We are having a consistent conversation in our home at the moment, and any parent can relate to this. It is the “When it is my birthday” conversation. Now this conversation can actually happen all year long depending on your child, and then become particularly heightened the month and weeks leading up to the birthday. In our home we love to celebrate birthdays with lots of thoughtful gestures and so there is plenty of birthday conversation. With Maya’s 7th Birthday a few weeks away we are talking, talking and talking. What was on her wish list this morning…why 17 frangipane tarts please!

Anyway, that aside, all the birthday talk sends me into a reflective space about when this little being came into the world. It reminds me of how she came to be, and that first moment I held her, it reminds me of her birth-day.

Now I do not want this to turn into If you give a Moose a Muffin, but when I think about her birth, I think about how amazing it was, and how I managed to make my birthing dreams come true, and how I managed to survive doing it…then I think about the phenomenal midwife Jayne Alder who took us on as a first birth at home, when many midwives in Australia would or could not. I think about the faith she instilled in me that I was capable to birth naturally at home, and how when I was at a point I thought I was going to die, Jayne lightly told me that birth was going to start soon. Start!!! I remember being so weak from 20 hours of laboring, and still no more than a few cm dilated. I could not stand, but insisting that I be vertical to birth. Cam held me under the arms, and they filled me with supportive energy. Then finally, 24 hours after the first contraction, with piercing agony of my body tearing into two, our baby arrived. I collapsed on the daybed, and held onto new life.

We did not know if we were having a boy or a girl, and after the birth, I held her for so long, before Jayne asked me the gender. Jayne of course knew…we looked over our baby, and we had a girl…we had our precious Maya. Jayne weight her with a hand held sling scale, and our little baby girl was a huge 9lb 20z (4.2 kg). Jayne stitch up my tear, and left us to be with our baby.

A couple of hours later Jayne returned to our home to check on us. When she arrived she had a container of fresh baked muffins. Maybe it was because I had just completed the most physically taxing experience of my life, and maybe I was super hungry, but these muffins were the best muffins I had ever eaten…I think I ate four. Loaded with bran and dried fruit to restore energy, and to keep my system flowing gently after birth. It was just what I needed, and she knew it. I never would have thought, that when we found our midwife, we found the perfect muffin too! So if  this Mama’s baby has a birthday, it will reminder her of a midwife and the muffin that went with it too.

 

Jayne’s Bran Muffins

1 cup flour

1 cup bran

1/3 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup oil ( I use light olive  or canola oil)

1 cup milk

1 tsp baking soda

 

I use this recipe as a base and add any fresh or dried fruit, and the relative spice, that I happen to have. Some of the things I like to use in this recipe: grated apple, bananas, grated carrot, raspberries, blueberries, dried dates, apricots and raisins….have fun and enjoy!

Method

Pre-heat oven to 400˚ Combine flour, bran, sugar, spices and soda. Stir until mixed. Add milk, eggs, oil and stir well. Add oats and fruit. Bake in lined muffin tin for 12-15 minutes. Makes 9 – 12 regular sized muffins.