pull up just where the action is.  Like Michael Lusty’s wake, when we were parked virtually on top of the drumming circle, all our friends and loved ones standing round our van and hanging out with our little people while Currawong drummed and I danced. 

I read a quote on facebook the other day, that was written in chalk on a blackboard that said “Forced Association is NOT Socialisation”  And it made me think.  Throughout the course of our days, we come across anyone from brand new babies to grandparents and crones, and our kids can slide along the age scale as easy as swinging on a see saw with anyone our paths cross.  Nobody scares them, and they’re always willing to talk to anyone, respectfully and honestly, like us, their role models, try to be with everyone we meet.   I know where they are and am personally connected with the people they hang out with.  We all learn together and approach everything in life with curiosity and imagination.

And when it all comes down to it, and after much reflection about our children, society, and our choice to keep them at home, what’s most important to me is that we protect our kids as much as we possibly can from any external force that wishes to control, shape, or teach them how to ‘be’ in any other way than they naturally are.  It’s taken me till the ripe old age of 41 to know who I am, what I’m here for, and to have the confidence to be it in the world.  I want my kids to be at this point a helluva lot earlier than me!!  All I want really is that they simply have the confidence to be themselves.   

Anyway, I got a bit off course.  Back to our day.

Over the course of our day we’ve had three visitors, folks from the community that just randomly pop in.  One of the funkiest grandma’s there ever was, and the fella who lives in her caravan in return for helping round her property.  He gets by doing gardening for a cheap rate, and joins with many of the other folk round here carving unique lifestyles and paths towards income.   People drop in all the time at our joint, for a quick and inspirational chat, or to give us clothes, shoes, veggies, or other random generous gifts.  And we’re always open for people in need.  Who need somewhere to stay, or some food, or some company……after Michael Lusty’s death, the pact we made to not let anyone slip through our net who is in need, has been regularly taken up.  Our kids love visitors.

About this time is when we start getting ready for dinner, another quick clean up happens (you’ve got no idea how much dross can be scattered on the floor by twin toddlers and a three year old, especially when one of their favourite games that’s almost impossible to stop them from doing, is playing with the cold ash from the fire and making roads and railways in it….) 

And tonight is the first night that it’s cold enough to have a fire, so the lounges get moved close, and the little kids watch enraptured, as we’ve not had an open fire in our living space before, and when it’s lit, the kids all go a little hazy and dreamy as they gaze into the fire.  But Max and Merlin being Max and Merlin, it’s not long before they realise that putting the lounges close to the fire means they can jump up on the bench, so of course they do, and give dad a bit of help cooking dinner. 

Then after dinner it’s the time when we’ll sit around and watch something – a documentary, or a kids movie, or a series that we’ve gotten into (Darling Buds of May was a big hit, and so was My Favourite Martian and Get Smart).  Then it’s time for some books before bed, and nappies are changed again, pyjama’s put on, beds made, hot juices for the night furnished, and all the little sleepy babies go to sleep nicely around 8…..we’ve trained them well……and Currawong and I get to spend a little time conversing without interruptions, gazing in the fire, and remembering all the love we have between each other that’s created such a wonderful full life.

Do pictures really speak a thousand words??

So the photos.....

Here are the ones we took, of which there really weren't many at all.

I figure that after the photo bonanza of the twins birth, you can just imagine

that it was all very similar...

minus the water of course

This is later on the morning he was born, trying to make sure to keep spending time with the other babies so  they don't feel too left out.....and the others are getting eyefulls of their new brother



A very brand new Zarrathustra Cyrus Wildcat

And one of the only photos we've got of the beautiful Annetta.....love Currawong in the mirror :)

Most of us sitting round adoring him...

Can you spot the baby??

A happy Currawong and Max with a stethoscope

Beautiful little Zarra with the vest I crocheted just for him. 

The white spiral is handspun bunny fluff.....the softest thing in the universe!!

Looking very regal

Beautiful boy

I know it's probably overkill, but what the hey :)

Three little angels....especially when they're asleep!!

The thinker.....I think his name is apt!

Beautiful big sister Tiger Lilly

Meanwhile, out on the verandah.....

Looking a bit serious....

Ah no!!!!  Call off the hounds!!!

The magical Currawong multi-tasking....reading the big kids Harry Potter,

whilst also being a bed for the two babies that he got to sleep at the same time.....

What a man! :)

Hope you enjoyed!



The baby that came bearing gifts - Part 1

It would be easy to assume on the birth of my eighth child that I am a veteran of birth, a knowledgable birthing woman in tune with her body and the rhythms of birthing, and secure in my role as a mother and lover and creatrix of little people.  But to be truthful, the more I birth, the more I realise I know nothing about birth, or more to the point – I could birth another eight times and still feel like I was standing before a limitless vista of birthing potentials and possibilities.  And lessons to learn and fears to face.  Attachments to let go of, and sacred cows to murder……  I had so much more to say about what was ‘right and true’ when I was just beginning my birthing career.  And now I find that everything just is.  Take out the judgement and it’s all just lessons.  The more I birth, the more I realise there is to know about birth……

So to set the scene for this recent birth, we’d all just got to a really nice place with each other, after a long long time of being observed and judged and in other people’s spaces, and sorting through recent trauma’s, and were all cohesively living and loving together and playing and having fun. The description of this time was in my last posting about Love….. Lasted about a week.

Only thing we needed to settle us, and before we got serious about baby preparation, was beds, cause the rest had been catered for.  So one day we get beds, the next day we drive to get our big girl from the airport, and the next day a friend turned up with her two young girls.  That same night a fellow community member dropped in too, and it was all of a sudden too many other people in our sanctum.  We slipped into our bedroom that night and felt overwhelmed and like we’d made a big mistake.  We’d finally got to a good and private place and then invited the world into it, and gave it away, what the hell was with that? When were we gonna be free to be ourselves in our own home again?  Went to sleep feeling slightly silly, distraught and ominous, after lots of activity and socialising….

