Waiting

When I was pregnant with Twyla, I felt very clearly that she would arrive later than her estimated due date. As I explored averages I saw that most first time Moms birthed at 41 weeks and 1 day. I felt like she would probably even be closer to 42 weeks.

Because of that, when I got my due date I advocated with my practice to not intervene and let her bake. They put limits (based on agreements with insurance, not my health nor Twyla’s health– a bone I have to pick with prenatal care in the US) but I knew what it would look like to go beyond 40 weeks gestation with them. 

I was so certain that I also was able to prepare everyone around me. It felt like my first act of parenting: this wasn’t my birth, it was Twyla’s. She was coming later. She was going to use that time to bake and develop and my job as her mother was to safeguard it. Sure enough, 40 weeks came and went and I calmly went about my way.

Her pregnancy was really sweet. I could take walks. Kevin and I went out to eat. We read lots of books and put up last minute baby things. I struggled to sleep and had acid reflux, but nothing unbearable. 

My practice at that time couldn’t care for me beyond 42 weeks gestation (which I have so much to say about, but another time) meaning, if I got to 42 weeks I’d either have to induce with them, or take my chances at a random ER or free birthing at home. At 41 weeks, based on this knowledge, I agreed to a membrane sweep and Twyla was born the following day.

In this second pregnancy, I had a feeling the baby would come closer to the estimated due date. Didn’t feel late, didn’t feel early, but earlier than last time. 

Then, deep in the second trimester, we realized why all bets were off: there were two babies. We shifted all thinking to crash course in learning twins and also trying to gestate as long as possible given that so many twins are born premature and need time in the NICU. While I am so grateful for NICUs and the care that they provide early babies, my hope was to do whatever was in my power to keep my babies cooking and to not need NICU time.

We then learned about “wimpy white boy syndrome” where seriously, no joke, there are no studies but every NICU nurse, L&D nurse, midwife, and OB/GYN knows that white boys tend to struggle the most upon birth. They tend to lack muscle tone to nurse effectively and therefore gain weight. If it’s a white boy/girl twin the boy will usually need CPAP or NICU time to work on breathing. 

And I had two white boys cooking! 

So again, Kevin and I looked into best practices to prevent pre-term labor. Of course, no one can control all factors but things like Brewer’s Diet do seem to help get birth weights up, help mother’s sustain appropriate blood volume so they’re less susceptible to preeclampsia, maintain appropriate sugar levels to ward off gestational diabetes, and collagen and vitamin C seem to help amniotic sacks stay intact rather than prematurely rupture.

We did it. When I got tired, I listened to my body and sadly put my gym membership on hold. I started finding meetups for Twyla that didn’t involve walking as I could barely. My inlaws helped afternoons so I could take naps. I did whatever I could to keep my babies baking.

Our next goal was to hit 37 weeks. Again, 37 weekers are preterm and many struggle to eat, but at 37 weeks we would be safe enough to stay with our homebirth practice and birth at home. Given hospital twin birth policies (the writing of another post) this was another major goal for the health of the boys and me. 

Tentatively, 37 weeks came and went. I wanted to keep them cooking so they would enter the world ready for it, but at least I knew that I could now safely call my birth team when the time came. 

Finally, 39 weeks, on Kevin and Twyla’s birthday. A lot of money was put on that date. And that date being true full term, a big achievement with two babies. As there were no babies, we put together a last minute birthday party for Twyla and watched yet another milestone.

Now, the time we did not intend for. Kevin and I started to look up from all our preparing: me, trying to survive how physically demanding this pregnancy is and him, taking all the rest of the weight of Twyla, household chores, cooking, cleaning, etc. Neither of us thought that we would get this far! 

Now what.

Now, everyone texting.

“Babies here?”

Believe me, no one ever forgets to tell you that their baby has been born.

