She is nursing here and holding a partially peeled potato. She likes to fall asleep holding something--and those somethings are often very random.
I’m just bursting with ideas for blog posts recently, but Alaina has other ideas for me namely with regard to her sleep “schedule.” She has had several days recently where she has only napped for 15 minutes. At night, she insists on sleeping with her head on my arm, which is really fine and pretty sweet, but since she goes to bed at about 8:30, I am then “trapped” there in the dark (light has to be off for her to go to sleep too) for hours and hours. (My iPad helps make this work.) With my boys, I could usually sneak away after they fell asleep. She, however, pops awake when I reclaim my arm. In the morning, I can’t get up before she does either, because she is still on my arm and pops awake when I try to sneakily wiggle away. I’ve surrendered to these things, knowing that they will pass soon and enjoying the fact that my baby has spent every night of her existence sleeping in my actual arms, but I have not surrendered to the notion that I’ll be able to put her down for a nap during the day! I nurse her to sleep for nap while walking her in the Ergo and then put her down on the bed. Today…popped up. This weekend…popped back up. Uh oh.
I have been “mining” my old blog for content that I want to move over here. In the same post in which I originally shared some quotes from the book The Mommy Wars, I found a quote that spoke to me again today as I try to figure out my “balance” with kids and teaching and writing and A’s popping up from nap ways. I thought I’d shared the quote here before, but I don’t see it now. So, here it is:
Let me save you some money: In a life with children, balance does not exist. Once you’re a parent, you can figure you’ll be out of whack for the rest of your life…Children are not born to provide balance. children are made to stir us up, to teach us how angry we can get, how scared we can be, how utterly happy, happier than we’d ever imagined was possible, how deeply we can love. Children turn us upside down and inside out; they send us to the depths and heights of ourselves; but they do not balance us. We can’t balance them either, and that’s a good thing, too. They’re finding out how to live in the world, and the most we can do is make them as safe as possible and have a good time with them.
I have struggled in the past when things like this happen thinking I need to give up my blog, but in the last year, I’ve accepted it is one of my favorite hobbies and should actually be the last thing to go. I’ve also come to the conclusion that it is a legitimate avenue for writing, providing me with countless seeds for later article and book projects, not to mention the personal posts serving as a “time capsule” or memory record for both me and my kids in the future.
I didn’t make a “onemonthababy” post about Alaina and as I flipped back through my journal on her birthday this year, I found the entry I made on February 20—the day after her one month “birthday.” So, I feel like adding it now to join the other monthababy posts I made during her first year.
Alaina is one month old! Still a nice quiet, contented little soul with new smiling action, head-lifting action, and potty-peeing action. I love her SO incredibly much. I’m loving having a baby again. I do not find baby-parenting to be difficult, confusing, or frustrating. Pretty much non-stop marvelment. She feels so easy to take care of.
Alas, tis not true of my other kids lately who are exhausting, noisy, need-factories obsessed with butts and poop jokes.
Weather has been delightful lately and I walked with her down to the priestess rocks this afternoon feelings as if I was officially “presenting” her to the world/planet.
Earlier in the week, I took her outside to wait for [my friend’s] visit and I walked the labyrinth with her and also introduced her to Noah. I had profound sense of unity with her. Symbiosis. A feeling of being her whole world and she my whole world. World felt narrowed in on us and then also like I was part of some great, grand majesty. Her nestled against my chest, me protecting her and enfolding her. Nurturing her. Our twosome the whole world. “The sheltered simplicity of two people existing only for each other.” And, that is enough. All she wants is me and I can give that to her. 🙂
I also spotted this quote on a friend’s Facebook page recently and it spoke to my heart and feelings:
“A mother’s body remembers her babies–the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It’s the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can’t dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. . . . That’s how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are–rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.
