Last Night's Dreams

Shafer Hall rode a pony through Grand Central Station, and I fished off the shore of Vieques where I caught a stingray but threw it back. There was also at least one trip to Burger King and my mother in a long white dress; snow kept falling--either outside my window or on the other side of my mind but I couldn't see through the clouds. In her nestside-nest, the bird hardly squawked, but daylight came too soon anyway, and I woke, worried about sentences, worried that they'd never come, worried about what they'd say if they did.

Drop of the Ball

Several days ago, I saw my watch sitting on the dresser. I couldn't remember the last time I had worn it, and I picked it up and glanced at it and found that it had stopped on November 27 just before 10 p.m.--right around the time I went into labor.

It's been nearly a month and time, as I've always known it, has shifted completely. It has bent and twisted and folded its legs up under itself to sit blankly on the couch staring at the wall; it's battled the wind and tears and a couple of gasps of exhausted laughter; it's snuck out of the house while the baby slept next to her father, just to walk, alone, around the block breathing the solitary air.

I find myself jolting up in the middle of night worried that I'm not ready for Christmas--there are presents to buy and cards to write and loved ones to call--only to realize Christmas has already passed.

There was even the moment a few nights ago when I woke up half out of a dream thinking it was time: the baby was coming: labor had started. Moments later, by the light of the nightlight, I had changed my daughter and was feeding her and realized that soon she won't even need me, that in all actuality, she already doesn't need me.

It's disorienting. Nights last a thousand years, and this month has gone by in a second, and come Thursday, it'll be 2009: the ball will drop; strangers will kiss, and here we will be, in the heart of Brooklyn, my husband, my daughter and me, wondering if the night will ever end and still hoping that tomorrow might hold off on coming.

Ho Ho Ho!!!

It ain't Christmas
if I'm not stuffing my baby girl into a stocking
for a photo op.

Merry Christmas to you and yours
from us and ours...

Merry Merry

Eva's First Movie

She loved it; I loved it; you'll love it.

Day Twenty-two

Yesterday, Ada came by with magic and light and a calender made of birds. She held Eva's head with her two hands and gave her kisses, told her stories about whales and said her ears looked like seashells. After she left, we went to bed early, and I dreamed of icebergs, not just the tips of them but the whole mass of them. When I woke, I pulled Eva close and pressed my ear to her ear, tighter and tighter, until I could hear the whole ocean inside of her.

It's morning like these...

when one wonders if it's a good idea to start smoking again.

The scene: in bed, 3 a.m., baby wants to be fed, but no way can baby be hungry, baby just got fed at 2:30, baby's diaper is clean, oh, but now, baby has peed all over "sleep sack," all over sheets, so much urine out of such a tiny infant, quiet baby, please be quiet baby, shush baby shush baby shush. Take her, the wife says to her husband. Finally. Exhausted. This same song since 8 p.m. Take her before I throw her. Husband, in despair, not believing wife could say such a thing, husband who sleeps on the side of the bed where he can't hear every cry and grunt of infant, husband who knows wife will wake up to comfort infant, will pick her up, latch her on, let her pee anywhere she pleases. Wife tries to comfort husband: You know I would never throw her, and of course she wouldn't, I wouldn't; she's read it in all the millions of books: this is a normal feeling: it's that 3 a.m. feeling, that oh my god what if my bones fall out because my skin's too tired to hold them kind-of-feeling, that I've stared at you all day long little girly bird and I love you more than anything in the world so can't you let me sleep for one hour straight kind-of-feeling, that barter-with-God, barter-with-self, barter-with-child (I'll let you stay out all night for prom! Please just forty-five minutes). Husband says, Maybe you should give up dairy. Wife imagines pouring the milk down the drain, walking around the corner to the deli and bellying up to the counter for a pack of smokes, make that two, ah heck, just throw in a third. Gave up dairy, she could say when her husband came downstairs and found her burning wildly on the couch: her head on fire, her heart aflame, smoke seeping out of every inch of her. Gave up dairy for good.

Bliss

Courtesy of Sweet Margot

Postpartum Pop Quiz

The prenatal fear that you will "break the baby"
is quickly replaced by the fear that:

a) you constantly smell of spoiled milk.
b) the breast pump will scar you
(both emotionally & physically) for life.
c) you will never again wear pants that are not
i) maternity
or ii) intended for sleep and/or yoga.
d) your mind has turned to mush.
d) (see: d, and make this e)
e) All of the above!!!

Undone

Now, you sleep. A wave of sour milk,

a hundred piles of wash and me, your mother, in bed

crying real tears, your gums already so familiar,

and your feet, your seabird cry,

and now, you sleep, a sleep of the very tired,

a sleep I long to be sleeping,

but your cry, your breath. I hear too much

of you, hear black and blue, and when I reach

for you (as I do and do and do),

my hand finds the warm, moist air from your nose,

and I count your breaths. (One, two). Now, you sleep,

and I stand over you, and I want already

for you to forgive me, forgive my lurking,

my counting, forgive my bone-tired bones,

my envying your rest, my wondering if I can do this loving,

this I am your mother, and you are my child

kind of loving. Now, you sleep, and the wash stays

undone, and I too am undone, completely undone by you.

