considering my son's nose in the mirror, i see finally just how crooked it is, how the whole left side slants down, covering the nostril, leading down to the scar and the tightened, knotted lip, raised where it should not be, the two halves connecting incorrectly and i am overwhelmed by sadness and anger and the injustice of my life, the way my body failed me so... i am dying to try to have another baby just to prove that i can do it, that i can make a whole person and feed that person as i was intended to and nurture and cradle that person how i wanted to with alex, but was prohibited from. i am so jealous of all the perfect babies out in the world and the perfect mommies who can do so easily what i could not do at all. i remember when he was born, how i tried to nurse and couldn't and how he screamed at my chest. i remember how the two sides of his upper lip could move independently in ways that were not intended by upper lips to move. and now, i am reminded of this every time i brush his teeth and the inside of his upper lip is so tight from the forced connections of tissue that it is hard to reach his upper teeth, let alone see them. and at the moments that i do get a look at his teeth, there is a tooth that slants sideways and back because it is in the hole where nothing should be and just to the left of it, there are no teeth at all because there is no gum at all. every night at bedtime and every morning after breakfast as i say, "brush teeth" and he repeats and points towards the toothpaste and the toothbrush, "teeth, teeth," i am reminded that there are surgeries yet to come and orthodontics reminiscent of medieval devices employed by barber surgeons yet to come and rhinoplasties and implants and god knows what else all yet to come. all this tells my heart is that it takes but moments to set in motion pain and suffering enough for a lifetime...

before

after

considering my son's foot this morning upon waking, i took in the toenail and the toes, the peachiness and the plumpness. for now there are no freckles on his feet, no moles, no scars, no hair upon the toes, but one day, there might be. one day, when he is older and no longer my baby cradled in my arms. and i will no longer consider his feet and spend time considering if there are freckles or hairs, long or short springing from the knuckles of the toes. i will no longer wonder over each inch of his skin, looking for new freckles sprung up. at the moment, at last count, my son had six freckles: one on the back of his right ear, one on his right elbow, one on his left wrist, one on his left cheek, one on his anus, and one on the top of his right hand below the knuckle of the middle finger. will there come a day when all i consider is him, who he is, his personality, and no longer the wonder of skin and muscle that i created out of the magical, unseen division of gamete cells? it is such a soft, tender thing to know my son so well, to hold him close and smell his hair, kiss his head. i do this everyday. it is the joy of warm summer days filling me up, of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven. it is a first kiss and the knowledge of true love. and every single day i get to feel this by simply holding him and rocking him to sleep. i am nervous of when the day will come when he will be too big for my arms and will no longer be so peaceful, but roughed and tumbled up by the miseries of life. my son, his human form, as the physical expression of my heart beating outside of my body is astonishing to me every single day.

my husband now has a master's degree. i don't have a degree at all. a week ago, he graduated. now we can leave montana. i leave on tuesday with alex. we're flying back to ohio and leaving jon to pack up the truck and drive it across country. a friend was supposed to help him, but he broke his leg and so we had to get my little sister's ex-boyfriend to fly out to help. they should have a fun trip, actually. except for all the moving business. i didn't have to move the last time at all either because i had just had a baby. i did have to travel out here in a car, but my mom did all the driving. i sat in the back with alex. he was such a tiny thing back then. back when he had that gigantimongous hole in his face. when i think about it, i miss not being able to nurse him. it was so devastating for me. i still cry when i think about it. especially when i think of other people doing it successfully. i just get all jealous and resenting. fuck them for being able to breastfeed perfectly. i don't know who annoys me more actually, people who choose not to breastfeed, but are perfectly capable or people who have absolutely no difficulty at all. i hope beyond hope that everything goes well with our next baby. i'm getting so excited about trying now. i think i have a pretty good idea of when i'll ovulate in august. i'm sort of banking on the baby being late, so i'm counting forty weeks from conception as opposed to the way that professionals estimate a due date by going from the first day of the last period. which means that a pregnancy is actually thirty-eight weeks and not forty, but in my case, i think it will actually be forty weeks like alex was. i'm pretty sure of aleksander's date of conception, so i feel pretty confident that his due date was correct, but that i carry babies a little longer. i know that with subsequent babies, it has a good chance of being different, but if i did it that way then we won't get two opportunities to conceive, but just the one. if i ovulate when i expect to and manage to conceive immediately, then i will be due around the beginning of may. also, if my anticipated dates of ovulation are correct, then i will get a second opportunity to attempt conception for a due date range that is reasonable to our expectations. i can't wait. i was around all these pregnant women today at the blessingway of a friend. it made me want to be pregnant again so badly. i love pregnancy. i know that i complained the last time, but overall i had a very simple pregnancy and my body handled it beautifully, so i fully expect for that to be the case again. i've got to find a better way to handle morning sickness though. i'll stew on that. a friend recommended these ginger candies, but they're pretty darn spicy. maybe i'll just buy tons of ginger brew, which is less spicy, but made by the same company that does that candies. i'll also definitely buy the wrist bands this time around.
here's a picture of jon after graduating. he's on the right.

