Retrospection

For two years I have thought almost constantly of the past; is it the immediacy of living in ever-changing motherhood that leaves me grasping for perspective? I don’t know.

I think of the future, too.

Here is a piece I wrote three years ago, during my pregnancy. I post it now because pregnancy is on my mind (not in my belly, don’t get too excited) and because it is the past and the future; and it is the beginning of the story we live now in this little house.

Dear Little Bean,

Today we ventured to the ultrasound clinic so that they could use soundscapes to look at you again.

At home I already have three collections of ultrasound photos. Two are of my uterus, empty of life beyond its own red vigour which I know must be there, although in the image it looks like an inert, grey blur. In these series of images are ghostly orbs: ovaries.

The first set were taken eight years ago by a kind woman who apologized for the coldness of the gel and the internal probe, who confided that her report would say all was in order, and that anyway I was too young for her to find anything. She meant well but it was small comfort for one longing for an explanation for the pain that incapacitated me each month.

The second series also shows oval orbs, unrecognizable to my untrained eyes, but nevertheless labeled as ovaries. These have shadows and marks, like moonscapes. There is a little cursor printed across the image, a measurement of the width of the largest moon-crater. In the envelope is a note to the doctor: both ovaries polycystic. These later images represent the beginning of a parade of intrusions into my body: syringes taking blood; gloved hands palpating organs; dieticians probing and dictating; acupuncture needles prickling the skin on my ankles, my feet, my abdomen; friends’ questions about baby plans flippantly thrown into conversation and falling into a black hole of awkward silence; a thermometer assessing me each morning at the same time; the dark knowledge of litres and litres of vainly tested urine; the secret, ecstatic meeting of flesh into flesh practiced in our marriage bed rendered clinical, routine, depressing. Especially the last of these intrusions, I cannot abide for long.

But now I have a third set of soundpictures of my insides. This time they show a little creature, twelve weeks old, nestled deep inside. My parasitic joy.

Today we come to the clinic with great anticipation. We clamour to know you. The sonographer is late and a little impatient, and she jostles you in the hope you’ll move and show her your heart and all its chambers. We laugh at you resisting. ‘She’s not a morning person. Like her mother,’ your father says. His voice is already full of love and pride, for you. Lucky you.

Eventually you twist and squirm for us and we see your spine, curled slightly but stark white on the screen and strong and sure looking. You have ribs, a heartbeat, blood flow, kidneys, toes. The pieces of your skull hold together delicately – in some ways you look ghostly, ghastly even. But your father looks up at the screen with shining eyes as if you are the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. When she has finished checking you over like a second-hand car and declares you healthy, we ask the question.

‘I see female genitals’, the sonographer says.

One day, you’ll be a woman.

The first thing your father says after we have left the clinic clutching your ‘photos’ and our happiness is ‘maybe one day I’ll give her away at her wedding. That is if she wants to get married. And if she’s not a lesbian. And if she doesn’t elope.’ I laugh at his wordiness. What he wants to say really is what we are both thinking; our daughter ought to be free. Whoever you are we already love you.

Mostly, I want you to be strong. I want you to be spirited. I want your first smile to drive me out of my own head.

I just want you.

You can take your Pretty Pusher and shove it

Now it’s not enough that women give birth. We’ve got to look good doing it too.

If you can’t escape the Body Police when you’re bringing a  person into the world through your vagina, when the hell can you? At your own funeral maybe?

I choose to laugh, lest I cry. No one likes the ugly cry, remember.

In your dreams, baby

Lately I’ve been dreaming I’m pregnant. When I’m asleep, that is. During the day I’m so very not-pregnant that no one even bothers anymore to say oooh, maybe you’re pregnant when I complain of nausea or tiredness. This could be because I’ve made it so abundantly clear to anyone who’ll listen that I’m Not Ready or perhaps it’s just that everyone knows I go to bed exhausted at about 8:30 these days and nobody believes in immaculate conceptions anymore. Where’s the faith, people?

