Monthly Archive for April, 2009

The Most Natural Thing in the World

Published
by
Melissa
on April 29, 2009
in expectations, feeding my child, intentions versus goals, letting go, opening your heart, practice, respecting your body, structure, surrender, trust, yoga class and you can't control everything
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What’s the most natural thing in the world?  Breastfeeding?  The naked human body?  Worms and cockroaches and creepy crawlies?  A little flatulence after a satisfying dinner of rice and beans?

Any one of them.  Except for breastfeeding.

This declaration, I know, sounds a bit aggressive, wounded perhaps, certainly not in keeping with the spirit of someone who believes that everything can be cured by yoga.  Everything, it turns out in my own personal experience, except breastfeeding.

Because no matter how many people might tell you otherwise, it is not the most natural thing in the world.  At least for those of us whose children would end up wolf food were it not for utterly unnatural things like the medication I take to induce lactation.  A medication whose dosage I am slowly reducing, slowly reducing my milk supply along with it.

I am also, not incidentally, watching my sanity level slowly reduce as well as I fruitlessly wish I just knew for sure when I should stop.

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Everything Bad for Me Is Good Again (or at Least a Few Things)

Published
by
Melissa
on April 27, 2009
in Mama instinct, awareness, change, expectations, following your heart, intentions versus goals, letting go, nonharming, practice, respecting your body, stuck at home with a child, the bigger picture, trust and you can't control everything
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There are a few things that feel unshakably bad for me:  Voluntarily being outside in the snow.  Spending my work weeks in an office building (and, even worse, a suit).  Wearing my pajamas all day.  Watching television in the middle of a beautiful afternoon.  And eating chocolate.*

* I understand that I have just alienated 90% of my audience, including a few of you I hold particularly dear, but please bear with me and my eccentricities and read on for even more horrifying evidence of my chocolate antipathy.  Remembering, of course, that we vilify that which we love the most.

For the most part, my weeks of second-time new motherhood confirmed these truths by which I live.  Except, most surprisingly — and, probably, most enticingly for those of us (that is all of us) who want another excuse to eat it — for the chocolate.

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What My World Is Coming To and How I Made It Okay

Published
by
Melissa
on April 22, 2009
in Uncategorized
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On Friday, I sent Mike an email message with the subject line:  “We have a poop!”

Not until long after I sent it did the really sad state of my world become apparent to me.

For example, the exclamation point was not an ironic gesture.  Nor was I the least bit embarrassed to be plopping emails with subject lines about excrement in Mike’s inbox.  And it never once occurred to me that this event was not so newsworthy that it couldn’t wait until Mike got home.

No, I was truly excited about this poop.

True, it was a confirmation of sorts.  It proved that Lily was not morphing into a generally fussy baby at a month old.  That it is not normal for your small infant to produce flatulence of a density rivaling that of an adult.  And that, indeed, what I eat does have a profound effect on how my body works.  In this case, my eating dairy translated into a fussy, farting, non-pooping baby, which in turn translated into one stressed out mom.  And my forgoing dairy confirmed the Mommy instinct thing that we all value so highly only when we turn out to be right.

So, you see, “We have a poop!” meant a bit more than the words might initially suggest.

Still, the fact remains that Lily’s poop was, quite literally, the most exciting thing that happened that day (even more, I am mortified to say, than a trip to Earthfare or a lovely walk with a friend).  When I had a moment to reflect on this frankly early motherhood fact, I found it just a little bit devastating.

Which, I believe, is the root of the breakdown I suffered over the weekend, the hitting-a-wall realization that, while I handled the first month of aimlessness that accompanies caring for a newborn quite handily, I wasn’t so certain I had it in me to toss away my sense of direction for the next several ones.

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What I Learned in My First Mommy and Me Yoga Class

Published
by
Melissa
on April 15, 2009
in Mama instinct, Mommy time, compassion, expectations, forgiveness, grace, inner beauty, letting go, nonharming, opening your heart, sense of self, social life, the bigger picture and yoga class
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3 Comments

I’ve had this day marked on my calendar for weeks.  My first Mommy and Me yoga class.

