Filling the Mind

It's not hard (for me) to rest in solitude. The new, demanding practice is resting without sleep and keeping attention trained on the needs of a tiny, vulnerable human. I've been on silent retreats where I feel utterly restored by the ability to give the fullness of my attention to myself, to let my imagination wander unrestrained, and feel saturated by that spaciousness.

This is very different.

Time is a bit shapeless. It gains contour at dawn, with a kind feeding and the knowledge that soon Kevin will be up. There will be someone who will speak to me in the English language and in full sentences.

I steal naps where I can, furtively blinking open my eyes to see the small baby chest rise and fall with breath.

I watch for cues-- the fist to mouth to signal hunger, the red face for poop, the "O" mouth for pee. I judge myself for missing or responding slowly.

I've begun dubbing her expressions, "the weather." Storm clouds pass over and she winces. A soft smile opens her brows. What she feels moves quickly. She is experience-- reality unfolding.

I sneak in my own maintenance when she first falls off my breast drunkenly. Wedge her somewhere that's hopefully safe. Go to the bathroom. Refill water. Grab a snack. Begin to brush hair. She wiggles and squeals. I abandon brushing teeth and swig mouth wash instead.

I try to put my feet on the ground but really my body wedges in whatever shape keeps her to my breast or afterward jiggles and moves her to help her tiny, not-yet-properly-functioning-digestion run as optimally as possible.

Kevin rests, cleans the house, prepares my food, and runs our errands. And I have the nerve to resent his freedom. And he meets my glare with compliments on how well I care for our daughter. I soften. He's an incredible father. And he does understand-- we have so few responsibilities and simultaneously so many. There is very little to do-- meet the needs of a tiny human. And that task demands everything.

I feel my attention stretching. I'm working to build endurance as I would a muscle. Each day, working to attune.

Not to be a martyr. Not to deny myself. But to meet the agreement that I made with her: I will care for you. I will do everything I can to help you feel a sense of safety in the world. Because you will only ask this of me for a season. I do my best to rise to the moment.

I knew parenting would be demanding. The cascade of labor, birth, and ceaselessly flowing into the sleepless, sore-nipple aftermath would be stunning if I had time to even process it.

I talked about the postpartum period to so many parents and they all got a far-away look on their faces. "We would talk about it more," one replied, "if we remembered it."

I know this period will blur into more defined seasons where she and I venture forth into the world. Our lives will again gain recognizable shape.

When I read accounts of pregnancy, birth, and new parenthood, the postpartum period was the gap. There was so much on pregnancy and birth and then crickets. I wrote about my plans for the postpartum period, acknowledging that I was working from limited accounts. I anticipated some challenges in lying low for a month and attending solely to my own and Twyla's care. What I didn't expect was the specific challenge-- directing my own attention from its previous freedom.

Yoga has prepared me well. I'm used to working with my mind and my thoughts. I'm accustomed to witnessing my own inner tendencies and acknowledging that they're not fixed, that there are ways to shift my interior towards a new goal or alignment. I have tools.

Twyla is my new mantra. Twyla is my new drsti. Her singularity is both the most compelling and demanding practice yet.

I'm used to cheap escapes. I can still myself and focus for a beat and then fall out of the pose to no consequence. I can let my mind wander in meditation and no one knows but me.

Twyla knows.

And this too will change. As she takes more freedom, my focus on her could become a burden. I find a pattern emerging now that I imagine will continue-- as soon as I feel like I steady a bit, as soon as I gain ground and muscle and maybe even anticipate her needs-- she shifts. My knowledge becomes largely useless. An unrelenting teacher, she nods at my growth and pushes me to the next.

