We went ahead and tested again (we had purchased a two-test pack) and it was positive again. It difficult to really contain the excitement that comes when you achieve something that you have been visualizing for many years. This past weekend, we visited family and shared in on their holiday excitement--we don't celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or any Winter Holiday for that matter, but we do take the time to give thanks. I decided to take the dog on a long hike/walk as I always do when I leave the city for calmer and greener pastures. I decided that I wanted to incorporate some meditation and mindfullnes into my walk. Sort of like a yoga of walking or a moving meditation. The snow had almost completely melted and the extra water from the melting was collecting in the brooks and streams. I made sure to admire each bubbling sound from the streams. For some reason, on that day, I was really drawn to water. I figure that my growing child is going to live in an aquaeous environment and that I needed to be in tune with that. Each time I passed a brook, I squatted down, breathed deeply and engaged my PC muscles. The dog sat with me and he breathed with me. He knew (as most animals do) how to be mindful and be in the moment. We got up and kept walking down the path. I made sure to stop at each stream to pay respect. After about an hour of this, I felt so calm. I think I'll do this sort of mindful walking a few times a week. It has now been 5 weeks and 2 days since my last blood.
12/28/2009
12/24/2009
Chosen
After more than two years of trying to consciously conceive our child. Two years of trying to communicate with and be chosen by an entity/spirit, it finally happened. We got not one, but two positive test results (both in the afternoon/evening)! I am elated, but still want to successfully get through the first 12 weeks before I let friends and family know the good news. My husband is so excited he is staring off into space with a huge smile on his face (for hours on end!). Now the next phase of planning begins (but I also want to surrender to this process and just let nature take its course).
Conscious Conception..one thought at a time! (for real this time)
12/22/2009
Two week wait..
So I am well past the dreaded Two Week Wait period and into the This-Might-Actually-Be-It period. I am now officially 2 days late. This has been the only time this whole year that my cycle has not ended by the 28th day. I am now on day 31 and still no signs of any blood. My breasts are sore, I'm juicy and ripe, but I don't feel like my period is coming. I will not celebrate until a test confirms and I won't test until I'm at least one week late. So I guess I have a One-Week-Until-Test period to get through.
Conscious conception---one thought at a time!
12/19/2009
A call to all women that bleed...
As I wait for either the beginning of my next cycle OR a signal that we have indeed conceived this month, my thoughts are racing. I'm trying to scour the internet for anything interesting concerning menstruation and I came across Susunweed's website and an interesting letter written for all women that bleed:
Dear Women of Power,
Those of us women who are in the menstrual phase of our lives may be wasting one of the most precious resources we have for healing world conflict: our menstrual blood.
On October 20, I attended a workshop led by Barbara Marciniak, one of the high priestesses in the United States who serves in the ancient fashion as oracle and sybil. She put out a call, which I am disseminating for her, that every month at the time of their menstruation, women offer some of their menstrual blood to the earth in a self-designed ritual.
Women should pour their blood onto the earth at this time, with the stated intention of calling the energies of the goddesses and helpful ancestors to the planet to end violence and effect the healing of all the who would perpetrate violent acts and all who are suffering as a result of violence.
The rationale behind doing so is this: menstrual blood is a very powerful magical substance for attracting healing energies. In the United States, Vicki Noble was the first scholar to bring this information to public consciousness in her 1991 book, Shakti Woman. She stated that Tibetan lamas, Native American peoples, and Gnostic worshipers, among many others, understood this as common knowledge and regularly used menstrual blood in their rituals as offerings to the earth, the community, and the goddess.
Judy Grahn in Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (1993) and Lara Owen in Her Blood is Gold (1993), wrote similarly about the ancient understanding of menstrual blood. And we have the excellent anthropological work of Chris Knight in Blood Relations : Menstruation and the Origins of Culture (1991), which provides a wealth of information on the use of menstrual blood around the world in ritual.
While many contemporary women have already been using their menstrual blood in ritual fashion, it is now time for more of us to come to an awakening about the true power of our blood and to use it responsibly for the strange and threatening times in which we are now finding ourselves.
