The Cranberries are playing in the background. They have resurfaced as a current favorite for the time being. Max is asleep for the next few moments. He turns 7 months tomorrow and I've realized that nothing makes the passage of time more evident than watching an infant in their first year of life. I remember feeling him move for the very first time last year on Thanksgiving day. I was 17 weeks along. Now, he lies asleep, full of dirt from trying to eat grass earlier this morning. He has come into his personality.

My days are routine and usually predictable. Some friends can't comprehend how I can do this and not go crazy. I am slowly gaining boldness in my ideals as Max gets older. I think there is a reason our bodies work the way they do and produce milk. We are meant to feed our babies exclusively. If the milk supply wanes, then more time must be spent with the infant. We are meant to respond to our baby's cries. Babies are not trying to manipulate us. After spending nine months growing and developing in the womb why wouldn't they cry when they are momentarily separated from their mother? I think people try to take on too many roles these days. And I while I am still trying to see what this whole motherhood thing encompasses and who I am within that realm, I'm in no rush to come up with some clear cut idea. There are things I still want to do 'alone' and goals I'd like to accomplish. This time with my little one is so short however and I want to be fully present for every moment of it. So I'll continue to breastfeed Max when he wants as long as he wants, Fuser and I will continue to share our bed with him (though I some nights I long to spread out and move around just a bit more), and he'll continue taking presidence over much of life. I don't want to be looking back back in 5, 10, 20 years and longing to be in this moment regretting missed time. I want to enjoy it in the present and move on through the stages of life as they come.

I have a few friends who all had babies around the same time Max was born. The universe is swamped with "how to " books on parenting. We all have different ideas. And while I'll hold to the idea that parents must do what works best for their family, I'm beginning to wonder if people try too hard.

If Fuser and I had to lump ourselves into a category for parenting types we practice what Dr Sears has coined "attachment parenting." When Max was a few months old I said to Fuser one day, "If I had never read a book on parenting, I would be doing the exact same thing I'm doing now only I'd feel like it was wrong because it's not the norm for our culture, it's not what my peers (most of them) are doing, it's not what I'm used to seeing." The way we have chosen to parent, simply said, just feels natural.

Motherhood has been surprising...

I feared becoming a mother. I feared losing myself. More selfishly, I feared losing my life and free time. I feared I wouldn't really want to spend that much time with 'they baby' once it arrived.

When I was in labor I pushed for two hours. While that isn't long, I'm told, for first labors I think my psychological self got in the way and prolonged the process. All the great proponents of natural birth--Ina May Gaskin, Sheila Kitzinger, Pam England--to name a few talk about women entering "labor land" a state where a woman although fully conscious enters a place very distant from that which is going on in her midst. Perhaps a higher sense of awareness? I was there and I still can't really describe it. I knew there were people milling around my bedroom. I knew fuser and my dear friend were on either side of me holding my hands, I knew my legs were wide open praying the next contraction would be the last, my eyes were clenched tightly shut....and yet I was faraway, talking myself through the process, yet not fully willing to surrender to it. I was fully aware that the second the baby entered the room, life as I knew it would change, my marriage would change, my friendships would change, I would change. I was thinking to myself, "I'm not sure I want to do this. But there are no take backs...so I have to push. But I don't want to, but I have to...." and thus my labor dragged on...

Then Max came. I felt his head with my fingers as it crowned. I pushed him out. All 8lbs 4oz of him. I didn't cry. I was relieved. I had a slippery baby on my stomach. My hands felt grace personified as I stroked his body all over. I couldn't stop kissing his head. He cried for maybe ten minutes. I felt his tiny naked body on mine. I didn't even know he was a boy until Fuser asked and our midwife turned him over so he could see for himself.

These past five months have been very sweet. All of my fears have been allayed and overshadowed by an indescribable (and very surprising) joy. I am living in the midst of utter fulfillment and contentment which I continue to find shocking.

8 months later with a 5 month old in tow...

wow, what a slacker. since february 11, or my last post life has undergone some major changes. maybe i'll write more now. maybe not.

i turned 25. i officially took a leave of absence from school in mid-march. I had a baby boy, 'max' (not his real name but what his older brother Yano is STILL fighting to call him). Max was born April 22, 11 days early according to calculations. The homebirth was sucessful. The only way to sum up such an event is to say that it was passionate and painful, romantic and primal...speechless. I still can't describe the event clearly. How does one articulate a moment in which new life, a soul, enters the world that wasn't previously 'there' in person? The mystery and amazement of it still boggles my mind.

Grieving.

Fuser and I recently returned from a trip to Hawaii. It's not a place I'd ever really had the desire to visit, but we went because we couldn't go somewhere else, it was inexpensive, and we wanted a chance to be far away from everything else (thougth the laptop found it's way into Fuser's backpack). Simply put, we needed the opportunity to be just the two of us in one celebratory last time. I'd jokingly been referring to the trip as our last hurrah before the baby arrives, but it was more a chance to remain in the union and partnership we've created over the past five years and just be together.

Our time was unique, uninterrupted, constant, and precious. I love who Fuser and I are together. I think to some extent I've had lurking feelings of lament over what we are in essence losing in the addition of this new life. Don't get me wrong, there is intense joy at the expectancy of this coming life and even now as I write and feel a constant prodding of the little one's foot in my lowest rib I can only smile at the faculty of created life. Things will change. Our relationship will be different. Life will be full and dominated by the needs of this helpless one.

I don't feel guilty for grieving the loss of being just the two of us. Even out of grief comes great joy. Without grief how would we recognize its antithesis?

This has little to do with pregnancy

A friend wrote this as part of a greater piece today:
I sincerely wish that I had spent more time in my twenties working on my own stuff and less time telling other people what to do with theirs. I wish that I had figured out sooner that my anti-church diatribes were more about my need for healing than they were about the church’s need for reformation. I wish that I had connected advocating for others with my own feelings of voicelessness and powerlessness.

So much of what my friend writes resonates with me and many others who devour her writings. This above paragraph particulary so tonight. Because I lack the history of the pain and abuse that my friend has experienced sometimes I feel unworthy to find such resonance.

These past 5 years or so of my life have seen shifts that I never anticipated. I have had my faith and ideals thrashed and deconstructed only to remain a discombobulated confusion. Slowly, I find that pieces find themselves joining together. I spent a couple years fighting causes and joining protests all the while ignoring the scattered pieces of my existence and soul. I stopped protesting when I realized that I was the ultimate problem. Me, a single human, represents a microcosm of injustice. How can I fight when I haven't examined this tiniest element of world. How can I criticize when I haven't taken a contructive look at myself? I have spent a lot of time feeling selfish and guilty if I so much as want to disconnect from the world momentarily that I might get to the bottom of who I am at the core. But I also know the time and self realization that will be involved and I get intimidated. I've always been full of excuses and lacking in discipline.

Reading my friend's post above reminded a lot of Henri Nouwen's writings. He lived a life of utter self examination and out of that came intense love and social action that subsequently followed.

If we allow ourselves to dissect all the issues in the world down to the smallest particle one will be left only to examine the injustice of their own heart. Until then, I must take on myself each day.

As I contemplate this baby that is coming I evaluate the type of mom I want to be, the values I want to instill, the example I want to lead. I want every action I make to be intentional, every choice I decide to come with a researched reason leading up to that definitive moment. I want this baby to learn self examination. At the end of the day I can either tune out my soul by escaping to the wretched stone (T.V.) or I can succumb to the sound of it scraping at my psyche begging to be heard, scrutinized, and nurtured.