gearhead mama

Dear M,

You turned one year old today. I don’t know how it happened, how the days spooled together and spun us around the sun, through summer, fall, winter, spring and now summer again. But it did, and here we are, back again at the very same day upon which I brought you forth from the comfort of my womb.

When I heard you over the monitor this morning, I rolled over and looked at the clock. 8:21 AM. The exact time of your birth. You obviously hadn’t forgotten.

This morning, for the first time, I dreamt about giving birth. It was not like the birth that you and I had together. We were at home, surrounded by friends, and it was gentle and easy. After everything we’ve learned together, I think it is the birth we would choose if we had to do it over again. The dream was not filled with longing or regret, however, and it seemed like an apt way to celebrate this day … to re-imagine and plant in our consciousness a joy-filled way of bringing you into this world.

It is astounding to think of you at the moment of birth, and look at who you are today. You are not a baby anymore. Although much of the last year seems like a blur, I have clear memories of my excitement over you reaching for a toy, finding your feet, rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and now walking. Day by day, almost imperceptibly, you have grown into a little person.

Although you are nearly proficient at walking, you are still not talking – in English, anyway. Actually, you probably are, but I haven’t yet deciphered any of your words. Your pointer finger has emerged, and you blew us away the other day, pointing to a small plane circling in the sky above. Nothing wrong with your vision, kid.

You are always on the go these days. So much so, that I’m starting to fear you will soon wean. Although you nurse occasionally throughout the day, you persist long enough to bring a letdown only two or three times. Of course, one of those times still happens to be in the middle of the night. No uninterrupted sleep for mama, oh no.

As much as I dislike getting up during the night, I can’t help but treasure that time together. In the quiet stillness, you are intent and focused, and the fears that I won’t have a letdown, that you won’t get my milk, that twice will become once will become none, fade to a distant whisper. When you are done nursing, you lean into me and close your eyes, letting me hold and rock you – something that is never permitted during the daylight hours. I wrap my arms around you, rest my cheek on your head and breathe in your sweetness.

I have always felt I would let you decide when to stop nursing, but I never dreamed it might happen so fast. At the moment of conception, our bodies began an intricate dance, weaving a web that would draw us as close as two humans can be. Your birth left this web tattered and torn, but nursing spun it strong again … binding me to you and you to me. Now, a year later, a few shimmering strands are all that is left, and they become loose and fragile. I am realizing that nursing you – growing you with the awesome power of my body, following in the footsteps of the generations of women stretching behind me – has become a part of my identity as a woman, mother. It is a seemingly simple, often difficult, and always profound thing. I know you will wean when the time is right for you, but as I hold you to me and nourish you with my milk, I pray that you won’t break those strands. Not yet. I’m not ready to let you go.

Whatever you do, though, there is no doubt that you love to eat. In addition to broccoli, you have recently devoured spinach and artichoke dip, asparagus, lettuce, zucchini marinated in balsamic vinegar and cooked on the grill, tomatoes, carrots, cauliflower cooked in sesame oil and flavored with tamari and wasabi, black beans and rice, lamb, steak, and hamburger with gorgonzola and onions. For lunch you pack away half a container of goat milk yogurt and an entire banana. And you always have the old standbys of avocado, grapes, cherries and whatever other fruits we have on hand. We’ve started making garbage disposal noises while you eat.

For so long you have been content to hang out in the library, exploring the terrain, playing with your toys. But with your new mobility, you grow impatient with that small space, wanting access to the rest of the house. I know we are on the verge of a new chapter in our lives – one that will require increasing vigilance on my part. No matter how well we babyproof (and there’s still lots to do), the thought of giving you free reign always brings a picture to mind … of me, in your wake, trying to prevent disasters, undoing the destruction I wasn’t able to stop, and somehow avoiding constantly saying “no”. Perhaps this will finally help me with my weight loss goals.

This last year hasn’t always been easy. The first months were so incredibly difficult, although time and wisdom have dulled the edge of the pain. And sleep is still fleeting – between my on-again-off-again insomnia, getting up to nurse you, and not getting to sleep when I want. I think that is what I miss most about my life before having you – spending half the weekend in bed. I know this luxury will return to me one day, and although I try not to wish away our time together, I have to admit that is one thing I look forward to.

