Muscle Tees

I'm going to bust you up!

Just, kidding! I love you!

baby in the bath

sleeping on a 12-hour car ride

I take it hungrily at odd angles, my head bobbing like a newborn's until it sinks drowsily to the nearest surface--Jude's carseat or the hard, grey plastic of the car door, my back shlumped over, the window hot and sweaty on my face.

I wake up to moments of flat, scrubby land, passing in whirls of browns and muted greens, and then fall helplessly back.

Would that I could slip this sleep into a hip flask, take hits throughout the day when the lack hits like a hot flash, or long guzzling draughts in the still hours of the night when my ears strain into the darkness for quiet cries, my breasts hot and full of milk, waiting for him to drain them as if from an aquifer, my breasts like porous stone.

I awake with red sweaty lines across my face, drooling, drunk on the stuff.

The Sea Change

Jude is a month old today. In 15 minutes, actually. This does not seem possible because it doesn't feel like I have had a month's worth of sleep. Maybe a few weeks worth, but not a month. Unfortunately, I have never handled lack of sleep very well. I behave like I did as a pre-teen who stayed up too late at a sleepover. My parents can attest to the seething storm of crankiness I always was the next day. The years have only made me worse. Despite the grogginess of the new era, we are delighted by our little man. Sometimes I still get weepy when I look at him. He's so beautiful.

After a month of convalescing, I'm starting to feel my body fall back into equilibrium. For weeks after Jude's birth it felt like I was inhabiting a stranger's body. My suddenly heavy and pendulous breasts, tender and shockingly practical. My Grinch-like belly, saggy after being taut and teeming with life. My lower region an alien landscape of a body pulling back together again. And my emotions, ah, my emotions. More stable. The violence of birth on the body was a sudden sea-change that left me sputtering in the wake. Luckily, the smaller, more delicate body that emerged, his unnerving vulnerability, continues to pull a veil over the former pain.

My mother left today. After leaving a message for Jude on the video camera, promising to think of him every day, she drove away. I stood on our front lawn sniffling under the blaring sun and waved until I couldn't see her anymore. For two weeks she has taken care of the three of us: washed and folded our clothes, changed innumeral diapers, bought groceries, made us delectable food, cleaned our house, scrubbed our oven, watched Jude while I napped, driven me on small excursions, picked up every thing I have accidentally dropped, promised me that it is normal for a baby to do x or y, reassured me over and over I would heal, and kept me company while we have starred googlie-eyed at my small boy for hours on end. As I am newly learning, there is nothing like the love of a mother or father. As I have watched her hold and cuddle Jude, I can see her in my mind's eye twenty-seven years ago, cuddling a little Emily and I know I have been loved every moment of my life. After we visited Grandma and Grandpa T today, I had the same feeling, imagining them years ago cuddling a little Jan. My grandpa walked around the room with Jude in his hands and said over and over, "How special...how special."

And so it goes.

Once she left, I shuffled back into our apartment and held Jude for a long time. After that, I put him into the sling she made, finished the laundry she started and pulled out leftovers from last night's dinner.

I miss her.

The Gory Details

I'm alive. Sore. In constant need of a plastic doughnut under toosh, but alive and getting better every day. I thought I would give a brief description of Jude's birth. You've been forwarned.

On Friday morning (June 26th) at about 2:00 AM, my water broke. I heard the pop. Like a balloon popping in another room. And then there was water everywhere. Contractions (that start as brutal menstral cramps and turn into leviathan waves of pressure and pain) began in earnest shortly thereafter. I woke Mike up and he promptly turned on rainbow relaxation (a self-hypnosis hypnobirthing cd) for me and began making us some eggs and raspberries so that we would have energy for the night ahead. I like to think about the sound of him cooking up a storm in the other room while I was imagining myself floating on a purple mist of relaxation. I called my mom and then my midwife, who said to wait until they were 2-3 minutes apart for 2-3 hours before heading to the hospital. For four hours I closed my eyes in bed and in the bathtub and tried to breathe through the contractions while Mike variously held my hand, did laundry, and prepared a hospital bag (we were expecting to have another week to get ready). At about 6:00 AM we decided to go into the hospital.

When we went out to the car, the small crack in our windshield had spread across the whole pane. In retrospect, we've wondered if the barometric pressure change that caused the crack to widen also caused my water to break.

Mike raced to the hospital, going over 90 mph, not because I was that close, but because this would be one of the few times in his life where he could justify speeding. We made it in one piece and checked into the hospital. They checked me when we got there and said that my water had not broken, that I was only dialated to 3 cm and that they might send us home. My heart sunk. I was so sure I would be at 7 cm at least. They decided to watch us and over two hours I dialated to 5 cm and they decided to keep me. They told me it would take about 1 hour per cm. This fact horrified me as the contrations were incredibly painful by this point and I couldn't imagine being at it for another 5 hours.

