Avivah Werner

Author: Avivah

  • Challah instructions and recipe

    >>Would you be able to post your challah recipe? I am tired of the one I am using and figure yours is probably really good. i always like your recipes. <<

    My dd14 has taken over the challah making in our house – when she moves out one day, I might have to relearn how to bake challah!  But since I’ve made it for so many years, I think it’s more likely to be like riding a bicycle – once you learn you never forget. 

    We use hard white wheat for most of our baking.  People always know that there’s whole wheat flour in our challah, but never guess that it’s all whole wheat.  The whole wheat flour you buy in the store is generally from hard red wheat kernels, and is darker in color, with a stronger flavor.  You can buy King Arthur’s white whole wheat, which is basically the same as what we use, but not as good quality because it’s not as fresh.  Nutritionally red and white wheat are comparable.

    >> i have switched to coconut oil and palm oil (the same brands you mentioned in your previous posts), but the one area i am having difficulty in adapting to these new oils is challah. I don’t want coconut tasting challah and I cannot find the right measurement for the palm oil. <<

    I use expeller pressed coconut oil for when I’m baking something that I don’t want to have a coconut flavor.  Expeller pressed coconut oil doesn’t have a smell or flavor of coconut.  (It’s also not as healthy as the raw coconut oil that retains the coconut smell and flavor, but it’s still very good for you.)  I like coconut a lot, but there are some foods where it just doesn’t enhance the final result!  We melt it first if it’s cold in the house; when it’s warm it melts so it’s not necessary.  We’ve found that it works just like regular oil, though I think the challah stays fresh for longer with coconut oil, but that’s my subjective opinion.  After the coconut or palm oil is melted, use the same amount that the recipe calls for. 

    Here’s the recipe we’ve been using for the last year or two – it’s the amount that we make every week, but it’s a large recipe and most families will probably want to halve it.  You could make this size recipe and freeze of the challahs for the following week, but it’s best made fresh.  

    • 8 c. warm water
    • 4 T. yeast
    • 3 T. salt
    • 2 c. sugar (1 regular cup, 1 overflowing – we use sucanat)
    • 1 c. oil (I use expeller pressed coconut oil)
    • 21 – 25 c. flour (I use all whole wheat, but suggest you start off with half whole wheat and half white because it’s easier to be successful with; of course you can use all white if you like, too!)

    Mix the warm water and yeast; add salt, sugar, and oil.  Add flour bit by bit – the stickier the dough is, the better the final result, but you can’t have it so sticky that’s it’s impossible to work with.  Let dough rise for an hour, punch down, then braid.  Put in loaf pans or on a baking sheet and let rise for an hour or until doubled.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes for loaf pans, longer for larger challahs – dd rotates the pans so that they’re on the top rack for 15 minutes, then the bottom rack for 15 minutes to ensure even baking.  My dd prefers how the challahs come out when baked in a loaf pan.  The challahs will look underdone when ready, but sound hollow on the bottom when tapped.   This makes 6 – 7 loaf sized challahs.

    I’ve learned that making challah is about getting a sense for what the dough should feel like when it’s ready – you can follow a recipe exactly, but you won’t get the same challah every time because it depends on a number of variables.  When using all whole wheat flour, this is even more important, because it’s easy to make the dough too heavy and then the final result will be dense.  

    My dd said to tell you not to get discouraged if it doesn’t turn out great the first time.  You have to get a sense of what the dough feels like when it’s just right, but once you’ve got that, your challah will turn out amazingly!

    Have a good Shabbos!

    Avivah

  • Cost for the bris

    >>Do you have any tips for how to make a low cost bris?<<

    Well, everyone has a different idea of what they consider low cost, but I’ll share what we’ve done. 

    Generally, an important principle in saving money is to look ahead and plan in advance.  If you know you’re having a boy, you can think about what kind of menu you’ll want to serve, and take advantage of sales to buy the non perishables.  You can do the same with paper goods and any decorations. 

