A letter to myself in the coming weeks

Dear Sarah,

You’re going to have a baby soon. Any day or any week. Tomorrow or a month from now, we just have to wait and see. But I’m not writing to you about that – you got this birth. You’ve done it twice; you know it sucks and is hard as hell, but you also know the baby will come, and that you and your little boy will work together to bring him earthside.

I’m writing about the days and weeks after. The days when you’re body feels wrecked from the exertion, when your hormones are slamming you up and down, when you’re up at night sweating through your sheets or making it through a visit with a friend without bursting into tears.

You’ve done this twice now, and you know your postpartum time is hard. Baby blues or whatever they want to call it. And so I’m writing to you to remind you that you’ve done it twice before, and that you survived it then and you will survive it now, even if it doesn’t feel like it when you’re in the moment. Just remember you have been here before.

Remember when Carter was born and you looked at your midwife with wide eyed panic as she packed up her bag to leave you alone with your new family. Remember holding your baby and caring for him, but wondering what you were missing because you weren’t falling in love. You were supposed to be having some baby moon but instead you were just very tired, and very sore, and humiliated that you had to have help walking to the bathroom, and concentrating on your extreme fear of what it would be like when you eventually had to take a poop. Remember crying. And crying. Waking up in the morning and crying almost before the first breath, seeing Rob look at you with concern, but being unable to explain why you are crying, just that you are. Just that the reality of waking up came with tears.

You loved your baby all along, but you did not know him yet,  though he knew you and needed you constantly. Remember how you thought, in complete surety, that you’d ruined your life. How you thought back 9 months to undo his conception and keep your cushy comfy life – life in your mid 20s in DC! Happy hour with friends! Sleep! Your old body! Sex!

And remember the moment, finally, crying in the bath, when you called your mom and said, “I need

Carter, 2 days old

you.” Remember that when you opened up and let yourself cry to your friends, they listened. Remember that when you opened up and talked to other mothers and grandmothers, they knew just what you were going through. How one surrogate mother to you said, “Oh honey, my mom used to say that crying after your baby is born is as natural as a duck going barefoot.”

And remember how after just a few weeks you started to even out. Your body was your own again, and your baby was yours too. And you got to know him in all of his chubby needy splendor, and you sat for long hours as he slept on your chest, and you knew one day that you reached what you’d been looking for – feeling at home with your new family.

And then 2 years later you did it all again. And you thought maybe it would be easier, because you were a mom now! And you knew what it was all like, and you knew what to expect! But what you didn’t expect was that on top of the rollercoasterng hormones and the physical recovery, was guilt. Guilt that you now had to divide your attention between your toddler and your baby. Guilt and jealousy that other people were doing for Carter the stuff that was YOUR job – feeding him, reading to him, taking him to the zoo. The realization that your best friend, the person with whom you spent the most time, was a 2 year old boy; and that he was suddenly almost absent from your life as you sat

in bed with this new mysterious baby and he went on with his life.

Remember how you thought, again, that you had ruined your life. That your family had been happy together, and you had disturbed it with this new baby. Remember how much you cried.

And remember, now, how it passed, too. How having a baby and toddler carried its own challenges, but your body and soul recovered from the birth, and you grew to know this blossoming precocious baby that had joined you. And remember knowing one day you’d reached what you were looking for – feeling at home with your new family.

You’re preparing for your 3^rd birth now, but you know the birth won’t be the hardest part. It will be the weeks after; the days when your hormones jump and plunge, when you’ll have to let yourself sit and rest, when life in your home will move along about you as you stay stationery with a baby in your arms. It will be the moments when you can’t put your kids to bed because you’re helping the baby or too tired to get out of the bed, the moments when everyone needs you at once and all you can do is try to take care of yourself.

But I am here to tell you that it will be ok. You will cry a lot, and that’s fine. Forgive yourself, forgive yourself, forgive yourself. Stay in bed and rest, even if it drives you insane. Read. Watch Netflix. Cry. Let people bring you food, let people take care of your children. Try to let it happen without a fight, and offer yourself kindness. Forgive yourself, you are doing great. And if all else fails, ask yourself this question -- when is the next time you will have the ability to sit in bed all day with a baby and a book? It will be a decade before you get this chance again, don't miss it! 

