As I hold you in the darkness, I think of my doula’s words.
“Labor prepares you for motherhood.”
You won’t sleep. Neither soothing nor crying is working. I’m barely powering through. I thought at twelve months you’d be sleeping soundly. We’ve worked on it, and yet, here we are, dancing this tiresome dance again, every few nights for months now.
Those words from all those years ago finally make sense. At the time I thought nothing could compare to the challenge of your sister’s birth, but motherhood is a marathon with hills and valleys. Sometimes the hills are harder than we remember. Sometimes the challenges are cumulative in their weight.
Somehow one year has passed. I spent hours yesterday pouring through the photos. So much has changed in twelve months. You’ve grown, we’ve moved, we’ve started different jobs. And, everything is changing still.
I told a friend the other day I have trouble when I don’t know the answers for the future. I like to look down the road of life and to see what’s coming. Which is silly, really, because some of the best changes have been unseen.
A year ago, at 3PM, I pulled your wiggling body onto my chest and cried the tears of relief and happiness only birth can bring. You brought such unexpected magic. You’ve given me hope for a better future even in some of the world’s darkest days.
Motherhood, much like labor, has its rewards to counterbalance those seemingly insurmountable challenges, and when I remember to stop and appreciate the rhythm of your warm breath against my skin, I’m reminded of life’s glorious power to be all things at once.
I worried, maybe because that’s what moms do. I forgot how my love for her sister intensified with time, a cumulative effect. Instead I looked back on three years and saw all the moments condensed together into one sensation in my heart.
So, the second time around, I expected to feel it all at once. The depth, the overwhelm, the obsession. When I was greeted instead with a familiar warmth, I thought maybe I was missing out on something earth shaking.
I asked everyone with more than one kid whether the bonding was different the second time, whether it was easier to bond with their first. I felt guilty asking. I worried people would think I was suffering from postpartum depression and hadn’t bonded at all, even though, of course, there should be no shame in those struggles. But I didn’t want there to be any confusion. I loved her already, it just didn’t feel the same as I thought it should.
I came up with all kinds of hypotheses. Maybe it was the medicated birth. Perhaps it was my fault for jumping back into work so quickly or not asking for more help so I could lie in bed and stare at her. Or maybe it was just the distractions of trying to take care of so much more with two children.
What I didn’t consider was time. I’d forgotten how I’d spent every afternoon nursing her sister in bed in an effort to bond more. Or how after months of colic, I’d pulled her sister to my chest and wept because some unknown layer of myself had been cracked open and suddenly her screaming was a call to hold her even closer instead of drive me away.
All I’d initially remembered of our bonding the first time was the intensity of those first hours of motherhood, as I’d transformed through the rawness of it all. I expected to sit in our hospital suite and feel it all again in that same life changing way. However, I’d already become a mother this time. My entire being wasn’t altered as it had been with her sister. I mistook this for a difference in bonding, when really it was just a difference in myself. That particular magic only happens once.
Four months in and I finally feel as connected to M as I’d hoped I would in those first moments. I can’t get enough of her wiggles and giggles. She is already quite the talker and wants so badly to run around and play with her sister. I’ve gotten better at sitting still and being with her. The adrenaline has worn off and I’ve relaxed, for the most part, into being a mom of two. Sometimes I’m caught off guard by the enormity of getting to love another baby. Moments of happy disbelief as I realize I get to do it all again. An incredible opportunity. Another daughter to love with all my heart.
Instead of keeping a regular baby book for the girls, I’ve started compiling my written memories for them, including these posts. I’m catching up today on both three months and three years.
I’ve been trying for months to time a picture of all three of us. Someday I’ll get one where everyone is looking AND smiling!
***
Three Months
Oh, little Miriam. The more I get to know you, the more I discover your joy. You laugh and smile with such ease. You love watching your sister play with toys. You’re happiest facing out to the world. You move your body to show us how eager you are to jump off our laps and run around.
The mom guilt has been more real this time. With your sister, I only had to focus on her. Now I have you both and feel bad I don’t spend more time just sitting and holding you. But you don’t seem to mind. You love your swing and activity mat. You’re happy cuddled up against me while we sleep.
