Love-Knowledge Baby

Disclaimer:  This is MY story.  I talk about body parts and functions.  If you can’t handle it, don’t read this birth story.  I also believe that birth is a spiritual and sexual and physiologically normal event.  This birth confirmed all three of those beliefs for me, so if you can’t handle THAT, please don’t read or at least don’t try to hurt my feelings by making stupid remarks.

Namaste.

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Thoughts I’d like to get out of the way first:

Our baby was conceived in love, consciously.  For some reason, we thought we were ready to be pregnant and to build our family once again.  Our first son’s birth was, in many ways, a gauntlet or crucible rather than a sacred birth ceremony I wanted it to be.  Brad and I endured the aftershocks of interventions and the soulless grind of hospital mechanics after having prolonged labor at home which transferred to hospital.

Hindsight tells us that we could have listened to our intuitions better, surrounded ourselves with a more fitting birth team, asked for privacy when we needed it, and many more things.  More than 50 hours of labor ended with me drugged against my will, my genitals cut without permission, and a baby who needed resuscitation and kept at the NICU for the first week of his life.

My heart still breaks thinking of Bailey’s birth.  I wanted SO badly to give my baby (and myself) the best start with the best birth I could think of: at home in the water.  Instead, I had different lessons to learn.  I had to learn how precious birth was, and the universe was going to teach that lesson to me by taking away all the beautiful moments I thought I’d bask in.

My support team didn’t know how to support me (and I never told them how, because I didn’t know exactly what I needed).  Other people showed up, and my sacred birth space was a circus.  Uncomfortable, given frequent and painful vaginal exams, I stopped progressing and was given a timeline.  I had no sensual, private time with my husband.  I was too closely managed, and too meek to ask for what I needed.

Finally, my desire to feel everything, to accept and work with my body to birth my baby, was violated when my mother and the nurse worked together to coerce me into pain medications I did not want.  The rest of my birth was a blur of pain, unconsciousness, and then the frantic, obnoxious overly-lit opera of the hospital birth:  flat on my back, tied down with monitors, threatened with C-section at the end of a timeline, crowning, automatic episiotomy, coached breathing, screaming and shouting of nurses like at some sporting event, scolding, breath-holding, counting to 10, and the emergence of my baby . . . who’s cord was cut immediately as he was rushed away to be resuscitated.

I sent Brad to stay with our baby, and no one told me anything.  I felt a strange high, even though I had no baby, and still no one told me anything.  I heard no words of reassurance.  No one held my hand.  I was sutured, vaguely cleaned up, and finally left completely alone in the room with my blood still drying on the floor.  It could have been 5 minutes or 20 minutes.

I did not hold my baby until his third day of life.

I’m crying now as I think about it.  No matter how far I’ve come from that, I will ALWAYS feel this pain.  My son is a part of my heart and soul, and we both bear the opposite ends of the same scar.  No amount of time or healing will ever undo what has been done.

But part of what I’ve realized is that I would not CHOOSE to undo it if I could.  That was the birth that made me a mother, and that was the battle I lost that made me a warrior.  Every stretch mark, every tear I shed, every doubt I had, and every subsequent waking nightmare I endured is a battle scar that I refuse to apply make up to cover.

Though I felt broken, and lived a life that dwelt in the horror of those moments, I dragged myself back up and refused to give up and live in constant fear.  I embraced motherhood with joy, and used it as an opportunity to embrace my intuitive self.  I grew a backbone and started making unconventional decisions in parenting.  I learned about slings and carriers and started volunteering teaching people how to nurture their babies hands-free.

I grew and grew as a person, but it took a long time.  It took years of inward focus.  Some days were so bad, some better . . . I decided that I wouldn’t have flashbacks any more, and integrated what memories I had hung onto back into my psyche, yet there are still things I’m learning from Bailey’s birth.

I learned how truly valuable a woman’s choice is in the context of maternity care and labor.  Choice and knowledge and full support are the things that are drastically lacking in our current maternity care system.  A woman should not have to go so far out of the ‘norm’ in order to have mother-centered prenatal care and latent management of her active and physiologically normal labor and delivery.

I learned how damaging it was that I’d been trained to be a “good girl” instead of being true to myself, and how being compliant sabotaged my ability to utilize my intuitive knowledge.  I should have picked care providers who fit my needs better and I should have kicked everyone out . . .

But enough about all that, because one of the most important things I learned was to avoid the guilt trap.  The past is done, and the choices I made (even though they were not the best) were the ones I NEEDED to make in order to learn the lessons that make me a stronger woman today.

My second pregnancy was never a second chance.  I would never have conceived a child out of fear and desperation, using that baby’s gestation and birth as a healing tool.  In order to enter this sacred relationship, I needed to feel whole enough to accept this child on his or her own terms, realizing that birth is powerful and unpredictable—and attempting to control birth, without giving outlet to my fears, was a recipe for disaster.  So, when people ask (and if they know about our last birth, they inevitably do ask) if this birth was healing for me, I say, “No.”

