Christian Winter Bruza Koch
Christian Winter Bruza Koch, born on November 21, 2008 at 9:41am, weighing 8 pounds. He was born at home in Brooklyn, as planned, despite the odds we had running against us that night. Mom and dad were both caught by surprise because we expected him at Thanksgiving.
More pictures and maybe a full story later…
Week 38 belly
“Hey, you know you’re having a boy, right!!!??? No, SERIOUSLY! She’s gonna have a boy!”
Living in our tony park slope neighborhood, residents will nod or smile or hold doors for a pregnant lady. Some will strike up a conversation and offer any advice they can to a new mother. Walking in downtown Brooklyn, folks are a little more vocal. Generally Latinos or men from the islands in strong accents…
(larger, dark skinned man with headphones on - dark jacket and mlb cap on sideways - keeping to himself leaning against a wall - comes to life when Alisa walks past and takes off his headphones quickly…)
“Hey!! You know it’s a boy, RIGHT? No, I’m SERIOUS! Look at her, you can TELL!!!”
Not 5 minutes later, we’re walking on Flatbush Ave., after dark. A black man in a parka walks past and stops short right before Alisa…
“Oh! You’re having a BOY!! You must be so proud! You can tell, you know? Look at how she walks - she walks UP! Her face held up high to the universe. It’s true!”
I’m perhaps most surprised that young kids of 18 or so are stopping us and telling us the sex of our child. I guess I figure it’s quite possible that these kids already have first hand knowledge of these things - I certainly never thought about these things before this year.
My mom told me the sex of our child even before I shared our sonogram news with her. She told me, “You don’t have to tell me, I already know.” Intuitive dreams figure very prominently on my mom’s side of the family, and she already had a vision of our baby boy. Alisa’s mom also had a premonition of Alisa’s pregnancy before we told her. There’s a lot that goes on in this world that is not black and white on paper.
“…U.F.O.’s, astral projection, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, full-trance mediums, telekinetic movement, black and/or white magic, pyramidology, the theory of Atlantis, the Loch Ness Monster… spooks, spectres, wraiths, geists, ghosts?”
Oh BOY…
And here’s visual proof of our impending boy child - note Alisa’s torpedo-like profile - proof she’s carrying a boy
When I first developed an awareness and got set on choosing my OB/GYN (and all signs pointed to Eden Fromberg), I didn’t realize how lucky I would get. First, Eden advocated home birth. Second, she suggested I do prenatal yoga. And those two things set the course of my pregnancy.
I’ve been taking prenatal yoga classes at Lila Yoga (Eden is the founder) from my 8th week of pregnancy, twice a week (mostly). I don’t know how well I can describe the benefits I got from yoga except to say that I feel ready. And I would think that is the greatest endorsement.
Here’s my own imperfect version of the prenatal “Sun Salutation” we do at Lila (video engineered by Chris, from photo stills):
And then there are morning walks in Prospect Park, 3 miles at least 4 times a week (upping it as the B-day approaches). As the year progressed, I got more and more inspired. And who wouldn’t: the park is just beautiful this time of the year!
In the last few weeks we attended two different vaccination talks. One was from Tribeca Pediatrics, taking a pro-vaccine approach, and the other one, the opposing view, from Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, given at Real Birth. There was so much information at both these sessions and this little account won’t do them full justice. This is just what we managed to retain:
Vaccines have improved the lives of people since they were first introduced. The incidences of diseases have been so greatly reduced that we are getting complacent about them and have turned our worry on the side effects of vaccines rather than the dangers of the diseases they prevent. This is a luxury that will go away if the majority of people stop vaccinating and epidemics emerge.
While most of the diseases we vaccinate against aren’t all that dangerous, they can be fatal or can cause lasting problems (brain damage, sterility). While there are side effects to vaccines, the link between autism and MMR vaccine is unsubstantiated.
Vaccine ingredients are all necessary. For example, aluminum makes a vaccine work better. Compared to the amount of aluminum ingested in our everyday lives, the quantity injected through a vaccine is much less. There is no longer any mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines (and some never carried it).
New York State law requires it. Children can’t go to public schools unless they are up to date with vaccines.
