I've been mostly absent from blogging largely because I've wanted to blog nothing but this post, but have been unable to start on it until now. I feel simultaneously as though I have a space in my life that has been blown wide open, large and empty, and that this space looms with fullness and intensity.
I wrapped up my apprenticeship at the end of last year, and as it came to a close, I was suddenly shaken from my longstanding belief that I would seamlessly move from apprentice to midwife. Shaken from denial, really, of so many things... denial that I was capable of working that hard forever, that I was still being the sort of mother I aimed to be, that my children were weathering my work well, that I wasn't missing out on that much, that I was doing the right thing.
A birth came at rush hour on Friday, just as I was arriving to a community Shabbat dinner with my children: our first attempt at making new friends at our new synagogue. Scott was an hour away via BART. My sitter was an hour away given rush hour traffic and the fact that we were so newly moved that I hadn't found one in our new neighborhood. I was a half hour away from the birth. On my first call regarding the birth, the mama was already pushing. I was not going to make it to assist the midwife. A mom I recognized from the preschool, that I had met once, got out of the car next to me with her kids. I asked her if she had a sitter that lived nearby that I could call. I told her what was happening. She offered to take my kids to the dinner for the hour until Scott could arrive. I accepted. We exchanged names and phone numbers, I introduced my children, and I left. I made it to the birth about 15 minutes before the baby arrived.
The next week, I didn't get called to a birth because upon a first phone contact with the midwife, we had a major breakdown of communication. While I was going through my head ideas of how I could find childcare faster to get to the birth faster to help her out sooner, she thought my hesitation meant I didn't want to go because I was with my kids. I was crushed - not only disappointed to miss the birth, but hurt about the way the miscommunication had gone.
I realized the reason it had hurt so much was that I had always put so much effort into getting to births fast, and that at the moment that the miscommunication occurred, the ideas I was having about expediting childcare were all just as inappropriate as the choice I had made a week prior. In our miscommunication, I saw that she viewed wanting to stay home with my children as a more reasonable reaction for me to have than desperately scrambling to find shoddy childcare situations to shave 45 minutes off an arrival time - despite my reliable track record, despite the fact that I had not once given anyone reason to believe that I would hesitate to attend a birth for any personal reason. Dear God were my priorities askew. What a wake-up call.
And if that was a startling realization, even greater was the realization no matter what I did, there would always be sacrifices to be made one way or another toward midwifery or toward motherhood. Of course I knew that already, I had just never realized how deep, important, and mutually exclusive those sacrifices would have to be. I started to think, perhaps my standards for the kind of midwife I want to be and the kind of mother I want to be are not compatible.
Perhaps they're not. Or perhaps I am too burnt out right now to think otherwise.
2011 chewed me up and spit me out. Largely, I have no one and nothing to blame but myself. I signed up to take on a second apprenticeship despite seeing clearly on the calendar how busy my first was about to get. I signed up to go to a busy birth center. I charged forward even when each midwife who knew me well asked me if I was handling it all okay. I was handling all quite well, actually, but in retrospect, I should have seen it coming, because this is how I always am: calm, clear, and effective during crisis - burnt to a fragile crisp after it's resolved.
Yes, I made the choice to pack my time full with apprenticeship opportunities. Still, I could not have foreseen how 2011 would unfold in terms of births. I attended enough complicated births to last most midwives several years. Of 44 births I personally attended this year, 19 had complications ranging from postpartum hemorrhage to events so strange I have no corroboration for them in literature or anecdote. I also was a part of the prenatal and postpartum care for 16 other clients whose births I did not attend either because I was out of town at the birth center or because they transferred care to the hospital before the start of labor and thus didn't have the usual 3-person birth team. Two of these sixteen clients had normal homebirths; for the other fourteen, I had varying levels of stress regarding their complications as I was updated from the midwife and/or student who did attend to them during their transfer or during the birth. (This is far different than being present during complications, but it is still significant to my stress levels over the year.) This is not normal. Generally, we see minor, easily managed complications in about 25% of births and more stressful ones in perhaps 5% of births. For my 2011, it was 55% overall. About half of those were scary (23% of my 44, 21% of all 60).
As 2011 was coming to a close, it was clear that I needed a break. I talked to Mason and Mollie about the plans to bring me on as a junior midwife, told them I was considering quitting, and we came to the conclusion that a sabbatical was in order. The plan was made that I would take all of 2012 off call. The relief I felt revealed to me just how heavy the weight I had been carrying was.
Of course, it wasn't a complete vacation from midwifery - I still had my schoolwork to finish and my licensing exam to sit. I took the exam in February and passed!