This birth did not lift me back up to a base line.  I started healed, but scarred, and this birth blasted me into outer space!  The birth of my second baby was what birth is supposed to be, and it was AMAZING.

In the last weeks before the birth, passed through some final gates of realization and opened myself to the possibility of birth.

I accepted the pain.  I accepted the unpredictable nature of life.  I accepted my fears, and expressed them as they came.  During this pregnancy, I just let all these things and feelings and worries happen and let them go.  I was an empty vessel, yet bursting with the inherent vitality of pregnancy.

I was told to think positively, but I could not.  All I could do was hold my space and mind open and ready, and wait for the inevitable.  I felt joy and sadness and fear and anticipation, but I let all these emotions and thoughts flow through me and out of me as I waited.

“Be not a slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rylie’s Birthday

The morning of May 20^th, I was 5 days past 40 weeks.  No, I was not impatient or tired of being pregnant, as many people assumed.  My first son Bailey was 18 days past due, putting him at 42 weeks + 4 days, and I waited patiently then.  I very much enjoyed both my pregnancies.  So, that morning I woke to a gush of fluids which surprised me.  It was maybe a cup of fluid which smelled clean and almost bleach-like and came with a small bit of cottage-cheese looking stuff on my panties.  Excited, I sent a text to Kathy.  She told me to keep her updated.

Bailey stayed asleep as I busied myself, keeping a towel under my bum.  I puttered around online, and then went back to lying down.  Every once in a while, there would be another leek or gush of fluid, which always surprised me; I was very giggly.

I told Brad what was happening, and he deliberated whether or not to go to work.  Between my thought that it could be a long time until something happened and Kathy’s advice to go about things normally, we sent him to work.

When Bailey woke up, I told him what was happening, and he wanted to see.  I told him it didn’t look like much, just clear fluid.  He and I laughed as I gushed fluids and tried to catch it all with the towel.  Mild, ignorable contractions had started.  There was so much time between them, and they didn’t seem pressing, so I got us both dressed (put a pad in my underwear) and went to Thursday morning playgroup at Birth Baby and Beyond.

Everyone there seemed excited that my labor might be starting.  I helped someone with slings and carriers, swapped birth stories and chatted people up.  Mild contractions continued, but with 15-20 minutes separating them, I continued as usual.

My friend Bonnie had planned on taking Bailey to the PlayStation (tunnels, ball pit, slides, games, etc.) that Thursday for a few weeks, so we followed through on that plan, and she picked him up and took him to play.  She was very excited that I might be in labor.  I was excited, but knew that it could be a while, so I bummed around a bit then drove home.  I also asked Brad to start finishing up, come home and help me clean.

I had some baby dolls and weights (to make babywearing demo dolls) to give to my friend Aradia, and she asked if she could come over.  I said sure.  Nothing seemed to be happening.  More amniotic leaking, some contractions and a whole lot of me trying to either keep busy or rest— Brad and I cleaned up the house.  Aradia arrived with her boyfriend Kyle, and we all chatted and hung out.

Once, changing one of my pads, I found a single tiny little baby hair curled up amongst the amniotic fluid, and I thought that was so cool!

I called my friend Carly to come (primary Bailey-keeper for the labor and birth), and she was on her way.  Bonnie dropped Bailey off.  He had skipped his nap, but he was very excited about the baby coming soon.  Carly showed up; Aradia and Kyle left.  I kept puttering around, trying to conserve my energy.  Wondering if I should be doing anything else, I called Kathy (our lovely Certified Nurse Midwife) who then suggested that instead of resting, I get moving and perhaps try walking.  If it was raining out (it was), hit a store!  Brad and I packed Bailey up in the car.  Carly hopped in, and we headed to Target.

Since Bailey fell fast asleep in the car, Brad dropped me and Carly off to walk around Target.  Trying to let Bailey nap, Brad drove off to buy himself some ice cream, while Carly and I talked and walked around Target.  We had good talks.

Almost immediately, the contractions started to be 6, 5, and 4 minutes apart.  We arrived at Target around 4ish, and we walked around until Brad picked us up at 5:30 to 6 pm.  During that time, contractions steadily got closer together.  They were 5 minutes, then 4 minute gaps, then 3 minutes . . . Brad got us home and we called the midwife and team.  I also called Laura (photographer who wanted to take pictures of a homebirth) who showed up before the midwife and everyone else.

I remember pressing my face against the screen door, feeling the cool air on my forehead.  I remember bouncing, rocking and swaying on the birth ball.  I remember flattening my torso on the ottoman, letting my belly hang low.  I remember walking into the kitchen, the living room, and back and forth.  Kathy, Monica and Shell showed up, and by then I barely registered them.  Kathy checked me and said I was at 5 or 6.  I forget which one.  The number didn’t matter much to me.

Kathy said the baby’s head was tilted a bit and gave me some homeopathy to assist in correcting it.  This barely registered in my consciousness.  I continued to labor.

