Children's Book: What's Inside Your Tummy, Mommy?

The other day, Sarah Nuxoll and I were at the library together with our children and Sarah happened upon this book: What's Inside your Tummy, Mommy? by Abby Cocovini. We ended up bringing it home and have been enjoying it. This book has brought up several new discussions about their lives in-utero. It would have been helpful to have for my son when I was pregnant with my daughter, and is another good "prepare the siblings book" for our list. It is written in kid-friendly language and the drawings are quite helpful. The pictures of the baby in-utero are suppose to be drawn to scale...I am not so sure about a couple of them, but maybe I have just forgotten how big my children's heads were when they were born. Also of note, my son loves all of the food references for the baby's size (why is it always food?), "Which food am I the size of now, Mama?"...golly...

Introducing Nurture's E-Center!

I would like to introduce our newest Nurture offering...our e-center forums.

I have been a member of a couple of mother-focused forums and have really appreciated the connection, ideas, and support I have received on them...especially during the times in my life when getting out was difficult or late at night as I held my infants to get them back to sleep (typos are welcome on our board!). And because Nurture is all about supporting mothers and families, I wanted to create a space that would extend that support beyond our building, a space that can be accessed anytime.

So, here it is, after months of researching the best way to provide an e-space, it is up and running. I hope it grows and becomes a space where families can find support and community...an e-village, if you will.

We have several categories up, and suggestions are, of course, always welcome...there is even a suggestions forum to provide a place for you to share your ideas or needs for both the e-center and Nurture the center. I hope that you will join us!

Confident Birthing Classes next series

What is Confident Birthing?

Just as a woman’s body is designed to grow and nourish her baby during 40+ weeks of pregnancy, her body is perfectly designed for birth. A woman who is confident will trust her baby to come when he or she is ready. She will rely not only on science, but also on her inner knowledge and trust of the process to make decisions during labor. Confidence in the satisfaction with her birth experience. This is important because the way a woman feels about her birth will have an impact on other areas of her life. A positive experience will have positive affects on her self-image as a woman and as a mother. Confident Birthing leads to confident parenting!

Confident Birthing is a 5-week childbirth education series. We will meet once a week on Saturday mornings at Nurture. Our next series begins September 12, 2009

We will discuss:

• pregnancy & birth as a normal yet significant experience in a woman’s life
• the role of pain in labor
• the emotional and physical needs of the birthing mother
• the role of her partner and
• birth from the newborn’s perspective.

The fee for this class is $125 per couple. This includes class materials and yummy snacks each week!

Confident Birthing is based on the principles of Lamaze International and supports Lamaze’s Six Care Practices for Normal Birth.

For more information on Lamaze, please visit http://www.lamaze.org/

For more info or to register for classes, please email Angi at confidentbirth@gmail.com

News from Lost Arts Kitchen

Lost Arts Kitchen exemplifies the slow food movement in Portland. Chris Musser started Lost Arts Kitchen and is an expert at bread baking, lacto-fermentation, buthering, gardening and just about everything that involves yummie yummie food.

Fortunately for us, she is also a great teacher. Lost Arts Kitchen offers ongoing classes that are fun, affordable and very very practical.

Check out the latest and greatest from Lost Arts Kitchen. To learn more about these and other classes, visit the Lost Arts Kitchen classes page. To register, call 503-253-7331 or email chris@lostartskitchen.com. As Chri's newsletter states, she is offering 25% off all canning classes through the end of the summer. Just mention "summer's bounty" when you register.

Yes We Can: Peaches. In this class, we will can whole peaches and preserve golden jars of Sun Relish, a delicious combination of peaches and pepperoncini that complements cheddar cheese beautifully for a marvelous mid-winter snack! We'll talk about what varieties to choose for canning and where to find good deals on peaches. Limited seating for this class, sign up soon. Saturday, September 29th, 10am-1pm. $40 before discount.