    But we don’t know what we’re having until the baby is born, so planning ahead isn’t something I can do.  I mentioned a few weeks ago taking advantage of a sale on turkey and commented at the time that if we had a boy, we would use it for the seuda.  We had talked about making a late afternoon bris if it was a boy, and serving fleishigs.  But you know the saying – ‘man plans, and G-d laughs’ – since our bris was on erev yom tov, the late afternoon idea was changed to the typical morning dairy spread and the turkeys stayed in the freezer. 

    But what you can do is minimize your costs by doing whatever you can yourself.  If you hire a caterer to do the set up, food preparation, serving, and clean up, it’s going to cost you a lot more than if you do any or all of those yourself.  We do all of the preparations ourselves, and can serve foods comparable to what the caterers serve for a lot less.

     What do we serve?   We had bagels, rice cakes, and whole wheat matza (dh and I don’t eat bread and we have friends who also don’t), egg salad, tuna salad,  hard boiled eggs, cheddar and muenster cheese slices, sliced tomatoes and purple onions, salad, cream cheese, butter, fruit salad, and a bowl of whole fruit.  We put out orange juice, milk, coffee, and herbal teas.  We decided against cake and cookies this time, though in the past we’ve also put out a variety of danishes and cookies.  I considered serving scrambled eggs, but it decided to keep it simple and not worry about how to keep the eggs hot without getting rubbery if they sat in the warmer for a while.  Basically, it’s your typical bris morning spread. 

    Food preparation for us was making the egg and tuna salads, cutting up the fruit (pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew) for the fruit salad and slicing the veggies for the platters.  The biggest expense was the chalav yisroel butter and cream cheese – we bought way more than we needed and I usually wouldn’t spend more than $2 a pound for either of them.  Because there was a sale last week, the sliced cheese at the take out counter happened to be less than buying a block and slicing it ourselves, but I would have bought it sliced even if it was more.  There are times when it’s worth it to pay a little more and have a little less to do! 

    Setting up the room and cleaning up take a solid chunk of time, but it’s not hard and generally it’s the kind of thing our family enjoys doing together.  Because there was a non family member there who was involved and very, um, instructive towards my kids, it made it a lot less enjoyable for them than it would usually be.  But as far as the money saving aspect, that was another way to keep costs down.

    We bought paper goods at the local dollar store, so that wasn’t very expensive.  My mother in law took my girls shopping for those items, though, and covered the costs, so I can’t include that in what we ourselves paid for. 

    Since my dh did the shopping for the food and I haven’t seen the receipts, I can’t share the breakdown of how much we spent.  It was around $200 for the food, and less than $100 for the rental of the room from the shul (less expensive because we’re members).  We set up for 50 people but could have easily fed double that number (except for the cheese, which was almost finished).  These milchig leftovers came in handy on Shavuos, since people sent food for two of the four yom tov meals, and when an hour before yom tov we realized that’s all there would be, we didn’t have any last minute pressure because we were able to supplement for the other meals with what I had in the freezer and what we had from the bris.  I don’t know whether to consider the extra food costs for the bris as bris costs or my food budget costs, but either way, it all evens out.

    We considered having the bris in our house, but felt that space constraints would make it less comfortable for everyone, and therefore the cost of renting the shul space was worthwhile.  But if someone had a large enough home, they could save on that cost by having it all in their home.

    The rav/mohel who performed the bris doesn’t charge and refused to take money when we tried to get him to accept payment.  Since we’ve asked the same rav for all of our brissim since living in this city, I don’t have personal experience with other mohelim.  Just last night a Christian women at the homeschool curriculum sale asked me about mohelim and their costs; she was asking for a friend with who wants to circumcise their son ritually though they aren’t Jewish, who had gotten quotes of $600.  I have no idea if that’s standard, though it seems expensive to me.  If that’s actually the going rate, then using the mohel we did obviously was a big money saver, though that wasn’t our primary motivation.

    Avivah

  • Using a baby wrap carrier

    I’m in love!  I can’t believe that it’s taken me until my ninth baby to use a wrap style carrier, but it’s amazing!  I’m so thrilled to have found something so easy to use, comfortable for the baby and easy on the back. 

