.life is good.

Five things that I really like about my life today:

- R is taking the boy to his first story time at the public library this afternoon (it’s a baby “lapsit” program). I’m bummed that I can’t attend with them, as I’m at work, but I’m so stoked that they’re able to go. My mom used to be the story time lady at my elementary school, so I’m extremely partial to this practice.

- The first 100-mile Farmer’s Market of the season is this evening at our Co-op. Plus, our regular city farmer’s market starts up this coming Saturday, and our organic CSA starts in three weeks!

- Bram has taken to sitting in his bumbo in the middle of the dining room table while we eat lunch and dinner these days. He watches us so intently while we eat. He’s even reached out for things here and there, and, though he’s too young for any solids yet, we’re stoked to think that he will be an “enjoyer” of food!

- We’re in the process of hiring a part-time, in-home sitter for Bram so that R can actually have dedicated time for dissertating. The young woman that we’re hiring is a talented, enthusiastic musician who is fluent in ASL. We’re so excited that she’ll sing and sign with B. Also, she’s totally happy to accommodate our attachment parenting/cloth diapering lifestyle. We’re also stoked because she’ll be coming over one evening a month so that R and I can have a genuine grown-ups date night! Yay!

- I feel like I’m really hitting my stride with this parenthood thing. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had, but I think that B is thriving and R and I are strong and connected. B changes everyday. Last week, he decided that bedtime should be around 8pm every evening, so we’ve been enjoying the transition of having an actual evening to ourselves. He’s usually up twice in the night to eat, but he’s so damn sleepy and cuddly that I actually find myself waking up before him in the night, listening for his cues so that we can snug together. He has a new lovey, lapinos the french bunny (featured in the photo below). We think he’s likely teething, as he wants to munch on e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g and he drools like a mastiff puppy. He can sit up with only the slightest parental support. He will not let us wean him from his night swaddler yet, so we’ve stopped trying for the time being.

Mostly, all of this is to say that this kid is awesome, my wife is awesome, and this life is beyond my wildest imaginings. I am truly grateful.

 

 

a new world

I’ve had one of the songs from our birth mix in my head these past days, the line: “say goodbye to the world you thought you lived in.” This seems right. We spent so long preparing to bring a child into this home, but none of that preparation seems useful in this massively overwhelming moment in time. So much to feel.

Bram’s Aunt Kippie just wrote to me suggesting that I take some time each day to write so that there’s some record of these early days once they’ve slipped by. I’m not sure how coherent I can be right now, but I do want to try to record bits of this. I can’t sustain the structure of the paragraph, though, so bullet points will have to do. I’ll throw in some images, too, which should do more justice than my words to all of this.

• I am hobbled by my love of this new person. It is almost too much to bear. Sometimes I just focus on one of his parts – on his ear or his skinny legs – because to look further might break me.

• I’ve thought about the women who helped us get here a thousand times. I feel connected to each of them by an invisible thread that honors the fragility and the sanctity of life. Our birth team, the many nurses and midwives who labored with us, our beloved midwife and our doula (I’ve tried to describe these women for about ten minutes; there are no words), my wife and all of her raw strength. I caught Bram, my hands clasped in our midwife’s. I wish I could convey my love for these women, for this new world they led me to. Women who uphold other women, who gather them in their arms and walk them safely through fear, pain, and darkness. Who enter that space and just hold it day after day. I am overcome.

• Watching J in pain for so long devastated me in some substantial ways. I’ll need to write about it (in my birth story), but I’m not there yet. There was darkness before the gift of this child. Moments when I wished we’d never tried. Moments when I thought all this was evidence that I’m not meant to parent, that I don’t deserve it. Moments when I thought my persistence might cost me my wife.

• I still can’t believe he came on her day. That they share that. There are 365 days in a year, and both of my children were born on January 19th.

• Emmett and Bram share that day with Paul Cezanne (my favorite painter), Julian Barnes, Edgar Allan Poe, a much-loved Charleston friend, and Buffy Summers (we’re Joss Wedon fans around these parts, so this one is significant).