Lactofermentation: Cultured Vegetables and Condiments. In this class, we'll make lactofermented pickles, cabbage, and salsa, plus mayonnaise and oh-so-easy and delicious ketchup. Try your hand at this ancient preservation technique that enhances food's nutritional value and tastes delicious! Fair warning: once you taste how good you can make these at home, you won't want to go back to store-bought. Friday, September 11th, 6pm-9pm. $40.

Yes We Can (and Dry): Tomatoes. In one class, we'll can a Basic Tomato Sauce, a Roasted Tomato Sauce and Tomato Jam with Ginger and Coriander, and dry tomatoes. Learn about which tomato varieties are best suited to which preservation technique, where to find good prices on organic, bulk tomatoes for canning, and how to manage your harvest and preservation projects when you're swimming in tomatoes. Seating limited. Saturday, September 12th, 10am-1pm. $40 before discount.

Dairy Magic: Yogurt, Mozzarella, Neufchatel, and More. Practice a little white magic in your kitchen: culture milk! In addition to the usual soft dairy magic, we'll make chevre from local goat milk, plus buttermilk, sour cream, and creme fraiche. The creamy deliciousness just goes on and on. Friday, September 18th, 6pm-9pm. $40.

So Long Supermarket, Hello Pantry. Lost Arts Kitchen's most popular class! Learn to plan meals, bulk purchases, and preservation projects, so you can spend a lot less time pushing wonky carts around the grocery store and a lot more time enjoying real, local, sustainable food. Provides a foundation for many of my other classes, though it is not a prerequisite. Saturday, September 19th, 2pm-5pm. $40.

Making Artisan Goat Cheese at the Cabin with TrackersNW. Once again, I'm pairing up with our family's favorite outdoor ed group, TrackersNW. This time, we're heading off to the Trackers homestead in Sandy, Oregon, to tend to and milk dairy goats, learn to make a variety of artisan goat cheeses, then ending the day by using them to create a sumptuous gourmet meal together. Sunday, September 27th, 8:30am-6:30pm. $135. Click here for details and registration.

Moving Beyond a Difficult Birth Experience

On September 12th & 19th, due to continued interest, we are again offering our two-part birth workshop: "Moving Beyond a Difficult Birth: Embracing Healing and Connecting with your Baby." This is a powerful, transformative workshop for any mother who has experienced trauma around her birth experience, to help her with tools for healing and heartfelt exercises for reconnecting with her baby.

Moving Beyond a Difficult Birth:
Embracing Healing and Connecting with your Baby
September 12 & 19, 2pm-4pm $45
The experience of birth doesn't always happen the way we imagine. Intense emotions from a challenging pregnancy or birth can make it feel difficult to be fully present with our baby. These emotions need and deserve to be expressed and acknowledged, before we can allow ourselves to release them and begin true emotional healing. Then we can relax more deeply into a heartfelt, intuitive connection with our child.

Part One: Birth Healing through Story and Art
Telling our story in a safe, supportive circle of women can be a profoundly powerful experience. In Part One of this workshop, we will share our birth stories together, while exploring artistic and body-mind tools for expressing and releasing difficult emotions and inviting emotional healing.

Part Two: Connecting Deeply with your Baby
What babies most need from us, is heartfelt connection. In Part Two of this workshop, we will explore creative exercises for healing our emotional connection with our baby after a difficult birth, helping us bring forth our intuitive wisdom as mothers for welcoming our babies fully and lovingly into our lives.

This workshop series is held at Nurture: Center for Growing Families, 1614 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR 97211. Sliding scale is available.

