Emotional Jet Lag

Geoff used this phrase to describe my state this week. My first doula-client gave birth on Monday. For confidentiality's sake, there is much I cannot say. My doula-mentor is a mountain-girl, an extreme-sport athelete, likes life with a full plate and dances fast and well. I have learned, this week, that I am not this way. From this first birth, I have learned things about whether or not this doula-work is my calling and more specifically, have learned about myself. It has brought gifts and it has brought pain.

I have been teaching childbirth since 2004. In my doula bag of tricks I was equipped with all my readings of the great Dr. Bradley, the unflinching Penny Simkin, her holiness Saint Ina May, and the ever-pragmatic Henci Goer. I figured I had read all of these experts, had four births myself, what I didn't know already, I could not possibly cram at 5:30 am. I packed what I was supposed to. Geoff packed a snack bag which included drawings of the kids and a portrait of myself wearing a super-cape. I had protein for endurance, fruit and water for hydration, a nutritious sandwich and brownies for a weary-spirit. I arrived at the hospital before sunrise with my backpack and my enormous exercise ball feeling excited and a bit ridiculous.

In my hours there, I kept trying to stay present. Stay with her. Be fresh eyes and insight. Be a cheerful, grounded Florence Nightingale who had memorized the birth plan. When I teach my birth class, I tell the students that I walk the delicate line between teaching a straight-forward method and introducing them to a pulsing and intense political movement where women in this city are having their birth choices taken from them in misogynistic and inhumane ways. At this birth, I found that there was no method to teach, just me trying to hold this woman's raft for her while her choices and her dignity spun around us as if at sea during a wild storm. I could feel the engines of the insurance corporations, the drug companies, the hospital legal departments. I feel like they all had hands in this birth.

The mother is well and the baby is well. I am in the process of writing the birth story for them as I witnessed it. Words, as significant as they are to me, always betray me. As careful as I try to be, as crafted and intentional--I am scared that my true disappointment will come across. I suppose that I signed on to be an agent of truth-telling and advocacy in my role as a doula. They had contracted me to work on the mother's behalf and remind her at all costs of her initial wishes. I think I did those things and I think telling them their story and excavating those threads of beauty and grace will be my challenge. When I look back on the 16 hours I spent with them, I do see those threads. I do. Now, the further challenge is to show them and encourage them to walk forward with them. What is mothering if it is not accepting the outcome and persisting with hope?

Photo taken when I served as Calliope's doula when she got her ears pierced.

First Days

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."--from the Book of Joshua

Tooth and Nail-Summer Highlights, Part 4

I think it's the Waldorfians who link child development to the child's teeth. That milestones can be marked by teething, by cutting certain teeth and then by the loss of those same teeth later in childhood. If this is so, then the loss off Manny's front teeth mark a challenging season of sullenness, volatility and contrariness. (This is not to say that I myself have exhibited those same behaviors. But that's another blog entry altogether.) We have struggled and I will say what has "worked." "Worked" as in given us a momentary season of harmony, revealed moments of triumph:

Cooking with him in the kitchen--Manny can make his own omelette, toast, oj, even choose a recipe from his Wookie Cookie Cookbook and then pull out the ingredients. Taking him out alone on a date-- at the bead store, we sat in the cool and strung together this necklace that makes him look like an Incan King. And I blinked back tears at the cafe as he ate his whipped cream with a spoon. He was bent over his hot chocolate, this big boy, doing something so basic as feeding himself and I could see simultaneously how grown and yet how I take for granted his vulnerability. He has these adult affectations like clearing his throat and beginning sentences with "apparently." One trigger point for him has been his teeth. If anyone asks or mentions the loss of his teeth, he shuts down immediately. He grows sullen and leaves the room. Yet there he was in that coffee shop with me, eating that whipped cream and smiling at me, that full and glorious front-toothless smile! I hold that gift so close to me. It was so delicate, I could not let on that I noticed his smile and yet I was trying to take it all in.

Benicio Rocks the Shock Top-Summer Highlights, Part 3

I realized that I was raising big boys this summer when I found that my thoughts were consumed with amusement ride-physics and the implications of the fear-factor. Once Geoff had read that a child's development as a swimmer correlates directly with his ability to engage in risks. Benicio was only willing to take the swimming risk when it involved a toy-bribe and a competition with me. Swimming the other day he said, "I think if Michael Phelps were here, he would be crying back at the wall because how fast I am." Since his superhero phase when he was 3, I have marveled at his larger than life mentality. I say, "Move over Michael, we have a risk taker!"

Clara the Frockstar-Summer Highlights, Part 2

Our days of summer could have been marked by Clara's dresses. The blue gingham with organza overlay, the full-slip crinoline she calls her "ballet"dress and of course the collection from my childhood which are all floor-length and evoke the late seventies quite unlike anything else. The gingham one-- Clara patiently playing in the nude while it spun in the washing machine. She would call out to me, "Mom, I think it's ready!" Then in the later, hotter days of summer, she would opt for the crinoline, easier for potty. Also, she discovered that this particular dress did not impede her climbing pursuits. Numerous times this summer, Clara has climbed to a height not just above my head, but above my arms reach! The most serious was at Philly U when I was close to calling Campus Security to get her down from a crabapple tree. And then the dress pictured here, was of the Holly Hobbie ilk from my girlhood. It has orange puff sleeves and a grosgrain tie at the waist. Here she is at a cafe with her brothers after a morning at Nursery School Camp.

Quote of the summer as heard by Geoff:"See my fingernail? I hurt it when I was downtown, with Buda. We were doing handstands and funny faces."

Calliope in LOVE-Summer Highlights, Part 1

Her favorite expressions, "I don wanna, kay?":: "Poch, poch" (when she wants to go onto the porch usually for a ride on the swing):: "Why Wawa kwoy?" (Why Clara cry?"

Spots she loved: climbing in this LOVE sculpture with her cousins, water's edge at the beach, sorting rocks in the front yard, packing and unpacking bags in her room

Yummies she loved: peaches and peaches ad nauseum, silver queen white corn, watermelon to beat the band, and cotton candy ice cream from Franklin Fountain

Her fave reads: Ping by Marjorie Flack and No HItting by Karen Katz