Here I Start Over Again
The previous two entries were never completed, but I thought I'd publish them anyway to let you know that yes I have been writing at least a little. I have just been reading a friend of mine's journal "faerynoel's livejournal" on the web. She is in Virginia working on an organic farm and is currently suffering from some physical as well as emotional/psychological maladies probably triggered by the new environment. But in the midst of it all, she still continues to write because she knows that her friends are reading her stuff. I should do that to stay motivated--tell people about this so I'll feel more compelled to write.

I think I'm going to change the format of my entries. I just can't go on "pretending" that I know anything about being a mom. Of course, I know it in one sense, simply because I am a mom, but I guess I can't really explain it very clearly to anyone who hasn't experienced it herself. Anyway, so I think I will just stick to discussing the real aspects of my life instead of waxing philosophical on what it means to be a mom, cultural criticism, etc. Besides, I haven't been a mom for a year, yet.

So, Aidan turns one on the 30th. I can't believe how time has flown. He has been a blessing. I cannot imagine my life without him, though I do sometimes long for a life without having to worry about someone else 24-7. Even as I type this, I can hear him in the other room, snoring in his crib. He is probably dreaming about the "Giant Boob in the Sky" as Alan likes to put it. Aidan has been walking really well, lately. Yesterday, while I was busy sending out an email, he was busy chewing on a self-stamper. I found chunks of blue ink in his mouth and had to wash it out of the carpet this morning. I remember asking Alan, rather calmly I like to think, "Do you know if ink is poisonous?"

Alan and I were able to go out on a date tonight. I discovered that he has become an agnostic. It's interesting what kinds of things you find out about your better half when you finally sit down after months of running in circles and get the chance to ask, "So, how are you?" And then things begin to come out--well, yes, I've changed while you weren't looking. I know it's going to be like that when our children grow older. They'll look at me and say, "Didn't you know?" and tell me they had decided to pursue a doctorate or get married to someone I had met only a few times. How do people change so quickly on you? And I feel as if I have hardly changed at all since I was in junior high--still struggling with raging hormones and pimply skin.

Ah me, so what did I say to Alan after he broke the news to me? Just something deep like, "Really?" and then I sat uncomfortably silent for a minute thinking of something else to say. Trying to fight the urge to say, "How can you not be sure if you believe in God? Don't you know agnosticism is the biggest cop-out attitude?" But, of course, that certainly wouldn't have got us anywhere. So, I bit my tongure, or rather, I took a very large bite of my Chocolate Peanut Butter pie (we were at Baker's Square) and chewed thoughtfully until Alan mercifully changed the subject: "Let me try a bite of that before you swallow it whole." And so it goes with dates with my husband, whom I love dearly and devotedly. Sometimes he drives me crazy.

Last week was a hard one. Aidan is nine and a half months old now. He's been cutting two teeth on the top. This means a runny nose, little sleep and general crankiness. It's like he's a different person. Every time I tried to do something, such as washing the dishes, he follows me, whining and holding onto my pants. And when I breastfeed him and think he's done, he wants to do it again in 15 minutes. Although I understand that he is not being his usual self and that his gums probably hurt, his behavior irks me just the same. I want to be able to put him down and do what I have to do. I feel like a baby myself--why can't I do what I want when I want?

How many new mothers (and fathers) have pondered this question? Why can't I do what I want when I want? We are such fickle creatures. My husband pride ourselves on the fact that we've chosen to raise a family early in our marriage. We scorn couples who have opted out of having children just yet because they value their freedom or careers. We like to think that we sacrificed all of that and are therefore braver and worthier. Of course, these notions are ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that we have failed miserably at being devoted parents.

When I watch Aidan during the day, I find myself drifting towards the computer to check my email or glancing at a book I'm in the middle of reading--anything more interesting than trying to figure out how to entertain a baby who can't understand what you're saying or respond coherently and has an attention span of about 30 seconds. Sometimes I think I have a similar attention span. While feeding Aidan at lunchtime, I find myself starting to doze in between spoonfuls of pureed carrots.

Honestly, I have had a few thoughts cross my mind during diaper changes and bedtime rituals that would probably bother Aidan if he was capable of understanding them. Thoughts like, "Why

Being a mother starts you on a path of worrying you never thought you'd be going down. When we first brought Aidan home, I worried I wasn't going to be able to take care of him. When I brought him into bed with me, I worried I was going to roll over on him. When we drove him to the pediatrician's office, I was worried we were going to get in an accident. I was worried he was too hot or too cold or too hungry. Where did all this worry come from?