And then woke up at 3am that morning, went for a wee, and had amniotic fluids running down my legs.  Shock, denial, fear, disbelief, horror, and panic played poker for centre stage, and I woke Currawong up to tell him, so they could tap dance in his head as well.  We decided to hope for the best, believe that my bladder had finally and all of a sudden sprung a leak after all these birthing years, and go back to sleep.  I woke up at 7 in the morning, had another wee, and this time the plug came away, with a whole heap of fluid, and I knew that I had to face up to it.  I was 35 weeks pregnant, which many people would agree is far too early to be considering birthing at home, and going into premature labour which is associated with lungs not yet ready, and a hospital birth with lots of backup, care, and postnatal attention.  After talking to my birth support person, Annetta, we decided that it was safest to just ring the local hospital and go in for their help, so sadly and miserably I packed my bags and asked my big daughter and our friend who’d just turned up the night before, to look after all our babies, while we went to the hospital for who knows how long.

We got there, and I mistakenly expected all the flurries and attention of the hospital folk that you’d see in a tele drama, and instead we got mostly left in a room for hours on our own. One of my first thoughts was about a midwife friend…….who had greeted this pregnancy with a seeming prophecy (that really messed with my head throughout the whole pregnancy), about how if this baby was to be stillborn, or with special needs, or needing intensive medical assistance, then that would be fine……and I told Currawong that she’d been right.  Here we were in hospital.  Feeling really depressed.  A hardened midwife of many many years was our tour guide into the system, and at first she was horrified that I was so far into a pregnancy at my age and with my history, without having had any tests, or ultrasounds, or doctors appointments…..  She wanted to kick us out and stop us wasting her time, so we could go and do paperwork and blood tests with a doctor instead of her.  It’s a tricky thing to try and explain to a hospital based midwife that I trusted my body and the process of birth, and hadn’t seen the need for medicalising my experience or getting information that might haunt me, especially considering that we wouldn’t have aborted this child in any case.   She put one of those machines on me that needed strapping in two places to my belly, and that recorded my blood pressure, baby’s heart beat, and contractions.  Currawong and I chatted and told stories, and asked her questions about herself, till she started to thaw, and realised that we weren’t homebirth extremists, and started making comments about ‘some alternative people who aren’t as open minded as you two….’ and the like. A sad chapter in the war between homebirths and hospital births is, this woman was bitter from the attacks she’d felt from ‘alternative’ types while she was doing her job to the best of her ability over the years……and if we had reacted to her reacting to us, we could have had a very different experience. 

A young doctor came in and asked a whole heap of random questions in the hope we wouldn’t notice he was checking us out, and that was the last we saw of him.  Then there was just hours of us sitting in an unused and sterile birthing suite, chatting, making phone calls to the kids and friends, Currawong popping out for fruit cake and bottled water whilst pouring money into parking meters, looking around at the standard fare in surroundings for women and families who birth in hospitals, and having moments of tears and disappointment, as we thought we were watching our homebirth sail off into the distance.  About 5 hours later and after not seeing a doctor or having an ultrasound or having anything really checked out, our new friend the midwife came in with a pill to stop labour, tags with my name on it for my wrist, and a shot of steroids in my bum for developing the baby’s lungs, as it was premature.  6 hours later another midwife came on duty who we connected with straight away, as we all told each other how judgement was futile, and it was far easier to make peace with your own decisions, and accept other people and the choices they made, rather than fight about it.  I had another 2 pills over the next hour, and time for a huge hug and cry with Currawong, as we realised that this was really it, and I’d be staying overnight in the hospital on my own, and he would go off to spend the night with the kids.  We really don’t dig spending time apart……

7 hours after getting to the hospital, a wild eyed doctor came in, asked about the dates, and within minutes had ascertained that I’d got my dates wrong, because I’d counted from  conception, rather than the two weeks before it, when the egg had descended and become ‘alive’.  Or in plainer language, I’d counted from conception, instead of from the first day of my last period, which is when the rest of the world considers the beginning of pregnancy to be.  I wasn’t 35 weeks pregnant, I was 37!!  We looked at each other horrified, and thoughts jockeyed in my head about how I’d robbed us of a homebirth, how stupid I felt, how I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life, and all sorts of other barbs.  But in my defence, we’d counted it from conception because we both remembered so clearly how this baby was made!  And the date of it.  It was a memorable event.  Other people remember holidays or outings, but my love and I remember conceptionsJ  So as we sat there looking shocked, the doctor tried to joke us out of it, asked us about our birthing history, and got very serious when I told him that our last birth was twins born at home in water and two days apart, and told us a few times in a tut tut kind of voice that we were very very lucky that it had worked out well for us.  He also told me that I was high risk anyway because of my age, and how many babies I’d had, and because I’d had a caesarean and twins most recent.  And then finished up by saying that I may as well stay in if I was already there, and spend the night even though there was no risk and we weren’t premature after all, and have an ultrasound in the morning so they could see what was going on.  Of course they wouldn’t be giving me any more pills to slow it down, or the other shot of steroids that was coming.   

He left the room and I wailed to Currawong about what an idiot I felt.  And then I rang Annetta.  “Get out of there!  And I’ll come visit you tonight, and we’ll see what we do from there” was her advice.  And big old strapping hippy me, the alternative lifestyler, the anarchist, the system questioning one……really needed somebody else to give me permission to go.  Afterall,  once I was booked in and had the tags on my wrists, wasn’t it a given?  And a really sad consideration that was probably one of the main reasons I was in hospital in the first place, and yet another casualty of the war between homebirth and hospital birth, was the knowledge that if something ‘bad’ happened in hospital, it would be considered par for the course, but if that same ‘bad’ thing happened at home, as the writer of a blog that was rather public about my impending birth, I’d most likely be hauled before the coroners court and demonised by the mainstream media and a horde of anti-homebirthing internet activists who’d doctor my photographs so I looked like Charles Manson……  What a shame politics has entered the arena of a woman’s personal choice for a place to birth.  So I needed permission.  All of a sudden this was a totally normal birth, and it was safe to do at home, and I could exercise my rights and just…..walk…..out…..of…….there……. 

