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Driving home from our visit with his parents in the beauteous outskirts of Weatherford, TX, Matt and I realized that we had only been in Texas for good for a whole week. It already feels like we’ve been here at least a month. Not in the “oh god it’s so tedious” sense–just the opposite. Every day is just so damn full. What isn’t filled with endless errands and Major Life Discussions and sudden cat-sitting-related crises is filled with Nathan. Who is pretty much a fulltime job all by his lonesome.

He and I are doing really well. I still can’t make him laugh the way his Grandoo does with her Pattycake routine, but he smiles plenty and cuddles as much as I could possibly want. He might be thinking about teething. He’s definitely always thinking about eating and growing, which would explain why he weighs 19 freakin’ pounds and measures 25 inches long at 2.5 months. Putting him, I don’t know, about 3 months ahead of a normal baby size. Jeebus.

I’m tired, pretty much all the time still. I never quite catch up on my sleep even though he’s sleeping better. First thing in the morning and 7 pm are my worst times…I wonder every day if I’m going to fall asleep and keep sleeping no matter what noise he makes. I’m ok the rest of the day, but definitely not in the best shape. Matt’s no better than I am either. I really need a nice 12 hour stretch about once or twice a week, but have no idea how that is ever going to happen. At some point he’ll sleep more and we’ll catch up, but I do hope it’s before he gets to jr. high.

Applying to jobs when I find them; I only have time to send a few each week, so I stick to jobs I know I might actually stand for a while that pay decently. I figure if I have to take a crap job, there’s plenty of them every week. Why try for them now?

But I’m anxious. I want money to be coming in, and soon.

In amongst the worrying and scurrying, we did manage to visit a friendly local bar (2 beers for $5! Take that, NYC!), then hop over to a Half-Price Books (the best used bookstore ever) and have a giant ice cream cone from Marble Slab. We also celebrated our return to suburbia with a trip to Target and several trips to large, clean, lovely grocery stores that we have so missed in New York.

Maybe we are just weenies, but we missed these little conveniences so much while we were there; it feels a lot like we were camping all those years, or traveling outside the States somewhere. Suburbia comes in for a lot of abuse, and I’ll be the first to agree that more sidewalks and fewer ugly-ass strip malls would be a good thing. But dammit, it’s nice not to pay out the ass for a dusty can of green beans and a few leftover chicken breasts at the local grocery, where you have to turn sideways to pass someone in the aisle. And nicer still to throw your groceries in the trunk and drive them home instead of schlepping two blocks in the bitter cold while sleet drives into your face. I’d go back to New York in a minute if I could afford a huge apartment and having everything delivered. Otherwise, it’s really kind of a kick in the ass every day.

Texas kicks your ass another way, which you feel when you open the local paper and read 5 different “editorials” in the Sunday opinion section, all of them defending oil and gas interests. Talk about sucking the corporate cock. There are two lonely voices of liberal dissent that get printed in the paper on a regular basis, and both columnists come in for steady abuse in the letters pages for daring to question the Almighty George. When did America become so full of craven, knee-bending ass-kissers that questioning our government became a crime? I never knew so many people had such a masochistic streak. They just can’t get enough of the Republicans robbing them blind and getting up in their personal business, so long as the Republicans swear that’s how Jesus wants it.

We still don’t know if Austin or DFW is our eventual home here; it all depends on the job market. I’ve given up the worry over it for now; there’s no time. Too many resumes to send, diapers to change, and beers to drink. It’ll all shake out in the end.

The last week has been wonderful and awful and hard. Wonderful to be back with Nathan and Matt all in one place. Awful because so much is uncertain still, and we are frankly, scared a lot of the time. Hard for the same reasons; it all depends on us getting our shit together and finding work and starting his business and raising Nathan in the midst of all of it. Quickly. And hard because no matter how gracious they are, it’s always hard to rely on the charity of family. I keep humming “God Bless the Child” from my Blood Sweat and Tears CD:

Rich relations may give you

A crust of bread and such

You can help yourself

But don’t take too much…

Not that my relations are either rich or stingy, but there is some truth to the feeling that you can only lean so hard on those that want to help you. Mostly because they have their own burdens to carry.