I think there are three types of pregnant dreams. The first are just plain bizarre (the baby is a green martian with George Clooney’s face/the person having the dream is a man, or Paris Hilton.) Others are wishful thinking (the woman wakes feeling warm… then empty). And the third kind: nightmares (not really any need for explanation here, is there?)

I think my dreams have been a heady cocktail of the latter two types. Being pregnant with Little Bean was such a magical experience. If I conveniently forget the weeks spent more attached to a bucket than any other person or object, that is. But there really is something awesome about literally being pregnant with expectation. Reading all the books and talking quietly into the night about how little foetus is now the size of a walnut or a grapefruit. Musing over names and equipment and imagining future family holidays (back before I learned that Family Holiday is an oxymoron). Feeling utterly connected.

Honestly I think that the Bean’s decision to wean has increased my nostalgia for those womb days. I guess breastfeeding is a kind of dynamic umbilicus and feeling the loss of it can lead to yearnings. And tantrums muffled by a few litres of amniotic fluid might be a little quieter too. Is that why mothers of toddlers still bravely get themselves knocked up again? So they can at least have someone quiet in their family, if only for a few months?

Anyway, these dreams are simply that. Given that I still haven’t recovered from the emotional shock of the early weeks with The Bean, having two children is pretty much my nightmare scenario right now. And the possibility of having twins keeps me awake at night (counting days to see if a period is late takes time, you know.)

Deep down I know that the longing will win out over the fear sooner or later. Part of me can’t wait. Right now though, the other part of me is going to take advantage of nap time and make a cup of tea because we all know that if I have another kid that won’t be happening. Except in my dreams.

Feminist mothers

It’s a curious fact that many women find motherhood is one experience which galvanises their feminist spirit. Whilst completing what might seem to be decidedly non-feminist actions in their daily lives, a lot of mothers are thinking. A lot.

Women my age were raised by parents who wanted us to have education and paid work. We were told by mathematics and science teachers that girls could do these subjects too – as if it weren’t to be taken for granted. And some of us, arriving at university, were bewildered by the prescence of fixtures such as The Women’s Room on campus, or the vociferous Womyn appearing at student rallies. Some couldn’t understand how these things were relevant to us.

And so if young women have managed to avoid, ignore or transcend sexism in education and the workplace and in their relationships with men, the realities of motherhood can come as a pretty rude shock. I’ve seen a woman boldly search for employment while pregnant and be slowly beaten down by it until she had no choice but to acknowledge that her opportunities are restricted by her biology. I know women who have cried themselves to sleep at night because working the hours required to keep up with male counterparts has meant missing one too many school concerts. I know women who have believed their workplaces to be breastfeeding friendly only to discover that the place provided to express milk is the toilet. I have had many, many conversations with friends about how finances and social expectations and biological imperatives and even sometimes vestigial patriarchal leanings have turned us into stay-at-home mothers when we never actually set out to be this. How, a friend once exclaimed, did we become housewives?

Now insofar as I am able to freely choose, I have chosen my lot. So I’m not just having a whinge here.

But I have been thinking about how becoming a mother has brought into sharp relief what I think I have known all along: we cannot move forward without acknowledging that we are bodies as much as we are minds. We need to take our biology into account. And in order to be able to do so without suffering unfairly because of it, our social structures need to change. Babies need to be breastfed: women need time off work to do this well. And yet career trajectories are meant to be linear. They reflect male bodies. This is worse than anachronistic because it robs women and men of choice and it is to the detriment of families and children and also, to be frank, employers themselves. Workplaces lose when women choose to stay home indefinitely.

I’ve not attempted to juggle paid work with parenting, yet. But I can’t imagine I’ll be overwhelmed by a proudly mollified sense of justice when I do return – at least, not until employers expect fathers to take as many sick days as mothers do to care for ill children, for starters.

