I read an interesting article in the paper today, about home births. The newspaper had apparently been following the story of a mother in the lead-up two the birth of her second child. The article included a detailed description of the birth process as it happened in her own home. Her husband and daughter were present for the occasion, along with the midwife and the reporter. The article included two pictures, one of the four family members, and one of the mother, topless, breast-feeding her newborn baby.
It was good to see such a picture of wholesome nudity published in the paper. I also thought that the idea of home birthing is very consistent with the concepts of nudity, and how helpful it will be to her daughter, being there when her new brother was born. Now I am not saying either that this woman is a nudist, or that nudists should or must have home births - I am just saying that it is good that some people at least can approach the birth of a child with respect to the miracle that it is, rather than doing it secretly and keeping children away from it. Obviously, there are circumstances when family cannot attend the birth, whether due to other appointments (which I think is sad) or due to being shut out of Operating Theatre (which is no-ones fault).
The article said the such community midwifes would charge about $2,500 - $3,000 (US$1,500) for their services (including prenatal and postnatal checkups).
When my wife gave birth, she insisted on being nude the whole time. All that cloth was just in the way! Nobody minded. She was a lot more comfortable that way. Not that this was exactly a "comfortable" birth. But she could have had a body image problem and it could have made it worse. Her mother and dad was in there along with me and my older sister. When they took her into the operating room for a C-section (which didn't happen fortunately) we were not there for that. So we missed the actual birth. But we didn't mind when we found out she had it normally.
We were at a Womens Hospital in Greensboro. Very nice facility.
My younger brother and sister were both born in the home, in California, but it wasn't a public or family affair. We had to stay upstairs in our room. No peeking allowed.
I was able to be present at the birth of our one daughter 19 years ago thanks to the fighting of many over the years for that cause, but when I was growing up in the late fifties and sixties, man, you'd never even imagine anyone else being present. What used to bother me about personal things like nudity and birth was that you can't just spring it on kids and expect them to be comfortable with it. Sexuality, birth, nursing, whatever, was just a mystery to me because my parents weren't the type to discuss things like that. You have to grow up with it and have it be a part of your life for it to be natural. I never saw my parents hugging or kissing, so when they did on a rare occasion it was just very uncomfortable. 35 years ago in "Life" magazine they had a picture of a mother naked on her side reaching for her equally naked baby. You saw a breast, a butt and nothing else (in other words, pubic). My mother just didn't think that was right. The mag stayed out for a few days and then disapeared. She got rather tense about every little thing like that. I was fascinated. I hope the trend of openness continues in our society so everyone becomes comfortable with things like birth and breastfeeding in the open. Things that, like social nudity, are just a normal part of life.
Except when shows on TV were turn off for being "suggestive", my parents and thus my siblings too, NEVER said one word about sex. When my primary school had a sex education class, I was in the group that was excluded from it by my parents (about 1/4 of the class did not attend). So I knew nothing about sex except little innaccurate things gleaned from fellow students. Until high school, of course, when I read the biology textbook very carefully.
The way TV was censored in my family was that violence did not seem to be a problem, but sex, nudity or coarse language meant that the show or movie would be turned off pretty quickly.
When I reached high school, due to the influence of my peers, and my prudish upbringing, I got involved in (or really, addicted to) pornography, and it has taken me years to get free of it. But I can gladly say - Praise God! I AM free! Pornography is no longer a temptation to me. The articles at www.experiencegrace.com were very helpful in showing me the verses that have helped my most in this challenge. Domai.com was also very helpful to me, showing me the beauty of women, that they are not sex objects. And of course this website, because I found the other two through here. (Actually I found Domai through Naturist Views, which was linked in this forum.)
I have to say, everything was hush hush for me growing up too (believe it or not). I am 20 years old, and if there is nudity on screen my mom still says "don't look!". But if it is an educational program, it's ok.
The most embarassing time for me in sex ed was the fact that I still didn't know what sex was (just knew it usually involved a male and a female sleeping nude together; makes you wonder how I was able to find naturism in the first place, hunh?). Then all of a sudden the speaker mentioned about wearing a condom before inserting the penis into the woman's vagina, I nearly had a heart attack! "You mean THAT'S what sex is? A guy puts his penis in the woman's vagina? Ew!!!". I was a teenager before I found this out. I guess if we had internet I would have found out earlier, but I am glad there are places on the Internet like this site, my site and DOMAI that teaches the beauty about nudity, and in a sense is able to seperate perversion from sex. That's a topic very difficult to explain and discuss.