• I haven’t been gracious to our parents. I wasn’t anywhere near ready to share our boy, and after such a long labor, all I wanted was to bond with my wife and new child. My mom and J’s parents did a lot to help us, though, and their love for their grandson is clear.

• Our dearest friend C took notes throughout the labor. I’ve only been able to read them in pieces, so beautiful and uncensored are they. Seeing this through her eyes is a magical thing, and the gift of her observations unlike any other I can imagine.

• Bram is on a biliblanket for jaundice. We’ll check his numbers again tomorrow; I so hope they’ve improved. Though I know how common it is, I lost it today when J’s lactation consultant mentioned a few of the risks of jaundice.

• Bram weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces at birth, and was 20 3/4 inches long. I forgot to include that in my last post.

• His namesakes are Bram Fischer (a South African anti-apartheid activist) and our friend Adrienne, the only person other than J, my mom, and me to see Emmett. Abram Adrien, you walk in good company.

• Here’s a slideshow of a few early photos. The labor/post-labor shots were taken by our doula. Her gifts to us are seemingly infinite.

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.thoughts on waiting and preparations.

The floors are finished! Hurrah! We made it through that major project with only a few hiccups along the way (and they weren’t even Rabbit’s this time). R handled everything beautifully, as I was either working or sleeping during much of the project’s completion. She has moved every book and item of furniture on our ground floor at least twice during the last seventy-two hours. rock.star. Also, R’s family came to town today for lunch, which doubled as our Christmas celebration together. We had a very nice time, received some lovely gifts (including a really nice baby food maker), and took up a pool about Rabbit’s birth date, time, weight, and length. It’s hard to believe that we’re only five days out from the first date prediction!

I’m including some photos of the finished product (please forgive me if this is overkill; we’re very stoked):

In other preparations for Rabbit’s arrival, R has put back several weeks worth of postpartum deliciousness. It’s hard to appreciate the depth of food that she managed to get into our modest freezer:

The creepiness that is being able to see our backyard in January. We should be under a deluge of snow right now. It’s just not right:

38-weeks along and we’re still quite fond of one another ;-)

The 38-week belly. More on this below:

My body has CHANGED over the course of the last few weeks. I can barely imagine how I will continue to grow over the next two weeks if we carry to our due date. I can’t even wrap my brain around going overdue (I understand that this is a strong possibility, but I choose denial for the time being). I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to prioritize concerning my physical self postpartum. Like so many things in life, there will be decisions that need to be made concerning my body, but much of it will be left up to a concoction of circumstance, hormones, metabolism, and other elements that are just beyond my grasp of control. Preparing for parenthood feels very similar to this. I have no idea what kind of individual this baby will be. Therefore, I have no idea what kind of parents he’ll need us to be. This unknowing is compounded by having no idea who our other children will be or how they will come into our family. Will Rabbit be smart? Strong? Attractive? Will he have special needs (medical or emotional)? Will he be social or introverted? Prone to anxiety, depression, or addiction? Will he be well-adjusted? Will he have a lot of questions about his genetics? About his donor? Will that never really matter all that much to him? Will he have a stronger bond to one parent or another? And our future children; what of them? The things I don’t know fill up the floor to the sky. I could fit the things I do know into my right shoe (and even those are subject to change at a moment’s notice). There are so many decisions to be made in preparing for parenthood, but I recognize that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. From choosing natural childbirth, breastfeeding, and cloth diapers to making choices about vaccines and diet, limiting consumer culture’s lechery, cutting back on sugar, cutting out television and video games, and figuring out how to foster a love of learning, of reading, and of art. How do we recognize and encourage innate talents, especially when they might be totally foreign to me and R (like classical music or organized sports)? How do we raise a compassionate, sensitive boy in a world that teaches men to be cutthroat and dominating? How do we instill values like feminism, equality, and generosity without giving our kids resentment against us or the morals that we support? I suppose we’ve had too much time to think about the “what-ifs” and no time yet spent in the “activity” of daily parenting.

