Got Milk? - How a Village Saved My Babies

"Ora na azu nwa ~ It takes a village to raise a child"

African proverb

When my twins were born they were perfect, beautiful, and born to a family who had so much love to give. I wish their beginning could have been easier but that is not my girl's birth story. Their lives began too early from the womb and from day one we had problems getting them to eat well. They had feeding tubes until about four months old. Even when they left the NICU they came home with feeding tubes and were not gaining weight normally.

We discovered after some tests that the girls both had allergies to ingredients found in all formulas. This is why they were not gaining weight, their bodies could not absorb anything if it was under attack from allergies. Following my instincts and the medical advice from my doctor I tried to breastfeed. But the girls had horrible nippling issues and were used to a bottle. Pumping alone would not make my milk come in and the result was never enough milk for my medically fragile babies. Desperate I turned to my doctor for advice. He gave us a prescription for the local Milk Bank and I called them as soon as we arrived at home. Even with a prescription from the doctor stating that breast milk is medically necessary because of my twins allergies to formula they still wanted to charge us $3 an ounce plus the cost of overnight shipping in a refrigerator box. At that point my twins were consuming 60 ounces a day which would cost us $180 a day (plus the cost of shipping which was about $50). They did not take insurance and there was no way we could pay that high cost.

Our first full freezer

I have to admit at this point I panicked. I had to find a solution fast. This time I turned to the Internet and found two organizations that put mothers in touch with each other for milk sharing. I asked our doctor about the safety of doing such an adventure and he reassured me that breast milk, even from another mother, is perfectly healthy as long as we knew some medical background. What I quickly discovered is that the type of mother who is willing to donate her milk is the type of woman who fully discloses any information you would need to make an informed choice. I put a few ads up and said some prayers. Quickly women from all over our state responded to me offering their freezer stash of liquid gold. We packed up our girls and traveled to these milky destinations, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

Over the next year I would form friendships that have lasted to this day. I am so grateful to these women for saving my children but also welcoming us into their lives. These women that I once met to transfer frozen milk from her cooler to mine are now some of my close friends. Our children have grown up together, we have shared birthday parties, births of new babies and holidays. 

With the birth of our third child coming any day I hope and pray that I can donate back to the universe. The African proverb is true, sometimes it does take a village to raise a child. For our family it took a village to feed our children! Seeing how milk sharing blessed our lives I can only imagine how amazing it will be to bless someone else. I hope that this blog post encourages you to donate your freezer stash, if you should decide to do so I have listed the organizations I have used below.

Human Milk for Human Babies - a Facebook group, you can post there if you are able to donate or need donations. 

Eats on Feets - also a Facebook group

Parent's Place - a local group that provides support and classes, for locals check out their Yahoo group to post about milk sharing.

To all the mothers who joined our "village" I cannot thank you enough. I hope you all know how much we love and appreciate you!

Preparing For Baby - Freezer Meals

An Urban Tale

A woman gives birth and her church community or friends started a dinner train to deliver homemade meals to the new family providing them with food for the first few weeks after baby's arrival. 

I know this must happen somewhere to someone but it has certainly never happened to me! When the twins came home from a three month NICU stay we found ourselves ordering take out and doing fast trips to Trader Joe's for ready made meals. No one brought us food. Now to be fair, B's family and my close circle of friends all live 400 miles away but our local church community did nothing. When we lost baby River my dear friend Jeana brought us a homemade pasta salad, I was so relieved to have something to eat at a time when it seemed inappropriate to do anything "normal" like cook a meal. I do not mention this to be a "pity party" for myself but rather to inspire you to take care of those you love. If you know someone who is recovering from surgery, lost a loved one or just had a baby, please consider bringing them some homemade food. It will be consumed with joy and gratitude!

When I was preparing for the arrival of this baby I knew that take out and ready made meals would not be ideal so I began to prepare freezer meals ahead of time. With this baby due any day I can rest easy knowing my freezer is packed with yummy homemade food that will be healthy for everyone. To keep it simple I would buy double the ingredients for a meal I knew would freeze well, we would eat one half that night and freeze the other half. Over the last few months I have learned some tricks of the trade that I would like to share with you. 

