Baby Apollo & Family

Baby Apollo: Two Years Old!

Baby Apollo turned two today!  He was adored all day long by his parents and by both of his grandmothers.  Unfortunately, we had to cancel his birthday party, because he is running a fever.  I think that one of his last molars is coming in.  He has run fevers before when teeth come in, but usually only at night, and they are gone by morning.  Last night, he was awake and uncomfortable a lot, and then he still had hot cheeks this morning.  His temperature went up and down during the day, and when he was still hot after his nap, I had to call all our big and little friends and ask them to take a rain check.  (It was also raining.)  Even though he was under the weather, he was excited to find the house bedecked with streamers and balloons when he woke.  He enjoyed opening presents and cards, he blew out his birthday candles, and even had a little cake.  In a way, it was nice how he wanted to be held and cuddled close all day.  It felt good to be extra close to him today, as I remember the beautiful day that we went from being one body to two.  Just up the block, in our old home.  It's nice also to see again what a lovely time of year this is to have a baby, and to remember that, after he was born at 4:46, we still had more than six hours of daylight left, to bask in the bliss of his arrival.

Two years later, he's still blissing us out.  Thank you, Apollo, for another beautiful year.  I'm having some technical difficulty with "Apollo: Second Year in Review," which will be worked out asap.  I will also write more pronto.  Tuesday is my last law lecture of the year!  I hope that I will find a better balance this summer, and next year, that includes more writing and contact with my loved ones.  Even though you haven't heard from me, I think of you all the time.  You, who comment on this blog; you, who read but don't comment, and even you who don't read it (Hi, Dad!). 

Apollo's First Sentence: I Love You

It seems like, as soon as I wrote the last post about Apollo’s language skills, they took off exponentially.  Or was he already further along than I had noticed?  It reminded me of when I went into labor with him.  I called my midwife; she asked me how far apart my contractions were; I told her that I guessed they were about 20 minutes apart.  We hung up, and once I paid attention to their timing, I realized that they were more like 3-4 minutes apart.  So, now, with Apollo.  I remember that he actually spoke first word last June.  My cousins, Gavin and Charlotte, were visiting from England.  Charlotte offered him a banana, in her beautiful English accent.  He said, “anana.”  Fast-forward to the present.  He now calls both his father and grandmother by name: Jonah is “papa” or “deh-deh;” my mother is “namama” or “nama.”  Obviously we sometimes need context to determine whether he is saying nama or mama.  The former is a derivative of Grandmama, which my niece Isabella calls my mother, and so we identify her to Apollo, for the sake of consistency.  He also says “hot,” especially when telling us that food is too hot or asking if it might be too hot.  It sounds like “height.”  He has also been saying “dag,” Dutch for both hello and goodbye, while waving goodbye.  And he loves to say “eyebrow”—ah-bwow.  When we identify all his body parts, I say their names and he points to them, or vice versa, but whenever I say eyebrow, he repeats it.

The best thing is that this week he spoke his first sentence.  It was bedtime.  I was sitting on the bed, and he was standing beside it, enjoying his last moments of the day before climbing in.  I said, “I love you.”  He looked at me intensely and said, “Ah yuv you.” 

Ah yuv you!  His first sentence!  What a nice first sentence for a lifetime, I think!  What more do we need, really?  Sure, I know that the content of that sentence is probably far too abstract for a 22 month baby to understand, and that he was likely mimicking form.  That said, he is such a loving and affectionate little boy that it seems perfect that he would express with words at his earliest opportunity what he has expressed with hugs and kisses for so long. 

He’s making many new sounds, carrying on long conversations with himself and his toys, and attempting to communicate verbally all the time.  It has really taken off in the last week.  He has also asserted his will more strongly than ever before.  He knows what he wants, with great specificity, and tries very hard to make it happen.  He turns bright red and screams or cries if it does not.   This week I was reading a book about the brain.  It mentioned that the left lobe of the brain is responsible for speech, and also for the assertion of will.  It’s interesting that, in the week that his speech advances rapidly, his will does so as well.

Thanks for checking in. Ah yuv you!

Baby Apollo: Twenty One and a Half Months

You may wonder, what is baby Apollo doing these days?  March was another intense period for Apollo’s family, but one that we all rode through quite nicely.  We saw a changing of the grandma-guard: my mother arrived to relieve Jonah’s mother, Carol, as Apollo’s care-provider during my working hours.  I had been worried about this transition—if you recall, Apollo cried every day for the first month that I left him in Carol’s care for a few hours, sometimes crying for all the hours of my absence.  Eventually, of course, he grew to love his “Oma.”  He would happily run to get his shoes for their outings, ran to greet her when she came in the door, and showered her with kisses and affection all day.  I was nervous that we would go back to square one with my mother.  But this time the transition was not a problem.  Within a day or two of my mother’s arrival, he was laughing at all her jokes, taking her hand to lead her around, and happy to play alone with her.  There was no crying when I left for the university, and I would return to find them playing peacefully.