We’re at that stage where you wonder…am I in fact insane? Probably. In hindsight, would we have at least done things in a different order (move THEN baby)? Maybe. Maybe not. For one thing, it would have meant putting off having a kid until I could acquire a decent amount of vacation time at a new employer…so at least another year or year and a half. By which time, would I have been getting too old to start trying? Who could tell?

What it has always boiled down to for us is that we have never had a lot of good choices. We’ve had Dangerous but Satisfying (if it Works) vs. Safe but Soul Killing. A devil’s choice either way.

And now the pressure is higher on us than it’s ever been, and we’re considering how much to bend our plans without breaking ourselves. Which means, do we stay here in DFW and try to make that work again (I personally didn’t have a lot of success at that four years ago) or do we hitch up our trousers, metaphorically speaking, and keep trying for Austin? DFW has family going for it, and familiarity. A little bit more of a safety net. And less start up money involved. For me, quite a bit less of a satisfying job possibility. But maybe, having that bit of security for Nathan is worth it. Maybe we can move to Austin or wherever later.

Or maybe DFW is a sucking vortex that we will never escape. Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind also.

And even if we stay here for a while or (gulp) forever, that won’t solve our difficulties. Is it worth it? Is it the best we can do or a cop out?

I wish I knew.

Nathan is glad to see me. But then he’s glad to see everyone. You never met a friendlier baby. But I’m not sure he really knows that I’m all that different from other people yet.

It’s not surprising if he doesn’t. He’s been raised by a village more than most babies his age. I’ve needed a lot of help. And when I was with him, more often than not, I was feeling very far away, concentrating so hard on holding myself together that deep bonding wasn’t really on the menu. I was caring for him, but with a sort of desperate, strained feeling–the depression I had then was that kind that makes you feel like an impending doom is hanging over you, a vague doom you can’t name (and therefore, can’t fight). Which combined with the sleep deprivation made every frustration, every time he spit up or couldn’t get to sleep, feel like the end of the world. I would set him down a lot, need other people to hold him a lot, because I just couldn’t connect in the right way. I loved him, but I was afraid of loving him. Afraid that I wasn’t really able to love him, because all I could feel then was my own pain.

I might still be afraid. But I’m not afraid to be afraid, if that makes any sense.

We were completely apart for two whole weeks, almost a fourth of his very short life. And a few days ago, before I got on the plane leaving New York for good, I decided he and I were just going to start over. Reintroduce ourselves and not worry about before.

We walked in the door and before I even hugged my mom I picked him up. I cried, he gave me the smiles and laughs he gives all the people who love and coo over and feed him. And I’ve barely let him go since. I want him to know I’m different, I’m his mom, and I don’t ever want to feel that far apart from him again. I don’t think he quite has it, though he gives me a puzzled look now and then, like maybe I’m someone he met at a party last year but he can’t quite remember my name.

Holding him is different without the depression, even though there’s regular old sadness hanging around still. But I’m not terrified now, even though I’m still so clueless that today I walked away while he was on his changing table to grab something. Classic dumb-mom move, and I’m really lucky he didn’t take a header, he wasn’t even held by a guard rail or strap. Did I mention my mom was standing right there? Yes, now she’s going to worry about her grandson’s keeper. Bad Mommy! Some parts of my brain have not yet gotten the memo about me being responsible for his safety 24/7. OK brain, you’re going to have to catch up now. Break time is over.

Last night we followed his grandma-tested swaddle and sleep schedule, and he did fine; 10-2 then a little bottle and a new diaper, then asleep till 6. At six I changed him again, gave him another little bit of bottle, and brought him into bed with me, because I couldn’t stand not to hold him any longer. I unswaddled him and put him back in his pjs so I could cuddle him better. We slept for two hours and it was absolute heaven to have his little warm soft self next to me, even if my arm did nearly fall asleep. I would have stayed there longer if he hadn’t wanted to get up and play.