1. Soups are almost always a good idea, they freeze well and they are easy to reheat. I suggest placing all the ingredients uncooked in a freezer zip bag (unless the soup has meat, you will want to cook the meat first). 

2. Many recipes can be adapted to work in a Crock Pot saving you tons of time from babysitting the stove top. The recipe I am going to post below was a stove top meal until I adapted it to work in the Crock Pot. The trick is to look for the point in the steps where it could cook slowly for a few hours verses on a high temperature over an hour.

3. Each meal needs to be analyzed to find out at what point you put it in the freezer. For a meal like chili I par cook the meat, bell peppers and onions together then place all the ingredients together in a casserole dish and freeze them then pop them into the Crock Pot to cook for five hours. For pasta based meals that are baked you will want to freeze them right before the baking step. For meat dishes like meat loaf you can cook them to the point where you need to remove the cover to let it brown. Don't remove the cover, instead freeze it at that point so your meat does not get tough. Freezer specific meals will tell you when to put it in the freezer but the biggest tip I can share is this, make sure your food is completely cooled before placing in the freezer!

4. Choose your freezer wear wisely. Make sure you pick glass over plastic so you do not end up with that weird plastic taste to your food when it thaws. Lids will need to fit nice and snug. I like to get short, shallow glass dishes with silicone lids because they are easy to stack and oven friendly. To prepare something to eat all I have to do is let it thaw for a couple hours then place in the oven or Crock Pot. 

5. Do not be afraid to freeze baked goods. The trick to freezing things like banana bread or muffins is to par bake them then freeze, from there place them in the oven. For things like cookies or scones I freeze the dough in rolls then put them in freezer bags. 

Here is my family's favorite freezer meal, it is really good for you and tastes amazing both fresh and from frozen! This makes enough for two meals for three adults and two very hungry children.

Spicy Lentil Soup with Turkey Meat Balls

2 pounds of spicy Italian turkey sausage meat not in the casing (I have Whole Foods make it for me fresh on the spot since sausage casing is pork and I do not eat pork. You can certainly substitute meat balls for sausage and this will still taste great)


4 cups chopped green cabbage


1 cup chopped onions


1 green pepper, chopped


3 cloves garlic, minced


4 cups of vegetable broth with some to spare (chicken broth works too, I prefer veggie broth)

2 cups dried green lentils


1 cup of dried red lentils (you can use three cups of green if you do not have any red)

1 cup of brown rice


2 tablespoons of turmeric

1 tablespoon of Cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon of cumin 

3-5 tablespoons of olive oil

salt to taste

To Cook: In a large pot add some olive oil and salt then place over medium-high heat until hot. Add the meat balls or sausage. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes, or until browned. Add the cabbage, onions, green peppers, garlic, and 1 cup of the stock. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes, or until the onions are soft but not browned.

Add the lentils, rice, spices, and the remaining 3 cups stock. Bring to a boil. 

For the Half you eat that night: Transfer half to a Crock Pot and place on low heat for five hours or high heat for three hours. Sometime toward the end of the cooking you might need to add a little water or extra stock as the lentils soak up the broth, just add liquid until you get the consistency you desire then let it heat back up and serve. I usually do this about 30 minutes before we eat and I always use water, this does not "water down" the flavor, I promise!

For the Freezer: Place the second half in a freezer friendly dish and let it cool completely before placing it in the freezer.

To reheat: Thaw overnight in the refrigerator or for a couple hours on a counter top. Transfer to a Crock Pot and place on low heat for five hours or high heat for three hours. 

I hope you enjoy this meal as much as my family! 

So You Have a Picky Eater...

Often other mothers stare at my children in amazement as they try a kalamata olive, anchovies or leavy green vegetable and make yummy noises then ask for more. People ask my husband and I how we got so lucky with our toddler's eating habits, I always reply that luck has nothing to do with it!

