Dressing a New Mother

After nearly five months, my body is approaching its pre-pregnancy dimensions. I have never been able to tell how fat or thin I am. Failure to accurately assess body image is very common. People cannot judge their own overweight-ness, or that of their children--perhaps because children function as surrogate selves to their parents?

Anyway, the body is finding its own shape, and the way I know this is by trying on my old clothes. A month ago I was dismayed to find that none of the old skirts or pants fit, and since I was feeling otherwise fine and healthy, I despaired of ever reclaiming my old wardrobe or my old dimensions.

There are shirts that no longer fit, too. But that's not such a problem. The maternal chest is substantially larger than before, and its duties are not compatible with certain style and fabrics. You want shirts that open in the front, and fabrics that are patterned (the better to conceal leaking milk, spit-up milk, and any other schmutz). Most of sweaters and many of the shirts must go, and that's not painful. I'll miss the cashmere bargains, but my new size is not upsetting. Given my dimensions in the upstairs department, having a fat chest has never been an issue.

I have worried about having a fat butt, though. So squeezing the butt that I have into the pants I once wore brings a certain satisfaction. Looking good, wearing clothes that I know flatter my body, brings a certain thrill, a flavor of something half-remembered.

I say "half-remembered" because there is a disconnect. Trying on these old clothes, I realize how I've changed. The body really isn't the same, and it never will be. The abdominal tone is um, very different! The spread of the hip bones is wider.

The heartmind is different, too. I am someone I was not before. Digging these clothes out of storage and putting them on is like putting on a dream person's clothes. Once, a self who no longer exists wore this slinky red satin sheath, this flouncy little black thing, this sexy retro tunic. Once upon a time, a woman bought clothes she liked without a thought as to whether they were compatible with breastfeeding or baby-wearing. Once upon a time, when I had no idea that I would be a mother, no idea how my heart would be opened and warmed and expanded by the tremendous and very simple birth of this baby, I wore these clothes. I went to parties and visited with friends and took myself to movies and generally did as I pleased.

I no longer do as I please; I no longer need the clothes that suited my old lifestyle. There is no regret in this. I am on assignment in the trenches of motherhood, where functionality trumps style. A cashmere sweater (hand-wash, hang dry) is no longer going to work for me.

Fortunately the neighborhood thrift stores giveth, and the neighborhood thrift stores taketh conveniently away. There's some serious turnover in the offing, both for them and for my closet.

Everything Ends

Today, 8/8/08, it is exactly one year since I began married life. My baby son came into this world exactly 139 days ago.

When we celebrate anniversaries and calculate ages, we count all the hours and minutes since the beginnings of things. We celebrate the passage of time from a beginning point. On some level we know that the conditions to allow marriage, and babies, and our own lives, to come into being were brewing for a long while before their official beginnings, but we have to pin something down, and declare how things endure and unfurl through time.

What we don't know is our reverse age. We don't know many years we have left, how many months remain until the end of a life, how many weeks or days until death (or divorce) do finally part a married couple. Time remaining has been heavy on my heart lately.

A relative has been in and out of the hospital. How much time does she have? We don't know. Perhaps twenty years, perhaps twenty months. I pray they're happy ones. I imagine I will have the honor of outliving her and remembering her one day. But it really is imagined, an assumption. Who's to say she will go before I do?

Last night, the phone rang. I eavesdropped. "Does her husband know?....No, let's leave him alone for now. We can call him in the morning." What could it be? An affair? You don't expect people to die.

But it was a death. A good friend had fallen--too far--while climbing a Cascades peak. Two weeks ago, at dinner with group of friends, B had no idea he would never see her again. It was not a particularly tough climb; she was an extremely experienced climber. Of course we want to know just how it happened; did gear fail? was she overconfident? But it doesn't really matter. Without warning, this person's life ended unexpectedly. Unimaginably. But expectations and imagination count for nothing in the end.

There was nothing to do but get ready for bed, check our sleeping baby very carefully, and hold each other in the darkness.

I know we are still processing this terrible gift of death. We are forced to face the profoundly precious, incredibly mundane matter of our ongoing existence. We go along imagining we possess a certain mastery over things, but really the life we are immersed in is barely understood. Its end is even more completely unknown. Having no other recourse, we pretend trivial things are important to keep ourselves occupied in the interim.