The nice midwife came back in with a very unappetising hospital version of spaghetti bolognaise, and with tears in my eyes I told her that I wanted to be back with my family, to which I was overwhelmingly happy when she totally agreed, thought it would be best, and I’m sure she gave me a veiled message to stay the hell at home, when she told me about how I could come back in the morning, and sit around on my bum for another 8 hours till they could get around to giving me an ultrasound….or stay with my family and see how labour progressed at home.  She went and worked it out with the doctor, and before you could say ‘Homebirths-R-Us’ we were getting shooed out of the room, and I took those tags off my wrists, and we scampered out of the building to the big sky, and the fresh air, and our wonderful magic bus that was going to spirit us back home.  The feeling of reprieve from impending doom was immense.  The reminder of how unspecial a hospital environment can be, even when they’re doing you the tremendous favour of helping you or saving a life, was timely.  And maybe that doomsaying midwife friend hadn’t been right after all!!  Maybe we really could pull off another beautiful homebirth.  

And as a little aside and to skip to the present, it’s only a few weeks after our birth, and already the story has spread round the area like wildfire, and friends have already heard a few times how “That woman who has SO many children, didn’t even get her dates right!”  Reminds me of when I had an emergency caesarean with Balthazar, and “that woman who’d had all those natural births had to have a caesarean, so you never can tell!!”, and there were also some nastier comments about how the ‘mighty homebirther had fallen’.  And it sits in a funny place within me.  Like a slightly uncomfortable itch that intermittently annoys.  A bit of a wrinkle in my birthing fabric.  I also got my dates wrong with Spiral-Moon, because the first day of my last period wasn’t actually the first day of my last period…..it was a miscarriage of her twin.  And I only found out that I’d got my dates wrong because I was going to freebirth her in a town 250kms away from Adelaide, and thought I should at least make sure that the placenta was in a good place and everything was going well before we did.  And you know what?  Sometimes the medical system and ultrasounds get it wrong too.  I’ve got just about every detail possible ‘wrong’ throughout all my births, and hardly ever predicted correctly which gender they were going to be.  But what I’ve learnt from my  ‘mistakes’ could fill a book, and has taught me far more than being ‘right’ all the time could have.  And in getting so caught up in getting it ‘right’, we can get so swept up in using other peoples terms and talismans that we can miss the subtle little nuances that were meant just for us.  Like how in getting my birth dates ‘wrong’, we ended up in hospital for a day, and got to really live out some of my most dastardly fears about the birth I was about to engage in the Tango with, and to really sit with them, in the hospital, with all the staff around us, and then get the incredible opportunity to break free, fly the gilded cage, and empower ourselves towards the birth that we really wanted.  What an amazingly emphatic way of working through some last minute fears and creating some clearing around them so that the forthcoming journey was made all the sweeter and stronger!!

And (to get back to the story), the first thing we did was go shopping.  I was so unprepared for this birth, that I didn’t even have a pair of knickers!  Let alone something to bleed into, or soak up my excess breast milk, or baby clothing, or wrapping cloths, or a birthing pool…..  I was especially worried about the lack of birthing pool.  Annetta couldn’t get her hands on one at this short notice, and how could I birth out of water!  Surely there was a kids pool to be bought in the megaplex that would do? But they were all too shallow or too big, and I calmed myself with the knowledge that we had a bath at home that would probably do.  Getting back home again was like a homecoming scene from the Waltons……hugs and tears and many children draped all round me asking for the story, and telling us how glad they all were that we were both back.  We settled them all down, and got them into bed, our visitor and her girls went to bed also, and Currawong went to bed early too, after our exhausting and emotionally roller coasted day, while I sat up to wait for Annetta.

She drove up in her awesome 4WD home, and parked outside, walked into the front door, gave me a huge hug and kiss, and then scooped up a baby bat that was sitting in a corner between the bathroom and hallway doors.  “You’ve got a baby bat” she said as she held the little one up, and we looked for something to hold it in.  I brought out a basket that I’d made as a meeting between crochet and basket weaving, nice and wooly like a mamma bat, and we popped it in there, till I could pass it on to my big daughter and the other kids to look after later.  We both decided it was a good omen, bats being considered good luck by many peoples, and a baby bat to boot…..  And I told Annetta about how we were all sure that this baby coming was a girl, and how Currawong had liked the name Batsheva for years, with it’s meaning being ‘daughter of seven’ which we all thought was apt.  We chatted, I told her the story of the day, we had cuppa’s, and then she checked me over, felt the head that was down in my pelvis nicely, heard the baby’s heartbeat, and checked me on the inside to see how I was going.  The only danger now was one of infection, as the plug was gone, but if I kept clean, drank lots of water, and showered regularly, all that risk should be avoided.  Everything was tickety boo, I was so relieved and greatful to be home and out of the hospital, and we smilingly went off to bed, hoping that the next time we saw each other would be early in the morning while I was in labour, and could ring the hospital and cancel that ultrasound, as my baby had come and was safe at home.

