Gut Punch

It takes a lot for me to feel safe somewhere, to let my guard down and really just hang loose. Like when you come home from a long day of work, take your bra off and slip into your favorite long-sleeve track t-shirt from high school (so what if it has holes in it?!) and your husband’s oversize hand-me-down sweats. Even better is when you feel so comfortable with someone, that they can come over for a glass of wine and you don’t scramble to put the bra back on, or even contemplate changing back into those skinny jeans you wore all day at work.

So when I’ve nestled in, gotten comfortable, really let myself BE MYSELF somewhere, and then it’s….taken away…it feels like the wind is knocked out of me. Like I’ve been punched in the gut, and I am left wondering, ‘how will I survive this?’ Not to get overly melodramatic (is it my seasonal affective disorder talking?), but it feels like mini-deaths when something changes or goes away. I grieve. I find it hard to put into words. I mope about and scramble to try and fill a void that is my community-hungry heart.

This summer my beloved massage therapist Courtney Putnam took a sabbatical. And when she announced her blissful 3 months off, I knew…the writing was on the wall so to speak, that she’d be gone from the realm of massage therapy. While she has re-invented her practice to encompass many more awesome things (like healing retreats! and art sessions! and growth-coaching!), I am sad that I will no longer be able to afford regularly scheduled massage visits with her. I’ve been going to her since 2007, when I googled ‘body memory’ and found a blog post that spoke to my cell memory from a car accident. And then she happened to be in Seattle. And happened to be a few years older and had gone to my same elementary school, and was a Sagittarius. It felt like the stars had aligned. And now, I’m having to shift my perspective, to reinvent the way in which I want to have healing done, and it is exciting, but also a little bit intimidating. So in the meantime I’m dabbling in psychotherapy with a psychologist through my insurance, and working on some Groupons for massage, and delving into my new found love of bikram yoga.

And if that change wasn’t hard enough, today I learned rather abruptly, that my absolute favorite parenting community Offbeat Families, is being shut down. The site I wrote into a few times, that has featured my baby’s picture, that has propelled me forward into understanding different parenting topics. Gone. Like that. Sure they give a nice little summary, and it wasn’t good for business, but…as I said on my personal Facebook page:

I guess…I guess I just sorta feel blindsided. Like with the new branding, and everything felt really good, and I know that we readers aren’t entitled to the behind-the-scenes, but it sorta feels like being in a relationship that feels really comfy and good and then BAM one night of fighting they peace out and are gone for good (except they’ve left all their clothes behind, that still smell like them, and you randomly come across that picture of you two on the mantle, etc). I think I wouldn’t feel so freaking sad if I had seen it coming. Like a farewell Montage last week as we’re prepping to close the doors. Or a final blast of birthing posts to get us through the next week. I mean, Mondays are hard enough…

In the grand scheme of things, these are small losses. I will find other websites. I will make other friends, and expand my circle of healing goodness (as well as head back to Courtney for some extra special sessions when I get the cash), and life will go on. But god, in the moment it sucks…when I’m feeling vulnerable and the little losses seem to be adding up to one great big identity and life shift. And, sometimes I don’t want identity shifts. It feels exhausting trying to be all the me’s already.

How do you deal with the “small losses,” of everyday life? The coffee shop that changes their name, or the pizza joint that goes out of business? Or the bus route that gets re-routed or the jeans you wake up to find don’t fit anymore? Or what about when your favorite show ends for the season (or for good) or you put a good book down knowing the author has died and no more books will ever be published? What do you do then? How do you cope?

Let’s talk birth stories…

I love reading about birthing stories. Probably because the whole birth story thing didn’t really come into my consciousness until I was out of college. So when I got pregnant, I read A LOT. I love reading the Getting it Out Birth Stories over on Offbeat Families, and read many birthing technique books while pregnant. And I’ve read a lot of good stuff, but there was something so strikingly raw and real about this article S. Lynn Alderman’s Ugliest, Beautiful Moment (Or, Fuck Ina May) over on Mutha Magazine. I’ll be putting some excerpts here, but you really should jump on over and read the full article, it’s hilarious…

Six years ago, I set a goal for myself. And, technically, I achieved it. I had a baby and didn’t use any medicinal pain relief while she was born. And you know what I have to say about it? Fuck Ina May, that’s what.