With Twyla, we turned off the outside world and went in. We waited with patience and trust.
With our boys, we couldn’t turn the world off. We needed the help we were gratefully receiving in the forms of childcare, meals dropped off, and other check ins. But that also meant everyone and their mother sharing their stories of inductions, C-sections, asking if we’d tried to self-induce.

So here’s the kind of crazy thing: that’s all really serious medical advice with big implications. And people pass it around casually, as though they know the implications or your medical history or the potential ramifications for your kids.

So it becomes yet another conversation to have for the umpteenth time:

Well, there are actually a lot of risks to medical induction. Among them, pitocin isn’t even approved for it though it’s used commonly. (https://www.hormonesmatter.com/the-rise-in-pitocin-induced-childbirth/) It would likely mean that I would need an epidural and given my health make up, that would likely plummet my blood pressure, which would put my babies in distress, and mean we would need a C-section. Which might otherwise be avoidable.

Well, if we can avoid it, we don’t want a C-section. I’m so grateful that these surgeries exist, but there are a number of reasons why if avoidable, it would be safer for me to birth vaginally. For one, C-section births lose almost double the blood of a vaginal birth. For someone like myself, hoping to nurse but also be healthy enough to keep up with 3 kids, it’s likely that I’ll recover more quickly from a vaginal birth.

Well, yes, some people do induce labor with castor oil. But for some, it just causes diarrhea and dehydration in the mother and for the baby to pass meconium and can put the baby in danger. So, it can be a dangerous gamble to take.

And yes, people do a thousand other things to induce labor. They pump, walk on curbs, eat pineapple and spicy food, etc. None of these methods are guaranteed. No one knows exactly why labor is triggered. 

Another favorite: “they let you…” go this long with twins. Yes. As a grown ass woman, I chose providers who know they are supporting and guiding my health and the birth of my babies. So I am treated with respect and give consent. And, like a criminal, I’m walking around beyond 40 weeks pregnant with my own twin boys. They let me. No one has arrested me yet LOL. Even though most mainstream providers induce twin pregnancies earlier, I found providers who trust birth and have experience supporting full term twin pregnancies.

It makes me feel like I’m consistently defending my choices. Choices that Kevin and I agonized over. Researched. Discussed endlessly with healthcare professionals and our chosen healthcare providers. Choices that we have given tremendous thought to. All casually dismissed with, “well, why don’t you…?”

What no one says is, I’m with you. Waiting. Patiently.

Waiting is hard.

And it has value.

If I list the innumerable symptoms I live with the answer is, well, just go get an induction. But a year from now, I might still live with trauma from a failed induction versus a distant memory of a few full days of waiting. Why not wait? 

I’m healthy. My babies are healthy. The more time that I give them in the womb, the more opportunities they have to form neural networks and develop their lungs and put on fat and ready for the world. I’ve been checked up and down. We even had to go to the hospital this past week for a check and doctors who believe that all twin pregnancies should be birthed no later than 38 weeks couldn’t find any medical reason to urge induction or surgical birth.
So why not wait?

It’s the only practice that seems to have lost its place in the realm of birth. Waiting. Waiting for babies to be ready. For them to trigger labor. Waiting, in the fullness, the discomfort, the all of it. Waiting, as I am, in frustration. I watch the days tick by and know this is all the sooner than Kevin has to go to work and all the earlier that I lose help.

And I know those are some valid reasons why people induce. There are medical reasons, psychological, and also so that people can have preferred providers or help. There are good reasons to induce and I don’t fault anyone else their decision.

But there’s also reason to wait.

Kevin and I keep talking about other hard tasks. Right now, a triathlon doesn’t seem as hard. I could duck out of it if I wanted to. And people wait for those. They mentally steel themselves. I guess the difference is that you know a horn will blare and the race will begin. In this instance, I have to trust.