It’s been just two days since Lily officially reached the Age Where I Can Take Her Into Public Places, and the prospect of the class was even more exciting to me than Monday’s foray into Target.  Purchasing diapers and Z Bars I could live without for another month if I had to; the only thing keeping me from Mommy and Me yoga this past month were those pesky flu viruses still floating around Asheville on the chill winds finally chasing winter away.

What I was looking forward to wasn’t so much a practice for myself.  I can manage those at home if need be — and did for all of six sun salutes and five rounds of navasana yesterday before Miss Lily intervened.  What Mommy and Me yoga offered that I hadn’t before experienced was a practice for the two of us, a time to share something beyond our daily routine of eating, holding, taking the occasional walk, and greeting Jake’s boisterous evening arrival with joy (me) and cries of annoyance (Lily).  And, of course, I was very  much looking forward to the company of adults who speak in real sentences, even if most of them are devoted to talking about their babies.

What I found, however, was something different, a lesson I haven’t yet approached in quite the same way in all the YogaMamaMe time I’ve devoted to the relationship between me and my children and my Self.  What I found — as, if I’m being honest, I so rarely find — was forgiveness.

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Alice in Motherland, or Just How Hard It Is

Published
by
Melissa
on April 14, 2009
in awareness, balance, centering, change, chattering mind, discomfort verus pain, following your heart, letting instead of making, motion, practice, sense of self, sleep, trust and yoga class
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Yesterday afternoon, I was like the Cheshire Cat, grinning and purring contentedly about how smoothly the first four weeks of Lily’s life have slid by.

Yesterday evening, I was Alice herself, “shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep, and reaching half down the hall.”  Unlike Alice, who was understandably crying because she had suddenly grown to about nine feet high, I was less understandably sobbing about what a terrible mother I am and how bleak the prospect of my being any better at it over the next many months appears.

Primarily, I was crying because my girl wouldn’t stop crying.  And I wasn’t trying to stop her, which merely led to more heart-rending screams on her part (and maybe on mine — no one else was around to witness them, so I can’t be entirely sure).  Her screams led me to remember all the times I let Jake cry the same way when he was an infant.   Which made me cry more instead of reassuring me that good mothers sometimes can’t deal with their babies’ crying and those babies turn out just fine anyhow.

Worst of all, I was feeling — how could any mother feel, much less admit, this? — resentful that Lily wanted to use my breast as a pacifier.  (Perhaps, I discovered later, because the nail on my pinkie finger was just a sliver too long and likely slicing the top of the poor girl’s mouth when I offered her a finger pacifier as a substitute.  Which thought makes me want to cry a little bit now.)

All this crying in front of my impressionable young infant made me — what else? — cry some more.  Even though I knew, despite my state of utter unreasonableness, that she will not remember her mother crying hysterically in front of her.  Didn’t matter.  Surely I was damaging her delicate new psyche in permanent and insidious ways.

In short, in the space of a few hours, I went from thinking I had finally put all the pieces of my life into place to being quite certain I could not manage life or motherhood, especially the next two to four years of it.

And I realized that It Is Hard.  Even when you find a place where it doesn’t feel like it.

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My Refuge

Published
by
Melissa
on April 6, 2009
in awareness, being in the moment, centering, change, gratitude, inner beauty, inner peace, letting go, motion, opening your heart, partners, practice, sense of self, stillness, structure, surrender and trust
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2 Comments

On Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be invited to the dedication of a lovely meditation space in downtown Asheville, the WriteMind Institute.  And even more lucky to have a mother-in-law in town and an infant feeding schedule that allowed me to attend.

It felt pretty darned great to take a shower, put on real clothes, and actually pick Jake up from daycare, from which I have officially been banished until the end of flu season, still a week hence.  I made an exception on Friday, feeling somehow loose and free by dint of my very ability to walk out of the house for two hours without my baby.

This is not something first-time mothers should try, by the way.  I don’t think Jake was ever more than fifty feet from me until that time we were visiting Mike’s mother when he was four months old, and three adults physically pushed me out of the house to take a walk without him.  He was crying when I got back, which pretty much convinced me I couldn’t leave him again for another four or five months at least.