    I first saw someone using a baby wrap when I was pregnant with my fifth child, and though I thought it looked  like a good idea, it didn’t occur to me to pursue getting one for myself.  I had a sling, and that worked well enough for me.  The wrap also looked kind of funky, in my opinion, and seemed complicated.  The sling hasn’t been something I’ve used much for the past few kids, though it was invaluable with my third baby (who is now almost 13).  But for my last two babies, we had so many hands wanting to hold them that I didn’t really feel the need for a baby carrier, so it didn’t matter much that I didn’t have an effective one to use. 

    Now that I have this new wrap, I really feel that I missed out on having one with my last babies, because it makes it so much easier to take care of a baby.  I received this wrap (called a Sleepy Wrap) as a gift from an online friend – it’s amazing how we can connect to others through the internet without ever meeting them.  She finished using it for her baby boy and thought I might enjoy it.  She was SO right.  I’ve really wanted to buy a wrap for the past few months, but kept thinking I could make one myself for a lot less than $40.  But I wasn’t feeling very motivated to make one, and I didn’t. 

    When she emailed to ask if I was interested in the wrap, I couldn’t believe it!  There really was nothing I could think of that I wanted for this baby except for a wrap, and this was just so perfect!  As I sit here at the computer, the baby has been snugly against my chest the whole time, sleeping in the wrap.  Especially with two toddlers, I really appreciate being able to keep the baby close while having the use of both hands. This morning, he woke up at 5 and though I went to bed early, I lost track of time when I got caught up in a new book I’m reading (Atlas Shrugged – fascinating and thought provoking – I read 500 pages since yesterday afternoon, and am almost halfway through it) – it was 2 pm when I realized how late it was and turned the lights out.  Facing the day with three hours of sleep would usually make me feel like crying, but I just got up, stuck the baby in the wrap, read my book while standing for a short while, and he was asleep before long.  Then I sat down in the recliner, leaned back, and with him still in the wrap fell back asleep myself!  Everytime he began to stir, I’d just slightly rock the recliner; I got another couple of hours of sleep like this.

    Not only am I enjoying the wrap, but my kids are, too!  We’ve only had it for five days, but so far five kids have tried it – dd8, ds10, dd12, dd14, and ds15.  Ds15 didn’t enjoy it because the baby happened to be hungry when he used it and was crying.  I told him to try it another time after he’s been fed.  The other three all loved it – it was so cute to see dd8 sitting on the couch after our yom tov meal, reading her book with the baby cuddled up to her in the wrap.  Dd12 took the toddlers for a yom tov walk while carrying the baby in the wrap (dd14 told her she was embarrassed to be seen with her and wouldn’t go along with them if she wore the wrap – “only mothers are supposed to wear wraps in public”), and also wore him a bunch in the house. 

    Tonight dh and I went to a curriculum fair, and we took only the baby along.  I had him in the wrap the entire time, and it made it so easy to keep him content (he slept soundly the entire time) while shopping and shmoozing with the homeschool moms selling stuff.  (And yes, I got loads of good deals – my dh asked me if he should look for anything in particular.  He was glancing through some brand new curriculum at brand new prices, and I told him, I don’t buy stuff at those prices.  My target price is free or almost free!  We spent $15 and got five boxes filled with books, a bunch of videos made by the Feature Films for Family company (I very much like those because they are clean and have good values – I have a very hard time finding videos that meet my standards but those I’ve so far aquired from the thrift store have been good), and also got some nice odds and ends, like a low power microscope, tupperware picnic container, chemistry set, game of Candyland, and a few homeschooling cassettes.  The kids will have fun unloading everything in the morning, since they were asleep when we got home.)

    Something I like about this particular wrap is the stretchiness of the material, which holds the baby close and doesn’t work it’s way loose.  I’m far from an expert on other wraps – this is the only one I’ve ever used, but it works for me and I’m very appreciative to have it!   