I think my husband wanted to strangle me with all my worry. He could hardly hold Aidan without me telling him how to hold him right or how to change him the right way. I remember being so jumpy about Aidan's crying. I tried to everything possible to get him to stop crying. We held him in our arms and bounced him on our big Yoga ball, I paced the floor with him while listening to music, we rocked him in the chair. The first week home, no matter where I was at or whether Aidan was crying or not, I could hear newborn cries in my ears. I'm glad to say I don't hear them anymore.

But I also enjoyed having Aidan around. We had a new little person to look at. We noticed all the little things he did. We had fun coming up with names for them. Like "the butthole express." Every time Aidan nursed, he would poop in his diaper. This led Alan to call it the butthole express because it seemed like the milk would go into his mouth and back out the other side all in one shot.

Discovering the "Mother Instinct"
After I had given birth to Aidan, I guess I had naively assumed that I would get to keep him in my arms for as long as I wanted. I soon found out I would have to fight to keep him with me. In the same room where I gave birth, the nurse placed Aidan under a heat lamp and left him there to cry. She said she would give him back to us after he had reached the proper body temperature, i.e. 98.7 degrees. Now, if you were placed wet and naked under a heat lamp that was high above your head, how long do you think it would take you to warm up?

So, as soon as the nurse left the room, I told my husband Alan to go get the baby and give him to me so I could warm him up with my own body. Didn't they know that skin-to-skin contact is the best way to warm up, not to mention calm down, a crying baby? When the nurse came back in, I had Aidan snuggled against me under the sheets. I told her his temperature had reached 98.7 before she had returned. She told me, huffing a little, "I'm supposed to take his temperature in the incubator. But I guess I'll have to take it in your arms."

Of course we were fine with that. Then they transferred us to another room, where we would spend the night. I was so excited to have Aidan with me, but it seems everyone else had first dibs. The nurses came in and out all night to check on him, testing him for this and that, taking him to the nursery for this and that, keeping him in the bassinet whenever possible. The phlebotomist came in at 6:30 in the morning with two interns to draw blood from Aidan and me. Then a woman came in to write down the birth information for Aidan's birth certificate and another woman came in to try to sell me a photo package. I wanted to ask them, "Do you realize I just went through hard labor and pushed a baby out of a hole ten centimeters in diameter? I worked hard for that baby, now let me be alone with him, damn it!"

Then the pediatrician came and knocked on the door and, much to my chagrin, refused to come in until I stopped breastfeeding Aidan for fear of glimpsing a breast. So my husband took him crying from me and put him naked in the bassinet.

Despite the constant interruptions, I could think of nothing else but Aidan and how he could possibly be in my arms after being so long inside me. "Is this really you?" I thought. My husband lay on the hide-a-bed next to my hospital bed snoring away as I pondered the experience and looked at our child. I was in a state of bewilderment. How had we come to this place? How did we get this tiny baby? Am I really attempting to keep it alive with milk from my breats and warmth from my body? Is it possible for me to support another human being this way? I felt out of my league.

Some people say that there really is no such thing as mother instinct, that it is learned, a social construct. I think this is true in some sense. I think it is especially true now because that "instinct" has been taken away from us.

We are told how to care for our children by the nurses and doctors. We read books and watch videos and take classes on how to raise children. We are told that our children should be doing such and such by such and such an age. We are told when, how and what to feed them. When did motherhood become so technical, scientific and psychoanalyzed? When did people start calling themselves "experts" in birth and child-rearing? And when did we start allowing ourselves to listen to these "experts" instead of our own "instincts"?

Of course, like everything else, it all revolves around money. Doctors and nurses make money from "caring" for mothers and our babies. If we didn't "need" them, where would they be? Drug companies and anesthesiologists get their money whenever we ask for drugs during labor because we are told and we tell ourselves we can't handle the pain. Formula companies make money when we are told we can't produce enough milk to feed a growing baby.

Of course, some of these things are needed in special circumstances, such as when a mother does need drugs and expertise during a difficult labor or formula when she is truly unable to produce enough milk. But these aids are no longer treated as such--they have become the norm.