But overall our lives have settled into a, if not predictable, at least comfortable rhythm. You are an unbelievably happy and joyous child, with a smile always at the ready. You take delight in everything you do, be it exploring my belly button with your finger, mashing food into your face and hair, flirting with strangers (apparently you do a lot of this while on my back in the Ergo), dragging a stuffed animal with you as you toddle about, fruitlessly chasing the cats down the hallway, hiding behind the chair when papa calls out “I’m gonna get you!”, or any one of the innumerable things that makes you the unique, delightful person you are.

Despite the pleasure of our day-to-day lives, though, sometimes I can’t help but think about the fact that I’ve brought you into this world during such uncertain times. We have managed to entangle ourselves in a war that appears to have no way out, and the end of cheap, easy oil will come – if not during my lifetime, then yours. I ponder the coming decades, and wonder if they will hold hardships I cannot even imagine. I am sometimes frightened for you, and the life you may have to lead. I worry that maybe I made a mistake, and that by having you, I have burdened you with a difficult and unhappy future. When these thoughts threaten to drag me down, I remind myself of your boundless love, fierce independence and intrepid spirit, and I feel certain that you will find a way, large or small, to contribute to the healing of this world. The small actions taken by each of us are the only way to get out of this mess, after all. Besides, it’s too late to put you back where you came from.

When I went to get you this morning, your father awoke as I entered your room. The most unsentimental man on the planet stumbled out of bed and raced down the hall to serenade you with an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday. I am not surprised you have this effect on him, because you have it on me, too. I find it easer these days to set my fears aside and listen to my heart. It is a wonderful gift you have given us.

I cannot imagine my life without you, and although it hardly seems possible, I love you more with every passing day. Happy Birthday baby girl. May you celebrate one hundred more.

Love,
Mama

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All photos in today’s post were taken by (and reprinted with permission from) the lovely Lesley Mason at New Life Photography.

Cut into small, bite-sized pieces. Lightly steam. Deposit on tray.

My kid loves broccoli. Other available choices within arm’s reach include cherries, grapes, mango and avocado. Avocado! She ignores all that and shovels the broccoli into her mouth as fast as I can get it in front of her.

I should know better than this. There’s that magical voodoo charged with restoring order to the universe that comes out of the shadows and kicks your ass every time it gets too big for your britches. And boasting that my kid will eat anything means my ass is just itchin’ for a kickin’.

But I still can’t help it. Broccoli! Take THAT George H. W. Bush.

I will file this feeling away, and remember it when I’m reduced to short-order-cook status for a toddler who refuses everything I put in front of her. Remember when she would eat broccoli? And I had to go and open my stupid mouth?

A great book to read if you’re pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, or are nursing your baby: Having Faith weaves the personal story of the author’s pregnancy and first two years with her daughter, Faith, and her knowledge as a scientist on the environment, biology, pollutants, poisons and toxins. The book is very sobering and made me angry, to tell you the truth. Angry at the way our world is run right now. Angry at the fact that nursing babies – who are at the top of the food chain – are not protected by our “family values” government. Angry that the status quo is encouraged and perpetuated, with denial and “fuzzy science” being put to use to avoid demanding change. It will make you mad, alright, but it’s stuff you should know.

Once you’re sufficiently angry, you’ll want to do something about it. I still meekly hide my head in shame while waving money at environmental and feminist groups, retreating behind my status as a new and tired mother to avoid becoming more active. But I do everything I can on the homefront to protect me and mine. It’s somewhat of a losing battle, as these chemicals are ubiquitous – in our air, water and food. But I still believe every little bit helps. To that end:

Read Jo’s post on plastics – the bad and really bad, and steps you can take to protect yourself and your child.

Buy organic. And when you can’t, consult the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce – a handy, wallet-sized reference card that tells you the 12 foods that are highest and lowest in pesticides.

Avoid polluted fish. The Seafood Watch wallet card is geared towards choosing fish with sustainability in mind. The PSR/ARHP Guide to Healthy Fish also has information on which fish tend to have high levels of mercury, PCBs and other pollutants.

Vote.

Cross your fingers and pray to God/Goddess/Higher Power that you and your loved ones will stay healthy.

On a recent trip to the grocery store …

R found an exotic new offering nestled amongst the lettuce and tomatoes.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with a money back guarantee.

We decided to risk it anyway.

The cat stands on my pillow and meows. I blearily open my eyes and put my face an inch from the clock. 6:37 AM. I lift the covers and the cat crawls in, turns around and snuggles up to me, rubbing his nose on mine, tickling me with his whiskers. I grunt with irritation, but tolerate it. He is getting old, and his kidneys aren’t doing so well. I am acutely aware that our time together is in its twilight.