We’ve been together all day; I’ve had a hard time putting him down for his naps, because it’s so nice to have him fall asleep cuddled next to me on the recliner. Then he wakes up and we play. I am having to find out how to play with him, because he’s learned all about new things…books and Baby Einstein and making talking sounds…that he didn’t know about yet when we were together. We’re going to have to find new games together.

His little head is round now instead of oval-ish, a baby’s head and not a newborn’s. His fine fuzzy black hair refuses to rub off completely, though, no matter how much I rub my face against it. He looks so much like me that I think I must be imagining it, until someone else says so. I didn’t expect that for some reason. But I know for sure that his lopsided smile comes directly from my dad, by way of me. I won’t take credit for his good temper and patience and reluctance to cry. Those are just pure blessings, however he got them.

Now when he doesn’t want to sleep or he spits up or something else seems to be going wrong, I don’t freeze and wonder what I’m doing here and why I thought I was ever qualified to have a child. I wait, to see what happens, I make a list in my head of things to try, and I remember that the world won’t end if he does cry. I might cry with him, but that’s nothing to be scared of either.

Hello, baby. Hello hello hello. Let’s start again, ok? I’m game if you are.

Since home is where my family is. Matt will be here in two days, then we’ll be complete again.

I cried when I held Nathan for the first time in a hundred years. Can you blame me? He’s changed so much but not at all. So have I.

He’s sleeping now. There’s lots to say but I need to sleep too. More later.

Why are crossed eyes so adorable? I don’t know. 3 more days till I see him again.

Man, all I post about is my birth experience. I would say I’m sorry, but who’s forcing you to read, anyway? No one, that’s who. So piss off.

Ok, now that I’ve alienated my readers unnecessarily, I just wanted to copy a post I made over at the Moms Who Think forum. The topic was, “what is your dream birth experience”? And the debate took a turn in which women who have had elective c-sections wondered why so many other women felt the need to have a natural birth..something I’ve been thinking about, obviously. Because yes, you get a healthy baby (hopefully) either way. So here’s some of what I posted:

….there are two things that I think about this question; one, that the reason so many women do feel disappointed when they have a c-section is that they feel there is something sacred or special about a woman’s body giving birth naturally. Not everyone thinks that, but a lot of us, like myself, do. …

And when we do have c-sections, things like bringing the baby to the mother’s breast and allowing her to bond are seldom honored as much as in a vaginal birth. No woman should have to wait hours to hold her child if that child is born healthy…

So yeah, having a “healthy baby” is great, and it’s not that we’re not grateful. But we’re not just uteruses with feet, and our feelings and needs for birth and after are important. And many many hospitals, especially with a c-section, just run you through like a factory.

…my perfect birth would be in a setting that was comfortable and safe, surrounded by people I knew I could trust, who were committed to doing everything possible to let me birth naturally. And who, if a c-section were necessary, would still treat me with dignity and compassion and do everything in their power to help me bond with my baby, start breastfeeding right away, and feel that my birth was special.

I haven’t said all that much about my feelings of birth as sacred, or a spiritual event, and I thought maybe I should. I’ve had my problems with religion, which I’ve written a lot about here, and this year I moved pretty firmly into the Agnostic column, where I’ll most likely stay. Because that’s more honest than saying I always believe when I don’t. Still, there are things in life I consider “sacred” even if I’m not sure I mean that in a religious sense. Things that are very deep and significant to me, that raise feelings I can only classify as spiritual or religious. Love is one. The power of art (music, painting, writing) is one. Death is one. Childbirth is one, also.

It has nothing to do with a romanticized view of birth. I know about the blood and pain and bodily frustrations and exhaustion, all of that. I knew before I gave birth. But the act of bringing a new person into the world is something special, something, yes, sacred to me, and I didn’t realize how much it mattered until I was cut off from the full experience. Not by my c-section so much as by my treatment, as a patient no different from someone having gallbladder surgery or their wisdom teeth out. Birth is not like that, for me or many other women, not a simple medical event. It has a very deep meaning, to us, a meaning that demands respect and a bit of privacy, a space in which to stop and absorb what has happened.

