sailing a small ship in a stormy sea
I tried so hard to get him to give me his Hansolo half smile to go along with his Hansolo outfit yesterday but he was too busy looking at the pictures above his changing table.
The Buddy
Buddy-man
Buddy-head
Buddy Snacks
Snacks
Snackie
Snackles
Snackford
Piggle
Piggles
Piggle-man
Piggleton
Did any of you see “Julie and Julia” and feel inspired by the yummy-looking food always on the screen and at the same time completely tired at even the thought of all that prep for one meal? If you are like me, you may have spent your young-adulthood and early married life convincing yourself and your husband that you were too tired to cook and that anyway there was nothing in the house and eating pizza (insert whatever go-to food you have). I will just go ahead and admit to all of my terrible food ways here. I’m not trying to convince anyone I’m a cook. I’m the one asking for advice on facebook, not giving it.
However…if you are like me or even if you just want to be entertained, keep reading. I’m going to write a bit about what I have so far.
1. I read (over a period of 2-3 years because I didn’t want to know the truth) the beginning to the cookbook called “Nourishing Traditions.” Be warned, this is a complete turn-around from what you will hear from culture at large w/r/t fats and cholesterol. And sugar!There is another book called “The Great Physician’s Prescription” by Jordan Rubin which I read (he’s the author of “The Maker’s Diet”).
*another side note. In order to read any of these books and glean things from them I have found it necessary to do some forceful pushing past of attitudes that feel, at times, rather pedantic and holier-than-thou. No one likes to be talked-to like this. A helpful antidote is Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.” I’ve never found her to be anything but witty, wise and down to earth. But that’s probably because I largely agree with everything she says.
What you can glean from these books (Not to mention “Fast Food Nation” or from numerous documentaries which I’ll have to get back to you on) is a sense of the foodie zeitgeist coming back around. They’re all saying essentially the same thing: eat like traditional cultures and you will be healthy. In my very limited opinion (and from reading “The Joy of Cooking” a bit) this is something which fine cooking has never lost. I doubt the French have ever just decided to give up butter for rancid oil by-product and lo and behold! they are just as healthy as they have ever been. Except for the smoking – which I’m convinced is what keeps them skinny after all those baguettes in the morning – but that’s another post.
2. I have had to realize and be very honest with myself that a) I will have to spend some time cooking and will have to plan better and b) I will have to learn to cook and eat vegetables. Meat, I’ve never had a problem with. Ditto dairy, eggs, need I say bread?, grains, fruit, etc. Finally, at 29, I’ve had to just turn to myself and say, “I don’t CARE if you don’t like vegetables. You have to eat them.” It helped to have Henry go on an allergy-elimination diet which did away with most of our grains and dairy. And here’s the thing that has been my saving grace: I found a friend who eats and cooks the way I wish I did and I asked her for help. She, in one email, opened up for me a whole new world of what you can do with veggies because she eats only veggies, fats, some dairy and meat. No sugar, no grains. I’m gonna give you a huge tip for winter that she gave me: you can do endless variations on stuffed squash: celery, onion, sausage, apples, cranberries, leftover chicken from the free-range chicken you roasted earlier in the week, cooked greens, leftover meatloaf…and that’s just one simple meal. Pick three things that go together well, saute the veggies in a pan with butter or coconut oil (fat that is solid at room temperature is okay to cook with…the rest of them will go rancid if heated – olive oil is okay at low tempsAnd btw, any other kind of “cooking oil” that you get at the store like safflower, canola, etc… those are ALREADY rancid when you buy them. Rancid=cancer-causing ), stuff the already-baked squash halves and stick in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
*here’s the key my friend gave me: she bakes a bunch of squash when she buys it and then freezes it for easy retrieval afterward. Brilliant!
3. Planning doesn’t have to be done meticulously, but it needs to be done. Don’t go to the store and buy a bunch of random vegetables thinking you’ll just use them all for *something* or-worse- thinking you’re just going to eat them all raw. Unless you are either in love with veggies or REALLY dedicated to a raw diet, you need to think how you’re going to make them all into something you’ll eat and enjoy. Here’s a tip: spinach and other greens cook down into almost nothing, so you can fit a TON of sauteed spinach into a quiche and quiche is really easy to make. As my friend Sarah recently read, you can even make a “crust” from red potatoes sliced really thin and layered at the bottom of the pan if you are trying to get away from processed flour (which I am, but I still bought ready-made crusts for my quiche this week. Baby steps, people!).
You still need raw veggies in your diet. I am TERRIBLE at this. My friend who doesn’t eat grains? She has a salad every day for lunch. I need to learn her salad ways. All I’m going to say on this point is that the other day I made huge salads for us for lunch and as usually happens when I do this, toward the middle of the afternoon I started feeling hungry and awful. I think it has to do with my addiction to sugar and starches and also that I didn’t add enough fat. I ate a handful of nuts and I felt a lot better. Become friends with nuts and seeds (raw, of course, if you can swing it).
Another trick I learned on the planning side is to make the most of a free-range chicken. They cost $14 and are pretty small, but it’s enough meat for 2-3 meals for us when I’ve roasted it. I wash it, drizzle with olive oil and then salt and pepper. I add chopped veggies on the sides and roast until my meat thermometer says it’s done. Get a meat thermometer! Afterward, save all your bones, skin and the drippings from the bottom of the pan (unless you made gravy with them) and toss it all in the crock-pot with some coarsely chopped carrots, celery, onions and garlic, cover with water and simmer for like 5 hours and you have a stock which you can freeze to make many kinds of soup or sauce that is, incidentally, WAY cheaper than any organic free-range stock you’ll find at the store. To make it easy on myself, I just always buy carrots, celery, onions, garlic and potatoes.
4. Budgeting. Here’s some research I’m going to do soon. We don’t have the budget to buy large quantities of organic veggies but apparently there are some veggies for whom pesticides make less of a difference in terms of how much of them we get at the end than others. In other words, “clean” vs. “dirty” commercially produced vegetables. But when in doubt, I’ve been concentrating all my organic efforts on the meat and eggs because truly, feedlot meat is just so awful in so many ways. And if you feel antagonistic toward this viewpoint I will simply point you toward the very mainstream and culturally accepted book “Fast Food Nation” or the documentary “Food, Inc.” So, I’ll let you know what I find out about veggies. I welcome any insight ya’ll have on clean vs. dirty veggies.
*This might be a no-brainer for most of you but for so long we wasted money on veggies because I bought them but never ate them. We ate all our grains first and then got pizza. I know. I suck. 🙂 So, know that it DOES make a huge difference in terms of money if you actually prepare and eat the veggies you buy!