For more information or to register, contact Sarah at 503.285.4906, welcomewithlove@gmail.com

or register on-line: workshops (scroll down to the Moving Beyond a Difficult Birth workshop)

About the presenters:
Sarah Nuxoll
After several years of feeling frustrated as a parent, I began working toward deeper body-mind clarity and emotional and spiritual healing. Now I feel excited about helping myself and others to engage life, move with our creativity, and allow ourselves to feel happy as parents. In these workshops, I share insights from my experience as a mother of two, as a spiritual practitioner, and as a former apprentice homebirth midwife. I look forward to meeting you! (http://www.welcomewithlovefamilycare.com/)

Mychelle Moritz
Having experienced the beautiful yet challenging transition to parenthood, I have developed a passion for helping women and their growing families. I am an artist, an art therapist, and a licensed professional counselor, as well as the co-founder of Nurture. My two active young children keep me very busy and I enjoy watching their creative antics.

Mama Mantras

Debbie, mother of a 4 year-old son and a 6 month-old daughter, sent this mantra of patience. Debbie writes:

With every challenge I face in parenting, there is the reminder that sometimes looking at the big picture is actually helpful. Each tantrum, difficult phase, you name it, is fleeting when you think about it relative to a lifetime. I like to envison a water flowing in a river as I say my mantra to myself.
My mama mantra is:

'This will soon pass.'

Thank you, Debbie, for sharing this mantra. It is another good reminder to let somethings run their course and flow on by.

This will soon pass.

Film: Reducing Infant Mortality

This free film, Reducing Infant Mortality addresses the impact that the medical model of care is having in the United States. We have top-notch interventions that save lives, but they are being overused, abused, and routinized with devastating effects. This film, as is well stated on the website, "...advocat[es] for a health care system in which it will be standard procedure for mothers and babies to thrive and not merely survive through birth and early life." The midwifery model of care (which the film states can be practiced by midwives and primary care physicians or nurse practitioners) is the lowest intervention route, thereby safer and more cost effective (not to mention more gentle and humanistic) for normal pregnancies. Saving the miraculous interventions for providing life-saving help when it is needed is common sense; yet in our country social constructs have created fear and stigma around viewing pregnancy and birth as normal life events. In our country, these life events are viewed as illnesses to be treated regardless of absence of any risk factors.

The film also addresses the higher infant mortality rates among black infants, with a focus on increasing accessibility to personalized prenatal care (such as the midwifery model of care) as one solution. Another solution, across the board, is promoting breastfeeding, which in intervention-laden births is often disrupted or unsuccessful.

The film makers hope that you will share this film...pass it on.

Reducing Infant Mortality from Debby Takikawa on Vimeo.

On a related note, I came across this article (through Facebook, of course). This is a story of a baby who was said, by the doctors, right after birth, that she would not survive. As her mother cuddled her to provide a loving space for this baby to die, the baby revived and survived. It is a beautiful story that demonstrates the importance of skin-to-skin contact (and kangaroo care) between a mother and her newborn.

I am not against hospital births or doctors; both have helped and saved several of my friends babies. My hope is that there is a paradigm shift in the approach to hospital birth care. A shift that reserves this care for those who truly need it, and with that a shift to preserving as much of the natural processes as possible throughout pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care.

Our House will be Open Tonight

Our lovely house, where Nurture resides, will be open for a celebration of all of the wonderful healing that takes place within.

Wednesday, August 19th from 6-9pm

Join us for:

• free massage and acupuncture
• great food
• live music
• health tips

All families and friends are welcome.

Loving the Skin We are In

There has been a lot of love for natural beauty floating around on Facebook recently. This is a topic that, as a woman with a mama-body, I am excited to see flourshing. You might have noticed that this is one of my topics d'importance, as I have written about it a few times; you know if it is that important, it must be somewhat personal...and it is. I am hoping my children are free from the mind-blech that negative body image influences can have. The following are bits collected to be shared...widely. Hugs to all of your beautiful bodies.