Twyla's Birth Story

Many thanks to Returning to Birth for publishing Twyla's birth story! Read on here:

https://www.returningtobirth.com/birth-stories/singing-my-baby-into-this-world?fbclid=IwAR3cFbpP5lIvtBQa0DRc0J6dvCaM7B6S3KttVh-fB6sMdqmdC2hN3HvfoHY

The heavy: weeks 38 and beyond of pregnancy

All in all, being pregnant with Twyla was pretty sweet. My body seemed to respond well to the hormones and shifts of pregnancy and-- most importantly-- I wanted her, I wanted to be pregnant, so mentally and emotionally, I adapted to the changes more willingly. While there were shifts, documented in other posts specific to various trimesters, it was pretty navigable.

And then week 38. It was kind of overnight. Everyone said at a certain point you won't want to be pregnant anymore and I thought, "Nah." And then I woke up and thought, "Oh." Walking through the world with a full grown baby in me elicited constant, "are you ready?" comments from friends and strangers. The truth was, "No." Every option was intense-- staying pregnant meant more nights awake on the couch, staying upright because anytime I laid down meant insane acid reflux, trying to find something new on Netflix while I resented Kevin snoring in our bedroom. Labor was its own mystery but obviously not a light-weight scenario. And then, a newborn. The most terrifying option of all!

The weeks of 38 and beyond (I went to 41 weeks) were full. Heavy. Laden. For both Kevin and me. I hit week 40 the day after his students graduated 8th grade and he was officially on summer break. For the first few days of that week, he was so happy to be able to shift his mental energy fully into baby. He made us a screened in porch. He got lots of groceries. There was plenty of readying and nesting.

And then we both got restless. We sat in the baby pool we'd purchased to cool off. He drank a beer. I ate cake.

I'd expend my energy by maybe running one errand per day. Being in the world was so bizarre. Being pregnant already makes you a walking target for unwanted and unexpected advice but being THAT pregnant meant I was eliciting constant birth stories. Lots of "you're lucky! I went early" to "let me tell you how crazy painful my labor was!" Cool. Cool.

Of course, I was grateful to have a full-term healthy baby. I also had no room for anything beyond the lives I was carrying.

Throughout pregnancy, I noticed how much unprocessed material is carried within so many people-- and how any pregnant person can unwittingly become target. I got better at deflecting and redirecting. And I resented having to learn this skill when so much of my energy needed to hold my own experience. I was breathing patience. I was softening into something I couldn't predict nor expect. I was on a constant precipice of radical change, and I needed to just live in that window.

It's strange to live right before you and your life changes unrecognizably. I think the truth is that we always live there, but certain periods make that more apparent and undeniable. Being so very pregnant is one of those seasons.

As much as being that pregnant was not the best, I did not want to rush her labor. I really wanted Twyla to arrive on her own timeline. Human gestation is organic, not mechanic. While there are trends of full-term babies arriving weeks 37-42, really, if allowed, babies arrive when they're ready. I knew there might be certain specific scenarios that would warrant a medical induction, like if the amniotic fluid levels varied or anything like that, but barring those circumstances it was important to me to guard Twyla's birth. I wanted her to initiate. I wanted her to be ready. My work was to surrender to patience and mystery.

My google history was endless, "does this mean labor?" while my text exchanges were fending off about the same from those curious about Twyla's arrival. I felt Twyla's wholeness in every movement. Bending over was a thing of the past. I got good at squats. Trying to get up from being reclined (because laying down was not an option, given the relaxin-induced acid reflux) was an event in body awareness and movement. I became really grateful for all my years of yoga, running, swimming, and other movement practices because they meant that I had more ideas and dexterity to haul myself around.

There were so many suggestions to induce labor naturally. I looked into all of them and did some. From what I can tell, there's only evidence corroborating dates readying the perineum. Beyond that, all the pineapple, sex, spicy meals, eggplant dishes, and the rest are just anecdotal and accidental. I still tried plenty of them. Castor oil may be real, but also induces some of the worst experiences of people's lives. I left that alone.

Twyla continued to prepare me. She adapted me more or less to her sleep schedule on the outside. She made it mandatory that I kept snacks around, though my appetite and ability to eat a full meal had radically decreased (my stomach was somewhere hovering near my throat). She took up all the room in Kevin and my life even as we lived out our last few days without her on the outside. They're the days that leave an imprint because you know you're getting ready to live out the events you'll never forget: the first contraction, laboring with her, how she would be birthed, and beyond.