All the while, a thought circles lazily in the back of my mind. As the haze of sleep fades, I suddenly pounce on it and sit bolt upright in bed (okay, not really, but in my mind I do): M slept through the night. And not that pansy-ass No-Cry-Sleep-Solution 5-hours-is-sleeping-through-the-night bullshit. I mentally do the math and scour my memory … am I forgetting anything? No. She last nursed at 4 PM – my astonishingly enormous breasts, tugging at the confines of my skin, are proof of this. She went to sleep at 7:30 PM. It is now 6:30 AM. She. Slept. Through. The. Night. And miracle of miracles, she is still sleeping.

It dawns on me that if it weren’t for the damn cat, I would still be sleeping too. I drop-kick toss gently push him out of bed, and settle in, determined to take advantage of whatever time is left, and get some more sleep myself. Then a small voice in my head pipes up.

Maybe she’s dead.

Don’t be ridiculous. She’s not dead.

How do you know?

Look. At some point, she has to sleep through the night, and tonight is as good a night as any. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, this night is loooooong overdue.

But maybe she’s not sleeping through the night. Maybe she’s dead.

STOP SAYING THAT. SHE’S NOT DEAD.

But what if she is? And you sit here all excited because she slept through the night, and don’t go in to check on her until 8:30 AM, and discover that no, she didn’t sleep through the night. SHE’S DEAD. And you are a horrible mother because you let your dead child lie decomposing in her crib for two hours because you didn’t want to risk waking her up.

SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!

Your baby is dead and you’re a horrible mother.

And this is how I entertained myself until 7:30 AM, when M woke up.

P.S. She made up for the sleeping through the night part by being up from midnight to 3 AM the next night, and waking twice to nurse the following night.

The tide rolls slowly in. Lapping at the rocky shore, hissing as it slides through cracks in the parched earth. It climbs higher, submerging first one thought, then another. Rising rapidly now, higher and higher, until there is nothing left but water, dark and still, under the moonless sky.

Sleep is here at last.

Dear M,

You turned eleven months old the other day, and Mama has finally arrived. The word, that is. I don’t yet know if you’re aware that it means me, but it doesn’t matter. When you say it, my pulse quickens and the corners of my mouth curve upward involuntarily. I find myself trying to coax that magic syllable from your lips over and over, as if it had the power to cure all the world’s troubles.

I am almost certain now that you will have your father’s hair. Delicate curls perch atop your ears, and when I run my hand up the back of your head, it leaves a trail of whorls and curlicues in its wake. When it comes to the straight vs. curly debate, it seems that the grass is always greener on the other side, and thus, long before your father and I decided to start a family, I had dreams of a daughter with golden curls. As your naturally-straight-haired mama who pays good money for her curls, I hope you will always love your hair.

But you are going to have my eyes – eyes that reveal feathery layers of gold and green to those who are willing to look close enough. I discovered by accident one day that when my eyes are in direct sunlight or filled with tears, they turn a brilliant green. I hope it is always the sun that makes your eyes shine green.

You have been making a new face lately that your father has affectionately dubbed “monkey face”. Thankfully, it is not accompanied by the hoots and howls of our simian cousins. At least not yet.

Although you still love to blow raspberries, you have mostly set them aside in favor of a new sound – it’s sort of like trilling your tongue, except somehow you do it in your cheek. With spit. Despite my best efforts, I cannot duplicate it, and must content myself with listening to you perform your own private symphony as you go about your business.

You are walking with more confidence every day, first taking one or two steps, now five or six, before deciding you have had enough, and lowering to all fours to race off to your destination. You also pull to a stand, bend over, and lower your head to the floor. I can only dream of that kind of flexibility.

You are not saying any words yet, but your babbling has taken on a conversational quality. In fact, I’m fairly certain you’re talking in complete sentences. Just not in any language I can understand.

When I get you from your crib in the morning or after naps, you hold the rail, bounce your legs, and shriek with excitement. I know you love me, but it makes me feel all warm and squishy inside to see just how much.

This bouncing has spilled over into other venues, including when I try to carry you around. You kick your legs and bob your head, flexing your body about my arm as it grips you tightly to me. And you have finally discovered that you can bounce in your jumper, and also make it swing. You will walk forward a foot or two, then lift your feet and smile crazily as you sway back and forth.