But now I’m sane and balanced and the mother of an inevitably neglected second child (have I mentioned that I’m a second child?) so off I traipsed to the petri dish of Jake’s daycare and off he and I sped downtown for an outing that brought back guiltily pleasurable memories of what it was like to have only one child.  Manageable is the word I think I’m looking for.

The meditation space was absolutely beautiful, with a peaceful pull that reminded me of how long it’s been since I’ve practiced any form of yoga.  (That would be 24 days, since the day before Lily was born.)  The head of the WriteMind Institute, Jonathon Flaum, gathered us around to talk about the space and how welcome we all were there.  He invited us to sit in silence for five glorious minutes — during which Mike and Jake wandered the street outside, far enough away so that our silence would not be broken by a small child yelling “NOOOOO!” as is frequently Jake’s wont these days.

And then Jonathon talked about refuge.  He told some beautiful stories, and what it boiled down to was this:  Refuge as he defined it is a place where no one asks anything of you other than that you be yourself.

This idea traveled straight to my heart, already steeped in the easiest five minutes of meditation I’d ever experienced and the warm energy of a room full of people who shared the love and excitement of this new space.  A place where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.

And in that moment, I felt as if I knew myself, in a clear and simple way that I hadn’t for a very, very long time.  In one telescoped moment, I remembered how long it took me to find that self and how I had lost her in that first year of motherhood, and I experienced a pleasurable jolt of wisdom in recognizing that the birth of my second child — far from tossing me back down the rabbit hole of lost mindfulness I had expected — has brought me more strongly to that self.

A self I can be in places of refuge.  Where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.

Continue reading ‘My Refuge’

I Like Pink

Published
by
Melissa
on April 3, 2009
in Mama instinct, balance, being in the moment, breathing, centering, expectations, following your heart, grace, letting instead of making and sense of self
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5 Comments

It occurs to me as I type in the title of this piece that I may generate hits from some fans of the singer Pink.  Who seems like a perfectly nice person but isn’t the pink I’m talking about.  On the other hand, I find it fortuitous to have the opportunity to declare “I like pink” to a few extra people, given how many have heard me viciously attack the color pink in the past.

Some context is necessary here.

Starting with my first pregnancy, I had a great fear of pink.  Pink little girl outfits with ruffles and ribbons.  Tiny pink bows that some mothers affix to bald baby heads in a frequently futile effort to make their androgynous babies look feminine.  (”My sister put a pink bow on her daughter’s head,” a friend of mine once told me.  “Strangers told her how cute her little boy was and asked why she put a pink bow on him.”)  Shiny little Mary Janes with paired with pink socks, and sparkly pink princess clothes, and mounds of pink doll-like dresses that I was just certain strangers were waiting to buy for my child if only she turned out to be a girl.

Jake, of course, did not turn out to be a girl.  But even before we found out he would be a boy, we warned our friends and family that the sex of our child would be strictly between me and Mike.  Primarily because we thought it would be nice to have at least one aspect of the pregnancy a private matter between just the two of us.  But, really, what a huge side benefit to know that if we did turn out to be having a girl she could remain free of others’ gender conventions for at least the time she spent in utero.

This time, not only did the rest of the world not know we were having a girl, but we didn’t either, having decided that we had already pondered all the big boy/girl decisions during my first pregnancy (to circumcise or not to circumcise? that is the question) and therefore didn’t need to know the baby’s sex ourselves.  So no worries about the dreaded explosion of pink that I feared would bury both me and my girl baby in a sea of Strawberry Quick colored blankets and dresses.

This child, I thought proudly, would arrive in the world a clean slate, no expectations piled upon … um, her.

As soon as she was a “her,” the pink card showed up on her hospital bassinet.  And I didn’t much care.  Maybe I was already sliding down the slope to my first Lily purchase — the pink Old Navy tee-shirt with the ruffled sleeves and Lucy Toothy decal and the hot pink polka dot pants with the ruffled ankles.

They are far from the last pink items I have purchased.  And even futher from the last ones I will ever buy.

Because, after opening gift upon gift of beautiful pink dresses with, yes, bows (but no ruffles), after oohing and ahhing like the most pink-addled of mothers, after thrilling at how girl-like my three-week-old looks in her pink clothes, it is time for me to admit it.  I like pink.

Continue reading ‘I Like Pink’

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