My husband (and friends) threw me a surprise party last night in honor of my upcoming 50th birthday. To set the record straight, YES, I WAS ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT SURPRISED. Did I have any idea? NONE WHATSOEVER. At least not for last night.

The fact that I was truly surprised surprised people. They figured since Jay had successfully thrown me 30th and 40th surprise parties that I would have known he was throwing me a 50th, too. “Come on,” they said. “Can you not figure out that he is going to do this every decade?”

“But I told him not to,” was my response. Imagine, I actually thought he would listen and take me seriously.

Instead, what he took seriously was that he was going to show me how much I was loved by the people in my life, and he was going to pull it off without me knowing about it. Doing it a week before my actual birthday worked well, but the whole “sage smudging” really threw me off the scent.

 

Actually I think I made this really easy for them. If memory serves me – and it often doesn’t these days but that’s another post – I think it was my idea to do a sage smudging at Larry and Tracey’s new home. Native Americans used sage smudging (the process of burning the dried plant and fanning the smoke over your body or throughout an area with sacred intention) as a simple and powerful way to clear an energy field and make room for new energy. It’s a cleansing, be it for a person, a place or an object. So Tracey said, great, let’s do it June 19th. Done. I’ll get the sage.

Let me tell you, the only thing smudged was my mascara.

At least once in a lifetime, every person should have the opportunity to hear what friends and family think about them and how much they are loved. At least once. It’s an amazing, powerful experience. Tracey pulled this off using her scrap booking prowess and finesse. She painstakingly mailed instructions with the necessary papers and return envelopes to my friends and family, who then took the time to write letters to moi and send them back to her with photos, which she then lovingly arranged into a scrapbook.

I’ve admired, and even envied, her family scrapbooks from afar. I never imagined I’d be the recipient of one. WOW.

I’m a little embarrassed about my reaction when I walked into their home at the start of the evening and was faced head on with the surprise. It’s an odd thing to have your mind firmly rooted in one idea and then, BLAMMO, in a flick of an instant that idea is shot to smithereens. My reaction time was slow on the uptake. Maybe it’s my age. But here I was, dressed in my earth mama, tealeaf reading, and hippie chick attire complete with peace sign necklace and babushka around the head, and I’m confronted with a room full of people staring. Gawking. At me. WTF. Understandably, that was my reaction.

Shoot, if I had a do over, I would have put my hands to my mouth and let out a squeal of surprise and excitement, maybe jumped up and down (if I weren’t wearing heavy 5 inch platforms that is). Instead, I felt like time stopped and I was slogging through mud while trying to grasp the sudden change in direction. (I hope I didn’t offend anyone in the process.)

What did compute was that my dear friends were there – some newer, some older, some waaaay older. Like Bill from college. COLLEGE. I had a friend from college at my 50th birthday party. See, it’s those things that remind me who I am when I forget. If someone who knew me 30 years ago still loves me, I must be okay.

Many of the friends and family who weren’t there were represented by their contributions in my AMAZING scrapbook. Did I mention how amazing it is? I stayed up until about 2 a.m. reading and rereading and savoring the comments and photos and memorabilia. Two of my friends are poets, who knew!?

It’s a little disconcerting how easily and thoroughly everyone lied to me. Straight-faced, no weird eye twitches or trying to hide a smile, lies. I think some people were just avoiding me because they knew they weren’t up for the charade.

Actually, as I look back on the days prior, there were a few little incidences that gave me pause. It’s like re-watching The Sixth Sense and seeing all the clues that were there for the viewers all along. I had my suspicions, but they weren’t for last night. They were for next week. Good one, Jay.

So, dear husband, thank you for not listening to me this time, or at least for realizing that, when you’re getting to be of a certain age, it’s especially important to be celebrated. I love you!

 
 
Pam Diamond, owner of First Daze & NightZzz postpartum doula and baby sleep consulting services, received certification as a H.U.G. trainer this month, one of only three others in the country to have earned these credentials.

“Parenting a newborn is one of the toughest jobs there is, and yet it’s one of the only jobs that doesn’t come with operating instructions,” Diamond says. “The H.U.G. is like an owner’s manual for new parents, and I’m delighted to have another tool to use to help guide parents in their new roles.”