I learned of Ina May Gaskin’s famous guide to natural childbirth while sharing homemade kale chips with a friend during a ConsciousMama moon retreat. Just kidding, that is completely untrue. I don’t know how I heard of it, but I bought a faded copy with dog-eared pages and told myself that lots of women had read it and had wonderful, peaceful birth experiences. I told myself that their good juju would magically pass to me as I gazed at the photos that they had also seen, of beautiful hairy women blissfully pushing out their babies, surrounded by other beautiful hairy women with half-smiles on their beatific faces.

I wanted my labor to be like this. The first pregnant women I ever knew was in my office post-college. She already had one child, and was pregnant with her second. She passed out candles to all her lady friends to light when they’d heard the news she was in labor. She said it would help her channel her inner light and focus during labor. She was a yoga instructor and so calm and I thought that image was beautiful. But my labor was so fast that there’s no way anybody would have had time to light a candle.  Having had zero experience with pregnancy or laboring, I tried to imagine myself like my former co-worker, blissful, meditating on light, calling up the mothers before me.

Except, that didn’t work.

But inside my head, I could not believe what was happening. How painful it was. How terrifying. I felt helpless. And degraded and humiliated by there being witnesses. And at the same time, I felt so, so alone.  I remember at one point saying, completely out of my mind, “I don’t understand why no one is doing anything to help me! Please help me!” Della reminded me that what I was feeling was the baby coming. That I was doing just what I was supposed to, having the baby, right then.

My labor was 4 hours long. 6 if you count the time we thought it started, and called the midwife to let them know we were on the way to the hospital.  My thoughts were racing by the time I was in the triage, and because I assumed that my labor would be twelve plus hours, when we were a few in  I thought that I would never get through it. I should have known that with a history of anxiety that when the labor intensified I would PANIC inside myself. I wasn’t prepared for the panic.

In not too many pushes, really, I finally got that baby out. And let me tell you what. I didn’t care if it was a human baby, a gorilla or a Cracker Jack prize. I just wanted that thing OUT of me. There was a hush. “Sunnyside up!” the doctor said. Instead of face down, like in 90-something percent of births, the baby was face up, with a bruised eye and forehead from pressing through my pelvis the wrong way. And then Luke said, “It’s a…girl!”

Was I flooded with love and amazement and whatever, cue swell of music? Yes! Did I gaze at that darling girl’s face for the next 12 hours, unable to sleep? Yes. Is she still, joy of joys, my precious, funny, hilarious Phee? Yes, she is. Yes. Yes. Yes. Sunnyside up was a telling beginning for her.

I am grateful that she and I were well and healthy. It is no small thing to have a baby, however routine it seems, since some woman somewhere does it every five seconds. It is an amazing thing, truly.

But here is why I am mad. I also felt completely flimflammed. For all my preparing, I wasn’t prepared at all. And I felt ashamed about it. I felt that I let my daughter down by being scared.

I laughed when I read that she didn’t care if it was a gorilla or a cracker jack prize. Because that feels so true, but also I know I would have been sad if it had been a Cracker Jack prize. Because the crazy experience of love flooding through me as we put Potamus on my chest is unreal and totally worth the pain and panic and fentanyl induced dreaminess. As far as achieving my set out “goal” of unmedicated, I did not succeed, but it was a small blip on the radar. Not so, for many of my friends, who experienced emergency c-sections because of complications in their labor. To them I had achieved what they could not…a vaginal/natural birth. And for them, I wish I could say:

So I’d like to offer an invitation to any woman who wants to join a new team to take into birthing rooms or forest glens or wherever. A team called “That shit is totally crazy and you don’t have to ‘handle it’ because the baby is coming no matter what and I’ll be there to hold your hand quietly or to let you scream and that’s okay. However you get through it is a victory and I am so proud of you, sister.” Maybe something shorter.