This is not an unreasonable desire; in fact, hospitals do respect similar needs for their other patients. For example, when my father died in the hospital, he was not immediately and efficiently bundled off to the funeral home. The staff respected our feelings by disconnecting and removing the equipment and leaving him in his bed, so that we could come see him, and say goodbye. They understood that the strength of the family’s feelings was something that should be respected, given space and privacy. It wasn’t a huge effort on their part; we only stayed with my father maybe an hour before we let him be taken away. Birth is no different. The new parents and their family need that space and respect, without the machines or doctors to intervene, just an hour…or even half an hour…to process what has just happened, the ways in which their lives have just changed.

To welcome a life is as profound an event as to say goodbye to one.

I think we often don’t understand this because death is an event that affects men as well as women, and birth affects women much more. We respect the pain of the grieving families, but not the profound feelings aroused by giving birth. Women’s feelings in general are often considered less important; we’re told “You’re making too big a deal over this,” or “stop whining, you should be happy for what you have.”

What people who say this don’t understand is that a woman in labor is having an experience that brings her closer to death than she may ever have been. Even if she’s surrounded by medical professionals, the process of birth always has the potential to be fatal or damaging, and in labor, I think that you know that, deep down. Your body is being pushed to the edge of its abilities, and you are forced to confront your own weakness in a way you never have before. And while you find strength you never had before, either, it changes you, and after the baby comes out, however it comes out, you are still shaking and transformed by this change.

And now you have a child, a new person, at the end of this terrifying and wonderful experience, and you feel the need (or at least I did) to just stop, hold them, allow yourself to connect with them outside your body instead of inside it. To take a deep breath after your struggle and enjoy the literal fruits of your labor. To have those around you acknowledge that your universe has just turned inside out. To have them share in your joy, or at the very least, give you some time to let that joy happen for you.

I needed that, and I wasn’t given that. I was barely allowed to touch my baby before he was taken from me for several hours. When he came back, that sacred, irreplaceable moment was gone and it could never happen again. Our first meeting was a sacred and necessary thing, and it was disrupted, and our relationship has been a cautious, halting one ever since.

I love him…that’s not in question. But it still sometimes feels like he’s not mine; we’re having to build our relationship in a slow, fragmented way rather than having started it with his birth, almost like he’s adopted. And I grieve that loss, because it was unnecessary. There was no reason to take him from me; he needed to be warmed, and I could have done that, nursed him a little, gotten to hold him while he was still new to the world, before he was handled by everyone but me.

If you take a newborn animal from its mother and handle it too much, sometimes the mother will reject it when you take it back. There is something deep and instinctive about bonding at birth, and it should not be broken without a very good cause. If Nathan had needed immediate medical care, I would have accepted being separated from him. But he didn’t; he was taken from me for the hospital’s convenience. There was no room for the sacred in their schedule.

It may be that some women don’t feel the need I did, and wouldn’t feel the loss I feel in the same situation. But judging by the email lists and websites and organizations devoted to women who are grieving the way I am, for the same reasons, I’d say they’re the minority. For the rest of us, the need for something better runs too deep to give it up. It’s not about being selfish, or wanting some sort of fakey mystical experience. It’s about respecting the work and courage and beauty of giving birth, and the strength of the bond between a mother and her baby.

Nathan and I will be all right, eventually. I’m at peace about that, because I know time will let us re-weave our relationship and get back to the place we should have been. Love is strong enough to overcome our obstacles. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to be complacent about a system that put those obstacles there in the first place.

When I found out I was having a boy, one thing that bugged me was the idea of getting him potty trained. I dread the idea of wee-wee everywhere in my bathroom and in my house–a fear confirmed by one mom who posted on a blog I go to about how her son peed into the heating vents periodically. It’s hard not to think of little boys as mobile, urine-loaded squirt guns roaming through your house, constantly tempted to take aim and fire when the mood hits. This seems like it would be less of a problem with girls, since they come without a hose attachment, no?

On the other hand, it’s unlikely that Nathan will ever want me to buy him a sparkly pink Barbie toy of any kind. So he has that going for him.

