Introducing....My Video Blog Outtakes!

I had so much fun stepping out of my comfort zone the other day to make my (first ever) video blog for the Friends Of Ricki facebook community page. It was about how The Business Of Being Born impacted my birth. And it absolutely did! After I posted it I was looking through all the other takes (10 to be exact!) and I decided to teach myself how to edit them together in imovie for a silly little video. It was so much fun! Plus my crazy husband is in part of it too. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did editing it! (I'm now as obsessed with editing as I am with writing!)

A fun problem to have! ;-) 

P.S. This was my very first editing job. If you are an editor for work, for fun projects or you work as an editor in the biz please watch something from this list of films. I

f you have never edited anything before and you don't have the first clue how it's done, then for sure check out my new radical vid!

♥ coco cana

*I'm not sure why my fonts and stuff are freaking out on here. Our computer has been going "buggy" today. 

A Post A Day Project Day #5 - How The Friends of Ricki Community Has Impacted My Life.

So I logged onto the Friends Of Ricki Facebook Page today to get my daily dose of positivity and I see that they are asking for videos talking about how the Friends Of Ricki community has impacted your life. I connected with this right away because recently I made my very first video blog for the FOR community talking about The Business Of Being Born, a wonderful film that spoke to me in so many ways and also had a major impact on my water birth with my youngest baby...and in the process I discovered that making a video blog was pretty darn fun too!

Here is my post talking about my Business Of Being Born video blog, A Post A Day Project - Day #4: Hoping To Share My Water Birth Story On The Ricki Lake Show!

After I posted my first (unedited) video to their FOR fb community page I decided to figure out how to edit all of my takes together to make a new video (and I had a lot of takes to choose from!)  I discovered this new found passion for editing that I kinda had a feeling would be there because I always think in movie plots complete with music (weird, I know) but now I know for sure.  I LOVE it!  

I'll post that vid here soon... 

For now, here is my newest video blog talking about how the Friends of Ricki facebook community has impacted my life as well as my life as a stay-at-home-mom and how it changes drastically from life as a young woman without kids.  I love being a mom, especially a SAHM but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that it's all sunshine and rainbows every single day and that it's not hard and frustrating and stressful at times too.

What good is that going to do anyone?

So thank you FOR and The Ricki Lake Show (which premiers Sept 10th btw!) for my newfound passion for video blogging and editing!

A Post A Day Project - Day #4: Hoping To Share My Water Birth Story On The Ricki Lake Show!

This is pretty cool...Ricki Lake is going to have a new talk show again!  I'm super psyched because over the past few years I have become a HUGE Ricki Lake Fan!  It all started with her amazing documentary called, "The Business Of Being Born" that completely changed the way I look at childbirth. Then when I was pregnant with baby #2 I read her book,  "Your Best Birth" and it helped to confirm my choices to have a more natural birth.

Since she is starting her new talk show again she is asking to hear from mom's who have changed the way they birthed their baby due to the documentary to possibly be on an upcoming show.

*raises hand* "Me! Me! Meeeee! Oooo Oooo Pick Me!"

(That is a little shout out to all of my teacher friends who are heading back to work soon after a nice, relaxing summer off.  Did you miss hearing that all summer?  )


So I sent the producers this blog post talking about my water birth experience and what my decisions were for deciding on a water birth at home with a midwife and a doula and they liked it. So now I have to make and upload a video of myself to Friends of Ricki to *possibly* be on the show.

I guess this means I need to take a shower, wear something cute and put on make-up to look somewhat presentable for the video.  Eh.  Honestly though, I don't know when I'm going to be able to do this thing. I think I'm going to have to make it at midnight or something because every time I start to do it (or let's be honest, every time I start to THINK about starting to do it) the kids are totally up my grill. You know how you become the most interesting person on the face of the earth (to your children) the minute you pick up the phone to make a call?  Yea, try making a damn video blog!  Impossible!

To the Ricki Lake Show Producers, "I'll make one, I promise!!"




To read a "poem" I wrote about my water birth experience click here. 

To read about my Post A Day Project click here.

My Journey To Motherhood: My Water Baby

The birth of my second baby was so moving it was like a rebirth of my soul and a newfound belief in myself and what I was capable of. Although my first birth was beautiful, I didn't feel prepared despite taking a birthing class. During labor I went to a very dark place deep inside myself, feeling so scared and isolated in my pain not even my husband or mother could penetrate it. Not knowing if I was capable of giving birth on my own, I felt like the pain would keep escalating until I was going to die because I didn't think it would end. I knew without a doubt I never wanted to feel that again. I wanted to experience a positive birth but I didn't think they existed. Then I saw “The Business Of Being Born.” My daughter was one week old and we watched the film that would eventually change our lives in so many ways and completely effect how our second baby would be born 2 ½ years later.