About one hour later my midwife showed up and after watching me, declared I was at least at a 9. The nurses had just checked me at a 6, but she was convinced. Perhaps it was her positive energy, but she checked me and, amazingly, blessedly, I was at a 9. The contractions were very painful at this point and I may or may not have been screaming. She helped me into some alternate birthing positions and she and Mike put some counter-pressure on my hips and back, which changed my world and made the pain such that I could breathe through it. Soon thereafter I started pushing. I pushed and pushed and he didn't seem to be making any progress. Every push I expected to see some results, but I was just told to push more. I was shaking and screaming. Apparently Jude had been posterior and was turning himself as he went through the birth canal. This explained the back labor. A few minutes into pushing, the midwife noticed that my water was bulging out and then it broke. Again. Apparently my water broke in stages. After an hour of pushing (Mike wiping the sweat from my forehead and telling me how proud he was of me, holding my hand), Jude finally came through. Surreal. At the last moments, I could see his little head full of dark brown hair coming through, and then he was there, naked and screaming on my belly. So small.

Although labor was harder and longer than I had anticipated, and recovery has been harder and longer than I had anticipated, holding our child, holding his downy hand, looking into his roving blue eyes, is beyond joy.

This morning he lay across my belly, nursing, his long, smooth arm draped across my body and it was a sweetness beyond compare.

Sweet Chaos

It seems appropriate that my current planner ends at the close of this month. Following June '09 there are only two pages for notes and then the blue, plastic cover. Fin. End calendar. Enter baby. End calendar. Enter paradigm shift, embrace unknown, introduce unquantifiable entity. Baby.

I vacillate between excitement to meet him, to leap into the beautiful chaos of tiny hands and tender fragility and, on the other hand, anxiety about not being able to plan, to jot down dates and follow the predictable cycle of my life thus far.

A few nights ago, Mike and I were on our evening walk around the block when he said, "It's odd to think that years from now we'll look back on our time here and feel nostalgic about our walks." On this particular night the air felt balmy and cooling after the heat of the day, the mountains covered in lush verdure, the falling sun streaming through the clouds. In the distance we could see Utah lake shimmering as we rounded our last corner. Is it possible to feel nostalgic in the moment? To feel simultaneously the sharp sweetness and the ache and tug of its loss with the fall of each step?

I've had anxiety about losing this--the evening walk. The green mountains. The simplicity of Mike and I walking side by side, hand in hand, talking quietly around our block. After a particularly difficult day yesterday when a well-laid plan slipped away, when baby was labeled a "complication," Mike took my face in his hands and said, "It will only get better. He will only make this better."

As I sit here feeling our baby move in my belly, I feel ready to leap into sweet chaos.

Mystery

He woke me at six o'clock this morning with flips like a fish in a small bowl. I imagine a sleek, silver tail suddenly startled and darting. I roll over in the soft morning light and place my hands over my bowl belly, feel him graze the smooth surface and slink below. Mer-child. How to measure my body in fathoms, to think of him slowly settling in a small sea.

my belleh: 28 weeks

Welcome to the animal kingdom

Watching Planet Earth a few weeks ago, I felt a strange kinship with the elephants. Especially the pregnant one whose swelling belly brushed the dusty ground. The labor of walking, of carrying. As my body stretches to accommodate life, I'm amazed at the animal in me. The taut, hard belly burgeoning from my frame; the swelling breasts; the rib cage that aches its growing; the fleet kicks of life pushing the body's boundary. How strange to feel like a mammal, to join the kingdom, to relate to the tusked, gray body drooping to earth.

Crane Kick

Last night after dinner, Mike and I were sitting on our couch watching LOST, Mike's hand placed over my swelling belly. For weeks now I have grabbed Mike's hand to feel the baby move, only for the babe to settle back into inactivity after a single round-house kick ("Take that, mom! Wham!"). Mike would place hand over belly button, feeling, waiting. And nothing. I'm not sure what regimen that kid is on, but he flutters constantly and then gives me a swift, fetus-sized Karate Kid "crane kick." He focuses all of his energy on that single forceful movement and then lapses back into meditation and repose. Yoga? Yota? Last night, however, Mike finally felt the baby kick, tiny foot to body-sized hand. It was final, astonishing proof that my swelling body is hiding a growing son, a wriggling, fluttering, baby boy. No Rorschach ink-blot test that was the ultrasound ("Do you see his face there?" "Uh...." "ope...therewenthislegs!!!"), no beating moniter suggesting a heart within, but a physical connection, son to father, through a thin boundary of skin.

Ultrasound Results:

IT'S A BOY! (Chinese calendar wins). With little fingers, little feet, a little beating heart, little bones, a little nose. We saw them. Even his kidneys. His lips.

He waved at us. Squirmed. And then kicked at us for being so invasive. Can't a little man-fetus have some privacy, for the love?

Like Hummingbird Wings

The week before Christmas found Mike and I in a small clinic. The woman standing over me slathers cold gel over my belly and then firmly presses what looks like a child's microphone into my abdomen. Through the crackling speaker we hear the slow, strong drum of my own heart as the microphone moves over and across, then, suddenly, the very small and very fast swooshes of a heart beating like hummingbird wings. A heart so small I can hardly imagine chambers and valves. In a body so small I can hardly imagine the fragility of the translucent bones.

For 15 weeks now I have been growing a human--bones blossoming--under the thin veil of my skin. A super-human power. Superman can fly, but I, I build pea-sized kidneys in my sleep.

For the record, Mike thinks it's a boy. The Chinese calendar said so. So he has been practicing his name in careful, curving script.