At first I tried to fight you into your own space at night, but I’ve decided to embrace the closeness because we often don’t get that same time when the sun is out. Still, I try my best to give you little moments throughout the day. Maybe that’s why you wake up at 5AM, so we get to be alone together. Thank goodness you seem so content. Getting to know you is a gift.
Three months, already.
***
Three Years (a couple months late)
One of the best afternoons of my life was also one of the simplest. A few weeks before M arrived, E and I went to the park with Grandma. It was an unusually warm January day and while Grandma basked in the sun, E and I went looking for worms in the swollen creek.
We’d just finished one of the biggest rain storms in recent memory and everything was alive and flowing. Instead of worrying about what needed to happen next, I allowed time to stretch endlessly before us. We turned over every rock we could find, we poked our sticks into the creek bed, and we laughed. She held my hand and I did my best to squat with my pregnant belly beside her, again and again.
After months of working five days a week, this was exactly the afternoon I needed. Weekends while working were filled with to-do’s and I’d missed those days where we just spent time together, exploring and seeing the world through new eyes. As we drove home from the park, I cried bittersweet tears because I knew it was the last time we’d have those moments alone, before her sister arrived. Sure, we’d still have our solo dates, but life would never be exactly the same as it was in that moment, just the two of us.
Three years old has been a flurry of moments, some incredibly intense, others undeniably sweet. From being told “You’re the greatest, greatest mommy!” to what seems like mere minutes later receiving angry commands to go my room, I can attest the term “threenager” isn’t entirely in jest. Still, my love for her only grows as she’s better able to articulate her thoughts and I get to know her even better each day.
Second pregnancies are different. Time no longer stands still. Best intentions of maternity pictures and quiet meditation take a backseat to jobs, and housework, and taking care of big sissy.
I knew she’d come at 38 weeks, but still it caught me by surprise. I never got to all those things on my list. All that contemplation and connection. Instead, it was Friday night and we went to dinner at a friend’s house and I announced to everyone I was done. Wishful thinking, I thought.
But, sure enough, that night the cramps turned into contractions and I slept as well as I could between each one, hopeful when they were 6 minutes apart but remembering the nights of prodromal labor with her sister. And, just the same, daylight came and they tapered out. Another night, the same. Exhausted but excited. Another day spread out and then a third night, more intense. I could no longer sleep between. I howled into the night, “Bring me my baby,” a voice primal and haunting escaping from my lips.
Alex got up at 3AM to check on me. He must have sensed it was time or heard my wails. We called Grandma and when she arrived the contractions were 3 to 5 minutes apart, strong enough to make me believe maybe we wouldn’t have to wait another night. I cried in the triage room when they admitted me. This was real. Somehow it had all flown by and I was having a baby. A BABY. How was it not real, already?
Bright lights and 30 minutes of fetal monitoring left me twisting back in forth in the hospital bed. “Your baby will be here soon, Mama,” the nurse assured me, her Spanish accent so maternal I wanted to melt into her arms. I needed to get up and move around. I was ready.
As the light began to creep into the sky, I felt my contractions spreading back out. I was too late. I couldn’t do another day and night. I needed my old friend, Pitocin, but now the memory of induced contractions flooded back and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it again. I had told myself if this birth was like Eloise’s I would do it differently. Not because I regretted the way I’d done it before, but because I’d already done it.
I asked for an epidural knowing Pitocin was next.
When the doctor came in, he thought I was the surrogate for my dad and my husband, who were with me in the room. We laughed. Exactly the moment comedic relief was needed.
I was more afraid of an epidural than the pain, but I was also so very, very tired. I held my breath and trusted it was an experience I needed. I let myself be less than perfect because perfect in my mind was facing the pain head on. After all, I’d done it the other way before. I should be able to do it again, but maybe that’s exactly why I didn’t. I needed to make time stand still, the super power I’d always wanted as a child. A tiny break before the marathon of newborn parenting.
