Tag Archives: Mother

Siren in the Night

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I am accustomed to hearing the emergency alert siren in Madison on a regular basis; it happens on the first Wednesday of every month at noon precisely. When I hear the siren begin to wind up into its high-pitch sustained whine, I pause to consider the day and time to confirm that it is only a test. My response to this conclusion is typically a mix of relief (that the sound doesn’t indicate an impending disaster), and slight irritation (that this grating noise is interrupting my day, albeit for only a few minutes).

I am NOT accustomed to being woken from a deep sleep in the middle of the night to hear this emergency siren, as happened earlier this week. At approximately 12:30am on Monday night, I woke to the sound of the siren.   It took my sleepy brain a few moments to register what was happening.   The siren was accompanied by thunderclaps loud enough to send the dog slinking over with her tail between her legs, shaking, and heavy rain – not falling in it’s typical downward trajectory but instead blowing horizontally, thumping against the house – making my bedroom feel like the inside of a car wash. Was this a tornado warning?? My first reaction was to grapple in the darkness for my smart phone to check the radar and verify the cause of the siren (hoping that somehow my technology was smarter than the siren and would indicate that I could go back to sleep). But before I could locate any information, Ken walked into the room and announced the tornado warning.  He’d first heard about it on Facebook, which he’d just happened to be perusing after midnight while unable to sleep – confirming that the news still travels fastest via the smartest technology of all — social media.

A more youthful and childless version of myself – feeling invincible and relying on a belief that surely tornadoes didn’t touch down in the middle of the city – may have thrown a pillow over my head and gone back to sleep.  But the stakes are higher now, and any recklessness I may have felt in the face of danger has been replaced with fierce protective instincts to keep my family and myself safe. Despite these strong instincts, Ken and I did hedge for a few moments weighing the consequences of being swept away in a tornado against waking the baby. While we usually do everything within our power to keep the baby asleep, this seemed like an appropriate exception.

Fortunately Mattie barely stirred when Ken picked him up and minimal rocking and shushing noises kept him asleep for the tiptoed trip through the house and down two flights of stairs into our basement. We settled down to wait out the storm in a nest of blankets from the laundry pile near the washing machine; me rocking and nursing my sleeping boy and Ken watching the radar on his phone.

Even though I still thought the likelihood of the tornado affecting us was small (yes, some of that invincibility still lingers), I felt afraid and imagined a variety of potential grisly outcomes.   But I was also struck by the timeless quality of this scene in the basement (minus the smart phone), and it made me think about all of the other mothers that have huddled over their babies in the darkness while sirens wailed around them. I imagined the fear a mother might feel while under the threat of an air raid or some other kind of enemy attack. Or of the mothers who knew that a tsunami or an earthquake was coming, but had no safe place to take shelter with their babies.

Maybe this was a coping mechanism of my mind – to imagine another scene to take me out of my own. Whatever it was, it instilled feelings of kinship with these mothers to know, if only for a few moments, the fear of a real potentially life-threatening disaster.

Like any mother, I feel tiny flutters of fear for the life of my child on a daily basis; the kind of fear that causes my heart to feel like it has momentarily dropped into my stomach while at the same time I forget how to breathe. This is usually caused by a close call of one variety or another, like when he almost falls from the top of the slide on the playground, almost runs into the street when a car is coming, or almost slips and falls in the bathtub.  I sometimes joke that my day consists of protecting Mattie from one life-threatening event after another, but today I am grateful for the normalcy and relative smallness of these everyday events.

On Monday night, the siren stopped after a short time (10 minutes?) and we knew it was safe to go back to bed, which we did gratefully. The next morning, I read in the paper that the tornado did in fact touch down in the middle of the city, even snapping trees, damaging property, and felling power lines on streets walking distance from my own.   While my mind drifted to the fates of those less fortunate than myself, maybe the fear that I was experiencing (and simultaneously avoiding) was more real than I dared consider.

At noon on the first Wednesday of next month when the emergency warning siren blares, I expect to feel more relief and gratitude than irritation. And perhaps I’ll even think to use it as a moment of ceremony, to remember all of those other mothers who visited me in the basement on Monday night; those who were able to return to bed like me, relieved and grateful that the threat of danger had passed, and those whose lives were lost or forever changed by a siren in the night.