Another relief, and another door opened wider for my children. If I were single and had no children I would have needed a break after that crazy year. Being that I am married and have three children, I not only needed a break, I needed a reunion. I've been soaking up my kiddos.
It's already becoming clear to me that I need more than 2012 off. I recently said to a new friend, "Midwives are notoriously unreliable to anyone except their clients." It's true, and I want to be reliable to my children.
My son is still little. I read Frye with newborn D nursing in my arms, I started attending clinic when he was six months old, I started attending births when he was eleven months old, and I have been so busy that I have missed out on more than half of his life. While I completely understand how this works well for some families, it is not working for me. It is not what I had ever intended for myself in motherhood or intended for my children. Time to start being myself again.
That's the crux, isn't it? I am a midwife. I am a mom. Like my love for my children, these identities overlap in my heart and fill me. But unlike love and identities, time can't overlap, and I have to choose what to do with mine. Right now, I am choosing to focus on my family.
A wise friend told me that this year my job is to forgive myself. I appreciated that, and then I edited it. This year, my job is to heal. I can't regret the choices I've made over the past few years. I am not angry at myself. I have learned so much and been a part of so many wonderful experiences I could never regret. Nor could I bring myself to regret the traumatic experiences - in them, I learned, and I mattered. And even though I have questioned it, I do not regret now taking this time for my family. I'm quite certain that I did the right thing with my time over the past few years, and that now the right thing is to shift gears. I don't regret, and yet it hurts. I missed them and I still miss them. I feel sore and raw from some of the choices I have made and some of the experiences I did not choose. Sometimes the right path is the hard path, the painful path. This is the year I heal.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
The raw heart of motherhood
I know I'm not alone in seeing the world differently after becoming a parent. Watching the news becomes a heartache in a new way as you know every person suffering is someone's child. Even fiction becomes different. For the longest time, I couldn't watch what were previously my favorite crime shows. Violence in any form was hard to stomach, even pretend violence.
Recently, I read The Hunger Games trilogy and it occurred to me about a third of the way through the first book that I would have already put it down a few years ago. I won't give you any spoilers, but the book is full of unthinkable situations that require great sacrifice and bravery. Mental anguish and grisly violence are to be expected throughout. It's also one of those terrifying dystopian novels that imagines a world much worse than ours yet so like ours that it's impossible to ignore not only the possibility that we could end up there but also the ways in which our world, our government, our culture are already cruelly inhumane and dishearteningly difficult to change. Orwell's Oceania and Huxley's The World State pale in comparison both to the horrors of Panem and, more subtly, to the similarities between Panem and 21st century America. I found the book utterly chilling, compelling, and rushed right from the first to the next to the last, loving the humanity juxtaposed with the inhumanity, the universals present in the differences, and joltingly disturbed by the brutality.
It opened up that raw heart of motherhood. By the time I finished the third, I was mired in thoughts of how I can protect my children from living the horrors present in our own world. Of how I and they can help improve the world so that other people - other people's children - don't have to live these horrors either, and barring that, of how we can stop hatred and violence from escalating. Of how no matter how peaceful we can make this world, there is no protecting them. Death, loss, and successful ordeals are themes threading through even the most charmed life.
Today, I took my kids to a playground with trees and bushes surrounding half the park, making for a nice pretend wood. They played "Woodland Children." I found myself proud of their inventiveness. I was surprised by Eliana's knowledge of what it might take to survive in the forest. And then, their plots and comments were enough to make me place them in Panem, to imagine Eliana in the Hunger Games, to grate at the rawness that the books had opened up inside of me and personalize it. I tried to ignore them for a while and turn away from this discomfort, but as I began to listen again, I was simultaneously relieved and disturbed to discover that Eliana has a ruthless streak that would give her top-tier odds for survival in any circumstance. I'm not surprised by this, but it was a new perspective on it, and a welcome one given the concerns brought to a head by reading these books.
What painful and lovely gifts The Hunger Games has given me, then: to recognize even more greatly the need for Tikkun Olam, repairing our world; to appreciate again how good our life is; to recognize the strengths of my children; to face fully the inability to keep them from harm or pain. I am glad I did not open the first book when it was published but waited until my mama heart had healed enough to be able to be opened again so that I could feel that rawness in new places, and learn.
