Mommy’s Groove

I love birthdays. Any excuse to celebrate an individual and recognize her uniqueness is as good a reason for cake as any other. But I have a secret about this birthday cake, I feel it’s as much for me as it is her. It was me after all, who sat 5 years ago perched on the threshold to motherhood, unable to see the next steps, choosing faith and love as my only companions.

Shooing fear and doubt away with every labour horror story I willed to bounce off me was easier said than done. Those acquaintances are the type that like to visit at dusk when I’m most tired and susceptible to suggestion. You have no idea how much pain you’re going to be in they’d taunt. What if the striking ambulance workers can’t get to you fast enough? You’ll never forgive yourself! they’d whisper ominously into my heart.

I still struggle to explain where the confidence to birth at home with a licensed midwife came from. There is no explanation except somewhere within. It’s not something I can share or teach. I looked hard at what I could control and how I felt in the quiet of myself to make that choice. I asked until I heard the answer: Where should we be? Where will we be safe? In a hospital was never part of the picture I got, neither were the anticeptic smell, bright halls or gowned strangers. I went with what I got. The quiet of our bedroom, the firm softness of our bed and the smell of my husband’s pillow. Love made the choice, faith showed me the place.

As I stir the batter for her 5th birthday cake I read the recipe, following the steps I’m reading for the first time. I’m poor at reading a recipe through before making it—I have all the ingredients on hand, I just fail to read the instructions in my haste until I’m in the moment. This lack of preparation usually leaves me feeling a bit trepidatious, with butterflies in my stomach—particularly when I come to a part I didn’t anticipate. At that moment I scramble to make what skills or utensils I have accomplish the task. And I throw in a big heap of intention and silent prayer. Becauase I love to feed people—well.

My mothering is basically the same. I haven’t read the receipes for raising a child. I mostly ignore parenting advice except from trusted sources and I scramble to handle the surprises I get along the way. But because I expect to be surprised, I have learned to trust that I will adapt. Jack Canfield in The Secret compares the road to life as being like driving in the dark: you can only see ahead as far as the head-lamps will show you. But that ambiguity about the whole journey doesn’t stop you from driving. Similarly, he notes, we climb stairs in the dark believing that there will be another, and then another step for our sure footedness. As I licked ice cream and wandered around my neighbourhood pacing my way through the early stages of labour I held onto that trusting faith. I have no idea what’s next, but I’m going with it.

Shocked was how I felt when I held Kate in my arms for the first time. Observers might say that’s because she was howling to wake the dead (and perhaps she was?). But I was stunned silent by her formidable presence, her strong and yes, vocal spirit and the fact that there she was in my arms for now and always. My legs shook as I knelt, holding her head-down to allow her lungs and passages to drain. I stared first at her red face, then at her long length and girl parts. Here she is, my daughter. I thought. I’m so glad you’ve come to me!

So as I prepare to ice the cake, putting a heavy dose of love on it, I’ll mix onto the sweetness my secret celebration of my on-going journey, now 5 years old. Michael added a new layer of engagement for me and for us. He’s made us richer, laugh harder and love more deeply still. So I ice the cake for both babes who come for me to mother, and celebrate the mysterious, affirming and surprising mothering journey we are on together. Happy Birthday Kate!

I’ve had a number of people e-mail me requesting the prescription for lying-in which I talk about in the September-October 2006 issue of Mothering. The “prescription” comes out of Bridget Lynch’s many years of clinical work, research and post-doctoral writing and I was blessed to have received the lessons as part of my experience. I look forward to one day reading about the history and clinical results she observed, and if and when that time comes, I will write here about where to find it.

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Etched in my memory are the feelings — trepidation, excitement, FEAR and quiet contentment — which jerked my body around in the final weeks before my first child was born.

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When I began to wonder who was in charge of my state of being, I was 7 months pregnant. I had expected to feel the presence of my baby by that point, but the eye-wandering distraction which came to envelop me, caught me off-guard. One day it was upon me and I could not get back to “myself”. My laser sharp focus, intuitive observations and crisp synthesization slipped through my grasp, seemingly gone forever.

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The downside of all the sharing we do with our pregnant sisters is that it’s really hard to filter our advice and experiences as so not to allow negative emotions — fear, sadness, guilt or regret — in our own experiences to seep into the conversation. I found when I was pregnant, I was so open to everything floating by that it was easy to absorb the emotions behind the stories that were being shared in good faith (hence I donned the emotional flak jacket). How can you stop your cervix from pulling in when you hear about 32 hours of labour, petocin drips and tears which seemed never to end? It kinda burns a hole in your no-yet penned birth plan!

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I found an enormous sense of excitement in wanting to be part of the collective consciousness of motherhood as the baby inside me began to grow and my body showed signs of change. I could hear the little girl in me saying, “Here I will belong. Here I will be welcomed”. But it was as if old wounds were being brought up to heal because while I yearned to belong, there was that old companion, nervousness in my stomach. Hoping to avoid the let-down of feeling different again, I began approaching “the news” with women cautiously, listening to the personal stories while filtering for gems of knowledge and common values.

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I was questioning things from my pre-pregnancy life I had always accepted as fact. Moving into the second trimester of pregnancy, I was increasingly uncomfortable with what appeared to be popular rites of pregnancy for their lack of connection to the bigger questions of becoming someone’s mother. While I was open to learning how to behave from those who came before me, I was beginning to sense there were decisions lurking around every corner about which I knew absolutely nothing; and I had yet to scratch the surface of the medical pregnancy.

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I became acutely aware, early in my second trimester, that Planet Baby was a stage which served to transition me from being a pregnant woman to being someone’s mother. This sounds obvious — but the distinction was about the sense that it was not just about “having a baby”. I was becoming someone’s mother and it made me sit up and pay attention.

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From my office in a high tower on Bay Street, the heart of Toronto’s business world, I rarely got the idea among the millions of daily transactions and human interactions going on around me, that mothering is important.

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There it sat anchoring the room, that status symbol of expectant parents: the crib. Who could have imagined with it’s hefty price-tag and its soft whisper of “adult-time”, this most symbolic first purchase would sit empty for months as a testament to the message.

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