Brooke

Walking on

The terrain I walk is treacherous.  Not fitting into a particular category, afraid to reach out to friends - other mothers - because in my grief, I betray them all.

I conceived a child, carried a child.  My child is alive.  Healthy even.  I labored at home for 16 hours and rode the tidal wives of birth, yet I cannot claim to have birthed at home.  Or even naturally.  I am sad.  Awash in tears some days and yet I am not on the doorway of medication...yet.  How can I complain?  I am relatively 'lucky' in so many ways.  How do I share the grief that is so real for me?

It is hard to share this here.  To write of this wasteland, of this paradox that has both the coos of a one month old baby and the despair of grief all at once.  The comments that shame me are not new, no one can be more ruthless to myself than I can.  Romantic visions of birth they say?  Possibly.  A sense of entitlement about birth?  Maybe.  I beat myself up alot over these thoughts.

Desire though is what it really is.  A deep, pulsing yearning to wipe slime and blood off my own baby and to revel in the freshness of life.  I want that moment of Creation.  To hold the wildness of all that has unfolded through magic and will.  And the truth is, I feel robbed and I feel angry at my body.  Betrayed by my own self.

I am angry, full of rage and disappointed in my body.  I feel like damaged goods.  There.  I said it. 

I have been so silent out of fear for sounding greedy, ungrateful, petty.  And then, this morning, I heard an interview with Louise Erdrich and she said that writers must write as if nobody will read what they are writing.  That this is the only way to write.  So I will tell my story, whatever it is.  It is the only story I have to tell.

Yesterday Temple turned one month old.  The time slips by and with each new milestone, I realize that there are no do-overs.  It is done.  The story has been written.  She has graduated from smiles to cooing.  She gazes into my eyes and lets milk slip down her chin when she smiles.  All of this is healing of course - the eternal blue of an alpine lake in her eyes, the lacey, spidery eyelashes that flutter.  The hands that flail, feet that kick with urgency, legs so strong.  I am blessed beyond belief.  I know this.  Her sweaty neck and soft tummy, her rashy newborn skin, each of these tiny markers - that she is real, she is here, she is mine - make me swoon.  I have a daughter. 

There are so many highs and lows in this postpartum time - fragile and joyous and overwhelming all at once.  It is part of the initiation into the tribe.  We all celebrate and suffer in our own particular way, we integrate our story, we move on, life changes.

So here I am, walking my particular terrain and sorting through the narrative of our birth story - Temple's and mine, the story that made us two people after being one for so long.

Where I Am

Some days I just pretend it didn't happen.  I spend many hours avoiding certain thoughts as one might avoid a nosey neighbor.  The memory peeks over my back fence and I bolt to another part of the yard or I scurry back in the house where I can hide from the tears that will undoubtedly fall.  If I ignore the memory of the cesarean, if I focus instead on the joy I felt when she was delivered into this world, I can maintain.  I do not dissolve into tears.  I am not flooded by grief.  I am not filled with the craving need for a do-over.  But when I am blindsided by an unexpected memory or when I let my guard down and I gently dip my toe into the vast lake that is her birth, I am lost on a wave of sadness so deep I could drown.

There was a moment, after hours of labor and reaching inside my body to touch her hair, a moment when I was so close to birth that I could taste it, and then a moment following close on its heels when I realized that it was not going to happen after all, that I consciously chose to haul my laboring body into the car and drive to the hospital so my daughter could be born.  In that moment of choosing, I said goodbye to the jubilation of reaching down to gather a squirming wet body out of my own and I embraced the fact that I needed to rely on all the preparation I had done for a spiritual cesarean birth. 

Outside the morning air was cool and hazy.  The oak tree towered above me, solid and unchangeable, birds chirped in their nests, the backyard fountain trickled peaceful sounds.  Everyone waited inside the house while I made my decision.  Or rather, came to an agreement with my decision.  I would choose this transport, choose this birth with all of the possibility for drugs and needles and scalpels and suction, and I would delay the grief until later.  I would not waste another birth shaking with trauma, fighting, birthing my child in fear.  Instead, I would embrace the circumstances and birth my daughter with a full heart even if it meant her being pulled from my body by gloved and unknown hands.

