Saw lots of baby girls with handbands at the ICAN conference and decided to cobble together a test one 🙂

I can hardly believe my baby girl is three months old now! It is amazing. Though, on the other hand, I also can hardly remember life without her. We also just crossed into her “life spark-aversary” as the anniversary of my LMP was April 17th (TMI!). This time last year, I was still full of confusion and anxiety about whether we would be able to have another baby and gathering up my courage to try again, “one more time.” She continues to be the most delightful, wonderful baby in the history of the world 🙂 Seriously though, she is just a really great baby. She is tons of fun, she smiles all the time, she laughs sometimes (mostly only at her Baba [my mom]), she chews on her hands in a contemplative manner, she drools a little. She goos and coos and gives little squeals of communication. She is shockingly accommodating, patient, good natured, pleasant, and adaptable (Z threw-dropped a pile of clothes on her head out of nowhere last night and when we snatched them back off, she was just blinking and then she smiled and kicked her legs—the boys would have SCREAMED from being surprised unpleasantly like that). I’ve never had such a calm and cooperative baby. She also sleeps like magic. Of course, she does also sleep in my actual arms all night long, so maybe that is why! I think she is actually one of those babies that I could probably put down in another bed, but I haven’t tried it. I sleep better with her close by and I don’t want to miss out on any opportunities to snuggle and enjoy her. I guess it is because we’ve said she is the last baby, but every day I think that I’ve got to have another one. She is so adorable that this can’t be the last time I get to have a baby! (I still think it is going to be last time though, for a variety of reasons.)

Despite being so used to her and feeling like she’s been with us for ages, I continue to have that sense of marvel over her—every day I feel it. I tell her things like, “guess what? You’re my BABY!” This is an unfamiliar feeling for me and it may be related to the same “last baby” thing, or, just because of my fear that I wouldn’t have another baby, or because of my relief to be on this side of the PAL journey. Whatever it is, I just feel amazed and grateful and delighted by her presence in our lives.

Having tummy time and showing off her cute little ears!

We’re doing elimination communication (EC) with her just like we did with Z. It is working out great. EC is amazing and I will write a separate post about that experience. But, I think it is just so COOL that a 3 month old baby will sleep all night and have a dry diaper in the morning (and then pee in her little potty).

The boys totally love her, which can have its challenges. They both like to get really close to her face and also kind of lean on her head to snuggle her. Her eyes start to blink rapidly when she sees them getting close to her! 😦 But, she also gives them some of the biggest grins and loves to watch them play. They are her favorite show and she will sit on my lap and just watch them for the longest time. She also likes to ride facing outward on my hip and kick and pump her legs and wave her arms. Lann is big enough at 7.5 that he can carry her around and you can tell she trusts him to take care of her. She has even fallen asleep on him before! (He was holding her and kind of dancing around while we cooked dinner one night and then laid down on the couch with her laying on top of him and she conked out.) She weighs about 15 pounds now and is getting heavy enough that he can’t hold her for very long without complaining about the weight though, LOL. She has fabulously chubby legs and dimpled hands.

 

Daddy and his kids!

We’ve just had a family-wide cold and she got it too (she escaped the one that caused laryngitis for me two weeks ago, but this one she got before me, which meant my antibodies weren’t able to save her from this one). My grandma is coming to visit from CA this week and I hope she will be suitably enraptured with her first little great-granddaughter!

This blog has taken on a more personal tone during my pregnancy experience and continues to do so. Eventually, I will get back to writing more educational or advocacy-oriented posts. Right now, I just feel more like writing about my own personal experiences.

There has been a “baby boom” of April babies amongst my friends recently and as I read their birth stories, I realize that I’ve yet to share the full version of Alaina’s birth story. I have it hand written in my journal and think I will transcribe it “sometime soon.” Attending Pam England’s presentation about the gates of birth story sharing also heightened my desire to write it up in full. Of course, every day I have at least 10 things I’d like to do that I don’t make it to that day. I was just talking about this to my husband, saying that really, I actually like this about myself. While I feel some kind of pressure somewhere to be “more Zen” and to “chill out”/relax, I like my own intensity. I run fast and high and bright. It’s okay. That’s how I am. As I’ve noted before, if chilling out means cooling my enthusiasm or putting out my fire, then, no thanks! I don’t want it after all. I’d rather have the slightly manic edge 🙂

I like waking up in the morning with my head boiling with possibilities and being full of exciting ideas. Of course, perhaps I could be calm and relaxed and full of ideas, but if it is a trade, I’ll take the ideas! To be totally honest, sometimes I feel like people who suggest relaxing are secretly trying to “dim my shine.” So there! ;-P

Cutie pie!

