Glory Ho

Dear Scarlett,

Everything is in terms of you now. As I watch Molly Ringwald present an Oscar, I wonder: What celebrities will inadvertently influence your style? As I watch what’s happening in Haiti, I ask: How and when do we explain this to you? When we tell you about your first year of life, when I birthed you at the Mountain Midwifery center and we were happy about the medical marijuana laws and we were both unemployed and the furnace quit and you were sick for 10 days and we sometimes sang Danny’s Song at breakfast, will you think we were poor hippies? You might. But if that doesn’t do it, Daddy’s organization of the God brunch (or Brunch#42, as he calls it, in honor of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), so we can figure out what to say when you ask where people go when they die, will. Then again, maybe you won’t even know or care what a hippie is. Maybe it will have been too long ago.

But there, I go, thinking too far ahead again.

When Mommy lived in the UK in 1995, nearly fifteen years before you were born, Grammy sent her a lot of care packages. (Grammy’s very good at stuff like this). From Twizzlers to Tootsie Pops and TJMaxx finds to Dear Abby gems, those boxes were brimming with inspiration and instant gratification.  In one package, she’d cut out a comic strip called Family Circus from the newspaper. (I guess we’ll have to go to the museum and look at a comic strip sometime) In the comic strip, Dolly shares this bit of wisdom with her brother, Jeffy. She says: “Yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future and today is a GIFT. That’s why it’s called the present.”

Sometimes its hard for Mommy to focus on the present because she’s too busy worrying about the future. I hope that somehow, someday, we can teach you that delicate balance.

But back to your babyhood.

Your first four months were like night after night of seeing the Blue Mosque for the first time. Every time we held, rocked and nursed you, we were amazed by your perfection and very existence. “Oh my God, look,” we’d say, to each other, taking our 72nd picture. Like the Blue Mosque on those breezy spring nights in Istanbul, it was hard to believe you were real. Back then you were untouchable. Mysterious. So breakable, it seemed.

Then on December 21st, you giggled. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. And as the new you slowly came into view, a baby with deeper dimples  her wrists, a much stronger grip and far more curiosity emerged. We left  the mystery of the mosque and discovered the familiar rhythm of parenthood. We figured out just how you roll.

In January, it was from your stomach to your back. And on February 16th (but who’s keeping track) it was sleeping to the tune of all night long. Yep. Lionel Richie style. Twelve hours. By March, you were sitting up, raking cheerios across the counter, occasionally letting bits of banana and avocado into your mouth, and drinking more milk than mommy could supply.  And slowly, ever so slowly, olive green and bamboo brown began peeking through the slate blue in your eyes. Excellent, we thought. You’re actually our baby.

Yet still, there are times when I look at you as if I just realized that you are my daughter. It happens at night. After I tell you what the brown bear sees, after I sing a lonesome Bluegrass lullabye, after I talk about a dish that ran away with a spoon, I begin Someday, a tender story that reaches far into your future. Right then, my “soul rushes up to the deck of my body” and water splashes from my sides.

Scarlett, oh Scarlett. I love watching your hands open and close as if you’ve been waterskiing all weekend. I love how you shriek with joy as if there’s a birdhouse in your soul. I love how you throw one arm around my neck when I carry you around the house. I love how you burrow into my shoulder every morning. And I love how you keep me in the present moment, forever reminding me that today, this moment with you, is a gift.

Love,
Mommy

November was a hard month for us. Because Scarlett, dear, you are a puzzle and sometimes Daddy and I don’t feel like we even have all the pieces, let alone know where to put them. But when you started crying inconsolably every day around 5:30, we knew it was time to trash the Dr. Sears book and start taking charge of our schedule. So we read the Baby Whisperer and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and we made it rain in your room and broke in the crib and plugged in the monitor and bought a couple dozen pacifiers and wrote it all down in your 1000 Days Journal. We rocked and sang and swayed together. Day by day. We just took it day by day.

Everyone kept telling me to follow my instincts but I gotta tell ya, my instincts and I have always had a complicated relationship. We’re just such different animals. I’m looking for all this approval and feedback, while my instincts are always insisting on this pesky independence. It’s a drag.