5. What number am I on? I don’ t know. The biggest thing I’ve been learning is that you can’t expect yourself to totally overhaul everything in a week. Go slowly. Do one thing until you feel like you have it under control (for me this means not having to consult a cookbook. And by the way, it helps to have a cookbook that will tell you how to make almost anything. I recommend “The Joy of Cooking”) and then move on. For me this was chicken and stock first and now bread. I don’t feel compelled to give up bread at this point, but I have been making my own. And no, it’s not sprouted. But if you eat sprouted bread, as I have in the past and I’m sure will again, I applaud you. I’m using stone-ground whole wheat flour and molasses. Things I hope to start in the near future: sprouts (apparently, you can sprout almost anything in your window and almost any kind of sprout is good for you EXCEPT the one you find in the store; alfalfa. Isn’t that just the way?) and raw milk and cheese (including making my own mozzarella!).
It’s hard to know where to start. I’ve been doing and thinking about all kinds of things – not to mention getting into the rhythm of being a mama. Isn’t he just the most precious little man? We spend so much of our time all up in this little guy’s grill, you’d think he’d want some space, but he just started smiling at us. This morning he smiled at each of us for at least a minute and right now he’s in his bouncy seat smiling at the globe lights and bookshelf.
I had my 6 week check-up with the midwives (I say “wives” even though Karen is technically a nurse because she ended up being such a ray of sunshine and there for more of my labor than Christina only because it ended much sooner than any of us could have predicted) on Friday. I think all three of us were surprised at the change in my demeanor. I told them I intended to not go back on the Lexapro and was already taking Vitamin B to help stave off depression instead.
Quick aside: it’s something you might consider adding if you are currently on an anti-depressant and don’t like the way it makes you feel. I never did. I was lethargic and had (sorry, TMI) NO libido to speak of. Not that, at 7 weeks post-partum, there is still any to speak of. Anyhoo… B3, or Niacin, can be taken in large doses (water soluble) without hurting you and I have found it makes a huge difference in even a short amount of time if I am feeling depressed, which I do when I get tired. Obviously, don’t just go off your anti-depressant, please, without professional consultation. My psychiatrist kind of gave me the freedom to use or not use the Lexapro at my own discretion in the middle of my pregnancy. I’m just saying…vitamins are good!
I think, overall, I am much happier not pregnant even with the lack of sleep. I keep telling people and writing in my journal (snicker) that I feel like I have a new lease on life. It was not what I expected at all. I thought everything would seem that much harder and that I’d give up on anything but the bare minimum. On the contrary, I have created some goals for myself that have started to be more than just daydreams! I’m hoping to write about my progress with these goals here as the months progress.
Goal #1 is integral to everything I want to achieve as a person and we want to achieve as a family. I may have written about it before and it would take too long to go into all of the details, but it can be summed up pretty easily by saying that we want to eat real food as a family and stop eating things that aren’t food in ways that aren’t communal. It sounds simple and it is simple, but it requires a major shift in attitude and practice. Simple but not easy. Having a baby has made this so much more immediate. To some of you who are reading this, it might be obvious what I’m fighting against because you yourself have had to change things to make this choice. I welcome your advice. Many of my thoughts can be traced back to my reading of better thinkers than myself: C.S. Lewis, Neil Postman, and this lady – who says much of it a lot better than I can in her own blog. However, here are some of the things I’ve found it necessary to be honest about before moving on:
1. Action is action. Day-dreaming isn’t.The nitty-gritty of child-rearing has started to teach me that in order to get anything done, you just have to do it. I am guilty of having been a chronic postponer. I have often had the mistaken impression that I would be able to somehow “get it all done” in one day. For some few things this worked once in awhile and so I think I counted on it working for big-picture things as well. Recently, I started saying to myself, “Jenn. If you want to *someday* have a family that sits down to dinner together every night and you don’t want your children to watch television or to have it as part of your household, that will necessitate you a) cooking and b) getting rid of television. Why would you think that if you aren’t doing those things NOW you will someday magically do them when the *family* is in place? Does Gilead not already count as your family?” I have had a real wake-up call about media and how I’ve chosen to spend my time, including already having to repent of making my baby wait to eat so that I could turn on a show to watch. I know. Detestable. What started as a way to take my mind off of the pain of nursing ended up already separating me from loving my child. So…to put my money where my mouth is, I have actually begun to plan meals and really shop for groceries (not something I did before to any great degree) and we have (once again) gotten rid of Netflix (which we were “borrowing” anyway, and abusing. Sorry Megs.)
Argh! Not only is this SO HARD for me, having accustomed myself again to tuning out the world in my young-adulthood, but I find that obeying God in this way has brought me blessings which, don’t get me wrong are still blessings, are nevertheless MORE WORK. Case in point:
2. Natural childbirth, which is something I wanted and which God blessed me with, has opened up a whole new realm of health-related facts which I would just as soon ignore because to embrace them requires a lot more sacrifice and work. So, if sugar is not food and processed grains are not food and pre-packaged meals are not food and feedlot meat isn’t food and I have now seen countless documentaries about this whole food vs. not food thing and talked to several health-care professionals who have treated me with so much dignity and respect whose lives are revolved around teaching people this distinction and thereby HEALING them of chronic diseases, I can’t NOT respond to that by wanting to do what they do. It’s like salvation: once you know the truth, going back to sinful ways requires a whole lot of cognitive dissonance. Now that I know how eating things which aren’t food affects me, why would I ever do it again? Let us be clear: I DO do it, but it means something way different now. There’s a whole other discussion about how choosing to eat real food in this country limits one’s social activities, but suffice it to say that I can’t ignore this anymore at home and feel good about what I’m feeding myself and my family. Especially since we are STILL seeking an answer to Henry’s 6 year battle with chronic fatigue and in the words of Dr. Zumhagen (our new family Dr. whom I LOVE), “when you heal your gut, your body heals itself.”
Goal #2 is a bit more fun, although pursuing it has required me to actually get up and do some things about it which, as much as I love to make things, has not always been my strength. It is to use my creative talents. I have finally registered my business in the state of Illinois and am a taxpayer – or will be whenever I make some money. Also, I am going to apply for a booth at the Wheaton French Market this summer!!! I am!!! I’m not sure which thing I will sell. It probably won’t be jewelry because of the large amount of jewelry-makers already at the French Market. I think it might be Mei Tai baby slings and various upcycled baby and nursing clothes because by then I will STILL be in the thick of trying to figure out how to feel somewhat pretty while wearing clothing in which I can discreetly nurse.
These are a few sketches I made of ideas which literally keep me up after the 4a.m. feeding with excitement. Don’t ask me why.
This is my inspiration board for clothes I’d like to try out for myself before I unleash my shaky sewing skills on the public. My main goal is to make a gathered skirt for myself for Easter when Gilead is getting baptized. For some reason I’m really into gathered skirts right now.
Lastly, here are some photos of weeks past. He’s so much bigger and chubbier now. I can’t stand how fast it goes.
I can’t help but post this…his sad faces are among the cutest.