The ritual could be very simple: place your pads, tampons, or sponges in a container of water; go out to your yard or a spot in nature and pour the water onto the earth, calling upon the power of the goddess to be present and to activate her healing energies in the world. Then, of course, dispose of your tampons and pads properly.
It is time for us to use menstrual blood, our most sacred resource, in the ways that all of our ancestors did. It is time for those of us who are not awakened to the reality of the otherworldly realms to awaken and to communicate responsibly with those realms for the good of all of existence. It is time for us to overcome our shame and squeamishness around menstrual blood and claim the power that it and all of us as women possess.
Do not underestimate the reality and power that performing such a ritual will have! Remember the ancient ways! Remember!
At the very least, know that by pouring your menstrual blood onto the earth, you will be fertilizing all of the plant life you touch.
Please pass this e-mail on to all women; let us send this e-mail around the planet. Let us have it eventually reach the Afghani women, who are so desperately in need of ways in which they could begin to reclaim their power. If anyone has connections to Eve Ensler and the organization she has formed around her play The Vagina Monologues, please pass this call on to her, as well, and ask her to pass it on to other women through her organization.
The time is now. Let us reclaim our blood power. Let us no longer bleed in vain. Our very survival may depend on it.
In sisterhood,
Marguerite Rigoglioso
Oakland, CA
***********************************************
Conscious conception...one thought at a time!
12/10/2009
Conception Voodoo
It took us a long while to actually admit to other people that we were trying. It was almost as if once we told the world at large about our intention, we would have to conceive very quickly thereafter for risk of having people look down upon us and our ability (or inability) to create a baby together. Well, fear of sharing and all, we finally started to let a few people in our circle know (very close friend and family) and eventually, we widened that circle to include even co workers. I found that the more people we told, the more bizarre techniques we were told to use and more old wives' tales we heard about how to properly conceive a child. We were told to keep elephants in the room for a boy or to not sweep under the bed. We were told to bathe in moonlight every full moon or to use certain sexual positions to help conceive either a boy or a girl. Here are a few wives'tales, myths and superstitions about conception:
1) Eating certain foods can cause you to either conceive a boy or girl. For example, high energy diets can produce male children (supposedly proved by a scientific study!)
2) Do Headstands after the act to increase chances of conceiving
3) Rub a pregnant woman's belly
4) Have standing intercourse for a boy and then sleep on your lover's left side
5)Eat chocolate for a girl
And the list could literally go on and on...I wonder if there is any truth to these (I secretly will try them... :-)
Conscious Conception...one thought at a time!
12/06/2009
11/29/2009
Waist Beads, Chakras and Crystal Healing
A few months ago, I got a strong impuse to start beading. I went to the local bead shop and almost bought them out. I got home, organized all of my semi-precious beads and seed beads and go to creating. Then I came across several articles that talked about the significance of waist beads in African culture. I learned about how they are a sign of femininity, fertility and wisdom. Then, I started to make them. I made some for myself (made of Copper and Amethyst seed beads) and I made one for my friend (made of Rose Quartz and Clear Quartz because she needed help healing her heart). I had long known about the benefits of wearing crystals for healing chakra imbalances and I thought it would be wonderful to combine Chakra Healing with jewelry making. As it relates to fertility, the most healing beads are Moonstone, Rose Quartz, Aventurine, Coral, Pearl, Carnelian, and Jade to name a few.
Recently, I 've gotten the beading bug again and I'm going to be a little bit more serious about making healing jewelry. I love the sexiness factor of wearing waist beads (and so does my mate!) so I'm going to focus on making them. This time around, I'm going to add more precious gemstones, specifically fertility-increasing ones. I just keep thinking that as great as it feels to wear a chunky piece of moonstone over your heart (as a necklace), it would feel even better to have it hovering over your womb (as a waist lace). What a wonderful way to honor my ancestry and to further my desire to conceive a child. Not to mention to try and help other people who may have blocked chakras. I will show some pics as I finish some of the pieces.