Also, before I forget. I am finishing up college soon, and I will be moving my server in about 2 months or so, and I have no idea when I will be able to put it back up. So something has to be done with Naturist Views if I want it kept up. Any ideas? Also, I was thinking about once again restructuring the site. It doesn't quite get the message across like this one does, and still has compatibility/browsing glitches. I have since created 3 web sites, and I think I'm getting better, lol (I just finished my first html course; with FrontPage). It's just a shame I didn't have more experience before. I am ageing, and getting more wise. Even now I slip through transitions where I want the site gone, I want it back up. I'm too busy for it, I have all the time in the world. Right now, I'm taking a study break. I just spent 3 hours studying, and now I wanted to spend some time on the other important things on life, like teaching (even if done by simply expressing views). I will say this though, if Naturist Views goes offline, there will be a new site. Maybe with a different name, maybe with the same. But be it my site, or somebody else's there will always be naturist views.
Move the whole site to a server out there somewhere, like geocities.com
That is where my site is. I have never had any problems with it there. You can edit it from there as well. In fact, you can use html coding and write the whole thing on geocities editor. That is how I keep up with it.
That's what I have been thinking of. I hate the idea of having uncontrollable ads on my site, but Geocities isn't bad. I say it will be a fair bit of work to re-direct the traffic once the site moves. For now, it will stay where it is for a little over two months, then it's up in the air. It will live to see its first birthday, lol. I feel funny saying that, considering it is just a web site. Probably better to say "anniversary"? Ok, I'm just blabbing now...
You can copy it over to the new site and gradually get it updated while your original one is still running on your server. That will give you time to make sure the new location is running properly on geocities and that hyperlinks are being redirected, but still have your "anniversary" for your original site.
Yeah, that's what I think I'll do. The only flaw with geocities is I think it only gives 1gig of transfer per month? Right now the site uses 3 gigs of transfer per month. I'll start by removing the images, lol. Now I don't have a choice.
I think it was one time I tried to visit this site and couldn't, and got an error stating you had used your bandwidth up for the day? I could be mixed up with another site though...
Geocities seems to be the way to go though, so it's where I'll be going for now.
PS thank-you everyone who has supported me and my site so far. I appreciate all comments good and bad. If they were all good, I'd never be able to improve the site, and if they were all bad I'd never be inspired to keep going. So thank-you to everyone who has contributed in some way.
In junior high and into early high school it seemed like everyone knew what was what with sex and "doing it." I remember walking home after school sophmore year (I'm 15) with a buddy who dated alot and him saying something to the effect that he was ready to go all the way with a girl. I sort of knew about the inserting the penis into the vagina business, but how do you get to that point, who does the inserting, what do you do after its in...blah, blah, blah? Parents were uncomfortable about sex and nudity so it wasn't discussed much. That's why I applaud youth who can be comfortable with their own bodies naked. Education about everything can only bring things out in the open and solve more problems than it might cause. We have been very open and honest with our daughter and not made any sort of fuss over any type of nudity or sexual issues. She's 19 and doesn't even date yet. It just isn't a big deal to her because she knows most everything (you kids think you know everyhting, don't you? And get off my lawn!). She hangs with her friends and they include boys as well as girls. A couple of times she was the only girl with a half dozen guys. Fear breeds darkness and darkness is the home of Satan. Bring everything into the light and fear is gone.
In Clarita, Oklahoma by Dr. Haberly out of Wapanucka, OK.
I witnessed a birth in Safford, AZ where my ex-roommate from college was practicing. We went out for dinner. Just about when we were finishing, he got a call that his patient had broken her water bag. He asked me whether I wanted to watch.
I did. He introduced me to the family as a physician's assistant from NJ (I'd been a medic in Vietnam, and lived in NJ then, not too much of a stretch). They said "okay". We rushed to the greens room.
He got his on right away and rushed out. I went through 3 sets before I finally found a set that the draw strings worked on. When I got to the delivery room, Larry was catching the baby before it dropped onto the concrete floor.
I stood and watched the afterbirth come out. It kind of mesmerized me, because it was just like from a cow. (I grew up on the farm and had seen that.)