But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.” ― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Alaina is most likely my last baby. When we are alone together, I often spend time just staring at her. I want to memorize her. I stare at her eyelashes, her lips, her little nose, the curve of her cheek, her profile, her fuzzy hair, her little neck. I nuzzle her face with my nose and lips and sniff her all the time. Today, we went back down to the woods, and just sat there on the rocks together and I marveled at how fast time continues to pass and how she grows and grows and grows. It isn’t that I didn’t notice or appreciate or cherish my boys as babies, I did, and I have crystal clear memories of lying in bed nursing my first baby and cradling the back of his soft little head with my hand and crying as I laid there thinking about how he would be a teenager before I knew it. He isn’t gone now, of course, and he is still my “baby” forever and I cherish him today also, but that baby whose head I cradled and cried over in that moment is in fact gone and every day I feel conscious of the fact that another day of Alaina’s babyhood has passed. As I’ve noted before, there is just a sharp sweetness to this time with her that I did not experience before and I think it is the trailing flag of surrender, of a passing season, that Kingsolver references in the quote above.
After posting my “playing my music” essay containing an exploration of my postpartum feelings after the birth of my first son, I went back and forth about continuing to explore the subject. I’ve written about it a lot, but the feelings are scattered throughout a variety of locations—including partially written articles and also blog posts from my first, no-longer-updated blog. I actually wrote this post last year, immediately after my part 1 post, and then ended up not sharing it, but moving straight on to Postpartum Feelings, Part 3 instead.
Weird thoughts
Anyway, I wanted to briefly address the weird/intrusive thoughts that I experienced postpartum with both of my boys. I think one of the reasons I have trouble broaching this topic on this blog is that to look back at my thoughts and feelings is to begin to acknowledge to myself that I very likely experienced a postpartum mood disorder, even though I—perhaps purposefully—did not identify it as such at the time. With my first, I had a recurrent image of the bookshelf in my computer room at the time falling over and squashing me. I also had the sense that the baby was trying to “squash” me—as in stamp out my life spark (actually, who am I kidding, life with kids still makes me feel like this is their goal sometimes! ;-D) and the best way I could come up with to describe my feelings at the end of a long day was that I had been chewed up and had my bones spit out. This is a pretty intense description that some people might feel is ridiculous or over-the-top, but is the way I would have described it.
When my second son was a baby, I planned much better for postpartum and experienced a fairly pleasant babymoon at home with him. I felt like in general, mothering him was easier than mothering my first and as he grew, I frequently would say (and feel) that having a second child was the best thing I’d ever done. Despite those feelings, I had a recurrent image that would pop into my mind unbidden of falling backwards through a grate, my body dissolving into water as I fell and dripping through the grate and the skin of my face remaining a “mask” on the grate, eventually also dissolving/dripping through. I also had a weird, recurrent sensation that my shin bones were fragile somehow and I would imagine them snapping.
So, after typing this out I officially felt mentally ill, and that is why it hasn’t been posted until now.
The current
With my second son, I described my mood to my husband in this way: There is a current that underlies all of my emotions. I feel like I can “dip” into this current and test out how it feels, beneath the mood that I present outwardly or how I feel on the surface. My current lately is always sad—even when I am happy and feeling/acting happy, if I take the time to “dip” beneath, what I feel is sad. I used to actually chart the feelings on my calendar, with a little notation for the surface feeling and a different notation for the current. I tried to explain to him that I did not feel like I had a neutral point and that I would like to feel “even.” However, I also acknowledged that if to feel “even” or neutral as my “current” would mean trading in all peaks of emotion, rather exuberant or despondent, I’d rather have the ups and downs. During this time I looked up various mood disorders, thinking that I might possible qualify as having cyclothymia.