not everyday is a struggle. but everyday is exhausting. my bones ache and my skin feels heavy, my muscles sag. i have so much work to do, but it's not necessary to do it this minute, so i am waiting. it's been cold here. i can't wait to leave. we leave on the twenty-fifth. i am ready. i am ready for it to be warm and for alex to have a yard to run around in. today i bought him really really expensive rain gear. i made sure that it was big enough to last him through next spring, when he'll probably actually get some use out of it. the boots have frog faces on the toes and are adorable. the jacket is terry-lined and really warm. he was wearing his boots around this evening while naked. he's naked all the time, really. he's been unpacking the boxes that i've packed. he takes out all the packing materials from the packing material box. so there are now little bits of styrofoam peanuts all over the kitchen, under the washer and dryer, littering the linoleum. i should sweep. it is not immediately necessary, however, so it can wait. i am very tired. alex is asleep now, so i can go to bed. he's been going to sleep very easily lately. it's been nice. every few months he changes his patterns. before this, he had been fighting sleep for a very long time and we were having to find all sorts of activities to get him to sleep. this is much better. it is nice to not have to struggle with him.

we did it again. alex was much crankier the second time around. but the art came out beautiful. we watched crap tv, ate organic frozen dinners and made art. what a life.

alex and i painted together for the first time last night. i've always had this quaint image in my mind of painting with a child, them working on some small corner while i paint on the rest of the canvas. our experience was not quite like that. i spread two drop cloths on top of one another on the floor in the living room, got out my paint box, got some water and my rags and changed my clothes. alex mostly runs around naked, so i didn't have to worry about him getting paint on his clothes. i got a canvas and started spreading paint on it. alex came wandering in from the office where he was watching his father play video games to see what i was doing. then of course he began helping. his work was pretty good, but then i needed to figure out how to get the painting away from him in order to keep him from working ad infinitum and messing it all up. jon recommended that it needed more blue. i should never listen to jon. i saw what he was getting at, but once i gave alex some blue, he began to muck the whole thing up. so then i had to wipe most of the blue off and start over with pink and red and yellow to go back over it. eventually we both had paint in weird places on our bodies (neck, head, him all over his butt), so jon took alex kicking and screaming to the bathtub while i tracked paint onto the carpet (bottom of my foot) and then cleaned everything up.


alex examining his work

my husband has all the digital photos that we have on this slide show that pops up as our screensaver. it just randomly goes through all the digital pics we have - which, there are hundreds since we got the digicam when alex was about two months old. sometimes we just sit and watch the slideshow go by. sometimes amidst all the photos of alex grabbing at the camera or him sleeping or him covered in food, a photo from when he had one of his surgeries will pop up. there's a particular series from his first surgery that i took of him and the room at night with this dim orange light highlighting the midieval-looking metal crib he's in, the humidifier blowing on him, the machines all blinking, hooked up to him under the blankets that he's covered in from head to toe. in his mouth is a nipple with the tip cut off and it's taped to his face so that his mouth stayed open so he could breathe since the swelling and the tylenol with coedine really depressed his ability to breathe and babies don't naturally open their mouths... every time i've seen that lately i've started thinking about how i should have been holding him. i attachment parented from the beginning, but i've recently realized that i wasn't able to bond with him the way i wish i had in those early months. i've started to feel guilty about this idea that i could have been a better mother to him when he needed it most. i'm trying not to put a whole lot of weight into this idea, but it's there. i hate so much the fact that i missed out on nursing alex. i hate so much that i am everyone's prime example of breastfeeing dedication just because i pumped for thirteen months. i hate that alex's teeth are all fucked up. i hate that his scar has not formed as well as it should have. i hate that i have to consider when his next surgery will be when deciding when to have another child. sometimes i hate other mommies that i meet or that i know just because from here it looks so perfect and unfair. i think about all the things i could have done differently, that i could have done or not done to prevent this from happening to him in the first place. which is why it so important for me to carefully plan the next child. which is why i am spending all this time thinking about it, making plans, obsessing over something i'm not even going to be doing for a few more months. i just need it all to go right this time because it's too hard and unfair and i don't want to spend all my time hating. i need to feel my life for all the good in it, to see it. i do and i can, but it'd be very very hard for me to fail at making a whole person and it'd be very very hard for me to fail at nursing again. i know that i'm not a bad person. i know that i haven't done anything to deserve this, and i don't even believe the world works that way anyway, but it doesn't stop the ringing in my head, that little nagging feeling of guilt, of suspicion. i'm just scared and nervous and it's hard. but then, what if everything goes right. well hell, i don't even know...