And then one day, I took you to the Sheridan DMV to get Daddy’s Volvo plates. Remember? It was the same day we pulled over to nurse in the McDonalds parking lot and the same day I drug you into Burlington Coat Factory to find socks that would stay on your feet. And as the cart rolled like a train across the parking lots toward the filth of low-income Colorado, your eyes seemed to outgrow your face as they looked up at me with innocence and fear and confusion. But I was scared, too. I realized that you would always be looking up at me for the answers and what was i going to do when i didn’t know them?

Ann LaMott says that motherhood is a scary business and if you’re not careful, you can trip off into this Edgar Allan Poe feeling of otherness. She’s pretty spot-on with that. Ann also says to ask people for help. I have. I do. But it turns out there’s a lot going on inside my head. Gender roles and self-loathing and ego monsters and more guilt than I’ever witnessed in one of life’s little intersections.

One morning as you stared into my soul, I reached for a link. You know, the blessings from my baby shower. This one was from Eva. It said: “Andrea, may you come to know that every choice you make with love, as a parent, is completely perfect.” And I kissed your little eyebrows and I knew it would be okay.

Then, that first weekend in November, your Great Grandma Enright passed away and Mommy really had to pull it together.

After crying into my robe the morning Grammy called, I knew that I had to go back with you in my arms. To beam new life into the stillness of death. So I carried you in your sling and nursed you through the take-off and landing and put you under my arm like a happy little basketball to meet Papa at the gate.

One day I will tell you about the farm where he grew up. About the green glass chalice full of mail and the phases of the moon on the Whiteside County Bank calendar. How Papa’s baby picture was the only photo I ever saw on Great Grandma’s dresser. How she always knew the White Sox line up by heart. Sometime, I will tell you about Great Grandma Enright’s mother, Mae Gainey and how she died just a month after giving birth to her only daughter. How Great Grandma grew up without a mom. And when I do, I hope that you will find it hard to imagine life without me.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Scarlett,

Every day you drink my breastmilk and your such a good eater. I want to look down and say: Augustus! Save some for later! But you keep on sucking and slurping it up. It’s this sweet, warm, magic substance that has everything you need to grow—you’d think the Oompa Loompa’s had a hand in the whole thing.

When I come into the room, you find me. Your eyes track me, your neck cranes to see me. They don’t exactly trace me in a smooth line, but rather, jump and dart like someone who’s had a little too much rum. Daddy says the hierarchy goes like this: Mommy, fan, him.

Sometimes the wise women in my life, the ones who embraced you in my womb, come over to witness your little life taking shape. They inhale the smell of your little baby head and breathe that sweet goodness out into the world as though they’ve been given a whole tank of oxygen.

Every week, we go to Baby and Me with the big kids and you fall asleep on my shoulder, your arms flipped over your head. We sing Mr. Noah Had a Boat to the tune of Old McDonald. Everyone says you are “petite” and just such a pretty baby. Mommy learns new words like “tummy time” and “acid reflux” and realizes that no one has figured out a graceful way to carry the carseat.

And speaking of the car seat, It is clear that you are not yet friends with it yet. So I reach my  arm around and rock the bucket and sing and pump the breaks at the corner of Iowa and Logan and turn on George Strait or Amy Correia. And sometimes its in the Old Navy dressing room where you lose it, just as I’m trying to find a pear of jeans that fit, and other times it is in that stop-light-strewn stretch between City Floral and Compass Bank and then there was that time in the Walgreens parking lot when I was trying desperately to find the correct dosage for infant tylenol as you cried and cried, ripping open the box only to find that they tell you to consult a doctor for anyone under six months.

Panic? Well, yes, there’s been a tiny bit of panic. And projectile vomit.  And oh when the poop slides up your back–that’s a doozy of a day. But there are moments of celebration, too. Like the moment you first grinned at me or the day I found out that Jimmy Johns had a drive-through or the moment Daddy and I realized that the song Baby Girl had a whole new meaning.