Vitamin G Health & Fitness: glamour.com
Shared via AddThis


The Shape of a Mother

Childbirth Options Discussion This Sunday

Angie Gunter, a childbirth educator here at Nurture and owner of Confident Birthing, is hosting a free discussion on "options for childbirth" this Sunday, August 16, from 2-4 at Mamas n Papas on Burnside. Participants will receive 10% discount in the retail store the day of the discussion. Pre-registration is required by Saturday - so go ahead and contact Angie directly at confidentbirth@gmail.com.

Supporting Each Other: Global Sisterhood Mainfesto

This manifesto by Awakening Women's blog was passed along on Facebook today, I thought I'd share it here because each statement in this manifesto is applicable not only to supporting each other woman to woman, but also supporting our children, our partners, our communities, our world, and ourselves. It is a good mama mantra.

I also really love the artwork that was posted along with the manifesto, a painting by Shiloh Sophia McCloud. I chose a different painting for this post because I love the mother image; I think all of her paintings are beautiful.

(picture by Shiloh Sopia McCloud)

Global Sisterhood Manifesto (by Awakening Women)

• I commit to be honest and straight with you
• I commit to take responsibility for my self.
• I will ask for support when I need it.
• I will ask for alone time when I need it, and it means nothing personal to you
• I will not try to fix you
• I will listen to you
• I will keep what you share confidential and not gossip about it
• I will not speak negatively about you to others
• I will celebrate your unique beauty and gifts
• I will not make my self smaller to fit in and I will support you in doing the same

Nurture's Continued Parenting Workshops

As part of the continuing parenting workshop series at Nurture, Center for Growing Families, we would like to announce two innovative workshops coming up.

This month, on August 22nd, we will present "Parents are People too: Reclaiming our Personal Expression as Parents." This will be a fun workshop about the importance of honoring our own creative expression, and how to find new ways to do so in the midst of parenting.

Next month, on September 12th & 19th, due to continued interest, we are again offering our two-part birth workshop: "Moving Beyond a Difficult Birth: Embracing Healing and Connecting with your Baby." This is a powerful, transformative workshop for any mother who has experienced trauma around her birth experience, to help her with tools for healing and heartfelt exercises for reconnecting with her baby.

Nurture invites you to our continuing Parenting Workshop Series:

Parents are People Too: Reclaiming Our Personal Expression as Parents

August 22, 2pm-4pm $30
As a parent, it is so easy to get caught up in the flow of daily obligations, leaving little time or energy for expressing who we are and what captures our imagination. Yet this creative exploration is essential to feeling fulfilled in our lives, which in turn translates into feeling more relaxed and happy in our role as parents. In this workshop, we will explore fun ways for re-igniting our creativity, loosening up preconceptions around what it means to be creative, and finding new means of personal expression that work in our daily lives as parents.

Moving Beyond a Difficult Birth:
Embracing Healing and Connecting with your Baby

September 12 & 19, 2pm-4pm $45
The experience of birth doesn't always happen the way we imagine. Intense emotions from a challenging pregnancy or birth can make it feel difficult to be fully present with our baby. These emotions need and deserve to be expressed and acknowledged, before we can allow ourselves to release them and begin true emotional healing. Then we can relax more deeply into a heartfelt, intuitive connection with our child.

Part One: Birth Healing through Story and Art
Telling our story in a safe, supportive circle of women can be a profoundly powerful experience. In Part One of this workshop, we will share our birth stories together, while exploring artistic and body-mind tools for expressing and releasing difficult emotions and inviting emotional healing.

Part Two: Connecting Deeply with your Baby
What babies most need from us, is heartfelt connection. In Part Two of this workshop, we will explore creative exercises for healing our emotional connection with our baby after a difficult birth, helping us bring forth our intuitive wisdom as mothers for welcoming our babies fully and lovingly into our lives.

Both workshops held at Nurture, Center for Growing Families, 1614 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR 97211. Sliding scale is available.

For more information or to register, contact Sarah at 503.285.4906 or welcomewithlove@gmail.com.