Recently, I read The Hunger Games trilogy and it occurred to me about a third of the way through the first book that I would have already put it down a few years ago. I won't give you any spoilers, but the book is full of unthinkable situations that require great sacrifice and bravery. Mental anguish and grisly violence are to be expected throughout. It's also one of those terrifying dystopian novels that imagines a world much worse than ours yet so like ours that it's impossible to ignore not only the possibility that we could end up there but also the ways in which our world, our government, our culture are already cruelly inhumane and dishearteningly difficult to change. Orwell's Oceania and Huxley's The World State pale in comparison both to the horrors of Panem and, more subtly, to the similarities between Panem and 21st century America. I found the book utterly chilling, compelling, and rushed right from the first to the next to the last, loving the humanity juxtaposed with the inhumanity, the universals present in the differences, and joltingly disturbed by the brutality.
It opened up that raw heart of motherhood. By the time I finished the third, I was mired in thoughts of how I can protect my children from living the horrors present in our own world. Of how I and they can help improve the world so that other people - other people's children - don't have to live these horrors either, and barring that, of how we can stop hatred and violence from escalating. Of how no matter how peaceful we can make this world, there is no protecting them. Death, loss, and successful ordeals are themes threading through even the most charmed life.
Today, I took my kids to a playground with trees and bushes surrounding half the park, making for a nice pretend wood. They played "Woodland Children." I found myself proud of their inventiveness. I was surprised by Eliana's knowledge of what it might take to survive in the forest. And then, their plots and comments were enough to make me place them in Panem, to imagine Eliana in the Hunger Games, to grate at the rawness that the books had opened up inside of me and personalize it. I tried to ignore them for a while and turn away from this discomfort, but as I began to listen again, I was simultaneously relieved and disturbed to discover that Eliana has a ruthless streak that would give her top-tier odds for survival in any circumstance. I'm not surprised by this, but it was a new perspective on it, and a welcome one given the concerns brought to a head by reading these books.
What painful and lovely gifts The Hunger Games has given me, then: to recognize even more greatly the need for Tikkun Olam, repairing our world; to appreciate again how good our life is; to recognize the strengths of my children; to face fully the inability to keep them from harm or pain. I am glad I did not open the first book when it was published but waited until my mama heart had healed enough to be able to be opened again so that I could feel that rawness in new places, and learn.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Interrupting Cow
A year or so ago, my girls were mired in knock-knock jokes. Donovan, at age two, latched on to one in particular: Interrupting Cow. Not only did he find it funny, he was exceedingly proud of himself for being able to participate in the joke telling. If you're not familiar, the joke goes like this:
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Interrupting cow
Interrup-
MOOOO!!!
Of course, he was barely two so he was unable to pronounce all of this, but "Iddleduddle tow" was even funnier.
Time passed, knock-knock jokes fell out of favor, new forms of humor ensued. Tonight, we were all in a silly mood, and I asked Donovan to tell me a joke.
D: "So, there's a cow knocking on the door..."
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Interrupting cow
Interrup-
MOOOO!!!
Of course, he was barely two so he was unable to pronounce all of this, but "Iddleduddle tow" was even funnier.
Time passed, knock-knock jokes fell out of favor, new forms of humor ensued. Tonight, we were all in a silly mood, and I asked Donovan to tell me a joke.
D: "So, there's a cow knocking on the door..."
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Harry Potter and the Captivated Muggles
Late to the party, I was pregnant with Eliana when I figured out that the Harry Potter books weren't just for kids and decided I wanted to read them. As we know, pregnancy does strange things to people, so I thought I'd wait until this baby I was about to have was old enough to read them with me. (This probably had something to do with my mother telling me how much more fun Disneyland is when you bring your children with you.) I may not have made this decision if I'd had any clue what a cultural phenomenon the books and movies were becoming, but I stuck to it once it was made. Having two subsequent children and beginning my midwifery apprenticeship helped with the persistence, I'm sure.
When Eliana turned six, I asked her to let me start reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to her. She refused, knowing just enough about it to be convinced it would be terrifying. On her seventh birthday, I asked again, and was rebuffed again. On her eighth, I put my foot down. "Eliana Rose, you will sit in my lap, you will put your blankie on your nose if you need to, you can close your eyes in sheer terror, but you will be reading this book with me." We sat together and read the first chapter.
That very night, she purloined the book, and finished it completely without me before I was able to steal the book back and start the second chapter. By the time I had enough time to myself to finish the second chapter, she was on book four.
Then I started my sabbatical. Aha. I caught up, and passed her. She was still on book four (which is more than half again as long as book three, to her credit) by the time I finished book five. She somehow guilted me into promising not to read more than one book ahead of her, but I bribed my way out of that for a quarter per book. (Kid's motivated by money; fortunately for me, not savvy about its value yet.) So, I've finished them all, and she's just about to wrap up book four. We have a rule that you have to read a book before you see its film adaptation, so at this point she's seen movies one through three. She was insistent, despite my warnings that the books became increasingly mature and dark, that she was old and brave enough to continue on through the entire series, reading each book and watching each movie.