Know that eventually you’ll even out, you’ll recover yourself. You are a good mom. You are a GREAT mom. Your kids will make it through the transition and so will you, and you will get to know this new being together. And if you can ride the waves when this baby comes you will make it to the other side – the side where one day you’ve reached what you’re looking for – feeling at home with your new family.  

36 weeks pregnant with # 3, photo by Heather Whitten

36 weeks; photo by Heather Whitten

photo by Heather Whitten

Thoughts on the third pregnancy, and mothering without my mother...

(This is something I wanted to share, so I made a blog. Will I keep writing here? Who knows! I'll let you know if I do.)

Mothering without our Mothers

When I discovered I was pregnant with my third child, I went into a bit of a shock. I worried a lot. I worried about the age different between my other kids, who will be 5 and 7 when the baby comes; I worried about money; I worried that friends and family would think 3 kids was overboard; I worried about further delaying my re-entry in the workforce; I worried about how big our car was; I worried about how I would cultivate a winter garden; I worried about another round of stretching and birthing on my body. But all of these worries were a distraction  -- at my core, I knew my real worry, my real pain. My mother died when my 2^nd baby was 6 months old, which meant that I would have to go through this pregnancy and birth without her.

The thought of enduring a pregnancy, birth, and postpartum period without my own mother was so painful I lay awake at night wishing away the pregnancy. I did not wish for a miscarriage, but to travel back in time and prevent the conception, to stop this pain at its source. I sobbed by myself, thinking of the pep talks she would not give me, of the meals she would not cook for me, and the footrubs I would never get.

After a period of mourning I began to accept the pregnancy, to share in my family’s excitement about it, to revel in my growing belly that was beginning to tell my secret to the world. We went on a vacation to a lake and I bought a bikini, embracing the belly and giving it room to grow.  I was 13 weeks pregnant, finally feeling ready to be pregnant as my second trimester began.

That night I saw my mom in my dreams. I was grocery shopping and turned an aisle to see her there, smiling. She beckoned me over and said, “Don’t forget this,” then whispered something into my ear. I don’t know what she said, and I woke with a deep yearning for her words, but also with the incredible comfort of having seen her face.

The next day as I sat on the dock and splashed my feet at the fish, I felt wetness beneath me and looked down to see myself sitting in a puddle of my own blood. My mother in law, who is a midwife, looked at the blood with a blanched face and called it “a considerable amount,” and I assumed I was having a miscarriage. We drove 25 minutes to the nearest small town hospital, where an ultrasound showed, much to our surprise, that the fetus was viable and had a good heartbeat. I was actively bleeding in two places in my uterus, and was told that my chances of miscarrying were 50/50.

I’m not much of a mystical person, but I do believe I saw my mom in my dream the night before to prepare me for this day.  To refill me with the sense of her presence, so I could hold it close to me as a trembled in a strange hospital bed wondering if my pregnancy was over.

Photo by Jade Beall Photography

I went back to our lake cabin and waited. Waited for the blood to start again, waited to lose the baby I had only just accepted. My pooching belly was no longer a round sign of a growing baby, but a constant reminder of a pregnancy in jeopardy. I tried an air of acceptance – I’ve known many friends who have miscarried, and my role editing a birth journal has brought me across many, many stories of pregnancy loss – but statistics mean nothing when you are waiting for it to happen to you. And I came to realize, for the first time, how much I wanted this pregnancy to make it, how much I wanted this baby to keep growing and stay with me. And when my son came up to my belly and said, “Hang in there, baby,” I knew I could do it, if I had to, without my Mom.

We all need to be mothered, especially as we journey on the path of motherhood ourselves. We can only continue to nurture and love if our own vessels are being filled, if our own bodies and souls are being nourished. For some, that nourishment will come from our own mothers; for many of us, that nourishment will come from one another, from the village in which we find a home, from our partners and from our children. When my son places his hands on my belly and says, in awe, “Mom, you have two hearts beating in your body right now,” I am filled. When my daughter falls asleep to the rhythm of baby kicks under her hand, I am filled. When I lean on my friends, when we laugh and cry together, we are nourished.  We are mothered.

Photo by Jade Beall Photography