There but for the grace of...

I have gone back and forth about posting this one. I think it's an important story to be told but it's deeply personal both to myself and the friend referenced here. This is published with her full permission and blessing and I hope it resonates with some of you. 

I had a conversation with a very old friend tonight. She's been through the wringer of life lately and it was so good to hear her brave voice rising above the chaos.
She filled me in on the vast swaths of her life that I have missed due to distance and other complications and I found myself in tears listening to the sacrament of her story.
She's been so beautifully brave and selfless in the face of her dream castles tumbling down. She's done exactly what I would hope I would do in the same situation, though I can't imagine myself being that tough. She's my newest hero.
I caught myself thinking that old cliche. "There, but for the grace of God, go I." I stopped myself short when this ran through my head because it's not true. I don't know what role God played in the differences in our stories but I don't think He sent her into an abusive situation and spared me. I don't think God works that way.
Girls like us, girls from backgrounds that contain abuse, are drastically more likely to find themselves in abusive relationships when they grow up.

In addition, it is not unusual for people, who grew up in abusive relationships and domestic violent environment to recreate this experience in adulthood and unconsciously choose a violent partner and recreate the dysfunctional home they grew up in. This is not putting a blame on anyone for anything. It is simply stating that trauma has its way of repeating itself from one generation to another (what we call transgenerational transmission of trauma), unless you put an end to it and address it in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.

Mihaela Bernard, MA, LCPC 

See, I didn't make that up, it's a thing.

We all seek out what is familiar. We long for the things that we know. We don't feel safe when we're in unfamiliar territory. But when what you are familiar with is straight up abuse, when feeling scared is your default, it messes you up and it takes a lot of work to make decisions that go against that knee jerk emotional reaction.

But some how, you can know this, you can make good decisions, you can do the work and you can still end up in that trans-generational cycle of abuse even though you did your darnedest to avoid it.  

My friend and I both wanted to be wives and mothers. We wanted to raise happy, healthy children who had two good parents in the home with them. I am privileged or lucky enough to be doing that and my friend isn't. 

We proceeded with caution into the dating world, we'd seen the risks play out so we took the job seriously. She took her time, she dated her future husband for years. She loved and supported him through all kinds of trouble, she helped raise his child and she thought she'd found one she could trust with her life.

I only knew my husband 18 months before we got married. The most stressful things in our dating life was a 1000 mile road trip to attend a funeral and we broke up for a short time after that. We did a lot of eating together and hanging out in bars and then we got married. 

If I were a betting woman, I would have said that one of those girls would end up in an abusive marriage and it wouldn't have been her. 

So, I'm sitting here tonight with a big case of something like survivors guilt, though I recognize it doesn't perfectly fit this situation. 

How did I end up with the reasonably happy marriage and the intact family? I didn't do anything to deserve that. I didn't make better decisions than she did, I think I just got lucky.

I don't really believe in luck, that's a problem when you've just admitted to the internet that you feel you've benefited from luck.  I believe in good decisions, in doing the next right thing, and I believe in our total lack of control of the outcome of those decisions. 

This is something I've been digging into in therapy lately, my control issues. I'm terrified to have control and I'm afraid to loose it. So this little story, my tale of two messed up girls, pins itself nicely to the bullseye of my control issues. You can do all the right things, you can make the best decisions you can and it still might all blow up. That. Sucks.

But, that doesn't mean we stop. We keep on doing the next right thing. We keep making the best decisions we can. We keep taking the best step available to us because we know, no matter how uncertain life is, going forward is still our best chance for something good. 

So tonight I'm going to pray for my friend as she bravely marches on, doing right things and doing them on her own. And I'm also going to count my blessings and be thankful that luck or God or fate did what it did because the wholeness of my family is beautiful in it's chaos. For no particular reason, I got the thing that we were both striving for and the gift of it is humbling.

Driving ourselves crazy

When I was a new mom, I read a lot of parenting books. I read the super crunchy attachment parenting books, the super conservative books, the what-to-expect books, the sleep books, they this-will-solve-all-your-problems books. I even went to a seminar or two.

I can sum up what I learned during that time that I still use in a few sentences.  Consistency and structure are good. So is flexibility and spontaneity. Follow through.

I needed those books and seminars when I had them. I needed to be told again that I had to be a leader to my children and so I had to let my "yes" be yes and my "no" be no. I have be consistent in what I say to them so that they know that my word can be trusted. They also operate better with some structure when they are little and they need to be taught to create their own structure as they grow.

There, I've just saved you a lot of reading. As much as I loved my persona as earth mother with my cloth diapers and my slings and all the breastfeeding, most of that wasn't really about the baby, it was just how I was getting through the infant years. The real work starts when your cloth-diapered-breastfed-home-birthed baby says "NO" to you and sprints toward traffic.

We can drive ourselves crazy of those externalities of raising kids. Between the sunscreen that will kill you or the occasionally raised voice that's going to give your kid anxiety or the spanking that will permanently damage or the lack of spanking that will damage them another way or the sleep training that will kill them or the the co-sleep that will also kill them. None of this is the actual problem!

The real thing that keeps parents up at night, the real things that makes us crazy, the thing that has us so worried we mask it with all these other small fights is our own lack of control. We can't control how our kids will turn out. Let that sink in for a minute. We cannot control how our kids turn out. They will leave our homes and make their own decisions that we wont have a say in and that shit scares us. So we'll dither about sleep training or sunscreen because those are small problems that we can feel some small amount of control over and fool ourselves into thinking that if we just do the right things in the right order, everything will be alright.

Of course, we have some influence and lord knows we can screw up our kids if we want to. Look around and see the whamy that absentee, addicted or abusive parents put on their kids. But a lot of those kids, the ones from parents that seemingly did everything wrong, they're finding better ways to do it all today. I know many of them and I am one of them. I also know more than a few who had parents who did more right than wrong who still went down some dark and scary paths that no one wants their baby going down.

Our babies will go down those dark and scary paths through their own decisions and that's what keeps us up at night, that's the thing that's so terrifying that we have to invent other, smaller problems to occupy us so the big problem doesn't drive us over the edge of our dwindling sanity.

So go ahead and read those books and do your internet research if you have the stomach for it. Breastfeed your baby until they turn 3 and tie them up on your back even though you both sweat like crazy. Do whatever it is that lets you sleep through the night. Do your best, whatever that looks like, and love the children you've been given for as long as you can.

My own hypocrisy in action

So, last Saturday my pastor preached a beautiful sermon about the good Samaritan. He emphasized that we need to not only help those who are unlike us but we need to accept help from those who are unlike us. We need to be humble enough to accept mercy and compassion from those we may have looked down on previously.

It made me think about how often we refuse to let those around us offer us comfort because we don't even let them know that we are hurting. We put the brave face on, post something pretty and softly lit on instagram and hope that people buy it. We even judge those who do wear their pain on their sleeves because that is just not done. At least, that's what I do.

So, full confession time. I've been in therapy since January. My childhood was pretty crappy in a lot of ways and I've been effectively not dealing with it throughout adulthood first by partying a bit too much and then by distracting myself by having many babies. Now, I'm too old to party and my babies are big enough that they are no longer all consuming time suckers. Filbert is 3 and I don't change 15 diapers a day and get 3 hours of sleep a night. I've had time to think and thinking has let a lot of things surface that I thought were permanently buried.

During the last school year I started noticing that my temper was perpetually shorter than it had been.  I was anxious and worried all the time. I found I was perpetually late and started withdrawing from many of our usual activities because it was just. so. hard to get myself and four small people moving. I found myself retreating behind a book or a podcast or a show on netflix so as not to feel or think or deal with my life. I felt like I was getting worse at dealing with my life than I had been only a little while before.

So, I'm in therapy now and I've been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and the letters PTSD have been floated out as a possibility. Therapy is bringing up all kids of stuff I'd really rather not think about at all but I know it's important so I'm thinking about it anyway, most of the time. However, I haven't told very many people and even when I do, I gloss over and brush it aside. All this thinking means that I'm getting worse before I get better. At least, that's the hope.

And so, back to the good Samaritan. At our usual discussion time, I brought up a friend who is very sad about something awful that happened and she's grieving pretty publicly about it. I once went through a similar(ish) experience and didn't grieve so publicly (All 5 of my blog readers knew about it but that was the extent of it) and I did my best to get over it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I know, I hear how stupid that sounds but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

I mention these things it passing and how maybe my friend has the right idea and she's letting her friends and family from far off bind up her wounds and show her mercy because she's letting them know how it hurts. Maybe me trying to be efficient about grieving was really just pride because I didn't think anyone else could or would be a good Samaritan to me.

I mention these things and the discussion moves on to other topics but my eyes feel strangely watery. Not crying but like I could and then we stand for the song and something in me breaks and I'm crying openly and not fully sure why. Our church is only about 30-40 people so I'm sure everyone can see me, especially when I break down and search for a kleenex. It's like a big ole' white flag advertising the fact that I've broken into tears.