Renewed feminist vigour at this life stage is not just anger at not being able to ‘have it all,’ as those who fear feminism would have us believe. Actually, it’s coming in contact with the body-hating language of obstetrics and wanting to fight for more woman-centred birth choices. It’s having salespeople ring during the day and ask when your husband will be home because they assume that you can’t make financial decisions. It’s the judgements complete strangers make about the rightness or wrongness of using childcare (or not). It’s hearing friends and strangers praise your husband for ‘babysitting’ but look expectantly at you if your child makes an inconvenient noise. And for me, a lot of it is about breastfeeding.

Rachel Blair says it pretty well in her book ‘Breastfeeders Anonymous’: Breastfeeding feminists…fight to achieve changes that allow women to maintain individuality and pursue careers while still successfully breastfeeding. They recognise that ‘mum-work’ is real work. They battle for a woman’s right to breastfeed herchild wherever, whenever and for however long both mother and child desire. They acknowledge that breastfeeding is a way for females to reclaim their bodies from the patriarchal arena that often exploits breasts and women as merely sexual objects. Breastfeeding is also a way to stand up against the commercialisation that tries to brainwash women into believing that a substitute is better than the milk their own bodies specially manufactures.

Hello Little Bean

I was going to save this story for a post on Bean’s birthday but this post by blue milk got me thinking. Positive birth stories really do carry power, and not just for helping the currently pregnant overcome anxiety. We are bombarded with images of medicalised birth and the idea of birth-as-trauma is practically part of our social fabric. I went to a new hairdresser the other day and when she found out I was a mother all she wanted to know were the numbers: how many hours, how many pounds, how many stitches. I guess the bigger the numbers the bigger the badge of honour and the more sympathetic the stare. I suspect my 9/7/0 was quite the disappointment.

Anyway – those of you who happen to know me and would prefer not to read about my vagina or aren’t in the mood for pontificating on natural birth might want to skip this post.

—-

I felt restless all day. It was warm, but I had dragged the dog along for a walk anyway. I sweated, he panted. I had to stop to let the Braxton Hicks wave pass. It never seemed to. I was in a constant state of cramp but just figured it was the discomfort from lugging such a weight around. And stretching. And the exertion. It was only later that I realised I’d walked myself into early labour.

A couple of hours trying to get comfortable on the couch (not even The Sopranos could keep me there) and I decided it was time for a nap. Getting up at 5am had become normal and I needed to snatch sleep during the day. But it was futile. I felt like I might be getting sick. In a huff, I squatted down by the bed, pulling determinedly on the sheets to straighten them and releasing the tension in my back.

That wasn’t all I was releasing.

I felt a kind of clicking, a little like when vertebrae realign. And heard a funny sound. And wet myself.

Oh bloody hell, this is really beyond a joke, not only am I enormously fat and uncomfortable and unable to sleep or even walk properly but the ultimate of indignities has been heaped upon me; stress incontinence. Joy of joys!

But it wasn’t incontinence. It was spontaneous rupture of the membranes. Bean was on her way.

I rang my husband from the loo. He was almost home from work already. I told him we were going to have a baby tonight. Then I rang the midwives at the hospital and told them about the clearish pinkish fluid and they said I’d have to come in and be seen since I wasn’t having strong contractions yet. I think I babbled the full 30 minutes into the hospital. I had been waiting for the challenge and for my daughter and was full of nervous excitement.

In hospital they didn’t seem very convinced that anything was happening. As if I was senile and didn’t know what it felt like to wet myself, they kept checking my pad for fluid and telling me they weren’t convinced it was my waters. I began to feel contractions but their electronic gadgetry didn’t register them so they told me I wasn’t in labour. I sent my husband off to get the TENS machine from the car and while he was gone my body began to show its work. When amniotic fluid spurted on the floor from each surge that came as I paced the room, the midwives finally believed me. But I said I wanted to go home and they sent me off with instructions to have some dinner and get some sleep and come in for an induction in the morning. I strongly disagreed with the hospital’s policy of routine induction a maximum of 12 hours post membranes rupture and was horrified at the thought that it could happen to me. But not for long. I could feel what they couldn’t and I knew I’d be meeting Bean before the morning.