3am in the morning I woke up and started having tightenings, sat up for a while on my own, and then Jess, my big daughter, woke up and joined me.  We had a lovely time out of time together, in the endless seeming hours of the early morning, as I told her stories about how horrendous I felt when I realised that I was 37 weeks pregnant in the hospital and thought I’d ripped us all off a homebirth, and how glad I was that we were home, and how strange it was to be birthing without my mother around for the first time, and how freaked out I was about birthing out of water……  A really bonding and connecting time.  She started timing the contractions, and they were very nicely and evenly heading down a narrowing tunnel of focus towards contractions close together and getting more intense.  In between them I kept chatting, and was getting more and more excited and empowered as I realised that I could manage my tightenings out of the water!  I was finding a position that tucked my bum in, while hanging my pelvis in as relaxed a manner as I could, rubbing the top of my bum, breathing out through a wide open mouth, and rubbing just under my belly all at the same time.  Currawong woke up feeling well rested, and joined in the dance I was creating through the house and the verandah, and we were both feeling happy and like we were going to meet our baby soon.  The contractions were getting closer and closer, and Jess went out to wake Annetta.  She came in too, and the dance kept winding round the house, and in between contractions I was brilliantly alive, and intense, and telling them the magic of this baby.  This new baby was all about letting go of the old and my attachments I decided.  I’d lost my birthing necklace with the Kali cow bone bead that I’d had since Griffyn’s birth, to Balthazar bashing it to smithereens early on in the pregnancy.  I’d left my breastfeeding dressing gown at my mum’s house.  I was birthing for the first time without my mother around, and interestingly, was out of the water and out of my traditional birthing position on my back, that was the same position that my mother had birthed me.  I’d been into the lion’s den of the hospital, thinking that my anxieties and that dire prediction had won, but had been released to birth at home, and was finally able to shrug off all those negative omens!!  I was standing on two feet strongly grounded, and looking birth in the eye!  I was wearing a lanolin soaked, handspun, bird cape with a raw fleece bustle that I’d made for Tribal Fibres, as a wrap to lend me power and magic.   I was meeting birth in a different way than I’d ever met it before, dressed in power clothes, standing tall and strong, perching my pelvis in a way that relieved the pain, and with my Currawong firmly at my side, instead of running around boiling water and making sure that the bath was the right temperature.  He was just as delighted with the new fangled way that this birth was happening.  I was grinning and smiling and laughing with delight at the fears I was facing, and the new birthing paths I was treading.  It looked like we were heading nicely towards birthing in time to ring the hospital with our awesome result, and then get on with the rest of the day…..

And then our guest woke up.  She had breakfast, and was telling stories of herself and her relationship and her births, and chatting to all my people who’d been dancing with me, and the contractions started to slow.  I tried to entice her into the birthing cocoon we’d been weaving, and she joined in the dance for a moment.  But then we were hearing about her plans for the day, and her daughters woke up, and my expansions virtually came to a stop.  I was bereft.  We were heading so cleanly and strongly towards birth weren’t we?  What had happened?  How could it have gone away so completely?  I came to the conclusion that I needed to ask our guest to leave.  I needed to reclaim my birth space, and keep it sacred and for the people who were in on the dance with me, and immediate family and my birth support person only.  Our guest didn’t take it too well, and felt like she was being kicked out, and was very pouty about it, but I stayed strong.  Which was actually a really big thing for me.  Underneath the strong alternative exterior, I’m actually quite a wus, and have often given what I want over in the face of opposition.  I’ll compromise what I want to make others happy before just sticking to what I want and exactly how I want it.  But I was clear.  “This isn’t about you, it’s about me, and what I need for this birth, and who I want around me, and it has to be family only.  Bummer about the timing, and thank you for your help yesterday, but that’s just how it is.”   I organised with a dear friend closer to Nimbin for our guest and her girls to stay in their community house for a few nights, and after packing up she was gone.  And so was my birthing process that had felt like it was coming to a conclusion.

We sat around for a bit, I had a few spasmodic contractions, and tried hard to not feel like I’d failed in some way.  Annetta decided to head off for the day, advised me to rest, and said she’d be back later that night after the babies were asleep, and we’d see what happened then.  We all agreed that we’d give it till the next morning, and if nothing was happening then, we’d have to consider hospital again.  That day was a bit despondent.  I tried all the things that I knew could bring on labour….walking around, squatting, and other positions to give my body every chance to kick back into the birthing process.  The hospital rang to see how we were going, and Currawong told them that birth had been happening and then stalled, and we were waiting to see what the rest of the day brought, and if nothing had happened by the next morning we’d be considering coming back in.  But the highlight of the day was Currawong’s favourite birth starting procedure…..making love.  And this was the first time in our birthing career that it actually worked.  All the other times we’ve tried it have been with lots of people around, and as a purely mechanical antidote.  Currawong’s enjoyed it, but I’ve been unimpressed, unfocused, and interested in what it might do for my body only.  But there was no-one around, the kids were all off on a walk, there was nothing else happening, and our lovemaking session did kick off a few contractions, but that was not the main aim of the exercise anymore.  We actually had the time and space to melt into each other, and visited the special place we create together, with the added spice of immanent birth.  I climaxed quite a few times, and Currawong was crying as our bubble of us drew to a close, telling me that watching me love him was what he was born for.  That moment he was watching me, was the moment he was born to witness.  Gotta love a romantic bird man.

Birth meanwhile, had gone on a very extended coffee break, and wasn’t coming back into the space anytime soon.  The day dwindled into the night, and well fed kids went off to bed, and Currawong again went to bed early with them.  I sat alone and waited for Annetta again, sad, and depressed, and tired after two days now of little sleep and big stress.  She came in again like a breeze of hope, and just hugged me and let me hold onto her.  And then she checked me over again, checked the baby’s heartbeat and position, and we sat as she explained what she was piecing together.  After having so many baby’s, my uterus was looser than normal, and hadn’t quite contracted tight enough to start pushing out a baby.   My body had been taken by surprise by the plugs defection, and a bit like my birth preparations, just wasn’t quite ready.  There was nothing wrong with the baby either, and it seemed like the little person inside had been caught on the hop as well, not quite ready to shimmy down my birth canal.  The culprit it seemed was the fact that my cervix which, again after having had so many baby’s, had been dilated and open for quite a while beforehand, and had left the plug vulnerable and exposed to the hungry bacteria that live in every healthy vagina, which had snacked on the sweetness of my mucus plug.  And then stresses, and moving, and cleaning and the like had helped weaken it, till it came away earlier than my body and baby were ready for.  So there was nothing wrong with us, except a mechanical fault that had thrown a spanner in the works…..so to speak.  And we seriously spoke about how getting this far from the plug having come away, there was still an increased risk of infection to me and the babe inside, and I had to finally and completely let go of the idea of a water birth, as water increased the risk of infection too.  I went to bed despondent and tired, but I felt like I at least had a clearer picture about why this was happening, and that there was nothing wrong with my body or baby. 