And of course, I play it off like it's nothing. I pretend like my face isn't red and blotchy when I see people giving me a curious look after church. I smile at my kids and when our brand new pastor asks how he can pray for me this week, all I can think to mention is something so minor I can't even remember it a week later. That's right, with the pastors admonition to humbly accept help ringing in my ears, do I tell about any of the very real stuff I've been dealing with? No! I mumble something about nothing and get out of there as quickly as I can.

So, all this is to say, I'm so very sorry for not trusting my church enough to let them show me some mercy. I'm so sorry for my pride in thinking I should deal with this myself. I'm so sorry for completely ignoring the good and true teaching from my loving pastor and I'm sorry for not trusting Jesus enough to let him help me through his people. That's a lot to be sorry about and I hope my church family can forgive my pride. I still feel new and like I want to make a good impression which is ridiculous.

So, for now, I'm going to keep working on being humble enough to accept help. I'm going to work on my issues so that I need less help and I'm going to encourage anyone who reads this to answer honestly if you are lucky enough to have someone ask, "How can I be praying for you this week?" "Oh, I'm fine." is not an honest answer to this question and true community requires that honesty, mercy and trust in each other.

Shoveling out the expectations

It's that time of year again. It's end of school, finish those last assignments, do the testing, schedule the evaluator, pull together the portfolio, that time of year. It's always at this time of year that I get grand ideas for all the things I'm going to do when I don't have to worry about homeschooling every day.
Every year that I do this I set myself some pretty crazy expectations. I'm going to clean my house, organize all the things, reupholster the couch, sew full wardrobes for me and the kids, solve world hunger, bring about world peace, vacuum out the car. You know, the usual.

I think this year I'm not.
I'm not going to set myself up for failure by imagining myself with unlimited time and energy.
I'm not going to imagine an entire new me by fall.
I'm not going to lose 50lbs by September.

This was a hard year for us. I've been dealing with some mental health crap and Pudding and Tyke are moving into more challenging school work while the Walnut starts Kindergarten and Filburt is not schooled yet so he pretty much destroys my house while I do school with everyone else.  It's been a challenge to be everything to everyone at all different stages of development and education.

So this Summer I'm going to coast. I'm going to sleep as late as the kids will let me. I'll fix meals and clean them up. I'll read some trashy romance novels. I'll walk the dog and play with the kids. I'll putter around my garden and run the kids where they need to go but that's really it. I'm not going to bury myself in expectations. Maybe I'll find some motivation later, but right now, my instincts say to coast so that's my plan.

So, Lent is now over, Good Friday has come and gone and Easter morning came with all it's beautiful promise and power. Over lent, my resolution was to read my Bible more and to attempt to practice meditative study. That is, where you read a passage, focus on something that strikes you and meditate on in for a time allowing God to teach you in the stillness. During the meditation, you're supposed to try to clear your mind of all the sundry issues you may be dealing with and open yourself to the lesson. As you can imagine, this doesn't work super well when one has 4 crazy small people running around wrecking things while you try to be still. So, my meditation has been brief and segmented but it's the best I can do right now, and I think that's enough, for now.
Today I read Acts 1,2,and part of 3. I generally read until something sortof hits me, until the lesson I need that day jumps off the page and catches hold of me and says, "This! Right here! This is what you're supposed to think about today! This is the lesson you need to hear!" Today, the scripture that shouted at me was the story of the apostle Peter healing the lame man outside the temple gate. The man had been crippled since birth and had begged for his living outside the temple of the living God. I can think of nothing more contrary to the nature of this God than tossing a few coins to a beggar and then going in to the temple to go through the motions of worship. Isn't that crazy? How can the people of God leave this man outside the gate that is called Beautiful with a few coins or a smile and nod and then go in to the temple, leaving him on the outside?
Anyway, back to our story. The man asks Peter for money and Peter says, "Silver and Gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!"
The man gets up and finds he is healed and immediately begins walking and leaping and praising God. Then he goes into the temple and walks and leaps and praises God. Can you imagine the scene? This man who had sat outside the gates for years was so grateful to finally be able to walk that he couldn't keep silent about it. Nor could he just walk around like it was no big deal. He didn't just walk, he leapt. All those regular everyday people who were just there because it was expected of them must have felt pretty uncomfortable. They must have been shocked at the unbridled joy and praise of this man.
If someone started leaping in my church, I'd think they were high or else the sort of "I'm-more-spiritual-than-you" sort of Christian. How cynical is that! That's a horrible thing to think about another believer. How can I judge what the Spirit is doing in another child of God? But I probably would.
This makes me ashamed of my cynicism and it makes me ashamed of my quiet, buttoned down, rolling-my-eyes-at-lyrics-I-don't-agree-with singing. It makes me ashamed of standing in one spot while I feel my spirit moved.
God is praised in the stillness and in the noise. Worship in quiet can be just as powerful as a joyful noise. Don't get me wrong about any of that. What I'm ashamed of are all the times when I really felt grateful and joyful and I really felt that my praise was too big to get out of my body but I kept still anyway out of embarrassment or fear or a desire to blend in. Jesus doesn't require me to blend in!
I am a child of God! I am beloved! How can the joy and praise of someone so loved be contained in a quiet, don't-draw-too-much-attention-to-myself kind of worship?
I jotted down a little poem after reading this story and I'm going to post it hear so that all 5 of my readers can see it. Here it is.

My praise is calm and dignified

a shadow of what is real.

I'm cynical and skeptical

afraid of what is showey

What would happen if I let it out?

If I walked and leapt and PRAISED?

Would I be embarrassed?

Would I be ashamed?

If I danced and leapt in praise

would my praise be any deeper?

If I worshiped that bravely

Would I be braver?

Am I brave enough to be that brave?

Can I step out like that?

Right now, I just don't know,

But I want to.

I'm just going to hit publish before I get embarrassed of this too.

The Birth of Filburt

This was the birth that turned everything I knew about how I birth on it's head.  Let's start at the beginning.

I thought we were done with suprise pregnancies but there we were, the line had appeared.  My period math had been inaccurate and apparently I'd been too lazy to go get the diaphragm and here we were.  Four kids, that's a massive family by DC suburb standards.  Shoot, even three seems a little nutty by those standards but 4 was crazy. I had always thought I would like 4, Matt had thought we could be done at 2, I was considering stopping at 3 but before we could decide any of that, here comes number 4.  I found out in the morning and didn't want to drop that kind of news on Dilbert at work so I bugged my friend Fergy about it instead.  I sent her a picture of the test, followed by an OMG and a WTF and probably several other obscenities. When Dilbert got home, I sat with my 16 month old in my lap and told him that that thing we'd been wondering about was in fact the case.  He took it pretty stoically, as he does most things.

I checked in with my midwife and she had me come in for an appointment just to talk things out.  I was pretty freaked out and she talked me off the wall.  My first baby was a suprise and I had thought we were done with surprises.  Our middle two had been planned and I liked having some warning.  My midwife listened to my ravings and calmed me down and by the time I left her office I was actually looking forward to this baby. Somehow in all the crazy of finding out I was pregnant, I'd forgotten about how awesome babies are and she helped me remember.

As our move to the Pittsburgh area approached, I looked around on the Google and found a new midwife up in PA.  Pennsylvania is pretty different from VA in it's attitude about midwives.  There are lots and lots of hospital based CNMs but they don't credential out of hospital midwives so they are difficult to find and evaluate.  I found one who was in the right area and seemed to have enough experience.  I asked a lot of questions and she had all the answers I was comfortable with. The only iffy thing was that when I told her about my experience with Joel, she told me that she would have counseled me differently.  I think her exact words were "I would have encouraged you to make a different choice." I found this a little judgmental but with so few midwives around, I figured one little thing like that shouldn't make or break this decision.

When I first met New Midwife we talked about a lot of the same things we had on the phone.  We sat in my new, unfurnished living room and chatted about homeschooling and kids and this weird rash that the Walnut had at the time. We talked a lot and then finally got around to birth.  I asked more and deeper questions and she asked about my previous births.  She really seemed to have all the answers so we gave her a deposit and went on our merry way.

She suggested that we become friends on facebook so that we could get to know eachother better in the short time we had.  I was already 20 weeks so we were getting started half way through this pregnancy.  New Midwife is very opinionated and very open and sometimes forceful about her opinions.  People often forget who the audience is when they are behind the facebook curtain so maybe she didn't mean for me to see this or maybe she did and hoped it would change my mind. I don't know.  I do know that she'd asked if we were looking for a church.  I know I told her that we were trying out a few of the Methodist churches in the area but hadn't settled on one yet.  I know I said that I'd been going to Methodist churches since the Pudding was born and that I felt comfortable with that theology.  Then on facebook I see that New Midwife has posted a link to the web site of the United Methodist Church.  The link led to the church's stance on abortion which basically says that we don't like it, we believe it's ending a life but that because of the unique circumstances of each woman seeking one, they believe that it should remain a legal option that is rarely used.