The beginnings of my stir fry

I was determined to have healthy eaters from the day my babies began solid foods. We quickly came up with house rules for eating habits, we knew that if we modeled good eating then the children would be more open to trying items that we eat. From day one we never gave the girls sugar, homemade all their baby foods out of foods we eat, offered fruits and veggies first before other foods and ate the same thing that we were feeding the babies. I let them eat off my plate, made yummy noises for foods I thought they might not want to eat and tried to be patient with foods they clearly did not like. 

One of my girls, E, is very tactile sensitive. She does not like anything that is grainy, sandy or pokes your finger. This was important to remember when giving her foods, some foods she refuses based on texture, and that's fine. My other girl, G, will try anything and eat pretty much what ever you are offering. When it comes to food she is always game! 

You may be asking yourself what specifically I fed my children, here is a list of house rules that we made up and follow to this day,
1. We all eat the same things, if we want to eat something they cannot have we try not to do it in front of them and wait until later. Remember that if it tastes good to you then it will taste good to them so you try it first and have them watch! If the apple sauce you made is boring add some cinnamon or if the oatmeal tastes like paste then add a little coconut sugar and milk.
2. No processed food for the following reasons,
- it changes the taste: have you ever tried those canned peas or carrots? You tell me if it tastes as good as the real deal, and yet we expect our children to eat it?
- the canning process takes away good properties of the food because it needs to be heated to a certain temperature in order to extend shelf life.
- the preservatives or thickening agents are sometimes harmful. Twin E is allergic to lotus bean (also known as carob root) which is found in fat free dairy items and canned baby food. It is used to artificially thicken the food.
- often sugar, corn syrup or salt is added to help with flavor which creates a cycle of children expecting all food to be sweet. Sadly if you formula fed your child this cycle started on day one of the formula feeding since all formulas have some type of sugar.
3. Limit sugar to natural. This does not mean that those sugar posers like Truvia or Stevia, what I am referring to is coconut sugar, honey (after the age of one) and fruit. I make the girls "cookies" using oatmeal, cinnamon, eggs, buckwheat with mashed bananas for sweetness. They gobble them up! We also limit natural sugars like juice by giving the girls 1/3 juice and 2/3 water, I personally do this to my own juice as well.
4. Do not offer foods we do not want them to like. It sounds simple, if you do not want your kid to be obsessed with mac and cheese then do not offer it! Side note, I LOVE mac and cheese but make a healthier version of it at home with amazing ingredients.
5. Make sure that caregivers respect our rules. Our children have only been watched by us, my mother and two different nannies that we have had since day one. Everyone is on board with our food rules and it shows!
6. Make healthier choices. We choose to eat sprouted bread over white or whole wheat, we almost always choose organic, we limit meat to about two meals a week, we add veggies or "hide" them in food whenever possible, we use alternative flours for baking (oat, buckwheat, almond, quinoa, brown rice and coconut flours) we never give our kids anything with corn syrup, we avoid anything fried like french fries, whole milk dairy, and we use alternative oils for cooking (olive or coconut instead of canola or veggie oil).

G enjoying an egg casserole

If you already have a picky toddler then this will be an uphill battle. You may have already given in to processed foods or sugar and it will be hard to take them away. Just keep in mind that it is never to late to create change but the more time you wait to change the process will take longer. I would suggest a complete overhaul instead of a phasing out. Make sure you offer foods that taste good and start with things that almost every kid enjoys such as homemade apple sauce, smoothies, pasta and sauce (but hide some veggies in that sauce and make sure to blend it in so they don't pick them out!) or alternative "cookies" like I mentioned above. It IS possible to transform a picky toddler into a healthy eater, I was able to do it with a child I nannied for full time from age one to three. But you have to get everyone on board, including the child. If you have any questions about how to specifically hide veggies, change to healthier options or anything else feel free to comment here and I will share what I know!

(To make your own baby food you can use a standard blender but we invested in a Beaba Babycook. I do not recommend this product but there are similar versions on the market that are better. It was the only baby food maker you could buy when the girls were born. To save time I would make baby food in large batches and freeze the left overs in ice cube trays then pop out the blocks and put them in labeled freezer bags. Other foods I would mash up or cut into small pieces for the girls.)