She created a full space, infused with her presence. We waited for her to arrive, to fill it.

The Ballad of Twyla

My baby,

You are made of mountains

When I was sorting out how to extend an invitation to you

I drove south

And west and out of the cities

And into the earth. The red clay, the pine trees, the land that held

You and me. For you were in my Mom, your potential, your life, as I was in my grandmother. I contain your daughters. You contain my great-granddaughters.

I drove into the thread back, winding through blasted shale, 

Mountains opened to their vein, left bare,

Sunlight blinking through their wounds.

I downshifted iron from them,

I heated my cabin with their energy.

The landscape down there gently swells and I feel

That, I feel you, now.

I swallowed the cosmos. Your Dad sent a spark and now

You’re nesting inside me.

I feel how you’re preparing me. I feel your drawing in

And down and I didn’t know I could love a word not yet whispered.

It shows me that truly, I am so loved, I was so loved,

How could I not have been given what I feel for you now?

I love carrying you. I love holding you

In my body. I’m starting to feel who you are, little twinkle,

Little twilight. I’m starting to sense you out.

We heard your name in a song.

I was feverish and wan, struggling through undiagnosed Lyme disease. We drove

Out on a spring Wednesday night to hear a favorite band, Calexico.

The lead singer said he had twin daughters who wrote a song. One of 

Their names was "Twyla" and that night lit upon me. I heard it with Kevin’s great-

Grandmother, the Irish Catholic, "Eulalia."

Eulalia, whose mother read the Imitation of Christ each night in Richmond. Eulalia, whose round vowels were too big for her grandbabies’ mouths so she became “Wa Wa.” 

I heard Twyla Eulalia. I heard you. 

I hear your name as a song.

I heard your name as a spell you could cast when you need to remember who you are.

The mountains who made you.

The parents who prayed for you.

Your mother, who heard you.

We listened to those Calexico songs, the driving beats of the US southwest and thought of you coming towards us.

We drove south and west back to Tennessee, where my grandmother was exiled after losing her mother.

I kept feeling my great-grandmother, Maggie, feeling her tugging at my sleeve. We saw her house. We learned of her losses-- her mother Susie Griffith who passed just two years before Maggie took her own life. That exile shot my grandmother and all her siblings out of Tennessee. They lost that land, those mountains, being known in that way.

We were in the south on Maggie’s birthday. And that’s when you took root inside of me.

I’m gathering your songs. So many women conspired to pull you here-- Maggie, my grandmother Sue, Eulalia, my Mom, and so many more.

We want you here. We’re making a place.

These are your mountains.

You come from this. 

From these heroines and devils. From the sweetness and the absolute worst. 

I’m still trying to figure out what to do with that material myself. But I think it’s a reminder that we contain it all. We’ll control our monsters and let our better angels win.

And when we forget, we listen to our song to draw us back in.

Planning for Postpartum

When Kevin and I first decided to take the leap into human-making, I never would have expected to become so captivated by the postpartum period. There's so much that feels compelling. For one, pregnancy actually garners a fair amount of attention and support. The support is kind of uneven and the attention not always wanted, but there's energy in its direction. I'd already observed with other friends that they seemed overlooked once the baby arrived and we would even talk about that. Some of them felt really OK with the level of energy going towards their children. Some felt newly invisible.

The more that I learned and observed, the more I kept circling back to a feeling that potentially more than pregnancy, labor, or birth, but the postpartum period is the hard part. And the magic part. The messy, quiet, and pivotal part.

The Fourth Trimester and The First Forty Days helped me understand cultural practices that used to cocoon mother and child in this sacred window. And, like Ina May's more nuanced histories, helped me understand that we didn't completely lose all the support simply because of "the patriarchy." Some postpartum practices, like Chinese women being kept indoors under their mother-in-law's care for the first forty days, were at times very oppressive. Women balking at some of these older rites was, at times, for good reason.