one day my son will be grown and will leave me. i know that this is the inevitable, and yet cannot imagine it. even as he pulls at my pantsleg and on my arm, wanting to drag me off to another room to get something that he can't have down from a high shelf for him, even as this makes me want to scream and tear my hair out, the repitition of it, the fact that i am quickly becoming "all touched out" - even still, i cannot imagine him leaving me, not needing me to rock him and cuddle him, not needing me to read all his books to him over and over and over again. the repitition of my day, the mundaneness of it, leaves me wanting to get out of the house for once by myself, leaves me longing to see a movie or read a novel. my life at times, leaves me longing for more, something other than what i am. and yet, i'd not give him up for anything. there is nothing that could actually entice me away. despite him tugging on my leg at this very moment, whining and wanting for everything bigger than himself.

the pull of my mind is hard to ignore. i am thinking intensely about the endeavor to attempt conception, to have another child, and yet i am not currently actually trying. but i am thinking nonetheless of what will happen, if it will work and if my body can do it without fucking it all up. will i make a whole person? can i be properly prepared enough to ensure that it takes, to ensure that it stays with me? is there something wrong that i am as yet unaware of? can i have a moment of perfect? am i entitled to that? i have this friend that annoys the hell out of me who is currently pregnant. and i know that because she annoys the hell out of me that everything will be fine with her, everything will be perfect. if only to continue to annoy the hell out of me. this is true with most women i encounter who are pregnant. some days i am so angry at the world that alex was born with the cleft. some days i hate everything. because it seems so unjust. i took such good care of myself as soon as i found out that i was pregnant. and now, i am trying ever so hard to take such perfect care of myself before i even conceive to guarantee that it will go right. but there's the little question in my head, pulling on me, the string connected to the thought nagging and tugging, ringing a tiny little bell in my mind, saying, "but there are no guarantees..." what if i do everything right and still everything goes wrong? what then?

lost in transition. my husband finished his thesis and we're now able to get ready to move. i can't wait to get the hell out of here. i'm in this completely transitional mindframe and it's wrecking my ability to accomplish anything. i have conflicts here that i'm not interested in resolving, work that i'm not interested in doing, and weeks before i'm leaving, so there's no need to pack yet really. my hands are tied by my thoughts. i'm compelled to do nothing. i'm floating around, maintaining yet moving nowhere. there's no forward to move towards. i'm left sitting still, hands limp at my sides.

today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of my birth. so i'm a little older, not a bit wiser for it. getting older is starting to become just a nuisance. at least i get to go out on a date with my husband. he finished his thesis yesterday, so i suppose we're both in celebration mode. though of course at the moment, we're both just tired. i think i'm more excited about getting to see a movie in a theater than my actual birthday. seems fitting really, the years are just making it harder to remember the count.

everyone i know is pregnant. or trying to get pregnant. or just became not pregnant. none of my friends back home who are all my age, of course, but every other mommy on the block, it seems. there are three pregnant women that i know in my building, at least one that i don't know, two women from playgroup, and then there are four women i know who are trying to conceive/not trying but not stopping it/trying to trick their husbands into letting them get pregnant. also, my sister just had a baby two weeks ago and another woman in my building just had a baby at the end of december. i now also know all these women online who are trying to get pregnant. i am surrounded by the quest for fertility. it invades the spaces in my brain. all i can come up with for myself is that it was the smoking that caused alex's cleft, temperatures that are beyond erratic, an iud waiting to be dislodged, and the idea that i need a bottle of folic acid to start overdosing on pronto. babies babies babies... i don't understand it, but there seems to be this silent fertility competition among women that perhaps most of us don't even ourselves acknowledge. it's what makes us all ooh and ahh over new babies. it's what makes us all want a baby after watching some stranger from halfway around the world's perfect birth in all it's idealized flash glory. we're driven by instinct, i suppose, to want more and more to spread our genes despite all of the best-laid intellectualized intentions drawn deep from the wells of our alternate desires to leave something behind us when we die, to remain active in this life and independent and to produce an income - everything that "sequencing" promises - having it all, just not all at once. for me, i personally don't have a clue about what i want beyond babies, beyond that biological imperative to spread one's genes, to go forth and multiply. how lame am i? look everyone, with this brain and these talents, i am busy wasting away in domesticity, toiling daily with toddler underfoot at nothing more than picking up the same mess five hundred times and the most that i produce in a day is perhaps a healthy snack. how lovely for me.