This was a big relief, especially because I had to work more in March than I have yet.  The lovely dean of my wonderful program asked me to handle a series of Intellectual Property lectures, in addition to the Contracts course I was teaching.  I therefore had to find extra hours to prepare more lectures, and to try to do so in a way that left me time to meet my domestic responsibilities.  I have learned to find the extra hours where so many mothers seem to find them: I take them out of my sleep.  Because I am not a late-night thinker, I have developed a routine of rising early—5:30am.  But I also go to sleep earlier now, so perhaps I’ve really taken this time from the end of my day, which I used to devote to my bath ritual and to reading for pleasure.  Our day now looks more like this:

I rise at 5:30.  I have an hour or so to do my morning stretches, consume my morning beverages, and do a little work at my computer.  Then Apollo wakes and we go through his waking routine, while Jonah wakes and goes out for a run.  We say good morning to all of Apollo’s body parts, to me, to the different parts of the room; we open the curtains and say good morning to the street.  He runs down the hall to say good morning to his Grandmama.  We play and clean our room, make our bed.  Then he joins Jonah for his morning routine.  Because Jonah comes home from work after Apollo’s bedtime, their weekday time is 7:30 – 9am, this morning routine and then our family breakfast.  Apollo loves watching Jonah pee in the potty, take a shower, shave, comb his hair, dress.  He mimics whatever he can along the way.  They dress together and go downstairs, say good morning to the garden, put on some music and dance a bit or play with toys.  At 8:30, we three adults and baby have breakfast together.  Again because Jonah comes home late, it’s nice to have this family meal and opportunity to touch base.  At 9, Jonah leaves for work, and I do too—sometimes to the university, but usually just up into my study, where I close the door and work.  Then Apollo plays with his Grandmama for the morning: they garden together, or go for a long walk that includes parks and playgrounds; they have snacks and play with toys.  I hear him pealing with laughter at her funny A-B-C and 1-2-3 games.  If I’m working at home, I’ll put him down for his nap around 12:30 and greet him when he wakes around 2; otherwise, my mother does.  After his nap, I’m with him for the afternoon.

Sometimes, it’s reversed; we play for the morning, and I work for the afternoon.  By 5:30, I’m making dinner.  My mother has been great about being around during the dinner hour in case he isn’t contented to play with pots and pans while I cook, because it is not easy to cook with a toddler underfoot.  The three of us eat at 6:30, then Apollo plays for 15-20 minutes and says goodnight to his toys downstairs.  Then he takes his bath.  As his swimming skills have developed, bath just becomes more and more fun.  He can float on his back now in our big, deep bathtub—he flips from front to back like a seal—he blows bubbles with a tune.  He splashes and kicks his legs.  I sometimes jump in with him for the last few minutes to wash off, and this is my bath for the day.  After the bath, he says goodnight to the different rooms upstairs—gives his grandmother multiple goodnight kisses—and then we tuck in for the night. 

I might not have mentioned the status of our co-sleeping situation?  By the time we moved here, in November, we were just too squished with all 3 of us in a double bed.  But we didn’t feel like Apollo wanted or needed his own room yet…  I’ll save a “why co-sleep” discussion for another post.  For now I will tell you our solution: we put a single bed next to our double bed—right up against it—so our bedroom is mostly this giant bed now.  The single is “his bed.”  I nurse him to sleep in it.  Then I flop over into the big bed.  Sometimes I fall asleep straight away.  If I have a little energy left, I spend my last few minutes of the day reading back issues of Martha Stewart Living or other cookbooks or magazines.  I’ve collected MSL for long enough that I separate out a stack of, say, 5 or 6 April issues, and I’ll just read through them during April for ideas and inspiration.  I love you Martha!

So that’s our day.  An update of Apollo wouldn’t be complete without a report on his verbal skills.  He recently expanded from a repertoire of one word: “Hi”—to two words: “Hi” and “mama.”  That’s it.  And yet—he has been communicating with total clarity for months!  He has taught us all how much a person can say without words.  He gestures with great effectiveness—he moved from simple signals that we taught him for, e.g., “all done,” to creating his own signals for, e.g., water, to miming exactly what he wants us to do or get for him.  And, while his tongue is still too untamed to enunciate for him, he has a strong mastery of cadence and the intonation of speech.  So he applies his sounds, “ah” and “ooo” and “uh” to the cadence of statements and questions and exclamations and, I tell you, we usually know what he is saying.  Furthermore—he understands everything we say—everything relevant to him, at least.  We ask him questions, give him options, issue instructions, and all are responded to appropriately. 

A brief illustrative vignette: One night, a few weeks ago, I was nursing him to sleep.  Like many babies, he tends to prefer one breast to the other, and on this night was drinking from my fast-flow left breast and neglecting my slow-flow right one, which was rather uncomfortably full of milk.  I urged the right breast upon him, but he declined.  Then he used his signal for requesting a song.  I sang one or two of our bedtime lullabies and then stopped.  He looked up and signaled again for song.  I said slowly, “Drink the milk from this [right] breast, and then I will sing you a song.”  He looked at me, the breast, he thought—and then he drank from the right breast.  And looked up for the song.

He can’t talk, but he can bargain!  I find that amazing.