I remember Bailey hiding from Laura and her camera.  I remember the birth team leaving the apartment to sit on the steps and clear my space.  Carly and Bailey kept each other busy.  Brad and Monica (probably others too) kept giving me water.  Love those bendy straws!  I drank one cold orange juice, and the contractions (I don’t really like that word by the way) kept getting stronger and lower.  I felt SO MUCH ENERGY down in my low abdomen and the pubic bone area.

I snapped at someone to put a liner in the small garbage can.  It was a few contractions with heaving, almost throwing up.  Then I finally did throw up, and all the orange juice came back up along with the Gluten Free chicken nuggets I was munching on earlier.  In the back of my mind, the logical voice was chattering excitedly about vomiting being a great sign, transition, ejection reflex, blah blah blah.

I just kept letting the waves flow through me, concentrated on low and open vocalizations, and worked with my body and the baby.  I kept throwing my body back, and Brad and Monica supported me, my arms over their shoulders.  I just threw my weight on them and tilted my whole body backward.  I think this helped the baby get into position.

Things were really intense, and Kathy set up plastic and chux pads on the floor and sofa.  I told Brad to fill the bath, and he went to do that.  At that point, Kathy said, “You might not make it to the tub, hon,” and mentally, I said, “Oh, I’m going to the tub.”

After the next wave ended, I walked to the tub, stripped naked, and got in.  Lamentably the water was lukewarm, which translated as cold.  I was not able to vocalize anything, but I got no immediate relief from submersion.  Brad and Kathy had a whole dialogue about the temperature, and Brad ran the hot water again.  The tendrils of warmth snaked their way through the water and hit my legs and lower back and the bottom part of my belly—Aaaahhhhhhhh!  Finally!

The waves just kept coming, stronger and more intense, and I kept vocalizing, still working with my body and the baby, diving forward into the waves instead of backpedaling.  At one point I said “Oooh–OPEN…” with my contraction.  I just wanted to go with it.  I’d say it wasn’t surrender, but cooperation and desire . . .

Brad helped pour water over my belly.  My bathtub just wasn’t deep enough.  Every wave, I would tell Brad, and he would hold my hand or let me hang off his shoulders.  I would moan or roar.  I was making very primal noises.  Just not high-pitched, frantic noises like on TV.  I was making POWERFUL noises.  At some point, everyone else left the bathroom and let me and Brad work together.  That was the best.

Before Kathy and her team cleared our small bathroom, I made a vaguely annoyed gesture and noise at Laura who was taking pictures, and Brad translated for me: “No more pictures.”  Laura backed off and I turned my attention to laboring again.  We labored alone together, and Kathy gave Laura permission to continue taking photos (saying that she would take the blame if we ended up not liking that).  Honestly, she was out of my space, and past that one point, I just didn’t care.  Now I’m really glad to have photos.

The baby kept diving deeper into my pelvis, my uterus continued to contract, thickening at the top, pushing and turning the baby down lower and lower.  I kept moving, sometimes splashing water out of the tub.  Brad had to lean over the tub and brace an arm on the tiles behind me, as I nearly snapped him in half, but hugging him just felt good.  I especially liked when he took his shirt off because I’d soaked it with water.

Skin on skin and warm water . . . I kissed him once on the lips.  Not long or involved, but a real kiss, and things took off from there.  The energy had been getting so intense, and then I started to feel REALLY good with the next few waves.  I started saying, “Yes! Yes, yes, yes,” instead of making my low noises.  Brad knew what that sounded like, and I remember him giggling a bit to himself.  I was just really grateful.

I felt the baby press into my nerve cluster inside (G-spot?), and I almost left my body.  It was amazing.  All I can remember is overwhelming and powerful gratitude.  I felt the need to reach down and touch myself, so I did with each wave, also checking the baby’s descent.  When the rush ended, I relaxed back against the tub and tiles and just sobbed, “Thank you,” over and over again.  I was just so grateful for that release, that break in the experience of hard and overwhelming work.  It was only probably two or three of the contractions that felt that good, and by the end of that, Brad was soaking wet from my thrashing about—and the baby was presenting very near my opening.

I remember that Kathy said the baby’s head would be out “with the next contraction” and my internal dialogue said, “Oh, it better go a bit slower than that!”  She asked me if I could feel the baby’s head, and I did, but I had a large cervical lip.  I couldn’t vocalize that, at the time.  She discovered it when she checked.

During this last stage, I kept saying things like, “I wish I could just rest . . .” and similar phrases.  I actually don’t remember what I was saying, but I remember that a chorus of voices was telling me I was doing great and that I was almost there—that I would meet the baby soon.  Pretty soon, Kathy said, “Let me know if you feel burning.”

It took a few more contractions, which by the way, were back to being painful, before the baby really felt well engaged and crowning.  Only that cervical lip was there.  Kathy told me that she was going to move it aside, and she reached in and pushed it back up and over, freeing the baby’s head to descend.  Ouch, ouch, ouch!  During THAT contraction, I yelped and let out high pitched ouch noises, but it was over in a minute.

