Birth Story

"Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don't know how strong we are until we're pushing out our babies. We are too often treated like babies having babies when we should be in training, like acolytes, novices to the high priesthood, like serious applicants for the space program."

- Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jays Dance, pg. 12

I started to have contractions on Friday night that were five min. apart and at least a min. long, but they didn't hurt so Jon and I figured that it wasn't anything to get excited about. Luckily, I slept really well that night but I woke up at about 6:30 am with REALLY strong contractions that were intense. We called the midwife at about 8am and she arrived at our house at about 9am (we planned to have a home birth). Jon had already set up the birthing pool in the front room and he and Vivian set it up-- in between my contractions :)

I got into the pool for the first time at about 10am and it was heaven. I won't say it was an epidural, because I could still feel the pain, but it sure made it so much easier to handle and to relax. I got out after about an 1h and half and walked around, but labor was much harder out of the water so I got back in as soon as I could. Jon and Vivian were wonderful with support, massages and helping me relax and let go of the pain. I don't think that I could have done it with out them. There were several times I thought that I couldn't do it and that the baby would never come. I started pushing at about 2pm and he was born at 3:10pm. I stayed in the birthing pool and he was born in the water. His cord was wrapped around him twice but the midwives got him untangled really quick and brought him out of the water and on to my chest.

He didn't cry at first but just sort of moaned and looked up at me with his big beautiful eyes, and I was in LOVE! It took him awhile to cry, he just sort of "talked" at us for a few hours. But don't worry, he's made up for his lack of crying these last few days! He was really strong right from the start and even tried to nurse within the first few min!

All in all my labor was about 81/2 hrs-- and I am so glad that it wasn't a moment longer! It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but also one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. It was so empowering to see my body endure and overcome. I now have a new appreciation for the phrases "endure to the end" and "being delivered."

I am so grateful to God for my baby and the amazing privilege and miracle of being a woman!

Asher is five days old!

Wow! I didn't know that life could change for the better so fast. These past few days have been the best, the hardest, the most exhausting, the most rewarding and the most beautiful of my entire life. I am amazed more and more each day at how strong and intelligent he is. Sometimes when I look at him all I can think is "Where did you come from!". I am still a little in awe at the miracle of life, that this little perfect human being came from inside me-- that he is parts of my body put together. It is truly amazing.

Asher Baby

ASHER THOMAS FARRELL

Beautiful Baby





Asher


We Thank All of You Who Have Given Such Wonderful Support
The Families
Vivian and Heather the Midwives
And so many more of you...
Thank You

Baby stats

Beautiful
8lbs 4 oz
22"
Dark hair
Blue Eyes

Beautiful
We've never been so blessed.

We appreciate our own mothers even more now. Thank you.

Heather did Absolutely Fabulous. It was inspiring to see.

Baby

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Last weekend Jon and I got our Christmas Tree up. It turned out to be a bit more of an ordeal than we had intitally intended.
Let me tell you the story.....
So I really like to have live Christmas trees, my family always did growing up and somehow it doesn't seem like Christmas without a real tree. So Jon was kind and patient enough to humor me, but this year we decided that it would be more fun to go cut down a Christmas Tree. Since I'm not up for hiking around the mountains at this point, we went to a Christmas Tree Farm in Layton to pick our tree. It was really fun and we found a tree that "spoke" to us. So we cut it down and Jon carried it about a 1/4 mile back to the car and then put it on the top (the people at the Farm were REALLY impressed with my strong and kind of crazy husband who carried the tree that far!). Then we drove back to SLC-- on the freeway-- with the tree on top-- we got lots of funny looks.

The problem started when we tried to set the Christmas tree up in our front room and realized that we had picked a really funny shaped Christmas tree- kind of short and incredibly thick and fat!We couldn't find a way to make it and our couches fit in the same room.

So after several hours of thinning and pruning our Christmas tree-- I don't think that is exactly what is meant by "trimming" the tree, but that is what we had to do!-- we finally got him to fit nicely. We still can't open our front door all the way, the love seat is in the way, but it is only for a month!

It sure makes our home feel like Christmas! And we are excited for Buster to see his very first Christmas Tree!

Jon's Big Bodacious Birthday Bash

Jon's Birthday was on Nov. 19th and he turned a whopping 26!