At home it soon became apparent that there’d be no sleeping. Or watching of The Sopranos. I tried the eating but when that backfired in the most spectacular way there was no denying that it was literally all systems go.

I actually found this part of labour to be pretty fun. I bounced on the fitball in the loungeroom and groaned however much I wanted to, and breathed deeply, and panted, and stomped my feet. My darling Ferris followed me faithfully around and nudged me with his nose periodically. His eyes said what his little doggy voice couldn’t – that he knew something momentous was happening and he’d be right there with me. I wished I could have taken him to hospital.

My other faithful supporter helped by bringing heat packs and rubbing my back no matter how ungraciously I asked. And noticing what was happening - because by this stage I’d retreated so deeply into my bovine-moaning self that I could have been on Mars and contractions could have been anything from sixty minutes to six seconds apart for all I knew.

A call to the midwives stopped all this labouring at home malarkey. I would later hear that after being treated to an aural exam of where I was at via the phone (somewhere between ow and moo), the midwife told the Fireman that if he wasn’t ready for a home birth on our carpet he’d best get me into the car. And so began a hilarious few minutes where I argued passionately in favour of staying at home (I hadn’t even used the shower yet! And I wasn’t tired! And the contractions weren’t that bad!) in between surges. Common sense and calm reason prevailed and I made it to the car.

Sitting was the worst part. The TENS machine was on full by now and I did my best to look out the window and concentrate on the radio. I didn’t want to put him off his driving. I was in pain but I was exhilarated. This was it! I was going to give birth to my baby. I was going to see her face. I was going to go into hospital with empty arms and not leave until they were full.

I had no less than three contractions on the way to the birthing suite. My midwife was called Lisa and she held me firmly and made me feel safe. I knew people might see me, or hear me vocalising, but I didn’t care. Everything felt right. I was on the cusp and I wanted to jump off.

We didn’t have time for the oil burner or the massage roller but we did put on some Radiohead and after the monitoring (hospital policy…. there is no way I would have lain on my back by choice) I was free again to let my body roll along as it wanted. Lisa had made a few attempts at conversation but I wasn’t interested – I actually felt largely unable to speak because I didn’t feel fully conscious. Not in a frighteningly out of control way, but in a deliberately absent way. At the time I didn’t think about it but later I realised that I must have reached the state that calm birth aims for – almost like meditation. I felt everything but experienced none of it as trauma. I felt safe and calm and confident. For the first time in my life, I liked my body enough to trust what it could do.

And so it did its work. It was less than two hours after we arrived in hospital that I was ready to push and push I did.

I’ll be honest: I found the pushing the hardest. I had some nitrous oxide during the fist stage and when it came to the second stage they withdrew that and I was on my own. When the surges came they were powerful but it felt like undirected power. I visualised pushing downwards and tried to feel my baby coming. I felt stretching and burning. I was close to crowning.

The description of crowning as ‘like a chinese burn on your vagina’ is pretty ludicrous. Chinese burns are what kids in grade one give each other when they’re bored at recess. This was definitely a game for grownups. It was painful enough that for a moment I got scared. I started to say ‘I can’t…’ but Lisa and my husband simultanously said ‘Yes you can!’ and I drew strength from them. I felt them there, attuned to me, buoying me, and it was all the urging I needed. I gritted my teeth and kept pushing. This may have been the only part of my labouring that required a conscious choice from me to continue. I knew that Bean was coming out. When I pushed I felt like I was going to rip myself a much wider vagina but I had little choice but to trust Lisa’s guidance and I listened to her every word, panting when she said pant, resting when she said rest. It probably took a few minutes but when you think your clitoris is going to tear up the middle a few minutes is rather a long time.

I heard Lisa say to her assisting midwife ‘I haven’t seen anyone push out her own baby for ages’ and I knew then that I was going to do it. Bean was almost here, and I had almost reached my dream of an intervention-free birth. And then I felt her little head. She and I rested for a moment – still one. Her body came out in a single, involuntary, almighty surge. I felt her limbs slide out of me and the fluids gush down my legs. I cried out for my baby and they lifted her into my arms.