So the last few days since my last post have been…surprisingly good. As in, the anxiety has lifted, or lessened (it would be weird if my move didn’t cause me some anxiety). But the feeling of all-consuming dread has taken itself off for the present. I’m hoping that’s my hormones adjusting and my moods sorting themselves out. I know something’s up with the old hormones, because I am having teenager acne breakouts all of a sudden.

I am doing all I can to encourage this situation (the good mood, not the acne). When sadness looms, I am attacking it at once and driving it off as much as I can. Or at least labeling it “birth-related crap that I am still dealing with” so that it seems less overwhelming.

But it is nice to remember my old self, the person who was not curled into a little ball weeping, mentally speaking, all the damn time. It may be that the link doctormama sent me to someone who had been through real depression helped too…I recognized some of what Tertia described, but also realized that my depression had not reached those depths. And that it had gotten better lately. Which gave me hope.

Is there is such a thing as good denial, you think? The kind that says, fuck it, I’m going to be hopeful no matter how many articles I read on How We are All Doomed or how sad/anxious/confused I feel about various parts of my life? That’s what it feels like to be optimistic for me. If we are, in fact All Doomed, or if it’s just me who is doomed, my reasoning goes, well there ain’t much I can do about it anyway, might as well enjoy myself as long as I can. And hope that I’m not actually doomed, of course. Plenty of time to be doomed later.

I still need to join a support group, because I still have a lot of sorting out to do. Right now, is my feeling of humiliation over my c-section, after being such a vocal natural/vaginal birth advocate. I am trying to balance my feelings that I was a victim of a system stacked against me with my feelings that I have some personal responsibility as well, for not being as aggressive and smart about my options and my rights as I should have been. Lots of wistful thoughts about how I could have done more, fought harder, fought smarter, etc.

I knew the system was stacked against me, but I didn’t want to believe it, is what I think now. I didn’t want to be that paranoid, I wanted to believe the best, because it was easier and I was overwhelmed with the whole pregnancy thing anyway. I was too passive. I didn’t want to fight, and it may be that reluctance that cost me the birth I wanted. I can’t be sure of course, but I would feel better if I had at least fought harder, even if the outcome was the same. I don’t like the part of myself that caves in to authority so easily, that is too lazy or scared to fight. I’m not proud of that part of myself, at all. It’s not enough to be able to endure the pain of childbirth; you have to be prepared for battle when you give birth in a hospital, and I wasn’t.

Still, even while I’ve still got all these kinds of thoughts in my head, the mental weather is a lot clearer the last 2 days.

Today I went to Central Park to tell it goodbye, to tell New York goodbye, really. I thought about all the good things and bad things about living here, and decided that what it boiled down to is this: New York for me is like dating a nice, good-looking intelligent person with whom you have no chemistry at all. You can go along a long time and even enjoy each other’s company, but there’s no passion there. I never felt a passion for this place, though I got a lot out of it. And I can see why other people love it. But for me, finding a place that feels like home is still something ongoing. Guess we’ll see how Austin and I do in a few months.

First of all, I should probably correct an earlier post about my c-section scar being a foot long. It’s not quite that big. But when I put my hand on it, it feels enormous. This is the first week where doing that doesn’t bring on a wave of grief (still plently of anger hanging around, though). I mean, my belly was nothing special before, just an average one, no abs of steel. And I still have stretch marks, so it wouldn’t be an object of beauty right now no matter what. But the scar is an angry dark pink color, and it looks alien there. I’ve never had a scar that big. And now I’ve got this one for the rest of my life. It’s hard to adjust to.

I imagine heart surgery patients feel the same. Apparently, from what I’ve read, it’s not that unusual for any major body-altering surgery to bring on grief. We get pretty attached to our bodies in their original forms, and it’s a shock to have them changed on us. And surgery, I suspect, always feels like a violation or a trespass. It’s more intimate than sex, in a way, but done to you by a stranger in a mask while you’re helpless and drugged. And it leaves pain behind, along with the scars, and even phantom pains or weird twinges that weren’t there before after recovery is officially over.