Wal-Mart “angel”
Then, one day, when my second son was perhaps a year or so old, I had an interesting experience at Wal-Mart with a very friendly and cheerful checker. She chatted along with us and was just very nice and pleasant to be around. That night I had a vivid dream that this checker was actually an angel and that she had come to “heal” my feelings. When I woke up that morning, I had very dramatic sensation and announcement of sorts in my head, “you are not depressed anymore” and indeed, when I dipped into the current it had become a wellspring of joy, rather than sadness. Since this time, my “current” has never again shifted back to sad. While I definitely have sad or “down” moods or get distressed about things, I now feel like it is only that surface emotion that is being buffeted, but that what waits underneath is always doing all right. Perhaps you have to know me in real life to understand how strange of an experience this is for me to describe. I have never had another “angel” experience and do not connect with angel imagery. The word “angel” is not one that I use to describe anything, really, and I feel extraordinarily skeptical and uncomfortable when other people say things about having guardian angels. I suppose if I did have PPD, it could be looked upon as a “hallucination” almost. However, I do not have a way to describe what happened to me without using the word. Indeed, I feel so oddly about it, that I have never actually told anyone else about this—I told my husband about the current shifting, but left out the “Wal-Mart angel” piece of the story.
Why tell it now?
As I noted, I’ve been waffling about posting this. It is close on the heels of another post that may seem woo-tastic. It makes me feel vulnerable and embarrassed. Why? Why bother sharing things that bring up these sorts of feelings? My answer was almost, just don’t, and then I read a fabulously amusing essay in the winter issue of Brain, Child magazine about a woman’s experience teaching “sexuality and the new mother” workshops at Babeland in New York City. In her postscript closing the essay, Meredith Fein Lichtenberg writes the following:
“…writing this now, years after it happened, I still felt that sharing something personal cast stark light on the Inner Vat of Chaotic Shit I Haven’t Figured Out Yet. The desire to hide that is amazingly strong; I see it in my students, and I see it in myself. But I also see that when we bend our lives’ stories into words to be shared, everything changes. Sharing stories reminds us we’re not alone with our icky mess of doubts and questions. In the light of day, frightening concerns and general weirdness become more understandable, forgivable, human.”
Reading this, I knew I wanted to share after all. And, it reminded me of another quote, this one by Carol Christ, a thealogy scholar that I love:
“When one woman puts her experiences into words, another woman who has kept silent, afraid of what others will think, can find validation. And when the second woman says aloud, ‘yes, that was my experience too,’ the first woman loses some of her fear.” –Carol Christ
As I look at these drawings by my older son at ages 2.5 and 3.5, I feel quite a pang. This time has passed. He is eight now. He hasn’t drawn a picture like this in years. I didn’t fully realize at the time that he was drawing them that it was a one shot deal—looking at them gives me that familiar feeling of, but that was SO REAL. That was my life and my toddler and now our life landscape is a totally different one. Obviously, I guess I did have some recognition of the one shot nature, because I did save the drawings and have them to share this much later. In the first two pictures, which he drew before I gave birth to his brother, I love how the baby’s eyes match the mother’s.
I love how the baby looks like it is "floating" in this one.
After Zander was born, Lann got a little older and a little more skillful at drawing. I forget exactly when he drew this one, it was sometime during Z’s first year I think, and is obviously based on Lann’s own observations of the birth, rather than just the idea of “mama’s got a baby in there.”
Love the placenta in a bowl and the baby attached to the mama with cord (yes, I know the two are mutually exclusive, but I love these details anyway!)
I forget if I’ve ever shared Lann’s version of his own birth story here. I asked him about it when he was about two (so, before he’d ever seen a birth). Do you remember being born? He immediately said yes and I asked him what it was like. He said:
Swimming. Swimming down out of mama. Crying. Nursies. Happy now!
This was a surprisingly accurate thumbnail snapshot of his birth. He cried when only his head was born. I brought him to my chest and said, totally instinctively with no pre-planning of the name, “do you want some nursies, baby?” and he immediately latched on and nursed. 🙂
These pictures and these thoughts are exactly why I write so much and why I have a semi-obsession with storing papers, drawings, writings, the printed word (I joke about being a personal archivist), it is because seeing them or reading what I’ve written later, brings that so real feeling back to me and that life that I lived, those babies that I raised, are vivid again, rather than faded, fuzzy, or forgotten.