Now, this may not seem like much but here's the thing.  Because the church has this stance, that allowed my pastor to offer me comfort and guidance while we were going through our ordeal with Joel.  She offered to come to the hospital with us, to baptize Joel. She performed a funeral for him.  She wouldn't have been able to do most of that and still keep her job had she been a minister in a Baptist church.

So, when New Midwife posted this link accompanied by a rant about how far this church had drifted from the truth of the Gospel, I was hurt.  I tried to ignore the post, but people kept commenting on it so it kept getting kicked to the top of my news feed and the comments hurt too.  Finally, I felt like the comments I was reading were missing the point of the church's stance.  I spoke up and told my story, my Joel story.  I told about the condition that he had and the information we were given at the time.  I told about how sweet and encouraging my pastor had been when we were going through all that and what a blessing it had been to me to have someone guide me through it.  I told about the risks of not doing it and weighing those against the risks of having it done and why the former outweighed the latter.  New Midwife said she was sorry that I'd been made to feel like my body would be damaged by not having him when we did.  Her husband, after chiding me for having a female pastor, said that just because my pastor had said it wasn't a sin didn't make it so. Several others speculated on what could have been done to save my baby.

When I saw her next we didn't talk about it but I was thinking about it the whole time.  I was hurt that she thought I'd been manipulated by my doctors.  I'd done my own research and made my own decisions.  I wasn't bullied or pushed into anything. I made the best decision for my current and future family and I felt belittled by her comments. I talked to a few other people, including my old midwife but there just didn't seem to be anything we could do.  New Midwife is and always has been very sweet and friendly to me in person. But in order to preserve whatever relationship we had left, I hid her posts on Facebook. What a silly world we live in, where little comments said while hiding behind a keyboard can cause so much trouble. I probably should have just hidden her posts as soon as I saw it but you know how it is when someone is wrong on the internet.  It's sometimes impossible to stop yourself from setting them straight.

As my due date approached, I grew enormous.  I was depressed, I think.  I missed my friends and my whole world down in VA.  I was physically miserable due to my wacky hips and lower back.  My kids would tear the house apart all day and I couldn't bend over to put things right.  I wasn't happy.  I kept having little contractions, tickle contractions, nothing to write home about but they just kept comming.  One Saturday I asked if my midwife could come check me because these little contractions, even though they weren't intense, just seemed to keep on coming and I was wondering what they heck was going on.  She checked and found me nearly completely effaced but not dilated.  It was a relief to know I wasn't dilating yet.  My friend Fergy and Supermom were coming up from VA and I wanted to have plenty of warning before this baby made his appearance.

Finally, after yet another evening of heartburn and hip pain, I looked at Dilbert with desperation in my eyes and said, "Can we go upstairs and have sex just so we can get this baby out?"
...
I woke up at about 5:30 the next morning with more little contractions.  Then I realized that my water was leaking.  I'd never had that happen before.  With my natural labors, the water has stayed intact until the birth is imminent. Not this time.  I waddled to the bathroom and took a shower to get the amniotic fluid off, all the time having contractions about 3 minutes apart.  They weren't bad but they were more than the tickly contractions had been.  Dilbert called Fergy and Supermom and they got on the road. We let New Midwife know what was up but told her we didn't need her yet.  I got dressed and moved around our bedroom a lot.  Dilbert went downstairs to clean the kitchen since he knew people would be coming soon and our house looked like a bomb had hit it.  He was buzzing around cleaning things and I was focusing on contractions.  I told him he was stressing me out with all his hurry and that it didn't matter if the house was clean or not, the baby was coming.  He kept cleaning anyway.

I remember staying in my room a lot, walking and swaying or laying down, whatever felt right at the time.  Matt came in from time to time and the kids were excited because we knew the baby was coming today.  Then around 10, the contractions died down to nothing. I lay down to rest and they were just gone.  I was just starting to panic about it when at 11, I heard the car door close and knew my friends had arrived.  I had a big contraction and waited for them to come up.  I was so happy to see them I didn't realize that this big stall in labor is actually a symptom of a breach positioned baby.  More on that later.

It was so good to have my friends with me.  They knew just what to say and we had so much fun just hanging out while I labored.  We joked our way through some castor oil, to make my labor pick back up after the stall.  We walked around the back yard and enjoyed the sunshine.  I told them about what I wanted to do with the yard once the weather warmed up enough. We chatted with a few neighbors that were out.  Everytime I felt a contraction coming on I would lean forward and put my hands on my knees and let my belly hang.  It seemed to help me keep loose to do this.  I'm sure it' looked interesting to the neighbors.

Around 2 or 3 I told Dilbert he could call the midwife. While we waited for her I remember standing around my kitchen island and someone looked up the phrases you're not supposed to say to laboring women.  We thought they were funny so they all started saying them to me.  It was things like "Are you OK?" "Does it hurt?" "Wow, that one sounded bad!" I remember laughing a little even during the contraction.

The midwife got there and I was starting to feel like it was time to go upstairs and have a baby.  The contractions seemed more intense and I just felt like I was about to hit transition.

The sequence of events gets a little fuzzy for me here but the next thing I remember I was on the bed on my hands and knees and I knew things were about to go crazy.  My beautiful Pudding was there on the chair in my room watching and I remember telling her that pretty soon I was going to have to push and that I would probably sound really crazy and it would probably hurt but that I would be ok and that it was just want I needed to do to get the baby out.  I will always be proud that I thought to reassure her at that moment.
Well, I didn't feel pushy yet but New Midwife said I could try pushing with the next contraction.  I did but that big, uncontrollable urge to push didn't happen.  I kept waiting for that urge to just take over my body and get that baby out but it just didn't come.  I would half-heartedly push with each contraction but I couldn't find a position that was working for me and I wasn't making much progress.

I got down on the floor, my back against the bed and my feet held by my friends.  I tried pushing this way for a few minutes and the midwife started seeing meconium.  She asked to check me and when she did, she discovered that baby was breech.

The fun thing about breech birth is that it doesn't trigger that happy little expulsion reflex.  That squishy little bum doesn't press the right places like a big hard head does so it's a lot harder to get them out.  You also have to very be very careful getting them out because if you startle them, they can end up stuck and there's nothing you can do.  So, we were in a tricky situation.

I remember everyone telling me to push and trying to be encouraging.  I got on my hands and knees again and tried to push but every time a contraction came I felt scared  and tried to fight it.  I didn't want to push because pushing hurt and I had to mentally decide to do it, I really wanted my body to just take over, get my mind out of the way but it wouldn't.

Finally, after lots of little pushes and more whining and fighting and begging to go to the hospital for a c-section, the midwife told me to reach back and feel my babies feet.  His bum had come out first and his little feet and legs had just fallen out.  Finally, finally the urge to push came and I gave one great heave and he was out.

Now, I didn't see this part but everyone else told me about it later.  Remember, I was on my hands and knees, and the baby had come breach.  Other than myself, no one else had touched him at all. So, when his head was finally born, he landed bum first on the chuck pads on the floor.  Apparently he actually sat there for a minute, propped up on his own arms and legs and looked around at everyone, blinking. He didn't cry, which freaked me out because I couldn't see him and I'd been worrying ever since I started pushing and we found out he was breach about all the risks I'd read about.  So, while everyone was marveling at his froggy like squat, I was freaking out because I didn't think he was breathing.  After a beat, New Midwife rolled him over and got him to cry to clear his lungs and I was able to sit back and actually see him for the first time.

He was smaller than I'd expected, smaller than my last two babies and he didn't have the huge Hanson head that my other kids all had.  He had huge eyes in a tiny little face and he blinked up at me as they handed him to me.  He was covered with vernix felt very slippery.

When I was pushing and things had gotten a little scary, Fergy had sent the kids out.  They came back in now and surrounded me and I was so glad to see them.  I don't even really understand why because I was so tired and I didn't want them around for very long but I wanted them close.  Having just come through this very scary birth, I wanted to see the fruits of my labors, all my labors. I wanted to know that they were close and safe and that they knew I was safe.

The midwife and her assistant cleaned things up and made me take a shower after a bit, they checked over Filburt (8 lbs, 3 oz. 20 inches) and made sure he was latching alright and then left us alone. Supermom made me some eggs and toast and Fergy and Dilbert got the kids to bed.  My only job was to look at baby, who was pretty sleepy. And so began our journey as a family with 4 kids.