Her fingers gently pushing the cervix back and over the baby’s head made that wave and the next one much less bearable, so note to all you women out there: Vaginal exams and hands in your vagina are not conducive to remaining Zen during labor.  I was glad to have a respectful, gentle midwife who asked permission and made it as quick and painless as possible.

I changed positions all over the place during labor.  In the tub, I was leaning backward grabbing onto Brad who was braced over the tub.  Then I was slightly sideways leaning back and then leaning forward.  It was hard to get comfortable (actually impossible), but I kept trying.  My legs would get wedged the short way in the tub and I would have to shift.  Eventually, I spread my legs and got up on the balls of my feet, assuming nearly the same position as the birth bead focus I’d put on during labor, ankles in and knees bent out.  I was squatting in the position, crushing Brad, yelling powerful noises (straight into Brad’s poor ear), and feeling the inevitable tide of the baby rushing slowly down the birth canal.

By the way, Bailey was running around the apartment, and everyone took turns distracting him or holding him up so he could see me laboring.  Every once in a while, he would ninja his way past the protective grid and come check me out himself, touching my belly or running his little hand through my bath water before he was whisked away again by Carly or the birth team.  It was part of my plan to have him there, and it worked out just fine.  He WAS distracting, but it was OK.

Kathy started to encourage me to push with the contractions.  They were so powerful, I didn’t know when they ended, and had to be told to rest and relax.  I just kept feeling the pushing and the STRENGTH and ENERGY.  I had to make a conscious effort to relax when I could, but the next wave always seemed to come too soon.  I felt overwhelmed, but I just let it all go and worked to bring the baby down to the gateway.

What I could feel, only a finger’s depth away from the outside world was a slimy weird little thing.  I think I said, “It doesn’t feel like a head!”  It was the hair mixed with mucous, and the sensation of ridges—the scalp covering overlapped skull pieces.  I think someone reassured me that it was a baby’s head.  It was a very silly little conversation.

For those of you who have never done this or can’t picture it, the baby’s emerging head (still half a finger’s depth in my vaginal canal) felt like a slimy, ridge-y bump pushing out that would fit through the circle I can make with my index finger and thumb.

Slowly but surely, that weird little bulb emerged further and further, growing larger in diameter as well.  At this point, I kept getting up into a squatting position and was encouraged by Kathy to push with the contractions.  The burning was incredible.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have much of a sense of the contractions or the top of the uterus, which was undoubtedly working very hard.  Instead, all my attention was brought to the opening of my hips, deep in my pelvic floor.  The baby was moving out of my womb into the vaginal canal, inexorably closer to emerging fully into the bath water.  Oh, it burned, and I ROARED through the waves, still clutching at Brad’s neck, shoulders, and chest.

He held me as I moved with the baby.  If there was any rest between waves, I let my body go completely loose and almost slept for those few moments.  I kept looking into Brad’s and Kathy’s eyes.  Again, a chorus of voices said that I could do it, I was amazing, I was doing great.

It was almost unreal.  I kept my hands down by the action, and it really felt like my butt was turning inside out.  This might be TMI for some people, but I pooped a bit, I’m sure.  Brad even asked what it was (in the bath water), and Kathy had to tell him.  It was another funny little conversation.

I used my fingers to apply counter pressure on my perineum and anal area, just keeping in touch with what was going on down there.  The baby continued to crown, and I kept ROARING and yelling deeply as I pushed the baby down, down, down.  The largest part of the baby’s head reached the tightest point of my opening, and I could feel that the baby was ALMOST out.  Letting the baby sit there, ring of fire and all, was nearly unbearable.

With the next wave, I PUSHED and the head popped out!  At that moment, I also felt my tissues parting a bit at the top and bottom.  I guess I’d forgotten all about Sphincter Law and just wanted the baby out!  My mouth and face were probably full of tension as I roared that baby into the world.  As soon as the head popped out, I received my baby into my hands.  The rest of the body just slid easily out in the next moment after the head cleared.  INSTANTLY, I felt no discomfort.  The burning was gone, thank goodness!

I pulled the baby out of the water onto my chest, and the little one gave one gurgling cry with a squished up little face.  I think I made my baby-shushing noise out of habit.  The baby was so slippery, covered in cottage-cheesy vernix from head to toe, skinny little limbs filled with the tension of birth.  I think Brad might have been crying.  He leaned in and put his hand on the baby, sliminess and all.

Everything was still and silent (not really, but I was in my own world) as the baby rested against my chest.  I breathed that baby into me, felt the little squirming movements as the baby settled on my chest, releasing some of the muscle tension of the recent expulsion.  Brad asked if it was a boy or a girl, so I took one hand and moved a slippery thigh aside.  To my extreme surprise, it was a BOY!