so i'm going to try to conceive. again. well, this time i'm going to try. last time, it just happened. we've decided to try for a june baby round about august-september-october sometime, depending of course on when i ovulate. so i've started charting my cycles and so far it's not going so good. i started taking my temperature before i actually had or read a book that told me how to chart. now i've got the book, but my temperatures are all over the place, contrary to what they're supposed to be doing. so i'm changing thermometers, seeing if the old one's batteries were perhaps dying or something of the sort. this time, i've got to really plan this. i've always had that in my head, from the moment alex was born with the cleft, i knew that the next time around i'd have to be really careful and take extra good care of myself. so no boozing it up this summer (not like i have the time for that anyway with a toddler underfoot), cutting out caffeine again, eating healthier, etc. after four surgeries and the agony of missing out on breastfeeding, i'm just not prepared for anything else going wrong. i know that my chances of it happening are slim, but i've seen worse happen to other people and i feel not a little bit vulnerable. at the moment, i'm not really feeling into the whole idea of trying to conceive at all, but i'm not feeling much into anything. i can't figure out what's wrong with me. lately my head is just so full of soup it's ridiculous. i'm getting upset at the slightest thing, and feeling absolutely no motivation to do much of anything. it's amazing that i'm here typing. it's amazing that i've done any of the things that i did today: went to the insurance place, did the laundry, did some dishes, worked on my attachment parenting brochure... and yet, still, i feel like i've accomplished nothing. i'm just not happy right now. i don't know why i can't just be happy. it seems so easy when i see kodak commercials or crap like this. i don't know why i can't live in a fucking kodak commercial.


alex today

i have problems. i took a personality disorder test. here are my results:
Disorder | Rating
Paranoid: Low
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Low
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Moderate
Histrionic: High
Narcissistic: High
Avoidant: Low
Dependent: High
Obsessive-Compulsive: High

his heart beats silently,
but his breathing is always labored.
air screams through a tightened wall of scar
where once there was nothing at all.
his lips press tightly together,
pursed into a frown by the vacuum of breath
rising and falling.
his hair mats from sweat collecting on his pillow.

and what dreams do not wake you?
what makes you smile while sleeping?
is it the bath fish come alive, wriggling against your skin?
or mama chasing you in fields of bedding,
catching you and tickling?

how did you even come to be you?
what mistake did i make that left your flesh incomplete,
your face hollow where a smile should be?
was it my body?
the things i did,
this gross collection of DNA,
half-rotted from some past indiscretion?
my cells eating each other at the exact wrong moment,
leaving you incomplete and detached,
so that now, months later,
your inhalation and subsequent exhalation
are driven hard by will,
forced coming in and going out
against damaged tissue,
hardened by unfamiliar hands
and yet unable to soften with kisses,
to relax with words whispered gently in a lullaby hum…

why can i not repair what i’ve inflicted
and heal my heart enough
to have faith in this body’s ability to
make a whole person,
perfect and ripe,
fruit born from a shell tough enough
to weather every wound,
to absorb every stone thrown
in a tornado of creation?

will one day come when we have both healed over,
yet left with scars
that remind us at times
of how difficult it is to breathe?

i think that my struggle has more to do with understanding my choice to be a mother. being a mother is a greater task than i could ask for. it takes everything of me, all the parts of me to do it as well as i like. i can do things outside of being a mom, and i do, but at the moment all roads lead back to that. the things that i am doing outside of being a mom include leading an attachment parenting group and organizing an attachment parenting group booth at a mother's day event. i also see a therapist to talk about being a mom, since my adult interaction is limited. i don't mind being a mom. i love it, it's fabulous. and i am still me even though i'm a mom. i guess i've found a career, you could say. but the struggle is that sometimes doubt creeps in. guilt creeps in. curiosity creeps in. and i begin to wonder if maybe there is some other version of my life. sometimes i feel the pressures of 70s-era feminism saying that opportunities were presented to me that i snotily declined. sometimes i feel the pressures of artisthood breathing down my neck saying that i should be progressing, growing, producing at all. at other times i realize that all of this is the stuff of life and if i were doing anything else i would be missing the real thing which is where i'm at - the purpose of the species, the intentions of my biology, to which i know that i am truly, truly dedicated. i know that despite the rhetoric, the goal of feminism was to allow for the choice, which as a culture we are only now remotely appreciating. i know that despite feminist gains that support for mothers at home or mothers at work or single mothers is decidely lacking and that the discrepancy between the pay rates of men and women is 75 cents on the dollar. i know that in order to be an artist fully, i must allow for life to feed the art. i also know how frida khalo struggled with the inertia to create, how fitzgerald felt that his earlier work was immature, and how salinger still hides in the woods. what history now tells me is that given all the time in the world (van gogh) or a hefty cocaine habit (basquiat), or the world's wealthiest sponsor (michelangelo), or some combination of the three, one can produce ad infinitum, provided one's back, or one's heart, or one's brain doesn't give out, which of course it eventually does. i am not yet 25. my world is not likely to end tomorrow. i must simply learn to accept everything in good time. i must also devise better methods for staving off all those gremlins of fear and doubt and guilt. and as an artist, for which the time will come, i must learn how to do as jack black has mastered and keep ego and critics away from my brain as my fingers type or paint or what have you. and you're right, indeed - fuck 'em.