I had included this quote in my recent update post, but decided it edit that one for length and give this its own post.  From the book, The Blue Jay’s Dance: Growing, bearing, mothering, or fathering, supporting, and at last letting go…are powerful and mundane creative acts that rapturously suck up whole chunks of life. –Louise Erdrich

I went to a retreat yesterday and one of my friends said of her own baby that, “I am his everything.” That is an excellent description of that mother-baby unity that I touched on in my last post. With Alaina right now, I am everything she needs. I am her habitat. I am her gauge for the world around her and also for her own self—I’ve pointed out to the boys before how if she gets startled and her arms go out, she immediately searches for my eyes, looking for my signal (calmness) that everything is fine and the startle is unnecessary. She uses me and my responses to her to understand the world (and herself). If she gets fussy when someone else is holding her, as soon as I take her back, she rides along happily peeking over my shoulder—balance of her world restored. Her eyes follow me when I am walking around. I feel like I have savored all of my babies, but I feel more intensely aware this time around how short this time period is—this time of complete symbiosis and dependence. I also remember feeling more confused by my first baby and I remember worrying and worrying about, “what if he cries?” I think I thought he might cry and I’d never be able to calm him back down or something? I’m not really sure what that was about, but I remember feeling like crying = bad mother. With Alaina, I am 100% confident that she will not keep crying (duh). I mentioned before that she doesn’t cry much, but last night she had a fussy spell after our second day in a row being away from home all day, and I had no doubt at all that her trust in me to care for her would calm the fussy (and it did). Oh, and, she also laughed at me for the first time last night! It is amazing to be someone’s whole world and it just feels extra special this time around. This morning when I was playing with her and she was smiling with her whole body (love that), I felt like our connection is so pure and basic that it feels almost holy. I have to confess that she makes me feel like having another baby—how can I not do this again?! I’m still pretty certain we won’t have any more children, but I surprise myself by frequent thoughts about maybe ONE more…

My boys still think I’m pretty awesome and prefer being with me to pretty much anything else (they do adore their grandpa and he is their most fun person to hang out with), but they really like me a whole bunch and I still have the power to make their worlds “right” as well. I enjoy their company and their wild, funny, enthusiastic, creative, complicated personalities and I feel like they are the treasures of my heart. I also feel like my love for them is deeper in a way (or more developed, maybe?) than it was when they were babies, because we are so invested in each other. I know them so well and we’ve had so much life together, I can’t imagine not having them. I can still remember not having Alaina and I can remember how I thought I may never get to have another baby ever again and I’m really enjoying this very uncomplicated, unconditional, sweet, sacred love of and for a little baby again.

I am currently reading and very much enjoying a book called She Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World and the author critiques the foundations of modern philosophy as being based on independence from others as the goal/highest state  as well as critiquing spiritual traditions that see attachment as a flaw and a state to be transcended (the book is based on process philosophy instead). She describes an anecdote how a fellow student wrote a paper making a case for “the existence of other minds” and no one else in her class other than her seemed to find it bizarre. She discusses Descartes and his “I think, therefore I am” conclusion as inherently flawed saying that before Descartes could articulate this thought, “he reached out his hand for his mother.” It is relationship, not thought that forms our basis for life and our experience of reality.

In her habitat ("the maternal nest")

I’m getting ready to start teaching in-seat again at the end of this week. I’m getting nervous about it, because we’re not really ready for separation yet, even for short times. The class is 5 hours and since I’m the teacher, I can give breaks when I need to. My husband is going to stay in town with all the kids—I know this sounds slightly crazy, but I have to know she can get to me if she needs me AND we also always have a Wal-Mart list, so he’s going to do that each week (the boys love to go to WM with him, because he has a tendency to say yes to new toys, candy, and weird food for dinner). The class only lasts 8 weeks and one week is a midterm and one a final, which usually means dismissal a bit early those nights. I guess it is a little strange to be worried about it, because many mothers go back to work when their babies are 6 weeks old and for 40 hours at a time. I’m getting all concerned about only working 5 hours once a week! (with a baby lurking in the parking lot with my husband!) But, still, it is on my mind…a LOT.

I’m going to remain on leave from teaching birth classes and I’m also strongly considering not resuming breastfeeding support group meetings—just stick with phone/email help and no in-person group for a while. I do have another project brewing, but I’m not going to write about it until I know if it is going to work out or not!