Offensive Boobs

I’m a dues-paying member of the local English-speaking ladies’ club, “In Touch NL.”  They have a moms’n’tots play group on Tuesday mornings that I attend when I can, and I’m on the emailing list for events and parties hosted by other members.  The women are American, British, Australian, Canadian, even a few Dutch who are married to English-speakers or want their kids to learn English.  I’ve never made it to one of their evening events.  But this month I signed up for a “cake-decorating workshop,” figuring that I would learn skills for a lifetime of birthdays etc.  So last night I decorated cakes with 9 other ladies around a kitchen table. 

It was the first time that I haven’t put Apollo to bed for the night myself.  The event was scheduled from 7:30 to 11, and Apollo’s bedtime is around 7:30.  So Carol agreed to put him to bed and Jonah to come home from work a little early, but still I told them that I would return home at 9:30.  So around 9:15, I told the ladies that I had to depart, and explained why.  I was friendly with a couple of the ladies around the table from the playgroup, but most of them I’d never met before.  One lady I knew asked, “Do you have to pump when you’re away this long from the baby?”  I said, “Oh no; maybe when the baby is 3 months, you have to pump if you’re away for a few hours, but not at 20 months.” 

Lady A said to the table, “I saw a TV news show with a woman who breastfed her 7 year old!”  All the ladies made disgusted sounds.  Lady B said, “I saw something like that too!  Her boobs hung down like a cow!  The kid would just grab her boob like this.”  Lady C said, “Well, I did breastfeed, because of the benefits, but I stopped at six months.  I wanted my boobs back!”  Lady D said, “I don’t deny the benefits, so I actually breastfed until 1 year.   But then I stopped, because I don’t want ugly boobs.”  Lady E said, “Plus, when the child is that old, it becomes sexual, and that’s sick.”  Lady F said, “Can you say creepy?”  The ladies all made some more disgusted sounds.  Then someone changed the subject.

So, in the moment, I could see what was happening.  Breastfeeding a 20-month old was equated with breast-feeding a 7 year old, both were condemned as morally repugnant and ruinous of the mother’s sexual appeal, and the ladies all signaled to me that breastfeeding a 20 month old is unacceptable, while also confirming their solidarity for “taking their boobs back” (if they ever shared them with their babies at all).

Statistically, it makes sense that in an “average” group of English-speaking woman, I’d be the only one who didn’t wean long before the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum of two years.  9 out of 10 western babies are weaned before they turn one. 

The women’s words touched on the fascinating intersection of breast-feeding, identity, and sexuality.  All the women called their breasts “boobs”—that loathsome, self-loathing word!— which, after all, means fool, idiot, blunder, or mistake.   And it made perfect sense to all of them that it was worth denying their babies access to their breasts, cutting short the breast-feeding relationship, in the hope that their “boobs” might look a little more appealing later to some boob ogling them on the beach.

I thought about speaking up for Truth—pointing out that it is much more Normal for the human animal to breastfeed until 7 than to wean at 6 months—let alone that unmilked breasts are not immune from aging, and are instead vulnerable to cancer-- but what would have been the point?  That would have only reinforced the alienation that had just fallen between us.  It was clear from their body language that they didn't want me to offer my perspective or opinion.  If I had Spoken Up, they would have seen it as the attack of the aggressive feminazi.  So I clamped my tongue between my teeth and rolled out the arms for my marzipan frog.

This was perhaps the most blatant of the encounters I have more and more as Apollo gets older, “oh my God; you’re still breast-feeding?”  One interesting thing I’ve noticed lately is how the questions these women ask reflect knowledge only of the reality of breast-feeding early babies, like the question about whether I had to pump if I went out for the evening.  Another woman recently saw Apollo nursing and asked, “Don’t you worry about him getting enough to eat?  That’s why I didn’t breast-feed.”  I was like, “Er, well he eats 3 meals a day plus snacks.  So he doesn’t rely entirely on breast-milk for his nutrition at this point.”  I was confused, until I realized that she was just rolling out this very tired old “reason” against breast-feeding at all—you can’t measure the milk in a beaker!—with no thought of its inapplicability for breastfeeding a toddler.

As last night’s boobs were prattling about their boobs, I thought, this is why La Leche League exists.  I also thought about how loudly premature weaners complain that they feel judged when they read or hear or see about women who do breast-feed. (Like, the phrase “premature weaning” is doubtlessly offensive.)  Lisa Belkin, Times “Motherlode” blogger, loves to do this, like when she recently criticized a photo of Angelina Jolie holding a tiny baby near her chest for both its “exhibitionism” and for making Lisa and “the rest of us” feel “inadequate.”  As if women breast-feed because of pressure from the strident opinions of La Leche “lactivists,” instead of the reality: social pressure is a major reason that women stop breast-feeding, whether that pressure comes from the overwhelming majority of non-breastfeeders, like last night, or from husbands and families.  The In Touch ladies exercised the prerogatives of mainstream/ power, to casually dump their assumptions and judgments on those who step out of line.  Then they express indignance or outrage if those assumptions, or their choices, are challenged, even implicitly, by the minority who think or act differently.

Well, it’s all about Choice, right?