At that moment, I just laughed and laughed!  This pregnancy, one of the things I did differently was to try to find out the sex.  On two separate occasions, I’d taken the pee test called Intelligender (said to be 86% accurate) and got a “girl” result.  My pregnancy was a completely different experience from Bailey’s, and I’d had a dream about a girl named Leah a year or two before.  The Chinese chart indicated girl.  Everyone who looked at me said I was carrying like it was a girl.  Where Bailey was high up in my uterus, this baby was very low and engaged.

So, my one concession to control impulses was to find out the gender, and I was so sure it was a girl that I kept saying, “If this baby pops out with a penis, I’m gonna be SO surprised!”  Lo and behold!  The cosmos decided to send me a friendly message!

I’m not disappointed AT ALL.  I was overflowing with joy.  Right now (despite the challenges of a regressing toddler and a less than three week old baby), my cup runneth over.  I am filled to the brim with joy and happiness.  I still think it’s hilarious that my baby turned out to be a boy.

Anyways, back to the laughing mama sitting in the tub . . .

With the baby in my arms, I sat in the tub marveling at life, the universe, and everything (but mostly my newborn).  He quite intentionally scrabbled toward my left breast and immediately attempted to latch on.  So he initiated nursing within the first few minutes after birth.  I just remember his slippery little body and tiny, skinny limbs, those little fingers and toes tipped with long scratchy nails moving across my chest.

Bailey came to see his little brother, and he was VERY excited.  I found out later that once he heard the baby’s first cry, he grabbed Carly’s hand and said, “Come on!  We have to go see!” and dragged her to the bathroom.  I don’t quite remember if he touched the baby or just looked, but I DO distinctly remember him yelling, “My SISTER!” . . . And me thinking, “What am I going to do with those dresses I bought?”  HILARIOUS!  (Good thing it was only two little dresses, and they had been on super clearance.)

Kathy followed the umbilical cord down and encouraged me to give one push as she helped slide the placenta out.  It had already detached, and just needed the slightest grunt and tug to slip out.  That stung a bit as it passed my small tears.  She put my placenta in a plastic pan, and everyone else bustled about the apartment, cleaning up.

The blood darkened the water in the moments before and after the delivery of the placenta, and after a while, it was time to get out and clean up.  I was helped out of the tub and went to lie on the bed, still holding the baby to my chest. I thought I would be cold or something (vaguely in the back of my mind) soaking wet and stepping out of the warm water, but I didn’t register anything but AWESOME.  If “AWESOME” was a temperature, that’s what temperature I was feeling. (Someone walked the placenta, still attached to the umbilical and the baby, to the bed and put it down, and I got my hair into it when I lay down.)  Someone moved it so I could lay down fully.

I was wiped down, asked if I was comfortable over and over again, and Kathy and the team checked out my tears.  After I checked with Kathy if she was SURE I needed sutures (on the off chance that magically I wouldn’t need to have anything to do with needles at all this birth), she went ahead and numbed up my parts and stitched the bottom tear.  The top one was internal and closer to the clitoris and wasn’t to be messed with, but the tear on the perineum (near the anus) required attention.

The needle with anesthetic in it is GIGANTIC, by the way.  I was a big wuss about it, but I managed to turn my attention to the little baby who was still rooting around and latching himself at the breast.  When vernix (the cheesy substance surrounding baby) starts to dry, it gets sticky instead of slippery.  So my arms and chest had white sticky vernix, and my fingers stuck a bit to the baby’s skin.

No one suctioned his nose and mouth at birth or wiped his beautiful protective vernix off.  I rubbed it in deeper actually, knowing it would be beneficial for the baby.  By then, someone had gotten a towel to put on top of him, but we were still skin to skin.  It was just lovely.  We got a hat on him, organic cotton knitted by a friend (Thanks, Susan!).

Brad and Bailey and I got to examine the baby and get to know him.  By now it was after 10 pm.  From my water breaking in the morning to walking at Target at around 5pm to the birth at 9:44pm, this entire labor was lightning speed compared to the 50+ hour labor with Bailey.  Bailey was exhausted but EXTREMELY excited, so he kept wandering in and out, not registering what we were saying, yawning, and generally being an overtired toddler.  Thank goodness for Carly who was there just to make sure he was OK.

Lying there, it was either Brad or Bailey who stuck a slice of orange in my mouth, and my face and jaw had been so tense, I couldn’t open my mouth big enough to chew.  My jaw got stuck, which worried Kathy a bit, until I just started laughing about it which loosened it all up.  I finished eating my orange slice, giggling.  Seriously, everything seemed hilarious ALL day.

I decided it would be OK to unlatch the little one and hand him to Monica for the first newborn exam.  He checked out great, and had tiny little complaint cries.  He was 7 lbs 12 oz and 21 inches long.  And we didn’t have a name for him.  The three boy names we’d toyed with didn’t fit, and we couldn’t use the girl names.

Carly stayed the latest that night, until 11 something so that we could all settle down.  Bailey was so excited and psychotically over-tired.  After Carly left, we all tried to go to bed.  Kathy visited the next day.  Then the first few days and nights all blend together in the usual new-baby haze.  My placenta was encapsulated.  On the third day, we named him Rylie.