My brother reminded Johannah and me this New Year’s Eve how we watched every single moment of the Lord of the Rings special features for all three films a few years ago. Johannah went on to remind me of how we both cried through them – the special features, I mean. I did! When the last moment of the last special feature on the Return of the King disc was over, I was especially sad. It was truly over. We finally had to face facts: we were not, currently, residing in Middle Earth.
The last homely home.
I like to use that phrase as much as possible in real life. If you recall, this is what Rivendell was called in the books. It was the last bastion of rest and healing, of song and story and beauty and peace in the midst of a world which was, yes, becoming influenced by darkness but also just changing. “Moving on,” as the Gunslinger would put it, if I can mix my fantasy stories. I like how even in the books, places like Rivendell and Lothlorien sound so incredibly heavenly but pale in comparison to the distant Valinor.
Maybe it’s plain to you how the church is like Rivendell. If so, I think you are one of the lucky ones who has seen the Church the way it was meant to be. I haven’t always felt it to be so. I know for many people, the church has been anything but a safe haven of rest and wholeness. I have to hope for more churches with a “come as you are” policy. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not saying I hope for more churches who want to LEAVE us as we are. That’s a whole different thing. And very dangerous.
I think the main thing about those Rivendell Elves is that they aren’t setting out to create a really beautiful party where everyone has a good time. The beauty is a by-product of the fact that their lives are about preserving something sacred. I, especially, am susceptible to getting this one wrong. I like things to look pretty but there’s always this danger of “things” becoming in actuality not very pretty under their veneer.
I have to admit that our son is named after two fantasy series. The first, Gilead, is from the Stephen King Dark Tower series. The protagonist is kind of a knight who is on this journey which has outlasted his mythical home, Gilead, by hundreds of years. Gilead was the source of civilization and order and Roland (another name I liked) is the last Gunslinger – a line of men born and bred to protect the world from the encroaching evil and chaos.
Gilead is also mentioned in the Bible, first in Genesis, as a piece of land. It was the place to which King David fled when his son Absalom was trying to kill him. There are several references to Gilead in Jeremiah which allude to the availability of healing for God’s people which they will not take. Gilead was a place where people went who needed healing. The well-known spiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead” refers to the same availability of healing for God’s people through Jesus:
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul
Here’s where it gets cool: Gilead means “hill of testimony” but Christ is Balm in Gilead to which the Old Testament refers. For me, Gilead’s name is a declaration that God not only has a place for me to receive healing but that he is making of me a place to offer healing to others. It is my fervent hope that our future embodies some very real way of offering up to the world the “last homely home.” Even if it’s only in our family in our small way: offering someone a cup of tea and homemade bread let’s say. After all, the hobbits had their fair share of homeliness to offer without all the grandeur of the Elvish songs.
We’ve talked about several ways this might look. Early on, our conversations were about alternative education and starting a school that would share all the best things about homeschooling with all of the wonders of having teachers who are actually passionate about what they are teaching. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Catholic Hours – the services of the day where you stop what you are doing and devote yourself to prayer. I’ve been daydreaming about starting what would essentially be a monastery only with a couple of families. I want to build this beautiful House with a chapel for worship and open it to all who wanted to come and worship God and eat good food and have good conversations and read good books and rest. Those of us who lived there would, like the elves, do these things day in and day out. I imagine space there for music and art to be created, but mostly I like the idea of doing the mundane things really reverently and well. I like the idea that we’d be intentionally clearing our lives of the superfluous voices and just cooking, cleaning, making things, eating and praying. Above all, praying. Doesn’t that make you salivate? Doesn’t it make you long for this life?
Tangent: a friend of mine – we’ll call him Chris “Smurf” – has expressed in the past some perplexity over the fact that his sisters had liked to play and read about all things “pioneer” or “olden days” when they were young. I feel like I tried at one time to explain to him “our” ardor for these things and failed, but this is what it is: that was when things were more pure; when people made things with their own hands. What they had was plain and their lives were not easy, but there was so much grace in, for instance, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s depiction of sewing a dress that wasn’t present in my life as a girl. Pretending was the best way I knew to get there.
Anyway, since I’ve also always had a thing for stories about journeys and survival I think it’s only fitting that our son’s nickname – Lee – was inspired by Battlestar Galactica. Even though I love Anne of Green Gables (and all things L.M. Montgomery for the same reasons as I loved playing pioneers), I didn’t want Gilead to be shortened to Gil or Gillie(!) and I already liked the name Lee on its own.
So there is my long-winded and twisty way of explaining the whole meaning behind our son’s name and the hope we have for our family. I went nursing bra shopping yesterday with my mom and upon being asked by the store clerk how we got that name I realized I don’t have anything like a short answer. The best I’ve been able to come up with is that I like the idea of hope for healing. She replied to this that it’s kind of like how some people name their daughters “Sedona” because of the healing properties of that location in Arizona. I wanted to say “not really” and probably should have. Then we would have gotten into a much bigger conversation. I can’t help thinking about how our rector would do it as I wonder right now why I automatically didn’t. Oh well…I’m sure I’ll have many more years of explaining Gilead’s name to many people. 🙂
I started weeping yesterday when I saw pictures from my friend Mike’s wedding on facebook. Technically, we didn’t actually date, so I can’t call him my high school “boyfriend.” There wasn’t enough time for that because he asked me out about a month before I went away to college. But he did kiss me and then proceed to guess rightly that it had been my first kiss when we saw each other again at Fall break. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about that time in my life, although Mike’s gentleness of spirit and warm honesty has always made those memories some of my best. We went on to have a great friendship precisely because we didn’t date and he even came to my wedding with his fiance – now wife – so I have no sadness in reserve for a lost relationship. It’s that Me I’ve lost: the girl who had the luxury of having nothing on her mind but heartbreak over a boy even though at the time it was very real. It was shocking to find that in a moment I have gone from being an innocent 18 year old getting her first kiss to all of this ordered chaos which in another 20 years will most likely seem again like luxury to my more expansive self. On this side, life looks very much like a series of re-births into a wider world.
A friend reminded me the other day of a scene from “The Last Battle” where all the animals are approaching Aslan’s doorway into the new Narnia. Some of them go joyfully through, propelled by the hope of what they will find on the other side. Some of them get to the very threshold and veer away, suddenly repelled by the very same thing. I can saw, now, from experience that birth – all kinds of bringing forth of new life – is this way: you have the option of saying no, but to say yes is to give up all control of what happens afterward. It feels very much like rushing toward a narrow opening with only the vaguest ideas of what the other side will be like.
I’ve had two weeks full of odd moments to think about all this and every time I sit down to write a journal entry for my own purposes I find that my initial impressions have been added-to by new experience, so it would be very hard for me to re-capture the exact feelings I had on the day Gilead was born. Maybe they weren’t meant to be captured anyway. I kind of think that’s why any language we use to describe physical intimacy or something as elemental as giving birth ultimately falls flat or sounds unbelievably crass when compared to the real feelings we feel when we remember the acts themselves. I couldn’t even rightly describe that first kiss of mine to you. All I can do is reiterate the sweetness of the memory and trust that you can extrapolate all the meaning on your own. I believe this is a bit of what C.S. Lewis means when he tells us about Joy.