So tell me, what was your birth experience like? Did you resonate with what this article was saying?

What it’s like to get an IUD with a toddler sitting on your chest…

he wasn’t wearing fatigues and no choking was invovled, but this is what my exam experience looked like…

Potamus walked proudly into the doctor office with me, but as soon as we started heading back to the room he began having a meltdown. He completely lost it, sobbing uncontrollably, when the nurse put the blood pressure cuff on my arm. No amount of cajoling him (‘hey, it’s like your doctor kit at grammy’s house!’) got him to calm down. So he sat facing me all snuggled in on my chest. The nurse asked, (naively in my opinion) if I thought he’d go with one of the nurses while I got my procedure done. Hardly, my friend, hardly. But never worry, I, the ever resourceful mother, had planned to either let him sit on my chest, or was prepared for him to sob on the floor while the procedure happened.

Thank God the latter didn’t happen, because it turned out to be a 30 minute ordeal.

Perhaps I should have gotten a ‘babysitter’ (aka asked MIL to do it), but she’s watching him tomorrow for a few hours, and watched him on Tuesday. Plus, I’m a little bit masochistic or martyrish in that way. Like I get special brownie points for making a doctor visit even harder, more painful, then just having a copper T shoved into my cervix. But also, Potamus wasn’t feeling well today, and he’s coming off his first four full days at daycare this week, and I thought it’d be good for him to just spend some more time with me.

And also, it’s a good reminder of why I’m in the office. To prevent having to go to the doctor toting two tots together (say that twelve times fast).

The doctor seemed apprehensive of my plan, but Handy Manny on my smartphone is a pretty sure bet. And he doesn’t weigh more than 30 lbs, so I dropped trou, scooted my bum to the end of the table and hoisted Potamus up onto the top of my belly, lower part of my chest. With my feet in the stirrups, and my kids feet in my face, straddling me, and my smartphone nestled under my chin, I realized that yoga is possibly the best preparation for such an awkward experience.

I barely even felt the procedure, though the doctor managed to horrify me with some crime scene cleanup since she had “hit a blood vessel.” Nothing like gushing all over your doctor’s shiny clean floor. And the whole while she kept asking if I was doing okay and if I felt any cramping. I didn’t. Probably because a 30 lb toddler had me in a body slam choke-hold on the exam table. Also, I have a high pain tolerance. And a good grasp of breathing and relaxation techniques. Also, it wasn’t quite like labor, ya know?

 

Any awkward experiences that have been made even MORE awkward with your kid present?

Take Charge of Your Fertility

ancient birth control…beating off storks…

I grew up in a household that did not value body autonomy, especially not feminist ideals related to issues of fertility. My father’s favorite thing to say was “die to yourself,” using the example of Jesus dying on the cross and giving up “all his rights” in order to save us. This message translated into the overt belief that “you have no rights, because you are a Christian, and so you have to give up all your rights to follow Jesus.” As an adult I think my dad botched the true message, especially since there’s a difference between being told ‘you have no rights,’ and choosing to forgo your own desires to benefit someone else.

As a child, and teenager, it felt very hierarchical and patriarchal, that I, especially, as a woman, did not have a say in what happened to my body. When I chose to have sex with my boyfriend, at 2 months shy of 18, they believed I was trying to be “like her,” and assumed that my boyfriend took advantage of me. Because I certainly couldn’t make the choice with my own body. And while hindsight shows me that there was peer pressure from the other half of my relationship, it wasn’t anything close to rape, or even date rape. I made a choice with my body, and even if it was a choice I later regretted, it was still my choice.

And so, today I finalized my choice to take charge of my own fertility desires to not have another baby (right now? ever?). Sure I consulted with Boof, but I chose this for my body. And it feels good, although a bit crampy since it’s settling in. Haha. But while I am bodily and spiritually confident in my decision, there’s this niggling back-of-the-mind thought that has entered a few times, and I know it’s based on my childhood upbringing. There’s this judgment that I am an evil-hell-going-feminist. That I have strayed so far from the party line that I’ll be burned at the stake. While a few close friends know of our my decision to get the IUD, most family hasn’t been let it on that decision. I’m mostly optimistic that they’ll be supportive, but there’s always a little doubt that they’ll still love me at the end of the day. And I worry, will I regret my decision?