    Avivah

  • Baby nicknames

    It’s funny to see how quickly a tiny baby aquires nicknames!  Until we name our kids, I usually call them something like ‘cutie tootie baby’ – not so original, but so what?  As soon as this baby was born, the kids already started calling him ‘chamoodi’.  This was due to something that happened when our last baby was born.  My ds was then 8, and because that baby had so much dark hair (he’s very fair now, with blue eyes – people can’t believe it when we say he was darker than any of the kids at birth), said he looked like a gorilla.  He asked my dh how to say ‘gorilla’ in Hebrew, and my dh, knowing what our son’s intent was in asking, told him ‘chamoodi’ (cutie).  So ds went around calling the baby chamoodi, thinking he was putting one over on all of us by calling the baby a gorilla.  I think he did wonder a little why we didn’t stop him.  The look on his face when he discovered a few days later that he had been calling the baby a cutie and everyone but him realized that was priceless! 

    When this baby was a day old, my ds6 told me that he looked like Yoda (from Star Wars).  He didn’t say it in a joking way, or to make fun of the baby, so I asked him what he meant.  He told me that ‘the baby has old eyes’, which was perceptive of him, since newborn do have a look of ancient wisdom in their eyes.  He’s a very different personality from his older ‘gorilla’ naming brother, so it didn’t occur to him to call the baby Yoda. 🙂

    But don’t worry, we still have plenty of nicknames already in use!  As soon as the baby was named (Shimshon), that very day we had three different nicknames for him.  Shim, Shimmy, Shimshy – and my ds3 said he wanted to call him ‘Shimmy the youngest’, because of a book we have by that name. I do think that when giving a child a name, you should give them a name that both you and they will be happy to use.  But I’ve nicknamed all of my kids, and as long as the nicknames are nice, then I’m the last to complain!

    Avivah

  • Making a poison ivy remedy

    My ds10 showed me on Shavuos that he has a very bad rash between his fingers, which was super itchy.  (My kids have a way of only telling me about things like this on Shabbos or yom tov, when I can’t do much about it.)  He said he was sure it was poison ivy.  I asked why he thought so, and he told me he pulled out poison ivy with his bare hands when he saw it growing in the yard.  When I asked what made him do that, he said he planned to wash his hands after he pulled it out but forgot.  I mentioned that we have plenty of garden gloves that would be useful for something like this, but he said it was too much work to go into the garage to get them.  When I said we had pairs right on the back porch, too, he said that would have been too much work, too!

    So not surprisingly, he now has a very unpleasant case of poison ivy.  I have a recipe in my notebook for a poison ivy remedy that I’ve never made, and decided that it would be instructive for him to prepare it himself.  The recipe called for just three ingredients: burdock root, plantain, and comfrey.  I have comfrey in my small collection of herbs, and burdock and plantain growing wild in the yard.

    His best friend came over early in the day, and I sent them both out to harvest the herbs.  Plantain is easy to pick, but the burdock roots are long and skinny so it’s a bit of a job to dig them.  He discovered that using a full sized shovel made the job a lot faster than using a trowel.  Once they came in with enough of the herbs (I had to send them back out a couple more times), I had ds peel the burdock roots and chop them up, then wash the plantain leaves and chop them up. 

    He put a cup of burdock and a cup of plantain into a pot with 1/3 cup of dried comfrey.  (The recipe called for equal amounts of each herb in the dried form, so I figured we should use about triple the amount of fresh herbs so it would be the right balance.)  He put enough coconut oil into the pot to cover the herbs, and then let it simmer on low for a couple of hours.  (You can also use Vaseline, or a combination of virgin olive oil and beeswax instead of the coconut oil, but for simplicity, health, and it’s powerful antifungal/antibacterial properties, I prefer coconut oil.)  After it cooked for a while and the herbs were starting to get crispy, dd14 strained it out (he had to leave for his baseball game, or he would have done this, too) and put it in a small glass jar to cool.  We made about 9 oz of salve.   