 

Becoming Momma in 2013

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This post was inspired by the writing prompt from my last contemplative writing class of 2013.  It came out of the suggestion that there might be one word that could sum up the year…

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Holyshitfuck.

That’s the first word (a new one coined in our household) that comes to my mind when I reflect on the last year.  2013.

While Mattie was born in September of 2012, the bulk of this last year has been my first year of motherhood – of becoming Momma.  Someone said to me recently that they couldn’t imagine anything more tender and vulnerable than the first year of motherhood, and as this truth resonated through my being, I wept.

I feel like I may be just beginning to emerge from that state – maybe – just barely.  I certainly feel like I’ve come a long way from the uber-vulnerability of those first few weeks and months.  I remember feeling so naked learning how to be a parent in front of other people.   I felt like everyone was judging me, criticizing me – with their questions and assumptions and suggestions.  (Even when they were delivered with the best of intentions.) It’s taken a year for me to develop a sense of confidence in myself as a momma, and not take these things so personally.

So much of this year has been spent learning – and forgetting everything I thought I knew.

And I still feel so vulnerable and uncomfortable talking about many of our personal choices as parents. It’s not that I doubt them, but that we’re doing things differently than our parents did (than many parents do), causing me to feel the need to explain, justify, probably even defend.  And I find it so difficult to convey this with confidence, in a way that doesn’t come off as accusatory or know-it-all, without shrinking away and losing myself in my fear of being perceived as weak or overly-indulgent.

For example, nursing Mattie is hands-down one of the most amazing, powerful, and meaningful things that I’ve ever done.  It provides him (and me) with so much comfort, and is building a bond that is intense and beautiful and unlike anything I’ve ever known.  And of course it provides critical support to his developing immune system and his overall health and well-being.  These are benefits that I truly believe will last a lifetime, and I have no intention of weaning anytime in the near future.

And yet, while I know all of this in every fiber of my being, I still feel ashamed of breastfeeding my 15-month old son in front of most people.  After 12 months it’s officially called “extended” breastfeeding and the statistics about mothers who do this drop way off – like  a

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f.

Like the cliff I feel like I’ve been falling from for the last 15, no make that 18 months.  Since the blood clot presented itself at 28 weeks, really.

When I’m feeling self-conscious while nursing Mattie in front of someone, I find myself spouting off the World Health Organization’s recommendation that all children breastfeed for a minimum of 2 years.  I’m glad that the WHO has my back, and that they do research to support breastfeeding worldwide.  But in reality, the WHO has very little to do with my decision to continue breastfeeding my toddler (or to co-sleep, or anything else we do that falls outside cultural norms).  I’m doing what feels good – for me, for Ken, for Mattie.  And I find this a lot harder to explain.

Our culture is strange in that way.  Anything that science can explain = real, true, and acceptable.  And the things that cannot be measured and summed up through peer-reviewed research; through statistics and flow charts and diagrams – the things that can’t be seen — just aren’t as real, true, or acceptable.

But human beings cannot be reduced to numbers and lines, dots and arrows.  We are far too vast and complex – whole beings made up of interconnected systems – that are too often viewed in isolation from one another.   We are body, heart, mind and soul – and when we allow each part of ourselves to matter – we are our most whole, liberated, and powerful selves.  And from this place it’s easy to remember our truth, and to know what we need.

It’s from this place that I’m trying to live my life.  It’s just not easy to stay there all the time.

Holyshitfuck.

 Yes, 2013 has been a year of muscle-building for me –

 Of s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g myself in many less-than-comfortable ways;

Of developing greater resiliency, confidence, and tenderness toward myself;

Of widening my lens on reality;

And learning to trust my knowing about

the things that can’t be seen.

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Note:  If you’re interested in more information about extended breastfeeding (both the statistical kind and the story-telling, feel-good kind):  http://kellymom.com/fun/trivia/bf-numbers/; https://www.llli.org/nb/nbextended.html.