Mothering my peacefully born baby has been an entirely different experience than the anxiety filled-days at NICU, then the insecure weeks (and months) following Bailey’s birth.  This whole experience has made me realize how detrimental our early separation and our traumatic birth was on both of us, and how much our bonding was a thing of deliberate and calculated effort instead of instinctual connection.  I mothered Bailey the way I knew I should, or at least tried.

I’m mothering Rylie with my animal brain, instinctively.  It feels so much deeper, and I have so much less anxiety and fear surrounding my every move than I did with Bailey.  A large part of that might be that I’m not a new mom, but I think the good birth really helps.

Every time I stroke his beautiful round head, I get a delicious and shivery feeling—like a cat purring.  I love the way he smells, and the way he moves himself about (seemingly not knowing that newborns are supposed to be helpless and immobile).  He’s so strong, and unlike babies born in trauma, he never really stopped doing the things he probably did in utero:  laughing, smiling, hiccupping . . .

Don’t let people tell you that babies can’t X, Y, or Z.  Newborns are miraculously capable little beings, with a deep language.  You just have to be listening from the beginning.

So, no—I didn’t have a healing birth.  I birthed in joy and fierce power, and never required this tiny soul to aid me in healing.  I got a taste of the power and essence of birth the first time around, even through all the trauma, so I never lost sight of how it could and should be.  Birth can be a peak experience.  Rylie’s birth certainly was for me.

As I finish this account, he is nearly three weeks old, and growing fast.  We proudly help him eliminate in the potty (with cloth diaper back ups), use sign language with him, wear him in (lots of different) slings and carriers, and parent him instinctually, struggling to find the balance of having two children and making sure both are cared for compassionately.

“Thank you for your suggestions, but please excuse me while I ignore them.”

That’s what I want to say to a lot of people.  And you know what?  I started out this whole mothering journey with a much “better” attitude.  In the beginning, especially, I was ready and willing to listen to peoples’ suggestions, their advice, and their anecdotal evidence in regards to childrearing.  I was a lot more submissive, and a lot less fierce.  I had a newborn.  I was young.  I thought I needed to listen to those who had done it all before, and so I asked.  I listened.  I nodded my head and tried it their way.

And it felt wrong.

It felt wrong when I called my mom about my 2 month old baby who was crying, and she told me to put him down and let him cry it out.  It felt wrong to watch my helpless infant lying on his blanket, his small body twisting, limbs jerking in the agony and danger of loneliness, his hysterical cries answered by my shushing voice and not the touch of my skin on his, the warmth and scent of me, the taste of my milk . . .

I’m so ashamed.

I’m so ashamed I listened to my mother that one time.  I’m so filled with regret that I let him cry at all, and I took that deep, nails-on-chalkboard feeling of absolute shame and wrongness with me as I researched for myself.  I discovered what my heart had been telling me all along: babies cannot “self sooth.”  Meeting an infants needs as soon as they arise is the basic prerequisite for humane and biologically normal parenting.

When my beautiful son developed facial eczema after early introduction of solids at 5 months old (another result of my submissive and passive parenting with a domineering mother of my own), I heard plenty of things which caused me to grow a tougher skin.  Things like, “Eeew, what’s wrong with his face?!” and “Oh, it’s just baby acne.  It’ll pass.  My kids all had that, and I ignored it.  It eventually went away.” and “That’s terrible!  Have you asked the doctors to test him for X, Y, or Z?” (all horrible diseases which have no cure) and “It’s eczema.  You need steroid cream.”

I could actually write entire paragraphs about what people said to me about my son’s skin.  Many comments were so stupid my brain rebelled and struck them from my memory almost immediately, and I’m glad not to share them.  Suffice to say, I kept a cover over his stroller and car seat when we were out (this was before I used slings), and started to get jaded about bringing Bailey to public places.

What I do know is that I used my own initiative to keep a food diary of what I ate and how it affected him through the breast milk.  I eliminated wheat.  We also did something that made me nervous, but ultimately worked out for the best; We backed off of solid foods and went back to exclusive breast feeding.  Meanwhile, multiple trips to the pediatrician supplied us with steroid creams and other things with long and upsetting warning labels.  Though I asked to be referred to an allergist, I was told he was too young for true allergies.  We should just stick to the creams.

The advice that parents of babies with eczema is confusing.  Bathe often, don’t bathe often.  Use this cream or another.  Most of those messages revolve around treating the symptoms of eczema, not finding the cause.  I knew there had to be a cause, and it was inexorably linked to food.

My food diary led us to a wacky sort of elimination diet, and all the while we got no sleep.  Bailey scratched himself bloody.  We put mitts on him, and he’d use the mitts to scratch his skin off.  All his clothes had blood stains.  I stayed up nights just holding him and applying more creams and swaddling him and nursing him.  Nights blended into days which melted into weeks.  I eliminated most of the major allergens, and I saw some improvements and then back slides.