‘Don’t drop her,’ said the midwife. As if I would!

I brought her to my face and kissed and kissed her. She was perfectly still and beautifully formed and she smelt heavenly – to me. I had not expected that. She did not move. I also had not expected that. There was no fear; no rushing. We waited, hushed. And then she opened her eyes and her mouth and screamed her first scream. It was louder than I could have dreamed.

I cried and my husband cried and I felt unadulterated joy. And that is how my obstetrician found me; kneeling on the floor holding my still-attached babe in my arms, shaking with elation, smiling up at him and saying ‘I did it! I had a baby!’

I think he felt bad for being late – at least, the midwives told me he’d boasted about how unexpected it was for a first timer like me to have had such a quick birth with no complications, no epidural, no stitches. In the coming days when new midwives came on shift they would come into my room and say ‘ahhh, you’re the one. You must be proud!’

And I was proud. I know that so long as she was healthy, I would have been glad of however she came into the world – like any mother. But to have her come naturally, as I had planned and prepared and hoped for, was a gift.

The cherished child of my womb was born with such grace that for a moment she didn’t even realise she was here, and the first arms she felt around her were mine.

It’s what I would wish for any mother. It’s the pinnacle.

Serving to Live

Obama has talked a lot about service. Cynics say he’s trying to align himself with JFK (presumably minus the brains-being-blown-out part) and others say he’s just being practical – the mess is so big that it just can’t be cleaned without everyone mucking in. My money’s on a little of both.

I’ve talked about service a lot lately too. Well, I’ve talked to myself about it. I’ve been thinking about the difference between service and submission, and the different levels of respect we give to various types of service.

Being a mother (and to a lesser degree, being a wife) is all about service. A mother – especially an attachment-parenting type mother – is available to serve her offspring twenty-four hours a day. I read something recently that described breastfeeding as the most selfless act of all and I’m not sure if it is entirely selfless but it is certainly all about the giving.

Personally, I have a great deal of ambivalence towards the level of service involved in mothering. It brings joy and untold rewards, that is true. And perhaps more than that: it’s necessary. In my mind, choosing to have a child means choosing to look after that child in the best possible way – and that means a little selflessness. But without making the required sacrifices that parenthood brings, what would be the point? You won’t hear me talking along those lines after a 4am wake-up-call. If I say anything at all beyond ‘arrrrggggnnngggffffthhhh’ it’ll be something with four letters. But still – I get up. Not responding when I’m needed is unthinkable. A non-0ption.

As a society we have a truckload of ambivalence about this service stuff too. Anyone pregnant with her first child knows this first-hand – all of a sudden, her needs are subjugated to those of her foetus. And should she dare to drink a glass or wine or eat a rare steak in a restaurant she’s likely to draw everything from furtive whispers to open criticism to flat refusal from wait staff. And all this after spending an afternoon having all and sundry either touch her abdomen without asking, comment on her size, tell her eye-watering tales of their own episiotomy scar or offer parenting advice: invariably along the lines of ‘don’t ever let your baby cry, it will get brain damage’ or ‘don’t spoil it – crying is good exercise for babies’. She is expected to take all of this with serene grace because she’s just so lucky to be a host organism and no longer requires a brain of her own.

But she better not get too complacent. Because when that baby is outta there, being a host organism is no longer good enough. Oh no. She needs ‘me time’! Preferably at the gym or the beautician so that she can return to her ‘pre-baby’ self as soon as possible. And she’d better learn how to avoid letting her baby manipulate her – because babies need to be trained not to cry, since their crying is inconvenient and interrupts mummy and daddy time. Or, perhaps she needs to learn how to respond to every sound her baby makes and prevent any crying at all – which means holding her infant 24 hours a day. Which shouldn’t be a problem, since she can use a sling to help her do laundry and make dinner.

