Caspar BabyPants appreciation society!

Hello!

I want to share with you some groovy little tunes of someone very funny. 

His name is Caspar Babypants.  Here is one of his CD's.

...here's another:

And another!

Cute, huh?

If you are a little person you are sure to love him. 

Your mamas and papas won't be able to resist having a boogie either!

Click below for his full youtube playlist or just watch these two gorgeous vids.

 http://www.youtube.com/user/casparbabypants/featured

Hope you love Caspar Babypants too!

Lots of love, Motherfunker XXXXX

Off your tits in the birth room? Is it possible without drugs?

When I set up this blog I vaguely remember promising to talk about doula and birth stuff and since this here blog was never meant to be a straight up show-and-tell of our home ed journey, I hope you don't mind me straying into that part of my life for this post.

If you'd rather read about my other stuff or are offended by birth talk, you may want to skip this post. I promise there'll be a return to my other home ed stuff soon. Don't go away!

********

The longer I study, listen, watch and learn about the process of birth, the more mysterious it becomes. I am in awe of this amazing process. Births are a science unto themselves, so it would seem! I have read so many books this last year, watched endless documentaries and birth films, and friends around me have been having babies too. I want to talk a little about some of the conclusions I have drawn so far.

You might want to make a cuppa. I bang on a bit.

Birthing truth number 1:

I think that perhaps the most useful preparation leading up to the birth is *clearing the air* or in other words, getting shit off your chest. Riding the waves of labour are hurdle enough without extra baggage weighing you down. Talking out all your fears, expressing your angers, frustrations, and so on with your partner. Being clear and open with each other about what pisses you off about each other, and trying to get into a peaceful space with them. Birthing energy moves better when two partners are mentally making love, even just on an emotional level, throughout the birth. When both partners are getting psychic with each other, are not fighting each other, the birth energy flows well. When there is antagonism, bitterness, unspoken shit between them, it seems to flow all over the place. Touching, massaging and kissing are all good. But it all has to be done with heart, not perfunctorily, otherwise it's not going to help but will in fact hinder and annoy the birthing mother! If you can't get high off the synergy between you and your partner, you may want some other people at your birth who you feel completely at ease with, who make you laugh, who will help the energy flow well. Sometimes your partner is great but you want the extra company and reassurance of females - in some cultures, birth is a right old party!

Birthing truth number 2:

The more painful you expect birth to be, the more painful it is. You would be totally forgiven for thinking all births are an emergency waiting to happen, painfully screamy dramas, as that's all we ever see on TV and since hospitals make birth so damn hard to do well, a lot of women end up having that kind of birth. And they don't really need to. When a woman is surrounded by other women who have a positive, empowering, gentle experience of birth, they tend to think less in terms of risk. Risk is all when birth is discussed by medical professionals. They view birth solely in these terms and it scares the shit out of women ("Cos they're profesionals, right, so they know best? Don't they?) Women have become so scared of their own bodies, so afraid of their own capabilities, of their strength, of the chemical reactions our amazing bodies are capable of.

Birthing truth number 3:

If we submit to medical protocol, policy, and dictat, often we talk ourselves out of what might have been a beautiful birth. It's just a case of having the right professionals on your side, who have a can-do approach to births outside the ridiculous tick list of 'norms' which they have devised. Any woman who is a deviation from the norm list is basically seen as a nuisance, so if you are in any way different from the norm, you will have to fight for the birth you would like. If you are overdue by their dates (even when you know their dates are bullshit), if you are presenting in a breech position, if you are carrying more than one baby, oh a whole list of conditions which they freak over. And none of these are really *that* freaky. They've just forgotten how to care for idiosyncrasies in the spectrum of women because it's inconvenient to treat women as individuals when they don't fit neatly into their boxes and timescales. They're too busy, too overcrowded, to respect and revere each individual labour as something magic, as having a rhythm and timing that more often than not, is perfectly normal. So many women go under the knife un-necessarily just to keep that conveyor belt labour ward moving along at a pace that suits them. It's not the birthing mother or the midwives fault, they're caught up in it all with an arsenal of drugs and interventions for every slight deviation. If I were birthing on my back whilst sapped to monitors for endless hours I too would be begging for the knife.

