A Warm Wind

Breathe deeply, and feel the bliss that has so saturated every ounce of my being that it must emanate across the entire earth with its magnitude.

At 5:07 PM on the 13th of November, Fiona Clementine was born into my waiting arms and is absolutely perfect.

(Fiona, one minute old)

Together at last (on the outside)

She is 6 lbs, 12 oz, 20 inches long, and she is a peaceful, quiet baby who is alert and cozy and beautiful.

I am so, so happy.

And the weight off my back is inexplicable. This combination of ecstatic joy and relief is really unbelievable.

The blessings of the universe...

A mystery arrived in the mail yesterday, a brown package with my name penned on it in unfamiliar print. I opened the package, curious. It is so rare now that something unexpected happens.

And this was, truly, so very unexpected.

For inside the little, brown envelope, carefully sealed with tape, was the one thing that I really (greedily) felt that I needed for my baby, and did not have. Really.

A history on my mothering would indicate that I hoard certain things, knowing in my heart that in some circumstances you need just the right thing. I hoard cloth diapers, and I hoard babywearing devices. I have Ergos, and slings, and wraps galore, but there was one thing missing from my roster-- my favorite thing to carry a brand, new nursling in is a ring sling that is just the right size for me. I have one ring sling, but it is too big for me and works better only for a bigger baby in a hip or kangaroo carry. I can't nurse in it. When Aoife was a baby I borrowed a smaller one and it never left my body for 4 months, but I no longer have access to it. Many times during the past few weeks I have lamented not acquiring that just-right sling for me, so I can nestle up my new baby with ease, nurse on the go, and be anywhere with my newborn.

So can you guess what was in the package? That exact sling, in a beautiful, blue jaquard linen print. It is heavenly, gorgeous, and exactly right. I feel spoiled.

Here is the best part, the part that made me literally just about weep. One of you reading this knows what I am going to say. Because do you know who sent it to me?

One of you. Somebody I have never even met. My heart nearly broke and fell on the floor to feel this gesture, this motion of the warmest love from somebody who I do not even know in person. I am so grateful for the motion alone, not to mention the gift which was somehow the only thing I really wished I had for this fourth babe of mine.

So here it is, a huge thanks, and my love back to you for this lovely tribute. I shall wear it with pride, with the hope of ALL of you tucked inside it warmly and safely.

(now may the future occupant of the sling please reveal him/herself...wouldn't it be great if that were my next post?)

Something new...

Here is some of Erin's amazing photography... she captured my family beautifully several sunny weekends ago...

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So now I have something else to fixate on.
Now, I want to say outright that I know that the only important thing is whether or not the baby is born healthy. How many times have I thought to myself, "It's not about the birth experience, but the otucome..."

And now, I'm choking, trying to maintain the willpower NOT to eat my words... because I know that they are true.
Starting tomorrow, at every single hospital in Western Massachusetts, there are NO children under 18 allowed in the hospital to visit patients, because of swine flu. As far as my research has led me, there are no exceptions, and no loopholes. It is just plain NO. No kids. Nohow, no way.

So my little, sweet children, who have been expecting and preparing for the past seven months to witness their new baby's entrance into this world, will not only miss out on that greatest moment of life, that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them to see that child be born, but they will not even be able to SEE the baby once it is out!

Oh, I know I should not care. It will be a day, maybe two, and then (god willing) a lifetime of memories with this child. But I do care, and I'm sad that my vision of a family birth will not materialize.

To be truthful, it's not the birth that vexes me, but the aftermath. I was very willing to let go of the children being there at the actual birth-- there are any number of circumstances that might have prevented that, and I expected that once things started rolling, time would tell whether the children would really attend. But I never imagined that it would be more than an hour or two before the grand reunion... and now we're talking, how long? I am tempted, if I have an early birth, to discharge myself hours later, but I want the surveillance that the hospital staff offers.

And, to be honest, I also want that day or two to lie in a sun-lit room, with total control over my visitors, with no laundry, with no meals to worry about. I look forward to that honeymoon. The two times I have taken a healthy baby home, I have worried intensely about the baby upon discharge-- and I'm certain that would only be heightened if I left early.

The only upside is, that it gave me something else to think about as I lay in bed last night, waiting for sleep to come.

I wonder if Liam would fit in a suitcase...

37 weeks, 4 days

Okay, I admit it.
I have arrived at the point of no return.
I am scared shitless and I want this baby to come out RIGHT NOW.
It is fully cooked, all grown, ready to be born and I don't feel patient or zen or anything like that anymore. My power of mind to withhold anxious thoughts is waning. The baby is alive right now.
I want it OUT.
There is something about the fact that the entire zone within which the baby might be born now falls within the next month--- even if I were to be a full two weeks late, which I would never allow myself to be, a month from now it would all be settled.
And that's how I view this-- not that, a month from now I will have a baby, but that a month from now I will know.
I will know what the outcome is, I will know whether I am growing my family or shattering its very core, I will know if I have given my living children a gift or a lifetime of heartache.