It was a dangerous few months.  We both lost weight.  I lost a LOT of weight, but I didn’t really care about that as much as my baby’s weight loss.  Babies aren’t supposed to lose weight.  They’re supposed to be fat and happy.

So, without my pediatrician’s referral, I found an allergist who would see infants.  We looked over my food diary, and picked out the major elements and went to get blood drawn from my 8 month old baby.  They called us back and told us that he was indeed allergic to wheat, oats, rye, barley, soy, egg whites, egg yolks, and peanuts.

No wonder my haphazard elimination diet hadn’t seemed to work.  There was just too much to eliminate.  It was too hard to tell without that test.  Within the next months, Bailey’s face cleared up as we learned to adapt to a new allergen free diet.  The change was amazing, and he started gaining weight again.  I never put my normal weight back on, but I felt so much better knowing the food I was eating wasn’t going to hurt my baby (barring mistakes and carelessly read labels).

Now I’ve been Gluten Free for over two years, along with the rest of his allergens.  We’re still breast feeding and a recent blood test at 2 and a half years old has shown that he’s no longer allergic to soy, and that a whole bunch of his allergies have come down on the severity scale.  I’m now pregnant with out second child, and I know what I can do for my baby if he or she has allergies.  I can change the contents of my milk.

This all has been tremendously difficult, but extremely rewarding, but there’s something you don’t know.  If you go back and reread what I’ve written, feel free to mentally insert between each sentence that someone told me to stop breast feeding.  If we do that, we might actually come vaguely close to the amount of times somebody actually believed that it would be better for me or my baby to use formula, or just STOP nursing . . . and said it to my face.

So, forgive me if all I want to say to people who have advice for me is, “Thank you for your suggestions, but please excuse me while I ignore them” . . . but that’s the polite version.  Because I can understand why a mom would want to eat what she wanted to without having to worry about her nursing baby’s food allergies, but I CAN’T understand the choice to switch to formula just to indulge in lattes and pizza.  I can’t understand it because I know how important, how vital and irreplaceable breastfeeding is to the mother and baby.

There is NO logic behind switching from the one perfect, living and utterly changeable nourishment source to a dead and inadequate replacement during a time of stress and compromised health.  If I had followed that chorus of voices and denied my intuitive desire to continue breastfeeding, I don’t know how much worse it could have gotten.

But I know it would have been worse.  Breast milk is a supply and demand system.  The more formula introduced, the less breast milk I would produce.  My milk supply would have plummeted.  The introduction of formula into his digestive system would have irreparably altered his intestinal flora.  I was also all too aware that one of his allergies could easily be to dairy (which his latest allergy test as a toddler confirms).

So I would have been quickly losing my milk supply while trying to do damage control as he reacted to the milk-based formula.  At that point, I’m sure advice would have been to switch to soy-based formula which would not have solved any problems because he’s allergic to soy.  I’m so glad I stuck with nursing and had him tested.  I can change my “formula” to exclude his allergens and still include all the good things he needs.

What is so horrible about breast feeding?  Is it the white blood cells, the stem cells, the essential and easily digested form of DHA built for babies and toddlers, the fact that the milk changes to match the developmental stages of the child, or is it simply because boobs are icky or only for sex?  Is it the bond and love and beneficial neurological feedback that a child receives through skin to skin contact?

What is it about breast feeding that offends so many people?  Why is breast feeding seen as the problem in so many cases?  If someone can stand up and give me a rational and intuitive reason I should not breastfeed my baby, my toddler, both of them at the same time, in public, anywhere, anytime and with great joy . . . I’m waiting.

Let me hear it.

But if it’s not both rational and intuitive, it won’t work for me or my family.

And I’ll just say, “Thank you for your suggestions, but please excuse me while I ignore them.”

Oh, you bet I am.  I’ve thought about how hard yet rewarding this whole mothering journey has been.  I think about all the pratfalls we’re set up for, all the false expectations of what a mother should want, what a “good baby” is, and how to go about gestating, birthing and raising human beings . . . Instead of warm fuzzy feelings, I am overcome by the deep rumblings of a ferocious and primal womanhood which has had to fight its way past many obstacles.

I am fierce because I never doubted my ability to birth.  I’m fierce because I dared to question a routine ultrasound, and when the nurse told me refusing could lead to a dead baby, I told her to get my medical records copied so I could find another provider.  Even as a young mother, I was not going to be bullied.

I am fierce because I found myself a midwife and planned a home birth in Midwestern America, where ignorance and persecution keeps most out of hospital births under the radar.  I kept my internal flame burning as I threw up every day at work for 6 months until I took an early leave.  I kept faith and love in focus as my husband lost his job and we were forced to move to a smaller apartment.

And I survived through a home birth transfer to hospital that tore away my trust for the people who should have been supporting me most.  I survived over 50 hours of labor, the latter half an experience of dehumanization, coerced medications, genital mutilation without consent, the near loss of my newborn baby, and the scolding and condescension of the medical professionals surrounding me.  I survived the three days before I held my son for the first time.  Against pressures to do otherwise, I protected his prepuce and his beautiful, intact body.