How many births could have gone differently if a wise doctor had said "no problem"? If midwives were able to spend more time on the relationship they have with the woman they're helping, time to build up trust, a connection, heart-to-heart, woman-to-woman? Instead of counting birth exclusively in centimeters, numbers, heart rates - birth can also be monitored in emotional terms, by recognising changes in her body and voice to feel her in an intuitive sense rather than with rubber gloves, up the fanny. (Relaxing, huh?)  It is perhaps wiser to notice the effect on the mother when certain people enter the birth space (negatively or positively), what positions she finds comfortable or uncomfortable, allowing her to eat/sleep/move about as freely as possible. Allowing gravity to do its magic instead of insisting that she lay on her back * THE WORST BIRTHING POSITION EVER* for fuck's sake?

Birthing truth number 4:

Did you know that undisturbed birth is generally the safest model? You wouldn't think so huh? The way your doc and the media go on about it. But to be able to do that means either living in an indigenous culture where birth is not feared or talked about exclusively in risk terms, using risk language and risk terminology every step of the way.....or....if you live in western society you will instead need to invest some time boning up on the chemical powerhouse that is actually going on in your body whilst you labour. In undisturbed birth our bodies actually sequence the drugs we need by dispensing them naturally to us, at the right dosage. They are in fact more powerful than any synthetics if we're talking pain relief. But no-one makes a buck out of that, right? So that's why they don't talk too much about that one at your check-ups (what a rude term anyway, who invented that- makes you feel on edge doesn't it, to think you are being "checked up' on?) Ditto it's not exactly promoted at ante natal classes either. Natural birthers are seen as some hardcore freaks, but in fact it is possible for most of us if we open our minds. And because we are scared out of our wits by all the scary tv programmes and negative messages we've been told about birth, we clam up. We clench and feel on edge. And then we really do need the drugs because we are handled in such environments that are too NOISY for all our senses to allow our own drugs to flow. The bright lights, the uniforms, the bleepy machines, being strapped up to monitors, the string of different people, the language used, the intrusion on so many levels, the decor, the food, the feel and smell of hospital - generally are pretty anathema to getting down and dirty and pushing out our babies in a sweaty grunty primal and actually pretty sexual way.

I wonder why we are so prudish about this inevitable fact of birth? We are pushing a baby out of our *vagina* for goodness sake! Good birth is like good sex. The same hormones. It's seen as weird to enjoy the grunting, primal, sensations or relate them to the orgasm that got the baby there in the first place but the sooner we get over this basic animal fact, the sooner we can have more enjoyable births. Birthing your baby in a glorious quiver is not very British though eh? The hospital set up (with the exception of birth pools) is as frigid as it gets, so generally they are a bad place to have a beautiful birth. Unless you fight tooth and nail and lay out a list of demands to guarantee low levels of light, noise, disturbance etc etc.

Birthing truth number 4:

Once you read up, and get some friends on board who also don't fear birth and think its the most awful thing ever, surrounding yourself with positive images, affirmations and so on, you need to leave your brains behind to birth a baby. You need to get into primal monkey 'ug' mode. Cave woman panting, groaning and so on are all part of the deal. You can't be using the rational part of your brain whilst you are birthing or worrying about anyone else. You need to get into your zone, which is pretty powerful actually, and doing this will help you to get "out of it" in a sense. It's amazing how trippy a natural birth at home can feel. You don't need gas and air to be off your tits in the birth arena. You don't need any morphine based drugs, your body produces its own opiates!

This link is great if you are looking to have a natural birth next time round and want to understand what your body is capable of: http://www.childbirthconnection.org/article.asp?ck=10184

If you want to find out more about a woman's body can really do, here's a great reading list for you.

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
Dr Amali Lokugamange: In the heart of the womb
Sarah Buckley's: Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering
Sheila Kitzinger: Rediscovering birth
Janet Balaskas: New Active Birth
Dr. Grantly Dick-Read: Birth Without Fear
Tina Cassidy: Birth; a History

Women's bodies are generally not broken and they still work. We are just forgetting because we have been subject to so much fear-mongering and hysteria that we have perpetuated and not questioned for too long. It's about time we reclaimed our body's truths and tapped into what really is and isn't possible.
There are actually only a very small number of women who cannot give birth naturally, safely, and without all the circus of hospital protocol, and for those women, modern technology is in place to help. Technology is not bad in and of itself. The machines that go ping, can be lifesavers, no two ways about it. It just needn't *always* take centre stage. The mother should be at centre stage, generally. Even when birth takes an unexpected turn, there is still room for as many natural elements as possible to be preserved, it doesn't have to be all-out technology central, all the way. It's easy to see the machines as our saviour, and buy into every last techie solution to problems, when sometimes nature is better.