And sprinkled like sugar are the sweet secrets just between us. I tell you how much I love you and show you the window at Five Green Boxes and put on your little leg warmers and sing Sweet Child of Mine to you. . .you and your Sponge Bob Square Face and the little bald spot at the back of your head and the way your fingers feel soft like sushi and the relief in your art-pencil-sketched eyes when I lift you into my arms.

Love,
Mommy

We’re still in shock I think. I mean, we don’t have time to think, we just do: Dab, hold, feed, pat, soothe, change, snap, wipe. It’s all just a series of tasks. Like an old game of pin the tail on the donkey, we’re blindfolded and we keep pinning bits of this and that to the wall, entirely afraid of stepping back far enough to see the big picture. That we have a baby. A real, live, kicking, cooing baby. And she’s staying.

We do a lot of staring, too. We stare at each other and stare at her and then stare at each other again and realize that we created this being. A creature who sometimes sounds like a little gremlin and other times more like a pigeon, and often looks like a little shepherd in a nativity play–her cream-colored swaddle around her, hands just barely visible, calm, watching her new flock of peeps.

Have I told you about her arms? On the changing table, she’s a classic music conductor, her arms jerking out and in and over and through, excited for the symphony of life. When she is placed in the bath, she is a storyteller, eyes wide and arms straight out as if she is describing a ghost and a really big fish in one breath. When interrupted from sleep, she is a dancer, arms floating up through the air—she floats, she flits, she fleetly flees, she flies.

Our favorite move is the Scarlett Stretch. After being released from her swaddle, her arms go up and over her head, her feet scrunch up toward her stomach in a big curl and her head tilts to the side, lips in a pout, eyebrows up as if to say: Why thank you, Jeeves, I’m ready for my breakfast now.

She love her sling. Babywearing is all the rage these days, you know. Its what all the third world countries do. It keeps her close to Me, feeling safe and secure. It allows Mommy to be all she can be in a world that honors multi-tasking. One day I will tell her all about it and by then, surely, they will have found evidence which proves that wearing your baby causes cancer.

I touch her head a lot. When my brother Philip was born, my Mom explained to my six year old self that he had a “soft spot” on his head–that all babies did. I was fascinated by this. Now I touch Scarlett’s soft spot, smoothing down her strands of hair. I think I am comforting her, but perhaps I am just comforting myself.

Birth was exhausting, but finite. Motherhood is forever. What if I’m not good at it? What if my instincts don’t show up? What if Scarlett can tell?

But I am surrounded by souls who support me every step of the way.

At my baby shower, Eva had the idea to create a paper chain for the nursery. Each attendee was to write a blessing, a piece of advice or a wish for my birth and my baby on a link of the chain. Everyone once in a while, I read one. Today’s said this: “If you ever doubt your ability as a mother, just know that you were chosen, before the beginning of time, to be this child’s mother. And you ARE good at it.” Whoever that was, thank you.

Dear Scarlett,

When you rose to meet me, you looked like a little old woman and a little baby bird at the same time, an old, wild soul, all scrunched up and sweet and full of ethereal wisdom, yet completely pure. There were no tears or screams, just awe and confusion on your pinker-than-expected skin. I felt every moment. Mommy was very tired and Daddy held you in his arms. Then we gave you a bath.

That first month of your life, I sat on the porch swing in my purple ruffles and sang Hush Little Baby, Old Shep and Jolly Playmates to you. I cried with confusion, exhaustion and happiness. I called Grandma Great. I called Grammy. I called Aunti Maury. I called Erin. They all told me it would be okay.

Thanks to Facebook, everyone knew about you right away. When I announced your birth, you got 57 comments and 27 likes all that first day.

I knew how to hold you, and I knew how to change your diaper and feed you. But I was still nervous a lot. I wasafraid that I will change you. You are so pure, so untouched, sun has never burned your skin. . .words have never bruised your emotions. . .guilt has never dented your conscience.