i was wondering, do you ever feel the need for validation? because i was thinking about myself as an artist and realizing how i constantly need to be validated, whether or not i actually get it. i find myself even feeling a great pull for someone to tell me that i am doing what i should be doing, that this path that i am on makes sense regarding who i am and that it is good and right and that it is *who i am*. i feel sometimes that maybe i sold myself short in terms of art and that nothing i do is valuable and that nothing i've ever done was as great as it could be, or any good at all. and then i thought of you - and you seem so confident that what you do is good and of value and that how you actually make money, or that you make money or feel or find security is of little importance. that's the feeling i get from you - that you *know* absolutely that what you are doing is right. how ever did you get that way? is it something that your parents or community or society instilled in you? were you just born with that? did you/do you ever feel that you should be doing something better, or perhaps just outside pressure to do something more/better? i feel like i was told that i was good at so much and that i'm letting that image/idea of me down somehow, even though i know there's absolutely no real pressure to do anything other than what i'm doing. am i just overly neurotic? do i think through this too much? and why have i chosen you as my confessor (you might ask and even i ask myself)? i had this discussion with my father when he was here in february and he mentioned that everyone is surprised that i've become so "domesticated". no one ever expected that of me. i never even really expected it of myself, though it was what i really wanted. or maybe it was a cop-out. or maybe just a biological urge. but how can i reduce my love to biology? what the hell is wrong with me? why do i feel so twisted and turned about this? i speak about my life and get so tongue-tied. how do i get ahold of it, feel it, sense it, understand it, reconcile that which i dream with that which i do? where does understanding come? when do i feel sure of myself? how?

Birth Story

"it is five a.m. and the sun has charred the other side of the world and come back to us." it is five a.m. and i am stirred by a tensing in my belly, pressing on my bladder. this is nothing shocking, nothing new. this has become my life in these 15 days of delayed baby. i get up to pee, and for the first time in months, more than a few teaspoons of liquid trickles out. a lot more. i am confused. i am terrified of hoping that this is my amniotic sac sprung a leak and seeping down my leg. in my life, "maybe" always means "no". it has been 15 days since my due date. i am done waiting. i am through with hope. i am swollen from my spine to my navel with so much hope i can’t stand it anymore. we had tried every home induction and wives tale in the book to no avail: primrose oil, blue cohash, black cohash, sex, orgasms, swimming, spicy food, bouncing, nipple stimulation, castor oil, stripping the membranes, foot massage, spinal realignment, long walks and a raspberry tea leaf enema. and yet here is this trickling down my leg as i get back into bed and then another contraction. i check the clock and try to rest. in lieu of sleep, i periodically watch the time and realize that approximately every ten minutes another contraction comes. knowing that my husband has just recently fallen asleep due to a lifetime of insomnia, i let him be…

at seven, my mom got up for work. i got out of bed and went downstairs. i told her my water broke. she got the doppler and listened to the heart rate. it was fine. she asked if she should stay home. i told her to go ahead and go to work because i wasn't sure how long it would be. mom said i would have the baby today. i felt giddy. finally he was on his way. i ate breakfast and folded laundry, contractions still coming every ten minutes, maybe closer. at eight my mom left. i tried calling the backup OB's office to let them know i wasn't coming in to talk about induction.

at eight thirty, i woke jon up. he was groggy but immediately jumped up and got in the shower. i started to make the bed with two sets of sheets and the plastic cover, but had to stop because the contractions didn't let me focus outside of myself any longer. for some reason i wanted to be downstairs. i started to pace around, not knowing what to do. i wanted to get the bed made, but didn't want to go back upstairs. i guess i was afraid of getting stuck up there. i would stop and lean against the dining room table during contractions. they weren't really painful at this point, but the pressure was mounting and i had to breathe through them.