It's time to stop fearing our bodies as we have been taught to, and enjoy them and what they can do!

How do you feel about your birth/s?
Are you a natural birther?
Or maybe you are a midwife or doula and have something to add.
Do you disagree with anything here?
I love to debate this kind of stuff!

Xx MF xX

Do we need to try so hard to be good mothers?

I have wanted to do a post about this for a while, and here we are.

Before having babies my bookshelves started filling up with titles on education. My insatiable hunger to get to the bottom of the question "What does it mean to be educated?" meant that I was reading more and more titles, pushing the envelope, reading more and more radical ideas. Within a few years I couldn't get enough of the writings of the anti-pedagogues, the John Taylor Gatto's and A.S. Neills and so on.

Unschooling literature was such a fascinating and liberating discovery - throwing away the rulebook, a rebellion against the flawed, one-size-doesn't-fit-all way of learning, seemed like such a wonderful dream. And yet other books, opinions and ideas, as well as real life experiences pulled me in other directions too. The idea of sticking to one or even just a small handful of people's visions and following them prescriptively seemed like too much of a full-stop for me. The problem with people being on pedestals, however wise their sayings and observations might be, is that in order for one person to sit high on a plinth, they must necessarily look down on someone, while the followers must equally be looking up to their leader, but down on the rest of the world too. It's all too easily to insulate yourself from the rest of the world in a bubble of righteousness. Now don't get me wrong - I think both the above guys have made some astonishing observations about the way things are. I agree with a lot of what they have to say.

But I'm not a one-idea utopianist. I believe we all hold pieces to a puzzle with no end. In order for us to make sense of this crazy world, I think we must keep our minds open, our eyes open, our hearts open, and look for the answers by living in real time. And the answers don't always come from the obvious places, from the preachers and evangelisers.

This is where I start to have a problem with the preachers. They say - This is the truth. This is the way. Follow this way. Don't look anywhere else for the answers. Everyone else is doing it wrong. We are doing it right.

And I can't get down with that.

In the same way that I have been building up my collection of books on learning, I have also amassed a pretty large collection of parenting books, hoping that by osmosis perhaps, I would absorb the wisdom of others so much wiser than myself, to become a better mama. I have felt tugged this way and that in the quest to be the best mama to my children. Titles like "Mothering with soul", "Playful parenting", "Attachment parenting" seemed so much like they would hold all the answers to being a graceful and loving mama. And they do - to a point. But when a person starts to disagree with some ideas in a book with a title called Mothering with Soul - one starts to question - must I follow every last idea, opinion, suggestion, to be a soulful mother? Am I bad because I don't agree with this? Such titles can be loaded and dangerous, and can erode a mothers already fragile self-esteem. The AP movement also proclaims itself to be a movement based on 'mothering with soul'. Which camps can rightly claim this trophy? Is it necessarily either? It makes my head hurt! A.S. Neill would argue that his school corrects all the neuroses caused by a child's mother in the first place, therefore providing a release from all that harmful fussing, attention and love.

Being attached to our babies is utterly sensible, wise and loving, but there are so many more subtly prescriptive suggestions in books, or from different parenting movements, sub-movements, and sub-sub-movements, that trying to keep up with them all could strangle the very love out of you as a mother, and in fact cause you to become pretty anxious and full of self-doubt. There is so much underlying judgement, self-righteousness, bitchiness and expectation from so many different camps across the spectrum of the parenting community. Each insisting their way is the one true way. Motherhood is hard enough with the tiredness, the economic and so many other factors without the added pressure of the idealogical battleground.

At one end of the spectrum there are books that say we cannot really call ourselves any kind of mother at all unless we give 150% of ourselves. That we must surrender every bit of our soul, every ounce of our time, mental and soul energy to our offspring, until the two souls are so enmeshed there is no separatedness at all, no gap, only utter co-existance.

In her book 'Momma Zen, Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood', (on extended loan with many thanks to my dear Buddhish friend Viv) Karen Maezen Miller suggests another way of looking at our roles as mothers;

"You don't have to work so hard at this. You don't have to do so much. You don't have to endeavour to be natural, normal and good. It happens by itself when you least expect it. If you are confused about what you should be doing, try this. Stop what you are doing. Take care of what is in front of you, when it is front of you, and the confusion will pass. This is called the effort of no effort. No effort is what powers the universe.

With time your roots grow deep and your branches long. You lean less backward in fear and a little less forward in doubt, resting solidly right where you are. When the wind blows, you bend. When it stops, you straighten. Your boughs provide shelter and shade. Your strength supports the sky. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

Your baby will be ok. "

And as I read those words, I feel a sense of peace. Loving with some sense of detachment no longer seems lazy or soul-less.