But we might not have understood what we were losing.

I started looking at the struggles of the postpartum period alongside older cultural support practices and also in the context of current messaging: bounce back! Get your life back! Get your body back!

And all these accolades to women who returned to work or exercise or travel practically minutes after giving birth.

And some women who had no choice but to return to much of their life that was outside of the world of a new baby.

In some conversations, I noticed a lot of resistance from other women about the possibility of needing recovery time after giving birth. I asked a friend her take on it. She said, she felt like most of us struggle with limits. My understanding of the postpartum period is that by investing in it up front by doing as little as possible-- resting, eating nourishing food, nursing your baby, bonding, and staying quiet-- there is the potential for very long-term resiliency. But it means slowing down for a period. That is very, very hard for many of us.

I also think some of our collective resistance to fully caring for ourselves, setting up support, asking for and receiving help, and allowing for this healing time is due to lack of information. And a fear to meet our own limitations. From what I can tell, birth has the potential to fully empower women, which is also why it can feel counter-intuitive that the aftermath might be so quiet and internal. One notable piece of information is that after a woman births, no matter how she births, when the placenta exits the uterus it leaves behind a wound inside the uterus. Among the reasons that care providers urge postpartum women to be so conservative in their movement and energy output in the early days is because there is a literal, but not visible, wound healing. You wouldn't run to the store or try to resume yoga if you had a gaping wound on your thigh, but because we don't see it and it's not commonly spoken of, a wound in our uterus, a very central internal muscle for women's health, women push themselves.

I have a lot more to say about this period, but so much of it right now is speculation. It feels to me like one of those critical moments that can deplete or restore a woman long-term. Given that we're such resilient creatures, I think women can "bounce back" quickly after birth and maybe not notice many side effects in the short term. Again, this isn't backed, but I would like there to be studies! I think the moment of consequence might be menopause. I'm strongly suspecting that what happens to women postpartum has great bearing on their experience of menopause. I think it has something to do with restoring hormonal balance, among other things.

I want to be a powerful, strong, older woman. I want to use the postpartum period to my benefit.

And I know I can only parent well if I'm well, so I want to use the postpartum period to restore my energy and vitality fully.

It feels like an opportunity.

Based on my reading and research, I selected the practices that felt most important to me. Some of them have to do with balancing hormone levels but some of them feel important for more obscure reasons. They just feel right.

• Pretty early on, I booked placenta encapsulation.
• A friend of mine set up a postpartum meal train (and I'm SO EXCITED AND GRATEFUL!).
• During pregnancy, I began osteopathic manipulation with a DO at my practice. I'll go at least once more in the first five weeks after having given birth to help put everything back in place while relaxin continues to loosen my system.
• Also during pregnancy, I had two pelvic floor physical therapy sessions. I learned perineal massage and had some myofascial work done to prepare for birth. After birth, I'll have at least one or potentially more sessions to make sure my pelvic floor is fully healed. This is some of the most important work to address very common, but unnecessarily so, issues like incontinence. Most women will face some disruption to the pelvic floor and neighboring organs. Pelvic floor physical therapy is standard postpartum care in France and helps women navigate the common, but unnecessary, post birth issues. We don't need to be martyrs. We should all get this care.
• I found a steam care specialist who advised me on appropriate herbs and a protocol for postpartum vaginal steaming. Depending on how the birth goes, this will likely begin on day 2 and continue for 30 days.
• I asked one of the wisest women that I know, who is also one of the most talented myofascial body workers, to bind me postpartum. We'll also do myofascial work.
• I plan to "lay in," meaning I'll stay in bed with my daughter for at least a week. If we can, we'll stay in bed or near it for about a month.
• Last, I'll have a blood panel check my hormone levels regularly in the ensuing weeks and months post birth.