But I knew being a mother without all of that is possible, that I could to do it "by instinct," if you will. My mother had done it, my grandmother and so on had done it before her. Many, many women had done it, even before the creation of formula, incubators, epidurals, baby manuals, and Babies 'R' Us-es. Their "instincts" were guided by other mothers, who taught them what they found worked best for their own children. What blows my mind is how many women listen to men for child-rearing advice (as if men don't have enough fields in which they are the experts!). Of course, not being raised in a society that values motherhood in a healthy manner, I still have to turn to books for some advice. But I select these carefully, based on whether or not the author validates the mother instinct over their own "expert" opinions. And I have sought out other like-minded mothers.

So, after talking to my husband, we decided to leave the hospital as soon as possible. We wanted to be with our son and get some sleep. I didn't want Aidan to be poked and prodded anymore. I wanted him to feel gentle human contact, to be welcomed into the world as a human being and not a specimen. I wanted him to be soothed when he cried and nursed when he was hungry. I wanted to help him get over the shock of leaving the warm, watery womb.

So we took Aidan back with us and invited him into our home to spend the rest of his life with us. Then the real fun of caring for a newborn began.

Remembering a Secret No One Wants to Share
Topic: Or Dealing with the Pain
I always wondered why no one ever told me what giving birth is like. Why no one ever shared with me their birth experience. Only the people who had horror stories about the length of the labor or their discomfort said anything. But they never gave you any real details of what exactly happened--just a general impression of hell. I tried to get my mom to pin down the experience for me. But she, too, could only explain it in vague terms: "A contraction is like a wave, it gets stronger and stronger and then it reaches a peak and then the pain recedes and you're left alone to gather your strength for the next one." It was the same thing with breastfeeding: "It's really hard at first, but you've got to be tough. It gets better."

Why all the vagueness? I thought. But really, who can describe pain? It seems ironic that the women who complained the loudest were the ones who had the drugs. My father's grandmother, who had twelve children, told his mother, who had seven children, "Childbirth isn't as difficult as they make it out to be. It's no big deal." My mother told me the same thing.

I think the vagueness comes partly from forgetfulness. There's something about time that erases, or at least dulls, even the most painful memories. My husband remembers me being in a lot of pain, but I don't remember it. I think the vagueness also comes from a deliberate suppression of memory. Who wants to remember the pain?

But, I wanted to remember. Why? In some cultures, giving birth is a rite of passage for women. Here, it is talked about as a horror that one should try to alleviate at all costs. Or it is not talked about at all. But I wanted to tell others about it, to say "I did it." I wanted to tell other people about it, to say it was the most powerful experience of my life, that it made me feel more like a woman than I had ever felt before. And what was the response I received? "Oh, that's nice, but I would never do it that way" or "no wonder you were so tired." Only my husband and my mother congratulated me on a job well done. No one else wanted to hear about it.

We are a culture of secrets. I never knew that when most women went to the hospital to give birth, they had a huge needle placed in their spines so they couldn't feel the pain. I never knew that they were yelled at to push the baby out. I never knew that they had to stay in bed while they experienced wave after wave of pain. I never knew that in the 40s, they were put to sleep and their babies were taken out with foreceps. Women say they want to have a choice about what they do with their bodies. What kind of choice is that when doctors insist that you cannot have a baby on your own, that your body is incapable? If I had such an experience, were degraded in such a way, I wouldn't want to tell others either.

But I did not need the doctors to take over what my body could do on its own. So I am not afraid to speak of the birth and tell others it was a "good experience." Even now, I must be vague about it because I found that I was asking the wrong question. It is not, "But what is giving birth like?" Rather, it is "But what is giving birth like?"

For me, I did everything I could to cope with the pain, but all through it, I thought, "I'm doing it. I am strong. It will end soon and I will see my son." It is how you deal with the experience and what you get out of it that matters. If you fight it and hate it, that is all you remember. If you work with it and are hopeful, that is what you remember. I remember being strong and excited about seeing my son at last.

And when he was finally placed in my arms, I forgot about the pain and the exhaustion and the blood and focused on being with him and my husband. I was able to do this because I had decided long ago that the pain wasn't going to lick me.

The Adventure Begins (The Birth of Aidan)
Why the "adventures in mama-land"? Mother of six-month-old Aidan, I've decided it's high time someone told other mothers-to-be what they're in for. Well, at least, from my own experience. And that's the main trouble. Everyone's experience is so different that anything you hear about motherhood is immediately contradicted by someone else.