The H.U.G. – which stands for Help, Understanding and Guidance – is an evidence-based, innovative, and family-friendly approach to helping parents understand their baby's body language in order to promote breastfeeding, prevent and solve common problems around a baby's eating, sleeping, and crying, and enhance parent-child bonding, interaction and attachment.

“Bleary-eyed new parents – many of whom have had little or no experience with newborns – often misread their infant’s behavior,” Diamond says. “For instance, an over-stimulated newborn may continuously look away from his mother’s face while she tries to interact with him, but not because he doesn’t like her, as she might mistakenly assume. Instead, he is using an innate reflex to shut out stimuli and calm himself.”

Parents who take the class learn how to tell when their baby is over-stimulated, how to help their baby eat well, how to help their baby sleep well and what to do to comfort a crying baby.

Jan Tedder, BSN and Family Nurse Practitioner, developed the H.U.G., after her extensive work at The Brazelton Institute/Touchpoints Center. It's based on the medical and child development literature of Drs. T. B. Brazelton, M. & P. Klaus, M. Lamb, M. & H. Papousek, B. Howard, R. Sturner and others. This research and Tedder’s materials have been presented at national and international conferences and published in JOGNN, MCN, and Journal of Perinatal Education.

The H.U.G. can be taught in health department classes, clinics, at private home visits, birthing centers, childcare centers, in community parent support programs and early childhood education programs.
 
 
What’s in a name? A lot, apparently, when your last name is Diamond. Almost daily, someone somewhere makes a comment about my name. It used to be mostly women sales clerks saying, “Oooh, Diamond, what a great name.” But lately men join in, too. “Sweet name,” they tell me. “Sounds like a rock star or a radio personality.” 

“Pam Diamond, private eye,” I retort. I got that from one of my former editors at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. Whenever I’d come into the office he’d announce, “Pam Diamond, private eye.” I liked it. I kept it. 

My daughter loves, loves, loves the story of how I met – or almost didn’t meet – her father and ultimately acquire the name. I met Patti Diamond in a shoe store in Dallas, Texas and, once she learned I was Jewish (What? Doesn’t everyone talk religion when buying shoes? Isn’t buying shoes a religion in and of itself?) she said, “Oh, you need to meet my brother-in-law.” He turned into a blind date, one of two I scheduled for the weekend. One date was for Friday and one was Saturday. I don’t remember how I got the other blind date for that weekend but I remember whom it was with – Andy Shrimp. Yep, that’s right. A Jewish guy named Shrimp. (For the goyim reading this, shrimp isn’t kosher.) 

This is the part my daughter loves. She says, instead of Pam Diamond I could have been Pam Shrimp. She says this laughing hysterically. Pam Shrimp. Imagine.

But it didn’t happen, because I cancelled both dates that weekend after coming down with the flu. I was deathly sick. Not, I don’t feel like going out sick. I was SICK. So I called Shrimp first to give him the bad news. “Sorry to cancel but <sniff> I’m really sick and <cough> I will have to reschedule.” “Yeah, okay, right,” Shrimp said, unsympathetically and sounding as if he’d been blown off many times before and figured this was just another time. Had I the energy I might have tried to convince him otherwise, alas, I did not. I filed it under red flag “pissy phone manners” and instead, I called Jay to break the news, and the date, with him. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry you’re not feeling well,” Jay said. “Let me know when you’re feeling better and we’ll get together then.” 

Bye bye, Shrimp. Hello Diamond. 

Suffice to say I never gave Shrimp another chance. Crikey, he couldn’t get past his own shrimpy little complex long enough to muster up some sympathy for me. Jay, on the other hand, being his sweet, sensitive self, got a date and the girl. 

So, the moral is, if you have a name like Shrimp, it would behoove you to be courteous and sympathetic or you just might get dumped before you even have a chance to prove you’re more than your name implies. Whereas, when you have a name like Diamond, well, it speaks volumes.
 