Ascribing the decline in contagious diseases only to vaccines diminishes the socio-economic factors that have contributed to this decline. The quality of life has improved. For example, incidences of diphtheria steadily fell after the vaccinations started in 1920, but so did incidences of yellow and scarlet fever without vaccinations.
We carry trillions of bacteria and viruses in our bodies: micro-organisms do not necessarily come from the outside but live in us as well. We vaccinate against 26 of them (though the number keeps rising). New diseases will be born out of this imbalance - other strands of a virus or bacterium that are not immunized against rise to fill the void. When the body has an opportunity to fight off a disease, it acquires a full cellular immunity to it. Antibodies, acquired by vaccination, are just one part of this immunity and that immunity is incomplete.
Being sick and letting the body do the work of fighting off a disease also affects children developmentally. A high fever fights an infection and helps in the ‘pruning’ of older brain cells. Post sickness, it’s been noted that children experience growth spurts both mentally and physically (for example, a child is found to talk or walk better than before).
One in 5 American children have some kind of developmental delay, autism being just one of them. Our vaccination rates are the highest in the world and they correspond to high atopic disorders such as allergies, lupus, asthma.
Vaccine ingredients include heavy metals, animal serum and known neuro-toxins (i.e. formaldehyde and some others). While it’s true that we do ingest or inhale heavy metals in food and air naturally, injecting them into the bloodstream exposes our bodies more directly. The body has natural filters such as the skin, the mucous membranes, and the digestive system. Injecting a vaccine directly into the bloodstream bypasses all of them. The vaccine additive polysorbate 80 enables a virus injected into the bloodstream to easily pass into the brain, bypassing important natural barriers.
A notorious example of vaccine composition is the original polio vaccine invented in the 1950s. The polio virus was cultivated on shredded monkey kidneys, then made inactive by dunking in formaldehyde, and then the mash was made into vaccines. But the monkey kidneys bestowed this mash with something called SV40 (simian virus 40) which also got injected into people, millions of them. SV40 has been found to cause brain cancer. (Of course, there are studies that show that this monkey virus has no effect on people, but beware of statistics). This was in the past, right? Well, as late as 1999, this virus was found in the blood of a vaccinated child or two, during an autopsy…
Read. Think. Pray.
The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, by Robert Sears
The vaccination dilemma, edited by Murphy, Christine.
Summary of Notifiable Diseases, United States, 2006: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/summary.html
Possible Side-effects from Vaccines: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm
Afzal, M.A. (2006). Absence of detectable measles virus genome sequence in blood of autistic children who have had their MMR vaccination during the routine childhood immunization schedule of UK . Journal of Medical Virology, 78, 623-630.
and more…
Vaccines and Their Specific Ingredients: http://www.informedchoice.info
Fear of the Invisible, Janine Roberts (book)
The Virus and the Vaccine, Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher (book)
Research by Boyd Haley.
and more…
Week 37 belly
We are full term!
I come from a line of healers. Mom says that we’ve only seen the inside of the doctor’s office for few vaccinations and one or two injuries (such as me falling head first onto a sharp rock from about 5-foot height). All of our maladies were taken care of at home with herbs and other random home remedies.
Chris will jokingly say that my “untreated” high fevers killed many a brain cell and I can’t find any evidence to refute him. What are going to do…
The thing is, my parents still swear by their methods. Here are some of them:
- Mom would soak a pair of thick socks in vinegar and put them on our feet. She would then cover the wet ones with a pair of thick Bosnian handmade wool slippers-socks. Tucked in.
- Parchment or newspaper thickly coated with lard, laid on our chests. Tucked in.
- Primrose tisane
- Chamomile tea, sometimes with milk.
- Raw garlic. Lots of it.
- Grind pumpkin seeds, raw garlic, corriander seed. Ingest.
- Apply propolis tincture — a bee product my dad still swears by
- Yogurt or
- Raw, cold milk
- Few drops of expressed juice of a succulent plant Common Houseleek, into the ear or
- A drop of olive oil
- Fish oil pomade
- Few drops of propolis tincture in warm water
Week 36 belly