The Summer of Kelly

Homeschooling 2 kids while you have a threenager and an infant is hard.  Can we all just agree on that right now? By about 4, when everyone is finally done with school work and I've managed to get the little ones to nap and not screamed at anyone (much), I'm beat. Then I get to make dinner and clean it up.  It's an all day, full on mental exercise in self control and temper keeping as well as teaching.  Please don't misconstrue this as whining because I do really love homeschooling and I love having my kids home with me all day.  It just isn't easy and I'm never, ever alone.
All during the school year, if I ever talked about my weight, it was to say that I wasn't going to worry about it too much right now.  I didn't feel like I had the energy left over at the end of the day to tackle another problem, least of all my own issues with food.
Then the kids got their test scores back and I realized they'd actually learned something this year.  Then we had our evaluation and our lovely and talented evaluator was enthusiastic about how awesome our homeschool is.  That's when I realized it might be OK to take a break and focus on some other things.
So, this summer I am letting my kids do a lot of nothing (after they've done their chores, I don't want to have to unload my own dishwasher) and I'm starting to do some things for me.  I've signed up for Power Yoga at the YMCA which is exhausting but I feel stronger and better about me after I do it.  I'm attempting to cook low carb.  I'm not putting the pressure of a real elimination diet on myself because I still have 4 kids and that's still plenty to do but we're having a lot of meals of some kind of meat and a whole lot of vegetables fried in coconut oil and served over nothing or maybe cauliflower rice. The kids hate it but they hate everything I cook so whatevs.
So, I'm attempting to eat better and exercise more. Then why the sudden blog post after years of being idle? Well, I've had my last baby. He's now a year old and I'm starting to realize that one day soon, I will need something outside of my kids to pour my creative energies into.  I need something that's just mine that I can have a passion about. I sortof always thought that whatever I ended up doing when I grew up, writing would be involved somehow.  I blame my 8th grade English teacher who ceaselessly praised my writing assignments and encouraged me to continue with it.
So, I've joined a writing group at my church and I'm trying to take up my blog again and I've got a little something working on pen and paper that I may or may not share on here someday.  I'm thinking about it.
Stay tuned for the next installment of
The Summer of Kelly!!!

A brief recap of the last 3 years

I've been away from this blog for a really long time.  The five people who read this blog probably already know most of the things I'll bring up here but for some reason I cannot just write a current post without addressing the absent information.  I'm sure a random internet lurker will appreciate my efforts.
My last post told of the birth of my 3rd child, the Walnut. Well, when that child turned 16 months, we discovered much to our surprise that we were expecting another baby.  We looked around our 1200 sq/ft townhome with a parking spot for a back yard and thought, "Where are we going to but them?"
My dear Dilbert started looking around for other jobs.  He loved his current job but there was no way we could afford a large place on the current salary in the DC area. He found a few options but nothing that would allow for what we really wanted. 
We wanted a home that we wouldn't grow out of with enough room outside for the kids to play and a neighborhood where we could feel safe letting them do so.  To those not familiar with the DC area, those things come with a really big price tag. 
In the back of our minds we'd always thought about having Dilbert telecommute and moving wherever we wanted.  Dilbert talked to his bosses about this option and everyone thought it was a fine idea.  We'd always thought the Pittsburgh area would suit us well so we started looking and found that we could find exactly what we wanted well within our budget close enough to the city that Dilbert could commute in if he ever decided to switch jobs. 
We fixed up our place and put in on the market, got in our van that night and drove up to the burgh to look at houses.  We found one that weekend and by the time we got home we were under contract and the house had been inspected.  We closed a month later and moved into our truly enormous house on a half acre in a nice neighborhood in PA.
Five months later Filbert was born here in this house.  I'll write about that someday but not now.  That birth challenged everything I thought I knew about myself and birth and it got pretty heavy for a while.  I have to be in the right frame of mind and possibly fortified with a bottle or two of wine before I get into all that.
Filbert has just turned a year old now and in the meantime we have been doing our best to make friends, put down roots and raise and educate our kids the best we can.
I want to write down here as much as I can because the older my kids get (The Pudding is now 9!) the more I realize how much my mind is letting slip away.  All that stuff that I thought I'd remember, I don't remember.  First words, ages of first steps, teeth, words. All those little insights that mothers have into what works for their child, it's possible to forget them for a time and have to relearn them all over again.  It's mid May and so our school year is coming to a close and I'm hoping that I will have the time to record many of those little things here so that I can revisit them, relearn them and remember all the thousand and one sweet moments I have the privilege to share with my babies.

Birth of the Walnut Part 2

So, my estimated due date with this baby was the 16th.  I was betting on the 30th.  The Tyke had come so late that I just sortof figured that, left to my own devices, that's when my babies come.  With the Pudding, we had pushed things along so I figured that her birth would have happened a week or two later if we hadn't done all that.  Well, who knows.
Anyway, the morning of the 16th dawns nice and sunny and I start having contractions.  They are about 10 minutes apart but pretty consistent.  I putter around the house, hang out with the kids, etc. I talk to the midwives and let them know what's up.  I send the kids to my friends house so that they can have some fun and Dilbert and I have some fun hanging out together.  Around three we call Tara, our doula, to come.  She was with us at the Tykes birth and was fabulous.  She gets there and I decide that I'm getting tired of this half-assed labor, lets kick this in gear.  So, I have Dilbert make me a peach and castor oil smoothy, funny enough, it's not as good as it sounds.
I choked that down and things do pick up a little.  The midwives come out and check me and I'm at 3cm! They set things up for a birth that night and then go because another mama is in labor and moving quicker than I am.  We putter around some more.  We had fun, Tara, Dilbert and I just hanging out together.  I sat on the ball for a while and would sway through every contraction.  They were the real thing but they didn't seem to go anywhere.  Finally around 11:30 that night, everything just went away.  I drank about 2 ounces of wine and went to sleep.
The next morning was a Tuesday and I went to my regular book club/Bible study at church.  I was mad as a hornet.  I had labored all day yesterday and now was walking around, still dilated to 3cm but still very much pregnant.  My ankles were swollen, I couldn't fit into normal shoes, my back ached, my pelvis ached, I was not in a happy place.  I made mention of this to a friend of mine at the study, who also happens to be a nurse.  She seemed to think that this stall in labor meant that something could be wrong but honestly, that had never occured to me before.  I was irritated, yes.  But I wasn't worried about the birth.
When I say I wasn't worried about the birth, that's not exactly accurate.  I felt about the birth the way I imagine athletes view some incredibly difficult, painful and life altering event that they are excited to do but will be happy to have behind them.  Birth makes a better memory than experience. But I wouldn't trade that memory for anything.
The rest of that week was pretty quiet.  Thursday night Dilbert and I tried a little labor encouragement that seemed to work.  I started having contractions about 10 minutes apart again.  They weren't very intense so I went to sleep.
When I woke up, they kept on coming.  Sometimes they would be tough, and I'd have to stop and pay attention to them.  Other times I didn't even pause.  At about 2, I dropped the kids off at a friends house where they could play while I went to my midwife appointment.  As I was driving the kids there I gradually started to think that maybe this could be the real thing.  The contractions were more intense when I was in the car and I really did have to pay attention to them so it made  the drive pretty interesting.
Dilbert drove me to my appointment and started making noises about how nice the birth center was and maybe I should just have the baby there.  He's right, the birth center is very nice and I could totally see why someone would want to have a baby there.  The bathtubs are enormous! But I really wanted to be at home.  The midwife checked me again and said I was dilated to 4cm now.  After 4cm you're considered in active labor.  Because it was now about 6 and the route home was a parking lot we decided to have dinner near the birth center, that way if things picked up quickly, we could at least get there to have the baby.  We went to this nice Thai restaurant and I squeezed Dilberts hand through the contractions.  Then we walked around the shopping center for a while.  I was having to stop every few stores to wait for a contraction to pass.  Now it was close to 7 and the roads had cleared up a little so we could make it home quickly without risk of birthing in a car.  We went home and called Tara and started to get ready.
Things were still set up from Monday night when we'd had a false alarm so all I had to do was get some water and go hang out in my room.  My friend dropped off my kids and Karla came over to be with them if they wanted to be at the birth.
At 8 we put the kids to bed and between contractions I did our usual good night song with the kids.

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday,

We love you

Happy Birthday and may all your

dreams come true.

When you blow out the candles

one light stays aglow.

It's the love light in your eyes

where ere you go.

The Pudding came home from preschool with this song and loved it and was always asking for it so we sang it to her and the Tyke every night.  It was kindof our thing.

After the kids were in bed, things started getting more serious.  I kept saying things like "I really want to be pushing, I just want to push this baby out, I feel so much pressure, I really want to be done with this!" Between every contraction I sat on the edge of the bed, then when one would start I'd stand up and bury my face in my husbands chest and moan.  I'd bend my knees a little and sway my hips.  It wasn't a pretty dance, but it was mine.  Apparently it was during this stage that I bit Dilbert a couple of times.  As I came out of a contraction  I realized that I was about to bite him and stopped and apologized.  Dilbert said it was no big deal, I'd already done it a couple of times and that it was his fault "for getting anywhere near your mouth." He a good man.