Oh, there has been basically endless talk about sleep and poop and nipple pain and weight gain, so I don’t want you to think I’ve had this totally philosophical existence since January 3rd. On the contrary…there’s so much I wouldn’t know about God right now if I hadn’t been spending many, many of my waking moments taking care of someone else’s basic bodily functions while trying to ignore my own aches and pains. It’s dirty and exhausting and also the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done. I still look at his little face and can’t believe he’s mine. I drive so much more carefully now and make sure I don’t fall on the ice and hurt myself simply because I know I am responsible for this little person’s life. And he’s such a creature! It immediately puts in perspective some of the things God says about how He feels about us. Gilead is totally wrapped up in his needs and most of them have to be satisfied right away. He has absolutely no perspective on the wider world around him…but do I resent him for this? Do I sit there and say to myself that he really should grow up? Not at all…I have this kind of wrenching pity for him. It doesn’t matter at all to me that he can’t even smile at me properly yet or doesn’t have a concept of loving me back. All I care about is that I love him and that for at least a moment at a time he trusts me to take care of him. Again, this is something I will never be able to adequately describe to you, but even if you don’t have kids you probably have felt it. Remember that – it’s how God feels about you. We shouldn’t feel indignant that He pities us – although we often do – because we are just such small, helpless creatures to him whom He loves with all the ferocity of a Father.
I’ll quote a bit from my journal entry 2 days after Gilead’s birth:
“What I also wanted to say was that saying it’s worth the pain is almost making an irrelevant statement. I don’t connect the two because his existence swallows it all up. That’s why I hardly remember it. After the moment he came into the room I was a different person. It’s taken me a few days to know it, but reliving the birth story is almost like telling something that happened to someone else. I remember those deep throbs of pain that felt like they would never end and never stop getting deeper so that my voice found a whole new register – think Mordor – as I strove to somehow accommodate it. I was not ready – although I am proud of how well I did and thankful my body knew its way. There was no way to be prepared for that pain. Thank God it works its way up to being as deep as it gets. But more…I wasn’t ready to have a baby. (Imagine that. Even at the very end.) Thank God that happens in the end no matter how prepared you feel. Not that I wanted to prolong it, but when my body started to push I almost resisted. It defied both my expectations of how long labor would last based on how far we thought I was and also any physical sensation or experience I thought I’d ever encounter and say to myself “yes, I will willingly go there.” I was, for the whole measly 30 minutes I was pushing, afraid to open my legs, unwilling to change positions had someone asked, unwilling to let go of someone’s hands in order to feel his head or to pull back on my knees and unprepared to find that he was coming very quickly. It was a force like a tornado. And then it was over; completely over. I came to myself and he was there – this tiny little stranger who looked like no one I’d ever seen – and we’ve been falling more deeply in love with him ever since.”
More than once since that moment I’ve just stared at him and started to cry. It’s almost impossible to process the immensity of feeling I have for this boy. Like I said, I was a different person than I am now. It might be imperceptible, but the moment he came into the room, I did feel my soul become a little bit heavier with the weight of glory.
However, I can retell my birth story here briefly for posterity. I can’t believe it was only two weeks ago. It feels like I’ve lived a lifetime since then.
We went to a friend’s wedding on Jan. 1, which was my due date. I was so huge and swollen that night that I got asked if I was carrying twins. Always a great thing to hear. Henry’s friends were in town for the wedding, so we set up a breakfast date the next morning and were up bright and early to reserve a table. That morning marked my last full night of sleep for awhile. 🙂 We had a few people over to hang out that afternoon and Ray came by so the three of us watched Dr. Horrible, which I hadn’t yet seen. When Ray left I watched HGTV on Hulu and felt sorry for myself. Then I lied down in bed and read my Stephen King novel until about 1:30 a.m. I had just turned off my lamp and started dozing while Henry was in the bathroom when I felt a contraction unlike those ridiculous Braxton Hicks I’d been having for a couple of weeks (each time making me think I was in early labor…which I guess if you think about it, maybe I was). At the time I remember thinking it was like a diaper of pain – better yet, a loincloth of pain – stretching from my abdomen up to my lower back. It made me hop out of bed and hustle Henry out of the bathroom (because with it came the instant urge to go #2 – a fact of life you may as well get used to if you want to read a birth story). By the time I came back, he was half asleep and I thought I felt a little trickle. I ignored it because I was NOT going to cry wolf again and lied down through another 1/2 hr of the same type of contractions. When I stood up again I got a big gush that I knew was my water having broken. That was about 2:30 a.m. and I called my midwife, who told me to try to sleep if I could.
It was so strange – I had been wanting to go into labor for weeks, but at that moment all I wanted was for Henry to hold me and to take a break for a bit. I got into bed and he did hold me but there was no real break. I succeeded in dozing between contractions for the next 4 hours; first in bed with Henry and then on the couch when I kept having to get up to go to the toilet every 5 contractions or so. I just kept telling myself to look forward to the dawn and at 6:30 when I knew I was going to start throwing up I woke up Henry because I knew we were going to need some help. After that, the last coherent thing I remember was calling Sarah and Bethany and then chatting with Sarah very briefly as I sat in the rocking chair in the nursery and Henry started filling the tub. Then it was snippets of memories. Karen (the assistant) got here around 8:30 and I was 4 cm dilated and fully effaced. His head had been sitting very low on my cervix for a couple of weeks, so there was no problem with that. After about 7:00 I had added throwing up to my every 5-10 contraction pattern and was shaking fairly visibly with hormones. It felt good to throw up, but not to labor on the toilet. Karen wanted me to try having a few contractions on my feet or squatting, so Henry helped psych me up for that and we did several that way; standing in between and squatting when the contraction came. I remember my mom and Bethany getting here and that they took turns holding my other hand or being with me when Henry had to leave. I remember him drinking coffee right next to me and not having the energy or heart to tell him it made me sick. I remember trying to eat things and how everything tasted awful. Mostly I just remember how my voice became this conduit for the pain. I don’t know when I started moaning with the contractions, but once I did I couldn’t stop. If I hadn’t been able to moan I wouldn’t have gotten through it.