In reality what most of us strive for is a happy medium between disappearing into baby-service altogether and not spending enough time loving our children because we’re distracted by our own adult lives. But of course there is no such thing as a happy medium – just a host of compromises which usually require one person in the family to have their needs put aside at any given time. And a Darwinian battle for ascendency to avoid being the family member in that default position.

Anyway, all of this is not really what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say is that our valuing of individuality, ambition, and power detracts from the value of service. As a mother and a feminist, I believe – I need to believe – that spending this time in service of my family is not subjugation because although it is not paid work, it is vital and valuable work. It is work I can be proud of.

I remember a conversation with a fellow feminist and mother, back when I was pregnant, about cloth nappies.** My friend had said that the very thought of having to wash and dry nappies on top of all the other work involved in raising her two wonderfully active boys was enough to scare the bejeezus out of her and I totally sympathised. In a writing class I went to that afternoon, I scribbled ‘will drudgery make me a drudge?’ It was a real fear and one that still grips me sometimes.

But I resist it. Because I know that being the mother my daughter needs, the mother I never had, is as important to me as it is to her.

I think that when we conflate service of this kind with submission – to the patriarchy, to a stereotype, whatever – we devalue the work that so many women do.

And what is so wrong with service anyway? Serving one’s country in war is considered one of the most honourable and noble tasks. Serving the community as a volunteer – aid worker, tuck shop lady, firefighter – is seen at the least as a worthy contribution, if not some kind of higher calling. And the word doula comes from the Greek word for servant. Many women who do birthwork talk of themselves as birth servants – and so they are. Their role is to support the mother: no more and certainly no less. To give such support is an honour and it requires skill and the ability to put one’s own needs and opinions aside. 

It’s refreshing to hear the leader of a country known for individualism and greed talk about the value of community service. I hope his words have some impact and encourage a new spirit of volunteerism. I also hope that those of us who care for others in our family every single day without economic reward, will start to feel as though that work – that service – is precious, skilled, valuable and worthy of acknowledgement by other feminists. And everyone.

 

** Incidentally, I did go ahead with the cloth nappies. But it’s my husband who usually washes and dries and folds them, after he’s gotten home from his paid work and played with our daughter for a while. Because serving a child and a family and a household is men’s work too. Of course.

Five books I wish I had read before having a baby

I’ve read a lot of books about pregnancy, birth and parenting. Some even before I was pregnant. But like most people, I didn’t know then what kind of parent I wanted to be, or what kind of challenges I would face. Now that I’ve read even more about this whole parenting caper as I’ve frantically searched for my own answers as well as expanding my knowledge in preparation for doulahood, I thought I’d share some of the gems that I’ve recently discovered.