    When he got home from his game, the mixture had solidified, and he put some on his hands.  Very soon he told me that the itching was much less and the irritated red skin was noticeably less inflamed.  After a couple of hours, I suggested he apply some more, and within an hour he told me it was much, much better.   I’ll have him continue to apply it until the rash is entirely gone; I’m hopeful with the help of the salve that it will be pretty quick.

    When I placed my last bulk herb order a number of months ago, I ordered a 4 oz can of herbal salve that was good for general antibiotic use, stings, etc, and paid $16.95 for it.  This was a bit of a splurge for me but it seemed like a valuable item to have around.  And it has been very useful for diaper rashes, chapped skin, cuts – it’s been helpful for a number of things, and I also bought a small 1 oz container to keep in my purse.  Four ounces lasts a lot longer than you might expect – we still have almost half of the container left, even after using it frequently. 

    We checked the ingredients in the salve that I bought, and saw that it contained both comfrey and plantain, along with three other ingredients.  We realized that the salve we made can easily substitute for the one we purchased in terms of practical usage (reducing skin inflammation, itchiness, healing cuts, diaper rash).  But this cost us a LOT less – the herbs we picked were obviously free, the amount of comfrey we used was probably less than 50 cents, and I bought the expeller pressed coconut oil in a 5 gallon bucket for about $80 a while back (price has gone up since).  Since there are 80 cups in 5 gallons, and I used a cup for this recipe, the cost of the oil was $1.   I’m not going to figure out how much gas we used for two hours on the lowest setting when cooking it, but let’s say that it cost another $1.  That means for less than $2.50 I was able to make a comparable salve to what would have cost me $34 if purchased retail.  We also realized how easy it would be to slightly change the recipe to make a salve that has the same ingredients as the one we purchased; while it would be slightly more expensive, since we’d need to use other herbs that we purchased in bulk instead of harvested ourselves, it would still be only an additional $2 for the entire batch. 

    If you want to make a healing wash instead of a salve, use water instead of oil and follow the same directions.  Use the herbal wash to rinse the affected area periodically. 

    It was fun and educational for him to make this and see how easy it is to take care of your own health.  And this batch should last us for quite a long time!

    Avivah

  • Harvesting plantain leaves

    About a week and a half ago my dd8 got a splinter in her finger, and she didn’t want me to pry around with a needle because it was too sore.  I’ve heard that putting a banana peel on it is a great way to draw out the splinter, but naturally, though I usually have bananas around, right then I didn’t have any.

    I considered if I had any other options, and this is what I did.  I told her to soak her finger in warm water, and then to go outside and pick some plantain.  Do you know what plantain looks like?  It’s a common weed that grows all over the place here, maybe all over the US, I don’t know.  The Native Americans used to call it white man’s foot, or broad foot, because wherever the white man travelled, plantain would grow. 

    I don’t know much about identifying weeds or wild plants, but a few years ago I was on a nature hike with the kids and the guide pointed it out.  He pointed out other things, too, that I didn’t remember.  But this one was memorable because he had said it was good for a number of things, including bee stings.  A little later on that hike, a little girl got a bee sting and he immediately picked some, smashed it to a pulp with a rock, and applied it to her sting.  She calmed down very quickly.

    Not long after that, I was attending my then sixth grade son’s baseball game.  At that age, most of the parents don’t attend the game, but I went to every game.  One of his fifth grade teamates was stung by a wasp on his hand, and it was so painful that he couldn’t hold a ball or bat.  There was no other adult to help him and even though he was trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal, I could tell it really was hurting.  So I picked some plantain, told him it needed to be chewed or smashed with a rock before applying it, and he willingly chewed it and put it on his sting.  I thought I must have seemed like a weirdo to him and wondered if it would really help, but I needn’t have worried.  He told me after a minute that his hand felt normal and was very appreciative – and he thought it was cool, not weird.

    Plantain is good for lots of things, and I thought it might draw out the splinter, too.  So I told dd to wrap it around her finger and put a bandaid on top to hold it on.  We couldn’t find the splinter the next day when we took it off, so I guess it worked. 