I need to know. I hope I will not have to wait too much longer.

I am stunned and saddened because something that I wrote on this site, weeks ago, made a good friend feel judged, hurt, and angry.
Oh, how hard it can be to negotiate this delicate territory, and how hard it is to feel deeply ashamed.

How is it that something so private has become so public? That in my time (almost 2 years!) of writing this blog, I think I have revealed its existence to only several people yet somehow people I never imagined have found it and read it.

This blog has served as a forum of release for me-- to talk about myself honestly, from the roots of my babylost motherhood, where I am constantly trying to balance the normalcy of my life as the mother of two young living children with the absolutely earth-shattering beginning of my motherhood. I hate to say I don't consider the feelings of others when I vent the things that strike me as difficult about the everyday. But sometimes, it appears, I do not.

If you are babylost, and have living children, you know this feeling: you have good friends, and you love them and trust them and you talk to them like therapy and let them surround you with themselves. But somehow there are still moments where you are sitting on the other side of a glass wall, and you are not like them. Even if you could find the words to say, it would not mean anything, and would set you apart or ostracise you.

Or, worse---
Make them feel as if you were judging them, when really you are just looking at the entire world through the glasses of someone with a child in the grave. I can't judge someone who has never lost a child, because they do not have the same critical evidence upon which to make their decisions. I can make my own decisions, and I can say with great certainty that I would never make a decision that someone else has made because of my own life experience, but since that person has a different life experience, that does not mean that I think less of that person for having made her own choice. We all weigh the evidence we have to make our decisions. It's all we can do.

And, as I have said over a thousand times before, is there not always that streak of envy -- envy of the innocent-- that runs through anything that could be perceived as judgment? Where really what I want to do is just live the life of the carefree? Where really, when it comes down to the truth of it, there is NOWHERE I'd rather give birth than in my own bedroom, but I can't do it because of what I've lost? (This just pulling the most obvious example out of the air, but there are dozens more where that one came from).

I feel like sticking my head in the sand, like re-reading the entire blog from start to finish to pull out and delete anything that somebody might think of as judging. I do not think of myself as the judging type, and it makes me cry to know that I have been perceived that way.

Jealous, yes. Definite in my own choices, yes. But I fear for myself as a person if I am judging.

Today I talked to a new friend, I think she will be, who is six weeks out... six little, lonely weeks away from her little girl. I could have set the phone down and bawled. My body ached for her. Hurt like there was battery acid being poured down my throat, to imagine that echoing, ricocheting silence that bounces through her life and thoughts. I could feel that hot void in my arms where my baby should have been, I could imagine her in the car driving and knowing that there was nobody else there, and knowing that this was not right. I could remember that stultifying mystery of every moment of the day, my body crying out for my child, my life empty of meaning.
I remember thinking, how can this go on? How can I go on like this, when this is never going to go away?

This is where I begin to think, think hard, because I don't know how it was that things changed, and when they did, but somehow over the course of years on end, that knife that twisted in my chest, that salt that drizzled the wound every single day began to lighten. There was warm sunshine on my back, and I was able to bathe my wounds in warm water and sing softly to myself while I did it. I live in a new place.

I told this woman today about how part of what is different for me now is that I trust Charlotte, because she is more and more real to me as time goes on. She is changing me now, as she has changed me since she was born. I have never loved a single person the same since she came into my life, and I never will. Knowing with such extreme clarity that she will always, always be with me eases some of what felt so terrifying.

Even though, as I write this, the other side of me shouts in a tinny, sarcastic voice: I want the real girl, and I don't want any of this spiritual, wisdom crap of her always being with me. I want the real girl. This other side of me bangs her fists on the table and feels utterly unsatisfied with the course of events in every single aspect of their existence. And I respect this half of me, too, because she is also right.

Your turn

Here's what I need.

I have been a support to women who are doing this again, over the years. I have said, again and again, I know that you can't believe that everything is going to be allright. You can't. It just isn't in your emotional brain to do so. So, do you know what I am going to do? I am going to believe for you. I am going to take that hope that is too risky for you to hold, and I am going to hold onto it for you.

Can I give you a little bit of hope, and ask you to hold it for me? Because I can't even think past tomorrow, and when I imagine that this baby might live, it terrifies me because it forces me to think of the alternative. And I know I am getting down to the wire-- in four or so weeks, one way or the other, I will know the ending to this story. Or the beginning. Or however you want to qualify it.

Please RSVP in the comments section if you will hope for me. If you have a good relationship with a higher power, throw that in for me, too. I could use everything you can offer.

Thank you.