Until, on page 640 of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: "Mom, I changed my mind. The movie will be too scary at the end."
"OK, honey. Thanks for being responsible about that. You know, books five through seven have a lot of parts to them that are as scary as the end of book four. They get sadder too."
"That's okay. I can read them, but I just won't see them. I'll see The Goblet of Fire when I'm nine or ten, and The Deathly Hallows maybe when I'm sixteen."
As for me, I loved the books. I read a review that described them as being as funny as Roald Dahl and as vivid as Narnia, and I think that's apt, except for Narnia got less enjoyable for me as the series went on, whereas the final Harry Potter felt like the raison d'etre for the previous six books. None of the books alone stands as my favorite book of all time, but I can't think of a better series. Rowling managed to write 4000 pages of staggeringly imaginative and cohesive fiction.
I have to thank her, too, for helping me parent. As evidenced in previous posts, I've had my challenges discovering the best tactics to approach mothering Eliana in all her strength, vulnerability, self-criticism, intelligence, and explosiveness. Humor has always been one of my best allies. Laughter - the kind of laughter that comes from a mature, developed mutual understanding of intelligent humor - has forged a connection between us that helps us handle the rough moments. With this connection, she forgives my responsibility to hold her accountable, and I've found a salve for the painful aspects of mothering this complex creature.
So, I've begun taking points from Gryffindor as a warning that she's crossing a line, inching toward an actual consequence. She stops in her tracks, and instead of being angry with me for policing her, she laughs. Sometimes she'll say, "Mom, Gryffindor's not real, it doesn't matter," but she understands that it's not supposed to be real... yet. It's just a nicer way of saying, "You're pushing it, kid."
We also talk in terms of spells. When she can't find something, I remind her not to cast a disillusionment charm unless she can remember the counter-spell. I threaten to cast a tickling charm if she keeps dilly-dallying. Or, "Watch out. Touch that, and I'll levi your corpus."
As for general connection maintenance, I've been hunting down Harry Potter humor. It's abundant on the web - if you're okay with sexual content and cursing. Harder to find humor appropriate for eight year olds. Eliana has much appreciated my finds (as have I). Here are my favorites:
"Knock-knock."
"Who's there?"
"You know."
"You know who?"
"Just say Voldemort. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."
(Eliana laughed riotously before the word "who" was even out of her mouth.)
Then I got her with
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"You know."
"You know who?"
"Yes, avada kedavra!"
("Oh, that's a good one too, but it's not as nice.")
Also:
I hope Kesenia and Donovan have this much fun when it's their turn to enter the world of wizards.
When Eliana turned six, I asked her to let me start reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to her. She refused, knowing just enough about it to be convinced it would be terrifying. On her seventh birthday, I asked again, and was rebuffed again. On her eighth, I put my foot down. "Eliana Rose, you will sit in my lap, you will put your blankie on your nose if you need to, you can close your eyes in sheer terror, but you will be reading this book with me." We sat together and read the first chapter.
That very night, she purloined the book, and finished it completely without me before I was able to steal the book back and start the second chapter. By the time I had enough time to myself to finish the second chapter, she was on book four.
Then I started my sabbatical. Aha. I caught up, and passed her. She was still on book four (which is more than half again as long as book three, to her credit) by the time I finished book five. She somehow guilted me into promising not to read more than one book ahead of her, but I bribed my way out of that for a quarter per book. (Kid's motivated by money; fortunately for me, not savvy about its value yet.) So, I've finished them all, and she's just about to wrap up book four. We have a rule that you have to read a book before you see its film adaptation, so at this point she's seen movies one through three. She was insistent, despite my warnings that the books became increasingly mature and dark, that she was old and brave enough to continue on through the entire series, reading each book and watching each movie.
Until, on page 640 of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: "Mom, I changed my mind. The movie will be too scary at the end."
"OK, honey. Thanks for being responsible about that. You know, books five through seven have a lot of parts to them that are as scary as the end of book four. They get sadder too."
"That's okay. I can read them, but I just won't see them. I'll see The Goblet of Fire when I'm nine or ten, and The Deathly Hallows maybe when I'm sixteen."
As for me, I loved the books. I read a review that described them as being as funny as Roald Dahl and as vivid as Narnia, and I think that's apt, except for Narnia got less enjoyable for me as the series went on, whereas the final Harry Potter felt like the raison d'etre for the previous six books. None of the books alone stands as my favorite book of all time, but I can't think of a better series. Rowling managed to write 4000 pages of staggeringly imaginative and cohesive fiction.