Nursing continues to hold its own set of surprises. I’ve seen you make the milk sign, but not always when you’re hungry, so it could just be you opening and closing your hands. I know it will come. Patience. There’s still lots of wiggling and switching of sides, so much so that you are often not latched on when I have my letdown. For as long as I can remember, I’ve mumbled “milk’s here” when it arrives, and it dawned on me the other day that you know what that means. You will stop whatever you’re doing, throw yourself sideways, and greedily gulp down the liquid gold. And finally, you have discovered that you can lift my shirt, and seem to find great pleasure in doing so – even when you’re not hungry. Let the public peep shows begin.

Your obsession with the cats continues but, whereas they used to let you tug on their ears and whiskers, and remove the occasional fistful of fur, they now won’t even stand for being in the same room. I don’t even think it’s the physicality of your excitement that scares them. It’s the top-of-your-lungs screeching that sends them skittering for cover. So for now, it remains a somewhat one-sided love affair.

You find small amounts of solace in Goodnight Moon, though, giggling every time you see the kitties on the page, poking them with your finger, and giving them wet kisses with your mouth.

And you are becoming increasingly aware of the other animals in your life. We live in a quiet, wooded area, and see everything from deer, fox and coyote, to bunnies, squirrels and woodchucks. I catch you staring out the window, watching them with curiosity. I’m fairly certain that they all fall into the following categories: kitty, small kitty, big kitty, and really big kitty.

You have finally decided that food is for you, and if I plan on eating, I better have something on my plate I can share with you. You eat avocado, bananas, strawberries, cherries, avocado, mangoes, carrots, prunes, avocado, peas, plums, pears, avocado, chicken, melon, avocado, avocado and avocado. In fact, you’ll eat at least a small amount of just about anything I put in front of you. But the whining begins if I don’t get the avocado in your hands fast enough. You eschew delicate bites, choosing instead to shove huge chunks into your mouth, patiently mashing it to a delicious paste with your tongue. And you’ll even eat lemons, although we learned the hard way that they don’t mix well with eye-rubbings. The surprised cry of shock and pain you let out led to a hasty removal of the lemon slice and rubbing down of the hands.

Sleeping is typically going well these days, and with the introduction of a fairly sizeable dinner of solid food, you often go ten or more hours between nursing at night. This sounds fantastic, but in fact, I am still getting up at least once a night to nurse you. This happens because you frequently refuse to nurse before bed, so that ten hour stretch is from, say, 5 PM to 3 AM.

All in all, the sleeping thing would be going fairly well, however, if it weren’t for my insomnia. I’ve struggled with it off and on for all of my adult life, and during bouts like this I have always turned to sleeping pills to get me through the sleepless weeks or months, knowing that it will eventually go away, and things will return to normal. But I don’t dare do that while nursing you, so I am left to spend hours in bed, mind churning, jaw clenched in frustration. I am probably averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night, and it is really taking its toll. At this point I’m just hunkering down and waiting for the end. I know it will come. Eventually.

Sometimes, during those sleepless nights, I see the future stretching out in front of us. I think about you walking and running, riding a bike, flying a kite, jumping on a trampoline. I think of your teen years and wonder if you’ll shut me out completely, or let me in a little. I think of dating and late nights and worry, and then college, adulthood, career, marriage, children, and not having you in my everyday life anymore. I used to hear about the “empty nest syndrome” and wonder what the big deal was. I always thought parents would be thrilled to return to their childless days, to do what they wanted when they wanted, travel, sleep in, not have to worry all the time. But I failed to realize how foolish it was to think that one could become “childless” again, and that perhaps, one might truly mourn the loss of that physical presence, the daily contact with this person who you love more than life itself.

That future is far away now, although I hear it whispering in distant corners, gathering speed, heading our way. Every day brings it closer, and I see small signs already, in your growing independence, in the way that we are no longer a single unit, operating as one. I watch you walking away from me, and feel so excited about the coming years, but I know they come with a price – that eventually, I will lose you. Of course, I will still be in your life, and I hope with all my heart that we will remain close when you are an adult. But, although that will come with its own rewards, it won’t be the same. You won’t be my little baby anymore.

But it is a reality, and one I must resign myself to. So I try to cherish each moment we have together, to inscribe your eleven-month-old face in my memory, remember each motion of your hands and silly face you make, record every coo and babble. It is an impossibility, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. I need all of this, so that when you’re grown and gone, I can remember how amazing it was to have you for every minute of every day.

Love,
Mama