That is over a quarter of a century!

We had a really great time celebrating with the Farrells.

We made a castle cake (I have this special bunt pan I bought at William Sonnoma) and filled it with chocolate pudding and cool whip and it turned out really yummy!

Jon is getting excited to be a dad-- him and Buster are prepared with matching BYU hats! (Notice Randall holding River upside down in the background!)

Hopefully now that Jon has a new hat the old hat (the one that he has had since high school and is totally nasty and broken-- sorry dear but it is true!) will um...accidently... be misplaced!

About the Cottage Cheese Cottage

This is me

I'm a

church going,

home birthing,

book loving,

chicken raising,

fast swimming,

doula training,

toast eating,

baby snuggling,

modern dancing,

muffin loving,

scripture studying

mother, wife, sister, and daughter.

I live in the Cottage Cheese Cottage, an old house with a very unusual stucco job.

Within those walls lives...

1) Me

2) Him


(Hint: You can see the house's stucco job in the background... very cottage cheesy)

3) A Toddler

and

4) A Nursling

Life is good
Life is crazy
Life is sweet
Life is an adventure

Welcome... enjoy... leave comments :)

Buster's First Costume

Jon and I figured that it isn't going to be very often that I will be as big, round and pregnantly luscious as I am now-- and that we should take full advantage of this for a Halloween costume. So this year, Jon went as a newsie (we just watched the movie a few days ago),

I went as a gardener

and Buster went as a pumpkin!

Jon did a WONDERFUL job painting my belly, we cut a hole in an old shirt and lots of people at the ward Halloween party thought it was just painted on my shirt! If you look close you can see my belly button in the middle of the pumpkin's nose. Jon had fun painting it-- especially when Buster started to move and kick while he was trying to do the lines!

We had a really fun Halloween-- the Monday before our next door neighbors came over and had a pumpkin carving party with us. It was really fun and now we have about a GAZILLION pumpkin seeds to eat-- yum yum!

Jon's Fabulous Project

I am officially impressed with my husband. In just a few days he was able to take the heap of junk dresser that he pulled from the side of the road, literally, and turn it into this beautiful dresser for our nursery!

I wish we had a better picture of how horrible this dresser was before he started working on it. When we first moved into our apartment it was "rubbish day" where everyone leaves their household junk out in the street for the city to haul away. Jon found this dresser, which had a broken leg, an awful white veneer covering, a top which had been so badly water damaged that it was one huge bubble, in short.... it was a mess. Jon had to beg me to take it, his best justification being that it had dovetail joints, and that anything made with dovetailed joints was worth saving. How glad I am that we rescued it!

It was a fun project to work on together. I got to sand it down (because that didn't involve any toxic fumes that might give us a mutant baby) but then we realized that it might have had lead paint on it-- thus the gas mask.

Trip to Philadelphia

Jon and I just got back from a wonderful trip to Philadelphia. My work sent me out to a little college in Elizabethtown, PA (about two hours from Philly) to present a paper on peace education. The paper went really well, I felt good about it and I got alot of possitve feedback. I am glad though that I didn't know there were some pretty famous peace education people in the audience till after my presentation or I would have been alot more scared.

Jon and I had such a nice time together-- we realized that this was probably our last vacation EVER without having to worry about a babysitter or hauling a baby around.

We really loved Pennsylvannia-- we got to visit cousins, eat philly cheese steaks, go to a peace conference, see the Amish country and go to Hershey, PA. Here are some pictures...Of the Amish Country-- it was SO beautiful and it was funny to try to see Jon figure out how to pass a horse and buggy!

Jon and me in Hershey, PA-- Chocolate World!!!

In the town of Hershey some of the streetlights are shaped liked giant Hershey's Kisses! The town even smells like chocolate-- seriously!

We also got to visit cousins and that was really great! They treated us so wonderfully. (Ps. There are six people in this picture-- can't see them-- they are pretty small-- Reina is pregnant too! That means there will be three babies within a year of eachother!)

Heather's Academia Nut

I hope it isn't too conceited of me to post this but I am really excited about it! I am now an officially published author in the great wide world of academia nuts! Last summer Jon and I went to Jordan to do a study on breastfeeding among Iraqi refugees. The survey didn't quite turn out how I had hoped because we left THE most important question open-ended and didn't realize that the word for haleeb can mean breast milk or cow's milk. But despite that one mistake we got a lot of good information and this is the paper we were able to get published off the data! The journal is called the International Electronic Journal of Health Education, the article will only be published online.