    Today I asked ds10 to pick some to make a salve with (I’ll share details of that with you tomorrow when it’s finished and I see how it works), and asked dd8to pick a bunch of it to dehydrate it for future use – it’s good for a lot of things, it’s free and easily available, so I figure, why not take advantage of it and stock my home grown medicine cabinet supplies? 🙂

    Avivah

  • Quick answers – fermented veggies and dehydrating

    >> the fermented veggies- sea salt is just regular salt? Or is it something different? How much salt do I put in? Can you ferment cooked veggies? How long does it last once fermented? <<

    Sea salt is different than regular salt; it’s less processed.  Depending what kind of sea salt you get, it’s significantly less processed.  I don’t really use regular salt – I use a fairly processed sea salt for cooking, Real Salt (that’s the brand name) for salting food at the table, and Celtic sea salt when I make fermented vegetables.  Celtic salt is pretty pricey but I don’t use much of it so a little goes a long way – it’s a grey, moist, and kind of rocky, not finely ground.  I feel like it improves the nutritional value, but regular salt would probably work just fine, too. 

    How much salt you put in depends on how many vegetables you use, and how salty you like your food.  I’d suggest googling for some recipes.  I use about 2 T. salt for a half gallon jar of vegetables.  And you wouldn’t ferment cooked vegetables, just raw.

    Be aware if you decide to make fermented vegetables that they will have a different taste than pickled vegetables.  For many people this is an aquired taste.  Be sure to carefully follow the recipe the first time so you know that nothing spoiled in the process, and then when you taste the veggies you’ll know that they taste the way they’re supposed to.  If something you makes doesn’t turn out the way you like, don’t give up.  There are lots of good recipes out there, and some are going to be more appealing to you than others.  I used the recipes in Nourishing Traditions to start with, and found that most of them were too salty for me, so I adapted them to what we prefer. One recipe I found very easy to start with was making pickles (from cucumbers), because the taste is familiar.  These get gobbled up.

    Remember also that fermented veggies are eaten in small amounts as a digestive aid, not large salad quantities. 

    >>You inspired me to get a dehydrator- have you made jerkey in it, or not your style?<

    I haven’t made jerky, not because it’s not my style, but because I want to keep the dehydrator parve. For the same reason, I haven’t made yogurt-fruit leathers.  But both of those things would be fun to make if I had the luxury of separate dairy and meat dehydrators.

    Avivah

  • Today was the bris!

    This morning we made the bris, BH on time.  The mohel came a few days before and said there would be no need to come back sooner to check on him, since the baby looked great and when they look like that, jaundice occuring later on isn’t an issue.  That was nice to hear, since it was touch and go with the last two babies as to if it would be on time until the night before the bris. 

    Practically speaking, it’s always walking a fine line as far as the time to schedule a bris.  On one hand, the earlier it’s called for, the easier it is for men to come and the longer they can come before they leave to work.  On the other hand, the earlier it is, the fewer women will make it because they’re still busy with their children, carpools, etc.  We called it for 8, which meant that there was a gap between when davening finished and the bris started, so there was no spillover of attendance from the minyan that finished and the bris.  When I walked into the shul at a minute to eight, there were only 3 men and 2 women – I got a little nervous at first!  But people turned up very soon.  The bris was lovely, and I’m so grateful to all of our friends and family who made the time on such a busy erev yom tov to come.  A simcha is really enhanced when others share it with you.

    My husband decided he wanted to be sandek this time; it seemed fitting that after catching the baby as he was born, that he would hold him for the bris.  The baby bled more than any of the others, which was a concern, but he seems to be fine now.  We named the baby Shimshon, which was mainly after Rav SR Hirsch, who has been a powerful influence on my husband and his approach to Torah.  But there were alot of other connotations of the name that connected with the time of the year and our feelings about the baby.  My husband very much wanted to name our last baby Shimshon, but it didn’t feel right to me at that time and I adamantly refused – not because I didn’t like the name, just because it didn’t seem like it was meant to be his name.  For this baby, it felt like the right match up of name and spiritual energy.

    I was thinking about a few points after the bris, and wanted to share them with you because I think it’s constructive. 

