On Independence.

If you teach a man to fish, he'll be fed for the rest of his life, right?  I feel pretty lucky having parents who were capable and willing to teach me how to do a whole slew of things that are not necessarily typical skills that a kid these days learn how to do.  I think many of the things I've learned were fundamental, basic skills that everyone should learn how to do, because really, the applications are far and wide.  Some examples include teaching me how to do my laundry, clean a bathtub, mop the floor, clean the carpets, fell a tree, erect a tent, build a bonfire, frame a barn, work concrete, change a bicycle inner tube, change the oil, install light fixtures, jump start a car, paint a house, back in a trailer, deal with a flooded carburetor, make bread, play the piano, save money and keep a budget, prepare/teach a lesson, stretch wall-to-wall carpet-- the list goes on and on.

Rumor has it that I was occasionally a stubborn child.  Perhaps.  Maybe resolute is a more appropriate word for it.  I had my ideas on how things ought to be and followed that path.  [Mom, I'm sure you have your own clarification you could offer on this point.]  Jen seems to think that Blake inherited all of my stubborn-ness, and that is why he declares that he doesn't need no stinkin' nap!  Truth be told, combining Jen's stubbornness with mine probably selectively bred a child with an iron will against the nap.

Anyway, I guess one of my favorite catchphrases as a toddler was "I'm big and I'm strong and I can and I will."  Sounds nice enough!  Talk about confidence!  I can conquer the world.  Under that premise, I don't have many memories fearing failure.  I always have just figured that things would work out in the end.  I got into my first choice college, received a prestigious scholarship, then sent in papers to serve as a full-time missionary, and went about that work with a fair amount of vim and vigor.  When I came home from England and returned to school, it didn't take too long before I was dating and balancing my social life with coursework.  We decided over Thanksgiving 2002 to plan to get married, and moved forward in a very optimistic, confident way.  So what if we had less than $2K total assets when we got married?  We've never taken loans or had any of our day-to-day operations financed by parents or grandparents.  I won't say we've never been (thankful!) recipients of gifts or that we haven't been happy to mooch when we visit parents more settled in life.  Visiting home with more comforts of life has always been a pleasure.

I'm a firm believer that a person should do what he can first before enlisting the help of others.  It's a general welfare principle.  It provides a sense of accomplishment, pride in a job well done, and a plethora of learning opportunities.  It connects you to the outcome of your work.  I love my cars because of the time we've spent together with maintenance and repairs.  I love my basement for the organization and projects that have happened down there.  I love the taste of homemade bread because it was made with our oven, our ingredients, our hands kneading it.  I even love our lumpy yard, because I've spent time with it mowing, raking, gardening, and playing on it.  

These principles certainly apply to anything that you decide to do "on your own."  I get that same sort of feeling when thinking about Blake's birth circumstances.  We decided to go for the do-it-yourself method, and hired a midwife to help us make it happen.  Here are some of my rationale about why a home-birth worked for me. 

• The home environment is comfortable, soothing, and pleasant.  It has comfortable furniture, a familiar smell, and all of the amenities that we like to have to live life.
• The probability of unanticipated complications at a home birth is very low.  Part of this should be attributed to a lack of medical staff who are trying to help things along through peddling their intervening methods and processes.  Seriously.  They are scientists.  They have cool gadgets and inventions they want to try out.  I imagine they get a great deal of satisfaction in thinking how awesome it is that a hoosie-whatsit can do so much!  {insert: ease pain, accelerate labor, measure ____, bypass _____}   However, if you want to bake a nice loaf of bread, you don't really want to be poking at the dough, opening and closing the oven, or cutting into the center of the loaf during the final stages to see if it's done yet.  Call me a skeptic, but I do think that if a doctor has something to sell, he doesn't want to make himself obsolete by saying "Do what you can, and if you need my help, I'll be nearby."  In fact, our obstetrician said that he would refuse to play that role if invited.  They create a need by finding some other-than-average metric in declaring an emergency.
• The amount of privacy and self-direction that we maintain at home is up to us.  We are the bosses of what goes on here, and we get to hire the help that we want.  Maybe that's the stubborn part, too, where we say the Mama is performing the delivery, NOT the doctor.
• We aren't beholden to someone to tell us when we can leave the land of the IVs, fluorescent lights and beeps to go home, because we are home!
• I trust that my home isn't full of sick people.
• The biological process of birth is a delicate dance between mother and baby.  When a third party (medical practitioner) tries to interrupt the dance, someone is going to feel taken for granted and invalidated.  Okay, maybe they won't necessarily feel that way, but their (often unrealized) birth skills ARE being overlooked.  Even with IVF being a huge science experiment that worked out for us, I see downsides of removing natural processes.  (Let me say that the Sunday morning of the transfer wasn't all that romantic.  Cool yes, romantic, no.)

So there you have it.  Joe likes to do things on his own, his way.  He likes to give things a try before asking for help.  I know how to ask for help when I'm stuck, but I also think training, planning, and preparation go a long way to increase independence and should be the first course of action.  The appeal of accepting someone's offer to do something for me isn't that appealing, because I get intense satisfaction in feeling successful at doing it myself.