But you can only postpone sadness for so long.  Now, home with a chubby-cheeked and smiling two week old, the grief has walked back in the door and asks to be welcomed in.  Sadness has come to visit and asks for her due.  She gave me a joyful birth and now it is her turn. 

Once again, my body could not give birth.  I know I can grow a baby.  Twice I have done this now.  And after Temple's birth I know I can labor.  I know my cervix can open and so another doubt has now been fulfilled.  But I still cannot deliver my baby earthside without modern medical technology and this is a demon I cannot shake.  In another time, another era or place in the world, we might all be dead because my body does not work as it should.  To know that I cannot give my own children life without medical support is a mind-fuck all its own.  There is a fundamental loss of feeling whole when one's body doesn't work.

So my days are spent holding it all...the joy of my daughter, the sensual pleasure of nuzzling a newborn, the shame of a body that won't work, the sadness and grief, the vivid memory of sounds and sensations from the OR, the undeniable hope that I will have the chance to try this all again, the fear that my desire to give birth - really give birth - will never come true and even the resentment - the tiny, greedy seed of envy - that lives in me for all the people who can do this birth thing just fine on their own.  For all these reasons, I am overwhelmed and virtually silent.

Know that your words and hopes and congratulations mean alot to me right now - even if I am lost in the postpartum integration, trying to piece myself back together. 

The Littlest Birds Sing the Prettiest Songs

Words escape me right now, like nothing quite captures these tender days, this sweet and fragile cocoon.  I offer instead a few images of our first week home.  Thanks to our friend Sophia for taking some of these photos for us.

Love to all...

 

HEY-LA, HEY LOVA!

                 After a long, challenging & fully rockin' labor at home, surrounded by love,

                 our baby girl was joyfully born on Sunday evening, April 6, 2008 @ 5:45.

                              

                                             Temple Lova Tiger-Lily

                                                       IS HERE!

                                                           born by cesarean

                                                         9 pounds, 9 ounces

                                                              22 1/4 inches

                                                                 Sublime

                                                             Love, Sweet Love.

                                                             Lova, Sweet Lova.

                                                               We are home.

Meet Me @ 42nd, week that is.

Me, last night.  Obviously still in a delicate condition.  Delicate like a Mac Truck. 

Balsamic moon with Venus conjunct tonight...hmmmm????

Thanks for all the love coming our way.

Suspended Animation

I am in new terrain.  Actually old terrain revisited anew, seen with new eyes, for this Ten Month Mama.  And it feels different this time around while I hang out in the waiting.

For now, I am between worlds.  I am between one child and two.  Between prepared and completed.  I am before the storm yet consciously holding what awaits.  Postpartum beckons from beyond and yet I have already travelled to this future place in order to prepare for my return. 

It is in this liminal space that I reside.  And being here asks that I be tender with myself and that I listen very closely to my needs.  My moods are quicksilver, my energy levels surging and then disappearing so immediately and drastically that my body wants to collapse.  My uterus seizes and expands and tightens for awhile, and then it retreats to some former state of restfulness, tricking me into preparation or lulling me into tedious waiting.  I gather enthusiasm only to feel entirely drained moments later.

While I thrive on adventure, on journeying into the unknown through travel and friendships and food and words - the concrete experiences in life - I do not like unpredictability in my internal landscape.  It makes me restless.  It is hard for me to cultivate the inner peace to just hang out in my own vast unknown.  And it is exactly what I need to be doing.  This place of anxiety, this restlessness is my teacher. 

Motherhood was such a mind-fuck the first time around for exactly this reason.  My tidy life - my rhythm and my ability to choose, control, achieve - was washed away on that very moment five years ago when I decided that my body was not going into labor and I had to do something about it.  Yet nothing I did worked.  In my own eyes, I was failing.  My equilibrium was gone.  My body was not an ally but an enemy.  This was the first inkling that my life was about to spiral out of control and I had to give in.  My self-confidence and all the stories and agreements I had about who I was were wiped away.  Looking back, it was a fresh start, a chance to discover new things about myself, but in the moment it was gut-wrenching agony.