I used to think that all distraction from the Ultimate Matter was evil. But there needs to be joy in life. More than ever, I am looking forward to seeing who the baby is when he wakes up from his nap; to watching the Olympic ceremonies tonight on a borrowed TV; to getting a facial sometime soon. To savoring the mundane mystery while I can.

fan

my internet browser dont work
my baby dont sleep
but the laundry is done
and a fan whirrs this hot day away

i cut the tie today
to work that pays well
for now

the baby yearns to crawl
looks across the room
lunges onto his face
can sit and use two hands to eat a scarf

he said "a-ma"
probably nothing
but my heart flipped

this is what you type with one hand
while an infant with hot skin
holds your other arm in place

Introducing The Parenting Bodhisattvas

There are those who argue we should always keep the Dharma in the forefront of our minds; others proclaim there is no Dharma, and no mind in which to keep it. But, regardless of what is meant by "mind" and "Dharma", there is the mundane experience of remembering and dwelling on the Truth, and of experiencing our life as a manifestation of that Truth.

A person under stress is liable to forget that the life they are living is nothing other than the unfolding Dharma. Fortunately I have a husband who will kindly remind me--at 2:30 a.m. when the baby refuses to sleep--"This is your advanced spiritual practice."

It's easy to say, and a little cheesy to say, but it's also true. This is a spiritual practice, a lesson in applied bodhisattva-hood. You are literally giving your life to another being. Their supper is your body; their pain racks your heart; to relieve their suffering you would do anything; to see them smile and laugh is a prayer fulfilled. As a parent, your heart is torn open, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

You are also aware of not being in control. This has a painful side: your child may scream all night, and you may never know why--but there is also a joyful side: you do what you can, and somehow because of you but more likely in spite of you, a human being self-assembles. An intellect coalesces; a body grows; new preferences and abilities come out of nowhere. A baby does not need to be taught to suck or laugh or hide its head shyly. There is no instruction in chewing on your own toes, falling asleep, or clamoring for solid food. These things happen on their own, when the time is right, regardless of parental effort or opinion.

You could invoke biology to explain the birth and development of babies; you could employ the tools of sociology and psychology to tell you what happens to make some babies grow up into wounded adults, while others endure great pain and are mostly fine. But the experience of being a parent, of witnessing a new human flowering into itself, is something beyond what science is equipped to explain. There is a spiritual element to it--something magical, profound, and deeply right. As a parent, as a human, as a former baby myself, I experience energies that correspond to the archetypes known in Buddhist thought as Bodhisattvas.

Kwan Yin (Jap. Kannon, San. Avalokitesvara)

Kwan Yin is the great parent, the parent you secretly hope to be--and the one you sometimes are, impossibly, with her help. Her kindness and sweetness are boundless. When you feel your heart expanding as if it would burst, she is in you. She embodies the great love that parents and children feel for one another. She brings babies to parents, and parents to babies. She fulfills the unfulfilled; she makes love whole.

To be a baby is to suffer. The screams of the suffering children of the world find a deep hearing with Kwan Yin; she understands and does not avert from their grief. The healing balm she carries soothes the most searing hurt. She is a being composed of pure compassion. When pain overwhelms us, she holds us. When joy overwhelms us, she holds us. Like the extraordinary parent she is, she desires nothing but our safety and happiness, and the fulfillment of our greatest destiny. When we this for our children, and live from that place, we are Kwan Yin.

Jizo (San. Ksitigarbha)

Jizo guides the spirits of new children into this world, and watches over babies who depart from this realm. Nobody really understands where our life comes from, and nobody really understands where we go when we die. In the elation and the tragedy of these transitions, Jizo stands guard with steadfast kindness.

For all the children who enter the world only to find that their parents cannot care for them properly, Jizo is a comforter. For all the babies who cry alone in their crib, Jizo is there. For all the babies who are ignored or mistreated as they earnestly try to accomplish their destiny as little humans, Jizo is there. In the bewilderment and terror of a child in war, of a child abused, of a small life snuffed out or subverted, Jizo offers silent solace. There is no situation so terrible that Jizo's brave heart does not shine.