About the presenters

Sarah Nuxoll

After several years of feeling frustrated as a parent, I began working toward deeper body-mind clarity and emotional and spiritual healing. Now I feel excited about helping myself and others to engage life, move with our creativity, and allow ourselves to feel happy as parents. In these workshops, I share insights from my experience as a mother of two, as a spiritual practitioner, and as a former apprentice homebirth midwife. I look forward to meeting you! (http://www.welcomewithlovefamilycare.com/)

Mychelle Moritz

Having experienced the beautiful yet challenging transition to parenthood, I have developed a passion for helping women and their growing families. I am an artist, an art therapist, and a licensed professional counselor, as well as the co-founder of Nurture. My two active young children keep me very busy and I enjoy watching their creative antics.

Announcing Mothergarden: A new mothers' group starting in September

Nurture is excited to announce Mothergarden, a new mothers' group at Nurture hosted by Welcome with Love Family Care starting in September.
Mothergarden
A free drop-in group for moms & babies
Come meet other moms, laugh, cry, tell our stories, and most of all, support each other.

Mondays 10:30-noon, starting September 7
Nurture, Center for Growing Families
1614 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR 97211
www.nurturepdx.com/mothergarden

Hosted by Welcome with Love Family Care (www.welcomewithlovefamilycare.com), and Nurture, Center for Growing Families.

What is Mothergarden? Mothergarden is a space to relax and share your experience of being a mother, meet other moms, trade stories and suggestions, find the support you need, and simply enjoy the company of other moms & babies.

How did Mothergarden come to be? Mothergarden has been birthed from a lovely partnership between Nurture and Sarah Nuxoll of Welcome with Love Family Care. Sarah's vision of helping women as they grow into their roles as mothers is perfectly complemented by Nurture's mission to provide a warm and welcoming space for growing families to find the support they need. Our intention is to bring together moms & babies to help bring forth the collective wisdom, humor, and compassion that sustain and nourish us as mothers.

Who is invited? Although we created Mothergarden to help new mothers find support and companionship, we also welcome expectant mothers, dads & partners, grandparents, friends, and others who are interested in creating a parenting community to support each other.

For more information, visit www.nurturepdx.com/mothergarden, or contact Sarah at welcomewithlove@gmail.com.

Children's Book: Stone Soup

Jon J. Muth's community-building Stone Soup is my favorite version of this tale. Set in China, three monks, Hok, Lok, and Siew are roaming about the misty mountain paths, come across an insecure village made weary by war, famine, and floods. The monks start a pot of stone soup in the village square and the villagers respond, first with curiosity and then with generosity, to the subtly disguised lesson of cooperative spirit. Muth has filled this book with symbolism both in the story and in the illustrations.

In his informative author's note, Muth shares his inspiration for this book,

There have always been Zen poet monks wandering through cloud-embraced mountains, and it seems to me they must have at least once found a village with sad houses and done just what Hok, Lok, and Siew have done here.

At Nurture we have just started a small pot of stone soup; it is not quite boiling. Come by for a bowl and fill your community spirited heart.

Nurture at the King Farmers Market

Nurture will have a family tent at the King Farmers Market on Sundays from 10am-2pm at NE Wygant and 7th Ave. for breastfeeding, diaper changing, and more. Stop by, support your local farmers, and visit us whether or not you need to change a diaper or nurse. We will have some basic supplies available, a table for changing diapers, a chair for nursing, a children's clothing exchange box, and various other goodies on different weeks throughout the remainder of the farmers market season (September 27th). We look forward to seeing you there!

World Breastfeeding Week

Today is the first day of World Breastfeeding Week organized by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action. This year's theme, Breastfeeding: A Vital Emergency Response. Are you ready? focuses on the life-sustaining power of breastfeeding during emergencies. In the US, many organizations including the US Breastfeeding Committee, Le Leche League, National WIC Association, Lamaze International, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the International Lactation Consultant Association have joined in the efforts to provide information about breastfeeding and emergencies.