1. Breastfeeding…naturally This excellent book about breastfeeding is produced by the Australian Breastfeeding Association. It is definitive, up-to-date, readable and comprehensive. I challenge you to find a breastfeeding question or difficulty that is not at least mentioned in this book. Even better, it comes free with a subscription to the ABA. I really wish I had subscribed and met my local group before I had the Bean. We live and learn!
2.  The Attachment Parenting Book This guide is by peadiatrician Dr. William Sears and his wife Martha Sears, a nurse and lactation consultant. I would recommend pretty much anything by any of the Sears famliy, who never fail to put a baby-centred but positive and practical spin on their advice, which comes from a depth of knowledge and experience that few parenting ‘experts’ can boast. This book in particular is great for expectant or new parents – whether Attachment Parenting is something that you think you want to do or not. Before I had the Bean, I confess, I thought that parents who practised AP were mostly hippies who didn’t believe in discipline or boundaries. In other words, I had no understanding of what the AP philosophy actually is. When I read this book I was so thrilled to find that many of the practices I had instinctively gravitated towards were in fact part of a parenting style with proven benefits. Well worth a look.
3. Fresh Milk by Fiona Giles is a wonderful book. It covers all the stuff about breastfeeding that may not be in the more practically-based guides. Reading this book made me want to jump up and run around topless in a lactation celebration. It doesn’t shy away from the more complex or unnerving elements of lactation and breastfeeding lore, such as wetnursing and sexuality (or putting some breastmilk in the chaplain’s tea). Everyone who has breasts, or loves them, really ought to read this.
4. Pinky McKay’s Parenting by Heart is a great introduction to parenthood. McKay is one of my favourite parenting ‘experts’ — she writes warmly and reassuringly. She is a certified lactation consultant and her advice is breastfeeding-friendly. She acknowledges that all children and parents are different and that no approach should be one-size-fits-all. She gives mothers permission to carry their infant around all day, if that is all that will calm both of you, regardless of what Aunt Mavis might say about ‘spoiling’. At the same times she gives mothers permission to shut their bedroom door and spend an hour painting their toenails while Aunt Mavis takes care of the baby, if that is what is needed. I wish I had read this before I entered those wild and desperate early weeks of parenthood when I was most vulnerable to the well-meaning ‘advice’ we are all bombarded with.
5. The last book on my list today is one I have not yet finished reading. I picked it up at the library, thinking it was a book about natural birth, only to discover later that it is actually a compelling and fascinating treatise on the fallout from blanket testing for foetal abnormalities. Anyone who is pregnant, or might become pregnant, should read Defiant Birth by Melinda Tankard Reist. Whatever your stance on abortion (mine, for the record, is firmly pro-choice), it is horrifying to read of how many women are encouraged to abort foetuses who later turn out to be perfectly healthy children; or of how many mothers of disabled children are now asked why they didn’t ‘have the test’ — the assumption being that had they undergone prenatal testing their children would have been aborted. I confess I meekly went off for my prenatal testing as referred by my obstetrician, only questioning afterwards whether I had really wanted to. Pro-choice I may be: but informed choice it must be, right from the question of whether to have a test in the first place. Aside from airing this important and little-discussed issue, the book also allows for a space for the stories of people whose pregnancy outcomes may not have been what they had hoped. Stories that are hard to read, but important. I imagine anyone who is facing the reality of a worrying result from prenatal tests would gain much strength and courage, as well as knowledge, from this book.

Weeping woman

For someone who writes about Spilt Milk, I don’t seem to do a lot of crying. At least not recently.

I’m not sure when it happened, but my teariness seems to have dried up. When I was pregnant I was drowning in salt water on a daily basis: first it was the overwhelming joy that kept rushing through me, then it was the misery of becoming the lady-with-a-bucket who couldn’t leave the house for fear of public vomiting, and later it was clearly the overdose of womanly hormones that made commercials for toilet paper into a weeping event. As if that weren’t enough, after giving birth my tear ducts seemed to become a direct line to whatever part of my brain registered love, stress, tiredness, happiness, fear, frustration or, well basically anything. The “baby blues” hormone withdrawal engulfed me on day four and didn’t seem to leave for about a week. After that, I struggled so much with exhaustion and cracked nipples and resurging anger towards my own mother that I suppose it made sense that I wept practically every day. I got used to it, and people around me got used to it, but I still felt disconcerted by my inability to stop myself from welling up. I felt a little unhinged.

Eventually, the rivulets dammed up.

It could be that I’ve grown in confidence. It is surely much to do with having enough sleep to sustain human life for a change. It is no doubt linked to the new ease with which I can feed and bathe and care for Little Bean, now that we are used to each other. It is probably also because I have cast off those festering resentments; in acknowledging that old pain I have been able to ease it.

I’m sure that there is something more biological happening. With the end of nighttime breastfeeding has come a more ‘normal’ hormonal cycle. It seems that the hold that Little Bean has had on my chemistry and thus my body is slowly lessening.

But with a greater sense of normality and control over my responses has come the great gift of willing surrender: Little Bean’s effect on my emotions hasn’t diminished, not really, because I don’t wish it to. I guess this is what attachment is.

This morning she lifted herself up onto all fours, in a stance she has been practising for a few weeks now. And then she shuffed one knee forward after the other, and her hands, and crawled properly for the very first time. It was shaky and brief , like so many beautiful things are.

I was so grateful to be there to see it that I wept, and hugged her, and wept some more.