Marianne's Musings

I was standing in Rajalakshmi’s home in Visakhapatnam, India. She had just finished showing us each of the three rooms in her house and we had ended in the kitchen. In a moment of unrestrained curiosity I asked her, “How many children do you have?” In her broken English and in the accent that I love and miss she replied simply,   “For me no children.”   For some reason her words struck me deeply. “For me no children,” continued to run through my mind. A Westerner laden with modern family attitudes could have easily interpreted her answer to mean, “As for myself, I didn’t want children.” But I can tell you with certainty that that was not what she was saying. She meant, “For me, there were no children. For me, there are no children. No children came, for me.” From the look in her eyes I could feel that this was not something that was planned. I felt certain that she and her husband must have dealt with infertility. It would not have been proper in her culture to e...

I am not a parent. But I have some ideas about parenting. And studies. And words from men called of God to receive revelation for His church.  I remember hearing in a various classes at BYU about how harmful it can be to “hover” over your children. I’ve heard horror stories of moms flying to BYU weekly to do their children’s laundry, or making calls to their professors regularly, or just not letting their children grow up and be on their own.  Parents “have the complex task of adjusting their demands and disciplinary methods flexibly to the developing capacities of the child so as to encourage social responsibility without discouraging independence and individuality ” (Baumrind, 1978, p. 249). Young adults should be ready to subsist independent of you when the appropriate time arrives. They should be able to have: Psychological autonomy Emotional autonomy Financial autonomy Spiritual autonomy These all come at different times, but it is important t...

I am happy to announce that our baby girl is here! Lucy Esther Meiners arrived on Friday at 5:58 PM. She weighed 8 lbs. and 4.6 ozs. She is 20.25 inches long. We are truly overwhelmed with love for her. Having a newborn is a tiring whirlwind, but it is so wonderful to have her here. Here is the story of how everything happened: On Thursday night we had gone out to Chinese dinner as a family and had come home and gone to bed. Around midnight I woke up to go to the bathroom. I realized that I was experiencing painful menstrual-like cramps. I realized what was happening, that I was probably in labor, and tried to relax. I tried to sleep to get as much rest as possible, but every 10 minutes or so the cramps would come and it was too distracting to sleep. Around 3 AM I got up to go to the bathroom again. This time, I realized that I had leaked a lot of clear fluid. My waters had broken! The only thing that was slightly disconcerting was that the fluid had some of a brownish-green...

As I look forward to the birth of our first child (approximately July 6th 2015!) I have done a lot of reading and thinking about birth and my baby. I hope as I share my thoughts it will be understood that I am a first-timer and I hope to offend no one.  Something that has occurred to me is that women today care an awful lot about how their baby comes into the world. Controversy abounds regarding natural births, c-sections, vaginal births with an epidural, etc. I have observed the judgment and criticism that can occur between women about these issues.  My question is, why do we place our birth experience (which really isn't "ours," by the way, but our baby's) on such a high pedestal? We have such high expectations, and sometimes when things don't work out the way we planned, we are utterly traumatized. I have read about women who have been traumatized on both ends of the spectrum (c-section vs. completely non-medicated) because their expectations were not m...