11/27/2009
Preconception Rituals
The preconception stage is probably the most important stage in the life-cycle. It is during this stage that couples can set the intentions for future pregnancies. They can have honest conversations and really connect to the mystery of conception. Really having an understanding of the spiritual implications of a conscious conception is that first step in this period. Here are a few rituals for calling your unborn baby to you:
1. Meditation/prayer
2. Talking to your baby (as if s/he were already here)
3. Journaling (start a sacred journal book about the baby you wish to come)
4. Dreams
5. Create an altar for your conscious conception, healthy pregnancy (be sure to have a fertility goddess!)
6. Faith practices (blessingway, mass, marriage counseling)
7. Being in nature, taking time alone
8. Get connected to the moon’s cycle
9. Communicating with your partner about your intention to conceive together
10.Listening to your heart—make a wish!
11.Explore what other faiths believe about conception, pregnancy, birth, parenting and how they fit with your beliefs. Perhaps there’s a hidden insight there!
# 9 Really rang true for me because I find that as women, we feel the desire to conceive much stronger than men. A lot of men that I've talked to said that they didn't really feel ready to have children until much later in life and it was their Significant Others that really refocused their energies to parenthood. As women, I feel that it is our job to prepare the men emotionally for conception because a lot of them are caught up in feeling like they want to be more financially set or have a bigger house or make more money or own more stocks before they want to conceive. While I truly see where they are coming from in wanting to properly provide for their future offspring, finances should not be the only factor in planning a pregnancy. It takes more than money and a nice house to make a healthy home for a child. Love and willingness to create harmony is most important.
Conscious Conception--One thought at a time
11/25/2009
Internet Support at your fingertips
If you have ever felt alone when dealing with any issue that arises in your life, then you've never fully used the Internet for all that it's worth. When it comes to trying to conceive and then having difficulty conceiving, I have truly spent hours upon hours on the web researching, chatting, becoming inspired, dreaming of my future, and getting good ol' support from other couples/people who are in my same boat. Some really neat sites to visit so that you may become inspired and chat with others are: Trying to Conceive, Primal Mothering, and Conscious Conception, to name a few. Or you can just type in "Trying to Conceive"into Google. There are so many blogs, websites, internet groups and the like dealing with fertility. I feel so indebted to the Internet for providing me with educational tools for the issues that matter the most to me. I would never have known about most reproductive issues if it were not for my obssession with looking things up on Google. By the way, I just got my Basal Body Thermometer and a book called Honoring Your Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook. I will definitely start being more diligent and start to record my waking temperatures and symptoms.
**Conscious Conception--One thought at a time.**
Fall Rituals
(IMAGE: by Gene Louis Gerome Ferris "The First Thanksgiving")
As I get ready to do the complete opposite of what everyone is going to be doing tomorrow ("Thanksgiving"), I wanted to take a moment and reflect on why it is that I don't really vibe with this holiday. I really feel that we are all being misled about historical origins of this holiday. We are fed images of this feast and celebration that supposedly unified the Native Americans and Europeans, but images like the one above are not reality. The reality is that the Euros really messed things up for our Native peoples and they did not at all have symbiotic relationships like they teach us in school. They brought disease and systematically exterminated the majority of the people that they encountered once they got here. They took and did not give. They committed many crimes against nature. I say all this to say that as the rest of Middle America(and most others) stuff their faces with the turkey carcasses and other hard or impossible to digest foods, I choose to fast (or abstain from consuming anything). My husband and I usually go hiking on this "Day of Mourning" and we have our own version of this Fall Ritual. We climb up to the highest point on our favorite hiking trail. We burn sage and sweet grass. We pray for the world and for our causes. Then we detoxify our bodies in preparation for the hibernation period or Winter. This year, we hope to plant a little seed and see it grow into the Spring/Summer. Even if we are only able to plant good intentions for next year, it will be worth the effort.
FertileForest
Conscious Conception...one thought at a time
