Jeez.

This blog deserves more updating than this.

Our old neighbor Teresa gave us a great baby diary, by Olympia artist Nikki McClure. I've been jotting down as much as I can think to jot in those pages, because it's a much more casual affair than the scrapbook that I've been perfectionist about, and this blog, which is a sad scrappy thing indeed.

The truth is, we've been pretty busy.

With the heightened level of responsibility to the world that growing a human entails, we've been getting better and better and enjoying every single moment. It's becoming more apparent that we just don't have time to argue or complain or stay bitter about moments that have already happened. Get over it, man. This baby grows so much every day, the least we can do for her is try and grow with her. If I'd known that all it would take to shake ennui and escape the slump was have a baby, I'd have had one a long time a-

just kidding.

she showed up one day and basically told us she was ready to exist and that our mission, should we choose to accept it, was to be her parents in this lifetime. so I thought it would be easy. Well...sometimes it is, but mostly it's not. Except that it is. It is easy in a way, because I know (all of me knows!) that this was no mistake. As crazy as making babies is, and as crazy-making as babies are, Emily meant to be here and we meant to be hers. So what's the fuss?

Still, sometimes we are slow learners. Putting her away for the night at a reasonable time so she can maintain her own reasonableness, for example, is a good idea that has taken some time to learn.

Also, I bought a camcorder with the intention of using it to post videos on this and the other blog. I bought a camcorder that doesn't really seem to have that feature. If anybody out there knows anything about digital video sharing, throw me a buoy, please?

hm. It's time to put myself away for the night so I can be a reasonable human tomorrow. Still learning.

Firsts

I don't often have enough time to write in this blog. I don't have time for the scrapbook. No time for the journal. ugh! she is growing so so so so so fast and every day something new happens. I want to catch the big bits of her life as well as all the small simple things. But I've neglected to note much of it.

That said, I now make time to note that tonight she said my name, Mama, for the first time. Not her first word, which was "Hi", but her first "Mama."

I was in the kitchen stirring Spicy African Peanut soup and she'd been on the bed for a long, boring time waiting for me to come back. Babbling, then Mmmmmmmommmmmmm babble babble mmmmmammmaaa.

It feels unbelievably great.

In other news, she grabs everything, including the glasses from our faces, pens, knitting needles, sharp knives, broken glass from the floor....etc. Talks to strangers on the bus, makes fart sounds, and LAUGHS! The laughter is pretty new too, started last Saturday when I got the hiccups and apparently it was hilarious. Oh, and she's discovered The Vagina. Every diaper change now, the hands shoot down, yup, still there. She's growing up so fast!

vaccines :(

She had her first official doctor visit today. Since being born, the midwives conducted her first exams, up to 6 weeks. Because I am a slacker mama and because I disagree with much of the modern medical protocol, we missed her 2 month exam and shots. I've known that vaccinations are controversial, but until a few days ago I hadn't done enough research to make an informed decision either way. Which was tricky when certain extended family members were a little bit aggressive with their opinion that she had to get those shots, right away. I defended my lack of a choice as best I could..."I know there are reasons not to get the shots, but I don't know what they are yet." something about autism or other complications, um...

Then another extended family member sent a book with some vaccine information, just in time. We arrived at the doctors armed with a hippy's dirty armpit load of questions, concerns, and special considerations. We could just feel the doctor rolling her eyes on the inside at these granola monsters, as we took her out of the cotton sling, changed her cloth diaper, and requested the vaccines be thimerosol free, metal free, spaced out as much as possible, and that she be given only the necessary vaccines. We opted not to give her the one meant to prevent ear infections, and one other. The doctor, seeming to work with us, advised us not to get polio and one other which is only necessary in third world nations with poor water supplies. She recommended the 3 in one shot and Hib. I'd heard of the 3 in one, Dtp - diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, and agreed that she should get that one. What the doctor failed to make clear was that the 3 in one that she was talking about was DTP, HepB, and Polio all in the same shot. So it was a 5 in one. Which was exactly what I was trying to avoid. She prescribed tylenol to help Edie deal with the pain later, but when we got home and I double checked my info, I found that some doctors advise against Tylenol because it puts too much strain on the baby's liver.

I kind of want to find a new doctor that will be able to spend more time working with us and our concerns, and maybe who approaches health care from a similar point of view - the less is more approach, for one thing. When I said we wanted to space the vaccines out, she acted as if that's what they do already, but I was talking about more frequent visits and less vaccines per visit, while she was referring to the standard vaccine schedule of a group of shots, every two months. But, there was another patient in another room and it was nearing 5 o'clock and there just wasn't time to iron these details out. We did choose not to get the vaccine meant to prevent ear infections. Kenneth wanted to, but I am adamant that she ONLY get vaccinated against life-threatening diseases that she actually has a chance of getting. There are certain vaccines that only make sense if you are traveling to another country, for example.

anyways, she got her first shots and it was awful. The nurse who gave them to her was wearing pants with bright green fish all over them, because her last name is Fish. It was the end of the day, and she kept mixing up the names of the vaccines, so everybody was kind of confused. I started to feed Edie and the nurse stuck her with the first needle. Her face crumpled up and turned crimson and she stopped breathing so she could work up the energy to scream. My eyes got watery right away and Kenneth took her and walked her around the room until she calmed down. I put her back on my breast and she started eating again, and then PAIN! in the other thigh! She shot me a betrayed look before working up another scream, twice as anguished. It. Was. Horrible.