Karen checked me again at 10:30, I think, and I was still only 4 1/2 or 5 cm. She told me I should probably wait an hour to get in the tub so I could try to get at least to 5 cm. So I just stayed put on that bed right where she’d checked me. At one point Henry looked at his watch and remarked sarcastically that that was only 52 more contractions (at that point they were about 1 minute apart). I had no energy to say it, but that was not a great thing to say around me at that point. We laughed about it later. They told me I could get in the tub finally at about 11:15 and I remember bolting for it the minute a contraction passed and not getting in the water in time for the next one to hit so I was doubled over, standing in the water and waiting for it to pass. When I got in the tub I had 5 blissed-out minutes of what felt like complete relief. I remember thinking I could handle a few more hours if it was going to feel this good. Then the serious contractions started. This is where none of us are sure what was truly going on. The last we knew I’d been at 4 cm and was likely at 5 at that point, so when I felt the “serious” contractions I thought maybe I was in transition although it seemed like it should be way too soon for that. It felt like several long waves of deep, deep pain – lasting for a couple of minutes – with only a brief break in between. I remember saying frantically, “help me stay calm!” because I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through an hour or more of those. Honestly, I don’t know how I could have. As it was, I just did. I had no choice. Toward the end of one of those I felt my body pushing and I remember laughing internally when I heard the midwives both come quickly walking back from the kitchen where they’d been eating and chatting. They both thought it was still going to be awhile. It really is true that one’s body pushes without your active consent. I remember being afraid that I was actually pushing against a remaining lip of cervix and it wasn’t truly time. I asked if it was okay and Christina said I should just go ahead and do some small pushes if I felt like it. But the next few contractions weren’t small pushes at all – it was all-out, sweaty battle. I kept asking if it was okay and Christina kept offering to check me to see if I was dilated. I didn’t want her to do that, being totally freaked out that I was pushing so soon but not wanting to be told that I shouldn’t be pushing either, so I just kept pushing. After 3 or 4 pushes she said, “oh yeah…you’re ready.” I asked her why and she said, “because I can see his head.”
This was when the whole thing took on a sense of total unreality. They got on their gowns and gloves and all my friends and family gathered around. I kept thinking…this happened so quickly. Pushing is great because your contractions slow down again and they don’t feel so intense because your main sensation is one of downward motion. Pushing is not great because you can feel your hips being pressed apart and your, well, vagina being stretched and held open. It’s scary. As it happened, the largest amount of time spent in the pushing phase was when he was crowning. My body just held him there for the exact right amount of time needed to keep me from tearing. I got SO hot and sweaty. I remember demanding ice chips and water between each push. When his head was out and I could see it, it got even weirder. I couldn’t even process that there was a person down there, halfway into the world. I’ll never forget the relief of getting his shoulders out of me. It felt so great that they had to remind me to push just a little more so that his legs would come free. Come free they did and Henry pulled him up and onto my chest. He was pink and perfect and he did all the things any self-respecting baby should do right away. And really…the rest is history. Like I said, it all feels really distant compared with his actual, beautiful self.
I’m sure there will be more thoughts on God and birth as we figure out how life looks now. I know now more than ever that I wasn’t ready to have a baby. My instincts on that one were right. But I think it’s in the same way that none of us, except for a few really exceptional and devoted people, will ever truly be ready for heaven. I think the whole point – well, I HOPE the whole point – is in us running toward the door even though we don’t know what lies on the other side. It’s in that one reckless moment abandoning all control and taking one step forward into the unimaginable.
I thought of all kinds of things I should add yesterday as soon as I got off the computer. I’m doing all this painting and cutting for Christmas presents and listening to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” so my brain was kind of floaty.
One thing I wanted to add was how the other night we sat down and watched the first three Anthony Bordain “No Reservations” (France, Iceland, New Jersey) episodes and how when he visited this little farm in New Jersey where they make cheese (Raw milk. Happy, pastured cows.) and bread (in an outdoor bread oven. They are the first American place, period, to export to cheese BACK to Europe in a CENTURY) I just felt so happy. It’s the same feeling I get when I look at pictures of a well-ordered and serenely decorated house or read ANY Barbara Kingsolver. THAT is why I want to be home, along with taking care of my son of course. I want our home to mean something – to us and hopefully then to people around us. And maybe, gasp!, to people who AREN’T EXACTLY LIKE US AND WHOM WE HAVEN’T KNOWN FOR TEN YEARS ALREADY. Although, those people are still good.
It’s the reason I ask why my tired brain keeps beating me up about not making the money whenever we run through our paycheck in a week instead of two. This is not that big of a deal, but it inevitably happens – these days – when we have to pay $100 or $150 for some baby-related thing or car-related thing or eating-related thing like getting groceries. Because…my heart is not really in being a career woman. I’m not too sure what that feels like, actually. I will say ’til I’m blue in the face that I wish I would have gotten a college degree or at least taken some college classes which actually gave me a marketable skill to use instead of the (like I said, bitterly, in my last post $60,000) education I DO have which got me exactly nowhere in the job market. I still do wish that, and I still do have daydreams about taking night classes in clothing construction and patternmaking and tailoring so that I would have a skill I can use if I ever need to, but I’ve never wanted that badly to be in the working world.
Mostly, I think it’s just not where my gifting lies. I love design, but I DON’T love business and I DON’T love that fake feeling of trying to sell myself or my goods. I get really jazzed about eating (and learning to cook) good food and making stuff and renovating a house. I think it goes deeper than that, though, and it’s why I wish I could just let it go that my best moments haven’t been in the working world. I think I could find out a lot more by pursuing the things I ACTUALLY like.
HENCE…Toledo. The lower housing prices alone could make our life more livable even if there was no change in salary. Just sayin’. Living in Wheaton or Glen Ellyn would always be a struggle, financially. And I agree so wholeheartedly with Kirsten in her comment about making A good the highest good and therefore an idol. Stewart preached about this in his series on marriage and celibacy. One of his points about the temptations of marriage and family which often gets overlooked (especially in our community which LOVES marriage and family) is that we can make that good the highest good and actually put it before God. Since it’s so socially acceptable in Christian circles, it’s not something we talk about much as a setback or a temptation to sin, but it’s definitely there.
This whole job search process has been, for me, about a willingness to say yes to anything (trusting that we’re making good decisions together and with God’s help), and realizing that the best decision for US might not be the same as for others but that God can still bless us through it…like I said. And just maybe, we would thrive even more than we are now!
I took these yesterday for my mom because they came to take us out to lunch and she had wanted some artsy style pictures of me, which did not get accomplished with her little digital camera in the 5 minutes before they left. I guess the “artsy” part got accomplished here, although I can’t really vouch for the professionalism. I tried to get Henry to take them and knew THAT was a big mistake almost as soon as we started. So I set up my huge digital SLR on my tiny broken-down, rickety tri-pod and did what I could with the daylight left in the nursery.
So, I hit 37 weeks on Saturday and as of now, baby boy is just hanging out in there getting a little chubbier every day. He’s not the only one! I’m not even attempting to guess when it will happen. I hoping within the next 3 weeks instead of the week or two after – even though it’s Christmas. I just really want to sleep on my back and my stomach and I want to be done receiving internal blows to my groin that literally make me gasp. Last night I had many waves of more serious contractions (they feel more serious anyway) and thought: what if this is it? What if these don’t stop and I end up getting up to pace the floor. It would be kind of fun, in a way. Henry would stay home from work and we’d have a little excited party – at least until things started moving along more quickly. But then what would I do with all of the half-finished Christmas presents strewn about the nursery? I shouldn’t even be writing right now! I should be working on them!!