the lay midwife happened to call for my mother and jon talked to her. he gave me the phone and i had to tell her to hang on for a contraction. i leaned against the table and once i could talk again said, "okay," then told her when it was over. she said it was about 45 seconds long. i didn't know what to tell her, but she recommended that we call my mother back home. i stopped for another contraction and handed the phone off to jon because it was more work than the last. she told him they were three minutes apart. he got off the phone and paged my mom, then called the photographer, our friend sarah who was going to be there to help out and our other parents to tell them i'd started labor. my sisters, natalie and lilllian, got up and became pretty excited. they made me cinnamon toast and got me gatorade. my step-father, jim, was out feeding the animals.

i sat on the floor between the wall and the dining room table. during contractions would get up on my hands and knees and moan. i had been having irregular contractions for a week and was already dilated to three, but these contractions were more in my lower back. the pressure on my low back was becoming more painful and everything was becoming gradually and evenly more intense.

my mom got back at about 9:30 - an hour and a half after she'd left. she got my sisters to start setting up the birth pool and listened to the baby. she recommended that i get out from between the wall and the bench and go into the living room. she said to try out the bean bag chair. i labored there for a while, moaning through contractions, starting to seriously lose my head.

everyone arrived between 11 and 12:30. jan started taking pictures and sarah jumped in to do counter-pressure on my back. i got on the birth ball, leaning on jon with sarah pressing hard on my low back. mom put on the norah jones cd, which was really nice and burnt a sage incense wand. i smelled it when she first lit it – i could smell the sulfur of the match and asked what it was, but sarah and jon didn’t know what i was talking about because they couldn’t smell it all the way in the kitchen.

mom brought me a rosie the riveter shirt to wear instead of the nightgown i’d had on. natalie, lilly, and sarah kept cool washcloths for my head. natty filled up the bathroom sink with water and ice and several washcloths so they didn’t have to take the same one away to re-wet it every time. i remember she was proud of her innovation.

this is where my memory of the order of things starts to get hazy. i was in such a haze – completely in laborland. i moaned and wailed through the contractions. i tried to find positions that were comfortable and completely used jon and sarah physically to rely on to support me when i couldn’t support myself and massage me to relieve the pain. during contractions i struggled to get my torso higher to let my uterus move the boulder in my belly lower.

the norah jones cd ended and some classical music came on that was from the olympic games and i said, “what the hell is this music?” mom stopped the cd and said, “i know what she wants to hear.” and i knew that she did. she went and found her al green box set, put all four disks in the cd player and hit shuffle. i know that the music played the rest of the labor, but i have no recollection of hearing it.

they told jim to boil water for the swimming pool since we were out of hot water, which made him really excited because it was just like in the movies. i finally let my mom check me and i was dilated to 4 cm. jon and i walked around some, stopping in the kitchen for a contraction. i stood and rocked a bit, but it was harder to relieve the back pain while i was standing.

i got in the pool for a little while, which did help the back pain at first. in fact, as i was getting in, my contractions let up for a couple of minutes. at first i relished the relief, but then i started to worry that things were stalling. just then, the contractions came back full force. i went to the bathroom then came back to the pool. my mother said that my father had called. i remember thinking that i should respond to this or call him back or something, but was completely unable to do so. he called periodically throughout the day and kept my step-mother and step-siblings up to speed. they seemed to think that it took a very long time for the baby to come, but to me it went by quickly.

pressure was building inside of me and i felt a strong urge to poop. jon and i went into the bathroom. i insisted that it was just jon because i didn’t want everyone watching me poop. everyone else took a break and ate sushi that jim had brought home from his errands. jan told me later that tuesday said, “i love this part. i know she feels terrible, but it means the baby’s almost here.”

the contractions were nonstop at this point, though because of the back pain they had never been clearly defined anyway. i told jon that i felt like i wanted to crawl out of my skin. during contractions i would lean my full weight on him and make him pull on my lower back with his hands from where he sat in front of me, all while he was squatting down on his haunches. i asked him if he wanted a towel to sit on, but he declined.

my mom came in to check me, which i didn’t want her to do, but she assured me that i was close enough that it wouldn’t hurt quite as badly as before. she said i was 7 to 8 centimeters. i think that i sort of began to push there in the bathroom, but it was more because i kept thinking i needed to poop than about getting the baby out. he was moving down the birth canal, but it all felt like pain to me.