I recently finished a series of classes with some truly beautiful, anticipatory, and excited pregnant women and their partners. I cover postpartum planning during the final class and I always feel a tension between accurately addressing the emotional upheavals of welcoming a baby into your life and marriage and “protecting,” in a sense, their innocent, hopeful, eager, and joyful awaiting of their newborns.
This time, I started with a new quote that I think is beautifully true as well as appropriately cautionary: “The first few months after a baby comes can be a lot like floating in a jar of honey—very sweet and golden, but very sticky too.” –American College of Nurse-Midwives
Matrescence
In Uganda there is a special word that means “mother of a newborn”–-nakawere. According to the book Mothering the New Mother, “this word and the special treatment that goes with it apply to a woman following every birth, not only the first one. The massages, the foods, the care, ‘they have to take care of you in a special way for about a month.'”
There is a special word in Korea as well. Referring to the “mother of a newborn child,” san mo describes “a woman every time she has had a baby. Extended family and neighbors who act as family care for older children and for the new mother. ‘This lasts about twenty-one days…they take special care of you.'”
These concepts—and the lack of a similar one in American culture—reminds me of a quote from Sheila Kitzinger that I use when talking about postpartum: “In any society, the way a woman gives birth and the kind of care given to her and the baby points as sharply as an arrowhead to the key values of the culture.” Another quote I use is an Asian proverb paraphrased in the book Fathers at Birth: “There is a proverbial saying in the East: The way a woman takes care of herself after a baby is born determines how long she will live.” While this quote usually gets some nervous laughter, I think it is impresses upon people how vital it is to plan for specific nurturing and care during this vulnerable time.
Dana Raphael, the author of Breastfeeding: The Tender Gift, who is best known for coining the word “doula” as it is presently used, also coined another valuable term: matrescense. “Nothing changes life as dramatically as having a child. And there was no word to describe that. So we invented the word—matrescence—becoming a mother.”
The postpartum law of threes
I also share the “law of threes” with my clients which I learned from an article titled “Baby Moon Bliss” by Beth Leianne Curtis in Natural Life, Fall 2008:
A helpful tool I share with students and clients of mine is what I describe as the ‘law of threes’ when beginning the postpartum period. The first three days after your baby is born, try to stay in bed or at least in your bedroom. Many other cultures worldwide have much longer ‘lying in’ periods for mother and baby. If you can give yourself the much-deserved rest of focusing on breastfeeding, sleeping, eating, and recovering from the work of labor, your body and your baby will thank you for it. While birth is a healthy, normal event, honor the recovery process that your hard working body needs and deserves. The less you physically do in the initial few days following childbirth, the better and stronger you will feel in the weeks ahead. …Next, prepare to have three weeks of meals readily available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner….” (don’t forget plenty of snacks at easy reach for breastfeeding!)
Finally, understand that those first three months after birth are truly a time to embrace the unexpected…for some mothers, after three months is when breastfeeding really begins to be fun and easy. Many parents find that at the end of this [fourth trimester] transitional time, baby has moved through any colicky phases and that suddenly baby looks and acts more like a ‘real person.’…Physically, this is when your body begins to return to its pre-pregnancy state.
When I present about this topic to groups, sometimes I hear the following types of remarks: “Getting back out made me feel better, I would be miserable lying around in bed all day”—at the time when my own first baby was born, I would have said this was true for me as well, but looking below the surface shows me something else. Someone who hadn’t planned for a nurturing, comforting, supportive postpartum cocoon and who hadn’t given herself permission to rest, relax, and restore. The same high-achieving style that served me well in the workplace did not nourish me physically or emotionally as a tender new mother. I firmly believe that a nurturing postpartum downtime lays foundation for continued “mother care” self-nurturing for the rest of your life.