No matter how many times I say “I can’t believe this is really happening,” it never gets any more real. My parents just laugh knowingly and say, “Oh, it’ll get very real soon enough.” I think, why am I wishing this time away?! Now everything I do I think – oh, this could be my last…
Okay, so one of the things that is happening right now with us – apart from imminently becoming parents and trying to squeeze in last minute outings and planning for Christmas (which, thankfully is being mostly handled by my lovely sister instead of me. Her gift to me.) – is that Henry is going to interview for a job with his college roommate in Toledo. This roommate started a company from his dorm room and dropped out when he started becoming successful. Smart man, I say. And I have $60,000 in debt to prove it. The interview may not happen now until after the holidays (and, hopefully, baby) but the job description sounds perfect for Henry. It involves administrative work and would allow him to work in an instructive capacity with people. The major drawback is that we’d have to relocate to Toledo.
Try as we might, there is just no way to get ahead while we live here and while Henry has this job. For obvious reasons, this holiday season is the most stressful I’ve encountered – and it usually IS stressful anyway (side topic: why should this BE and how can I change this for my children??? We had a conversation at lunch yesterday about how Christmas time always brings about feelings of tension and anxiety for my parents. It’s so awful! I shared in some of that while growing up). We just don’t make enough money to cover our debt and basic living expenses. I’ve recently realized that just because things ARE this way doesn’t mean that God has some big agenda to make them STAY this way. Mary and I had a big talk about it last week – about how the lack of or starving of an intimate relationship with God makes us think all kinds of crazy things about His will for us. Like how for years in my adolescent life I feared that because I WASN’T dating, God was doing it to me on purpose and that He wanted me, for some inexplicable reason, to be single forever, even though it was the worst POSSIBLE thing I could imagine. I know it’s a bad example because there are people called to be celibate in the church and that all of us are called to celibacy at some point in our lives, but I think it still goes to explain how often we mistake our own negative self-talk (particularly in the event of inevitable confusion about God’s character when grown up, wounded sinners are raising little sinners) for the will of God when we don’t believe and actively pursue the personal words God is speaking to us all the time (which, for the record, are NOT things which would ever go against the scriptural truths God has revealed to us all). All of this to say: I’m getting more and more ready to move not because I feel ready to move away from the community I’ve known for 10 years but because it’s not wrong for us to want to get out of debt! Or to make a decision based primarily on that goal! And by not wrong I mean that I’ve realized He can probably bless us in Toledo and make us thrive there. I think deep down, my fear has been that if I move not knowing if it’s the absolute best thing to do, He won’t bless us where we go and will just leave us to our own devices in a new place where we don’t know anyone.
Anyway, he hasn’t even interviewed yet.
This brings me to my other realization/question. Why am I 29, expecting a baby almost any day, and STILL wondering sometimes where my life has gone wrong that I’m not working and not bringing in money for our family? It’s a constant worry when things get tough financially at our house. Where did I go wrong and why have I been so “unsuccessful?” I asked this of my therapist a couple months ago w/r/t the attempt to start yet another screwy business venture. And today when I texted Henry and told him things would get better soon and he texted me back and said that he wouldn’t rest until they did and I felt so taken care of, why did I then immediately feel guilty? Why did I feel like I should be contributing more to our family? Will I ever be rid of this sense of guilt? I think it truly gets in the way of my calling as a person because I don’t think God ever speaks to us (in that personal, loving way I was talking about) through bad feelings and manipulation. So it makes me wonder then, how IS my calling being drowned out by these negative thoughts? And how can I learn to accept and feel good about my accomplishments (such as they are) in spite of them? Even if I never get a full-time job. Even if that puts me in a precarious position as a woman because “you never know what might happen…you need to be self-reliant.” How much of that is wise? Is any of it wise? Is any of it really what God wants?
I’m not going to answer because I do have to go, but I would love other women’s take on this. My friend Emily, who is a Princeton and Yale educated lawyer and mother of 4 who lives her life up to her neck in kids and likes mothering better than she ever liked her career, told me the other day that she thinks I’M starting out things right and that she wishes she’d been more like ME. Can you IMAGINE?! I still don’t quite know what to make of that, but it was helpful all the same, I guess.
So, here is the finished product from my belly cast party. I have to tell you that it was one of my very favorite parts of this whole baby-having endeavor.
I realize you guys don’t need to see me in ALL my glory, so I won’t post too many pictures, but I was so impressed with the ones Henry took that I had to post some of them.
I’m trying to decide what to write, or more importantly, what to leave out from my long and complicated history with my body. There really is no time one is more aware of one’s body than when someone else is living in it. I looked in the mirror at my recently emerging and darkening stretch marks and realized that I love them. I love my stretch marks! Why?!
Even I don’t really know. It’s not like I think they’re pretty, but I guess I’m proud of them. I imagine it’s a little like a 10 year old boy coming home from a baseball game proudly sporting the scabs on his knees. It shows I’ve done something. Endured a little something – even if it’s not much yet. On my best days of this pregnancy I feel proud of my big, lumbering body. It’s not at all the same as looking in the mirror and seeing some extra pounds I’ve put on all by myself. Thank God! I wasn’t sure I’d feel that way.
On Sunday I woke up feeling gross. We got up and got all ready for church, walked out the door and then turned around and walked right back in. I had done too much in the two preceding days. All day I felt downright sick and so I was starting to worry that I was going into labor. It’s still a few days too early for that, and when I awoke on Monday morning still sporting the headache I’d had all night I worried I had preeclampsia. Thankfully, drinking a ton of water remedied my headache and after the epic massage Henry gave me Sunday night, my back felt better than it had in weeks. Nope, not in labor. Not even close.
During that time, however, as I worried I’d have to be induced in the hospital and that absolutely everything would be out of my control and against my wishes, I realized that I’m not really ready. I keep saying I’m ready for our son to be on the outside of me, but as I contemplate it, I really am starting to be afraid of the pain. Everyone says you will be toward the end like this, but I thought I’d “already dealt with it.” Ha ha. I also realized I have no choice. I feel like Pam from the birth episode when it comes right down to it and she doesn’t want to go to the hospital because she’s just not ready. That’s all there is to it. Our birth class instructor told a story of a woman who got all the way to transition (the time when your contractions get really strong and close together and you are super close to pushing the baby out) and started packing her bags to go home. She had decided she just wasn’t going to do it anymore and that she’d go home and have the baby some other day. It wouldn’t surprise me if I did something like this. Mine will probably look more like begging.
What other joyful life event do you know for certain will be painful and are just waiting around until that pain starts? I guess it could be argued that marriage has that probability. But still…it could happen right now while I’m rested and feeling good or it could happen after another long night of no sleep and big headaches. I don’t get a choice that it will happen and I don’t get a choice when it will happen. I also don’t get a choice how it will happen. I may not have him at home. I may not get to hold or see him as soon as he comes out. I probably will, but you never know.