    1) If someone invites you to their simcha, they probably would love for you to be there!  This may sound obvious, but I think alot of the time people when invited feel like their presence won’t make much of a difference one way or another, and maybe that the person inviting them was doing it to be polite.  If you can make it, then do it – it makes a difference to the baal simcha.

    2) If you do come for the simcha, stay as long as you can.  We noticed that most of the people who came to the bris stayed long enough to grab some food and go.  It’s totally understandable that people are busy, but the mitzva part of the seudas mitzva is at the very end.  It’s important to be there for that – though we had every seat taken for the seuda, by the time bentching came, we were short one man for a minyan.  And we only needed 6 people other than the mohel, my dh, ds16, and fil to complete the minyan.  I’m sure every man who left early felt his absence didn’t matter.  The entire bris and seuda don’t take very long (ours was 1 hour and 15 minutes from start to finish), so if you have a flexible schedule, staying until the end is an easy mitzva to participate in.  If you can’t stay until the end, try to stay at least until the father of the baby speaks; this is his opportunity to share his feelings of joy and gratitude with those who attend and he’s earned the right to be listened to for ten minutes. 🙂

    3) Because at the last bris we noticed the reality that people leave early, dh called several of his friends and explained that he’d appreciate if they could stay through the end so we would have a minyan.  He asked them if they thought they’d be able to be there, and a number of them agreed.  Most of them didn’t end up coming, for whatever reason – neither of us think it was because they didn’t care.  Life is busy and things come up.  But my last suggestion is that if you tell someone you’ll be there, then be there.  It created last minute stress when we didn’t have a minyan and we couldn’t find a tenth man for the bentching. 

    All in all, it was a wonderful bris and a lovely relaxing day.  My husband and I are both filled with gratitude to H-shem for our wonderful friends and family, for our healthy baby, and for the opportunity to share our joy with all of them.  May we all know only good things!

    Happy Shavuos!

    Avivah

  • Red raspberry pregnancy tea

    Here’s the recipe for the pregnancy tea that I’ve mentioned drinking.  I got it from bulkherbstore.com.  I try to drink at least a cup a day in the last month, though I’ve seen it recommended to drink up to to 5 cups a day starting at 37 weeks.  One precaution I would make is that if you do drink a lot of this, to increase the amount of water you drink, as red raspberry leaves can be a diuretic.

    I personally wouldn’t drink it until the end of the first trimester, and not more than a cup or two a day until the last month.  I’m aware of women miscarrying because they drink huge amounts of this daily in the early part of pregnancy, maybe under the misguided belief that if a little is good, a lot must be better.  This is a wonderful uterine toner, but like everything, should be used as it’s meant to be used, not indiscriminately.

    • 8 parts red raspberry lea
    • 3 parts alfalfa
    • 3 parts peppermint
    • 2 parts nettle (I usually leave this out)

    You can make a cup of hot tea by adding 1 or 2 teaspoons of the premixed herbs to 1 cup of boiling water. Let it steep for 5 to 10 minutes, strain, and add honey (raw is best) to taste.

    To make a pitcher of tea for storing in the refrigerator, use 10 teaspoons or so of the premixed herbs for 8 cups of boiling water. Let it cool for a while and strain. Discard the used herbs, and put the tea in the refrigerator to drink over ice or reheated.

    If you use this in labor, then you’ll drink it as an infusion instead of as a tea.  Only drink an infusion in labor or when you’re ready to be in labor.  To make it, take one ounce of the herbs (it will be a lot), and pour two cups of boiling water over it.  Let it steep about 30 minutes, and drink as hot as you can, when active labor has started. 

    Avivah

  • Responses to birth story comments

    >>Wow. An unassisted childbirth. Sounds scary, but glad everything worked out great!<<

    It actually isn’t scary at all, but I can see how it could sound like that!  I was talking to my dh about why people think giving birth without medical professionals present must be such a frightening situation.  A big part of this is because our society has bought into the belief that birth is dangerous and therefore has to take place in a hospital, because anything can and probably will go wrong in the absence of professionals.  But I don’t buy into this mindset of danger and fear.  I see labor and birth as a normal and healthy process, and generally when the birth goes so quickly, it’s because everything is fine.  So to me the fact that things were going so fast would in and of itself be reassuring, if I had been worried.  But I wasn’t.