Why Cloth Diapering Makes Sense

Goodmama diaper, Buntcakes Photography

I have been told I am crazy for cloth diapering twins but I feel that it would be insane to spend hard earned money on something that your babies poop on then you throw it away! Although my husband and I do tease that our home is where cloth diapers go to die, because with twins they are over worked! When our girls came home we did not have enough cloth diapers yet and we were moving to a larger house so I used disposable diapers for a few weeks. Each box of diapers had around 30 inside and cost about $13, I quickly did the math calculating how much I would spend per week then per month then for the first year if this continued. The cost came out to just shy of $3,000! This is an average of $1,500 per baby. 

I opted to buy more cloth diapers, it is a larger start up cost but in the end I knew it would save us money. We tried several different diaper systems and I quickly noticed that diapers with layers of PUL (a plastic liner to prevent leaks) did not wash as clean, dry as fast or let baby's skin breath. We chose to go with fitted diapers and wool covers. In about two or three days all diaper rashes cleared up and only returned with teething. Each fitted diaper cost about $12 to $20 depending on the brand. I kept tabs on how much I was spending. In the end here is how it broke down,

Wool longies, picture from Bundtcakes Photography

$500 on diapers
$200 on wool covers
= $700 for a diaper and bottom clothing stash that lasted for two years...and counting!

This saved us over $2,000 for just the first year and a little less then $2,000 the second year because diaper changes became fewer as the girls grew up. With the new baby we decided to begin with prefold diapers for the newborn stage since we skipped that size for the twins and they are much more cost effective at $2 each. Cost was not the only concern for cloth diapering, here are some other good reasons to consider cloth over throw away.

- fewer diaper rashes
- healthier for baby's skin
- easier on the planet, less in the landfill. In an ideal world you would be using a water efficient washer and line drying but with twins we almost always use the dryer.
- they are super cute! My twins get compliments all the time on their adorable wool pants.
- easier potty learning, since the baby feels wet they quickly learn not to like the feeling of a dirty diaper. 
- they last for years, often beyond just one child. Our girls are passing down many of their diapers to our new baby (who is due any day!) Sadly some have died but they served their time :)
- it is not as much work as you think it will be! We do one load of diaper laundry once a day or every other day. I throw them in the washer on a heavy bedding setting with a scoop of Tide and an extra rinse then dry...easy as pie!

Boogie Bums Diaper

If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments and I will get back to you. We have tried almost every brand at some point and know how to deal with issues like stink build up, where to find deals and how to wash. 

Here are my favorite places to buy diapers,
Prefolds: Green Mountain Diapers
Fitteds: Diaperswappers.com or Facebook groups like Cloth Diaper Swap. For locals try out Expressed Luv in Marina.
Wool: Diapperswappers.com or Facebook groups like Wool Swap

Baby Showers, Blessingways and Birth Preparation

The entrance of my twin girls to this world was like a summer storm, we saw it coming on the horizon but the full impact could not be determined, predicted or contained. They burst into our lives with such a great force that a baby shower was the last thing on anyone's mind. Instead of celebrating we survived. Each person came forward with their own gifts and offerings to our little girls, individual dinners and visits were welcomed and cherished. During this time I did feel sad that there was nothing traditional about their birth, that I didn't have a baby shower or the normal newborn experience but I was so happy to be a mother, finally, that I let it all go and enjoyed my little ones.

This time around I wanted the celebrations, the party, the cooing over my big belly and the blessings and support of my dear friends. I was the happy recipient of both a baby shower and a Blessingway.  The baby shower was held by my dear friend Bethany. We go way back to the days of pleated plaid school skirts, really bad hair and band instruments that never should have been shoved on a bus! She did the most amazing party for me, every detail was thought out and everyone there saw her decorations and preparations with awe. But it was not the actual party that stood out to me the most, it was having my dear friends who I rarely see all in the same room at the same time. We played games and had many giggles along with a few tears of joy and when I finally went home I felt so blessed to have so many wonderful women in my life.