Apollo's Family: The Latest

So, it turns out that Apollo was sticking his fingers down his throat, and not eating much, and hurting my breasts when he nursed, because he was developing a case of thrush.  Thrush is a baby sickness I’d read about in the breastfeeding literature, an infection in the mouth that can come in when their immunity is challenged, as it may have been during our recent travel.  He developed these white spots on his tongue last weekend; it seemed like maybe they itched him.  On Monday morning, we took him across the street to our “huisart,” house doctor.  She confirmed our suspicion (based on our baby books + google) that it was thrush, and prescribed this goopy medicine out of a toothpaste-like tube.  Apollo hesitatingly opened his mouth for a teaspoon of it 4 times a day for 4 days, and now he is healed, thank goodness.  What did people do about thrush before they developed this medicine?  The one food he really seemed to want in the last few weeks was yogurt, and apparently the bacteria in yogurt are good for this kind of thing.  Luckily, this medicine worked quickly, and now I know what to look for I it ever comes back.  No more bulimia, his appetite is back in full force, and breast-feeding is a pleasure again.

Thank you for asking how work is going, Carosgram.  I just finished my first course, Tort Law, and am preparing a syllabus to start teaching Contracts in a few weeks.  This work could not be more perfect for me at this time of my life.  I love teaching and am so grateful for the opportunity to teach these international law students.  It’s much more difficult to teach well than I thought it would be.  For the first few classes, I was just delighted to be teaching at all, but as the quarter wore on, I became more aware of the mistakes I’ve been making and how much I want to improve.  I’ve gone to so many schools and had so many teachers, and I know what made the great teachers great.  But now I see that it’s one thing to know what makes great teaching, and another thing to do it.  Teaching is challenging work.

It’s a good challenge for me now, and one I’m glad to take on.  The work of teaching is a nice balance to the work of mothering.  For me, mothering a baby was quite physical, intuitive, and solitary; teaching is verbal, rational, and social.  I enjoy going from one activity to another.  Breaking news on the childcare front: we arrived at a cherished goal this week.  Until now, Apollo would want my attention if he knew I was in the house.  Our routine was that Oma would take him out, I would sneak into my study, and I’d hide in there to work until his nap.  This week, for the first time, I was able to just tell him that I was going upstairs to work, and he accepted that I was in the house but unavailable during that time.  So now I can work in the house while he plays with his grandmother without a problem.  This makes all of our lives much easier.

I watched ¾ of Sex In The City: The Movie last night.  And even though the characters are sort of objectively despicable in their materialism, if you are a fan—if you love Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and even Miranda—then it’s a satisfying movie.  I laughed, I thrilled over the fashion, and, as usual, I shed some tears over beautiful scenes of girlfriendlyness: The scene when Charlotte hisses like a furious kitty at Mr. Big after he breaks Carrie’s heart on her wedding day, or when Samantha spoon-feeds heartsick Carrie yogurt  at the honeymoon resort in Mexico.  Is there anybody out there feeling SITC with me?  I really enjoyed this show.

Happy New Year

Happy 2009!  I guess my prediction of increased functionality in my last post, at least vis regular blogging, was on the optimistic side.  First of all, my heartfelt thanks and love to those of you who put up such encouraging comments after that last post.  I can’t tell you how much strength your words give me.  Things have been easier since I last wrote.  Apollo has come to embrace his mornings with Oma (Carol).  She asks him if he wants to go out, he goes to the closet and gets his shoes, hops into his stroller, and off they go to the playground or the museum.  They can even play in the living room, kitchen, or garden while I work upstairs at this point.  She puts him down easily for his nap, and when he wakes up, I’m there and am with him for the rest of the day.  It is easy to see the benefits to him of developing a rich relationship with another adult.  Oma has long conversations with him, and has her own ways of playing with him and teaching him.

I put up another five weeks of photos, Weeks 77-82.  Jonah and Apollo and I went to California for 10 days after Christmas, to visit Omie (Oma’s Mama) in Palm Springs and Jessica (my dear cousin) in Los Angeles.  The three of us were like happy plants in the technicolor sunlight therapy of California.  One of the reasons why I’ve posted so few photos in the last few months is that it is just so dark here in Holland at this time of year.  Even in the middle of the day, even outside, the photos blur without a flash!  It’s a wonder we’re all not more depressed over here.  The Dutch do a nice job of coping with the winter dark.  As soon as the clocks go back, the seasonal oliebollen (delicious deep-fried donuts) stands appear on the sidewalks, the shops are full of chocolates, and the wonderful holiday traditions begin.  Such a lovely people, the Dutch. 

It amazes even me to see what a big boy Apollo is becoming in those photos, and I live with him.  See him hiking along the rocky trail in the Palm Springs desert!  He does seem to be slimming down a bit with all of his activity at this point.  He walks, he runs, though the latter is more still like hurtling headlong, his little legs doing their best to keep up with him.  He falls like a ninja—really he could be a stuntman.  He talks and talks, but still has no intelligible words.  Well, maybe “hi.”  He says it while waves at people, doggies, ocean waves, automobiles, shoes, and other objects of interest.  He loves waving.  He shakes his head no (“uh.”) and nods it yes (“ah.”).  He seems to understand any question we ask him, and can let us know whether he is hungry, thirsty, wants or doesn’t want this or that, is ready for bath, bed, a new diaper.  He is showing interest in the potty.  The other day he was having some diaper-free time downstairs.  He looked at his penis and said oo? Oo? And I said, “do you want to go to the potty?” and he nodded and said “ah.”  I said, “Your potty is upstairs.”  He walked to the stairs, we climbed them, he went to the potty, sat down on it with my assistance, and made a small peepee in it!  I am hopeful that we could be diaper free in a few months.