 
This postpartum doula thing confuses people. First there’s the word doula. “What did you say?” “How do you spell that?” “What does it mean?” These are questions I’m frequently asked. It’s an ancient Greek word (pronounced due luh) that used to mean hand-servant but now means a woman who provides support to other woman, and in my case that support comes after the baby arrives. Postpartum. Following childbirth.

Actually, I’m not sure which throws people more, doula or postpartum.

To me, it’s obvious. I’m working with women AFTER birth. But people get stuck at postpartum and next thing you know they’re talking to me about someone they knew – sometimes themselves - who suffered miserably from perinatal mood disorders (the new postpartum depression, much like bipolar disorder is the new manic-depressive) and how much they could’ve benefited from someone like me. Well, yes, I do work with women suffering from PMD, but that’s not the bulk of what I do. Mostly I work with healthy new moms, guiding them in newborn care, breastfeeding, giving them time to sleep, shower and eat. You know, the things family members would typically do if they lived nearby or the relationships weren’t so dysfunctional.

But I find myself explaining my role over and over and over again. Obviously, this field is in need of some serious PR work, at least in the southeast where I happen to reside. Even my own daughter doesn’t get it. I heard her tell a friend that I baby-sit, or something.

I take offense to the babysitting thing. I am not a glorified babysitter. Show me a babysitter who can accomplish what I can with a family in 3 or 4 short hours. Not to mention some of the more unorthodox functions I’ve performed. One family had recently moved so I helped unpack boxes, organize drawers (good gosh, if she could see my own drawers she would’ve thought twice) and even hung a toilet paper holder that was lying on the floor in the bathroom. Another client’s father died while she and I were working together. I helped write letters and make phone calls on behalf of his estate. Another client’s husband had been a chef in a previous life. He would leave me detailed instructions for prepping the evening meal, in between helping his wife with breastfeeding issues and teaching her how to deal with a very, very fussy baby. One time he had me brine a chicken with salt and fresh rosemary snipped from the garden outside. By the time he went this far, I was starting to suspect that perhaps my husband was paying him to teach me to cook under the guise of them hiring me as a doula. I also saved some clients big bucks by averting a call to the plumber. Since we had recently unstopped our garbage disposal with this particular technique, I recommended they try it. Voila, it worked. And my latest unique success story was curing the dad’s snoring. Though they managed to procreate twins, the couple had been sleeping apart – she with earplugs – for quite a while. I suggested what worked for my husband, and they are now not sleeping but together for the first time in years.

So back to what to call my profession… The birth doula people have it easy. They only have to explain the doula part. Birth, even labor, is crystal clear. No explanation needed there. But how can I overcome the postpartum doula confusion? What else could I call it? After Birth Doula? That sounds like someone who deals with placentas and blood and performs odd rituals like planting pithe placenta under a tree. Not the image I’m going for. So until I come up with something else, I’ll keep explaining that, no I’m not a nurse who specializes in postpartum depression, but a certified doula who works with mothers after they have their babies. If you can suggest a way to say that in 3 words or less I’d be most appreciative.


 
 

Can it be true? Supposedly, Weebly and Mac are now friends. I must admit, I loved Weebly. Let's see how it works.

 
 

In case you're looking for me, I'm at mypollyblog.livejournal.com. Come on over and visit. Sit a spell.

 
 

Okay, ya'll. I really hate to do this but I think I'm going to have to go back to blogspot. I really don't want to, but, you see, I got an iMac and we moved the pc downstairs to the playroom. Unfortunately, I cannot post to my blog or edit it from my Mac. They aren't compatible, or whatever the proper terminology is. So if I feel a blog coming on, I have to get up from my beautiful iMac, head downstairs to the pc, which is now surrounded by CRAP that belongs to the kids. (Yes, my computer is surrounded by crap, too, but it's my crap and that makes a world of difference.) So, until Weebly can get along with Mac, I will move back to blogspot. (http://mypollyblog.blogspot.com) Hmmm...now that I think of it, I haven't actually tried posting to blogspot from my Mac so it may not work either.  I'll try it out, and if it works, I'll give you the heads up to move on over.  Weebly Dan, you've been most helpful. Please let me know if you think weebly will work better with Mac in the near future. Bye for now.