Then, in my notebook, I found the following relevant quotes that I had saved from the book Natural Health After Birth by Aviva Jill Romm:
“Too often women develop the mindset that a good mother gives all and takes nothing for herself. Remember, this is a great cultural fallacy. A good mother gives of herself to her children, but she has to have a self to give. A good mother nurtures herself, develops her own interests, even if in small ways, and grows as a person along with her children. Children don’t need us to be martyrs; they need us to be their mothers. A self-actualized mother sets an example for her own daughters that becoming a mother expands identity, not limits it.”
–Aviva Jill Romm, Natural Heath After Birth
“To put a child on Earth, an immense amount of creative intelligence flowed from the Great Spirit, through nature itself into your body, heart, and mind–remaining now, as an integral part of your own spirit. This energy is yours forever. Like a pocket, deep and filled with magic seeds of creativity and healing, this is the source of unconditional loving from which every wise woman since the beginning of time has drawn her strength.”
–Robin Lim
“Motherhood is raw and pure. It is fierce and gentle. It is up and down. It is magic and madness. Single days last forever and years fly by…Be gentle with yourself as you travel, dear mother. Don’t miss the scenery. Don’t miss conversation with your traveling companions. Laugh at the bumps and say ‘ooh, aah!’ on the hairpin turns. Buckle your seat belt. You’re a mom!”
Support & Sanity Savers handout for class from Great Expectations—this is one of my very favorite postpartum handouts to use for birth classes, particularly the last page which is a “request for help after the baby is born” letter to prospective helpers that includes a “coupon” for people to fill out with what they’re willing to do for the new parents.
“Every single human being was drummed into this world by a woman, having listened to the heart rhythms of their mother.”
-Connie Sauer
We nestle together, lives and hearts entwined. Bodies imprinted at a cellular level.
Greeting 2012 at midnight on January 1.
This is a fully embodied and multisensory experience. My lips on the top of her head, my nose in her hair. Breathing in her smell, feeling her fuzzy hair. Feeling her steady, vulnerable pulse in her skull against my lips. Sometimes I murmur or hum, mmm, so that my lips vibrate at the top of her head, and she answers me, “mmm, mmm, mmm.”
One hand cups the underside of my breast, the other sometimes holds my hand or grips my shirt or necklace, or randomly roams, patting my chest, stroking my belly, or pinching or scratching my skin. It often finds a place of rest near my heart.
I kiss her head. Nuzzle her with my nose and lips. Breathe her in. Breastfeeding is the real deal. The day in and day out fluid of connection and physical relationship. Body based. First habitat. First environment. First relationship—this is how she learns about relating to another, through my body. Through warm connection and synchronized rhythms.
Her head near my shoulder, on my upper arm. Her body in full contact with mine. Legs curl into me, resting on my thighs, or with a foot poked between my legs near my knees, keeping warm. Sometimes I pet her hair or smooth her eyebrows. I touch her cheek, hold her hand or foot or ankle.
We nurse.
—
Explanatory note: last month when I was nursing Alaina to sleep at bedtime, I was thinking about how I never wanted to forget what it felt like to have this breastfeeding relationship with a baby. So, I paid close attention to our physical alignment, etc. and when I got up, I jotted down what my heart had memorized during that time.
On Alaina’s birthday I received a special treat—her birth story written by my mom (called Baba in our family). I asked her if I could post it here and here it is!
Alaina’s Birth Story
Baba’s version
Waiting for a baby to be born can be exciting and stressful at the same time – but waiting for baby Alaina was especially poignant because of Molly’s previous loss of little Noah. I was worried. I knew she had a specific vision of how this – her last – birth would be, and I was concerned that my presence would somehow ruin things for her, or not live up to her expectations. I was also actually afraid. I was afraid something would go wrong, either with the birth process or with the baby herself. I was afraid I’d have to be the one who was called upon to act in some heroic manner and would fail. I was afraid I wouldn’t measure up to Molly’s birth expectations. I wanted to do it all right, perfectly, and was afraid I couldn’t. I felt that voicing these fears would somehow manifest them, and I didn’t want to carry the fear into the sacred birth space. I felt prepared – I had been trained in neonatal resuscitation, knew where all the tinctures, supplements, and supplies were located, had a little bag packed for myself – but I was still emotionally and mentally concerned.