I may have cried a little as the epidural was administered, but soon my legs were fuzzy and I was able to relax. We’re too hard on ourselves as women, I’ve decided. The midwife who delivered Eloise came on duty and we chatted about my choice. She was so supportive, her curiosity about my experience comforting, as she wanted to hear the difference between an epidural birth and a natural one, having opted to go natural for her one and only childbirth. Knowing she would deliver Miriam was everything I needed. It was the natural balance to my choice.
For the next 7 hours, I rested and visited with family. It was somehow anti-climatic to lie and wait for the baby to arrive, unlike the hours of hard work I put in with Eloise. Still, there was comfort in the ability to let go and just let it happen. I imagined my body opening. I went crazy unable to move my legs. Finally, the epidural started to wear off just as I hit the wall of transition. I wailed and moaned and sent the anesthesiologist running down the hall with needles to fix things. Numb again, I stopped trying to harass my legs back to life and finally accepted my passive state.
When it was time to push, she was out in just three contractions. So much peace in her exit. The midwife had me hold my own legs and the muscle memory of pushing came back easily. No tearing, no pain. Just a baby. As her head emerged, they had me sit up to look. I pulled her onto my own chest. My little act of agency in such a passive state. A gift from my kind midwife, knowing I needed a little more.
A warm, wet baby on my chest. Wiggling and real. My baby. Born on a rainy afternoon in February without screams or profanity, just ease and grace. Tears again. Loving disbelief on my husband’s face. Eloise was the first besides us to meet her. I had thought we’d wait until we went upstairs to recover, but my husband marched her in and I pulled her into bed with me. Another moment I didn’t know I needed. Our little family of four finally complete.
Two girls, my girls. Miriam Grace, the missing piece of our puzzle, teaching me on day one to be present instead of “perfect,” to make time stand still, again, to let her enter the world in peace.
One of my two favorite pictures in existence. The other, our first picture of Eloise.
It’s 4AM. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to bed so early. The words are back and it’s time to write. I owe baby M at least one reflection on my pregnancy.
I tried in the beginning to write, but it was too hard. I felt so sick. Then there were all the uncertainties and school started again and time flew.
Now, 37 weeks, 3 days. The exact point where labor began with her big sister.
It’s not time yet, but things are getting real.
At this point with E, it was all about the future. I dreamed about our adventures to come. I was ready.
With M, it’s about the present. I haven’t had the luxury of so much time. I haven’t laid awake talking to her in the middle of the night. Instead, I’ve worked and taken care of her sister and tried to take care of myself. I’ve folded all her clothes and gotten all the gear ready. I’ve done my best to prepare E for what’s to come. But, still, I haven’t figured out how to slow down and be fully present.
There have been moments. Like when we got to see her face by surprise during a growth scan. Her lips and expressions somehow mirroring her big sister’s. I cried and she was real. Of course, I feel her all the time. Her little knees and feet and elbows skimming across the right side of my belly, her body head down but turned toward my right. The day we found out she was a girl was surreal. Sisters. Of course, I’d thought she was a boy because of how sick I’d felt all summer, different than with her big sister.
Everything has been different. At our first doctor’s appointment we learned her due date was way off and held our breath for two weeks until we could return again to find a heartbeat. Then we discovered a possible challenge with her placenta. So far everything has been alright, which has taught me to take a google search of any diagnosis with a grain of salt. Mix in an extra crazy world and wow, this baby is brave.
Since the beginning, I’ve told her it’s by the grace of God she joins us. We hadn’t planned so soon, but still she’s a wished-for child. Two sentiments reflected perfectly in her name, or at least in the name we hold for her until our eyes meet and we know for sure.
I worried, maybe because that’s what moms do. I forgot how my love for her sister intensified with time, a cumulative effect. Instead I looked back on three years and saw all the moments condensed together into one sensation in my heart.
Oh, little Miriam. The more I get to know you, the more I discover your joy. You laugh and smile with such ease. You love watching your sister play with toys. You’re happiest facing out to the world. You move your body to show us how eager you are to jump off our laps and run around.
Leap of Mama 