Lunapads

I am currently living in the northeast of Brazil, in the third largest city of the country, which nevertheless ranks first in terms of poverty and unemployment. Women are frequently the sole earners in a lot of poor households, since it is easier for them to get a job, normally as domestic servants. Working conditions can vary, some women get a salary (minimum wage, which is still not enough to cover all their family’s expenses), free meals while at work and a decent treatment from their bosses. Others are not so fortunate. Stories about sexual harassment from male employers are common, and quite often the victims of this inappropriate behaviour are forced out of their job and accused of “trying to steal” a family man. Domestic and sexual violence is also very common, and only just recently the law was changed so that a man convicted of beating a woman now has to go to jail instead of having to pay a fine. But what does all this have to do with Lunapads?

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I am a Lunapads user for about 3 years now. I guess if you thought there was a certain look to a cloth pad user, I would break the mold. I am a stay-at-home mom to 2 kids, minivan driving, totally non-hippie looking woman who enjoys all kinds of active and fun sports and really enjoys shopping!! At the time I made the switch, I was a tampon only gal and the thought of pads invoked visions of high school nightmares of crinkling, leaking and wet, smelly diaper-feeling pads. But the tampons (organic cotton) were really causing a lot of problems for me——constant yeast infections, terrible cramps, awful dryness and ovulation pain so bad I could not get off the couch a full week after my period ended!! I first heard about cloth pads from a friend probably a year earlier and was horrified—-I thought it was such a ridiculous and gross idea! But with all my problems I was getting worried, and when I typed in a search about tampons being bad for your body on the internet, cloth pads came up. In fact, at the time, Lunapads was one of the first companies that came up. So I read the whole website and all the testimonials, but it was really the awesome colors and prints that sold me. I ordered a couple of sets of maxis and minis, and well, the rest is history.

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On Monday August 28th, mid morning, I realized my mucous plug had broken. Excited, I phoned my doula and my midwife who asked me to keep them posted throughout the day for any other changes. So, I carried on the day getting things ready to possibly give birth that day, but with no particular urgency.

All along, the plan was to have a home birth, since my first birth with Aiden was without any complications. Not completely satisfied with the hospital birth and my caregivers, I was moved by the stories and experience of friends who had successful home births, and I longed to have a more peaceful and gentle birth in the comfort of our own home. With the support of my husband Craig and a team of amazing midwives and a doula, I got my wish…

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UPDATED: Spread the Love Campaign 2008!

When I was pregnant with Aiden 4 years ago, I read about blessingway ceremonies and immediately realized this is what I wanted for me and the baby. Last week, surrounded by a dozen special women in my life, we had another blessingway ceremony for me and baby #2, and it was a special night indeed.

A blessingway ceremony originates from a navajo tradition to celebrate, support and honour many of life’s changes. With the help of a little research on google, I worked with a dear friend, Signy Wilson, to develop a blessingway ceremony to honour the upcoming birth and create some special energy so that the baby would feel safe and welcome coming into the world. Signy, our spiritual leader for the evening, not only set the stage and led us through an amazing ceremony, but knows how to bring out the goddess out in all of us. We sat in a cirlce, cleansed the space, honoured our matrilineal line and adorned an altar with symbollic treasures and reminders for me to use during the birth.

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Since this blog is supposed to be a real, intimate look inside Lunapads, I’m going to share with you some of the ups and downs of what it takes to run a small business. I appreciate that it’s hard to know what things look like to folks on the outside, but sometimes we get emails from women who think that we are a very large, profitable company (must be our awesome website and super-professional customer service! While we’re certainly successful enough to keep going, I’d like to talk a bit about some of the challenges that we have faced and are currently facing, in order to let our readers know a little more about the realities and sacrifices that have gone into bringing Lunapads to where we are today.

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I guess you haven’t heard from me in awhile, summer’s been busy and I’m living it up! Speaking of summer, one of my very favorite events each year is the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Now, in case you haven’t been to a folk festival in awhile, the term “folk” sure has changed, especially here in Vancouver. The new slogan is “you are the folk, this is your music” since this genre has become so all-encompassing.