He still breastfeeds several times a day and several times at night.  When he is stressed, like during our long journey, he eats less food and drinks more of his mother’s milk.  He didn’t seem too stressed during our trip—we were all so at home with Omie and Jessica, and he was having a lot of fun spending long days outside with both parents—but there were these little clues that it wasn’t so easy on him, like that one.  Or the way that, in the last days of our trip in L.A., he would stick his fingers down his throat after eating dinner with us and throw up his meal.  He did that in Jamba Juice one morning while I was carrying him on my back.  I had just given him a little piece of danish, and after I ordered my juice, I heard, “ech, ech” and turned my head to see his fingers in his mouth.  I was like, “no no no no no no” and all the ladies in line were like “eek!” and then, blech, the vomit was making a warm trail down my back.  The ladies were all like, “oooohhhhh.”

Well, his bulimic streak ended after we got home.  He was so happy to be home, he just smiled and sang and danced for two days and nights.  But another interesting thing is that after this trip, like after the June trip, he is clamping my nipple with his teeth for dear life while he nurses.  It is painful.  But I trust that it will pass, like it did then. 

He has a passion for music.  He points at the stereo and says, ah? Ah?  Whenever music comes on anywhere, he starts dancing, even if he can only dance with one arm because he is in his stroller or something.  He sings along with sounds he hears, just random sounds.  And he kisses.  It seems to take him a week to get kissy with someone—that’s how long it took with Omie.  But then he will hug and kiss whatever part of their body he can reach, and he communicates real love and affection in the kissing.  He kisses me on the lips half a dozen times a day.  And in the last month he has started holding hands.  His hand is still so tiny, fat and soft.  He reaches up to hold ours and often uses this to lead us places.  Everybody in his world is crazy about him.  He is a bright light and he connects all of us through him.  

Of course, he’s not the only source of connection in the world, but I’m happy that he’s joined the human web!  And I’m grateful that this electronic web helps me to send this small message to you.   I remain optimistic that my resolutions for a Better Hermine in 2009 will lead to more writing in this space.  Thank you casting the thread of your attention here toward us here in Rotterdam.

Apollo and Family: A New Chapter

Here comes the little gopher, poking her head up from under the ground for the first time in over a month.  Some of you are aware of the basic reasons for my absence, but even my closest and most regular correspondents haven’t heard from me for long enough that my email inbox is piled up with emails saying “Are you still alive?  Please get in touch.” 

Some explanation is in order.  Jonah took a three-week staycation in August, which we devoted to exploring the possibility of making a transition along three axes: a move into a bigger house with a garden, part-time work for me, and baby-care for Apollo that would enable me to work.  During the staycation, Jonah spent 4-5 hours a day caring for Apollo solo, which allowed me to do some writing, work on my resume, and consider what kind of work I might want to do.  Seeing that Apollo was perfectly happy to spend these half-days away from me cemented my resolve to find a job that would allow me to work in my home office for 4-5 hours a day, while Apollo spent that time with another caring adult.  I was certainly happier after spending four quality hours at my desk.  The fact is that our long-term economic reality is not for only Jonah to do paying work and for me to be full time at home.  I didn’t take out $100,000 in student loans to permanently shelf my professional life for motherhood.  For better and for worse, Apollo’s mother also has a career.  I imagine my balancing act like a see-saw, or perhaps just scales—heavier on the childcare when my child(ren)’s needs are greatest, and slowly adding more professional work as those needs change.

But as with so much else about child-raising, there are few obvious or formulaic answers to the question of what is best for babies and children.  The staycation convinced me that we were ready to make a shift.  I sent out my resume and was offered a job teaching international law at the Hague University.  Teaching college students is truly a dream job for me, and my new colleagues were perfectly agreeable when I told them that, because I am balancing the return to work with mothering my toddler, I would do all course prep work from my home office and would come into campus for 2 or 3 half-days per week.  (I was certainly cognizant of how lucky I was to have found a professional environment that did not ask me to pretend that I am not a mother.)  We found a perfect new house with a garden right up the street.  And then Jonah’s mother Carol said that she was between projects, and could therefore come over to help us with childcare through this transition. 