Well Rabbit, the floors are finished, so you can make your appearance at your convenience ;-)

 

nearly thirty-three weeks with a gestating rabbit

My son is in there! He’ll have been there for thirty-three weeks on Monday. Whenever dance music comes on, he starts to move. I adore him.

We got this guy from my cousin L, and I’ve been calling him Sue. (I like Johnny Cash.) My mom predicted that one day soon, we’ll have to drive back some forty miles when we realize we’ve left him and Rabbit won’t stop crying.

We’ve named this fella Shmuel. He arrived yesterday care of MTB, a SUPER talented (and loving) friend of ours. I alternate snugging Shmuel and Sue. Shmuel tagged along for our maternity photo session today.

This is our clearly mistreated boy cat wearing the rabbity-eared hat that MTB sent with Shmuel. (Alternate caption: Further evidence that it’s time.)

Back in May, I told J that once it was winter again – once it had been spring, and summer, and fall – our baby would come to us. When she walked in all dusted with snow last week, I felt the nearness of his arrival.

Our SHARE Support Group’s holiday memorial service was last night. We hung this swirly purple and white glass ornament for E. (C: This sphere feels like the sea.) Seeing all those ornaments go up on two full trees was powerful/heartbreaking. J watched one man light five different candles. Five. E’s ornament came home with us; I’ll hang it in Rabbit’s room this week.

Between the blogosphere and our natural childbirth classes, we know about a trillion expecting couples. As of this evening, we’re eagerly anticipating the arrival of three overdue babies (two here in our town plus the folks over at Parenting Cricket). What a world.

Happy December, friends!

 

giving thanks

Troublesome origins aside, I adore Thanksgiving. No material gifts; just gratitude, family, and good good food. Here (in no particular order) are just a few of my reasons for giving thanks on this day.

• You people. Friends. Family. Blog friends, whom I love from afar. Your words, your care, got me through this year, and then through this past week of panic. This week in particular, some of you came and spent whole days with me when my fear got bad. Some of you introduced me to paths of less suffering. So many of you listened to my fears, my struggles, without judgment. Thank you for your generosity and your compassion. It has not gone unnoticed.

• My health. All of my labs this week came back great. That rare disease? Not in my body. It’s hard for me to perceive my body as healthy and strong, but I’ll get there again. I am devoted to getting there again. To trusting. This week revealed some wounds. Now I’m ready to heal them.

• My wife, who as I type this is working on a vegan walnut lentil loaf in the kitchen. It’s an ineffable thing, the sense that you are understood by someone. That you understand someone. I am blessed by this marriage dance.

• My mom, who’s spending her Thanksgiving here with us, helping us prepare for Rabbit. Who bought J and me Christmas Eve pajamas for the last time this year (since next year, that tradition will move on to the boy). Whose presence this year has been of tremendous comfort. Family matters. Family matters a lot.

• Emmett Ever, who was with us last Thanksgiving, and who we carry now. I’ve always loved Yeats’s idea that “nothing can be sole or whole / that has not been rent.” I just never quite understood it before our girl.

• Rabbit River. Who kept his mama and his mum up for most of the night last night. And who is nearing four pounds. And who has the sweetest energy. And who I believe I was meant to parent.

• Rabbit’s donor. I don’t think about him a lot, but he’s on my mind today. Though we may never meet him, he is our family now. And I love him for his gift to us and for his silent presence.

• Gratitude itself. And joy. And the ability (struggle though it sometimes is) to be present. And wisdom, even when it comes through painful experience. And growing pains. And surrender. And vulnerability, even when it feels like it might break you.

• The greatness that is J’s 31-week belly, and the way it peeks out from this flannel shirt.

The mobile above Rabbit’s crib. The way it dances in an apparently still room.

The stained glass full of concentric circles. Circles, which feel like life to me. Circles, which will surround our little boy in the space where he will begin his life soon.