You know, I wish we women got better prepared for ALL of our life and body events the way we prepare for birth. I wish somehow that I would have known how complicated my relationship with my body would get and how fast it would get that way. How can a little girl know that? I think it’s well worth thinking on this subject as a mother. We have a kind of relationship to the body that is different from men’s relationships with their bodies. All this stuff can feel like it’s just “happening” to us – especially if we aren’t prepared for whatever reason. Maybe we need to get back to the red tent. Anyone ever read that book? It’s good!
I love pregnancy and the way my friends have been so good to me for this reason. It’s almost like we’re back there. It’s the one time in life when many women will tell you with total sincerity that you’re doing great and that you look good when you’ve gained 60 lbs. and are lumbering along like godzilla. Yes, you get some odd and mean comments as well, but there are always plenty of good women who will tell you those other women are crazy. I recently read a book of short essays from women authors and columnists about their experiences of breastfeeding. They were all interesting, especially since most of them were working moms – which won’t apply to me at this point – but there was one I especially liked. The whole thing was about how she wished we would all take it easier on each other. She was referring to judgmental attitudes she witnessed about breastfeeding and child-rearing among moms but I think it applies to all kinds of facets in a woman’s life where she is subject to scrutiny first and foremost by her female peers.
What would it be like if instead of competing with each other – a lot of retroactive non-competing in my case would be nice – we were able to recognize one another as completely unique and praise each other and urge each other on to become the best kind of woman we can be in our specific lives? I really wish I’d both done this and felt this through my adolescence. But more than that, I wish I’d known better in my early adult life and stopped comparing my body, my clothes, my hair and then my wedding and then my apartment and THEN my pregnant body and my plans for child-rearing to other women. I’m not going to say that I’m cured, but the belly cast put some finishing touches on something which has been dawning on me these last nine months: this isn’t a competition. You don’t get points being the “best” at that stuff. Or, heaven forbid, for being the “best” at spiritual endeavors. Yikes. People don’t even like you that much if you do that, lol.
I’m extremely grateful for the women who bravely applied slimy plaster bandages to my naked body and who told me afterward that I was beautiful. Or showed me they thought I was, just for being me. I totally don’t deserve them – which, I think, is the nature of good friendships. Where would we be without those faithful few who are most like Jesus in that they just tell you, “I love you. No matter what.”?
I think I mentioned yesterday how I have a new favorite blog. The address is actually www.ourmothersdaughters.blogspot.com. I don’t know a ton about it, except that it looks like a ton of information for women and that the woman who posts most often is a mother of 7 (I think), Catholic and hilarious. She’s called Auntie Leila.
I know I just posted yesterday, but I got a lot of comments from women and I had some more thoughts this morning. Currently, Henry is into his 3rd hour of napping and since this is his “birthday” celebration with me and it’s already been a bit of a downer due to my incessant crying, I think I will just let him rest. All you ladies who commented yesterday are in a flurry of wishing you could hug me and wanting to reassure me that everything is okay. I really appreciate it…you have no idea how much a little comment on what I write means to me. But fear not! I am okay. It’s just one of THOSE kinds of days. Also, for the most part I too think I will be a kick-ass mom.
Whenever I get like this, I get the Jennifer Knapp song “When Nothing Satisfies You” running through my head. That’s right, Jennifer Knapp – who is now openly gay – was a staple of mine in high school. Good memories of me at about 17 with Bethany in her Grandma’s beater (which sometimes steamed) taking a road trip and listening that whole album. Anyway, basically the chorus is: “When nothing satisfies you (repeat 3x), hold My hand.” What really *irks* me is how that song, bordering on Christian schmaltzy, has stayed in my head. Whenever I have a day like this when everything seems to be going wrong, when I can’t think of a single thing that is going to make me feel better and, gasp, I might just have to get through it rather than anesthetize myself it’s like Jesus just flips this toggle switch in my brain to that song. Honestly, I can kind of imagine Him sort of snickering at little ol’ me when He does this – kind of like you do at a two year old who is having a tantrum. It’s not that you don’t think she thinks her woes are real and that you don’t feel for her a little, but she’s just so darn cute and totally IGNORANT while she’s doing it. She has no idea how quickly her woes will pass or how insignificant they truly are. I think He LOVES it when nothing sounds good to me – not even eating or watching t.v. or reading a stupid Dean Koontz novel. It’s not in a sadistic way, it’s in a “finally you are LISTENING to Me” way. “Finally, you realize you have nowhere else to turn and you just might have to be miserable for a few hours and learn to make the best of it.” Katherine Ruch would call this a crucible moment.
“A crucible is a refractory container used for metal, glass, and pigment production as well as a number of modern laboratory processes, which can withstand temperatures high enough to melt or otherwise alter its contents. Historically, they have usually been made of clay, but they can be made of any material with a higher temperature resistance than the substances they are designed to hold.”
Which brings me to my next thought and a blog entry I think all of us young women would do well to read.
http://ourmothersdaughters.blogspot.com/2010/08/having-baby-and-culture-of-freaking-out.html
I stumbled on this through the links my friend Emily sent me on nursing. Auntie Leila again: she has a lot of wisdom but not a lot of judgment. I love her and I’ve hardly even read her blog. It was EXACTLY what I needed to hear. Not just because I’m having a baby and have fully witnessed (but hopefully not fully participated in) the “culture of freaking out” but because I am a young woman who somewhere along the way found “stuff” to be soothing and have at times embraced it with all my heart. Random associations: I remember the first time I heard the phrase “retail therapy.” It was a phrase of a friend’s big sister which she repeated while in Target and I was getting over a break-up and boy did it ever feel like the great panacea just to let myself buy some stuff for that reason. I was sad. I needed retail therapy. Also, I’m thinking about how in “Infinite Jest” (set in the future) each calendar year is corporately sponsored and so named so instead of dates you get things like “that was in the year of the *Depends Adult Undergarment.* Also, I just recently watched “Sex And The City 2” while I was doing some project or other – this is after having gone through all 6 seasons and movie #1 again – and not for the first time had this suffocated feeling about that show. It’s entertaining and witty and funny but, oh my gosh, once you pull out (and this really holds true of so many shows) and look at it in its entirety it is about nothing but spending money, getting stuff and going around and around about all the same small-town gossip and personal turmoil or triumph over and over. It’s conspicuous consumption, conspicuous sexuality and gossip. AND WE EAT IT UP. At least I did. Ladies, THESE are our idols. I mean, not literally. I know not all ya’ll have watched that show, but there is some version out there battling for our attention. Mine is the design blog/blogger, I’ll just say it.