However, a few days before the birth, Molly and I had a talk, and it really cleared the air! When the “stand by” call came from Mark, I knew I was ready to be of service to my daughter and arriving granddaughter. The first request was for us to collect the big brothers, who had awakened early and were impacting Molly’s birth environment. I picked them up and brought them to home with me. At that time, Molly was very clear and focused, doing her work on the birth ball. When Mark called me to come back to the house at about 9:00, I scrambled into the car and tore over there, as if there might not be enough time! Molly has a history of precipitous births…….
There was definitely some birthy energy going on! Molly was on the ball with Mark rubbing her back. I knew she wanted to be left alone and have a peaceful environment, so I spoke as little as possible. At some point, I slipped over to her futon nest and tucked my little cheat sheet list underneath. I didn’t want to forget any of the resuscitation steps or what supplements to give her. I tried to remind her to eat, drink and use the bathroom, without being obtrusive about it. She was obviously making progress, and I could hear in her voice that the contractions were growing in intensity. She worried about being too much “in her head” and analyzing things. I tried to reassure her that this is always how she approaches the world, and that it was fine to be that way. She was up and moving around, talking and considering, and also worried that she might not be progressing. This made me think transition might be near, but I didn’t say that to her. She felt some rectal pressure and decided to sit on the toilet for a while. It seemed to me that things were progressing apace, when she reached down and felt something squishy. She said she thought she was pushing, and I decided it was time to abandon my “silence” (really hard for me, by the way!) and comment that she should probably get to her nest if she wanted to avoid having the baby on the toilet. She agreed, but didn’t really seem to want to move. No wonder. She barely made it! Meanwhile, I had called Summer, the doula, and midwife E.
Baba meets Alaina!
Molly dropped to her knees on her futon nest, and had an obviously intense contraction. We helped her get her clothes off. She was upright on her knees, intent upon finding heart tones, when the phone started ringing incessantly. It was SO annoying that I ran over to, picked it up and slammed it down to make it stop. That’s when I heard some garbled crying and Molly had baby Alaina in her arms! In my mad dash to the phone, I had missed the actual moment of birth :(. We all burst into tears and Molly was repeating, “You’re alive! You’re alive! I did it! There’s nothing wrong with me!” The baby was crying lustily, so we got Molly into a prone position (she was still kneeling) with the baby on her chest and covered up. My job was to pop things into Molly’s mouth – supplements, vitamins, chlorophyll, etc., so I got ready to do that. Summer arrived, midwife E arrived, and all was right with the world. Baby Alaina was safe and in her mother’s arms! And in mine, as soon as I could get my hands on her…..
As of this week, my miscarriage memoir, Footprints on My Heart, has finally been published and is now available in eBook format via Kindle and Lulu, Inc. (epub format compatible with Nook and iBooks). There are a few formatting errors and some other general problems (like with the sample/preview–it is totally wonky–and with the lettering on the cover), but guess what, it is DONE, it available, and it is out there. I’m really, really excited about it and I feel this huge sense of relief. I still want to write my Empowered Miscarriage book someday, but for now, this memoir is what I had in me and it will have to do for the time being. I realized after Alaina was born and was, in a sense, the happy “ending” to my Noah story, that in writing my miscarriage blog I had actually ended up writing most of a book. So, the bulk of the book is drawn from my miscarriage blog and from this blog as well (for the pregnancy after loss content). I also included an appendix of resource information/additional thoughts that is fresh.