Thank you all for reading. For being a part of our family this way. For the things you share with us. For community. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

the (mostly) highs and (few) lows of THIRTY weeks

Thirty weeks. Thirty. Weeks. Those two little words are like magic, and somehow, I never thought we’d get to say them. This week has been full.full.full, and there’s no time to properly document everything. In lieu of something thorough, then, here’s a snapshot of these past few days.

• Our shower was yesterday. Rabbit’s amazing Aunts Adrienne and Kippie (Christine) threw us a positively delightful celebration. They baked and baked, made mulled cider, gave baskets of local apples as prizes for an adorable baby photo recognition game, and made everyone feel warm and cozy and happy. A co-worker of J’s commented that it’s obvious how supported we are and how loved Rabbit River is. I could go on for hours about all the incredible baby stuff we got, and how fabulous the whole event was, but I’m not sure I could say anything more fitting than that: it was obvious how supported we are and how loved our little boy already is. If you’re reading this, and you were a part of our day yesterday (from near or afar), I thank you. You are this little boy’s village.

• One particularly amusing moment: when we opened Christine’s gift, which was a Kleen Kanteen sippy cup (seriously. impossibly cute.), a friend shouted out: “now you’ve done it. This baby will be a republican.” Hilarious. Apparently, baby’s first Kleen Kanteen is the quintessential emblem of liberalism and is thus ripe to be rebelled against. So Rabbit: if you’re reading this in sixteen years or so, please don’t become a republican. Drink out of styrofoam if you need to. Be super athletic: neither of your moms will know what to do with that. But don’t become an advocate for big money. Our little hearts couldn’t bear it. :)

• J’s mom was in town for the whole weekend, and it was incredible to see her bonding with her grandson for the first time. We’re so lucky to have her; she will be an excellent grandmom.

• We went to see a modern dance performance on Saturday night. We saw the same company’s fall performance last year, too, when I was pregnant with E. This time, Rabbit danced along. There were two pieces he seemed especially to love, and, as I watched with my hand on J’s belly, I had the thought that maybe our son will be a dancer. He certainly already has rhythm!

• We finished our first round of legal paperwork, and I’m now in possession of a parental designation form that J has to sign every six months. I know it should feel good to have it with me – I mean, it’s my only form of legal recognition – but it’s extremely painful to have to be given six months’ worth of parental rights at a time. I don’t even have to sign the document; J’s signature is the only one that matters because she’s the boy’s only legal parent. I’m having a hard time with this.

• Our dear friend Laura defended her dissertation on Thursday, and we got to celebrate with her Thursday night. We are so proud of her. Also: thanks, Laura, for proving that it can be done! Sometimes it gets the look of the impossible. :)

• I realized when we got home with all of our gifts last night that this little boy will wreak havoc on the minimalist aesthetics that I’ve spent the last decade cultivating. I know we will develop systems; J and I love a system. We already have a whole crate thing going in the basement. And I know that we won’t always live in such a tiny house. But wow: this little being already has some stuff. Post-baby minimalism won’t look the same as pre-baby minimalism, that is for sure.

• Rabbit has the hiccups a LOT. Like: every three hours or so. Our midwife tells us this is normal, that her daughter had them this often too, but J is having a hard time with it. They make her anxious, and she read about a connection with cord compression that, though not relevant at this stage, seems to be haunting her. Any reassurances would be appreciated. We can be worriers up in this house.

• I’ll get new belly shots on here soon, but know this: my wife is huge! She carries it incredibly well, but that belly is not messing around. It is, quite simply, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

 

.starting to feel real.

We will be 30 weeks this coming Monday, and the reality of bringing our son home in a few short months is beginning to sink in. Our baby shower is this Sunday. My mom is flying in from out-of-state and R’s family (mom, dad, grandmom, aunt, and cousins) will all be attending. Our dear friends C and A have generously given of their time and energy to prepare everything for the shower, and R and I are really looking forward to it!

