This old house, v. 2.0

One of the reasons I wanted to buy an old house is for the history in the home. The imagined lives of its past inhabitants, wondering about the children growing here. Wondering about who had the house built.

In this house some of those questions were easily answered. We have the original blue prints and the original work order for the home, passed down by the 4 previous owners of this home. Almost nothing in our house has been changed except the kitchen has been updated and the basement finished.

We also know quite a good deal about the original owner of the house. Mr. Sittle and his wife were the first people to build on this street in 1926. They moved here from a farm and brought some of the pieces of their old barn with them, which are still in the garage. Mr. Sittle was a milk man for a local milk company, he drove a horse drawn milk wagon up and down Market Street, when it was still a brick road. He was driving milk for that company still, when they started delivering the milk in trucks.

Our next door neighbors moved into their home when the Sittles were retired. They tell us all about how Mr. Sittle would bring a lawn chair out into the front yard just to watch my neighbor’s children play in the yard. My neighbor, Bob, recollects Mr. Sittle with a look in his eye like he’s remembering a long lost friend, or a close family member.

Now our neighbors are reaching retirement and Bob comes out and chats with Olivia and tickles Elise and pretty much acts like an on site grandfather. I can see that he is pretty satisfied in becoming the neighborhood replacement for old Mr. Sitttle.

Here’s movie trailer

about something very close to my heart: the normalization of childbirth.

I have had two very different births. Olivia’s birth was a nightmare and Elise’s birth was beautiful. It wasn’t a homebirth, but it would have been if the laws in Ohio would permit me to have a transfer in the case of an emergency to a doctor that I knew.

Look up your state’s birth laws, unless you live in New Mexico you will be astonished.

Be educated on natural childbirth (as in take a Bradley class, or something not offered in a hospital), have a midwife, a doula, or a husband/best friend/coach to help you deliver as naturally is possible. One thing people don’t know about birth is that one intervention leads to another, even something as seemingly harmless as continuous fetal monitoring.

Protect yourself and your baby.