Here is the link:

http://www.aahperd.org/iejhe/template.cfm?template=2007.cfm

It is near the bottom of the page and is entitled Breastfeeding Education, Support and Barriers among Iraqi Refugee Women, I am the second author.

From Latin Class to the Laboratory

Ahhh, the beautiful site of fluidized anionic resin. This is what I do at work most of the time--test anionic resin beads to measure how many ionic elements they remove from industrial watewater. Yep, all in a days work for a Classical Studies graduate. My vocabulary lists have simply morphed from Latin into Chemistry. My favorite new particle of knowledge is the "Freundlich Isotherm." Huh? Yep, this job is great because it's teaching me so much, letting me build things, do math...and dishes. I've broken a half dozen glass vessels and one of the square plexiglass jars pictured above.

Meauring devices--I particularly like the little syringe because of the filter screens that I figured out how to fasten to the tips to prevent the resin from getting sucked up with the sample water.

Taking samples.

Oops, top secret.

One of my favorites so far: testing ceramic filters from Brazil. These remind me of the filters that people in Venezuela used to clean their water. Figuring out how to run the tests and devising a pressurized testing chamber were particularly fun.

100 000 MILES

One-hundred Thousand Miles!!! Our 2000 Pontiac Sunfire has worked hard these past few years. Though this post is about a 1000 miles overdue now, Heather and I took a Sunday night drive through the splendid neighborhoods of Salt Lake City on July 22nd so that we could hit this milestone together--and we hit it just as we pulled back up to the curb in front of our house.

Halmarking the 100 000 mile mark on the odometer became a tradition in my life ever since our family hit the mark in our old "Zeppelin" by the old Childrens' Museum of Salt Lake City. This is a seldom celebrated tradition, and I have yet to celebrate a 200, 000 mile mark. Perhaps, that occasion would call for a new quart of oil and maybe some shock absorbers to ease the old joints.

Baby fashion show

After we found out we were having a baby boy, my sisters, Mom and I (and Jon) went shopping for baby clothes because I don't have any baby things except for two diapers and changing table. These are the clothes that we picked out. I really love this one, because it reminds me of how Randall use to try to feed Jon sand when they were little! Besides if he's like his daddy, he'll probably eat anything:)

I really love this one, but my brother told me that it is too frilly-- and that while this type of clothing will work for awhile, I better start dressing him cooler when he gets older :) I think it is cute.

We are having a baby boy!

Today was our first ultrasound and we found out that we are going to be having a little boy! We are thrilled and excited to now start hording blue things and thinking of boys names. (So far Jon has suggested Ahekom and Gomer-- he's been reading the Old Testament-- Help! ). The doctor said that the baby's development is looking really good and that it's house (my uterus) is healthy and strong. That is always a relief to hear.

He was really really wiggly when the ultrasound tech was trying to get picutres so I have a feeling that once I start being able to feel him, he is going to be a kicker. I can't wait!

They also said that my due date is December 13th! I am glad that it will be a few weeks before Christmas-- hopefully, unless he likes his house too much.

This is the proof that is it a baby boy, I know that some day he'll be embarrased that I posted this on the internet, but right now it's just exciting and cute! (the "v" shape is his legs and the little white hand is pointing to the boy parts)

The Apricot Monster!

Grandma Bay gave Jon and I about a thousand apricots from her tree and I have been really busy the past few days trying turning them into culinary masterpieces! So far I've made 17 jar of apricot jam (which turned out to be scrumdiddlyumptious), 8 jars of canned apricots (which were my first attempt at canning ever, so I'm proud of them) and one batch of freezer jam. And then the very best part-- several trays of dried apricots. But I ran into a bit of problem trying to dry the apricots- because the trees by our house are full of birds and I was afraid they would try and eat them. So I created the APRICOT MONSTER to protect them, and so far he has done a wonderful job -- even though I think my neighbors think I am loopy. We still have alot of apricots left that are going to morph into fruit leather and more jam. So if anybody wants some-- let me know-- but you might just have to wrestle the APRICOT MONSTER to get some-- so ask at your own risk :)