All of these plans and protocols are pretty explicitly geared at me using this pivotal time to shore up my own health and longterm vitality so that I can parent to the best of my ability. My insurance only covers the osteopathic manipulation. I think all of these practices should be studied, so they could responsibly be prescribed as standard postpartum care. I'm able to do these practices thanks to support from my community, family, and most importantly, Kevin.

Another way Kevin and I tried to think through postpartum is to think about our own tendencies and patterns when we're sleep deprived and freaked out. I'm doing everything I can think of to support myself to hopefully navigate this period as well as can be hoped for. And a lot will fall on Kevin. We've had a lot of conversations about how each of us handles sleep deprivation (he's way better at it than me) and what we tend to do when stressed. Conversely, we've tried to think about what helps both of us feel like we have some sustenance or nourishment to ride out a stressful period. Knowing what helps each of us, we're going to try to make room for one another to do what we gotta do.

Living through these phases of life like pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is reminding me of how seasonal needs can be. I don't believe that I'm meant to live into postpartum as I lived into my energetic early thirties. I think I'll face other phases of seclusion and shoring up as well. I feel like I have an opportunity here-- to go in and allow for a quiet rest and strengthening with my daughter. I think it will ready us to reenter the world whole.

I'll report back.

Prepping for labor

We joined a practice that doesn't offer epidurals (unless you require transfer and surgery) so they request that you prep for labor. We'd planned on it anyway and signed up for a great class with Cat LaPlante and Carrie Sarlo-Randazzo at the Village. We got fantastic information about the general arc of labor, ways to move and support both comfort as well as the baby's descent, and best of all, ways that Kevin can massage me. Win.

This experience and many prior and since spurred Kevin and I to talk about what support feels like to each of us. We're very different characters. If Kevin were the one giving birth, he'd probably either want me to be totally silent or read aloud super obscure Stoic philosophy. However, I'm chatty. Our practice recommended hypnobirthing materials. I listened to a podcast and looked into it a bit-- from what I can tell, it's an amazing network of resources and feels very similar to yoga affirmation mantras. And it caused me to realize something else about myself. I have a history of being gaslit, meaning I had pivotal experiences where I was told that what I experienced wasn't real, or wasn't what it felt like to me. It's taken me years to really trust myself and my own perceptions. I realized that due to those past experiences, cliche affirmations don't work well for me. I want verbal communication and I want it to be very specific. When I get that, basically, a narration of reality that affirms my own experience, I feel safe.

This is a pretty foreign way of operating for Kevin, but he's a champ, and we've been working on it. He's been writing up a list of all the things he's seen me accomplish so that he can remind me of them if I need encouragement. He's working on affirming what I'm experiencing first and being verbally connected to me so I feel like everyone around me is checked in and on the same page.

I put this in a birth preferences sheet for my practice-- that's basically a "birth plan" but perhaps with more allowance for the reality that birth can't be planned. My midwives were very responsive and grateful to know what communication style made me feel the safest and therefore the most relaxed. They agreed that for many birthing people, less information or communication is preferable. Knowing this about myself is helping me ask for what I need.

I mentioned in other posts that I'm also deep in both Ina May Gaskin and Spinning Babies rabbit holes. Ina May is a plethora of wisdom on all sorts of things, but mainly, the miracle of the birthing body. She's reminding me to keep my mouth loose and make low noises and filling my imagination with all the possibility of birth.

Spinning Babies is reminding me to move, move, move. This is another request that I put in my birth preferences document-- to get suggestions and encouragement in moving frequently during labor. My midwives responded really well and I'm excited to get their support!

Kevin and I packed bags for two nights at the birth center, and they're in the trunk. He installed the car seat and I got it inspected. We've made a document on who to text and when, like our friends who will come watch the cats when we go to the birth center, and a list of who to contact after our daughter has made her arrival-- we don't want to forget anyone.

The main thing that has me stumped is snacks. Easily digestible, high energy food tends to really help people in labor-- and those supporting them. Kevin has a bunch of energy bars. I'm not good at food prep. It's on the list.