I’ve felt haunted by the desire to publish this for the entire last year. It took a surprising amount of work, as well as emotional energy, to prepare for publication, even though I actually did most of the actual writing via blog in 2010. Now that it is ready, I just feel lighter somehow and have this really potent sense of relief and ease, as if this was my final task. My final act of tribute. My remaining “to do” in the grief process.
If anyone really, really, really wants it and cannot afford the $3.99 for which I priced it, I do have it available as a pdf file, a mobi file, and an epub file and I will be happy to email it to you in one of those formats.
At Alaina’s birth time today at 11:15 a.m. I walked our little front yard labyrinth with her while listening to our special song. We got to the middle (and Lann took a picture) and I said, “my baby is here! She’s here! She’s one now!” I also repeated my immediate post-birth comments. Then, we walked out again and I held her up to the sky and she laughed. Then, she directed me with pointing and leaning and uh’ing over to Noah’s tree and put her hand on his plaque. (Lest this sound too shockingly cosmic, I still go out to the tree periodically and put my hand on it, so she knows that is something we do.) It was a nice moment.
Then, she went for some rides on the hammock swing with Lann!
Then, she decided she wanted to swing in the blue swing too!
Looks like a big toddler girl in this picture!
After nap time, it was time for a visit from Baba and Tom and time for some presents! She liked hugging her new Raggedy Ann from aunt Nancy:
“Our lives can sometimes feel like passages through harsh landscapes that shake us to our core. Yet these difficult passages bring us to our most profound transformations. In the midst of heartache and greatest need, we find that grace descends. And at the end of it all, we often discover that we have become someone new, stronger and more alive…the tender moments of heartache, illness and inner strangeness that we all experience at times. They illuminate the path of healing–when awe, self-love and grace touch our very being, leave us breathless, make us whole.” –Carolyn Brigit Flynn (Sisters Singing)
“I have hands big enough to save the world, and small enough to rock a child to sleep.” –Zelda Brown
(I wrote this second quote on the first page of the baby record journal I kept of her first year)
I’ve spent multiple days trying to gather some minutes together to work on a happy birthday reflective post. While sometimes I hesitate to write posts that are “too personal”— thinking things like “who really cares anyway?” and “why do I feel so compelled to share my life online?”—I’m so glad I’ve written regular updates about this first year of life with my baby girl. Even if no one else does really care to read about it–I care and I’m glad to have a “permanent record” of her infancy in this manner. The main thought that comes to mind when I reflect on her first year of life is, but it has all been SO REAL. I’ve expressed that same sentiment previously and maybe it doesn’t make sense to anyone else, but that it is the feeling I return to. This life, this past year has just been so real. By that I mean so vivid, so present, so conscious, so physical, so embodied, so here and now, that I can hardly believe it has now passed. I am likely to never have another crawling, drooly, grabbing, fuzzy headed baby of my own in my house again–and, even if I do. It won’t be this baby. This little walking, minimally talking, amazed, and amazing, energetic and enthusiastic, baby girl. I paid attention, I told about it, I remembered to look, listen, feel, and to embed precious moments and memories as deeply into my soul as I possibly could. I’ve struggled with life balance, come in and out of various states of equilibrium/disequilibrium. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve marveled, and I’ve been ragged. And, we’re here. We did it. We’ve taken our first trip around the sun together. After having walked the labyrinth of pregnancy after loss in 2010, in January of 2011 I greeted the labyrinth of birth with wild joy and sweet relief, and now we’ve been on our “return” journey–step by step and in my arms, Alaina and I have now completed our postpartum return labyrinth together (though, I think it might actually last three years…).
Just this time last year I was wondering aloud if the full moon would bring me my baby and sure enough, my labor began that night and she was born at 11:15 a.m. on January 19 (full birth story in case anyone missed it). For me, the first birthday is really as much about memories for the mom as it is about the baby! Some favorite early pictures:
Moments after birth. I tried editing the contrast to make the picture actually visible for this post. I'd just caught her myself. The tenderness and majesty of this moment makes me cry!