Daddy kept reading Dr. Sears’ Baby Book. We learned to shoot saline up your nose and take your temperature and with all this H1N1 stuff, Daddy got the flu and had to stay and Nonna and Papa’s for a couple days. One night, you wouldn’t stop crying. . .we were so scared, so we swaddled you and rocked you and eventually I cried with you. It was all I could think to do.

Your favorite activities were hanging out on my shoulder and peeing just as I slide off your diaper. You are a truly beautiful baby. Everyone says so. Then people say how they say that to everyone, but this time they mean it. Even the girls at Mountain Midwifery said you were beautiful. And they see a lot of babies.

On the third morning of your life, my friend Amy called from New York. We hadn’t talked in several months. Sometimes, relationships are complicated. She wanted to know all about you. Someday I’ll take you to New York City to see her. We’ll sing the TMBG song and meet my blog friend, Frances and we’ll go to a poetry reading.

But first, we must master breastfeeding.

Caitlin, the blond nurse with pixie features and Nordic skin from Mountain Midwifery came to see you last week. I was nervous for the dirty house, but Daddy said if our floors were too clean, well that wouldn’t paint us as very good parents, would it? She measured you and looked around and called you Madame and you loved every minute. She also found my Linea Negra, the faint line down my middle, a trace of you, still in my belly. It just means “black line” in Latin, but Caitlin made it sound exotic and beautiful. And to me, it was.

Do you remember living in my belly? When your sleep grins shine through, what are you smiling about? Do you hear Julie Delpy singing that waltz? Do you taste creme brulee? Do you dream about your previous life as a whirling dervish or a deep sea fisherman?

Do you like us?

Love, Mommy

I’m not sure how to tell you this, but movies are kind of a big deal.

As I wiled away life during pregnancy, I couldn’t help but think of every baby reference across my history of couchtime. They’d just come to me. I’d be shuffling my belly from the bedroom to the bathroom and remember Mrs. Mott and that turtle trimmed nursery. When discussing names, I wanted someone to suggest “baby fish mouth” and how it was sweeping the nation.  When Michael and I exposed our utter fear about how life might e after baby, I remembered how Holly Hunter reminded Nicholas Cage that “Evrythang’s CHAEEnged.” At some point in my birth, I pictured someone yelling: But I dont know nothin’ about birthin’ babies! And afterwards, for a random stranger to say, a la Frances MacDormand that Scarlett was:  ”an angel straight from heaven”. But most of all, when people would ask how it felt to have a baby inside my stomach, I wanted to respond: “You know in alien, when that dude was in that guy’s stomach? It kinda feels like that.”

So I was pretty thrilled when I found a Molly Ringwald onzie at Rock the Cradle in the Baker District. Despite me knowing that this purchase was a little too. . .something. . .I bought it and looked forward to my baby being pretty in pink. And when John Hughs died earlier this summer, that onzie became a tribute to the 80s director who taught me more about birth control than birth.

We’ll be birthing our baby at Mountain Midwifery–at least, thats the plan.  It’s a stucco building complex called Plaza de Medicos that was probably once an apartment complex. All the curve-topped cottage doors open to the outside. There’s a courtyard for fresh air and it has two stories with a balcony along the top. I like the feel of it. It’s a little retro, very peach , nine minutes from our house and just a block from Swedish Hospital.

When we attended the orientation more than six months ago, Scarlett was just a little lime. There’d been no kicking, no ultrasound and no belly yet. I’d hardly felt pregnant. But I liked the place immediately. Its much more home than hospital. Much more bedroom than bedpan. There’s no nurse station. It has more birthing chairs than wheelchairs. Appointments with the midwives (there are eight) often last a full hour. Herbs are on sale. Birthing pools are available. They can administer oxygen, IVs and use a handheld doppler fetal monitor. They do not perform epesiotomies.

I didn’t start out pining for a birth center and I am still, and I stress, in no way, anti-hospital. I just want to be an independent thinker. I first realized that I had a choice when I saw The Business of Being Born, a documentary which interlaces personal home birth stories with historical, political and scientific insights and statistics about the current maternity system and how American health care deals with pregnancy and birth. The film asks the question: Should most births be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potentially catastrophic medical emergency?