But just the same as Twyla, I feel like this is the job of a parent. If there were medical reason, I would listen to my providers and act to birth my babies however we needed to. Given that we are all healthy, I’m guarding their ability to determine their own birth. Kevin and I have done everything that we can to ensure that it will be as healthy and peaceful as we can make it. While these days tick by agonizingly slowly, next year we’ll look back with gratitude. Our summer boys. Who were allowed to enter the world without force, with trust, and with the time that they needed.

Feature on Better Happier Blog

Been busy with that whole caretaking an infant thing! My friend, Jillian, did a photo shoot and interview with me when I was 34 weeks pregnant with Twyla. The piece is now live!

Wrestling with motherhood

I go to so many new Mom circles and I sink gratefully into the commiseration and I also resent it.

Because I think the idea of "motherhood" in the US is absolute BS.

I wanted no part in it. It was maybe the primary reason I was ambivalent around having children for so long.

I need the commiseration and the venting because the problems are real. It's insane to have no national paid parental leave. Breastfeeding is fucking hard. Other people's unresolved pasts and their need to shove them down your throat in the form of constant unsolicited advice is toxic. The fact that culturally we don't know how to relate to one another and support one another means we all struggle with community, relationships, and support.

That shit is hard.

And.

Motherhood shouldn't be that.

I look around the room at a diverse group of women. Always. Always shifting. They're all different. It's why some suck their teeth and want the others to suck it up. And others are sniffling. And some want to start a revolution. (And I may be any one of them given the day.)

And the babies in their arms are just as diverse. This one is long and skinny like his Dad. And fuckers still constantly pester his Mom wondering about his health. This one has this circadian rhythm. This one has these allergies.

They're humans. Little tiny humans. And all diverse.

And the orchestration between the adult, diverse Mom humans and the tiny, struggling-to-effectively communicate baby humans is beautiful. There's attunement and false steps. There is utter love and mutual devotion and exhaustion and terror.

There is the fullness of human experience swelling in the intensity between each mother and baby.

And some of the mothers throw themselves fully and endlessly into the role.

Some rebel and really want hot dates or good sex.

Some forget who and how they ever were.

We all reconfigure.

Some do it so majestically. They grow with their baby and grow as themselves. Their own art is breathed into the world as they write early in the morning or choreograph a dance piece during a nap.

Motherhood is so much bigger than we allow it to be.

I recently read an article that was so beautiful. It also called BS on the density of expectations on mothers (and it is mothers. I know fathers have their own experience. I can speak to this one and it's specific!) alongside the radically dwindling support. Women are continuously told that when anything goes awry: the kid has an issue, sleep is a struggle, the marriage doesn't include as much sex, the house is messy, whatever! It's the mother's fault.

And women have honestly been complicit. We're culturally taught to people please and acquiesce. We really haven't had a lot of energy to fight back against this trope while we're breastfeeding around the clock.

And then, some of us resent the burden and feel others should have it too. Only fair.

Wearily, we've been accepting systemic failure as personal inadequacy.

It's bullshit.

I've loved traveling my whole life because it always reminds me of the diverse ways to live my life. If something isn't right for me (like in my case, college :) ) there are other paths.

Women mother differently in other parts of the world.

And when they have more community support and aren't so sleep-deprived, they're less likely to swallow this load or horse shit.

And when babies growing up knowing that the person in the center of their orbit also centers themselves, that message is transmitted. Center yourself in your own life. Matter the most to yourself. Let your life be your project. Let your health be your responsibility and your power. Live in your life. Live in it fully.

Trying to talk about this topic feels like tiptoeing through landmines. There's unprocessed shame and resentment. There's defiance. There are a diversity of feelings and experiences.

And that's what I crave. That diversity. That chorus of voices puncturing through the veneer of the martyred mother; tired, unsupported, dry, not sexual, not creative, a drained vessel for her family.

Her counterpart: the neglectful, selfish mother or the one who leaves. Either one who prioritizes themselves.

There isn't as common a narrative of a woman who values herself and does that within the nexus of her family.

I want that story told. In all its diversity. The chorus of voices of how they configure themselves in the real context of others who need them.