I don’t feel completely different. But here I sit, a woman who can have unprotected sex from now until 10 years from now when the IUD craps out, without worry about getting knocked up. It feels liberating, although I’m sure it’ll take a little getting used to…

How does your values, or values you were taught, inform your reproductive choices?

Bikram Bootcamp?

I have gotten into quite a little routine over at my Bikram yoga studio. I’ve shared parts of my life with certain teachers, and have gotten used to their style of leading the classes. While much of the class is scripted, the words sound different when different people’s energies say things like “bend beyond your flexibility,” or “struggle harder, don’t give up.” Two of my favorite instructors (one who happens to own the studio) have this subtle sense of humor that they infuse into the sessions, and I enjoy when they point out both things we’re doing well and things we can improve on while we’re doing our asanas.

So, much to my surprise, I showed up at my most recent class and there was a teacher I hadn’t yet met. Somewhat disappointed, I made her acquaintance, and headed on in to the studio. I figured, that just like all the other instructors I had experienced, that this class would be pleasantly challenging with a twist of humor.

But I was wrong. Sure I got used to it by the end of class, but her method of delivery was rapid-fire fast and more like a bootcamp drill seargent than a mild mannered yoga instructor. I had heard about bikram’s bent toward a more Crossfit/bootcamp/competition bent, but had yet to experience that in this studio. I’d always felt challenged, but not stupid. And while the instructor never called me out (either good or bad), it was the subtle comments like “party’s over” when we were supposed to be done with the first water break, or actually saying “no water now Amy,” to a woman who was taking a sip right before camel. Good intentions, and a warning I’ve heard before (because it can induce vomiting), but the delivery style felt grating and harsh and shaming.

I didn’t like it.

It’s not enough to keep me from going, though I’m praying that she won’t be scheduled as the regular Thursday Night instructor. While I’m sure I would learn something about myself, my body, perseverance, determination, etc., I’d prefer to do it in a room with a little more humor.

 

Teaching Feels Different this go-round

I successfully finished my first week as a second year teacher. Technically I’ve taught this course 6 times already, so I shouldn’t be nervous, but there’s always the first day jitters when I meet my fresh crop of students and realize “oh God, I’m going to have to get to know them.” And then I meet them and they are such delightful people in their teenage dysfunction, that I can’t help but smile and then turn around and kvetch with my co-instructor.

This year feels much more relaxed. I haven’t been ‘raging against the machine,’ and have accepted the fact that I am getting paid X amount of dollars on my advising days to be available to advise students. Which translates to getting paid X amount of dollars to sit in my office facebooking. And that I might not make huge structural program changes, but I can get involved in professional development and meet some more faculty on campus that can contribute to my overall development as a teacher. It’s exciting.

One professional development that I’ve gotten involved in is on Coursera, which is a MOOC (massive online open community) where I’m taking a course on being a teacher. And by taking a course I mean I’ve logged in a few times and gotten some good ideas, but haven’t actually done much of the work at all. I’m trying to let my perfectionistic student attitude go and just get some info that’s helpful to teaching my students.

I love standing in front of my class feeling relaxed and like I have enough time to go through my materials, while also getting to know students or going with the flow in class. Current event discussion in my afternoon class went a good 15 minutes, rather than 5. Yay! Meant less time for lecture and that we’ll come back to this material on Tuesday, but so be it, that’s going with the flow! If the students are engaged with the material, they are learning. If they are just sitting through a lesson so I can get a lesson in, then that is boring and lame!

I’m tired at the end of the week, but I am also excited and feel even more invested in teaching this course this time. I am actually having to hold myself back from checking my email on my day off, or grading the papers that I could grade on Monday. That energy is so unusual for me!

 

Godspeed Little Star

This is put much more eloquently than I ever could. May she return sooner than later. May her soul remain intact through this process.