This Moment of Peace Brought to You by Zantac

For the past two weeks, the baby has not slept well. I can count on one hand the number of times he's gone down for more than 2 hours at a stretch. Or I could try--I might be too fatigued to make it that high.

Trapped gas, burps and farts, seemed to be a major contributor to the wakefulness. I have learned in the past few months that it's nearly impossible to burp a sleeping person or a screaming person. Moments when the baby is awake and not distressed have been few. You can't burp him because he's too busy yelling about the trapped air in his tummy. It's a very unpleasant cycle of suffering.

This morning, whilst searching online for new and better ways to burp my son, I came across a post that equated trapped air, "colic", and reflux.

I thought he was over his reflux. But perhaps this latest round of arching the back, pulling off the nipple, screaming, non-burping, waking up the minute he was laid down, etc....perhaps this was reflux.

There was some unused baby Zantac in the medicine cabinet. I put it to use.

Twenty minutes later I had a sleeping baby, and an hour later I had a relaxed and peaceful baby.

We walked all the way up to the Japanese Garden. I renewed my membership and we went inside. It was members-only hours, and we had the garden and the gardeners all to ourselves.

The baby was transfixed. Everything needed to be looked at very carefully. The light on the water. The way the water runs between the stones The braided straw insets on the sheltered bench that is my favorite seat. He could have stayed there all day.

A very sweet gardener with a gentle German accent saw me with the baby carrier. "Oh, is it hiding?" she asked. The baby peeked at her while we chatted. Her job that morning was watering moss. Doesn't that sound pleasant? Almost as pleasant as sitting with my baby, just looking at a waterfall.



Later in the day, I found myself lying on my back, feeding the baby, and...we started joking around, I swear.

The little guy looked at me with a glint in his eye, made a giant lunge for the boob, and we both started laughing. I wrinkled my nose. We cracked up. He made a funny sound. We lost it again. This went on for a while until he got hungry enough.

It's good to laugh, especially after these past couple weeks. It's good to laugh with the most precious 4-month-old in the world and feel that you are communicating with this little person.

He's in bed for the night now, and I'm praying for some sleep.

Exposed, and Night Falls

I have always kept a journal. I have never known why. And now there is this blog.

When I was ten years old, I thought I was preserving some unique slice of history for future scholars. At fifteen, I wrote to maintain sanity, sometimes writing continuously for hours, escaping my life by chronicling it. As the years wore on and memories faded, I would say that I wrote to remember the puzzling and the mundane aspects of my existence.

Lately, it has seemed to me that writing a blog about my life may be a fundamentally narcissistic undertaking. Who but myself is really interested in what I have to say? Am I not actually writing for others, and subconsciously trying to satisfy an imagined audience? And why do such a thing? Why not let life burn itself out, day by day, and vanish?

Because then I would not understand. I write to figure things out. To comprehend life a little better. To find patterns, to uncover insight, to record mistakes for future review. I aim to approach the truth, somehow, laying down thoughts while I am still blind to their significance, appreciating events only in hindsight. Beyond just writing in a journal or a blog, I have to read it. Otherwise nothing is learned.

And the truth wants to be shared. Which is why we have blogs, poetry, and Dharma centers. On the city bus, excerpts from poems are posted along the ceiling. They capture something widely accessible and yet effective. Good poetry is true. It has to pierce its own container to touch us, to mean something greater than it seems to. This is Dharma, humans grasping with words for a wisdom that pierces the fog: uncomfortable, necessary, and bracing like a cold wind. I suppose all art comes from this kind of attempt to find Truth.

The new Poet Laureate of the US, Kay Ryan, says there is nothing to be done in the face of her fame, so new and so awkward, because are all exposed anyway, all the time. And if she’s right--as I know she is--well then, those who blog are likewise exposed already, anyway, before they even begin typing. So what if we are seen? I once lived with someone who used to read my blog to find out what I was all about and how I was really doing. Perhaps I was seen more accurately through the blog than by the everyday eye.