Now, I not only attend the festival, I am a volunteer of 5 years, 4 of which have been spent on the Lantern Committee. Now what, may you ask, is the Lantern Committee? Well, we get together weeks before the festival and get our creative juices flowing. We build lanterns out of bamboo, tissue paper, and lots of glue to be carried on bamboo poles. Each year we have a theme and this year it was ‘Things in the Garden’. There was a wasp, a grasshopper, a queen bee, a snail, a gnome, a leaf, a dragon (like I said, we get creative!) and so much more. We parade through the night crowd gathered around the main stage and then light the path for them to exit the park. It’s a magical experience and if you ever make it here, you should really check it out!
Photos: taken by my partner Dave Niddrie, this one is me carrying the leaf lantern, I’m wearing a headset cause we are pro-processioners, I’m the “head” and lead the group through the crowd and then I can have contact with the “tail” so I know what’s going on with everyone behind me. For more photos of the festival check out Dave’s Flickr profile.

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While I’m not sure where that phrase originally came from, it seemed like an appropriate title for my entry this month. At 37 weeks pregnant (I’m 20 weeks in this picture) with less than 3 to go, I have finally found some time to reflect as this pregnancy winds to a close. It is so true that with your second pregnancy, things seem to happen quickly and rather unconsciously. Juggling the demands of running a business, volunteer commitments and keeping a preschooler occupied, fed, and happy means the pregnancy doesn’t get the attention it did the first time. Of course all the milestones during this pregnancy were important (like getting past the first trimester without miscarrying, hearing the heartbeat, etc.) but there hasn’t been much time to just reflect on how life will change in a few weeks.

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I’ve named this post after the work pictured above, “The Birth of Consciousness” by John Outram

There is something special about every birth, and something that stays with us about every birth story that we hear. I’ve been thinking about birth lately for a bunch of reasons - friends trying to conceive or about to have babies, the “birth” of various creative projects (more on these soon!), and my upcoming attendance of a wonderful benefit for a new birthing center in New York City.

What’s coming up for me is an observation that, in mainstream culture at least, menstruation and birth are held in a similar regard in at least one respect that I call “bounce back and get on with it”. A birth story that I heard a few years ago epitomizes this concept. The woman had a fast, intervention-free labour and birth that took place on a Saturday morning. To top it off, she informed us proudly, she was back in the office, baby in tow, first thing Monday morning. I was speechless - 48 hours into your first child’s life and you’re where? And yet she was beaming and happy - clearly it was the right choice for her, but it has kind of haunted me ever since.

While I’m thrilled that the birth was so easy for her, I’m still perplexed that she felt that she had to go to work (in her case, this would not have been a choice driven by financial necessity) so soon, even though it clearly felt empowering to her. In conversations about birth and new mothers I have heard numerous admiration-filled versions of “she just bounced right back!” (this is a particularly popular observation among my Mother’s friends when comparing their daughters’ experiences), and I’m left wondering what’s being left out of the picture.

For me, giving birth was a crazy, warrior-worthy marathon, a physically and emotionally shattering experience from which I most certainly did not “bounce right back”. So maybe a “woo hoo!” birth triggers me, but what I think I’m picking up on on a larger level is a culture that celebrates moving as quickly as possible through the sacred events of our lives.

It’s actually very similar to how menstruation is treated, at least in this culture - little or no celebration of menarche, no encouragement to really understand our cycles, and very little support around taking time to deeply connect with ourselves, or even discuss it.  The spate in recent years of hormonal birth control methods used for menstrual suppression is right on trend here, and it leads me to wonder what else is being suppressed along with our cycles, cramps, bleeding and all the rest.  For all that our cycles (not to mention giving birth!) can be a chore, I encourage all women to look deeper and see what gifts are there for us as well.

Posted by Marie-Geneviève

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the importance of music (and girl bands specifically) in making me the feminist that I am today. This has been spurred by two recent events — the break-up of Sleater-Kinney and the Team Dresch show I recently attended in Seattle. But I should back up a little first and give you some context.

See, as a girl who was a bit of an outcast, coming of age in the early 90s in a medium-sized conservative city in Alberta, expressing myself and my values and opinions was not always easy. And like many of my friends, music was the most accessible and most meaningful way I found of doing just that. I was already a proud feminist (thanks in large part to the teachings of my mother), and so all-girl or female-fronted bands appealed to me from the get-go. I remember being in high school when I first heard about Riot Grrrl, which was a punk rock feminist movement/community made up of numerous young women from across the country, a lot of whom were in such bands. It only took one mix tape made for me by a friend and I was hooked.

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