And guess what……..I’ve reached my self imposed limit for a blog post, so I’m going to finish the story in another post.  We have another situation of a ‘to be continued’.  It may not be twins, but it goes over days again, and a lot can happen in three and a bit days!!  And sorry, but this birth was far too engaging and intimate for any of us to have bothered with taking many photo’s, so you’ll have to imagine how it looked in your minds eye………….

My Currawong

There’s a lot of stories and events in my past that I haven’t even touched on here in my blog yet, and I reckon there’s a few terms and words that I’ve made up that you might like me to explain at sometime… But that time is not now. I keep getting ideas for things I want to blog about, like all the other births that I’ve experienced and what I learnt from them, and a glossary of all the terms I use that aren’t in common usage (yet), and I’ve written a cute little number about optometrists and another one about space in relationships……but their time is yet to come. But right here and now, I really wanna pay a bit of a tribute to my man. My Currawong. My best mate and co-conspirator. The studly father of my beautiful children. The male at the top of the heap in my circle when it comes to the survival of the fittest……..the male that’s preened and made nests and provided beautiful food, keeps our mechanical wheels running, and puts across the best display’s of human nature that impressed me (and him) so much, that we keep having babies. My muse, inspiration, education, and the most bodacious bed mate that ever sprinkled my life with pure human essence.

We’ve just been through a really hard time. And are only now really realizing how traumatized we’ve both been by recent events…….twins was enough on it’s own, but also my daughter feeling down, and us losing the home that we thought we were gonna live in the rest of our lives, and the betrayal of some of the people in that community home…..not to mention feeling poor and homeless, and staying away from our beloved beach community for a couple of months and finding out about an unexpected pregnancy along the way. It’s been really hard. And we’ve done what most other people would probably do in the same situation……..taken it out on each other. Years ago, I figured that fighting amongst couples is actually quite an honourable and trusting thing. You’re telling each other that you believe you can express and display the worst aspects of your personality (and let’s face it, we all have them), and also believe that the other will still be there at the end of it, and still love you, and accept your nasty self for what it is, at the same time as expressing their own. And it’s a great way for letting off steam in a society obsessed with being ‘good’, and ‘fine’. So we’ve been through the hurly burly of late. And just last weekend went down to the hugely loved Willunga and all the wonderful folk who we love and who love us there, and remembered who we were when we feel loved again, and it kinda put all the past hurts and betrayals into perspective, and helped us realize that we’ve both been a bit off the wall for the last 3 months or so. It wasn’t just him, like I kept trying to tell him it was, afterall. And for the first time, in the middle of a blazing and bitter recrimination that I just HAD to inform him about, I did what I’ve wanted to do for years, and told him how much I hated it when we weren’t getting on, and told him I was going to do my bit for making it better, dropped it all, and gave him a hug. And guess what. It worked. He was so happy that I just dropped it all and hugged him, and we haven’t had a cross word since. And it makes me realize again how very much I love him.

We’ve got one of the best love stories I’ve ever heard of. When we first clapped eyes on each other, I was a black leather wearing recent dyke with short hair, and he had a purple Mohawk, and wore black and shades of grey. Our eyes met across a crowded pub, and we stared into each others souls…….which neither of us had ever done before (or since). And then we met on the busy Katoomba street, went for a coffee, and within minutes were telling each other our deepest and darkest secrets. That night he was palming off his mistress, after having left his partner at home, so we could go upstairs to really meet each other…….and you can think what you like about such a meeting, but that’s how it was. 6 hours later we came back to the pub to cheers from observers, and parted, sure that we’d never meet again. He had a whole life that entrenched him, and I lived in another state, and I decided I wanted one just like him, but not him, because he was far too damaged. (I thought) But no-one of the male persuasion had ever treated me with such respect and equality before…….so I wanted to remember all the details. I got home to South Australia and decided to write it all out. And became a woman obsessed. Within 3 months of wondering whether I was writing the book, or it was writing me, I had a tome that I’d written, that began with a recounting of our meeting, and then became a visualization of what I wanted and wished would happen, as well as an autobiography, science fiction novel, and self help manual. It’s written in the most amazing poetic style, and as I wrote it, I’d read back over what I’d written in amazement, wondering where it was all coming from! I reckon I could almost call it a channeled book. I finished it just before Saturn Return and decided to take a trip through the desert and let it go, and take on the changes that would happen, and face my fears, and that trip is a whole other story in and of itself……but on the way home, I stopped in at Katoomba again, and just when I was about to leave and come home, Currawong walked into the pub, and we sank into each other again. I told him I’d written a book about him, and he told me he’d written a song about me, and our hearts melted together. But he was still entangled, so we parted again, a bit sadder this time, and went our own ways again. Till I got a phone call a year or so later, and he’d left his partner, and moved to Melbourne, and wondered if I wanted to come to a party at his house. I drove there straight away, and we spent the weekend drinking large amounts of Stones Green Ginger Wine, and had 7 people traipsing through his bedroom as we kept telling each other that we weren’t into a relationship, and we wanted our freedom, and all sorts of other pretty lies. Till the last moments, when we’d kicked the last person out of his bed, and he said ‘But is that all there is? Can’t there be more between us?’