Our eight-weeks of natural childbirth classes also wrap up next week. I’m SO glad that we’ve taken this course. I feel like R and I are going to make an amazing team in labor and I’m much less intimated by the prospect of childbirth, as I think I have a more finely tuned sense of what to expect. We were present for the birth of our friends’ daughter in June of 2010, which was a magical experience. At the time, though, I really didn’t know enough about labor and delivery to appreciate everything that was going on. Now, I feel like I’ll be able to recognize and move through each stage of labor as its own unique (albeit painful) experience.

I feel like the beginning of the third trimester was akin to getting to the top of the first big hill of a roller coaster. Now I feel like we’re falling, moving along at lightning speed. It’s not scary or unpleasant, but it feels like a pace that you really have no choice but to surrender to. There’s the shower, then Thanksgiving, a few short weeks later is winter break, and then, come the first of the year, we’ll be considered full-term. The Rabbit could pretty much come at anytime in January and be perfectly fine. And then, beyond that, I’ve no idea. We have plenty of plans and speculation, but who knows what it will be like to be new parents together. I’m just so excited to find out. And I’m really excited to figure out who this little new person is. I carry him around with me 24/7, but I feel like he’s behind a little wall beyond which I just can’t see. I sense that he’s sweet. And I think that he’ll have a big nose. But there’s so much more to know about a person than that…

 

.thoughts in entering the third trimester.

It recently occurred to me that I spend a lot of my time on the blog talking about politics, about loss, and about the unexpected change from NGP to gestational parent. What I haven’t spent enough time writing about, though, are all of the things that I really love about being pregnant with this Rabbit-baby. As we enter the third trimester this week, I can see the light at the end of the pregnancy tunnel. Our son should be here in about thirteen weeks, which, I feel sure now, will fly by (except perhaps those last few weeks). That said, I think I’ll really miss some aspects of being physically pregnant.

Things I dig about being pregnant:

* Feeling Rabbit move inside of me throughout the day and night. It’s an incredible gift to carry this little boy for  forty weeks. His kicks, punches, rolls, hiccups, and stretches (while sometimes a bit uncomfortable) always make me feel safe, grateful, and secure in his little presence. I particularly love sharing this with R. Even though we’ve been feeling him move together for nine weeks, R still gives a little gasp of excitement almost every time she feels him. A recent development that I love is that I’ve been spooning R at night with my belly up to her back. This way, she’s able to feel him move even once I’ve fallen asleep. And he is his most active at night. This is a nice way for them to have some alone time for bonding while he’s still on the inside. It’s an incredibly sweet experience.

* Prenatal everything: Massage, midwife care, yoga, chiropractic, birth classes. It’s been a really amazing experience to learn how to navigate pregnancy among an incredible community of women. I have never had the chance to be a part of a community of straight women before. At first, it was incredibly daunting. I felt like a boy in the girl’s locker room. But as time has gone on, I’ve begun to see myself in light of our similarities and not our differences. As such, these spaces have allowed me to embrace myself as a pregnant woman and to honor the ways in which I uniquely fulfill this role.

* Pregnancy has given me a new kind of perspective, though I suspect that this will become even stronger postpartum. This past year has given me so many levels of change. I feel like my body image, my priorities, my fears, my shortcomings, and my relationship to vulnerability have all been overhauled. My new motto, crude as it may be, is “fuck the bullshit.” So much of the stress and worry in my life from before this time has been eradicated effortlessly. And the stuff that matters now really matters. It’s impossible to discern how much of this was the result of our loss and how much of it is the result of this pregnancy. I see them as wholly interconnected events, so it doesn’t really matter. But I do feel like the weight of my past concerns has largely vanished and it has been replaced with a new kind of weight, a good kind of heavy and full. Namely, that of family, commitment, and forward-thinking.