On my due date demonstrating how she could still fit!
First three generations picture. Look how excited I am!
Here is a video we took for family when she was a couple of days old. I love my voice in this video—in you can hear how marvelous I think she is—and how my fingers tenderly touch and explore her as I talk.
And now, fast forward a year and we’ve got some early steps:
And, then more real walking at Baba’s house:
And, of course I had to make some more polymer clay birth art goddesses to commemorate the big birthday! This mama has her baby on her hip, which is still Alaina’s most preferred mode of transport:
This baby is stepping out a little, but still intimately connected with mama. Double spiral symbolizes our interlocking labyrinth path, forever joined, but now able to separate too:
It is a total coincidence that I ended up making 12 figures--I didn't plan it that way and I didn't make one during every month or anything (though, that would have been cool. I wish I'd done that!)
Okay, time for twelve month update too! After many months of posting about the best baby ever, I am here to report that Miss A has taken a turn for the wild. If anyone has been secretly annoyed by my “perfect baby” and wishing to crow with delight, now is your chance! Oh my goodness. I don’t even know where to start. How about with this picture?!
Yes. That would be some of the wood from the back of the kitchen chair. Peeled off by a baby. And, the set of her mouth is because she’s also eating it. The slightly wild, manic-clown-type hair also sums it up. This girl is on the move. She’s into everything. Wants it all. Is constantly making one of two sounds to indicate her many wants–a cute little question-intonation “huh?” sound, or a grating, “aaaaaaaah!” sound that makes you want to yell, JUST STOP. She is incredibly grabby and shockingly destructive. Nurses very roughly (this isn’t new) and uses my skin as a handhold or toehold often enough that my upper arms are covered with little fingertip sized bruises. My thighs near my knees are also covered with small toe-sized bruises from being kick-walked on during lying down nursing. BUT, lying down nursing is pretty rare, since she pretty much will only nurse while standing up in the Ergo. And, that is how she goes down for nap every day (down to only one nap per day now). Nurses lying down during night. Potty strike is finally pretty over, but sitting down to pee just takes too much time. I still mean to write an EC post, a common refrain in which will be, and then I got peed on.
She loves to get into cabinets and also to take lids off of stuff.
Again with that hair and face of mischief-making!
What a sweet face too!
She weighs about 24 pounds and I need to measure her height. Has 8 teeth. Thought recent personality shift might have to do with more teeth or the developmental milestone of walking or the fact that she had a yucky cold, but it seems to be her new way of being. Markedly less verbal than she was last month—I know that is supposed to be a worrisome sign, but I think in this case it is related to the brain being able to concentrate on one significant developmental leap at a time. Right now, walking is primary and language has taken a backseat. I remember the boys doing this too. She often seems disgruntled lately–like whatever we are doing, she wants something different. Wants to get on top of table, counters, and stove. LOVES to be outside and asks all day long to go out (even when it is 10 degrees–then she complains and wants us to make it magically warmer). Has thrown several fits about this (and other things too). Is constantly aggravating the boys by getting into their games and wrecking their stuff.
She is very tough and brave and surprises me still with her unflappability in the face of change or drama. A couple of days ago I accidentally scraped her face with a tree branch when going out to open the chickens and didn’t notice what had happened. She made a small sound and had a turned down lip and I said, “oh, what’s wrong?” Upon getting inside I then noticed the two inch long bloody scratch down the side of her head and face!
Spends a lot of time in-arms still. Really enjoys mama and wishes to be mainly with me, though she does like visiting my parents and playing with daddy too. So far she still prefers to crawl to get things, but on two occasions this week, she has chosen to walk toward something rather than crawling. Crawling will soon be history! I swear, sometimes it feels like my heart is breaking when I think about the little baby of one year ago and how she is growing so fast, but at the same time of course I’m just so happy to see her developing and changing and being amazing. It has been a beautiful year.
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Talk Birth 