I know that this is not the time in my life when I can endlessly indulge my own wellbeing. I care for myself in tiny pockets of time. But I do care for myself. And I do it in part to model for my daughter but beyond that, I do it for myself. Because I am at the center of my own life.

I relate to her when I am. She can be herself when she does not have the burden of defining me.

Casually and frequently, I'm asked for my elevator pitch explanation of her. It usually amounts to my baby is "good" or "bad," i.e. she's a "good" sleeper and an utter angel or she's a "bad" kid with colic and clings to me. And the truth is, she is honestly all of that. She's so so unbearably good and also awful. And I find myself protective of how I respond. I don't want to diminish her.

I'm not asked by acquaintances to characterize my marriage in the same way. Kevin and I fought so hard to not have a marriage that was cliche-- I nag and he resents. We've worked to be humans to one another, to see one another continuously, and to let our relating live outside the bounds of flawed, limited definitions of marriage.

I want that for my mother-daughter relationship too. I don't want to fall into the prewritten script of battle and struggle. Seems like the options are: 1. she's an angel living out the life I couldn't live myself or 2. she hates me. What if we live in witness to one another, both being who we are? What if we had a relationship that wasn't written for us, but rather one that we live out minute-to-minute? What if instead of being asked if she was "good" or "bad" or a "good sleeper" or whatever, I was asked, "What is it like? What is your experience?"

There's so much more space.

What I currently know about birth

Birth is a force, an energy, like standing in the ocean and feeling a tidal pull or standing on a mountain and feeling the rush of wind. Birth has it's own identity and agenda. It's moving spirit to earth and that process isn't simply physical. I believe, for a woman to birth, she works with herself, the baby, and the birth force. It's optimal for each woman to know herself well enough to understand her own fears, what makes her feel safe, her ancestry, her intentions, and what she's willing to relinquish. Ideally, she also feels the baby's energy-- how the baby wants to move, the information the baby is providing about itself during the pregnancy.

The space that forms around birth is timeless-- time stretches and contracts beyond everyday rhyme and reason. It's necessarily messy and broken because it's an uncontrollable, feral force.

Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy

Early in my pregnancy with Twyla, I heard a Birth Kweens podcast about the Fourth Trimester period during a baby's first 3-months of life. As a first time parent, and someone who hadn't paid much attention to pregnancy and birth until I decided to go down this path myself, the period after delivery completely captivated me. From everything I read and heard, in this period mother and baby seem developmentally in tandem. Both in diapers. Both re-establishing communication with their elimination functions. If nursing (and perhaps if not?) both need to eat around the clock. Both enduring strange sleep cycles less tied to the sun while wrestling with exhaustion. Both finding their body in a different state, geographically, physically, with brand new sensations.

Some East Asian traditions feel that the postpartum period sets the tone for a woman's menopause and old age-- that by active care during this period you establish a stronger foundation for later in life. Intrigued, I began cultivating my own postpartum care.

I learned that in France it is standard care for all women to have at least 10 postpartum pelvic floor physical therapy sessions, no matter how they birth nor how the birth goes. In any birth, there is still a lot of pressure and stress (not unhealthy, but action) on the pelvic floor. The common advice given to prenatal women, at least in the United States, is to do a lot of kegels or actions to strengthen the pelvic floor. I think this is because, logically, when there is so much weight of a baby on your pelvic floor, there's a sense that you need to be strong enough to bear it.

However, most of us actually have really tight pelvic floors. That doesn't necessarily mean strong, but it does mean unyielding. For a woman to fully dilate and birth a baby, the pelvic floor has to be responsive and soften to the birth. I knew through my yoga practice that I fell in the tight camp. Years of active practice and aggressive mula bandha had tightened my pelvic floor. I also learned about a fascial connection between jaw and pelvic floor. As someone with periodic TMJ and teeth grinding, I knew that was also symptomatic of a tight and less yielding pelvic floor.