Adoptive Couple Vs Baby Girl

News spread like wildfire. By now, we all know, the Oklahoma Supreme Court lifted the stay in the case of Brown V. DeLapp (although many of you may know it better as Adoptive Couple V. Baby Girl). On Monday, the OKSC lifted their stay at approximately 2:30 pm. By 7:30, Veronica was gone. Officials went to the Jack Brown house at the Cherokee Nation complex and removed her. She was escorted away by Ms. Nimmo, attorney for the Cherokee Nation,  who with heavy heart had to deliver Veronica to the adoptive couple waiting at tribal headquarters. As she was taken away from her family, her cry rang out….. “No, I don’t want to go! I don’t want to go! I don’t want to go!” It fell on deaf ears. There was nothing that could be done.

In physically coming to Oklahoma, the Capobiancos forced the spotlight on this child. They got…

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It’s okay, he can wear a dress…

if a dress is good enough for president roosevelt, it’s good enough for my son!

My son loves playing dress up. He’s almost 2 and his imaginativeness is shining through. He loves wearing hats of all sorts (included plastic buckets, and baskets, and wigs (as we’ve seen before in pictures), capes (made from scarves or other bits of fabric), and sunglasses. I haven’t yet gotten him many other dress-up items, but I think since it’s Halloween time, we will head on over to Value Village soon and pick up a few other play options.

Today, at daycare, when I picked him up, there were many kids digging in the pretend play box. And one little girl had put on this fancy princess dress and was wearing it around. Potamus was so glad to see me, and we did a quick 30 second snuggle, and as I was asking the teachers about his day, one said to me “he wants to wear that dress,” pointing toward the little girl. “He’s always asking to wear it.”

And my response was, “oh, let him wear it. That’s totally fine. He’s at such a sweet age, and playing pretend is good for him. He’s not old enough to be made fun of for wearing a dress, yet.” And they nodded their heads and laughed along with me, since my tone was light and cheery.

But I meant it.

And I have so many swirling thoughts about it all.

The first, is, that this is a phase. That my child loves all things dress up, and I want him to have the full range of exploration imaginable. And my second thought was horrified, not that he would be wearing a dress, but that he had been asking to wear a dress and they hadn’t let him. My baby, unable to play pretend in a way that he has wanted. Which makes me question the underlying foundation of the daycare (which is otherwise doing great), because I’ve been not teaching hard-line male gender stereotypes, and would hate if he was being subtly or not-so-subtly pushed into a certain way of play, at such a tender age. Also, it wasn’t that long ago in history where little boys (up until age 6 even) were dressed in dresses to keep them ‘sexless’ and innocent for as long as possible. Or for fashion or other reasons, like practicality when not wearing a diaper!

But then my thoughts flicked toward the longer term future, at the unknown of what Potamus’s true gender identity will be. Perhaps he’ll embrace traditional male gender stereotypes, or perhaps he’ll be a “boy who loves girl things” like CJ at Raising My Rainbow, or perhaps he’ll tell me that he is actually a she, or that he loves boys, or that he wants to wear rubber boots to school everyday (true story, my friend’s son did that for a good long time). I don’t know, but I will love him no matter, and will encourage him to be who he is, no matter what.

I hadn’t thought about him being pegged into a gender role so soon, and hope that the conversation with his teachers, for the minute, allowed a little more freedom for him to get to experience pretend play as his sweet little toddler self, without the teachers worrying that they might get in trouble for letting him wear a dress. Because, I could see that some parents may  not want their kid to play dress up that way, but I don’t mind. He can wear a dress if he wants to. Or fairy wings. Or a crown. Or a pirate costume. Or a basket on his head.

HELP! Would you have done anything differently in addressing his teachers? How do you handle the play-pretend issue as far as gender norms are concerned? Any experiences having to give teachers instructions on how to interact with your child?

I thought she died…

not the same picture, but taken around the time of my terrible dream

A lot of childhood memories have been floating up to the surface, which I attribute to my wrestling with having an only-child vs. having another child spaced 4-5 years apart. When thinking about all-things-kid-related imagining into the future starts with progressing into the past in order to see…how would I have felt, which is narcissistic at it’s core (because Potamus is not me), but that’s what I’m working with right now. And so, imagining a 4-5 year age spread means going back into my past and remembering what it was like when my sister was born…er…adopted into my family.

