"Grief is a teacher. It tells us that we are not alone; that we are interconnected; that what connects us also breaks our hearts — which is as it should be. Most people who allow themselves to grieve fully develop an increased sense of gratitude for their own lives. That’s the alchemy: from grief to gratitude. None of us wants to go through these experiences, but they do bring us these gifts." Barbara Platek

Rafael Vicente!!

The night I wrote the last post, the 9th of Jan, I went into labor and had my little guy in the morning by C section. It was smooth & peaceful, although I didn't have the dr I planned it with, the one who delivered the last 2 babies, it was still good overall. Pics of Rafa's first days ...

I got this quote from this blog, http://a-mom-is-born.blogspot.com/2009/02/precipitous-labor.html
"I am left with the sense that I didn't so much give birth as I did give way to birth, and I am feeling far more humbled by nature than I am empowered or heroic."

She had her baby in a little more than an hour & was shocked by the intensity. So many birth stories, esp. home births are about women feeling "empowered" by their births. I like that she admits its humbling rather than empowering every time. As someone who had a challenging birth, then a horrific birth, followed by 3 very peaceful & beautiful C sections I came to birth already empowered. I didn't expect anything fulfilling from birth, I just wanted it to go smoothly, I wanted to be heard & I wanted to be able to do it again if possible.

The whole "trust birth" movement really rubs me the wrong way. I just attended the VBAC trial of a dear friend and I felt, more than ever, that birth is really luck. If you believe in it so heavily and it goes awry, then what? Did you not trust birth enough? Trusting birth is like having a kidney stone and trusting your ureters to get the stone out without surgery. Or trusting your digestive system to always work. Birth, like everything in nature, is bigger than us & doesn't always care about us. I am completely at peace with getting my babies here anyway I can & I am humbled by meeting my newborn no matter how he got here. However it works out, I am not in control & its the only birth he'll have.

Positives

My little fun OB visit companion!




I have an antibody that lurks when Im pregnant & for the last 2 pregnancies it completely stayed out of the way. I just found out my number is right where they start monitoring more closely, with this, my 4th isoimmunized pregnancy. I am going t focus on the positives here, so far baby boy(what else? ;) looks good & is big, strong & active.
I am 30 weeks, which is much less scary than 20 weeks if baby needed to come out early!
I expected this 2 babies ago & was very lucky, so I am OK with extra monitoring.
I get to see him often, I see an OB one week & then the MFM/perinatalogist the next, all the way to the end, which God willing will be at least 37 weeks!

Back in April, things were busy, very busy, but OK. We were at birthday parties every weekend, Joaqueeny was playing soccer, my oldest played an instrument, basketball & did Cub Scouts. The Creature was making it through Kindergarten, pt 2. The little guy was growing fast & cute & darling husband and I were healthy & happy.

Then, the night before the littlest guy's birthday party, Joaqueeny breaks his arm. It was a simple break that healed well & he has only good memories of the experience, but it was no fun to be back in the ER again. The birthday party was pretty spectacular, great food & drink, a moonbounce, a magician. It was a little too good though, neighbor kids were running in & out whenever they wanted & causing mayhem with nobody watching them, adult neighbors were starting fights with party guests, it all went downhill from there. In the future, back to basics, small & meaningful parties, with people that care.

In May, my oldest boy got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. He was so unbelievably sick the week before he was diagnosed that I was terrified it could be something much worse than type 1. When we told him what he had, we wanted to do it right, we wanted to present it in a way where he would be as OK with it as he could be. He was not only OK then, thanks to an amazing hospital team & an awesome endocrinologist team, he has been completely OK ever since. He has such a great attitude that its contagious,he does all of his shots & glucose checks. He can go anywhere & do anything, even without us, as long as he carries his kit that hooks onto his belt. I wish could have been 1/10th as awesome of a kid (when I was a kid!) as he is now.

At the end of that first week after his diagnosis, I learned I was expecting Number 6!
So, its been absolutely eventful & I haven't even mentioned all of the testing for school that we did for the Creature for this year (so far so good for him!) and the swim team that the oldest swam on all summer, every single day! I have a lot of challenges but still feel blessed to be here to face them & learn from my unique bunch of boys!