And so we write. Medical students, Army snipers, religious evangelists, and proud parents all feel compelled to share something with the world as they try to make sense of what it means to be alive day after day. I know my life now is superficially less interesting than it was when I lived in a startup Zen monastery. My posts are less immediately affecting than they were when I first moved to the city. They are certainly less frequent then they once were. They show symptoms of mental fatigue. But there I am. This is what there is.

---

Tonight the fading light made the blowing leaves on the trees glow richly green. Later, the leaves danced grey in the fading light. Breath came to mark the passage of time; leaves and mind did not separate. When the baby stirred, his skin seemed molded from porcelain, a tiny ideal come to life. He blindly searched for food from the depths of sleep, arching and raising his brows over closed eyes like a little drunkard seeking the sweet taste of life.

It is dark now, and the leaves blow still, rustling invisibly in the dark, beyond the drawn blinds.

A Brush With De Quervain's

Medicine is one of those fields in which very little is charming. Yet medical conditions are often named for their discoverers, which never fails to seem quaint and earnest. As if a particular predicament did not exist before it was recognized by Dr Down or Dr Alzheimer and shared with a grateful world.

I have no idea who De Quervain was, but I am absolutely certain that the condition that bears this doctor's name has been around since time immemorial.

Before "De Quervain's" became real to me, it manifested as a curious and painful stiffness in the wrists. As the baby writhed and grunted and signaled readiness for a nighttime feeding, I would stand by the bassinet doing some grunting of my own, still mostly asleep, unable to mobilize my hands and reach for the child. I would eventually stretch them enough, or wake up enough, to reach into the bassinet and lift the baby, ignorantly utilizing the same rotten body mechanics that got me into the predicament in the first place.

This continued under the radar for weeks, and the baby grew, until the pain, and not just stiffness became a common fixture of the waking hours. I knew I should not lift the baby so much--but how can you even attempt such a thing? Looking around the internet, I learned that new mothers and grandmothers often have this kind of wrist pain, which resembles carpal tunnel pain but is restricted to the tendons at the base of the thumb. De Quervain's was real, belatedly.

I began to lift the baby with a neutral, not bent wrist. But a hard bump the size of a lentil grew under the skin of the wrist, below the thumb. The right wrist now hurt all the time, not just when I was hoisting the baby in a contorted manner. Pressure on it of any sort was excruciating. I tried to immobilize it with a bandage and woke up one night to find myself tearing at it, and the wrist burning with pain.

Finally, I could not lift the baby much at all. I would awkwardly pick him up using my forearms rather than my hands, and wretchedly try to maneuver him around. Or I would wait for my husband to step in and lift, rotate, and tuck my son's body into the desired position.

I had resisted splints because pressure on the wrist was so excruciating, but finally I was convinced that, since my physical misery was only increasing, I should give them an honest try. At the low point, unable to turn a doorknob or pick up a pillow, I finally splinted.

The splint was a battered neoprene one covered with mortar and speckled with paint. It's the grit between the tiles of our bathroom floor, the color of our kitchen. I padded the inside with foot-pampering gel toe-spacers, to take pressure off the lentil-like growth, now visible beneath the skin. I put this ugly contraption on. The relief was immediate. I refused to take it off until I had a fresh, unsoiled but otherwise identical model, to wear.

Two days later, my wrists are fine. I wear the brace at night and intermittently during the day. I avoid all pressure on a bent wrist. Since the flaring pain is gone, I am functioning well. Most interesting of all, the lentil-like growth, which two days ago was a small mountain pushing whitely outward against skin and vein, has now completely vanished.

I move my body and employ my wrists with great care. The baby has gained even more weight; he is a solid little turkey of boy-meat, more charming and engaging every day. The online descriptions of De Quervain's are depressingly short on successful treatments (acetaminophen, surgery). In this case, what saved me was listening to my body and being curious and desperate enough to rig up a solution that worked. I wish I had been more careful from the beginning.

Fortunately, the way karma seems to work, you keep encountering your issues in various forms until you resolve them. Today the wrists, tomorrow, who knows?

Obviously...

Baby K seems to recognize the sign for "hungry?"

Encouraged, I've begun building my knowledge of ASL based on our needs: "papa"; "change" (as in diaper); "up"; "more"; "big"; and "boy".