 
 

It’s come to my attention that some of you are not privy to Pamnation, and it’s high time you learned.

Here’s how it works (true story)…

A friend from book club was wearing a lovely necklace at our last get-together. We all oohed and ahhed about it, until she finally she told us a friend from my neighborhood made it.

Today I called my book club friend to get the jewelry-making neighbor’s number, as I wanted to see her jewelry. So I called her and went by this afternoon.

When she opened the door, I said, “Oh, you look familiar.”

“Is it school?” she asked. No. “Church?” No. Oh well, we’ve probably seen each other at the pool or something.

We chatted while I looked through her jewelry and found a couple of things to buy. Then, as I was walking out the door to leave, something in her living room caught my eye, and I stepped back into the house to look again.

“I used to have a sofa just like that,” I said.  This look came across her face and she asked, “Where did you used to live.” When I told her near Garner, she said, “I bought that sofa from you. Remember, I broke the heel of my shoe while I was there?”

Sure enough, there was my red, camelback sofa, the one that I brought from Florida. The one I nursed both my babies on. The one Olivia leaped back and forth to from the coffee table. The one I had reupholstered from pale yellow to deep red. There it was in her living room.

I will say, she has given it a lovely new life. She has much the same colors as we did in our old home. The sofa sits between two built-in bookshelves in a room filled with music and love, as evidenced by the beautiful piano, guitar and drums set up in there.  She said it’s where she plants herself making jewelry while her husband and children are playing music.

Now I ax ya, what are the odds of that sofa moving to the very same neighborhood to which we later moved? And what, for crying out loud, are the chances that I’d ever find out about it?

That’s called Pamnation. You never know when it will strike. But you can count on it striking again!

 
 

Do you read the comic strip Zitz? If you do, then you may understand what life in this household is like these days.

For instance, Zach has this female interest. She’s Indian. I tell you this for a reason, which you will soon see. Tomorrow is the Diwali festival at the amphitheater down the road from our home. For those of you not in the know, Diwali is the Indian Festival of Lights. There will be lots of cultural festivities throughout the day, including dance performances, arts and crafts and lots of food. Then it culminates with a performance from India’s first and only boy band, called none other than A Band of Boys.

Well, I wanted to go to this festival but, of course, Zach was grumbling about it, like he does a lot these days with anything I suggest. “Aww, do I have to go?” That was his attitude. UNTIL, he texted with his friend, who said she was going to the Diwali festival, and suddenly, he is looking pretty good for the fact that he even knew what the heck it was, much less was going also. (Yeah, now he’s going.) And do I get any credit for broadening his worldly horizons. NOOOOOOOOO!

Another source of contention is his 8th grade school trip. It was changed from Boston to Outward Bound. Let me tell you, suggesting that a bunch of teenage girls and boys at various stages of puberty go out into the wilderness for several days without showers, without toilets, without blow dryers, is akin to asking them to go to school nekkid.  So, naturally, Zach is doing a lot of grumbling about it.  I said, “What if you had an open mind to the possibility that this could be a great experience? What if you just put some positive thoughts out there about it?" To which he replied, "That's like acting excited about doing math homework." I said, "Well, you can do it grumbling and get it done, or you can do it with a good outlook and get it done. Either way, you did it, but how was the experience for you?" 

For some reason, I just don't think he's getting my point. I need to figure out how to say it in teen-speak.

So, like, what if you, like, just went or whatever? Like, maybe you'd, like, have fun or something.

 
 

I didn’t win the dadgum Paula Deen Limerick contest. Apparently poets – with really good southern drawls – abound in our area. I think it’s because my accent wasn’t quite up to snuff. I should’ve had Dennis read it for me. Or Dr. Land. Either way, I lost. You can hear the winners, if you want, at share.triangle.com/PaulaDeen. Here’s mine, so you can see how it compares.

A sweet lil’ lady down South
Feared havin’ to live hand to mouth
She made fancy fixins
Threw buttery gritz in
Now, ya’ll love ‘er from North to South