we went back to the living room, which i didn’t think i could do. i got on my hands and knees on the bean bag chair again, this time with the birth ball to lean on to help me lift my torso up higher. i think they grabbed the ball in desperation as i growled about not being high enough. i started feeling incredibly nauseous and someone brought a bowl for me to vomit in. i threw up several times and totally lost my head. the contractions were building to a crescendo and i couldn’t do anything. i was totally and uncontrollably in my body. i kept struggling to get my torso higher to allow my uterus the room to stretch, to open and push down unobstructed by my insides. i couldn’t support my own weight and started to fall asleep between contractions. everything was a panicked rush of struggling to get higher, vomiting and desperately searching for a more comfortable positioning. it was a little like being drunk to the point of sickness, falling asleep on a bathroom floor between vomiting… occasionally i'd scream as loud as i could, though it wasn’t a b-movie horror flick scream, but a deep-throated howling. i was flailing my whole body uncontrollably as i couldn’t support my weight and couldn’t stand the pain i was in.

they put me back in the pool, now completely naked (though i don’t know when exactly that happened) and i felt nauseous and flailed some more. someone said as i was getting in the pool that i was close and was bringing my baby, trying to remind me that there was a purpose to my agony and reassuring me that everything was right, but i said, “i don’t want a baby, i want an epidural.” my mom said that she had the midwife’s epidural ( the pool) and put me in the water. i said that i couldn’t do it and thought to myself how i really didn’t want to anymore. everything my body did was trying to find a way out of the situation. all my movements were frantic and uncontrolled. i kept saying i couldn’t do it, even though i knew that i had to. even as i thrashed around in the water, it occurred to me how much worse it would have been if we had gone to our appointment with the backup ob that morning and had had to go in for an induction on monday and i’d had to have the baby in the hospital. i was glad that i hadn’t been given pitocin and wasn’t stranded in a hospital bed. i couldn’t imagine how much worse a pitocin drip would have been.

mom and tuesday tried to listen to the heart rate with the doppler, but couldn’t get a good listen because of the water and my thrashing. they were able to hear that the heart rate was dropping during contractions which i was now definitely pushing through. someone asked if i was pushing, though i think they just said it out loud, not directly to me, but i couldn’t answer anyway. they tried to get me to calm down and to breathe. they had jon breathing slow and deep, in through the nose and out through the mouth for me to mimic, but all i could do was hyperventilate. i guess because of the dip in the heart rate, they wanted me to breathe deeply and slowly down to the baby to give him oxygen, so tuesday got the oxygen out and put the mask on me. jon kept breathing slow and loud and i held onto him, trying to breathe with him, but still breathing too fast and moaning and screaming and pushing. considering the feeling of it all now, i can only think that i was opening up with a capital O. i was being forced open by giant hands – pushing me open, squeezing me open, prying me open from the inside out, making room for the boulder to come out. i didn’t feel like i was going to be split in two – i felt a surging, pushing, Opening.

finally, they pulled me out of the pool (though i was there less than 15 minutes) and put me back on the bean bag, this time on my side to deliver. while in the pool, i had reached down to try to feel the head, and i did feel it, but it didn’t feel hard, it felt like a piece of fruit or a water balloon – taut, but soft. on the bean bag, i was laying on my side on top of my left arm. sarah had to hold my right leg up and i yelled at her to hold it better and higher. i pushed during every contraction and natty got a mirror for me to see the head come out. mom asked if i wanted jon to come catch the baby or stay with me by my head. i’m not sure if i actually answered, but i did tighten my arm around his neck.

tuesday described the pressure i was feeling and said that i would feel a stinging sensation from the pressure of the head, which i didn’t until it was fully crowning. they told me to push hard during contractions and they started to see the head come out. it came out then went back in a little bit through a few contractions, then tuesday said that it had stopped going back in, so i pushed as hard as i could for as long as i could, grunting and screaming. i caught a glimpse of jim in the doorway between the living room and the dining room – he was jumping up and down, clapping his hands, then he’d leave and then come back and do it again. i looked at the head in the mirror that tuesday was holding and reached down to feel it. it crowned and i felt it as it came out completely – it was a sensation unlike any other and one i could not describe with words. it hurt, but i could also feel the head moving through the birth canal and what that was like – the tissue moving against tissue, the boulder becoming two parts and releasing. the head came out and turned – sarah said that he opened his eyes and looked up. his hand was up by his head and my mother pressed to keep it from flipping up and tearing me – it was probably what caused all my back pain.