I have to thank her, too, for helping me parent. As evidenced in previous posts, I've had my challenges discovering the best tactics to approach mothering Eliana in all her strength, vulnerability, self-criticism, intelligence, and explosiveness. Humor has always been one of my best allies. Laughter - the kind of laughter that comes from a mature, developed mutual understanding of intelligent humor - has forged a connection between us that helps us handle the rough moments. With this connection, she forgives my responsibility to hold her accountable, and I've found a salve for the painful aspects of mothering this complex creature.
So, I've begun taking points from Gryffindor as a warning that she's crossing a line, inching toward an actual consequence. She stops in her tracks, and instead of being angry with me for policing her, she laughs. Sometimes she'll say, "Mom, Gryffindor's not real, it doesn't matter," but she understands that it's not supposed to be real... yet. It's just a nicer way of saying, "You're pushing it, kid."
We also talk in terms of spells. When she can't find something, I remind her not to cast a disillusionment charm unless she can remember the counter-spell. I threaten to cast a tickling charm if she keeps dilly-dallying. Or, "Watch out. Touch that, and I'll levi your corpus."
As for general connection maintenance, I've been hunting down Harry Potter humor. It's abundant on the web - if you're okay with sexual content and cursing. Harder to find humor appropriate for eight year olds. Eliana has much appreciated my finds (as have I). Here are my favorites:
"Knock-knock."
"Who's there?"
"You know."
"You know who?"
"Just say Voldemort. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."
(Eliana laughed riotously before the word "who" was even out of her mouth.)
Then I got her with
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"You know."
"You know who?"
"Yes, avada kedavra!"
("Oh, that's a good one too, but it's not as nice.")
Also:
I hope Kesenia and Donovan have this much fun when it's their turn to enter the world of wizards.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Exploring negativity
D: "Mommy, let's be sad." "I'm sad."
Me: "I'm sad, too."
D: "Maybe we're sad because we miss us Daddy."
D: "I can do that now because me getting bigger! I'm growing big, and some day, I be a grown-up!"
E: "Yeah, and after you're a grownup for a long time, maybe around the time you're seventy, then you'll die."
D: "No. I don't like dyin."
Me: "I'm sad, too."
D: "Maybe we're sad because we miss us Daddy."
D: "I can do that now because me getting bigger! I'm growing big, and some day, I be a grown-up!"
E: "Yeah, and after you're a grownup for a long time, maybe around the time you're seventy, then you'll die."
D: "No. I don't like dyin."
Thursday, January 5, 2012
En pointe
Episode 1:
E: "I want [identity protected] to be my boyfriend, if he wants to be."
Me: "Why?"
E: "Because he's good at soccer and I like playing soccer with him."
Me: "That sounds nice. Why not just friends, though, why boyfriend? Do you want to kiss him?"
-OK, break here - if you know my family, you'll know that this is half trying to get information out of her and half teasing. It's got Anderson family written ALL over it. You can take the girl away from the Andersons, but you can't take the Anderson out of the girl. Anyhoo -
E: "Well, yes, only if he wants to kiss me."
Me: "OK, well I'm not sure your school allows kissing, especially not for 3rd graders."
E: "Oh yeah, yeah, you're right."
Me: "Do you want to marrrrrrry him?" (and I can hear my grandfather's, mother's, and three aunts' voices in my own.)
E: [very thoughtful] "I don't know. We would need to be together for a long time first to decide that. It's a big decision, and I wouldn't want to get separated."
The next day:
E: "I asked [identity protected] to be my boyfriend, and he said no. So then later I asked if we could be just friends and he said yes!"
Episode 2: (At bedtime)
E: "Mom, what's the name of the thing that [Censored] needs that helps with peeing because he doesn't have something?"
Me: "You mean dialysis to clean his blood because his kidneys don't work? It doesn't help him pee, it cleans his blood because his kidneys can't clean it and put the wastes into pee."
E: "Kidneys! That's the word I was thinking of."
Me: "Yeah, kidneys are the organs that aren't working for him. Dialysis is what is cleaning his blood instead of his kidneys."
E: "Oh. With a machine?"
Me: "Yes."
E: "How does the machine work?"
Me: "Go to sleep, I'll email you."
I would like to know how many parents send their 8 year old a link like this: http://goeshealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/hemodialysis.jpg - or more specifically, how many 8 year olds want to know.
Episode 3:
E: "Mom, when I have kids will I love them as much as I love you?"
Me: "Oh yes, more maybe."
E: "MORE??? But I love you so much!"