Miraculous!  But that doesn’t mean that any of this transition was easy.  I had six weeks to prepare the syllabus for my first class, to introduce Apollo to being cared for by his grandmother while I work, and for us to move into our new home.  Apollo has had visits with his grandmother every few months since his birth, but he’s never been cared for alone by anybody other than Jonah and me.  Carol arrived in mid-October.  After playing together as a group a great deal to show Apollo how trustworthy she is, I started to leave them alone for an hour or two to work.  Apollo would start weeping and screaming as soon as he realized that I was leaving.  This had never happened when I left him with Jonah, which reassured me that it wasn’t my absence per se to which he was reacting, but that he still needed to build trust with Carol.  I tried to telepath my confidence that he was in safe and loving care as I smiled and waved bye-bye, but it was hard to smile cheerfully into his scarlet, tear-streaked face, as he twisted in Carol’s arms and reached for me. 

He would basically cry the whole time I was gone.  He would cry when I walked back through the door, and stop crying only when he was back in my arms with a nipple in his mouth.  He would stay close to me after my return, need more attention, cry more easily.  It’s hard to describe how drained I felt, how very little energy I had to prepare for teaching and participate in the move.  The sound of your baby crying—it’s like a tap into your body and spirit, and your energy and cheer just flow out and leave you like a cooked noodle—a cranky and sad cooked noodle.

We took 10 days to transition into the new place, visiting it daily and moving things over before we finally slept there.  He didn’t seem distressed with the loss of our old home or our arrival at the new one.  But a month after Carol’s arrival, he was still weeping when I left him with her to go work.  She would spend almost my entire absence (as much as 4-5 hours on the days when I went to the university) holding and carrying him, a testament to her love, not to mention her physical strength.  It has often seemed to me, during this period, that Apollo is essentially doing a concentrated physical bonding with Carol before he can become comfortable with her the way that he is with us.  He hasn’t seemed happy to be always in her arms, but he is even less happy if she puts him down, and so they spend all their time together in contact.  And then, after my return, he does show her love (kisses) and affection, a little more each time.  On some level, he seems to know what he’s doing—at least, he’s doing what he needs to do.

So things didn’t progress as I’d hoped they would, that after a week or so, Apollo would take his Oma’s hand and toddle to the playground, returning home for lunch and nap while his mum works in her study.  Instead, I spent a month grabbing moments here and there while Apollo wept and refused to eat or drink.  I did my best to patch together little pieces of time to prepare my class and do the things necessary to keep the household running.  Apollo’s increased need for me when I wasn’t working meant that I had zero left over for anything other than my most urgent responsibilities.  No blogging.  No emails.  No phone calls, particularly since we still have no internet and thus no phone at our new place.  It’s like we’ve all just been in this transition cocoon, holding on and coping as best we can.

Then of course we all got sick.  Bronchitis has been going around Rotterdam as the season shifts, and our house still hadn’t had a good clean since we moved in.  Carol and I got sick the week before last, even Jonah has a cough, and then Apollo, of course Apollo, picked it up at the beginning of this last week, my first week of teaching.  Runny nose, fever, coughing.  He needed to be held constantly; he wanted to sleep in arms, and would wake up instantly if contact was broken.  What a coincidence, right?  Thursday was my first lecture, and, as it happened, the #1 sickest day that Apollo has ever had.  He vomited and had diarrhea five times each that day. 

But you know what: the lecture went great.  I was ready; I loved it; I entered a new chapter of my professional life; I arrived at a long-cherished goal.  And I was home by 12:30 and held Apollo the rest of the day.  And you know what else?  I think we both—nay, I think we all—crossed a bridge that day.  The reins I’ve been holding so tightly for the last month, I feel that I can release a bit.  I can do this job; I can balance this life; I can start to reintegrate all its elements: mothering, working, writing, cooking, cleaning, communicating with friends and family.  And so another coincidence: the next day, I left Apollo with Carol for an hour to run an errand.  When I walked in the door, he smiled at me instead of crying.  Carol said that, for the first time, after I walked out the door he had looked at her, sighed, stopped crying, and got down to play.

So perhaps, here we are, on the other side of the transition we visualized during our August staycation.  It’s not like all the hard parts are over, or that he won’t cry when I work on Monday.  But I do still believe that these changes are what this family needs, and that they will ultimately be for the best for all of us.  I haven’t felt so sure of that at every moment in the last month.  Indeed, when I was offered this job, and realized that I was now committing to responsibilities that would separate me and Apollo for 20-25 hours a week, I asked myself, “What have you done?”  But then I remembered how really fine Apollo was to be away from me for that amount of time in August, and how good it felt for me to work for those hours, and how all of our life could improve in the short and long term if I could do this work and if Apollo learned to trust caregivers other than Jonah and me.  We’ve ended an era of mother-and-baby 24-7 unity.  I don’t know whether it’s too soon or too late, whether this could have been avoided if we lived in a more “natural” extended-family unit or if it is more “natural” for mother and child to be Siamese twins until age 3, 4, or 5.  These are our choices; this is the context for our choices.  We try to listen to ourselves, and listen to our baby, and to do the best thing. 