So here I am, again on this precipice of labor or no labor, baby coming or baby not.  And I am sitting between two worlds asking myself just how much I have learned.  Wondering what I am made of.  Not 'made of' as though there are rewards or trophies to be gained, but what really lies at my core?  Who will be revealed to me this time, with this birth?

Being here holds so much potential, so much unknown.  And while I prefer to birth at home, while I want my baby to come peacefully into my arms without drama and bright lights and medical support, what I know this time that I did not know last time is that I have little choice in the outcome.  My true power is tender and fragile and changeable in every given moment, depending what the moment brings.  Power is not defined by choosing what the moment brings and having it all turn out like you wanted.

In hours or days I may sit here triumphantly gloating or broken by a train-wreck birth.  It is possible that I will take this road again of judging my birth against certain expectations and standards.  But I hope, more than anything, that in hours or days - whenever and however this baby comes - that I sit here with some peace that I did my best and did it all in loving compassion for me and for my baby.  By these standards, I will be triumphant and at peace.  By these standards, Satchel's birth too, was a glowing success.  And I am ever grateful.

Credit Where Due

Thanks for the support but the snarky troll comment about the Audi didn't bother me.   Maybe it is the haze of pregnancy hormones.  Whatever...Funny thing is, the Audi isn't my car.  It belongs to the family business.  I just happened to be driving it that week because my car was in the shop. 

The real reason I put that picture up recently is because it was taken by my dear friend Jeanette at Crunchy on the Inside.  She is an amazing, brilliant photographer and she recently 'gave' me this candid photo taken last summer when several of us were getting milkshakes at the Sonic drive through.  Since it was taken by a friend and was, in my circle, a fun memory that made us laugh for many reasons, I wanted to put it up.

But I have been negligent about thanking Jeanette publicly and giving her credit for the photo.  So thank you, Dear Troll, for reminding me of my manners.  Whether or not you like the Audi or the five-spot in my hand, it doesn't matter.  J's skills are still evident and I think her photos rock.

All's Quiet on the Western Front

Nope.  No baby yet.  Despite spicy Indian curry, mexican food, running, walking, dreaming, planning and complaining, Lova has not made her entrance. 

But she has been coming to several of us in dreams.  The other night I saw her face, from my dream self, I was able to watch the moment I said hello to her and told her I was her mother.  She stared back with intense dream-eyes.  A little rosebud of a face. 

I went grocercy shopping today.  Again.  I think this is the third or fourth go-round of buying groceries in anticipation of labor and the immediate birth cocoon of postpartum.  Still no baby.  We want her here.  We want to meet her, wrap her in her newly knit blanket, kiss her little feet, sing to her and smell her and clean her tiny little bum.  It is time...

I joke that she will be born tomorrow - she will born a boy on April Fool's day.  And I was worried she wouldn't have a sense of humor. 

My mom promises to update my blog or hers when I go into labor.  You can keep checking back and I will keep you posted.

For now, another night of Lova in the belly.  The girl must be getting squished in there.

Bye, bye baby

Widget baby that is.  Lova is still in residence.

After all your good advice, I have removed the floating baby widget.  No need to remind me that my baby likes Brooke's Hotel.  Her head feels like a corkscrew in my pelvis, the fronts of my thighs have recurring charlie horses, and my belly feels like a 20 pound medicine ball.  No question that Elvis is still in the building.

But luckily, I have turned a corner.  My good humor is back.  My energy is better and I have found a wellspring of patience.  I don't want to rush this baby.  She has her own timeline and I want to honor this for as long as possible.  What I can do, what I feel good about doing, is helping my own body stay out of her way.  I don't mind doing gently supportive supplements to the natural process - visualization, ripening herbs, accupuncture, swimming, walking, massage.  These are yummy for mommy anyway. 