I'd used a birth stool at the Tykes birth and wanted to do that again but the second I sat down on the birth stool it felt all wrong.  I made it through one intense contraction there and popped up as quickly as an enormously pregnant and laboring woman can pop with a baby's head engaged in her pelvis. I started to get a little panicy now because my plan had been to push on the stool and now I didn't want to do that but I didn't want to do anything else either.  I felt like maybe it would be good to lean forward so I decided to try getting on my hands and knees.

I crawled up on the bed and almost immediately a contraction hit.  I felt the baby's head slide down under my pubic bone.  I've had three previous births and never felt that, it was the strangest thing.  It didn't really hurt, other things did but not that specifically, it just felt very strange and I suddenly couldn't move to change positions anymore. 

I lost my ever-lovin mind after that.  Tara tried to prop up some pillows to support my upper body and I threw them at Dilbert.  I cursed a little and told Tara that she was lying to me when she said I was doing great.  What I think I said was, "You and I both know that's just what you say at this stage, it's total bullshit!" or something to that effect.  This baby felt huge and I could feel it coming, the pressure was huge!

The actual order of events gets a little fuzzy for me here.  I felt all this pressure but not a strong urge to push. I really wanted to push but I didn't feel the, "I'm pushing now and I can't help it!" urge that I had with Ike.  Kim told me to try pushing as I felt like it so with the next contraction I did and lost my mind.  Apparently what was going on behind me was this.  Baby had their arm wrapped around their face and was patting their opposite shoulder so that great big head and elbow were all trying to come through at the same time.  With my first big push, Kim figured this out and went very hands off.  She said that the baby would need to spin to get all that through and the less she did right then the better.  She did keep putting the warm wet clothes on my bum which at the time were the best things in the world.  I never knew such a thing could be so awesome.

Anyway, while I waited for the next contraction and complained that I had a baby wedged in a very uncomfortable place, baby decided they had been there long enough as well and started to spin.  I felt baby spin and as they did, I finally go the urge to push and push I did.  Baby's head popped out with a sort of spinning "ta-da" motion as their arm was released from its awkward position and they started screaming right away.  I pushed without a contraction and got the rest of baby's body out but it seemed to take too long because I said as they were coming I said, "Oh baby, get out!". 

Kim slid baby between my knees and under my chest (remember I was on my hands and knees) and I got my first glimpse of my screaming baby GIRL! We touched her puffy little face and her soft little head.  Dilbert and I couldn't look away!  She just screamed.  We picked her up and I sat propped against the head board and caressed every beautiful little chubby extremity, and she screamed.  Dilbert went and woke the other kids and brought them in, and she kept screaming.  The Tyke was too sleepy for all this crazy, so he immediately went back to bed, and the baby kept screaming. The Pudding was excited to have a baby sister and we realized that they both ended up with the same birthday.  Baby girl was born just after midnight on the Pudding's 6th birthday!  Awesome! The baby kept screaming...

Around this time Kim told me to sing the song, the happy birthday song I'd been singing to the kids every night.  I did and a miracle happened.  Baby girl stopped screaming.  She nestled in and latched on like a hoover and nursed herself into a coma.  It was beautiful.  

I told Dilbert that with the disapproving look that she gave the world, her face reminded me of a walnut so that is now her blog name.  Her real name is totally different.

Around this time the Tyke realized he was missing out on the fun so he got back up, went down to his toy box in the basement and found his doctor kit.  His grandparents got him these little toy doctor tools and coat for Christmas so he found those, came upstairs and asked for help in putting the coat on so he could "check out the baby."  We weren't really sure where those toys had been so one of the midwives let him check her out instead.  It was really the sweetest thing.  

Kim checked out the baby with her real stethoscope and verious other stuff and then came time for the weigh in.  Someone guessed 8lbs 10 oz.  Someone else guessed over 10lbs.  Now that she was out I was hoping for a big number just to acknowledge the effort I'd just given.  They put her in the little fish scale and she came up at 9lbs 11oz, just exactly 1 ounce more than her brother had been.  She was one inch taller as well, measuring 22 inches long.  

After that things started to calm down.  The Walnut was dressed and went to sleep after nursing some more, I took a shower to get all the birth off me and the kids went back to bed and were able to sleep despite their excitement.  Dilbert called his parents and mine, my mom found a flight and his parents made plans to drive down early in the morning.  But for the night we were tucked in to bed to just enjoy this beautiful little Walnut.

Well, now my little Walnut is 10 months old.  She still likes the Happy Birthday song and still gives strangers the stink eye when she doesn't like the look of them. She's crazy tall for her age and crawls all over like a bug.  She is worth every heartache and tear shed and worry and ache and pain that it took to get her here and I'm so glad she's with us.

Birth of the Walnut Part 1

I know, I know, I've been away from this little blog of mine for a while.  If you only know me here, you didn't even know I was knocked up again and here I am telling you about a birth that happened 10 months ago.  Crazy right?
Well, I've been a little busy.  We've been homeschooling, the Tyke is in preschool now, my list of activities for the kids has expanded far faster than I thought possible and I still haven't figured out how to clone myself.  What can you do?
In August 2011, on the first day of vacation in Gloucester, MA with Dilberts entire family, we found out we were expecting again.  Dilbert wouldn't let me tell anyone even when people raised eyebrows when I refused wine.  We were both pretty happy to be pregnant again but there was that seed of doubt and fear in the back of my mind that just wouldn't let me fully enjoy that moment.
Fast forward about 10 weeks and I was just starting to look at my maternity clothes with longing.  On a Saturday afternoon we'd decided to go play with the emotions of Realtors by checking out model homes.  Everybody need a hobby, this is one of ours. We checked out quite a few of them and I found myself feeling really tired and kind of achy and campy   When we pulled into our driveway I had that feeling, like you don't really know whats going on by you really need to be in the bathroom NOW.
I got to the bathroom and realized I was spotting pretty heavily.  I started sobbing and yelling at God almost immediately.  I kept saying, "No, you can't take this one, I get to keep this on." over and over. I called to the Pudding and told her to get Dilbert.  She couldn't help but see some blood and still remembers it to this day (nearly 2 years ago as I write this). She got Dilbert and he brought my phone so I could call the midwives.  Kim talked me down off the ceiling and told me to get myself to the ER to get things checked out for my own peace of mind.
We got to the ER and got checked in and I have to do the whole "Explaining the legality of Midwifery and no, I'm really not in the care of an OB/Gyn" thing to the ER docs.  They then give me an IV, I still don't understand why that one was necessary.  About an hour after we got there, I'm finally wheeled back for an ultrasound where I'm told that everything looks fine but I have placenta previa which means that the placenta is lying over the opening to the cervix.  The placenta is this very bloody organ and it is most likely that a small clot simply passed through the cervix and that is what caused the spotting.  Previa at this stage of pregnancy isn't all that uncommon and it usually resolves itself during the second trimester which I was just about to enter.
We delayed announcing things to our Church or anyone else for another week.  We had a 12 week ultrasound and I grilled the tech on normalness of this baby's head and made her go back again and again to check it.
I really didn't want to have the ultrasound just to check things out but this was a concession to Dilbert.  I really felt that my biggest problem with Joel's pregnancy was the knowing.  If I hadn't known that he wouldn't survive, I would have had a happy pregnancy and when he started to come, we would have dealt with the grief then.  I felt like the early knowing ruined the rest of the time I had with him because I had to make that choice, I didn't ever want to make a choice like that again.  This may not make sense, my husband doesn't understand it, but perhaps I'll elaborate on that one later.
So, we've now had two ultrasounds, the one in the ER and the regular one, both telling us that this baby is as OK as they can tell.  We were now at about 14 weeks and it was time to tell everyone else about it.  As I recall, we sent out a very brief mass email and posted the text of the same email on Facebook. We were both happy to be expecting but afraid for the challenges ahead.

One of those moments

I know I haven't posted in forever and there is probably a lot to catch up on but I just have to put this out there before I forget it and get lost in the drudge work that is motherhood.

Today we had a moment.

If you're a mom you know how rare those moments can be. The kind of moment where you feel like you and your children are in exactly the right place and the right time and you've made all the right decision to get them into that place and they are going to be better people for having been there with you and will look at it years later with joy in their hearts that you were able to give them that one perfect moment. Well, maybe that's all a little much to fit into one moment but that's how good it felt at the time. Let me explain our moment and perhaps you'll understand.