* My relationship to my changing body and the people I encounter in the world. This is probably the most surprising “like” that I’ve found in pregnancy. I think that by getting this in touch with my female body and by opening up to the social experience (good and bad) of being a pregnant woman, I now inhabit a more fluid, authentic sense of self. I by no means think that pregnancy is the way to achieve this, but, for me, I find that my female masculinity is more empowered, more vulnerable, more humble. It stems from a place of expression, not self-protectiveness. And that is a really amazing benefit from what has, at times, been a jarring experience.

So these are just a few of the ways that I think pregnancy has changed me for the better. I hope that I can carry these memories and transformations forward into my parenting.

 

.thoughts on using donor sperm.

I’ve had the good fortune this week to read two excellent posts on the complexities of donor sperm. Both blogs are taking part in a round-robin on the subject, and I feel called to respond. You can read the original posts here and here.

Like both blogs suggest, I think that I’ll have shifting ideas about our sperm donor(s) as time goes on. I know that, for me, thinking of the donation as a life-giving gift (much as I would think of donated blood, organs, or marrow) is helpful in circumnavigating the feelings of insecurity that having a third person (a strange man, no less) involved in the construction of our family brings up in me. But I suspect that the Rabbit (or other children) might not feel that way about him in the long run. And we’ll have very limited control over that.

Obviously, the narratives we construct surrounding the donor when Rabbit is little will likely be influential in his burgeoning self-identity. And I certainly trust that, having spent time as a solid, two-parent family, the fear of the donor as a “third-parent” will fade (as, I suspect, will the fear of our adopted children’s birth parents). However, it’s hard not to imagine taking stuff personally (children’s curiosity or attachment to their genetic lineage; interest in and care for a symbolic father who donated his sperm, or an absent birth mother who carried a child inside of her).

Though I know that R will have/does have her own struggles in carving out her NGP niche – which will take time, trust, and experience to find peace and stability within – I worry more about my character defects in this regard. I think that R is wired to be more open, more adaptable, more interested in others’ subject-positions. And while R is also fiercely protective of our family, I am more prone to defensiveness and jealousy of anything that I perceive as a threat to our family. So I worry that the process of accepting the evolving narratives surrounding the other adults who (by-proxy) join our family lineage may prove exceptionally difficult at times.

I do think, though, that the Donor Sibling Registry doesn’t stress me out too much. I think of it as a resource on a shelf. I have no desire to post to it, or to seek out other genetic siblings, but I do like knowing it’s there (if ever we had a medical reason to seek it out, or, if later in life, our children are compelled to look into it). Just my two cents…

 

no dragons here today!

When I was growing up, my mom had this saying: Some days the dragon wins. On bad days, she would tell me this as a way of putting pain into perspective. The place you’re in sucks, this suggests, but sometimes that’s just true. You win; you lose. It’s a roller-coaster, and it isn’t personal. Some days it’s a baby dragon, she would say. That makes for a lousy day, but the pain of it doesn’t linger. Other times, it’s a big dragon, and on those days, the pain is immense. Those days last for months.

What this implies, though, is that some days the dragon doesn’t win. It also tells you to pay attention to these kinds of days when they come, to revel in them.

That’s what she taught me. Here’s what I’ve learned in the last couple of years. If you have a community that’s wonderful enough – a community whose pains you feel deeply, and whose joys you celebrate with all of your soul – you get to revel in even more of the good days. How great is that???

Our friends have had some victories lately. Small victories. Big victories. Half marathons post-cancer. New graduate programs. Adoption placements. New shoes. And then there’s that family over at Love Invents Us, who are SUPER DUPER EXPECTING (with SUPER DUPER BETA NUMBERS). I love this life. I love that – on a day that involved nothing for me aside from quiet reading and writing – I can get a phone call or check my e-mail and learn about good news. Great news, even. I love how much joy hearing about your joys brings me.

Community: How does anyone get by without it’s dragon-slaying nature?

Hippie caveat: None of this should be taken as an indication that we think negatively of dragons. We catch house flies and take them outdoors. We have a giant spider living in our mailbox, and we’ve named her Esmeralda. We love dragons, and of course we recognize their right to win sometimes.