Was the film left? Yes. And I kept this in mind during my four viewings (once at the festival, once on my own, once with my husband and once with my Mom). I was careful to note the editing, the emotional appeal and the anti-hospital sentiment. It went a little too far. Bias was abound. Yet I came away with a clear goal: That wherever I birthed, I wanted a) it to be as natural and fearless as possible. b) the decisions for medical intervention such as a c-section, vacuum, pitocin or membrane rupture to be based on my specific situation, not the worst-case scenario and c) to honor the process of birth.

To further my study, I’d also begun reading Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, which details birth stories from The Farm, a commune in Tennessee where hundreds of babies are born without epidurals, c-sections, vacuums, forceps or epesiotomies every year. I looked into the various birthing classes. . .The Bradley Method, Birthing from Within and Hypnobabies. And because the birth center took almost every kind of insurance except mine (Kaiser), I had a lot of my early appointments with a traditional OB-GYN. I talked to moms who’d birthed at the center and people who’d gone the traditional route. I visited a midwifery wing in a hospital, realizing this was also an option. I spoke with a doula or two.

The more I learned, the more I realized how Hollywood, media and marketing had been misleading me for decades. Images of screaming, swearing women had led me to believe that birthing required a horizontal position, unspeakable pain and a hospital setting. Not to mention a lot of panic. Turns out birthing is rarely a medical emergency, it seldom happens all that fast and being on your back is not an optimum position for giving birth.

This was great news, but I had a bigger problem. I *was* a natural panicker. An overreactor. And this did not bode well for my birth. My mother had us all naturally. . .and despite the fact that deep down, she knew that no one would ever use the word “tough” to describe me, she encouraged me to do the same. She believed. Blindly, but she believed. My husband, well, he knew how I rolled. I may bitch a lot along the way, but I was typically brave enough to dive in and once there, too determined to quit.

Why is all this important? Because the midwifery center doesn’t administer epidurals. Just another factor in our decision.

As my pregnancy continues, and I hear more about the hospital experience and I spend more and more time at the birth center for breastfeeding advice, hypnobabies classes and belly checks, I felt better and better about our decision. The center is was not anti-hospital or even anti-Western medicine. They are simply pro-healthy. They empower you to educate yourself and work together with your body and your baby for a calm, fearless birth.

At Mountain Midwifery, I knew I wouldn’t have to fight off a pitocin-happy nurse, refuse unnecessary antibiotics, beg to be given food and drink or be tempted to get an epidural. The midwives at Mountain Midwifery are educated, certified and experienced; they are kind, patient and wise. They respect my birth plan and base their decisions on my scenario alone. Tracy Ryan, the center’s founder, has helped birth over 500 babies. I feel safe there. I trust those midwives to make the right decision, whether it’s time to push, time to head to the hospital for a c-section or time to wait.

Of course, as some people like to comment: “Sure, I had a birth plan, too. . .and then it all went out the window.” Yep, I know everything could change in an instant. I could “risk-out”. There are several situations where the birth center immediately defers to a hospital–meconium in the amniotic fluid is one example. And I’m trying to prepare for that. Because something else they teach you at Mountain Midwifery is the idea of acceptance. Everyone should have a birth plan. But as my body “transports a soul from one dimension to another,” (as described by my husband), it may have other ideas. All I can do is honor the process and hope to be as present as possible.

When I first saw the difference in the reaction of my pregnancy by someone who has children and someone who doesn’t have children. (Month Three)

When we knew for sure, the name of our baby girl. (Month Three)

When I learned how the baby breathes amniotic fluid throughout gestation and then, through some miracle of a valve and a heart and a couple lungs, can breathe air upon entering this world. (Month Four)

When I started missing the alcohol. (Month Five)

When my jeans didn’t fit anymore. (Month Six)

When people finally knew I was pregnant and not just fat, so I could stop touching my stomach in the elevator. (Month Six)

When Michael asked me how often the baby kicked and I said:so often, I dont even notice. (Month Six)

When I swear, I could actually feel my uterus expanding. (Month Seven)