Today my midwife offered to strip membranes and start the castor oil.  While I might get to this point next week, for now it felt too invasive, too scary.  I'm just not ready for those steps yet.  Three days ago I might have been.  There really was that moment on Easter Sunday, while the family sipped gin fizzes and fried Polish doughnuts, when I almost let my mom and sister make me a castor oil fizz to get the show on the road.  A frothy dose of cream, limeade and gin to ease the oily slick of castor oil sounded like a brilliant idea.  For now though I'm in a new groove, coasting and enjoying the anticipation. 

I wonder what labor will feel like.  How it will start.  How will I cope - will I yell or moan or rock or dance or cry?  I want to notice myself in the moment - giving into the push or pulling away from it.  I want to know what it feels like to have my flesh give way and let a baby through.  Do you feel your bones move?  Does the ring of fire really feel hot?  Can you feel the baby moving, swimming themselves out in labor or do they surrender to the force of uterus and blood and hormones?  Will I want to reach down and touch her hair or will I just want her out NOW?  Is she long and skinny or will she be chubby and round?  Is she bald?  Does she look her big brother or distinctly like herself?  Will she cry when she meets the world or will she open her eyes in peaceful wonder? 

These are the questions that flood me now and I feel much better.  These questions carry me through, hold me over, give me something to dream about.  Like waiting for Christmas morning, only better.

Come and Gone

The babystrology widget has given me an exentension.  How kind.  Part of me feared some empty bubble after the 'due date' passed.  A proverbial tongue stuck out at me for failing to produce said baby in a reasonable amount of time.  Seems like the computer has been gracious however, and gone to a new week-to-week plan.  Me?  I am currently white knuckling it day-by-day, hour-by-hour.

I'm not gonna lie.  I want this baby here.  Now.  In my arms.  I want to see this tiny face, meet this little person.  That is the sweet part, the exciting part of being here in this holding space.  But the other side of this is the anxiety, the what if?, the my body isn't going to go into labor AGAIN.  There is this black hole in my brain that just doesn't believe I can do it.  It is a tiny sliver of space, but it creeps up on me when the days drag out and I wonder what to do with myself. 

Sometime in the past 3 or 4 days, I have become grumpy and irritable beyond belief.  My belly feels so tight that it could shatter into a thousand tiny fragments.  And I drag myself out for exercise since it is the only thing that brings me any relief.  But the actual act of exercising reminds me just how large and heavy I am.  I stalk the house, refolding baby blankets, snacking incessantly because I don't know what else to do with myself.  Every night I go to bed wondering if I will wake up in labor or in a puddle of amniotic fluid.  At this point, I'm praying for a wet mess.  Anything to get going.

And then, I smile because I know these are good signs.  This irritability and crankiness.  Women at the end of pregnancy grow 'done' for a reason.  Otherwise, why would we be ready for one of the craziest physical journeys of our lives???  But in this place - this overgrown, swollen, emotional, fragile place - the labor sounds like a relief of sorts...a means to an end.  A rite of passage so that we finally get to meet our baby.

There is no denying the fact that I hold tight to many facets of my life, attempting to assert control on the uncontrollable.  So, after so much 'getting ready' for the baby with the washing and stacking and sorting and cleaning and stocking of the pantry, I'm beginning to wonder if I should get unready instead.  If I should stop buying fresh fruit and snacks for the midwives, if I should let the laundry pile up and the floors collect dirt and the sink grow full of dishes.  Maybe then, when I have let go of all the other chores in my life, I could let this baby come down and out?  This occurred to me when I considered the cultural traditions of unbraiding a mother's hair, of untying knots, undoing buttons, opening windows...all to encourage - or trick - the baby out.

Maybe, just maybe, I am holding on too tightly to something. 

And then again, maybe, just maybe, this baby knows better than I do when she should come.

For now I have a foot in both worlds.  There is an alert and conscious part of me who makes lists, goes to the store, brings Satchel to school, prepares dinner, pays bills, fills out forms.  But I also see the laboring woman inside taking over.  She is barely safe behind the wheel of the car.  She forgets things.  She spaces out and trips over a crack in the sidewalk.  She cannot have a conversation and pay for her groceries at the same time.  She forgets car keys and cell phones and shoes.  And I am inviting her to take her seat at the head of the table.  I want her hosting this dinner party soon, dammit.