The Tyke woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. He was cranky and fussy and went into a tailspin over the slightest thing (I unbuttoned his jammy shirt when he wanted to unbutton his jammy shirt, we didn't have the breakfast he wanted, I didn't wipe the spilled yogurt up quickly enough and he got it on his hands, etc, ad nauseum). By about 9 I was ready to throw him out the window but thought a snuggle on the couch would be more productive at calming him down and pressing the reset button on the whole day. I told him to go upstairs and get his wooly (the wool baby blanket I made him when he was a baby) and we settled onto the couch together, him cuddled around the big belly and me surreptitiously reading my kindle over his head.

This made the Pudding mad. She'd been good all morning but was she getting any attention, NO! If being naughty was what it took to get a snuggle around here that's just what she'd be. You can imagine the rest. I finally sent her up to her room because I didn't want to reward the jealous behavior.

Once I had Ike settled and felt like he was well on his way to reset I went up and cuddled with Pudding for a while. We talked about why mommy needed some time with the Tyke that morning and that it didn't mean that I loved the Pudding less, it just meant that the Tyke needed more at that moment. After a while of this she got over the "I wish he'd never been born!" stuff and asked if he could come and snuggle with us. We called the Tyke upstairs and he crawled in with us and wonder of wonders they lay together and didn't wrestle or fight, they just cuddled with each other and with me. We pet the can, we pet each other, they chatted and for that one blissful moment, we just loved on each other. This was at about 10:30 am, the breakfast dishes weren't done yet, we'd done no school work, the shopping needed to be done and laundry was waiting but for once I'm glad I ignored it all and just attended to my children's emotional needs at that moment.

Be Particular

Several years ago I was walking around in a book store and spotted a book with what looked like several drag queens on the cover. Upon closer inspection I realized that they were simply fantastically dressed women wearing towering red wigs, sequinned dressed and majorette boots. The book was called "The Sweet Potato Queen's Book of Love" by Jill Connor Brown and it's a hoot. She gives several rules to live by in order to make your own life fabulous to the point where it feels totally ok to dress up as previously described. I'm still working on that one.

One of the rules came to me today and made me think of that long ago discarded book. Be Particular. This rule applies to nearly everything in life and I'm incredibly glad I followed it in my choice of midwives for this last pregnancy.

Before we were pregnant with Joel, I checked out a few other options for our birth because we weren't sure we could afford to pay for another homebirth. I went to look at some midwives that practice in a hospital and you can read about my reaction to them here. For those too lazy to follow the link, I didn't like them. They didn't feel personal to me, they didn't greet me with a hug and a cup of tea. But I'm so glad that they didn't because it meant that when everything went south with that pregnancy, I was surrounded by midwives who did greet me with a hug and who knew me and loved me and came with me on the hardest day of my life not as a paid midwife, but just as a friend. She was right there making sure that I had the best care possible and avoided the pain and trauma that was always chasing me. She sat with me while we made our decisions with no judgement, only sympathy. She was the one steadying my hand so I could hold my baby for the first and only time.

I am so grateful I didn't do the financially responsible thing in this case and go with the midwives that our insurance would pay for but who would have dropped me like a hot potato at the first sign of trouble. They would have said "I'm so sorry" just like everyone else does and that would have been nice but then Dilbert and I would have been left alone to transverse the world of high risk obstetrics without an educated guide and friend. I'm so glad that I refused to settle for care that would be good enough and insisted on seeing someone better.
It's important to be particular.

I'm a little more fine

Today is not a good day but it's not bad either. The kids have fought and squealed at each other most of the morning but one of them is napping now and the other is coloring robins upstairs. I'm not the basket case I've been for most of the last few months. I'm not saying I'm better yet but I feel like I've at least achieved some equilibrium again.
Part of the reason for this has been my counselor. She's pretty great. I've only seen her twice so far but just talking about all the stuff that's swirling around in my head seems to help. I've talked to my husband about all this stuff before but somehow it's different with an objective party. She hasn't heard it all before. She didn't live through it. Anyway, it helps. I'm sortof wishing I'd done it sooner.
Another reason I think I'm doing better is that Dilbert and I got away last weekend. We left the kids with my aunt and uncle and stayed at a hotel. You all don't need to know about most of that weekend but we did have the time to really open the flood gates. All the feelings and sadness that we'd been holding back because we're busy or the kids need us or we have to work in the morning was able to be put out there on the table and dealt with. I realized that I'd been assuming the worst of him and he'd been frustrated with me for not being better. Before you all jump all over him for that one you should know that he didn't want to feel this way, but feelings happen weather we want them too or not and this was one that was hard to hear but I'm glad he shared it.
When we left, I promised to give him the benefit of the doubt and he promised to be more patient with me. So far so good. We feel like we're back on the same team again.

I'm fine

"I'm fine." That's what I tell everyone. I almost am sometimes. I can get up in the morning (as well as I ever did) and feed my children and get them to soccer and ballet and sing in the band at Church and do all the things that need doing. I can function.
But not terribly well. My temper is shorter than usual and it was never all that long. I don't play with my kids like I used to and I don't go outside if I can help it. I have rare moments of higher function but I'm not what I used to be. My moods swing like a 13 year olds and I'm just as irrational sometimes.
But worst of all, I don't sleep. I'm writing this at 2:30 this morning because I hate going to bed. I feel like slowing down and stopping for the day is a scary prospect. It takes me forever to fall asleep and for that whole time I have nothing to do but let my mind wander where it will and it always goes to the same place. Joel.
Mother's Day was particularly difficult. I had yet more opportunities to cry in public. I kept thinking "there should be three, I'm supposed to have three." All the songs about faith and drawing strength from the Lord just seemed false to me that day because I didn't feel faithful and I didn't feel strength coming from anywhere.
Mother's day was also confirmation Sunday in our church. All these kids were there making the decision to join the church, follow Jesus and give their lives to Him. The Pastors said prayers over each of them while they were surrounded by their family and mentors. It was beautiful and I cried my eyes out through the whole thing because one of my children will never be given the chance to choose that. His journey is already over and I know that he's with Jesus but he never had the chance to choose and I never had the chance to teach him the way he should go and I'm furious about that.
So I keep avoiding my husband because he needs me to be OK and I don't feel that way yet. I keep yelling at my kids because they are kids and act accordingly. I keep staying up too late because it's easier to distract myself with the lights on. I keep telling everyone I'm fine though I know its not true.

The bottom of the trench

Since this little exercise in navel gazing known as my blog is called in the trenches, I thought I'd use the metaphor a little more tonight.
I am currently residing at the bottom of the trench which, if any of the movies and books I've read about war are to be believed, is where most of the crap and vermin reside.
It's not even that today was all that bad, I just felt badly. I had no excuse for it, the sad just showed up and stayed with me all day. I cleaned my kitchen, fed my children, worked on some sewing, read a book, ate some chocolate, all in an attempt to rid myself of the sad but nothing worked.
By the time Dilbert called me from his car as it sped toward home I was a well concealed wreck. He asked me if I wanted to meet him with the kids at our local gun shop, otherwise known as his happy place. He's been wanting to get one for me for a while now and thanks to the joy of the tax refund and our two little deductions, we sortof have the money for it at the moment. I'm not terribly jazzed about it but I'm not against the idea either so I agreed to meet him and just keep the sad pushed down for the others present.
Then I tried to get the kids ready to leave the house.
They'd gone outside that day but they hadn't actually had any shoes on and Pudding was wearing a shirt that was way too small for her and had to be changed. And Pudding didn't want to change the shirt, then she didn't want to wear those socks, then she didn't want to wear any socks and why couldn't she just go barefoot and why did we have to go anyway and on and on and on. I called Dilbert and told him the outing was off.
Normally I have no issues with stuffing either of my children into the required clothing and frog marching them out the door but today was not a day that I wanted to yell at my children. I don't ever really want to yell at them but today was a day where I didn't have the energy and the will to do battle with them. All my mental energy was used up today in keeping the sad contained and I just didn't have any left over. I felt like I was looking up at the looming battle from the bottom of my little trench and what I needed to do right then was keep myself from drowning, not fight. Survive and live to fight another day.