Sweet Dreams

C., circa 1974

E., this morning

Day Twelve

A Pretty Song
by Mary Oliver

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

Week 39: A Recap

It all began Thanksgiving Day. Everything seemed ordinary enough. I woke up, took my "Week 39" belly-shot and then did the ole waddle with C. down to the fancy deli to buy some last minute goods. There was ham and turkey and mac & cheese and two kinds of cranberry sauce; there were green beans and squash and a whole heap of carrots.
Then, our guests started arriving, and there was even more. Here's Olivia with her famous apple pie--to be shadowed only by her famous pumpkin pie.
Looking back now (see below), I do look, as they say, verrrrrrrrrrrrry pregnant, like one of those women you point at expecting that at any moment they're going to burst wildly at the seams...

And...burst I did...Just moments before we sat down for dinner, I thought, hmm...something's going on. I was, I believed "leaking amniotic fluid." I went upstairs and called my mom. Mom, I said, I think I'm leaking amniotic fluid.

Your water broke?

Well, it doesn't seem "broken." Maybe just a leak.

Your water broke, she said. You need to go to the hospital.

When we hung up, I called my doctor for a second opinion. Yes, she told me, I did need to go to the hospital. I went down to the table and made everyone hold hands and say what seemed like a prayer. I might be in the early stages of labor, I said as we piled our plates high, and they laughed. Then we all laughed--all the way to the hospital.
At the hospital, I was given a gown, a plastic bracelet and a Ph test. Since I still wasn't having any contractions, I really wanted to go home and sleep for the night. The pony-tailed resident wasn't having it. Please, I said. I'll come back tomorrow. He stared at me; sitting at the edge of my bed, he played Mr. Empathy. My concern is for your unborn child, he said. As you know, the vagina is a very, very dirty place.

(Uhm, actually I didn't know that but thanks for the heads-up...)

Fortunately, the tryptophan from the turkey worked as a bit of a sedative; unfortunately, the laboring woman next door could have woken the dead. Sleep was not, it seemed, in the cards. The next morning, my doctor arrived. Because of my already broken water, she was concerned about infection. She told me that if I didn't start having contractions by eight that evening, she'd be forced to induce me. I really didn't want to be chemically induced. Again, I begged to go home to try to induce labor on my own. Finally, she agreed, giving me twelve hours to do whatever I needed to do.

It worked a little like this OR how to induce labor at home: Hot shower followed by acupuncture followed by a quarter cup of castor oil chased with apple cider followed by a one mile walk followed by two slices of pepperoni pizza (my mom swore by it) followed by a five mile walk followed by a self-given enema followed by a twenty minute nap followed by a shower and BAM: labor.

Here I am measuring out the castor oil. Yum diggety:
What followed was the longest night of my life. C. and my mom (who had flown in from Oklahoma) were in the labor room with me, and it went a little like this: la dee da dee da dee...oh my God...ouch...moo...(rock)...La dee da dee da dee...repeat. (I had hear mooing could help alleviate some of the pain.) We had gotten back to the hospital around five, and let me tell you, all the yoga in the world couldn't have prepared me for the pain of labor. The thing is: I think I'm tough. Or, I should say, I thought I was tough.

Around 2:30 a.m., 33 hours after my water had broken and 9 hours after the intense labor had set in, my mom came in to the bathroom with me while I showered. She cried. Here, the strongest woman I've ever known, and she was crying. Please get the epidural, she said. I can't watch this. I can't watch you be in so much pain.

Uhm...okay.

So I did it. Maybe I'm a wuss. The only way I can compare not getting an epidural to getting one is like this: not getting an epidural is like being hit by a Mack truck; getting one is like sitting in a truck stop eating a grilled cheese sandwich. To be honest, I wanted nothing at that moment except to hold my baby girl. All my tough-girl talk, all my "ooo-I-just-wanna-experience-it" talk, all my blahblahblah, it all meant nothing when it came down to meeting my daughter. (Of course, though, I'll still try it again with my next child; I hear the second one's much easier.)

So, that's it: Eva's birth story. We'll never be the same...

Lullaby

Eva's First Week

Fresh out of the womb...

Day 1:
Nana thinks the bow looks cute; I protest.
Looking back, I guess the bow is pretty darned cute.

Day 2:
Leaving the hospital.
Not a peep from Evabird.
I, on the other hand, bawled.
Were they really letting us take a live human being home?

Day 4:
Life is good.
Day 5:
First trip to the doctor.
All tests passed with flying colors!
Day 7:
First week on earth completed.
She even survived her parents dancing around the room
loudly singing Happy Birthday...

In the News

Earlier today, scientists believed they had found two previously undetected planets hovering dangerously close to the earth's surface. They then realized they were looking at my milk-engorged breasts. Back to feeding...

Her Cry

sounds like a Seagull's squawk

so I call her Evabird and tell her stories about the ocean: all salt air taffy love; how you can walk a hundred miles with the sand between your toes and never think to look back; I tell her about balloons that come unloosed and stars that lay belly-down; I tell her about the time I got stung by fishes made of jelly and the day her Uncle Joe buried me in the sand and made a mermaid of me; I tell her of meteor showers and summer thunder and houses that sit so close to the edge of the earth it seems that any second they could fall into the sky. Then I kiss her head, and Evabird, I say, mama's here. Don't cry. All the ocean is tears...we don't need any here.

Eva Jane Callihan

Six Pounds & 1 ounce

Born (after a long, long night)
5:19 a.m.
November 29, 2008

I'm in love...