Sunday, January 5, 2014

Six Months With Luna Cove

2 Days Old

Sweet Lotus Moon

Today we are so happy to be celebrating six months with our sweet little moon! Starting a family has been such a challenging honor and joy. We are grateful for the opportunity it has been, and continues to be! The most common advice we hear as new parents is to make every moment with our children count, as they just seem to grow up so fast. We're starting to understand that this really is true and the other day we were reflecting on how many changes we've seen take place in Luna and who she has become over the course of just six months. So amazing! Luna is a bright, happy little baby, with a huge capacity for patience, joy and love. Always flashing smiles and offering up affection, she is incredibly alert and attentive to the world around her, taking great interest in eye contact, laughter, and genuinely connecting with the people she encounters. Luna fusses only to communicate her needs and true crying is reserved for when something genuinely painful occurs. Her ability to pick up on and understand moods is amazing and she shows such a great awareness for feelings and intuition, as all babies do. We try to nurture this in her as much as possible, consistently going out of our way to provide her with the most calm and peaceful environment at all times, in an effort to honor her developing body and spirit. Such a privilege it has been to be her parents and to share in this wonderful process of growth! 

All of the decisions we've made since she was born follow in the same frequency of energy that we applied to how we brought her into this world, in what we felt was the most gentle way possible. Having her by ourselves in the comfort of our own little apartment and keeping her attached to the placenta through the tradition of Lotus Birth, was the best experience we could have asked for. Her posture towards life is special and unique for babies we typically see here in the US, but we do not think it is a miracle or a one-off chance by any means! We credit so much of her demeanor to the influence of the decisions we've made, especially those that challenge the status quo. Birth and parenting have, in general, become very complicated and corporate matters, more often than not dictated and controlled by a system that discourages intuition and does not operate from a place of love or heart-centeredness. Most of the behaviors seen in children these days are a result of being brought into the world and raised through this type of system. The picture of birth and parenting that we typically see represented is far from the beauty and power that this creative process innately contains or has the potential to be. One way we can start to heal our earth is by healing attitudes and practices around birth and parenting, empowering families to really take this sacred experience into their own hands. We hope to be a catalyst for this change by how we live as a family, and already we feel so grateful for how Luna has influenced and blessed this world with her presence. We celebrate you today, Miss Luna Cove Castro, for every precious moment you have been in our lives, and all of the joyful moments to come!

A Foxy Girl And Her Father

Sitting Up!

Flower Child
Until just the other day I had completely forgotten that we recorded video during labor. We had planned to film her birth, but the camera was abandoned at some point during our long adventure with her, and so these few minutes are all we have. It's not much, but it was so special for us to discover we had it, and we thought it would be fun to share it all with you as a little glimpse into what our experience was like. And of course to celebrate Luna being six months earthside! This was taken 16 hours into labor, 12 hours before she was actually born. A long and wild journey, indeed! You can really get an idea of just how tiny and city-congested our apartment was. (Yes, that is an airplane going overhead at minute 5:30!) Such special memories. It was a joy and an honor to give birth to this beautiful baby and I look forward to the day I will be blessed to do it again. You can read Luna's birth story and more about our Lotus Birth experience here and here. We hope you enjoy and have such a wonderful Sunday! We send thoughts of love and encouragement from our hive to yours.

 

If you didn't have a natural birth, it's never too late to start natural parenting! Gentle birth, gentle mothering by Sarah Buckley is a great resource to start with for those interested in more on the subject.
     

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