I didn't want to tear, so I began learning how to soften and open my pelvic floor in pilates, prenatal yoga, and also pelvic floor physical therapy.

This type of physical therapy retrains this important muscle group through external and internal work. In the United States, there are very strict rules about who is permitted to do internal physical work-- usually, just OBGYNs! While that makes sense in theory, it means that in so many ways, the types of touch and the relationships we have with our body are stymied. I didn't realize that until I engaged with the practice myself.

I've practiced yoga since I was 16. I felt like I was fairly integrated and embodied. Knowing that I wanted to do postpartum pelvic floor physical therapy, no matter how the birth went, as a preemptive action to restore my whole health, I found a pelvic floor physical therapist, Dr. Amanda Heritage. We had an initial phone call and saw that we were both very excited about the possibilities both of her modality and how pregnancy and birth can be used as periods to shore up overall health. Dr. Heritage recommended that I do a prenatal visit to ready my perineum to stretch, hopefully rather than tear, during birth.

In our first session, we first talked. I explained some of the "lightening crotch" sensation that I'd been feeling. That's a fun one! Dr. Heritage showed me models of the nerves in the pelvic bowl. I began to understand that I would feel sensation in my legs because my baby was triggering a nerve much higher inside my pelvis and the sensation was referred away. I was utterly fascinated, but also somewhat reassured throughout the rest of my pregnancy.

We then began the actual work. Physical therapy always involves patient action, movement, and integration. Pelvic floor physical therapy also includes bodywork. Dr. Heritage used myofascial work on my abdomen and hips before slowly moving towards perineal work. She taught me perineal massage. With every action, there was conversation and consent.

When the session was over, I felt that I'd had an experience that I didn't yet have the framework to process. That happens from time to time like if I'm in a foreign country where people are living in a way that's beyond my previous conception. It takes time for my brain to catch up to a reality that I'm witnessing. I don't have a file to place what I'm seeing.

I sat in my car and felt that I was in uncharted territory. My impulse is often to numb out by scrolling on my phone. As I've begun recognizing what's occurring in real-time, my current response is to just sit quietly. That's what I did. I sat in the pine shade and acknowledged that I was growing, something was shifting, and it would require time.

By giving myself that allowance, my brain actually does catch up more quickly. I realized that I was stretching into integrating my body in a completely new way. My arm has had a huge history of touch. I've felt my own arm and said, "arm," knowing it cognitively. My arm has been bruised and touched lovingly and touched clinically.

My pelvic floor is a very different story!

I realized that prior to the first session of pelvic floor physical therapy, I had experienced only clinical and sexual touch. This experience felt like neither of what I had previously known. It was clinical touch but at a slower pace and more time for me to make the same cognitive connection of "Oh! That's my perineum." Pregnancy is new, relentless sensation and this was a process of naming and embodying each feeling. The mystery was both contracted and expanded. In a way, it felt more like the friendly touch you would get on a shoulder in a part of my body that had never been dealt with in that way. I realized I wasn't fully living in every part of my body as I had previously thought. I had no point of comparison until my range of feeling and touch was expanded.

In learning about the postpartum period, I learned about many rituals that various cultures offer to this rich time. These rituals often occur in cultures that mark many points in a woman's life like the onset of menstruation, partnership, and menopause.

I imagined if I had pelvic floor physical therapy when I first began menstruating. I wonder how I would have known my own body with that information? If pelvic floor physical therapy was in a way, a ritual we utilized not only in times of distress but in marking new evolutions in our body. What if we used this modality as mapping and a point of integration? Each time the body evolves into a new function and iteration, here is a way to know it and be in it.

I had two prenatal sessions and go for my first postpartum session in a few weeks. I'm living in a completely different body. My current body is no longer pregnant but also still bears some of the space and aftermath of pregnancy. My body is not and will not be what it was prior to pregnancy. It's taking a new form. I'm excited to know it more deeply.

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