Hello, Thanks for checking out the podcast. I've over halfway through this experiment of 8 shows. Enjoy, Amity Family Community Service: Help take care of a local food pantry. Check out this website to find a food pantry near you and help your neighbors out. Grown Up Things to Around Town: Bangers Before Bed | 5pm | July 3 | Nectar Lounge (I forgot to mention this one on the podcast) Moms on the Mic | July 9 | 6pm-9pm Thursdays @ Gallery Erato | 12pm-6pm Getting Past Anger Is Easy Just Remember these 3 Truths Most of the time people are doing the best that they can. Shame is not as helpful as you think it is. Being mean to someone is not a good way to make them see your point of view. Dry wood burns. People change when they are good and ready to change. You can regain your boundaries when you decide what you WILL do and stick to it. The goal is to be firm AND kind. Setting a boundary is different than degrading someone. Lightly edited transcript: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Birth and Parenting Show with me, Amity Kramer. This is episode number five. I am committed to making eight episodes, and then reevaluating, like, the way to make any good decision. It's really hard to just jump in and say, I'm gonna do a podcast forever. I'm gonna do anything forever. And so, we're gonna do eight episodes, and if it keeps on running, great. If not, I'm gonna see these eight episodes as a success. So if you're listening to this, thank you very much. I appreciate it. If you've got any feedback, let me know. Okay, gonna jump right in. This week, we have five unexpected ways that partners can help with birth. Some, interesting ways that you can use a peri bottle right after you have a baby, and if you have one laying around the house, some ideas to recycle that. And some activities that you can do with your adult friends, or with yourself, with your spouse. Finally, I'm gonna ended up with a personal story about what I did when someone I care about is not making decisions that are good for them. So let's get started. Five unexpected ways that partners can help in birth. These are unexpected, and they're easy. get closer. That's all you have to do. Step closer to the birthing person. Heavy hands is number two. This just means you don't have to rub all the time. Just putting your hand on someone's shoulder. Touching someone's foot with your hand. And if you just kind of gently touch them, sometimes that can be annoying, but if you put a little pressure on it, it can actually feel really soothing. So if you want to try this out, whether you're pregnant or not, this can be helpful. You know, you just walk by your partner, you stop for five seconds. Put your hand on their shoulder and see how they feel. It's like a hug, but more fun. Eye contact. This is something that's really underestimated in, um... in birth, being able to hold a gaze with the pregnant person is really, really helpful. This one is a little bit more challenging to do, but is still so useful and kind of unexpected, is to actually see and... acknowledge the pain. All too often in our society, in birth, at work, in our families, people quickly go to brush off pain and suffering. We do this to ourselves. We do this to people we care about. It's not that bad. Don't worry. It's not that big of a deal. It'll all be all right. These are all statements that are highly invalidating, because when someone is suffering or just in discomfort, most of the time, they know it won't last forever. They know it's not a huge deal. But a little validation can go a long way, especially in the birthroom. This is especially true, I think, around birth and parenting, because sometimes people are, um, let's see, the only, how do I say this? The person who really, truly knows the heart of the other person is the partner. Nurses, midwives, pediatricians, nannies, they do not know. The depth of that person. So their validation is not always the same. The last one is to remember the why. Being able to call on the why and remember that this is about the baby, it's about creating family, and that is the reason you are enduring this situation. And I'll throw in a bonus one in here. I think it's important to remember when, you know, when we're parenting, during birth, that people actually have a choice. Now, someone might get very in dire circumstances where there actually is no choice, but a lot of the families that I'm working with, and if you're listening to this, you probably do actually have a choice in the matter. One of my best friends used to tell me all the time, he'd invite me someplace, and I'd be like, No, I can't go after work. They'd be like, You can quit your job. And I always thought that was ridiculous, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that we actually do choose. We choose this life, and we choose what we're doing, and so, um, there is usually options, and when you think about it from that perspective, it's like, Oh yeah, right. We are choosing to do this. And in the context of birth, one of the things that happens is sometimes people choose to do something that's hard, and maybe without pain medication, or, um, you know, they are choosing to do something more challenging in not having certain medical interventions. So, always remembering that you do have a choice and that you do have a say. The next topic is the Perry bottle. If you still have one of these around your house, or if you haven't given birth yet, you will receive a Perry bottle. Now, these are a thin plastic bottle with a little spray cap. And what these are for is to fill with water, and it serves two purposes. I call it the poor man's bidet. What it does is it can spray and clean off the perineum at a time when there might be stitches and swelling and toilet paper is just not gonna do the trick. The other thing that it is beneficial for is when someone urinates, it can, you can spray the peri bottle and mix it with the urine stream, and this will prevent stinging where there is stitches or tears in the perineum. So those are the two main reasons that people are using it. The bonus reason, some people fill it with a sits bath mixture. So, this is, like, an herbal bath, that you can sit in, or you can put it in the peri bottle and spray the perineum with an herbal substance that will be rejuvenating to the perineum. So those are the things that it's beneficial for right after the baby's born. And again, you get one of these in your home birth kit, or you get one at the hospital. Everybody's got one that they use for temporarily. And then, that means we have a lot of parry bottles at home. If you have a peri bottle at home, here are three ideas that you can reuse the prairie bottle. One, it makes a great bath toy. Kids love them. It can be used to water your plants, especially if you have any plants in, like, teeny, tiny, little pots, uh, that are hard to hard to water, and the water spills out. And it can be used as a dish soap dispenser. And be a little reminder of a time long ago when you gave birth and needed it for very different purposes. It is still Pride Month. This weekend, you can see if there is a Pride Month event near you. We also have, let's see, some family ideas. Sometimes people want things they can do with their kids. And it is helpful in our culture for people to be in service to one another. I found this neat website that is a food pantry finder. So you may think, Oh, what am I gonna do with food pantries? But this is something that you can actually do with your kiddos. You can, when you go to the grocery store, you can purchase food, and then stop and drop it off at the food pantry on your way home. So I'm going to put a link to the food pantry website. You can find a food pantry near you, and, um, you know, it doesn't have to, you don't have to fill the whole thing, but it's just something that you could do with your kiddos that says, Hey, we're helping our neighbors. We're helping other people. And so they can think about, um, think about that. Some adult time ideas. There is an event happening on July 9th, called Mothers on the Mic. And this is an open mic night from 6 to 9 o'clock where moms can share or listen. Everybody's welcome to be in the audience. And so you want to do some comedy, you want to read some poetry, a journal entry on their website. It suggests just text, message, exchanges. Sometimes looking back at those, there might be something funny. So, mom's on the mic, that's happening July 9th. And the other thing that I saw that I thought was interesting is that there is a art gallery downtown in Pioneer Square that is open again on Thursday nights, and it is centering, adventure, and sexuality, and understanding, and enjoying the romantic expression. I don't know. I haven't been there yet, but, wow, what a cool thing to go and check out on your date night. And finally, today, I have a personal story for you about what I did when, um, someone in my life was just not, not doing what, um, is good for them. First of all, I am very good at judging what other people do or don't do. as we all are. And so when somebody, you see somebody that just kind of has hit and roadblock after roadblock, there comes a point when there can be some anger from the person who's the bystander. And this happened to me recently, and I just, I was real angry, and so first off, I validated my anger, and my frustration with the situation, and feeling, um, a lack of control. And anger usually comes from when your boundaries are being pushed, and you don't feel that there's control in a situation. And that's definitely how I felt in this moment. And so, I, my instinct, my, my desire, was to shout and yell and degrade, and, you know, go and have a talk with this person, and let them know that, you know, they're not doing what needs to be done, and here's all