Birth art created by myself

The Blessingway was a different type of celebration. It is a Native American ceremony that takes the focus off of gifts and places it on to the wonderment of birth. Each Blessingway is different and has different ceremonies, mine had the bead ceremony. Each woman brings a bead that represents herself, she tells the expecting mother why the bead represents her journey to motherhood or the significance. The honored mother then makes a necklace out of the beads or puts them on display in the birth area to remind her of all the women who made this journey before her and that each one of them is offering prayer and support during labor. I took the bead from my mother and a very special bead from a very good friend and wove them together in a necklace. From that day I have worn the necklace as a reminder that birth is coming and to mentally center myself. The other beads were lovingly placed in a special bowl for the birth environment, I will be able to take them out individually during labor to focus on that person's prayers. 

Since these two celebrations I have been centering myself for birth. I wear the necklace as well as some prayer beads daily. I also took time to create some birth art to use as a focal point in labor. The next thing I will do is have my mother help me paint henna on my belly and hands. Each day that passes I know I am closer to the birth experience I always wanted and I feel the excitement building. In a way this baby has helped me come full circle, my twin daughters made me a mother but through this child I will get a full birth experience. I feel truly blessed and very grateful.

Why I Chose a Midwife

I often have people ask me why I chose a midwife over the traditional choice of an OB. For me I never saw a choice, I always knew I would prefer a midwife. In my area OBs run the show, midwives do not have hospital privileges in my town. The OB offices almost have a post office feel.  You take a number and sit down, then wait, fill out paper work, then wait, pee in a cup, then wait, you are transferred to a sterile room where you sit on paper and wait, wait, wait. The doctor finally arrives and must glance at your chart to remember your name. He talks to you while looking at his notes or writing more notes down, sometimes he takes out a tape recorder and talks about you in the third person. He orders more tests, gives you a lecture on eating healthy and then sends you to the front desk where they take your co-pay and make you another appointment. Sound familiar? 

Before we chose a midwife I had gone through several OB practices and infertility doctors searching for answers but they were all the same. Cold, often uncaring, and following procedure. I felt less human and more robotic, part of a system or well oiled machine. With our twins we had no choice, we were forced into a antibacterial NICU with several doctors and nurses who loved to play the doomsday game while calling me a "hippie" for trying to refuse tests, immunizations or opt for breast milk over formula. I am thankful that my children are alive today, I recognize that they needed medical intervention but I also see that in many ways I was right and they were wrong. I know this because when they finally came home and I took over they thrived and were no longer "medically fragile".

With our last baby, River, and this new rainbow I wanted something different. I wanted fewer tests and more conversation. I wanted compassion, love and empathy. I wanted birth, not a drug induced coma. I wanted a WOMAN who had faced birth head on as a warrior mother. A woman who would look at me in labor and say, "I know..." and I would feel that she really did know. I wanted a person, not a doctor. 

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I do not take anything of this nature lightly, I dove head first into research about midwifes, different certifications, homebirth v. birth center birth and safety. My poor husband was subject to books and articles, movies and Internet print outs. Weeks and weeks of research led me to a list of over 20 questions to ask a midwife. Then I began my phone interviews. I called seven different women, asked them my questions and tried to get a vibe for their personalities. Kelly was one of the last midwives I interviewed. I felt us "click" over the phone and made an appointment to meet her in person. As soon as I met her I felt at ease, she was calm and so at peace. I have often said that I see her as the color yellow, cheery and bright and full of love. 

My appointments were typically an hour long, most of it was conversation. We did the occasional test like checking for protein or sugar in the urine, listening to the heartbeat and the traditional blood test in the first trimester. She encouraged me to research the other tests and was fine with me declining ones I felt were unnecessary like the genetics test. She was open to alternative testing, when it came time for me to test for gestational diabetes she was fine with me testing at home over four days instead of the typical orange drink test. I always felt supported, that she heard me and she was doing what was best for me and baby.

