The baby came on Friday morning.
Labor was longer and harder than anything I've ever done. The result is more precious than anything I've ever known.
We are both doing well.
Click on the flickr photo badge to see lots of baby photos.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Past Due
This moment is all there is. Every other day or so, there is a rush of hormones: muscles contract in involuntary readiness; a great love rises and runs high; an inner ache banishes sleep. The cliff's edge is approached.
And then something draws back. It is not yet time. Mundane matters fill the day.
There is only one way for this to end, however. One day the boundary will not hold.
Perhaps this slow approach is good. The gate is opening slowly and gradually over days, so that when birth comes, it will be more gentle.
Over the past couple of weeks, something has happened. Some very specific regrets and fears have melted away. Old shame has dissolved. A gentle death of some attachments to a past time; a gentle death 0f some old life.
In this in-between time, there are many lasts. The last time I will have dinner and a long conversation with K. The last tutoring with M while still unencumbered by maternal concerns. The last weekend, and then really the last weekend, of quiet togetherness with my husband.
Some old life--once mine--is already dying. And some new life is actually already here. The baby becomes a person only when it emerges. But already it relates and fidgets, sleeps and gets excited. It likes eating, especially after a while without food. At the first mouthful, the baby wiggles with great energy. I don't know who this person is behind the skin veil, but I have no doubt that they are wholly there, dreaming their way toward the day when their genuine personhood is officially recognized by the US government. For today, this little one has no papers and no number. But he (or she) is more real than the remembered self that once lived my life.
I look at all the little clothes, at the baby bed, and the birthing pool, and my own roiling belly, and I am so excited. So worried, so happy, and so calm. Karma comes due. Waiting to dive over the cliff's edge is like this.
And then something draws back. It is not yet time. Mundane matters fill the day.
There is only one way for this to end, however. One day the boundary will not hold.
Perhaps this slow approach is good. The gate is opening slowly and gradually over days, so that when birth comes, it will be more gentle.
Over the past couple of weeks, something has happened. Some very specific regrets and fears have melted away. Old shame has dissolved. A gentle death of some attachments to a past time; a gentle death 0f some old life.
In this in-between time, there are many lasts. The last time I will have dinner and a long conversation with K. The last tutoring with M while still unencumbered by maternal concerns. The last weekend, and then really the last weekend, of quiet togetherness with my husband.
Some old life--once mine--is already dying. And some new life is actually already here. The baby becomes a person only when it emerges. But already it relates and fidgets, sleeps and gets excited. It likes eating, especially after a while without food. At the first mouthful, the baby wiggles with great energy. I don't know who this person is behind the skin veil, but I have no doubt that they are wholly there, dreaming their way toward the day when their genuine personhood is officially recognized by the US government. For today, this little one has no papers and no number. But he (or she) is more real than the remembered self that once lived my life.
I look at all the little clothes, at the baby bed, and the birthing pool, and my own roiling belly, and I am so excited. So worried, so happy, and so calm. Karma comes due. Waiting to dive over the cliff's edge is like this.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Little to Know
I cried the other day hearing Liam Clancy remember a departed friend, encountered in "that brief window of consciousness that is given to us between the two great mysteries."
What can you say, as you wait for the window to open for a child?
I thought when I started pregnancy that I would gain some insight from the experience. I would learn something and be able to report it to the world. Some profound understanding about this mystery would reveal itself. I would be able to say that growing a baby is “like” this or that.
Maybe it’s no surprise: I don’t understand anything. In my body, something tremendous has transpired, with no particular effort on my part. I have become extremely large, and I have had feelings about that. But when your body is co-opted for reproductive purposes, there’s not much you can do. The challenge is to feel, and to keep feeling. To note the physical and emotional landscape, all the wonder and trepidation and uncomprehending responsibility. This is a person we have here! the mind isn’t made to wrap around that truth. Only a soft and stable heart can hold it.
Last night I dreamed I was holding a very new Native American Indian baby named Donald against my chest. He curled against my tummy like a little frog, and tried to suck on my sweater. He had a full shock of blackblack hair. I took him down some stairs and gave him to his mother. She was wearing a beautiful white puffy jacket and a matching white baby carrier.
My pregnancy dreams are like that: taking care of babies and little children. None of these dreams horrible or traumatic or even psychedelic in the way that pregnancy dreams often are. Just tenderness and a bit of joy. This dream-baby was the youngest yet.
What can you say, as you wait for the window to open for a child?
I thought when I started pregnancy that I would gain some insight from the experience. I would learn something and be able to report it to the world. Some profound understanding about this mystery would reveal itself. I would be able to say that growing a baby is “like” this or that.
Maybe it’s no surprise: I don’t understand anything. In my body, something tremendous has transpired, with no particular effort on my part. I have become extremely large, and I have had feelings about that. But when your body is co-opted for reproductive purposes, there’s not much you can do. The challenge is to feel, and to keep feeling. To note the physical and emotional landscape, all the wonder and trepidation and uncomprehending responsibility. This is a person we have here! the mind isn’t made to wrap around that truth. Only a soft and stable heart can hold it.
Last night I dreamed I was holding a very new Native American Indian baby named Donald against my chest. He curled against my tummy like a little frog, and tried to suck on my sweater. He had a full shock of blackblack hair. I took him down some stairs and gave him to his mother. She was wearing a beautiful white puffy jacket and a matching white baby carrier.
My pregnancy dreams are like that: taking care of babies and little children. None of these dreams horrible or traumatic or even psychedelic in the way that pregnancy dreams often are. Just tenderness and a bit of joy. This dream-baby was the youngest yet.