I have been looking for the American Sign Language signs for "noise" or "sound". I can't find them. It's taken me weeks to finally realize why not. Deaf people probably don't really talk about noises, do they?

But the baby is interested in sounds. He perks up and looks at me when he hears the garbage trucks rumbling around our neighborhood. How can I tell him what they are?
I can't find the sign for "truck" either. What does this say about deaf people, as evidenced by ASL dictionaries? That they have different interests from a hearing baby....

I am completely in love with my son

The baby's eyelashes are so impossibly long that they don't fit neatly around the eyelid anymore, but lie ruffled as he sleeps. I stare at his profile, hoping to etch it in my mind, knowing it's already seared into my unconscious heart. I did not know it was possible to love someone like this.

Over the weekend, the baby seemed to become more childlike, and less babylike. Not physically, but behaviorally. He wakes up in the morning, and besides the usual smiles and cuteness, he is now ready to play. Where he used to grab things aimlessly, now he reaches for toys, and tries to make his way toward them. His attempts at crawling look like a face-grinding and floor-slobbering, and usually end with loud complaints. You pick him up and dry him off and try not to think about what's on the floor (we've been washing it) and then he's at it again.

There is a certain social maturity developing in him. He will smile, asking for reassurance, when he's feeling stressed. He will wait expectantly, for someone to make eye contact. He will play and laugh, but has never laughed for me. This morning I told my husband, "Kids are always savvier than they let on." I remember that from my own childhood. I realized that I was communicating with my husband via the baby, as in, "Maybe your papa wants to take you for a walk." Better to talk directly to the adult and leave the confused little kid out of it.

At night, the baby becomes younger. He does not like bedtime, and last night he cried when his papa left the room. He kept looking in the direction of his vanished father beseechingly. So papa came back to sit with us while the baby finally settled down for some serious sucking.

He knows not to bite me with his one razor-sharp tooth bud, but when he's tired or frustrated with pain, he chomps. It feels like he could draw blood, and I yelp and leave things alone for a minute.

He does not like a wet diaper, and can stay dry for hours when asleep. When he's awake, he can hold it for an hour or so, and let it go on cue. Of course, if there's no cue, you can end up with a lap full of saved-up baby pee. He'll pee when the diaper's open so he can get a fresh one, and he'll pee into the bedtime diaper and howl to be changed. Nobody wants to sleep in that stuff for hours.

"What did he do before this?" B asked. He looked at the world with big pensive eyes. Now that mysterious little person chuckles and dances and reads books and carries on long conversations that seem almost intelligible. He sits unsteadily, leaning on his hands, until he leans down to chew on his toes, or flips over onto his back. He plays peekaboo and looks at the baby in the mirror. When he's feeling shy, he buries his face in my shoulder, hiding from his reflected self.

All this at fourteen weeks of age, and fifteen pounds of solid baby-weight.

Father's Day

Seven o'clock on a Sunday morning.

I am dancing around the bedroom, mostly naked, holding a baby like a football.
I sing "Johnny Todd," "Clementine," and "She Loves You" in the morning light.
The baby's arms and legs bounce, and little spit bubbles form on his lips.

He smiles at papa and goes to read a book while I make my way to the kitchen to find something for breakfast. We have one egg and a large quantity of dry cereal.

Papa still hasn't found the Father's Day card hidden in the baby's crib.

Involuntary Ascetism Ends

My last post marked a local low point in the experience of motherhood. I asked my husband to come home from work early that day; I was so fatigued that I feared dropping the baby. I would look down at him and not really "see" him properly.

My very wise husband suggested I go to bed with the baby that night. Normally, after the little guy goes to sleep, I stay up for a couple hours and do yoga, or enjoy some grown-up company with my husband. The baby sometimes sleeps for 5 or 6 hours, but during that time I'm awake, trying to be an adult. Bedtime is at 7pm so I can have some time to relate to the man I married. But I wasn't much fun to be around anyway. And so I went to bed that night at 8pm.

The baby slept for six hours, and I did too. I awoke restored in every possible way.

My lips were red again. The world was once again full of promise and a hint of magic. My child was beautiful and adorable, my husband interesting and kind.