When I hear about the trials some of my pregnant friends are experiencing such as unnecessary tests, trouble declining tests or medications, doctors who are pushy about induction or pitocin or c-sections it makes me truly sad. Our nation is doing our women a disservice by making choices based on liability concerns. When the question becomes, "How can this come back to haunt me?" instead of "Is this in the best interest of the mother and child?" we should be frightened. 

My pregnancy is not an illness, my birth is not an emergency situation. I am young, I have low blood pressure, I do not have gestational diabetes or preeclampsia so why would I go somewhere that sick people go? If you ask me why I chose a midwife the answer is simple, because I trust my body and so does she. 

If any of my readers are thinking about hiring a midwife, here is my list of 21 questions!
1. What services do you offer?
2. What are the prices for your services and how do you work payments?
3. Do you have a billing service to deal with my insurance?
4. How do you make sure that the full placenta is passed to avoid a hemorrhage?
5. What techniques do you recommend in labor to cope with pain management?
6. How do you feel about delayed cord clamping?
7. What are your "red flags" for transferring to the hospital?
8. If we transfer will you come with us and how is that handled?
9. What if our baby is breached?
10. What are your birth stats, how many mothers have transferred, how many deaths (if any), and how many of your clients end up with c-sections?
11. Are you currently certified as a midwife and by what organization?
12. What life saving measures are you currently certified in?
13. Do you participate in formal peer review with other midwives?
14. How many births have you attended?
15. If you are sick or otherwise unavailable during my labor, who will attend to me?
16. How many clients do you take each month?
17. How familiar are you with procedures in the hospital?
18. How long are you willing to wait for a baby in a bad position to change positions before labeling the pregnancy high risk?
19. What percentage of your clients tear and how do you try to prevent tearing?
20. What equipment do you normally bring to the birth (birthing stool? blow-up pool? oxygen? ambu-bag? pitocin shot?)
21. What do you normally do while I am in labor?

A huge thank you to Kelly, our amazing midwife, my ray of sunshine. We cannot wait to have you catch our little rainbow!

Welcome to my new blog! With the arrival of our third baby girl approaching quickly I thought I would begin a new blog so I can post all my new ramblings. So for those of you who are new here is a little about my family and what I tend to blog about.

I am Anya and my husband B and I are high school sweethearts, we married on our four year anniversary. About seven years ago we thought it was a little odd that we were so young, not preventing and never had any pregnancies so we began a long journey of tests to find out if something was wrong. After months the only information we had was that there was something wrong and three different doctors told us not to get our hopes up, it might never happen for us. 

Well I do not take no for an answer! Two years ago we were blessed with amazing twin girls, G&E. We counted ourselves very lucky and thought our family of four was complete. Then when the girls were nine months old we got a positive pregnancy test. Over joyed we began the process of preparing to be a family of five. We never expected to loose baby R, it was late in the pregnancy too. We never did get a reason to why our third little baby died, he just left us and went to God. Following a Native American tradition we named him after something in nature. Many tribes believe that children who die in the womb or very young were never meant to be in our world, they always belonged to nature. So we named him River because we were only a part of his journey. Heartbroken we decided that our family of four was enough and began to rebuild our lives. As we all know God usually has different plans. We received another positive pregnancy test, each month crawled by with our little baby thriving and now we are only a couple weeks away from her due date. As you can see my journey to motherhood was long, at times depressing, but in the end it is such a miracle. No one can look at my family and say that it is not truly amazing!

As a family we live a simple and organic life style. I tend to post on mother related topics or themes of "going green" or living simply in harmony with nature. I am HOH (hard of hearing) and as a family we embrace the Deaf Culture and use ASL. For the last 8 years I have been a teacher and the final three years I have been a Professor of American Sign Language at my local university. 

I hope that in these posts I can find a creative outlet for my writing, help those who would like to live a little more green, or just provide a good laugh to other mamas. I am not perfect, but I can promise that any advice I give in my posts is tested by me first. 

So that's me...off to my first real post!