Apart from that, we're trying to make room. Just time and space to sink into the sort of twilight feeling of waiting for birth. I'm starting to feel that labor isn't just the hours leading up to the arrival of the baby-- it starts way earlier. Things get softer and fuzzier. There's a quiet. A sinking. A loosening and deepening. Going with that, so labor can unfold.

I'll report back.

The dissolve

I learned that so much of my prior ambivalence to motherhood was feeling like I had to potentially play the role of "mother." I didn't know who that was and I certainly didn't feel anywhere near the archetype. I didn't want to surrender who I am. I didn't want to feel bound and tethered to further conform and in so doing, sacrifice my children, by making them into caricatures too. I didn't understand how pregnancy, birth, and parenting could actually make me wilder, more defiant, more embodied, and fierce. It's a ferocity that I had no model for nor understanding of prior because it does coexist with a softer, gentler surrender. I'm finding myself slow walking into a process where I feel utterly animal and also transcendent. I don't know how to communicate about this differently nor in any way that doesn't feel cliche.

I want to bury myself. I want to go on hospice. I want to be in a cave. I want others, nearby, protecting my sphere, barring intruders, and leaving me food at my entry. I'm ready to completely disintegrate.

I wouldn't have been 10 years ago. I would have fought it, and in so doing, fought my body, my spirit, and my child. And that could have been my path. I think it's a reasonable path.

But I had enough time. I had enough room to know who I am and to care for who I am. And now I'm ready for her to dissolve. It's OK. She had enough room.

I can feel the release. My hips already feel like the hubcaps of a beater car. They feel like they'll just rattle and roll off. My whole body is open, unstable, and loose. And yet, so communicative.

I have no bandwidth to receive other information. I used to be such an avid consumer of books and podcasts and ideas. I just don't have room. I was trying to understand why all I want to do to relax is rewatch "The Office" for the 50 bazillionth time. It's because I have so much information rising up from within. I am so fully saturated with this newness, this understanding, and wild new world, that there's no room for anything else. I just want to casually watch Jim and Dwight prank each other while I mindlessly play Solitaire.

I joke to Kevin that I'm on hospice. Whoever I was is already gone. I do see that. I'm in the liminal space. It's weird, I can't wrap my head around it fully, I can't see the future at all, and so many parts of who I knew myself to be aren't within reach. For example, I was reliable. I answered emails and scheduled things well. I could count on my brain to supply me with words and ideas. None of these things are the case right now. I feel like a total and utter flake and yet, I really don't have it in me to do differently. I watch my mouth feel for words and they don't come or they come totally mangled. I look around for the ideas that used to rise so readily and instead, it's just way quieter in there.

This would have terrified me 10 years ago. But it's OK. She's done.

Birth is the initiation. I can see that. That feels good to me. I'm kind of excited.

And it's not my birth. It's my daughter's birth. But I'm excited that I get to be present for it. I get to work with her and the bigger life force energy. I get to dance with it all.

And it will totally wreck me.

And I'm not mad about that.

Honestly, I don't even think it will be that bad. I feel like I'll probably go into spontaneous labor and deliver my daughter vaginally. And there will probably be moments where I don't think I'll get through it and other moments where I'm overwhelmed by the surge of power and oxytocin and strength and support.

And my uterus will contract and pulse and there will be blood everywhere and I might tear. Or it could be worse. I might be cut either through episiotomy or a C-section. I may be filled with more drugs and fluids. I just don't know.

Any way it shakes out, I'll be pretty broken.

And that's OK.

That's what happens prior to reconfiguration.

My daughter will be pretty busted up too.

From what I can tell, we'll both come home from the birth center in diapers, disoriented, and with jacked up digestion.

I'm making a sanctuary, and the two of us will heal. We'll need Kevin to bar the doors and feed us and keep us safe, so we can rest and eat and find ourselves and one another.

And somewhere down the line, we'll both emerge.

Whoever I will be will be utterly different from who I am now.

And I have no idea who she is or how she will create herself.

We'll just create the space, witness, and allow.