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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.

Sometimes You Need to Find More in the Moment

All the baby-care things that take up a new mother’s day do not fill my spirit as well as my time.

I am not, I admit, one of those mothers who finds breastfeeding a spiritual activity.  If my girl is going to do her best to look around the room while eating, you can bet I’m going to lock my gaze on an issue of Entertainment Weekly in response.  The cooing and playing thing is certainly fun and at times transcendent (that funny little grin she has developed has a life all its own), but the matches last much, much longer if my DVD of Brotherhood is playing in the background.  And our serious gazing into each others’ eyes — love it, I really do, but I can’t help thinking ahead to whether we will have time for a walk before Jake gets home.

In short, I get the whole concept of being in the moment.  And I get the fact that babies don’t have much more than the moment and therefore don’t have a whole lot to discuss or do in it.  Furthermore, I admire — I really do — the people who can sit with this stage of life, revel in it and the excuse to stay inside and gaze into those beautiful clear marble eyes.  I’m just not one of them.

I didn’t set out with the intention of slowing down for just one month, sacrificing that precious bit of time before getting back to the serious business of being me, baby be darned.  That first month I practiced.  I brought myself into the moment.  I fought down anxiety.  I learned to live with my new sleep patterns.  Every time I felt jittery and panicked, I took a step back and saw what was really going on and forgave Lily for being an infant who needed me to just … be with her.

For some reason, it just became harder.  Maybe it was my subconscious lighting on the one-month marker.  Maybe it was the incipient arrival of spring, teasing me with a few gorgeous days before the wind kicks up a bunch of rain clouds and locks me inside with my Netflix subscription and a growing sense of couch potato-ness.  Maybe it was my inability to find a sitter to watch Lily for just a few short hours each week so I could return to yoga class.

Sadly, I suspect it was the last.  That I wanted to practice yoga so badly that I ceased practicing yoga.

The shift became apparent to me Sunday morning, when rain obliterated the beautiful, summer-like weather of the previous day — a Saturday of the first farmer’s market of the season and an afternoon hike through some nearby trails on the UNC Asheville campus.  Sunday morning was dark and wet and my greasy hair had to forgo a shower because on dark, wet days the playground at the Mall fills up with feral children if you don’t get there early.  Since the playground at the Mall is the only rainy Sunday morning alternative to endless hours of Sesame Street with a restless Jake, I knew, however grumpily, that the shower was a distinct impossibility.

So I set off with my family for the food court at the Mall, hair greasy, breastfeeding fat hanging over the edges of my jeans, and a scowl on my face made tolerable only by the fact that it distracted from the childish tears glossing my eyes.

We actually had a lovely outing.  On our way to the Mall we drove by the JCC’s children’s rummage sale.  Chatting with friends was nearly as good as spotting the bunches of three-dollar Baby Gap dresses someone left for us to fill Lily’s wardrobe.  And buying Jake cargo shorts at Children’s Place brought on a rush of summer coming one day, and me wearing flip flops, and Lily being able to hold her head up on her own.

But eventually Jake’s exhausted tantrums convinced me we had to bypass the new cheap Mexican restaurant near the Mall and go home.  Where my own exhaustion hit me, but not hard enough for me to take a nap until laundry had been folded, the baby had been fed, and I had stored up a good case of the grumps at Mike.

Because Mike got to work in the yard.

I hasten to point out that I do not enjoy yard work.  To the contrary, I enjoy having Mike do the yard work so I can look outside and marvel at how lovely our yard looks.  So as grumpy as I felt, I knew he had done nothing wrong.

But, see, Mike got to do something he enjoys.  And he got to do it without any kids around.  Because his primary child responsibility is old enough to sleep for several hours unattended.  Mine sleeps in dribs and drabs and wakes up demanding that she attach her mouth to a heretofore private part of my anatomy.

So by the time I threw myself down on the couch for a short nap I was shaking with the injustice of knowing just how long it will be until I once again do something I enjoy without a child nearby or thoughts of a child crowding out the enjoyment or the need to entertain a child rushing me so much there is nothing left to enjoy.  I knew I would reach that point again, but that almost made it worse.  Because I had reached it once, not so long ago, as Jake grew more independent.  And now I had to go through it all over again.

It was almost enough to make me volunteer to do the yard work if only Mike could feed the baby.

Patience with Your Practice

When I first began practicing yoga, years of running had knotted my hamstrings up so deeply there was no way my fingers could get close enough to so much as wave at my toes.  Just a few months later, they were communing.  The idea of turning myself upside down was terrifying; yet, within the year I was doing headstand without a wall.  I was learning to float and fly, to challenge myself and overcome the challenges, and I was getting so, so limber and strong.

Then it all slowed down.  Headstand never did get any less scary.  Virabhadrasana III (Warrior III) has never fully revealed itself to me.  And those standing balances?  Never gonna be a breeze.

None of this bothers me particularly.  But change the context to my second child, and it seems to bother me tremendously.  Yes, I made all this progress as Jake grew, and brought it bear on this second round at motherhood, saving myself from serious anxiety and maintaining some of my mindfulness in the midst of what some friends call “the two-month tunnel.”

But I balk at the idea that it’s still hard, that there are some things I can’t get around.  That young babies need a lot of attention and can’t give you a whole lot of entertainment in return.  And that acknowledging this fact makes me feel somewhat guilty and tremendously below par as a mother.

In other words, I am reluctant to sit with the things that don’t move so easily for me.  I am tired of the lesson of being in the moment when that moment occurs during nine bouts of breastfeeding every day.  I am scared of letting my entire self be still for months on end because I don’t want to go to the scary place I ended up when I was still for so long with Jake.  I don’t want to let go of the desire for Lily to be two and as mind-blowingly fun and amazing as Jake is now — even though I know it is sad and ridiculous to wish away all the joy she brings me and will continue to bring me in those two years, just as Jake did.

As I awakened from my Sunday nap just as groggy as when I went down, I didn’t have the energy to do much more than hold onto these thoughts, to go to bed early and sleep on them.  Which is sometimes the best way of sitting with something — not doing it deliberately, just getting on with the more pressing things in life.

And so it was that I awakened Monday morning not only to the day but to the realization that what I really needed was an asana practice.  Asana is the way I learn the precepts of yoga — including how to sit with the things I can’t change and find the beauty in them as they are.  And just because I couldn’t find a sitter didn’t mean I couldn’t have an asana practice.  Duh.  I used to practice at home all the time.

So after Lily’s morning feeding, we spent a little bit of time cooing before I asked her how she’d like to hang out in the swing listening to a little Krishna Das.

Turns out she liked it just fine — and for just long enough to allow me a half dozen sun salutations, some lovely standing poses, even a short savasana.  It made all the difference.  And reminded me that we all can find a way to practice.  We just sometimes have to practice finding it.

Cultivating a Home Practice

For over a year now I’ve been offering various poses and meditations here as I picture myself practicing them in my neat little home yoga space.  What I haven’t pictured is how someone who doesn’t already have a home practice might approach these offerings.  Probably by skipping right over them.

Which is perfectly valid, unless you really would kind of like to try out some active yoga and just don’t know how to create the space — both physically and in your life — to do it.  So, in the spirit of my recent rediscovery of my home practice, here I offer you some suggestions for how to create your own.

Home Practice Tips