It all began with telling friends, family and co-workers I was pregnant with Aidan. There's nothing like a pregnant woman's belly to provide fodder for conversation. When I first told my boss the news, this is what he said: "Well, let me tell you. When my wife had our first son, she just went in there and had them cut her open like this." He demonstrated by slicing the air horizontally with his hand. "And then the doctor just slipped his hand inside like this. And he pulled the baby's head out just like that." Like scooping out ice cream, only with your bare hands. I got the picture. "If it were me, I wouldn't do it any other way," my boss told me. "Oh, by the way, congratulations."

I told him thank you and went back to work, afraid to tell anyone else the news. But it leaked out anyway and the stories just came pouring in. One woman sat across from me at lunch and told me about having to fill an empty milk jug with pee for her doctors because she had preeclampsia. Then she told me how she had to go in early to be induced and her boyfriend was out of town, so she had to have the baby alone. Another woman told me the anesthesiologist had missed the spot for the spinal and she had been suffering from severe migraines for months. Yet another woman told me that her after-birth pains were so bad she never wanted to have another child. And still others said their labors lasted 25+ hours and they hardly had enough strength to push the baby out.

And the thing is, I don't think I ever asked them what their labors had been like.

It was probably because I mentioned o them that I wanted to give birth naturally. It seemed to me to be the right thing to do. I was just continuing a long line of natural births in my family. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and so on all had given birth naturally because for them it was also the right thing to do. But most of the women I talked to didn't understand why in the world I would willingly want to suffer what they went through and wanted to let me know what it was really like.

This is where I need to pause and take a moment to explain that I am not writing this to be a spokeswoman for natural birth and condemn all woman who have had medicated births. Instead, I want to just describe my birth experience, which ended up being drug-free, and leave it up to the reader to interpret as he or she wishes.

Still, I think it is just as legitimate to tell a good birth story as it is to tell a horrible one.

My first true adventure in mama-land began on June 30, 2004 at 3:30 AM when my water-bag broke. Now I know you don't want to know all the details, just the impressions. So I have written below a poem describing my experience. Here it is:

Birth.
My mother said it was as easy as pie.
No big deal.
I'm a ballerina squatting, holding onto a bar.
Crouching.
Feeling the insides of my thighs tighten.
I am ready to spring.
I howl.
Oh-OHh-OHHh-OHHHh-OHHHHh-OHHHHH
And then my legs loosen and I grow slack.
A wolf panting in pursuit of its prey.

And again it comes.
My fingers curl tightly around the bar.
My feet grip the floor.
My knees bend.
My husband rolls a rolling pin across my back.
I am dough. Please knead me well.
A nurse says, "90 seconds long, 2 minutes apart."
No, it must be longer, a century at least.
I glance at the clock.
10:28
Already?!
How can it be so late? We left home hours ago.
It feels like I'm just getting started.
How will it, does it, can it possibly happen?
The life inside me is on its way out.

My husband brings a straw to my mouth: "Drink."
I take a small sip, afraid to use the energy.

And it comes again.
The dull ache
Grows and grows and grows
Until I am left shaking and shuddering and quivering.
Limp in the arms of my husband.
Wondering how I came to be in his arms.
How I came to be in this room in the first place.

They want to check me.
Insert two fingers into the last place I want to be touched.
The place that got me here in the first place.
7 cm and 90% effaced.
Almost there.

Transition.

I have been taken unawares.
I am left stunned, without breath or sight.
It is too late to turn back.

The worst is over, or so they say.
I am taken to the bathroom.
I sit on the toilet trying to push.
It is like trying to make yourself have an orgasm.
He will not come this way.
But he must come!

I sit.
Will he ever come?
But I know there's more to come.

And so it begins.
I grunt and groan and strain until my lungs are on fire.
I spring onto the bed.
Crouching on my hands and knees.
Crushing my head into the pillow.
Roaring with each push.
The floorboards groan under my weight.
The door rattles on its hinges.
The lights flicker.
The walls quiver.

I reach down between my legs and feel hair.
Not my own hair but the hair of the other.

I strain once again.
The floor caves in.
The door falls off its hinges.
The lights explode.
The walls collapse.
As I feel the ring of fire
And watch the blood stream thickly out of me
And a large dark ball of hair squeeze slowly out.

"OH MY GOD."

As I strain again, everything in the room rights itself.
He slips out of me and into my arms.
A screaming mouth, clenched eyes, splayed arms and legs, arched back.
I pull him all into me, struggling to contain him in my grip.
He struggles against me.
But I have caught him and he will eventually go limp.
For he is mine.
I fought hard for him.
And soon it will be time to rest.