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My father is a bookbinder and my mother often complains that she is drowning in books. So she uses the library (in my hometown) almost exclusively. At the end of the year she calculates what she would have spent buying the books she read, then donates a percentage of that money to the library. I think that's a great way to give the library extra support if you are able.

She convinced me to start using the library here seven or eight years ago. Now we have two children and use the library quite a bit. I have a weakness for buying kid's books so the ones that we check out and love I often end up buying. I appreciate this "try before you buy" aspect of the library.

posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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I am so glad that we have a choice now. My parents planned on two kids, but they had four (good for me, since I was the fourth). My mom talks about how naive she was, and in her niavete used an unreliable method of birth control. And my grandmothers had no choice at all. My husband and I chose to have two kids, we chose (more or less) when to have those two kids, and now we are done -- at least with that particular stage. Pretty amazing.

I can absolutely understand why people would choose not to have kids. I was in that camp when I was younger. It is really really hard work to be a parent, and involves a lot of sacrifice and worry and guilt. It makes me sad when people feel that the only way to fulfillment is through having children.

But it makes me even sadder to hear that anyone would hate children. Just because you are not a parent does not mean you can't have a positive impact on my kids. I buy into the adage that it takes a village to raise a child -- unfortunately it's hard to find that village. I want my children to learn from everyone around us, not just the other parents-with-small-children.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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We had both of our children at home with no problems. We had a WONDERFUL naturopathic midwife for both births. Before we had our first child, most of the people we knew with children (relatively few at that time) had birthed their children at home. Now that we know many more people with children I am continually shocked by how few considered a home birth -- or even having a doula at the hospital. It bothers me when people tell me or my husband that we were so brave to have had a home birth. It was such an obvious choice once we read up on it. But when birth is considered something scary and is witnessed by most people many more times dramatized on TV and in movies than in real life, I can kind of understand why people think hospital births are the only option.

The real challenge for us was that our insurance did not cover either birth. In the first case we knew that it wasn't covered and planned ahead. In the second case, with a different insurer, we were told our home birth was covered several times before being told it wasn't covered at the last minute. That was very difficult. In Washington there is a law that insurance companies must cover services provided by a licensed provider (i.e., an ND, LMT, etc., not just for births), and I wish that was true in Oregon as well.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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