Me: "Well, maybe not more, maybe a different flavor, like different scoops of ice cream that are all the same size. As though you had a scoop of ice cream for every person that you truly loved but each scoop was a different flavor."
E: "Thanks, Mom. I understood you the first time you said it."
Kid keeps me on my toes.
E: "I want [identity protected] to be my boyfriend, if he wants to be."
Me: "Why?"
E: "Because he's good at soccer and I like playing soccer with him."
Me: "That sounds nice. Why not just friends, though, why boyfriend? Do you want to kiss him?"
-OK, break here - if you know my family, you'll know that this is half trying to get information out of her and half teasing. It's got Anderson family written ALL over it. You can take the girl away from the Andersons, but you can't take the Anderson out of the girl. Anyhoo -
E: "Well, yes, only if he wants to kiss me."
Me: "OK, well I'm not sure your school allows kissing, especially not for 3rd graders."
E: "Oh yeah, yeah, you're right."
Me: "Do you want to marrrrrrry him?" (and I can hear my grandfather's, mother's, and three aunts' voices in my own.)
E: [very thoughtful] "I don't know. We would need to be together for a long time first to decide that. It's a big decision, and I wouldn't want to get separated."
The next day:
E: "I asked [identity protected] to be my boyfriend, and he said no. So then later I asked if we could be just friends and he said yes!"
Episode 2: (At bedtime)
E: "Mom, what's the name of the thing that [Censored] needs that helps with peeing because he doesn't have something?"
Me: "You mean dialysis to clean his blood because his kidneys don't work? It doesn't help him pee, it cleans his blood because his kidneys can't clean it and put the wastes into pee."
E: "Kidneys! That's the word I was thinking of."
Me: "Yeah, kidneys are the organs that aren't working for him. Dialysis is what is cleaning his blood instead of his kidneys."
E: "Oh. With a machine?"
Me: "Yes."
E: "How does the machine work?"
Me: "Go to sleep, I'll email you."
I would like to know how many parents send their 8 year old a link like this: http://goeshealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/hemodialysis.jpg - or more specifically, how many 8 year olds want to know.
Episode 3:
E: "Mom, when I have kids will I love them as much as I love you?"
Me: "Oh yes, more maybe."
E: "MORE??? But I love you so much!"
Me: "Well, maybe not more, maybe a different flavor, like different scoops of ice cream that are all the same size. As though you had a scoop of ice cream for every person that you truly loved but each scoop was a different flavor."
E: "Thanks, Mom. I understood you the first time you said it."
Kid keeps me on my toes.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Unbidden
"You hear in the person you’re destined to love the sound of those yet to be born." - Alyson Richman
1998. As the plane lands in Detroit, an image flashes across my mind of my boyfriend waiting for me at the gates, as it usually does when I land on the cross-country trip. This one is different: his arms encircle three children who are also waiting for me. I laugh at myself for the schoolgirl imagining. Then, I think, I wasn't imagining on purpose - this image came to me unbidden. I call it back and look more closely. There are two girls and a boy, somewhere between the ages of maybe 5 and 11. Two of them have light hair, but I can't see their faces. I laugh again; my boyfriend is dark-complected and I can't imagine him ever having a child with light hair. I pull my carry-on out from the overhead bins and walk off the plane quite amused with my subconscious. I am 19, and I have hardly considered life after college graduation. The image is gone before I reach the airport shuttle. The fantasy was so great, my boyfriend is not even able to meet me at the airport today.
Tonight, 2011. I read the lines above in Richman's book "The Lost Wife," and the image returns to me, equally unbidden. The father of my children with two daughters and a son. The dark-complected first born so like him in many ways, the younger two more like me, growing into people I never could have imagined yet somehow I've always known.
For a moment, time feels simultaneous.
1998. As the plane lands in Detroit, an image flashes across my mind of my boyfriend waiting for me at the gates, as it usually does when I land on the cross-country trip. This one is different: his arms encircle three children who are also waiting for me. I laugh at myself for the schoolgirl imagining. Then, I think, I wasn't imagining on purpose - this image came to me unbidden. I call it back and look more closely. There are two girls and a boy, somewhere between the ages of maybe 5 and 11. Two of them have light hair, but I can't see their faces. I laugh again; my boyfriend is dark-complected and I can't imagine him ever having a child with light hair. I pull my carry-on out from the overhead bins and walk off the plane quite amused with my subconscious. I am 19, and I have hardly considered life after college graduation. The image is gone before I reach the airport shuttle. The fantasy was so great, my boyfriend is not even able to meet me at the airport today.