I longed for a birth like I saw in the film but I didn't know where to begin, so I started writing “My Ultimate Dream Birth.” In this wish list I threw everything out the window that would get in the way of my dream, like insurance and money issues, my husband's and my fears, family concerns, societal pressure and I wrote what my heart wanted. I discovered that I wanted a water birth with a midwife and a doula, I wanted to prepare for an unmedicated birth by taking The Bradley Method, and I wanted to feel strong, empowered, confident and capable. I had this beautiful story that seemed like a fairy tale because I didn't know how to make it a reality.

I became extremely ill with persistent bronchitis that would plague me throughout my entire first trimester making it hard to do the research needed to find an alternative birth plan on top of taking care of a busy toddler. We moved when our daughter was almost a year old so I needed to find a new OBGYN. After expressing my wishes for a natural birth during a second trimester appointment, my new doc said I'd “be crazy for not taking perfectly good drugs (epidural) that have zero effect on the baby” and that, “No one was handing out gold stars for having a non-medicated birth.” 

That was my last appointment with the new doc. 

I was 26 weeks pregnant. 

The scene from the documentary kept playing over in my mind where Ricki was saying, “It wasn't an illness, it wasn't something that needed to be numbed, it needed to be experienced...” I needed that experience. 

Immediately, I started to look for birthing centers and I found South Coast Midwifery in Irvine. I cried looking at the pictures of these strong women confidently birthing their babies and knew I found what I was looking for. We loved SCM. By the second appointment they knew my name where before I was a number and after 26 weeks my doctor didn't even recognize me in the hallway before our final appointment. I was excited at the chance at having my dream birth at home.

The morning before my due date I lost my mp. I ran errands despite the fact that things felt different. Around 5pm I started having very steady contractions so it was time to head home! My parents took our daughter to their house, my husband started filling up the birthing tub and I paced the house feeling busy and restless. My contractions were becoming so fast and furious and extremely painful they took me by surprise and I had those fleeting moments of, “Uh-oh! What did I get myself into?” I felt frantic as my husband realized he needed to start filling the tub with warmer water and was running back and forth from the tub to where ever I happened to be crouching when I'd yell for him during a contraction. My doula quickly arrived and once in the tub I felt calm, relaxed. Flickering candlelight filled the room with songs from my labor playlist. (We still did not know if we were having a boy or a girl!) My eyes had been closed for quite some time, I was in my own world humming to the music and groaning with each contraction. It felt like it was helping to take away the pain by pushing it out of my body in low, gravely groans as opposed to holding it in, holding my breath. It was not the hysterical, out-of-control screams seen on TV that condition women into thinking this is what's expected during labor. These were deep, primal and somewhat animalistic.

The room was still yet active. There were no constant beeps from various machines, no light piercing my loosely closed eyes, no cords tethering me to IV's and heart monitors keeping me from the movements I needed to make. No hospital protocol keeping me from eating and drinking what I needed to remained energized. There was no pressure to perform during anyone's time frame in order for my wishes to be granted. It was me kneeling in a tub of warm water, my head buried in the chest of my strong husband who never left my side. My doula was slowly pouring water on my back and massaging the pain away with her fists and my midwife and assistant who arrived around midnight were setting up what medical equipment they might or might not need.

Just then things started to change...

“Are you ready to catch your baby?”

My midwife asked after only pushing for a short amount of time. Those were the most powerful words I had ever heard. After one last push at 12:49am out spiraled this huge, pink baby hurling it's chubby body into my arms where I brought it up out of the water to my chest and my lips, “my baby, my baby!” I beamed over and over flashing me back to the birth of my daughter. My husband and I held our sweet baby for quite sometime crying and smiling, admiring our perfect angel. As my husband turned around to get the video camera I realized I still did not know the sex! Pulling the baby away from my chest I looked down and in amazement I exclaimed, “It's a boy! It's a boy!” I'll never forget the look on my husband's face as he quickly turned around to meet my eyes asking in disbelief, “It's a boy?” He peered over my shoulder and exclaimed, “It's a boy!” A whopping 10 pound, 21 inch bouncing baby boy who helped me achieve my ultimate dream birth. My water baby has inspired me to dare to be great and he has melted my heart ever since. 


To read more about my home water birth experience, click here. 

To read more about my water birth experience

For more information about:

Water Birth

The Business Of Being Born
Ina May Gaskin

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*This was originally posted on February 16, 2012 at BlogHer.com and was an entry into a contest put on by Ricki Lake and BlogHerMoms called Journey To Motherhood. We were asked to describe our own journey. This was 1 out of 4 entries I wrote for the contest.