We also try to listen to any and all advice from anybody with experience and wisdom to share, in an effort to minimize the extent to which we’re reinventing the wheel here.  So please, don’t hesitate to tell me what you think of this situation and how we could make it easier for baby Apollo.  Thanks for checking back in despite the long silence of the last month.

by Patricia Lynn Reilly

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman. A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.  Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who believes she is good. A woman who trusts and respects herself. Who listens to her needs and desires, and meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who has acknowledged the past's influence on the present. A woman who has walked through her past. Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life. A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf. Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and to her wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods. A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness. Who designs her own spirituality and allows it to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body. A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is. Who celebrates her body and its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the face of the goddess in her changing face. A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom. Who refuses to use precious energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life. A woman who sits in circles of women. Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

As you may know, I first came to consider home birth when I read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth a few years before becoming pregnant.  Carrie’s girlfriend Clark birthed her babies at home, and I think she shared Ina May’s books with Carrie.  Carrie told me that she thought I’d appreciate them, and asked if I would read Ina May’s Guide so that we could discuss some of the issues it raised.  I got the book and gobbled it up.  I read its first-person birth stories with the same riveted curiosity that I brought to the sex-books aisle at the library in my adolescence.  I hadn’t even realized before that I had never really heard any birth stories.  Birth wears the same sort of strange taboo against honest discussion as sex and death do, in our culture.  The birth stories and Ina May’s facts and statistics made clear that normal labor runs into dangerous complication when a laboring woman is in an environment where she feels anxious, embarrassed, or disempowered, and where she feels alienated from her body and nature.  I knew from even casual doctor’s appointments that hospitals and the medical establishment make me more likely to feel disempowered and alienated.  (I love Paul Simon’s line, that they “talk to you like you’re some kind of clinical fool.”)  Ina May’s report that birth can and should be sacred and empowering resonated with me, as did the idea that the proper role of medicine in birth is to provide emergency backup, not to dominate or dictate otherwise healthy labors. 

But the implications of Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth went further for me than the vista of my own “birth plan.”  Ina May’s illumination of the centrality of the mind-body connection for laboring women forces a reconsideration of birth throughout history, and casts new light on the framework within which so many women and babies were dying before Medicine came forward to rescue mothers and babies from each other.   Ina May demonstrated that fear, lack of support, past sexual abuse, and “modesty” all inhibit the natural process by which a woman’s body opens up and births her baby.  I considered this in light of the place of the female body and female sexuality in the religious culture of the Abrahamic religions and other patriarchies.   I considered it in light of the fact that it is so hard, even now, to find a woman with a completely positive relationship to her body and her sexuality.  Given that women have been taught for countless generations that the Word of God is that their bodies are shameful, wicked, and dangerous to themselves and others, and that childbirth is God’s punishment for Eve’s attempt to access knowledge (see Genesis), and given the needs of the female mind-body for a smooth delivery: What is remarkable is not how many women have died in childbirth over the centuries, but how many women HAVEN’T died. 

I followed Ina May’s advice for myself and did everything I could to plan my birth in the most supportive and comfortable environment possible, with midwives I trusted deeply and backup medical care if need be.  As a result, Apollo’s birth was the happiest day of my life, and not just because of the end product.  After his birth, I came to realize how rare this kind of birth is—birth in an environment that explicitly acknowledges its sacred nature and aims to support and empower the laboring woman— and I started trying to understand why.  My search has become my passion.  I want to do whatever I can to ensure that all women have the information and support that they need to choose empowering births if they want them, and to give birth in environments that acknowledge their experience as important and their baby’s welcome as sacred. 

The more I learn, the more I am amazed.  One new thing I learned is how radical was Ina May’s publication of her two books.  I had not realized that, when she started her work at The Farm, there were almost zero midwives in the United States.   The medical industry had eradicated the profession in the first half of the century.  I've come across many people's assertions that Ina May "single-handedly" brought midwifery back to America.  She happened to live in a community of hippies that treated her husband, Stephen Gaskin, as its spiritual guru.  One of this community’s central tenets was that birth is a sacred event in life, and should be supported as that.  So she had an environment that supported her efforts to create comfortable non-medical environments for women to birth in.  After doing this for several years, she collected birth stories and published Spiritual Midwifery, which is both a collection of first-person birth stories and a kind of manual for midwifery.  First of all, to even have a collection of birth stories was radical, given how women in our culture tend not to share these stories with each other.  SM carried story after story reporting that birth can be an ecstatic, gorgeous experience.  Only now do I understand how utterly radical it was to report to America that birth can be beautiful.  Generations of American women had given birth literally knocked out cold, or held down to their hospital beds with nets-- literally!  The fact that natural birth can be the ultimate empowering experience was completely lost.  So Ina May introduced this radical fact.  Show me where else in written history the beautiful experience of birth has been discussed?  Also radical was this idea of seizing back from Medical Science the practical knowledge of childbirth, in her midwifery manual, and putting it in women’s hands as a physiological process that they can usually manage themselves.  Then in 2000, 25 years later, she published her second book, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth.  Like Spiritual Midwifery, its first half was first-person birth stories.  The second half was, this time, not a technical guide, but an analytical report of what she had learned about birth over decades of serving as a midwife.  She reported that a woman who feels anxious or embarrassed runs into dangerous childbirth complications.  And she reported how supportive prenatal care and loving and encouraging environments for birth enabled the great majority of women to shed the fears that threatened their lives and to birth their babies safely and happily.  These facts were hitherto unanalyzed and unreported in medicine or in popular culture-- and they are absolutely critical to understanding how to make birth safe for mothers and babies.  And yet, these truths about the nature childbirth had never been widely distributed before.   