Its been such a challenging evening! I have lost my patience more than once & used language I am really trying not to use anymore. Too many hard things have happened to mothers I know. And then I went to one of my favorite blogs, Enjoying the Small Things, & I saw this quote,

"But, here's the thing. Once you become a parent...once you start feeling a little funny and you buy that pregnancy test...once you see a pink plus sign...once you know it's not just you anymore...well, you automatically carry around, for the rest of your life, an increased likelihood. To have your heart broken. And it's a constant fear that we struggle to put to rest.

And we can choose to be afraid or we can choose to live.

And I choose to live. "

love it.

My friend Anne came to visit from Seattle, she was in town for a scientific conference because she is a very smart scientist, and she spent 2 nights with us. This is spring for us, outside, eating on the deck & exploring parks when we can. The boys loved her & it was fun to see someone as an adult that I had so much fun with as a teenager. We must have passed a million notes to each other back in the day! We used to explore DC together and watched tons of independent films and saw plenty of shows. We got good at finding the band after concerts and waiting by their tourbus. We discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers were not very nice people, they probably are now :) I think of how bratty I could be back then & how unfriendly & I'm glad life knocked some compassion and cheer into me! Thanks Anne for stopping by, one day we'll get to you!

Cutest thing around town!!

My Ramsay at a Leader day for us breastfeeding helping ladies. He plays well with others!

With each baby I have a different physique and different figure flaws. In fact, my body looks worse each time, but...I have a better body image each time. I want to be awesomely fit and I try whenever I can to exercise, but its harder each time & I have to do more each time. You would think with constantly breastfeeding and babywearing that it would fly off, but I still manage to hold onto that last 15 lbs. The funny thing is I really don't care much, I care less each time. I am so glad they are here and healthy that being bigger than normal is not a big deal. As we go into swimsuit season I will keep telling myself that ;)

Great article in the Toronto Sun today about "minor" surgery & its complications!
http://www.torontosun.com/life/healthandfitness/2010/03/18/13277631.html#/life/healthandfitness/2010/03/18/pf-13277631.html

My boys are all asleep after the most hectic suburban day ever. I am so thankful I got to leisurely wander around the National Portrait Gallery yesterday and have a great dinner with an old friend & my husband (!), mussels, shrimp, wine, crusty bread..
Anyway, today was go go go & I was already losing it by 11 am when my basketball player couldn't find his shorts. We pulled it together, dashed into Target for more shorts, ran him to his friends house & then I took Joaquin to my folks house and my Creature & my little chunk & I went off to a bowling alley birthday party. As soon as the last bit of cake was eaten we dashed across the county to catch the last 2 minutes of the basketball game. Thenm after many minor catastrophes, back to my parents' where we had dinner with my dad's cousin, her husband, my great aunt & my dear brother & his lovely lady friend. Now I am enjoying a rare moment alone

The picture is a castle in the Mosel Valley in Germany that is pretty much the same as it was 500 yrs ago. I am dying to take all of my boys to see it. Once my husband gets in that part of the world I don't think he will want to leave. This is my convoluted post for the day, but I am happy to have made it through the hectic and damn it, I miss the blizzard that shut everything down 2 weeks ago, it really made my life simple!

No such thing as recovery...

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20340293,00.html

This is an article about John Travolta in People.com

John Travolta: 'We Work Hard Every Day' to Recover from Son's Death

By Jeffrey Slonim and Blane Bachelor

Friday January 29, 2010 10:20 AM EST

John Travolta and Kelly Preston

A year after the tragic death of their 16-year-old son, Jett, John Travolta and wife Kelly Preston say they "work hard every day" on healing – a message reinforced by their recent trip to deliver medics and supplies to earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

"Once you get yourself stable, then you're able to reach out again," Travolta, 55, told PEOPLE. "And I think this whole year, every day we've been working on stabilizing ourselves. And it's been successful so far."

Added Preston: "It helps to look out and be helpful to other people … that really helps."


I agree with everything the two of them said, but then, you can't really use the word "agree" when talking about grief, because everyone's grief is so unique. As for the term "recover", that word has no place in discussing the loss of a child. A child is permanent, their soul is unrepeatable, they are not lost & replaced. It isn't like a sickness or a depression you get over one day like it never happened. Whether you parent a child here or not here, you parent them for life. A mother who has lost her only child is no less a mother than one who has one living, one dead. A person can "recover" from many losses, but I think losing a child is different, you may get some acceptance, but even that comes and goes.

Awesome letter to the Editor!