    I think giving birth in a hospital can be a pretty scary proposition – there are so many unknowns facing birthing women other than labor itself, factors that they would have control over in their homes.  But maybe it’s only scary if you know that the infant and mortality rates are higher in the hospital, infection rates are higher in the hospitals, all the intervention rates that lead to further intervention and are linked with other complications are higher in the hospital – most people think they’re safer and view the frequency that all of these things occur in hospitals as proof that they need to be there, proof that birth itself is dangerous.  “Imagine how much more dangerous it would have been if they hadn’t been in a hospital!” goes the reasoning.

    A friend afterwards tongue in cheek asked me why I hadn’t called an ambulance.  Besides the fact that the idea didn’t even enter my mind, that’s another option that sounds unpleasant. I think emergency services are wonderful, but for helping women in childbirth?  Umm, that’s not exactly where their strengths are.  I can just imagine them rushing into my room in emergency mode, insisting on taking me to the hospital even after the baby was born to be sure everything was okay.

    >>A friend of mine had an unplanned HB and is sooo traumatized by it.<<

    Not being prepared for a situation mentally can make anything traumatic.  I also think that mental preparation in life tends to be one of the most important factors to being content.  (Mental preparation for labor is the most important factor in having a positive birth, in my opinion.)  That means working on accepting what is, rather than continuing to verbally or mentally hold on to your image of what you want.  This is something that we all get to work on every single day, every time your child, spouse, or even the person in the store does something that doesn’t match what you want.  I know that the more I can let go of what I think needs to happen, the more I can tune in to what H-shem wants and the happier I feel.

    If I had mentally focused on how absolutely unacceptable it was to me that the midwife wouldn’t be able to make it in time, my insistence on my past plans would have kept me from being able to shift into being fine with what was going to happen.

    >>Thanks so much for posting a photo for those of us who can’t be there to see him in person. It is a nice addition to your posts. <<

    It’s my husband who’s to thank for this.  I’ve never had the patience (or desire, to be more honest) to figure out how to put a photo on the blog.  I also liked that he put it there – I didn’t ask him to.  Maybe now I’ll be inspired by him to post photos from time to time.  🙂

    >>Birth is truly a surprise and an adventure, not matter how many
    times you’ve been through it. <<

    This is so true.  If I PG have another pregnancy, this is something I’m going to remember – not to think that I know what even my own normal is by virtue of being pregnant nine times before.  Being ‘overdue’ was a much needed exercise in humility and trusting H-shem’s plan.

    >>You had your supplies, your midwife was coming anyway, but that sounds like such an ideal birth. If you’re emotionally capable of handling such a thing, and medically prepared just in case, that sounds so special!<<

    It really was an ideal birth – I’ve always felt homebirths were amazing experiences, but this birth was on a totally different level.

    >>Can I ask what you do with your placenta? Do you bury it? If so, is it for halachic reasons? I have never gotten a clear answer if I need to bury mine or not.<<

    Rav Heinemann was here this afternoon to check the baby (he was our mohel for the last two brissim, also) – too bad I didn’t read this in time or I would have asked him.  I’ve never asked a shaila about this – in hospitals, placentas are thrown away and I’ve never heard of anyone wondering what to do instead.  And until now, we’ve always thrown it away.

    This time, the kids were talking about planting a special tree over it (they know a 20 year old whose family planted a cherry tree when she was born), which I thought was a beautiful idea.  Because of their enthusiasm, I was researching fruit trees before Pesach, trying to figure out what kind to buy and where to put it, but now it’s so late in the season that it’s not really the time to plant fruit trees.

    We always put the placenta in the freezer, and then throw it away right before the garbage truck comes; this time I figure I can leave it there a little longer until I decide what to do with it.

    Avivah