The last time

I've become addicted to this fabulous show called "Two Fat Ladies." It was a cooking show in England in the late 90's and it features (as you could imagine) two rotund women of a certain age. The show ran from 96 to 99 and featured the voluptuous women cooking in various locals and using lots of local ingredients. Tonight I watched them make (I'm not kidding on any of this) Strawberry breasts, Beef in Pastry, Salmon Mousse, and Swiss Chard with garlic and anchovies. They chortle along together while they cook and quote odd bits of poetry or share funny bits of history about the food they are cooking. At the end of the show they show their guests sitting down to dinner, share a few tips about serving each dish and have a drink somewhere picturesque. Clarissa and Jennifer always seemed the best of friend except when they argue about whether or not someone sat on the raspberries needed for that nights dessert (Pudding, they call it).
I recently read up on them a bit and found out that it was the death of Jennifer that ended the show. As I watched it tonight, I saw them both sitting on an old stone terrace, Clarissa with a glass of something orange and Jennifer with her scotch and cigarette. The sun set behind them as they stretched their sturdy legs in front of them and fully enjoyed their repose after a day spent in the kitchen. The thought occurred to me that if Jennifer were a friend of mine, this is what I would always want to picture her doing before she passed. Drink in her hand, cigarette on her lip and the pride of having done something productive all day glowing about her, sashaying into the long goodnight. It got me thinking about why it is so important for us to think that our loved ones who have passed on had peaceful or beautiful last moments.
So much is made of the last of something before someone dies. A last holiday, a last conversation, a last hug. A dear friend of mine just lost her brother to a very early death and she's been distraught that the last time she talked to him, it was a less than stellar conversation. I want to tell her to not worry about it but we all do.
I religiously say "I Love You" to my husband every morning before he leaves for work simply because he has to drive 11 miles with idiot DC metro drivers and I'm always a bit terrified that he won't make it home. I say "I Love you" every morning so if for some reason he didn't make it home, he would die knowing that I loved him. This is really silly because a hurried statement on his way out the door won't counteract unloving behavior displayed the rest of the day. If I don't love him with my actions during the time he's here, a superstitions sweet nothing isn't going to cut it. As a basketball coach of mine once said, "It's not the shot you missed as the buzzer blew that lost us the game, it was all the missed shots during the rest of the game."
The last minutes do matter but they can't spoil a loving relationship if they are bad and they don't make up for a contentious relationship if they're good. It's the relationship that counts, not the last minute.
For my friend, I want to tell her that her brother knew he was loved but I don't know. I know she tried to love him as best she could. She's just that kind of person, spreading sunshine wherever she goes. I know that at times her brother was difficult and pushed love and help away with both hands but in the time of his death, I know that brings no comfort. All that can really be said now is that she tried, she always tried and at the end of the day, that's all we can do. We do our best to love those around us the best we can and hope that they see the love in our every action. Then it won't matter if a sharp word is exchanged from time to time because at the end, the love is the only thing that lasts.
I don't know if I believe all that stuff about people who have passed on looking down on us from heaven, looking out for us or being cared for by other loved ones who have also passed on. I think that if you're in the presence of an eternal and loving God that singing His praises is about the only thing you'd have time for and the troubles of this world will seem silly and petty. Despite my belief to the contrary, I could see Jennifer up in heaven, on a cloud this time sharing a scotch with the brother of my friend and having a rousing political discussion. I like to think of them watching the sunset and resting from the turmoil of this mortal coil. I like to think that all of his troubles have left him now and he is at peace and feeling loved.

Semantics are everything

I'm going to take a small break from my rather heavy posts about the grief and loss of the past month to share a silly thing that happened yesterday.
The Tyke came into the kitchen sobbing as if his heart were breaking. His hands were behind him on his little bum and he kept saying that his back hurt. Dilbert asked him, "Does your butt hurt too?" The Tyke replied as though he'd been trying to convey something for a very long time and had grown so frustrated that he'd boiled over into anger. "THAT. IS. MY. TUSHIE!!!!!!"
Semantics are very important.

The Gifts of Grief

I think that perhaps there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who have gone through grief and those who haven’t. I know, I know, everyone has tough stuff that they go through. Bad break-ups, parent issues, friend issues, work stuff, you name it. But grief is different from other hard stuff. It overshadows everything around it, puts everything in perspective as the small and conquerable thing it is and shows you who the people around you really are.
I feel like I’ve crossed to the other side of this line in the last few weeks. None of the things I worried so much about before seem to matter as much now and the things that do matter seem so much bigger and better than they did before. My children matter, my husband matters. Whatever childhood issues I had with my parents don’t matter now, friends who don’t know what to say don’t matter so much now, stage-fright doesn’t matter now, appearances don’t matter now.
In a way this is liberating. There is a joy in not caring about the trivial and having enough perspective to appreciate that which is real. The real things are more precious than I ever thought possible. My children, my husband, my true friends have become more real and more necessary to my life than they were before. It is liberating to know this because it frees me from the distractions of other things. I’m less distracted by my own selfishness and laziness that prevent me from keeping a nice home. I’m less worried about how others will view my life and my choices and simply parent my children in the way that my instincts dictate. I find myself being the mother I’ve wanted to be, more patient, less quick to anger, more reasonable in my disciplining. Grief has given me that and I am grateful.
I find I have a glorious filter in place now. The good can come in, the unintended bad stays at arms length where I know that it isn’t meant that way and can ignore or dismiss it as necessary. I don’t know if this is a side effect of grief or if it’s just my optimistic personality asserting itself after six weeks of being dormant. I rather think it’s the grief and I’m grateful for it.
I’m grateful for the perspective and the liberation and the reforms to myself, I’m grateful for the filter and the joy that is all the more sweet for having been absent.
“Whatever my lot, thou has’t taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.”

Riding the wave

My mom says that grief comes in waves. You feel better for a few days, then worse for a few more, then back to better again. The idea is that eventually the better days are more frequent and the bad days less until you can think of the departed without being devastated.
Today is a better day. I looked through the box with Joel's things in it. I touched the box that holds his ashes, I looked at his little footprints, I saw the little blood smear on the ribbon of his impossibly tiny hat. I was sad but I didn't fall apart. I added the picture that the Pudding drew of Baby Joel up in Heaven and lingered for a moment, then put the lid down and went on about my day.
Sunday night was a bad night. I went to the grocery store after the kids were in bed and on my way home I just felt so alone and sad and generally depressed that I really wanted to hit that old Self-Destruct button. For those not familiar with this one allow me to explain.
For women from a certain background, usually children of divorced parents, often with some form of abuse during childhood, good things feel unfamiliar. When women from this certain background get sad or depressed about something, they seek the familiar and for them, it's usually more crap. This concept explains most of my relationships in my early 20's. I saw the pattern repeated in more of my friends than I know how to count. We'd get an urge to do just the worst thing for ourselves that we could. Sometimes that was to eat too much, have sex with inappropriate people, drink too much, max out a credit card, quit a good job, ditch a nice boyfriend.
That last one is one I actually did to poor Dilbert when we were dating. He'd just driven me to Wisconsin and back for my step-father's funeral and I was a wreck most of the way back. I'd been trying to do the strong, supporting daughter/sister thing for my mom/step-sister while we were there and about 5 minutes after we got on the road to come home, I snapped, hit a dear, broke Dilberts headlight and cried my head off to my incredibly sweet and supportive boyfriend. Needless to say, he drove the rest of the way home to DC.
A few days after we got back I told Dilbert that I didn't deserve him. He didn't deserve a mess like me. He was a nice guy who deserved a nice girl who would treat him accordingly, not someone who freaked the fuck out every couple of months. I told him I had so many issues to work out right then that he couldn't help me with and he didn't need the hassle. He cried, I cried, we cried some more and then he went home.
I hung out with my crazy friends that week that we were apart. I drank too much, smoked a lot of clove cigarettes (my chest ached) and had cheese puffs and Mountain Dew for diner a few nights. I was on the phone with one of my guy friends and strangely enough we were talking about relationships. I told him about the way that Dilbert always listened to me so well, like he was really trying to understand me and how selfless he was in driving me across the country to go to a funeral of a man he'd never met. I talked about how he'd talked to my grandparents even though he really didn't care much about old cars or religion. My friend said, "If you've found someone like that, why are you on the phone with me?" I took the hint and called Dilbert at 12:01am, February 14th, 2005 and married him 9 months later.
The funny thing here is that I had to make the decision against my gut instinct to do the thing that was good for me. For most people the thing that is good for them is the thing they would rather do. Not so for me, the thing that feels familiar is not good, the thing that I gravitate to is usually bad for me and will leave me feeling just as helpless and scared as I spent many of my formative years.
Since I married my Dilbert, the self destruct urge has fallen off quite a bit. Yes, I still get the urge to spend too much money or eat the entire pan of brownies knowing that I'm going to regret both later but for the most part, I'm much more even keel.
This last week, not so much. Not only do I want to eat the whole pan of brownies, I want to do it while downing a 6 pack of hard cider and possibly smoking more cloves. I want to do things that would be bad for me because then maybe the hurt would be controllable. I know how to dig myself out from under my own mess, I've done it more times than I care to mention. I don't know how to dig myself out from under this and when I have one of those bad days mentioned above, it feels like nothing is going to feel right ever again. I feel the weight of the decision we had to make and the judgment of every right-to-lifer who has never met me and doesn't know my situation. I feel my own judgment and that of every friend who had a funny look cross her face when I told her what we were going to do. I feel the weight of the judgment of every mother who carried to term with the knowledge that her baby wouldn't live and just counted herself grateful for the experience. I don't know most of the people mentioned above but I feel the weight nevertheless. That weight makes the 3 lbs I'd gain from the brownies seem rather insignificant.
But, on days like today, all that judgment doesn't seem to matter. I know my baby is being cared for in Heaven, I know that he was able to feel a mother's touch if only for a moment and I know that I did all in my power to make his short life sweet for him while making things manageable for myself. I know that my conscience is clear on this particular point and I know that God understands the choice I made and loves me none the less. Secure in that knowledge, I will continue to ride the wave as best I can without aid of the self destruct button.