 I look out into the garden where a snowy Buddha sits looking out over the garden.

The birds come and feed from the feeding station I am lovingly tending for them. And I think of the birds, and how they would laugh to know that us humans get so caught up in this silly pursuit of trying to be a good mama. They make a lovely nest, feed their babies best they can, then give them a shove out of the nest!!!

Maybe nature is the best teacher of all?

Wilde about cartoons :-)

Why hello you! Been a while hasn't it? I hope you've all been enjoying yourselves since my last post.

So what's going down in our household at the moment?

Well I decided a couple of weeks ago that whilst the autonomous education thang is a pretty good model for our family *generally speaking*, every now and then we seem to drift, and not having lots of ways to mark the day from evening, weekdays from weekends means it all starts to feel a bit samey. For me anyway. Not having a timetable suits us down to the ground for both philosophical and practical reasons, but not having any kind of unifying theme or topic to focus everyone means that people can be doing a bit too much of the same type of thing for long periods, and whilst they are learning all kinds of stuff, it's hard for me to quantify it in a way that any inspectors might recognise as 'tick-boxy' stuff as it's an all-out random way of learning.

So we have introduced the idea of having a theme a week to loosely follow, and you know what? It actually really seems to have revitalised everyone. Instead of the bookshelves in the library just being one mass of books, a small selection of those same books were pulled out and brought to life, seeming relevant and exciting all of a sudden, with one discovery leading to another. Last week we learnt about ROMANS, which was not exactly a starting-from-scratch kind of gig, (the kids already know loads on this topic) but it was a great chance to build on and fortify what we all knew already and explore some new paths. It was a really fun week and the children drew lots of fab pictures and surprised me with their knowledge and enthusiasm. It was great to see everyone enjoying learning and having something family-wide to focus on. Pete started a new blog in my name, called Educating the Clearys - the first post is a pretty useful resource if you are studying Romans, and we will come back to it again and again, since there's a lot of great ideas there. Go and take a look!

This week, our topic is exploring the artistic styles in ANIMATION and CARTOONS. Herb is leading a table on comic-strip making at our local home ed group soon, so I thought it would be fun to study these cartoons properly, and learn some techniques, explore different styles and so on. Learning how to draw faces that convey happiness, sadness, anger, annoyance etc etc. Learning how to draw background and foreground objects. How to use light and dark for effect. Different ways of telling a story. Split screening. Using text boxes/different types of speech bubbles in different ways. So it might sound like an excuse to sit around watching cartoons but I am actually trying to get a little deeper than that, to properly notice the artistry, besides which they are full of other depths, moral questions, and so on.

I would so love to share some delights with you.

First up, and definitely one for the boys, is the stunning, and quite breathtaking Samurai Jack.

No amount of sitting around listening to Elizabeth Mitchell, flower arranging or playing with gentle wooden toys seems to be able to quell the alpha male aspect that my boys seem to need, in their core, to explore, so I am embracing the fact that a little bit of ninja action to balance things up is inevitable, and in fact, healthy. Samurai Jack is a dude. Episode one of series one is absolutely joyous to watch and explains why he needs to do all the robot and spirit slicing in all subsequent episodes and it makes perfect sense as to why he simply MUST rid the world from the evil Aku (based on a traditional ancient spirit from Japanese mythology)! It's too simplistic to think this kind of stuff as just a mindless slash-em-up sword-fest and should be avoided at all costs bla bla bla. It is cinematically stunning, and the artistry is beautiful. Check out this wee vid from youtube which is about how it was created. I've watched it twice now!

Artistically, another beautiful animation that we will be revisiting this week, is this gorgeous film.

Look at the beautiful artwork.

It is ravishing. I love the celtic swirliness throughout the film, the whimsical and dramatic feel, and the sense of magic. Even though the film is about a Christian book, it has a pagan feel, and the forest is alive. I LOVE this film. My advice if you do watch this though is not to get hung up on historical accuracy down to every last detail - it's probably rather romanticised and the Vikings are presented as mindless brutes. But they did pretty much trash the joint so, ya know, it's not exactly a wholly unfair representation of things.

Next up, well what's not to like about Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli?

