Tag Archives: vulnerability

Sleeping Arrangements

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My heart is tender tonight.  I just tucked Mattie into his “own bed” for the first time (a futon mattress dragged into the corner of our room).  In his first few years of life he has spent the night in a variety of places, some stranger than others  — an infant car seat, a swing, a rocking bassinet, a co-sleeper — but most nights he has slept with us in our King size bed.  This is what has worked best for our family.  There was an earlier period when our mattress was on the floor and the futon was next to it, but Ken usually slept on it then. Our room is not large, and is essentially one giant bed with the two mattresses covering the floor.

As Mattie has been growing bigger we’ve talked about a bed of his own — still in our room, we’ve reassured him — but he hasn’t been interested.  I brought it up again last night, as we’d been waking each other up with all the tossing and turning on each of our parts, and this time he got excited about it.  The excitement carried through to today, and we spent the better part of the day cleaning and re-arranging.  He just fell asleep in his very own bed for the first time, and I’m tearful.  While it is a change that will likely be good for all of us, there is grief too.  She accompanies joy, change, growth.  They all reside in my heart space together tonight.

What follows is a poem that I wrote a few months back about sleeping with Mattie.  It feels appropriate that tonight is the night I finally share it…

 

It is the middle of the night

and I wake to feel his little foot

curling into the crease where my thigh meets my hip.

It nestles in and rests there

while we both fall

back to sleep.

 

Later, in the wee hours of the morning,

I feel his toes exploring the space under

my left shoulder blade.

He is lying horizontally

across the expanse of our bed

with his head resting near his papa’s.

This is about the time when the  l-o-n-g,

s-l-o-w process of waking up begins,

and while he flip-flops over me from one side to the next,

I squeeze my eyes shut tight and silently pray-hope-wish-with-all-my-might

that he settles back in for just…a bit…longer.

 

A few minutes later,

(my silent pleas unanswered),

he sits up and looks around through eyes half-open

until his gaze lands on me.

 

Momma…located.

I take a deep breath and sigh a tired sigh,

as I accept my fate and surrender to whatever might come next

(sweet snuggles and stories?

an onslaught of instant demands?

one never knows…).

 

My boy scoots over to me and rests his head

against mine,  then draws up his knees and tucks himself up tight

under the alcove of my chin, momentarily.  

I breathe in his sweet,  satisfying, oh-so-familiar

baby-boy-child smell.

 

He pulls away only to nuzzle his head,

then his cheek, against my cheek —

the way a kitten might nuzzle its momma.

 

While I am melting in the blissful sweetness of it all,

he tops it off with a kiss — planted on my cheek — and then

(the grand finale of this first act of the day)

he whispers softly, “I love you, momma.”

 

I am reduced to a puddle of love.

This is it, I think.  This is what matters most in all the world.

I squeeze him tight, and tell him I love him too.

 

This kind of love,

multiplied,

could heal this world.

I just know it.

 

IMG_5641

 

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…

*********

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

c

l

i

f

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.

 ********

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.

Birth

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I have been pregnant with the idea of this blog for nearly as long as my son, Mattie, has been alive (just over 14 months now).   I have taken great joy in its possibility; luxuriating in the longing and dwelling in the excitement around activating my creative mind with new purpose.

But in the last few months, as I’ve come closer to this moment – the one where I actually birth this blog – I’ve gotten really uncomfortable.  I’ve gone into labor, with contractions and all.  And the closer I’ve come, the more intense the contractions have gotten.

I’ve tinkered with setting up this WordPress account, designing the theme, looking through photos for a header, writing down countless ideas for names and taglines and topics.  And I’ve also come up with countless excuses to procrastinate, most of them fear-based or coming from a place of not feeling good enough, each causing a contraction in its own right.

And at each pause point, I’ve usually decided that I’m not doing this at all.  Time and again I’ve come to the conclusion that the vulnerability and rawness of writing and being this exposed is too painful.   And so in an effort of self-preservation, I’ve walked away, soothing myself with the notion that I don’t have to do it – or anything else that feels hard or risky or scary.

But here I am – knowing in my heart that I can’t turn back, wise with the knowledge that once in labor, there’s only one way out.   I want to write and I want to share my tender, vulnerable self in this new momma state.  I don’t want the possibility of this new creation to get lodged uncomfortably somewhere deep inside; providing a constant, painful reminder of what could have been.  I want instead to be brave, to let this new creation come up and through me, accepting its imperfections – my imperfections – rather than not risk trying at all.

So with this post, I am pushing forward and punching through my fear and my image of perfection by telling myself that the purpose is not to be perfect.  The purpose is to stretch and grow by putting myself out there in the world – as I embrace and explore what is real and raw and messy in this human experience of parenting and being in relationship – and trusting that this act that benefits me may also benefit another.

That’s what this blog is about for me.

So in that spirit, I’m not going spend another second agonizing over what this first post says or how the site looks.  It is what it is — and it can grow and change over time.  Publishing now as I surrender into the great unknown about what comes after birth…

Welcome to the world, Momma Sound!