Baby Joel

Our Sweet Baby Joel came into this world on March 8th, 2011. We induced his birth because of some very serious brain malformations that had occurred that were incompatible with life. We made the heart wrenching decision to terminate the pregnancy and here is the story.

Our son Joel has no frontal lobe in his brain. We were told at 12 weeks that he would not be able to survive outside the womb. We were sent home with a difficult decision to make. Terminate this very wanted pregnancy or continue it with the knowledge that a baby wasn't going to be living with us afterwords. We read, we did research, we got second opinions. Everything we read pointed us toward termination. We have two children already, they need a mother who can do more than cry in bed most of the day and a father who can go to work everyday and earn a living. We both need to be there for these kids and we felt crippled by this knowledge. The more research we did, the more it looked like this baby wouldn't make it to term anyway. He would most likely come late in the 2nd trimester. The doctors we talked to said that a stillbirth at that time can be risky for the mother and future pregnancies. Technical names like incompetent cervix or uterine scaring were thrown around while our heads were spinning.
The night we got our diagnosis I told my husband that I wished I could just give birth and have this over with. I wished that I could have the baby and hold them and tell them goodbye and then begin to heal and look toward the future without the awful waiting period of pregnancy to go through first. As we looked into our options, we realized that this was possible but were told that it probably couldn't happen for about 6 weeks. Then at our 14 week visit with the high risk OB/Gyn they told us that they had found a doctor who could and would do an induction of labor but only if we agreed to do it the next week. He felt that the risks would be higher if we waited. He also turned out to be the only doctor in our very large metropolitan area who would consider doing an induction at all so he was our guy. Our other options were to do a D&C (Dilation and curettage, they use tools to scrape out the contents of the uterus) or a D&E (Dilation and Evacuation, they use suction to empty the uterus). Neither of these options would allow us to see or hold our child, I would be unconscious for the procedure, neither of these options would give us the closure we were so desperately searching for and neither of these felt like a good way to honor the person-hood of our child.
After all the discussion, all the weighing of options was over, we decided to trust this doctor and do this on his time table. We made arrangements for our kids, my midwife Kim was able to come with us and we checked into the hospital late on a Monday night at 15 weeks 3 days gestation.
I was hooked up to an IV. I argued to have a hep-loc instead of a constant IV so that I could have more freedom of movement. They drew blood and then the doctor took out the laminaria that his partner had placed that morning.
The laminaria are little bits of seaweed that absorb water and when placed in the cervix, they will expand and dilate the cervix. The partner had put in the laminaria that morning and then placed two sponges behind them so that they wouldn't fall out before they expanded. When we got to the hospital the doctor took out the sponge but was having some trouble finding the other one. His examinations had been rough from the start but were quite painful when he was looking for the other sponge. It turns out that the sponges had been squished together and had both come out already. He finally realized this and removed the laminaria. Then he put in the first dose of Cytotec.
Cytotec is a medication that is used for people who have ulcers. It was not developed for women who are in need of an induction. The strong uterine contractions it causes are a side effect of the drug. The drug is commonly used against label because it works so well at bringing on labor but in full term pregnancies it does have some very nasty side effects like hyper-stimulation of the uterus and a marked danger of uterine rupture when used for a vaginal birth after Cesarean (VBAC). Because this wasn't a full term pregnancy, hyper-stimulation was of less concern to us and since I have never had a Cesarean, we felt cautiously safe about using it.
I went to sleep after the first dose and didn't wake up until 5am when the nurses assistant came in to check my vitals. I reminded them that I was supposed to have gotten another dose of Cytotec at 3 and the resident came in and gave me another dose. The drug was inserted as close to the cervix as the doctors could get it and about 15 minutes after the 2nd dose was given, labor really started to kick in.
Kim had gone home for the evening but by 6 am the contractions were strong enough that Dilbert felt that he needed to call her to come back. It turned out that that was a really good idea.
The contractions were not like any I'd ever felt before. They didn't rise in a wave with a peak and a rest in between. They came in jumps and starts. I'd have about 40 seconds of rest and then a 30 second contractions that hit me like a truck. Then it would be gone. Later, I had longer breaks but much longer contractions, it felt like there were 2 or 3 of them coming on top of eachother with no break in between.
I tried several different positions but just couldn't seem to find one that helped ease the pain at all. Kim had left the birth ball with us but the room was too cold and I didn't want to be out of bed for very long. Plus, by then they had insisted on an IV and nothing by mouth so moving around was difficult.
I got back into bed and just tried to sit forward as much as possible. We put the bed all the way up so that it would support me and I tried to sit cross legged but that was uncomfortable too. Toward the end I asked Dilbert to stand at the end of the bed and let me pull on his arms so that I would be leaning forward.
I'd asked him too before and so he kept reminding me that we were doing the right thing. When contractions got more intense I started to sob through them. The nurses, when they were there, talked about getting me something for the pain but in the middle of a massive contraction I shouted "No! No! No! I'm only going to have a minute with him, I don't want to be loopy!"
As the contractions kept coming and I kept crying I started whimpering for Kim. Whenever I had a rest I tried to remind Dilbert that it wasn't because he was doing a bad job, he was great, I just knew Kim was bringing the heating pad and her calming presence and I really felt like I wanted both right away. She did get there at about 7:30. She slipped in quietly while I was in the throws of a contraction, held my hand for another one and said I sounded "Pushy." "Maybe you should just try a little push with the next contraction." she said.
When the next one hit, I gave a little push and it felt so good to do something with this one. I pushed just a little and felt something come out. I threw back the blankets and there he was.
I started wailing then and told Dilbert to pick him up so he could feel a loving touch in case he was still alive. I looked at him an wailed and wailed and cried like I never have before. There was a Bible verse that kept going through my head. It was from the Matthew 2, the slaughter of the innocent by Herod, what went through my head was "WEEPING AND GREAT MOURNING, RACHEL, WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND SHE REFUSES TO BE COMFORTED, BECAUSE THEY WERE NO MORE."
Joel was not born with a heartbeat so we had them clamp and cut the cord so that I could hold him. I asked Kim to steady my hand because I was shaking and weeping so hard. I kept saying "I'm so sorry baby, I'm so sorry." over and over again.
The doctor came in and started trying to grab the placenta. He couldn't reach in (though he tried despite my protests and obvious discomfort). He ran out and Kim told me to push with everything I had so that I wouldn't have to have the really scary drugs that he was running to get. I pushed just a little and it came out intact. Kim did a fundal massage then to help the uterus clamp down but I really don't remember much of what happened after. I was looking at the baby.
He was absolutely perfect on the outside. He had these perfect little hands and feet. This tiny little chin and even ears. He had the sortof bug eyes of a 15 week fetus but he looked as perfect as he could. His skin was very thin and so this made him look very red. We had thought about letting the Pudding come see him but ruled that out because of this. After he had been out for a little while, I could feel him getting colder so I put him on my chest to keep him as warm as I could. I knew it wouldn't do any good for him, that he wasn't really in there anymore but some primal maternal instinct told me I had to keep my baby warm so that's what I did. We wrapped him in a blanket that had been made for him, it was too fuzzy and left little bits of wool on him but I really wanted to keep him warm so I didn't mind the fuzz.
We had him with us for about 3 hours. A friend who is part of the Now I lay me down to sleep group came and took some pictures for us. The photo at the beginning of this post is her work. A kind nurse took him to print his feet and weigh him. She did some clay impressions of his feet as well. She handled him so gently and kept him covered while she had him out. I was so grateful for that. I thought he was beautiful but I knew others wouldn't see him that way so I was glad she kept him away from the eyes of others.
The longer he was out the more we could see changes in him. He began to wrinkle and whither a little. His skin dried out and he sortof seemed to sink a little. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't keep him warm anymore so we knew it was time to say goodbye. We held him and kissed him and told him we loved him very much. I told him I would miss him. Then we handed him over to the nurse who took him away.
We had him cremated and have him at home now. We had a small funeral for him yesterday. In the days in between his death and his funeral we actually felt a lot better. We felt like the weight of decision had been lifted and we were out from under the burden of this huge aweful thing that had come to us for the first time in nearly a month. Today is a little harder, we have to get back to normal now, I have to start cooking again, Dilbert has to go back to work on Monday, we have to discipline our children and be parents again. I'm sure things will get better soon, we feel like we now have the permission to look to the future again. We're making plans to not make plans. We're going to take a trip, we're going to move on past the darkness.