You must have heard of these so I won't go on about them but Miyazaki is basically a master of moral tales that don't have the Disney schmaltz, with deeper characters who are more complex, lovable and human. We worship and adore pretty much everything that has come out of Studio Ghibli. A giant purple wall-sticker of Totoro beams down at us from the top of our landing upstairs. If you've never watched any, and you want to introduce your very young child to Miyazaki, the film Ponyo is probably the gentlest for the really young. Spirited Away may scare young 'uns a bit as there are Japanese ghosties and fantastical creatures that might be too full on for a young one, but it's a beaut. Apart from all the obvious ones above, Miyazaki's early offering "Sherlock Hound" is a big fave here in our household.... the victorian costumery and buildings etc are really beautifully done too.

Moving on, Oscar Wilde's tales re-imagined in Wilde Stories (Link to 4od, where you can watch now if in the UK) are simply stunning, but don't expect neat and happy feelgood Disney fables. These are bittersweet tales, which I think makes them all the more beautiful, and heartbreakingly gorgeous. The style of animation is really interesting, and Pete Postlethwaite stars. Maybe not one for really young children though.

( The Nightingale, who sacrifices herself in the name of love )

Last up, is this quite rare and amazing collection as seen below. This is region 1 though, so either watch it on your PC if you can, or research and find elsewhere, eg. on youtube/elsewhere online as individual cartoons (full listing on the amazon.co.uk page for this DVD). These are cartoons from a different era altogether so politically and socially interesting too. These are sophisticated and in no way dumbed down, as so much cartoonery is these days. One of the cartoons was argued to be the best ever among serious animation critics (Whether that still stands now is hard to know as these are quite old)

Wow - there you go. Lots of inspiring animated films in one lil' bloggy post for you. Hope this inspires you to want to explore them a little deeper.

What are your indie favourites dear readers?

Motherfunker and friends Guide to Pregnancy and Birth...

Hello lovelies,

Remember a while back I asked you for some help writing my first book? For those who have only just discovered my blog recently, you can read about it here :

http://feetonthegroundandheadintheclouds.blogspot.com/2011/11/brand-new-kind-of-parenting.html

To jog your memories, the book is about parenting - specifically pregnancy and birth. Babies' first year will be my next book!

I want it to be a book to be non-preachy, technicoloured, artistic and pretty. And I want it to be a realistic snapshot of pregnancy and birth for mamas and papas to be, with a good dose of nitty gritty as well as the beautiful, happy, pretty side of things. One for the ravers, goths, punks, bon-viveurs, hippies and indie types that your Miriam Stoppard type preggie book is not going to appeal to. There's already some beautiful hippy books for hippy-minded maidens like myself but not a lot going on for the wider 'alternative' audience.

I want to acknowledge the fact that a woman having a baby in this day and age is likely to have had a more colourful past than in days gone by. I want to acknowledge that a pregnant mother is not just some blank slate incubator, but a real live person with experiences! Good, bad and everything in between.

I want to acknowledge and talk about how women feel about being pregnant after

- having an abortion

- taking drugs or frequently drinking a lot of alcohol - how has this affected you positively or negatively?

- being raped or sexually abused

- having an affair or relationship problems

- being a heavy smoker

- being declared infertile

- having an amazing job

- being adopted

- experimenting with sexuality - bisexual or lesbian experiences

- self harming or having anorexia/ bulimia

- overcoming something very traumatic

- having suffered only miscarriages so far...


I want the book to be able to talk about the stuff you wouldn't dream of discussing at antenatal classes. Stuff that you couldn't share easily with newly made mummy friends. Stuff you would feel uncomfortable discussing with your midwife.

I feel it's important to help women who find themselves pregnant to have a space where past things can be acknowledged as she navigates her way through the emotional roller coaster that is pregnancy and motherhood!

We modern women have lived much more colourful lives than most generations ever before, huh? So it's about time this was acknowledged!

If anyone has any experiences they could share with me in confidence to use in my book to comfort and reassure others who are further back on the path than you are now, I'd love to hear from you. It could be advice you wish you could go back in time and give yourself. It could be a photo that says it all. It could be a poem you wrote. An entry in your diary. A blogpost even! Anything at all would be so great.

Thank you so much in advance! If you decide to confide in me, I absolutely promise that no information will be shared with my husband, nearest and dearest, friends or family and your identity will remain absolutely and completely anonymous and confidential.

Please dearest people submit your material to me by the end of February. Even sooner would be fab!

Incidentally I have been giving a lot of thought to the charities this book will support. Whilst I think both Warchild and HOPE are very worthy, I think there are other causes which may be better suited. Watch this space!

Lots of love

Xx Motherfunker xX