Birth Vigil
We are on birth vigil.
Yesterday I lay on the exam table as the midwife, a veteran of thousands of births, made ready to examine me. Instead, I asked a question about death, and she told me about the deaths she has attended.
Yes, she said, it's the same feeling of great transition.
I asked if she thought people dying go to the same place that people being born come from. She thought so.
There's a real physical effort to dying, she said, as if someone is pushing their way across something. Bit by bit, with enormous effort, they stop and rest, and then they carry on, gradually making their way. To the other shore, she said.
She is not, to my knowledge, a Buddhist.
You attend a dying person like you attend a birthing woman. You cannot do the work for them, but you can coach them and help them remember their intention. In both cases, they must open, and they must let go.
Breathing is so automatic, she said. It takes great will for a person to stop.
It takes great will to be born, too. The twelve-linked chain of causation culminates there--at birth, the apex of successive waves of desire and becoming--before it dives again into the next cycle of drives and wants.
Why are we born? Some basic desire draws us forth. It is all terrifying. And beautiful. Not entirely positive, in this world of dwindling resources. And yet, it’s just exactly As It Is.
The midwife turns at last to my body, and feels around. Things are in good shape, she says. Pelvic instability, which prevented me from walking earlier, is a predictor of easy labor: the bones are able to move apart. The baby-gate is nicely thinned and barely cracked open. The child’s head is low, ready to go. If everything were like this in a week, when the pregnancy is officially at term, the midwife would be pleased.
So we are ready. The baby is a good size. Some of the little clothes in the newborn lineup will never fit. The diapers are stacked; the cosleeper nestles next to our bed. Nothing to do but wait and invite the miracle.
Yesterday I lay on the exam table as the midwife, a veteran of thousands of births, made ready to examine me. Instead, I asked a question about death, and she told me about the deaths she has attended.
Yes, she said, it's the same feeling of great transition.
I asked if she thought people dying go to the same place that people being born come from. She thought so.
There's a real physical effort to dying, she said, as if someone is pushing their way across something. Bit by bit, with enormous effort, they stop and rest, and then they carry on, gradually making their way. To the other shore, she said.
She is not, to my knowledge, a Buddhist.
You attend a dying person like you attend a birthing woman. You cannot do the work for them, but you can coach them and help them remember their intention. In both cases, they must open, and they must let go.
Breathing is so automatic, she said. It takes great will for a person to stop.
It takes great will to be born, too. The twelve-linked chain of causation culminates there--at birth, the apex of successive waves of desire and becoming--before it dives again into the next cycle of drives and wants.
Why are we born? Some basic desire draws us forth. It is all terrifying. And beautiful. Not entirely positive, in this world of dwindling resources. And yet, it’s just exactly As It Is.
The midwife turns at last to my body, and feels around. Things are in good shape, she says. Pelvic instability, which prevented me from walking earlier, is a predictor of easy labor: the bones are able to move apart. The baby-gate is nicely thinned and barely cracked open. The child’s head is low, ready to go. If everything were like this in a week, when the pregnancy is officially at term, the midwife would be pleased.
So we are ready. The baby is a good size. Some of the little clothes in the newborn lineup will never fit. The diapers are stacked; the cosleeper nestles next to our bed. Nothing to do but wait and invite the miracle.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Waiting for Baby
Mostly what is left is the waiting.
I can walk now, and I enjoy it greatly. I fly up and down stairs, carefully but full of joy. I rest and do not carry things. Other than time and ice and kindness, nothing helped my hip to heal more than the midwife/naturopath's recommendation of great quantities of turmeric, a known anti inflammatory.
So I can do things again. I can move around the kitchen and cook. I can remember that following the recipe gives better results, sometimes, than complete improvisation. The freezer is filling up.
Pictures now hang on some walls. We have diapers stowed in large stacks in the antique dresser that will be the baby's changing table. The birthing pool is partway inflated, in readiness. The gaudy cartoon-fishies on the side really clash with our decor.
I fill the waiting with naps, with zazen, and with socializing. Soon it will be harder to connect with people. So many good folks are no longer in orbit; from a few, the silence is deafening. But it does not matter. The world is opening, the trees are in bud, flowers rise up, and we are never really separated from the people we care about.
Still, it is good to talk to my cousin M, to share chilaquiles with R and J, to know that A is coming over later to tell me about her kids and her job.
I am "due" in a week, but I secretly believe the baby will come before that.
I can walk now, and I enjoy it greatly. I fly up and down stairs, carefully but full of joy. I rest and do not carry things. Other than time and ice and kindness, nothing helped my hip to heal more than the midwife/naturopath's recommendation of great quantities of turmeric, a known anti inflammatory.
So I can do things again. I can move around the kitchen and cook. I can remember that following the recipe gives better results, sometimes, than complete improvisation. The freezer is filling up.
Pictures now hang on some walls. We have diapers stowed in large stacks in the antique dresser that will be the baby's changing table. The birthing pool is partway inflated, in readiness. The gaudy cartoon-fishies on the side really clash with our decor.
I fill the waiting with naps, with zazen, and with socializing. Soon it will be harder to connect with people. So many good folks are no longer in orbit; from a few, the silence is deafening. But it does not matter. The world is opening, the trees are in bud, flowers rise up, and we are never really separated from the people we care about.
Still, it is good to talk to my cousin M, to share chilaquiles with R and J, to know that A is coming over later to tell me about her kids and her job.
I am "due" in a week, but I secretly believe the baby will come before that.
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