This was in last week's paper, a fantastic rebuttal to the ridiculous article the Post put out last week about how newborn circumcision may be recommended again based on very flawed studies done in Africa on HIV & circ.

There's good concern for not circumcising boys


Thursday, January 21, 2010

It would be disgraceful bioethics for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend circumcision for U.S. infants based on African studies ["Circumcision may receive new support," Health, Jan. 19].

Amputating healthy, vital, nerve-supplied erogenous tissue from helpless infants, based on an assumption that they will be promiscuous adults, is remarkably totalitarian medicine. It also flies in the face of epidemiological realities. The United States has high rates of HIV and the highest rate of circumcision in the West. The "experiment" of using circumcision to stem HIV infection has been running here for decades. It has failed miserably. Why do countries such as New Zealand, where they abandoned infant circumcision 50 years ago, or European countries, where circumcision is rare, have such low rates of HIV?

Circumcising infants who can then claim as adults that they are less likely to catch or transmit HIV is a foolish gamble. And if circumcised individuals still need to practice safe sex, why bother with a procedure that might make them overconfident? Moreover, in an age when "super bugs" are rampant in U.S. hospitals, the CDC needs to weigh carefully the ethics of preventing disease by amputating healthy tissue from helpless children.

John V. Geisheker, Seattle

The writer is executive director and general counsel of Doctors Opposing Circumcision

Jakob is 10!

My first baby is 10!
Pictures to come... He is having his 1st sleepover to celebrate his new decade this weekend.

There is a great website for parents who lost babies called "A Glow in the Woods." I am not that articulate anymore about intense grief, I am not there anymore, but I stop by and read from time to time. Tonight I read such a great essay there, "Birthing a Dying Child"
http://www.glowinthewoods.com/home/2010/1/11/birthing-a-dying-child.html

This part is great:
"As expectant parents dream up their their ideal “birth plans,” young mothers describe their birthing experiences around water coolers or playground equipment, and well-wishers congratulate new parents on Facebook walls, the birthing experience is often closely linked to merit. The fewer the interventions, the longer the unmedicated labor, the more (or less) dramatic the coping with labor pain, the bigger the baby, the higher the Apgar scores, and so on, the more heroic the birthing woman. Anyone who believes machismo is a strictly male phenomenon should listen to newly minted mothers swap their birthing stories. The natural birth movement in particular and the contemporary North American culture of parenthood in general deemphasize the unavoidable fact that no matter how much a woman takes care of her body, knows her body and trusts her body, the birthing experience may go horribly wrong."

And this, as a Catholic I love this:
"Receptivity is a central motif in Mariology across Christian traditions. "Here I am, the servant of the Lord," says Mary in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke as the birth of Jesus is foretold. "Let it be with me according to your word." Mary’s openness to the mysterious movement of God is her chief virtue and ours. But opening ourselves to that which is beyond ourselves is dangerous business. The possibility of parenthood is no exception. When a couple open themselves to reproduction, they also open themselves to the relentless pain of being unable to conceive, unable to give birth. A pregnant woman opens herself to being cruelly betrayed by her own body, to standing by helplessly while her child is betrayed by his or her own body. Opening oneself to giving birth is opening oneself to suffering and death-to managing debilitating handicaps, to burying one’s child, to being overcome with sadness at the mere sight of another parent doting on a healthy newborn. Opening oneself to giving birth is opening oneself to hell."


Being open to God's will is a huge part of my life and that's what gives me the strength to go on & be a parent to my living boys and be open to whatever plans God has for us. When I'm expecting a baby I don't care how old I am, I won't get the AFP, nuchal screen, CVS or amnio. All of my kids are equal, born or preborn. Anything really bad can be seen on ultrasound.

The essay also says this:
"Some Old Testament scholars define "lament" as the reaction to a belief-shattering experience. Even though I knew better, before I carried and birthed my daughter Cara I believed that if I did what was right, I could expect positive outcomes. This is my lament. Metaphysically speaking, I do not know why bad things happen. I do not know whether God wills them, merely allows them, cannot stop them or something else entirely. What I do know is that I am not fully the master of my own destiny and that one day I will again witness the birth of something beautiful."

I remember seeing people leave the hospital every day with healthy babies when I was stuck in there with Alistair, and I never did leave with him. Even in the worst days back then I knew one day that I would again experience the awesome feeling of leaving the hospital with a precious little person.