Do surgeons ever think about or talk about these things? (perhaps doctormama can answer that one). When they’re standing over an unconscious or semi-conscious patient, does the patient’s fear and confusion mean anything to them?

I ask because I keep thinking how much difference it might have made had the surgeon taken the time to talk to me, to show me some compassion, to connect with me as a fellow human being. Do surgeons know how terrifying they look, robed and masked and holding a scapel over you? Could it be possible to dissipate that fear a bit by taking a few minutes to look their patients in the eye, to let them know they understand the fear and pain and that they are going to do their best to make it easy on their patients? I think yes. Maybe with scheduled surgeries, it happens more. Judging by the stories I read on the c-section mailing list, though, an awful lot of surgeons don’t; to the point where several relate stories similar to mine, where the surgeon nearly started cutting before the patient was properly anesthetized.

Technically my surgery was an unscheduled one, so I suppose it was considered “emergency” but neither I nor the baby were yet in distress; there was no real reason to rush, except the hospital’s schedule. And I’m sure that’s what the problem was. It was about 5 in the evening, the surgeon wanted to go home maybe, or had some other surgeries on the schedule. The whole thing took less than 45 minutes…efficient and successful, on paper. In terms of how long I’m taking to get over the surgery because of the way I was treated…not so much.

So many of the women on the c-section email list are like me, walking wounded. Even though I feel better today than I have in a long time, I’m one of them. So many c-sections. How many of them were necessary? How many of us will ever know for sure one way or another whether what we went through was really about our safety, and not someone else’s convenience? That’s the hell of it really. The way we’ve all lost trust in the doctors and hospitals that say they’re here to help us and keep us safe. There are women on that list who won’t go to the hospital for anything, not even a miscarriage, because they’re so angry and hurt by their experiences there. Undoubtedly, as it gets harder and harder to find midwives to do homebirths (or insurers to back them up) more women will opt for unassisted homebirths, raising the risks for themselves. Because they would rather risk birthing alone than going back into a hospital that symbolizes violation and pain and injury to them.

Women want to give birth in a safe place, and in this country, we’ve been taught to believe that would be a hospital. And then we go there, and we find out, it’s not as safe as we thought. That the US c-section rate is higher than a lot of medical professionals think it should be, meaning every birthing woman is at risk for getting one she doesn’t need, because our doctors and our system aren’t willing to find effective ways to bring that rate down. Because to hospitals, c-section is neat and tidy, no matter the fallout to the scarred and stunned women who undergo it.

In my opinion, we know pathetically little about birth and pregnancy and labor, anyway. It’s evident that Pitocin and epidurals raise c-section rates, but we still don’t offer much in the way of alternatives. We can’t accurately predict a baby’s size because our sonograms aren’t sophisticated enough. Most OBs have no clue about natural laboring methods, positions, why labor stalls, or even how to deliver a breech baby without c-section (some of them can be delivered this way). My hospital’s “birthing suite” for example, had no comfortable place to labor that was not the bed…and the bed was way up off the hard cold linoleum, so you always felt a little scared that you might fall off and crack your head. The foot of the bed was actually too unsteady to lean against, and your socks slipped on the floor. Why couldn’t there have been a mattress on the floor, too, or a lower bed or comfortable chair to labor on? If I’d known I’d have brought one. But it’s evident no one at that hospital had given much thought to laboring outside of lying flat on your back in bed, no matter how large and pretty the room was.

(And yes, I should have asked for those things, I know now. I would, now. But like a lot of people, I was scared and intimidated by the system, and distracted by labor, and I didn’t have the guts or the energy. Knowing what I know now? I’d be a huge pain in the hospital’s ass, or just have refused to be induced, or insisted on having the Pitocin turned off, blah blah blah. Hindsight’s 20/20, etc. )

C-section is a necessary tool and I’m glad we have it; but it is also a crutch that keeps our system from improving our understanding of vaginal births and how to make them more effective. It’s efficient, on paper. It’s traumatic, in the flesh.

My little pinup boy. The ladies could never resist him now! He is…too sexxy!