Tonight, 2011. I read the lines above in Richman's book "The Lost Wife," and the image returns to me, equally unbidden. The father of my children with two daughters and a son. The dark-complected first born so like him in many ways, the younger two more like me, growing into people I never could have imagined yet somehow I've always known.
For a moment, time feels simultaneous.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Donovan!
My baby boy turns three tomorrow! Incredible! Here's some recent cuteness from him.
"Moly holy!"
"Elilala" has turned into "Elilana"
"Happy Rosh Hashalah!"
"Kiki, me onwy Donowan. Me not Baby Donowan anymore."
Walking down the stairs first thing in the morning: "Mommy! Dere a boy comin!"
"Me need help. Me onwy a lidda boy."/"Me do it aself. Me a big boy."
D: "Me want to go back a my fwend's house. Me want more Shabbat."
Me: "We're going home now, but when we wake up, it'll be your birthday."
D: "WHAAAT?"
Me: "Yep, and we'll go to a park and see friends."
D: "Donowan birfday! Donowan birfday! Donowan birfday!"
"Moly holy!"
"Elilala" has turned into "Elilana"
"Happy Rosh Hashalah!"
"Kiki, me onwy Donowan. Me not Baby Donowan anymore."
Walking down the stairs first thing in the morning: "Mommy! Dere a boy comin!"
"Me need help. Me onwy a lidda boy."/"Me do it aself. Me a big boy."
D: "Me want to go back a my fwend's house. Me want more Shabbat."
Me: "We're going home now, but when we wake up, it'll be your birthday."
D: "WHAAAT?"
Me: "Yep, and we'll go to a park and see friends."
D: "Donowan birfday! Donowan birfday! Donowan birfday!"
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Food, stress, self-care, oh my!
Food:
January-June, I ate pretty well, though always on the run. I wasn't cooking. I was eating freezer meals, take-out, prepared foods from Whole Foods, and food from the fridge at Starbucks.
July, I was in Utah and was eating worse. Sometimes the same types of foods as before. Sometimes less - plain greek yogurt and a green smoothie was a pretty common meal. I was making an effort to eat nutritious foods, but finding little time to eat.
From the end of July to the middle of August, I ate terribly. I was packing up my house, getting ready to leave, and I gave up completely and ate at a restaurant or ate take-out most of my meals. I gained 4 lbs in 3 weeks, which is the first time that has ever happened outside of pregnancy.
Right around the time we moved out of our house and into our temporary apartment, my body let me know that it was done with this. The high-fat diet of outside meals gave me a gallbladder attack - the first one since I was a teenager - right about the same time that I started wanting to eat a whole bunch of salad, fruit, and tofu/veggie stirfry. I didn't even want dessert - and for someone with a sweet tooth like mine, that's saying a lot.
Stress:
I got home from Utah running on empty emotionally, not only because my stay there was so intense, but because of the six months that preceded it. Then I dove right in to moving, and not just moving but moving into a small and temporary place in a bad neighborhood, with a long commute to my girls' school and to my work. My husband and I don't quite know how to interact, since we are both so stressed and are having a hard time supporting each other because we are both so bogged down in our own stress. I'm also gearing up for submitting my application for the NARM exam (aka licensing boards), putting all my ducks in a row and studying.
Self-care:
I'm getting what should be adequate sleep. I am exercising, although this is pretty clearly the one facet of self-care which has plenty of room for improvement. I am spending time with friends and laughing. I'm having fun with the kids when they're off school. I even managed to get a massage last week.
I've been in a pretty horrific mood - very self-critical, primarily. I've been trying to figure out where it's coming from, because it feels disproportionate to the actual amount of stress that I am under. I finally figured out that it's just a cumulative effect of the several months of stress, the month of eating absolute junk, and the fact that right now, I am losing weight. Looking back over my life, I definitely get more self-critical and "down" when I am losing weight, for any reason. Since I am not losing weight on purpose, and I am eating nutritious foods when I am hungry, I don't really know what to do about that. I am hoping it will even out over time as I adjust back to a healthy and low-fat diet, and that I will just naturally stop losing weight as I reach a body composition that my body actually likes, or that my body will be okay with adding in more healthy fats as time passes since having overdone it on the fats.
I apologize for being MIA on the blog. If you know me in person, I apologize for being crabby at you if I have been. I think I have mostly been crabby at myself, though, and the good news is that I am able to keep all my responsibilities fulfilled, and am enjoying my time with my kids, friends, colleagues, and clients quite a bit. This tells me that I'm okay (and gives me a reprieve from being hard on myself). But I am definitely looking forward to the self-doubt monster getting the boot, when this funk passes or I find a solution.