I was so touched at the role reversal, and he was so soft hearted, that we entered into a period of a long distance relationship. I’d catch the train to visit him in Melbourne, and he’d hitch-hike to visit me. I was in such an amazing place of feeling my connection to the entire world, and understanding that everyone I met WAS me, that we had all these cute moments, like when he met me at the train, and I introduced the 6 people I’d met in the smoking carriage to him, after telling them all about our romance. He was really into being a debonair but angry punk at that time, and was a bit blown away being met by all these people….the toothless prostitute, the ex-con, the psychologist, the speed dealer and the rest… And eventually he decided to leave his punk band and come and see how good it could get with me. And we’ve never stopped the joy ride since. We’ve gone from both wearing black and shades of grey to wearing lots of bright colours, he’s gone from being virulently anti-child to being the best dad I’ve ever seen, I taught myself to spin and crochet and have done it all my own way, and he’s taught himself to drum in his own unique way, despite being told many times by big-egoe’d drummers that he didn’t know what he was doing and to stop. We ran a market together that was one of the most amazing social experiments I’ve ever been a part of – with the complete absence of all forms of hierarchy – and we learnt a lot about ourselves, our community, the environment, and other ways in which we could be activists for change. We travelled all around the country in our hi-ace commuter van, bought a house to have a baby (Spiral-Moon) in, up north in a town that time forgot, sold it after she was born, and then relocated to the hills around Melbourne for a short stint, before coming back to the Adelaide hills to have Balthazar, join a community, avoid the horrendous Melbourne fires, learn through Post Natal Depression and whooping cough, get pregnant with twins, and get to here where you find us now, wondering where our path will take us next.

But that’s just the external journey. The internal journey has been huge. We are both incest survivors and had traumatic childhoods, so we’ve had a lot of barriers and trust issues that needed dealing with in a gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) way. We’ve always had a huge love and lust for each other, but had to learn how to express it to each other in ways that allowed for each other’s particular foibles and scars. Currawong had so many barricades to his heart, that it really took the first five years of our being together, for him to truly believe that I was here to stay, and really loved him. And I needed equal time to believe that I really deserved love too. It was only last year that I really got that he didn’t put other people first, like I’d been accusing him of for years, and was obviously in every part of his being, choosing me and supporting me above all others. A lot of the things we’ve accused each other of over the years have been nothing to do with each other really, and are more to do with the treatment we experienced as children, and our issues with our families of birth. The untangling of family wounds and barriers we’ve built was tumultuous at first, and is getting easier and easier the more we do it, motivated by wanting to give our children as much healthy stuff as we can.

And I still pinch myself regularly, to make sure that I really am here, experiencing one of those epic love stories that I so wished for as a child and teen. He blends in wherever he goes just like me. He can get on with anyone, anywhere, anyhow, just like me. He can skip and jump through any intellectual hoop or concept you care to name, and he’s always growing and learning. He’s Friesian just like me. A bit less than me actually, but it doesn’t really matter, when you consider the coincidence of us having met and bonded at all. He’s the most awesome mirror I’ve ever known. And there’s not a single thing about him I’d change. He’s spontaneous, never boring, romantic in a totally uncommercial way, challenging, compassionate, and a huge amount of fun. We are so similar it’s mindblowing, and we truly have absolutely no secrets from each other. I’m so greatfull we found each other……..

Which is why we’re trying so hard to stay together. Without sacrificing one of us to a job and a mortgage. To keep travelling even sporadically, and make an income from our passions and talents. To keep our family close knit and dedicated to the path of natural learning for us all. To keep carving out our own reality, our own way, without compromising our dreams. And we’re both stubborn, and both resolutely freedom loving, so I reckon we can do it. I’m going to help Currawong get a vlog (that’s a video blog) together, cause his performance is so audio-visual, that I reckon it’s the only medium that will do him justice. His wild talent is so outstanding, I want the world to see what he does. He can drum on anything from glass jars, to computer parts, to play equipment in parks, to preserving kits, to plastic seats, to bodies, while creating the wildest threads of rhythm that keep forming a continuous multilayered soundscape. And he tells stories and plays with kids rhymes and makes up the most amazing lyrics on the spot. Everything he does is improvised genius, and I’m certainly not the only person that thinks so! My man needs the audience he deserves, and as well as busking on our journey, I reckon he could find an international love for what he does via the internet. Which will be easier on our family time than doing the band and gig trip that so many other musicians do.

And I’m going to flog my blog. Remember that book I was just telling you about? Very soon you’ll be able to buy it off me via the internet, either in PDF format, or printed in a hard copy if that way goes easy. I’ve got this idea of selling the articles I’ve written, theories, books, patterns, and creative writing pieces, with lots of pictures added, on memory sticks, and then crocheting pouches for the sticks to live in, as a connection from me to the recipient. And I’m going to revive my etsy site and start selling some of my crocheted creations that are just sitting around. And write more about birth and tell the rest of my amazing birthing stories. I’m even thinking about writing kids books about how we learn together, with photo’s of our gorgeous kids and examples of natural learning and how it occurs. And maybe one day we’ll end up on land and start community supported agriculture and other community hubs, cause that’s what we’re all about.

Cause I’ve decided I want a café income. After doing 6 years of cloth nappies, when I found out there were biodegradable disposable nappies, I decided I wanted a disposable nappy income, and it happened. I was so excited by disposable nappies after 6 years of stringing up prayer flags of colourful nappies everywhere we went, that I could hardly sleep!! And now I want a café income, so we can regularly go to gorgeous organic café’s for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, depending on the mood. And I reckon if you’d ever experienced thinking up, cooking for, and cleaning up after 6 young children on a daily basis, you’d totally understand my desire!!! And it’s even Currawong who does most of the cooking!! And we want a big purple 40ft bus to trip around in, with beds that we don’t have to pack up every morning, and lay out every night, and a kitchen on wheels!! Cups of tea whenever we need them. And a home…….where we belong to the land more than it belongs to us. And where we can grow food and family and love and community. Did you catch all that universe??

But first, the search to find where we’ll birth this next one……..