In general, Americans regardless of sex have a pretty good handle on stuff and freaking out but I think so much of it is targeted to young women that we hardly know where we are if we can’t shop or peruse or look or daydream or flat out lust. It’s so sneaky too…my love of design so quickly spills over into wanting to have things just so: my clothes, my hair, my face, my house. I could just keep adding frivolous things to care about until it takes up all of my time and energy.
Okay, so what am I saying besides just ranting? Um, I think I’m saying that even I – who thinks she has a handle on what life *really* means because of being a Christian – sometimes stop and look around me and see nothing but desolation. In reality, there is never a happy moment of realization between four best friends that all we need is each other and our great accomplishments. In reality, I am sometimes so jealous of my best friends’ accomplishments (and likewise, I’m sure) even though I know they love and support me. And $300 shoes don’t fix it. Not that I’ve tried.
I wish I didn’t get to this place because I never got so caught up in stuff to begin with. I wish I could say that I have the willpower not to look at pretty things and to never watch t.v. (we don’t even HAVE one, but I still find a way) or pick up a shiny magazine (I do try not to do that anymore for the most part. I’ve found they just make me feel like shit). Maybe this is one of the things God is rooting out in my life as we speak or maybe it will be a lifelong struggle which only ever brings me back to Him. Thank God He’s got endless patience to watch this temper tantrum of mine over and over and over and just keep smirking about it and loving me through it because I sure am glad my son will have a limited toddlerhood. Just saying.
This is me, how I look today, right now. I’m a day shy of 32 weeks pregnant. I’ve gained 30 lbs. (that I know of) and TEN of that was in the last month. Yesterday I felt like the biggest boat in the stream, but it goes off and on.
I wasn’t sure I was ever going to post again, but I spent a good long time reading and looking and blog posts this morning (My new favorite: “Like Mother Like Daughter”) and felt nostalgic. Also, I’ve finally finished the baby’s room and have almost everything I need (cloth diapers are en route) so I can finally sit back and focus on something other than baby. Well, between the times his little feet are sliding across the inside of my belly – it’s endlessly fascinating.
I was remembering how last year at this time I was painting and cleaning this apartment while listening to “The Vampire Lestat” and stealing smoke breaks out our bedroom window from the “birthday pack.” Both the weather and the story were perfect for an indulgence in the existential melancholy which always visits me in the Fall. It’s usually at its peak on days like we’ve had this week when the weather is balmy, but the trees are almost bare and the position and weakness of the sun say winter is on its way. It’s like a perpetual twilight. It makes me think of being in Lothlorien in the winter.
Anyway…these pictures aren’t that great. Add that to the list of things I don’t really care about anymore. It’s amazing how long that list has gotten in the last 6 months or so. I thought I cared about so many things. This nursery being one of them. True, I have spent SOME time getting it ready. Some of that was pure vanity, I’ll admit. Some of it was thriftiness: even my mediocre sewing skills will suffice in lieu of buying pre-made curtains. Free hutch from the side of the road? Yes please. Some of it, like the Hold Fast poster (inspired by Master and Commander/a sermon of Fr. Stewart’s), were just to celebrate our new life as a threesome. And for me to look at while I am breathing through contractions in this very room.
For some reason, that simple phrase – which was repeated through the movie and tattoed on one character’s knuckles, and is also in the Bible verse about a man leaving his family and clinging to his wife – has stayed with me and become a mantra for me. I thought this time while I am preparing to become a mother would be this blissful little romp of finding cute baby clothes and decorating a nursery. I thought I’d have endless fodder for a blog and that I’d take pictures of every little project I had in the works. I thought that just choosing the right “venue” for me for the birth would take care of all the fears I had and that I would just come to the day and be ready to have a baby. I also thought, somehow, that being pregnant would wrap me in this little cocoon of safety where none of the stresses of life could bother me. I thought the happiness of my impending heart’s desire (I’ve wanted a baby for as long as I can remember) would make everything else unhappy just go away and that it would be me and Henry and the baby forever.
Do I even need to say it? I know the moms who are reading this are with me right now.
What all has happened since I got pregnant? Hmm…well, I decided to go off Lexapro a bit into my second trimester. At first things were okay. I then thought, why not try starting a network marketing business on top of my jewelry business and the babysitting I’m doing for my best friend’s son? Around the second week of September, when I was with Henry on his Ohio college fair tour and purposely took a break from the businesses, I realized how miserable I had made my daily existence and how constantly anxious I really was from the lack of anxiety that week. It still took a lot to admit I’d made a bad choice. I went back to my therapist whom I hadn’t seen in months and cried about how I’m so disappointed in myself. Not my life, not my circumstances, but the fact that I just keep blundering at life. I keep taking on this stuff I think I can do and then I get overwhelmed and I all I want to do is lie in bed all day and then I have to quit things. She said, very calmly, that it didn’t sound like I wasn’t a hard worker but that maybe I just didn’t have a lot of discrimination when it comes to making choices for my personality and level of social anxiety. So I quit the business, for all intents and purposes.
And I said to God:” now what? Remember all that stuff about me being a bird and not a spider?” What does that mean? I don’t think it means what I thought it meant. I went back on Lexapro, had some huge crying jags, and then started to contemplate with Henry what calling really means. He is doing a job search for real all this time. In the last week he has ruled out or been ruled out of his two top choices and is back to square one. That on top of taking care of me while I had the stomach flu (a first for our relationship and he was AMAZING) has made this week a low one. We’ve gone in the last month or two from seriously considering moving to either Madison or somewhere in the Southwestern border region of the country to saying yet again, “now what?”
You might not think it, but preparing for motherhood can be really hard work. For one, all these months I’ve realized increasingly how needy I am. Not in a bad way…not like a college boyfriend leveling judgments at you kind of way, but a way which brooks no opposition. I just need. I need from my husband, my mother, my sister, my friends…and I had a long (it felt long) journey of learning how to ask and learning (hopefully) that ultimately I have nowhere else to go but to Jesus. I have NOT felt cocooned by pregnancy – if there is anyone out there who does, enjoy it – I have felt so much more raw and vulnerable than I ever thought possible. And the opinions! I have learned that my safe places are my safe places but that these do NOT include public forums like Facebook. And that people you haven’t said hi to in 15 years want to give helpful advice about child-rearing. I never knew you could feel like a bad mother before you are even finished gestating. I have had many many nights where I am convinced that I have ALREADY ruined my son’s life.
As I write this, I think the big message is maybe that I will have to lay things down over and over and over again. I don’t know that there’s an area of life or self that hasn’t been touched on and brought into sharper focus through pregnancy during this time. Each one of them has been something I’ve had to relinquish an illusion of control over. My body, my sanity, my community, my freedom, my sense of self, my sense of security, my family life…the list goes on and on. So…I guess that’s why I say I don’t care that much anymore about my photography skills.
Oh! My jewelry is this moment being featured in a boutique in Naperville “Wayfarer Candle.” I’ll be there all month and possibly longer. It was a lovely little unexpected gift.
Just some cute baby clothes to brighten the day.
Hold Fast 