No conclusory paragraph at this time—Apollo will wake soon and I write on the run.  

Toddlin' Along

Well, you might wonder what Apollo is up to these days.  His development has been incredible.  Every day brings new abilities, new reach, new sounds, new expressions.  He can’t quite run, but he can shuffle quickly and with great determination.  He growls, he cooes, he squeals, he screams, he inquires, he requests, he commands, and opines, all without making a single intelligible word.  He does say “mama,” “papa,” and “dada” a lot, but we can’t yet be certain if he means those words to refer to us.  Still, his communication advances daily, and he seems increasingly to understand many of the things I say to him.  At the playground he now knows that, if he wants to pick some shiny object up, he should carry it over to the trash can and deposit it there.  What a good little citizen!  He is still very much a fat and adorable baby.  He has a big cushy booty, fat legs, fat feet, round soft cheeks, and has a sturdy little body and strong arms.  His reflexes are quick: his hands spring forward like a cat to protect him from falling on his face many times a day.  He plays with all of his toys every day.  He reads all of his books and browses the book shelves for new ones.  He picks up the books one by one and will carry them over, plunk down in your lap, and want to sit there and turn the pages and hear the words and point at the pages.  If nobody is available to read to him, he looks at the books by himself and murmurs to himself.  One of his favorite books is a cardboard book I got in Alaska called Polar Babies, which is photos of baby polar animals with big words like, “Wooly lamb wants to play!” and “Little musk ox sleeps in the snow.”  He always spends time on the picture of the emperor penguin family; two elegant parents curving gracefully over two adorable baby penguins.

He can stack rings on a pole now and can open boxes.  He can climb up on furniture by himself but hasn’t quite figured out that he can use that to access forbidden objects at heights.  Though we anticipate that development any moment, which may create big baby-proofing challenges.  Like all children, and especially toddlers, Apollo needs at least some attention all of the time.  Though we’ve done our best to make the house safe, I still basically need to keep an eye on him constantly. 

And he’s down to only one nap a day.  We have segued into a new routine, which goes something like this: he wakes up at 7:30 or 8am.  He bobs along in Jonah’s wake as he gets ready for work, and they have breakfast together.  After Jonah leaves, we spread the cloth across the living room rug that turns it into his play area, and take each of his favorite toys out of his toy chest, saying good morning to each one, as in “Good morning, Clacky Crocodile!”  We play on the rug for a while and do some housework.  Then we go out to play: on Tuesdays we go to an English-speaking moms ‘n’ tots playgroup, and on Thursdays we go swimming.  On other mornings, we go to the playground.  We return from playing around 11:45, and Apollo goes down for his nap pretty easily.  He sleeps for an hour or two.  This is my only time to do anything that I can’t do when he’s awake.  Yesterday, he napped just long enough for me to eat, read email, and skim two newspaper articles.  When he wakes up, we play some more and do some more housework.  After he’s been awake for about an hour, we eat lunch.  Mid-afternoon, we make our way out the door for any marketing I have to do, and for a trip to another park or playground.  We come back home around 5.  I prepare dinner in the 10-minute increments that he can tolerate in the kitchen; otherwise we play and do housework.  Perhaps this seems like a lot of housework.  Within an hour of vacuuming, somehow the floor is sprinkled with bits and crumbs; God knows how they get there.  So I’m vacuuming twice a day.  Apollo loves to play with the vacuum now and it can actually buy me a little time here or there.  Not to get on the computer; god no; anytime I sit at my desk before the computer he automatically starts crying.  But the vacuum can buy me time to do a few dishes or take the laundry out of the machine.  Apollo eats dinner around 7pm.  Then he takes a bath and receives a massage.  Then we go back to the toy rug and put each toy back in the toy chest, and say good night to each one.  “Good night, Box of Blocks!”  Then we get into bed and he goes to sleep, usually in 15-25 minutes.  So he’s down for the night at 8 or 8:30.  Jonah comes home around 9 or 9:30.  We go to bed around 11:30.

That’s pretty much the routine.  On Monday afternoons, Apollo and I take a class with Sabina in Amsterdam.  He’s generally content in the car; he looks quietly out the window, or munches on these nice seaweed chips he loves, or takes a nap.  And he’s happy to toddle about in new spaces and look at everybody and everything.  On weekends, Jonah is obviously involved in Apollo’s waking activities, and on weekend afternoons the three of us usually go for a walk in the lake park or on an outing.  Apollo’s eating his meals regularly and can tell me pretty well when he is hungry or thirsty.  (He stands by the sink and looks at it intently and squeals when he’s thirsty, and he moans and stands by his high chair when he’s hungry.)  He still nurses plenty, probably a dozen times during the day (if only a quick nibble) and two or three times at night.   He’s very cute and loveable.  He makes up funny games every day, like sticking out our tongues and touching our foreheads together, that make him laugh uproariously.  Jonah thinks he may be slimming down, but he’s still a chunky monkey.  This continues to be the sweetest and the most demanding work I’ve ever done.