So if you’re into what I write about, and think what we’re doing is a worthwhile pursuit to support, I’d really dig it if you helped me get my blog ‘out there’ in whatever way you can think of, and maybe buy my wares when they come online. And check out my beautiful Currawong’s vlog when we get it happening. And I might even try and add one of those donate buttons I’ve seen around to my blog, for the altruistic philanthropists among you. And hopefully it will all come around for all of us, to live our true and authentic lives, and dream our dreams, and support each other to be all that we want and need to be. Love, respect, peace and freedom to you all!

On having a big family.....

So now that we’re expecting our 7th child together, and my 8th child all up, I’m really starting to notice the big balls of juicy judgement that come bouncing down the street towards us from folks eyes, as well as getting reactions from people when we tell them like “Oh, I’m so sorry” (?????????), and similar sentiments from people who look like we’ve just announced one of us is dying. Not to mention the odd snide comments from acquaintances about how many we have already, and the direct approach from ‘friends’ like I talked about in my last blog post.

As it is, I’ve developed a radar over the years for all sorts of reasons, for people on the street to look at and smile with, and people to avoid looking at, especially not making eye contact with, cause it’s likely to not be pretty. And basically, that radar picks out all indigenous folk from the world around, any ‘differently abled’ folk, any kooky folk, and people who look like refugee’s, as being safe to look at and smile with – essentially the other fringe dwellers in the world – and any mainstream looking one’s are the one’s my radar avoids. More often than not, these are the folk looking at me with ‘deadbeat parents’ and ‘she must do that for the baby bonus’ and ‘those poor grubby children’ and the like coming like daggers from their eyes.

And after spending a day sewing and constructing arguments for the rabidly anti-big-family-people who have already made their opinions clear in my life……..I figure it’s time for me to tell you, the universe, and anyone who cares to listen, our reasons for having so many children.

• First and foremost is that they’re utterly gorgeous, vibrant, envigorating, life enhancing, funny, cuddly, and the best people I’ve ever known, and we’re both honoured that they live in our family, and we get to know them for the rest of our lives. Every day is an adventure, and their unique takes on the world are pure gold. They teach us more than anything in our lives has ever done before. They are the reason to constantly strive to be better, and to make the world a better place. They are the motivation for nearly everything we do. They are friends and teachers and people that bring out our fierce protective and guiding instincts, and mirror ourselves and our behaviours in a way that means we have to deal with them, to make our combined world a better and healthier place to be.

• It took me three babies to realize that they’re nothing to do with me. Apart from the obvious of course, they’re completely their own people, born with their internal natures and distinct fate and destiny intact. With my first baby, I was convinced that my continuum parenting was the reason she was so funky, and if anything, my judgement about other parents increased……”If I can produce such perfect progeny, then it’s obvious that if everyone in the world would just do like I said, we’d have perfect people and perfect harmony forevermore….” My second baby perfomed just as well, as well as the third, but the fourth and fifth have blown that theory completely out of the water. All my tried and tested tricks and parental lore completely failed with these two. They are the ungovernable forces of nature that are best just to leave alone. And not take personally. And appreciate for their own unique contributions to the world. (We were warned about lotus babies…) And then there were the sixth and seventh that provided a whopper of a birth story, and rolled on just about all the other tried and true methods I had left for my parenting approach. All my other smug assumptions and judgements have been thoroughly discarded after they came into my life. Children, (people), are who they are, and can’t be expected to be certain things just because of who their parents are. I reckon Kahil Gibran puts it best…….

”Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

--Kahlil Gibran

It’s taken me this many kids and pregnancies to really get the great mystery of conception, birth, and the individual journey of the soul. And to just get out of the way and surrender into trust for my own life as well as theirs. I reckon I’m lucky, cause I’ve been enabled to discover that birth and all of it’s surrounding energies can truly be a path of spiritual transformation and enlightenment.

• Between all my births, (and there’s still one to come) I’ve experienced just about everything. I’ve had a disempowered, interventionist hospital birth, an empowered, almost unassisted hospital birth, a beautiful homebirth with disempowering after experiences and mismanaged bonding, an almost unassisted homebirth (with a sage, midwife observer) with a hugely empowering and transformative bonding experience, an attempt at a homebirth that became an emergency caesarean, that was respectful, empowering, and positive, an amazing homebirth of twins two days apart, and the intense experience of early life with twins, and the story is yet unwritten for the next one. I’ve learnt so much about birth. And have developed a healthy love and respect for both homebirthing and hospital birthing, and how important both of them are. And also have a unique perspective on how you can transform your birthing self, and are not just lumbered with a birthing self that can’t change. And I’ve borne witness to many other birthing women, who have had the great rewards of birth kept from them, by disempowerment by both the hospital birthing scene and the homebirthing one. I believe I have a valuable contribution to make to birthing lore from all of my experiences, and some suggestions about how we can all approach birth in a more empowered way. I really like having such a wholistic toolkit about birth within me.

• Contraception sucks, and in my experience anyway, babies are made from great orgasms. I refuse to do the pill, (synthetic bleeding? You’ve got to be kidding!) because I love my bleeding and what it brings, and IUD’s have problems, and I honestly don’t have the internal discipline to do the mini-pill or a diaphragm, and I’ve never been good at condoms (surprisingly, neither is Currawong). As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have a monogamous, loving relationship for 12 years, and have sex with plastic between you. But more than that, our sex and smell is one of the most important aspects of our relationship. Our deep trust and honesty have led us on a sexual journey that has never yet stopped….it keeps getting better and better, as we keep getting further into each other and deeper into our sexual experience. And there’s a certain animalistic nature to the procreation dance that is absolutely exhilarating. When the time is right in my cycle, and the smell’s align, and the planets with them, sex can become a mind blowing, transformative, and conceptual experience that is the equal to any great spiritual experience or great mystery of life. This is why we’re both loathe to get a vasectomy, and mess with our alchemy. But at some time we may have to face this one…. Other people may remember great holidays, or dance parties, or trips, but we remember our great sexual adventures. And we remember every great session we had that created life. We’re addicted to the danger zone, and prepared to take responsibility for the consequences. As many mystics and spiritual folk have noted during the ages, babies born from and into great love are very special……and we seem to have this particular magic DOWN PAT!!