When laughter through tears became the only kind of laughter I could produce. (Month Seven)

When I began peeing more than 10 times a day. (Month Eight)

When I realized what a big deal this is. (Just about every day)

When I heard the actual **number** of times I’d be changing a diaper per day. (Month Eight)

When I began looking at the clock in the bathroom and wishing it was morning so I didn’t have to go back to bed, where comfort constantly eluded me. (Month Eight)

When I was in line at Best Buy Customer Service and a man wished me luck and when I asked why, he identified himself as an OB and said “that baby’s coming out soon”. (The evening my labor began)

In the early days of my pregnancy, I read Loving Frank, historical fiction which details the affair between architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick, a feminist at the turn of the century. It was magnificent. Everything I devour. A story with some truth. Real people from the past. Womanhood. Choices. Tragedy. Bits of my local Boulder. But most of all, it was a follow up feminist meets motherhood tale.

Growing up, I always thought I would be a Mom. Wasn’t that what women did? At the time, there were no childless couples in my small world. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening stirred my senses a bit in college. The heroine had children, but she dared to be as interested in her own passions as she was in them, and that was considered a scandal. Her conclusion was important. She said: I would die for my children, but I would not give my life for my children. This seemed to say that it was possible to have kids and maintain your self, too. I ran that by my Mom once as we were driving along I-80. She agreed wholeheartedly. And I was relieved.

As I evolved through my 20s, I always felt that feminism didn’t really work for me–couldn’t I be a good Mom AND my own person (with possibly a career) too? Why did feminism have to bash motherhood and why did motherhood have to bash feminism? Why was everyone so extreme? But this was the 90s, when a career just seemed like a good idea. I had yet to evolve.

From there, I began to settle into life, becoming enthralled with various pursuits–triathlons, non-profit volunteerism, book clubs, local feminism history, my own business and Buddhism.  I became so interested in life, that I realized I would fill it up–even without kids. It was strange to consider, but the notion eventually sounded normal instead of neanderthal. I met people without kids. And I liked them. I hadn’t made any decisions, but I realized that I had a choice. My mother, afraid to pressure me, encouraged me to do what was right for me. “Maybe you guys won’t have kids. That’s fine, too.”

Then we left the country. The idea of kids hovered overhead, sometimes part of the smog we inevitably breathed, other times, the very stars we wished we could see. We talked endlessly about future plans because that’s what you do in the Peace Corps. Would we live in DC and work for the campaigns? Teach English in Korea? Spend time in India? Move back into our house on Emerson?

It was such a paradox. We KNEW we wanted kids, but they were always the leftover screw after you thought you’d successfully put together the $99 entertainment center from Target. Where did they fit? But at that time, any ideas about home were far too surreal for concrete plans and we knew nothing could really happen until we were within a two mile radius of a Walgreens anyway. We’d successfully put it off again.

But Wanderlust or Bust opened portals to worlds we’d never even pondered. And although deep down, I knew the answer, there was a shift in my thought pattern that took me from “generally agreeable” to “ready”.

At first, I thought it was when a sick, sixteen month old Ugandan baby called Innocent fell asleep against my chest when we were living in a thatch-roof hut in West-Central UgandaLake Nkuruba teaching daily Social Studies classes and evening computer classes to orphans. But that’s not right. It was a week or so later, when we visited Sarah Burke, a Peace Corps volunteer. She was young, with naturally curly blonde hair, a subscription to Sun and a very optimistic aura. I was taking in her modest African bedroom–you know, the predictable photo of girlfriends gathered on the beach, demonstrating their loyalty through linked arms and tilted head smiles. And instead of reminding me of my own college memories, I instinctively thought: I hope our daughter one day has a bulletin board filled with the celebration of good friends and good times. I was thinking about a daughter I would one day have. I was instinctively projecting my own hopes onto someone other than myself. And I wasn’t pregnant.

That was the hour I first believed. The hour I first knew for sure, that I wanted to create a new life. Creation, no matter what you’re working with, is what life’s all about anyway. Right Brent?