another contraction came and i pushed as hard as i could so the whole of his body slid out – first one shoulder then the other then the whole body. i pushed like a champion. he started screaming right away. they grabbed him up and placed him on my chest and i said, "it's a baby!" i kept saying over and over, “oh my god, oh my god.” then i asked what was wrong with his face, because it took me a second to see that he wasn’t just squished, but that something was wrong. my mom said, “she has a cleft, but it can be fixed.” i wanted to see what gender he was, especially since mom had said “she”. somehow we got the towel off to see that he was a boy and i think i said, “i told you” to my mother since i’d had a dream that he was a boy even though she kept calling the baby “she”. then mom untangled him from his umbilical cord (it was wrapped around his shoulder) and i was able to get my arm out from underneath me. i held him and he screamed. mom had jon cut the cord when it stopped pulsing. then jon took him and wrapped him in heated blankets.

my mom noticed that i had a peri-urethral tear, but said i didn’t need any stitches. i didn’t feel it happen at all. tuesday wanted me to push the placenta out, but i didn’t want to because i was afraid of the pain. she said it wouldn’t hurt like the baby did, so i pushed it out. she was right, it didn’t hurt as bad. aleksander manuel wlasiuk-martinez was born august 16, 2002 at about 3:05 pm, though no one thought to look at the clock the moment he was born because we were all so caught up in the moment. the first time someone noticed the time, it was 3:12 and i’d already delivered the placenta. i had inadvertently pushed for 30 minutes, then intentionally pushed for another 35 minutes.

i shook and my teeth chattered. jim brought me warm blankets from the dryer. i went to the bathroom, then came back and held him, both of us all wrapped up in blankets. my sisters brought me long soccer socks that went up to my thighs to keep me warm. tuesday gave me some homeopathic remedy for the shaking, and within fifteen minutes it had stopped. i had to be careful about how i moved, but i felt a lot better.

i took a quick shower after he calmed down, then held aleksander the rest of the evening on the couch. i was brought a glass of champagne and food. i tried to breastfeed all evening, but aleksander couldn’t get much. my mom called the pediatrician right after he was born to see if we needed to bring him to the hospital. the doctor told mom to try to look at the extent of the cleft. she also said the hospital was the worst place for him because of the germs, and called us in a prescription for special cleft nursers. my mom found me an electric pump to rent. jim went to his radio show, which he hadn't prepared for at all even though it was a special 25th anniversary of elvis presley’s death edition. my mom did a prenatal visit for tuesday who was pregnant with her fifth child, then cleaned the whole house. my dad and jon's mom came to visit. my friend amanda stopped by. she was most impressed that my toes were painted. our family friend martha came by and told us about joaquin phoenix being born with a cleft. interestingly, we had gone to see signs with joaquin phoenix and mel gibson the night before. i remembered staring at the scar on his lip the whole movie wondering what it was from.


aleksander manuel wlasiuk-martinez; august 16, 2002; 7 lbs. 0 oz.; 19.5 inches

i wish i were happier, hipper, freer, braver, bolder, friendlier, younger, wealthier, smarter, older, nicer, cuter, sexier, fitter, stronger, cleaner, messier, wiser, more awake, more active, more creative, more talented, more beautiful, more interesting, more exciting, more fun, more patient, more willing, more able, more caring, more careful, more gentle, more flexible; a better mother, wife, lover, friend, companion, artist, writer, housekeeper, woman, person, life form.

sometimes i hate everything. i have to pee right now. my son is sleeping with my husband on the bed. he's been grumpy today, but i don't think he's sick and i don't think he's getting any teeth. we went on a long walk to buy mayonaise and cinnamon swirl bread at great harvest. we saw that up close the houses need fresher paint. there were bluebells blooming in all the yards. and crocus and dafodils. one house was using a moose antler as a doorstop for their storm door. four blocks down from higgins, i realized that baby boy had dropped his bead ring. so we turned around. he was sleeping. we retraced our steps until we found the bead ring on a picket of a fence. there was an old man there with his grand-daughter cleaning out the yard. they said they found it on the sidewalk. we said thank you and took evans back home instead of beckwith. the street names are stamped into the concrete on the corners in this neighborhood. on all the corners on evans, it's spelled "evens". i thought about writing the city to find out why, but decided that since some of the corners had been replaced, it's probably been long enough that nobody knows or remembers. maybe i'm just being lazy. i had a fight this morning with my friend matt. i don't want to talk about it. i've been reading guerilla learning by grace lewellyn and i'm considering homeschooling alex when he gets older. i think i might be okay at it, but i have to learn to relax about his development. then i saw a baby who i think is younger than alex crawling and that whole being mindful about him developing at his own rate went out the window. sometimes i hate everything.