• And now that I’ve mentioned responsibility……we consider that we take a huge amount of it with our children. We may be income challenged at times, but we always eat mostly local and organic foods gorgeously prepared by the wonderful Currawong, as well as enough sweets to make sure they wont grow up sugar addicts. We give them enough media to do the same thing, but none of the really damaging (in our eyes) stuff that will mess with their unlimited imaginations and natures. You know how lots of adults spend their whole adulthoods trying to unlearn a lot of the shit they learnt from their childhood conditioning, and trying to become themselves?? We’re trying to short track that process, by giving them the freedom and confidence to be who they are from the start…..so maybe they can spend their adult lives doing something else!! And we’re doing our best to give them as many stories and experiences we possibly can, about all the varied ways that a person can do life. As well as having as many adventures as we can along the way. A friend told me there was an article in the local newspaper about a woman who’d reached her 100th year, and was asked about the biggest differences she saw around her now, compared to when she was growing up. And what she said, was that the children today had lost all their freedom. That really sat with me. And on our forays into the city, and to parks, and libraries, and museums, and all the places that children used to inhabit, I notice more and more the great disappearance of unruly kid energy and laughter…… And where have they all gone?? Poor little buggers are stuck in front of televisions, the internet, and DS9’s, getting madly advertised at and conditioned, and desensitized to death and destruction, while losing their freedom to be just what they are…..children. To play, and ride bikes without helmets, and sit on swings without hovering parents, and make up imaginary worlds, and build cubbies, and play dress ups and all the other kooky and possibly dangerous things that the kids of today are being kept from. Our kids are still free…..very free…..in fact I’d have to call them all free range kids. And as we roam around and find people increasingly impatient with their noise and childlike abandon, I feel sad for a generation of kids that are so quiet and entranced by media and the need for ‘stuff’, that they’ve stopped training the adults around them how to accommodate the needs of the free kid.

• As for practicalities…….I’ve got two siblings that never had children, so I figure I can take their quota of two children each, which means I’ve got ‘permission’ for 4 of my kids, and I’ve come across many folk in our travels that have told me directly that they’re not going to have children, so I can have the one’s they never will. So I have obtained enough sanction from the world around me for my liking anyway, about the amount of children we have. And for those people who think that the poor little mites are missing out on the valuable one on one attention that every child deserves……let me tell you a story. For years I’ve been saying that my first and second born babies got the best out of us, and the most attention, and felt slightly guilty at the moments that I don’t have for the young ones, ( which isn’t as much as you may suspect, as I’m rather proud of my recent effort of giving the same amount of attachment parenting care to my twin babies as I did to my single babies )……until Griff, my second born, pulled me up the other day. He reckons, that the young ones actually get MORE attention than he did, because they’ve got all their older siblings to play with, be smiled at by, and to take care of them, as WELL as us big people that try real hard to make sure they all get equal amounts of our love and time. And when I look at my twin boys, and the difference between them hanging out on their own, and the joy and how much they light up when they join the rest of the gang, I reckon he may be right. And Jess, my firstborn, reckons from her perspective, we’re much better parents, and much more patient, and just better at it all the more we have, so this is nice to hear too. I also think there’s a case to be made for the fact that children who are only one or two in a family, feel the weight of expectations from their families far more than kids who can share it with a big mob.

• If you want to talk about the impact on the environment, I’ll paraphrase Currawong, (without the swearwords). Look at the ridiculous amount of money we spend on warfare and western society in general, (V8 super cars, rampant consumerism, housing estates, mass media, tabloids, etc, etc, etc, etc,) and just try and tell us that our children are going to harm the planet. In the time it’s taken you to read this, there have been millions of dollars spent on weaponry and earth destroying practices. I’ve often thought that all those conscious and earth aware people that vow not to have children for the sake of the planet, are the very one’s who SHOULD be having them. Our kids are amazing people that are going to do amazing things with their lives, and the one thing they all have in common, is a deep love and respect for the natural world and it’s creatures. They pick up rubbish wherever we go, and we can all be stopped in our tracks on busy streets by an amazing spider, or bird, or cloud formation. They may not have Santa Clause and the Bunny Rabbit and all the other trappings of western capitalist life, but they have huge imaginations and a vast repository of knowledge about animals and the natural world. We all value handmade with love creations above that of two dollar shops. And our kids are aware of the impact on the planet that many of our consumables take. Which is not to say that it’s not possible that one of them will become the CEO of Coca Cola one day, but if they do, they’ll do it with style. And we’ll still love em.

• And quite simply…..I came from a big family and loved it, and due to great sadnesses and misunderstandings we none of us talk to each other anymore, and I’m really glad to be part of another big family in this lifetime. Which will hopefully and most likely be a big family that I get to keep, and holiday with, and love for the rest of my life. The hubbub of a big family is awesome. Going out with the family pack is a hoot. Watching them stream along through the central markets, and leap and bound and skip, and the amazement of people as they wonder when the stream of kids will end, is a real crack up. Having endless energy, and ideas, and playfulness, and kid aura’s all around us is just one of the most amazing, liberating, funny, and loving things I’ve ever done in my life. Birth and all it’s inherent attendants can truly be a transformative and enlightening journey worthy of any spiritual quest. I’m doing so much more with my life with them than I ever did without them. The lessons I’m learning about tolerance, compassion, selflessness, and destiny are incomparable. And I wouldn’t give any of it or them up for quids.

So next time you see us on the streets, and maybe next time you see a big family, CELEBRATE with us!! Don’t think about how we do it, and how you couldn’t do it, and put a whole heap of judgements on us about our choices……if we weren’t coping and didn’t like it, we wouldn’t be doing it!! Just say ‘yee ha!!’ and soak up some of that increasingly rare big family energy. And give the parents a shock by giving them a really positive reaction to the way they’ve chosen to do their lives.