I pumped my precious milk every 3 hours until I was ALLOWED to hold him, ALLOWED to nurse him with my own breasts, three days after I pushed him out, after he was immediately severed from me.  I survived that week while they poked and prodded and gradually unhooked him from the various life support machines.  I remember his defiant swatting at the plastic oxygen hood that masked his face and the precious smug look on his tiny face as they finally removed it.

I am fierce because I never doubted he would be well, and though the doctors were cautious, he did nothing but improve and gain weight.  And I took him home, and loved him ferociously . . . partially to make it up to him, to try to heal the wounds of our birth.

For me, those wounds included self-doubt and hatred, undeniable and heart wrenching grief, and later flashbacks and waking nightmares.  I did not value sleep as much as I valued the time I spent with him, learning his ways, listening to my deep intuitions as I should have all along.  I could not resent him, or mourn a life I used to have because I nearly lost my baby before I ever held him . . . and because a large part of me died in that hospital.

I am fierce because I began to listen to myself and my baby above all other voices.  Ignoring my intuitive voice had led me to a sham of a birth which had hurt us both.  I set my mind to researching parenting, the evolutionary psychology of birth and childrearing, and I wore my baby in slings and other soft carriers.  I nursed him on demand and coslept.  We started practicing Elimination Communication as a family.  I refused any and all vaccinations for my baby, whose immune system was flawless by design and inexorably tied to our breastfeeding relationship.  I could not and would not let my helpless child “cry it out” and lie to myself that it was for his own good, as my mother undoubtedly did to me.

I am fierce beyond belief because, even as my husband remained distant or took to uncontrolled raging fits which left holes in doors, I stood firm.  I told him that if he lay a hand in anger on my child or myself, he would know fear.  And he listened, and we talked.  I am fierce because I recognized the helplessness and fear that our birth and our situation caused in the man who was supposed to be able to protect us, and I told him that it mirrored my own pain and terror . . . and that we could weather this storm together.

I survived the cold and sometimes violent withdrawal of my husband, and I saw him open the door to hope.  I would not stand down, and I would not take no for an answer.  I did not accept that he did not, and could not, love our baby.  I weathered their bonding issues and kept on believing that they could get along and form a close bond.  I watched them play together, and saw the day my toddler cried when daddy had leave for work.  I am fiercely proud of my family.

I am proud I pushed my son out of my body of my own will and power, under threat of surgical knife.  I am fierce because I did not let the subsequent nightmares overtake my life.  I slipped many times, but I never failed to get right back up again.  I wrote, I read, and I thought and cried until I couldn’t any more, and when it was time, I beat back the demons that plagued me so that I could live my waking moments without the past intruding.

I am strong.  I am fierce, and now they think they can tell me to stop nursing my baby because he is too old?  Or because his nursing and my giving milk will harm the new child growing within me?  I have listened to the objections, and I have read my fill of research . . . but more importantly, my heart says I am healthier, happier, and more full of life and love than I have ever been.

So I will do as I please.

Because when they tell me how to parent, or what’s good for me or my babies, they do not know to whom they speak.

Am I a fierce mama?

Oh, you bet I am.

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This post was inspired and written for a blog called FierceMamas.  Please go visit and read the other posts by Fierce Mamas!

http://fiercemamas.blogspot.com/

I don’t know who to–Can’t trust anyone–Want to be by myself, left alone–and how can I make sure that–I don’t want that to happen, or this, or that other thing–

STOP.

I’m ready to get hurt again, to die, to be betrayed again–Better to be prepared, isn’t it?

STOP.  STOP.

I want . . .

YES.  Yes?

I want . . . to be . . .

I want to be worshiped like a goddess idol.

I want my husband to run his workman hands over my rounded curves and delight in me.  I want to eat exactly what I want, when I want it.  I want to be somewhere safe.  I want to play music and dance if I feel like it.  I want to wear what I WANT TO WEAR, even if it gets wet in the pool.  I want to lounge in warm water and invite the rushes through my womb.

I want to be left with my love so we can kiss and sway and dance, and do things that aren’t allowed on television.  I want an ecstatic birth!

PETA can go screw themselves because I want to luxuriate on lambswool or rich soft animal furs NAKED.  I want to allow myself to feel that beautiful, rolling, purring connection with my physicality.

I want to love being pregnant this time JUST AS MUCH or more than I did the first time around.  And I want . . . candles.  Back rubs.  Whispered devotions.

I want to open wide and give birth to my baby.  On the bed, the floor, in the pool . . . where ever.  But I WANT TO DO IT this time.

I want to be the first person to touch my baby, and I want Brad to be the second person, and Bailey the third.  I want to hold my own baby skin-to-skin and just hang on for dear life because I missed that with my first baby.

I want a healthy birth.  I want a healthy baby.  And the best way to do that, is to take care of myself, and work WITH my body . . . and enjoy the ride.

That’s what I want.

Just to enjoy it.