I heard once, second hand, about a prominent Buddhist teacher and monk who didn't lie down to sleep for a year, or maybe three years. When asked what it was like, he said, "I was just really grumpy during that time." It's hard to be graceful, or happy, or to meditate comfortably, when you are sleep deprived.

I realized, after my rest: it had been ten weeks since I'd slept more than three hours at a stretch. Of course I was miserable.

Last night, I slept again. For a five hour stretch. I felt so good when I woke up that I went to the hospital to take care of a long-delayed blood draw. Two weeks ago, I could not have imagined fasting for twelve hours, breastfeeding, and then hiking over to have blood drained out of me, all before 9 a.m. This morning, I did it and I was fine.

And so the sun shines, the trees blow in the wind, the road crew cuts into the pavement outside our apartment. Indoors, classical music plays, the baby grunts and babbles and reaches a developmental milestone: grasping and waving an object around. It's a good day. Gotta sleep more often!

The Locus for Going Crazy

Sometimes silence on a blog means that the writer's life is so full of high adventure there's no time to stop and write it down.

And sometimes it means life is kicking your butt, you have nothing useful to say, and you're taking your mother's advice in such situations and keeping your mouth shut.

Excuse me. There is a yelling child on my lap.

That's better. Now we have a only mildly fidgety baby swinging in a mechanical swing nearby. You know, the sort of contraption you looked upon with a combination of suspicion and disdain before you came to rely on its mysterious powers? He calms down the minute his butt hits the seat.

My last post was written in haste, and the comment that was posted to it was better thought-out than the original post. Or so it seems to me. For days, I have contemplated thoughts to add. Did you know that London cabdrivers have enlarged hippocampi? The better to remember their ways around the warren of city streets? Perhaps the human mind is nothing more than the imagined self that arises from the fleshly computing of a billion neurons.

Perhaps we use the term "mind" too loosely, and miss having a discussion entirely because we talk past each other.

Perhaps the same is true of "God". Do we mean the divine mystery that emerges from a silent mind and open heart? Or a parental arbiter that rules our lives? Spend your time discussing one while your friend discusses the other, and you have no discussion at all.

Noticing that perception of the divine happens in a particular locus in the brain, does that make it "only" a neural phenomenon, and not real? Would we say that the streets of London are not real because the experience of them can be measured as a particular pattern of neural activity? If seeing my grandmother correlates with one pattern of neural activity, and having a spiritual experience correlates with another, am I allowed to diagnose one phenomenon as a genuine experience, and the other as some sort of artifact?

Do people really think it's an artifact? Or do I imagine "scientists" to be close-minded because it makes me feel better for not being one? Do I set up a conflict between science and Buddhism where, for the most part, there really isn't one?

I had these thoughts, and I also happened to have a major attack of the Inner Critic--that voice in the head (show me the locus...) that notices what is lacking, what is not quite right, what is hopelessly muddled. For who am I to discuss "brain" or "mind" or "holiness"? Having tried--and you might say, failed, if you were in a judgmental mood-- at being a scientist; having tried my darnedest at being a Zen monk, having tried to live outside the monastery and meditate a lot, where am I now? I have a baby, all the time in the world to not meditate in, and only a marginal idea of which way is up.

My mind, what's left of it, is the most unclear and conflicted it's been in years. I have some inkling that something called "hormones" is involved. That and a really stunning life change that has to do with the baby who currently lies asleep in a sling against my chest, after another half hour of loud complaining.

It takes me weeks to recognize simple things: that the songs playing in my head are an attempt to avoid feeling intensely vulnerable; that I need to have contact with other people, because as absorbing as this little person is, talking to no one but him and my husband will lead only to depression; that perhaps instead of really wanting to have a career, instead of fighting against fate for some way to provide for my little family, I should gracefully accept this very important job I'm actually doing right now.

It's time to ask for help. To get a massage, to get a babysitter, to think about therapy. I've weathered a lot of good fortune this past year, and now I've found the point of resistance. Thinking doesn't help, and feeling bad about it doesn't help.

I don't want to be doing anything other than what I'm doing now. I just want to feel peaceful doing it.