I hesitated about posting this. Do former and potential future clients who are reading this really want to know when I feel weak? I finally decided just to be real. Midwifery is hard. It's physically, intellectually, and emotionally challenging. Midwives burn out at a high rate. Most midwifery students don't complete their training. Other midwifery students reading this deserve to know it's not always rainbows and roses for me and only challenging for them. So here you have it, a bump in my road. It'll smooth out. I've had bumps before. I've got a full tool box, a heart full of resolve (*cough* stubbornness), and all the support I need.
Ah - acupuncture. That's the one tool left in my toolbox. I think it's time for a trip to Berkeley to see my favorite acupuncturist.
January-June, I ate pretty well, though always on the run. I wasn't cooking. I was eating freezer meals, take-out, prepared foods from Whole Foods, and food from the fridge at Starbucks.
July, I was in Utah and was eating worse. Sometimes the same types of foods as before. Sometimes less - plain greek yogurt and a green smoothie was a pretty common meal. I was making an effort to eat nutritious foods, but finding little time to eat.
From the end of July to the middle of August, I ate terribly. I was packing up my house, getting ready to leave, and I gave up completely and ate at a restaurant or ate take-out most of my meals. I gained 4 lbs in 3 weeks, which is the first time that has ever happened outside of pregnancy.
Right around the time we moved out of our house and into our temporary apartment, my body let me know that it was done with this. The high-fat diet of outside meals gave me a gallbladder attack - the first one since I was a teenager - right about the same time that I started wanting to eat a whole bunch of salad, fruit, and tofu/veggie stirfry. I didn't even want dessert - and for someone with a sweet tooth like mine, that's saying a lot.
Stress:
I got home from Utah running on empty emotionally, not only because my stay there was so intense, but because of the six months that preceded it. Then I dove right in to moving, and not just moving but moving into a small and temporary place in a bad neighborhood, with a long commute to my girls' school and to my work. My husband and I don't quite know how to interact, since we are both so stressed and are having a hard time supporting each other because we are both so bogged down in our own stress. I'm also gearing up for submitting my application for the NARM exam (aka licensing boards), putting all my ducks in a row and studying.
Self-care:
I'm getting what should be adequate sleep. I am exercising, although this is pretty clearly the one facet of self-care which has plenty of room for improvement. I am spending time with friends and laughing. I'm having fun with the kids when they're off school. I even managed to get a massage last week.
I've been in a pretty horrific mood - very self-critical, primarily. I've been trying to figure out where it's coming from, because it feels disproportionate to the actual amount of stress that I am under. I finally figured out that it's just a cumulative effect of the several months of stress, the month of eating absolute junk, and the fact that right now, I am losing weight. Looking back over my life, I definitely get more self-critical and "down" when I am losing weight, for any reason. Since I am not losing weight on purpose, and I am eating nutritious foods when I am hungry, I don't really know what to do about that. I am hoping it will even out over time as I adjust back to a healthy and low-fat diet, and that I will just naturally stop losing weight as I reach a body composition that my body actually likes, or that my body will be okay with adding in more healthy fats as time passes since having overdone it on the fats.
I apologize for being MIA on the blog. If you know me in person, I apologize for being crabby at you if I have been. I think I have mostly been crabby at myself, though, and the good news is that I am able to keep all my responsibilities fulfilled, and am enjoying my time with my kids, friends, colleagues, and clients quite a bit. This tells me that I'm okay (and gives me a reprieve from being hard on myself). But I am definitely looking forward to the self-doubt monster getting the boot, when this funk passes or I find a solution.
I hesitated about posting this. Do former and potential future clients who are reading this really want to know when I feel weak? I finally decided just to be real. Midwifery is hard. It's physically, intellectually, and emotionally challenging. Midwives burn out at a high rate. Most midwifery students don't complete their training. Other midwifery students reading this deserve to know it's not always rainbows and roses for me and only challenging for them. So here you have it, a bump in my road. It'll smooth out. I've had bumps before. I've got a full tool box, a heart full of resolve (*cough* stubbornness), and all the support I need.
Ah - acupuncture. That's the one tool left in my toolbox. I think it's time for a trip to Berkeley to see my favorite acupuncturist.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Absence makes the heart...
The kids were at my parents' for the past two days and got home right at bedtime tonight. I gave the girls a cuddle, and Eliana said, "Mom, I missed you."
"I missed you, too, honey!" I replied.
And then she finished her sentence: "...for the first time."
I guffawed.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Oh, I love you, Eliana."
"I missed you, too, honey!" I replied.
And then she finished her sentence: "...for the first time."
I guffawed.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Oh, I love you, Eliana."
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