I was 5.

We drove from Seattle to Oregon where she had been born.

We had a necklace or some other gift that my brother (2 years younger than me) walked up to the lady in the hospital bed, and gave to her. I think we said something like “thank you,” and that’s all I remember (more could be said about this bizarre memory, as it was a concrete experience of what adoption-birthfamilies was, but I didn’t really analyze that until older). The next thing I remember is we were on our way home, somewhere up I-5 and I realized…I had left my favorite Skipper doll in the hospital.

And they wouldn’t go back to get my Skipper doll.

We came home with a baby, and I lost my doll.

And I lost my position in the family as the only girl.

The princess.

And I was at an age where I was embracing my princess-tomboy style, but I was clearly no longer the only girl, and she, in all her tiny bundle of joyness, became the family princess.

I don’t remember much about my sister until she was in pre-school. Coming home on the first day, eagerly declaring “I like TEN BOYS in my class, there’s Jordan, Taylor, etc,” and me saying “that’s not how it works. You don’t get to like more than one boy at a time. you grow up and marry one person.” But she was always the princess. And I grew into a new role…the protector.

can you see my annoyance with her fabulousness?

Both jealous and protective of this fragile, dainty, cheerleading popular kiddo (who grew into a fragile, dainty, cheerleading popular, fashionable adult), who was so different than me, and mostly annoyed me. We shared a room and she wanted to talk all night. I wanted to sleep. She wanted to play dress up. I wanted to read. But in preschool, I remember a photo of her was taken. She was holding a plastic pan, and looks caught by surprise. And it was hanging on our mirror the time I had the dream.

In the dream, we were in Disneyland, and she died.

I was horrified.

I woke up crying.

I carried that picture with me until I hit college (and she stole it back) because that’s how I remembered her, so young and innocent and for me to protect as her big sister.

And so, I think about things like that when I think about having another baby someday. That the dynamic will change. That there will be complicating factors and emotions and memories that Potamus will have of the time he had alone and the time he had when the sibling enters the scene. It will be different than my own memories. And if he doesn’t have a sibling he will not have those memories to look back on. It’s complicated and emotional on many different levels.

My relationship with my sister is currently also complicated. I will always be her big sister, protective, blunt, and loyal, but also jealous of her carefree swagger.

How are your sibling relationships? How has it influenced your decision to have/not have kids (or to have more) kids? Have any striking childhood memory involving siblings?

Both Sides Now- Joni Mitchell is a birthmother

Sometimes my emotions run so deep that words, written, or said verbally, cannot even begin to touch the depth. And in those moments I turn to music, and have been known to listen to the same song (or set of songs) again-and again-and again, until something changes or I cannot cry anymore.

I can’t write more about it. My heart is hurting too much, so I’m sharing my go-to song to express the depth of emotions that I am feeling at the news of a sweet 4 year old being ripped from her tribe, her daddy, her sister and extended family, and thrust into the confusing world of being raised by genetic strangers with a reality that doesn’t match the reality that you know in your heart.

This is a song I grew up with. My dad sang it to me as a little girl, because I loved the imagery of bows and flows of angels hair. I listened to it a thousand times before I knew that Joni Mitchell was a birthmother in reunion with her daughter. And while we may dicker about whether it was really written with adoption or reunion in mind, I’ll say that it cuts to my very soul and makes me feel the complexity of life and confusion seeing the world from the perspective of innocence, and the eyes of the ‘old soul’ who has witnessed far too much in such a short amount of time.

And so, this song is for Veronica.

Both Sides Now
-Joni Mitchell

Bows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that wayBut now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my wayI’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

But now it’s just another show
You leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say “I love you” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way

Oh but now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost but something’s gained
In living every day

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From WIN and LOSE and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

What music can you listen to repeatedly? Any mood music (sad/happy/angry/depressed) that is your go to?