As the nurse cleaned up and left cheerfully, she told me to feed her for a few minutes, to comfort her. Well, Edie knew better. The last two times she'd started to eat, well, bad things happened. So daddy took her again while I got our stuff together and we left. She went right to sleep on the way home, and she and I slept from 9pm until about 10:30 this morning.

Now I am just praying that each weird thing she does is not a sign of brain damage. I know it's unlikely. I know that the link between thimerosol and autism does not exist where there is no thimerosol, (supposedly - I still haven't combed the fine print on the vaccine packaging) and I know I'm being one of THOSE moms - the hyperconcerned conspiracy theory mistrustful of government moms, but shit. If she were to develop one of the negative symptoms of vaccine injections, I will feel like a crappy mama bear who failed to protect the cubbin.

at least she won't get polio.
:(

:(

When you were born, your matted curls of hair dried into feathery spikes of tiger down. Tiger because it was dark brown, almost black, except for where it sizzled golden at the tips. It was arranged in a perfect mohawk, perfect because you were born on Mohawk street in the darkest hour of the morning. Today that fuzzy head of yours smells like yellow curry, and your once tigery hair now has the distinct flavors of saffron, cinnamon, and turmeric in the sunlight.

This is all you will let me write, right now. My tiny dictator who will only sleep upon a bed of flesh, warm and breathing. Your throne, my lap. It is time for another airplane ride, you scream.

With 13 minutes of pushing she was here. 8 pounds 7 ounces of wrinkly baby meat. Cry like no other creature, tiny lungs working through new air. Somebody heard it from the outside, our tiny cabin lit up with candles and practically buzzing with the noise of her coming. My contractions started out quiet, with breathing and clinging to pillows, furniture, the hands of my sister, my neighbor, my partner. Lying down to rest, getting up to shower. Telling Jill when they start and stop so she could tell the midwives. Kissing Kenneth in the shower for the last time as two plus a hidden one. Then gradually they took me, the contractions, and I knew from the Ina May books to vocalize the feelings. It sounded just like sex, but for hours. It felt like minutes. Midwives sat chatting on the couch, comfortable to let me labor. I thought they'd boss me around but it was me who bossed that night. "Rub my feet! Then it became just "FEET!" as the contractions ripped me from this world into a complete and brief all over pain. Yelling now for a minute long then settling down to rest. Saw Jill and Amy and Stephanie the midwife carrying pans and pots of boiling hot water to fill the tub since our tank was tapped. Don't know how long it took but I was so grateful to get in. Kenneth sat on the birth ball which I hadn't needed while I squirmed around in the birth tub. I rubbed his leg when the pains came and it helped for some reason. Feeling any other flesh but my own for just a moment.

Then I had to poop. I told the midwives that I had to poop and could I just do it in the tub, and Pamela said that's fine but it's probably your baby coming. I said "oh no...pooping would be easier," so she came and sat on the bed facing me to square off about it. She said, "you've just finished stage one which is the stage of labor when you need to get out of the way and just let your body do the work. Now you are in active labor which means you are actively involved. You just get in there and push" and she told me to send the energy which was flying out of my yelling mouth down. I closed my mouth and made the noise go down into and out of me. I pushed hard and suddenly Kenneth who was now behind me in the tub could see the head. He saw her face. Pamela told me to slow down and push the head out so I did. Then she said to wait while she checked to see if the umbilical cord was around her neck. The coast was clear so she said push the shoulders out slowly and I screamed "OH GOD SHE HAS SHOULDERS!" but I was just kidding because I am grateful for those shoulders. The jokes I make, kiddo knows I don't mean it. She knows I love her and I am grateful to have her here on earth with me and Kenneth. Kenneth held her first and then put her on my chest where she wriggled around until I started talking to her and then she was still. Midwives got her to cry and like I said it was a sound like no other creature. Tiny and sweet.

from soda pop and popcorn trees

She came to us in the springtime, after we'd drunk deep of the season's intoxicated blessings. In music class, pieces like Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a (naughty little) Faun and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring wove their peculiar spells over me until I was as susceptible to the will of the world as he was to the coyly bent sprigs of cherry blossoms which surrounded our rooms.

Love drunk, we laughed all day and deep into the chirping night. Our passions floated out the open window in a testament to the reckless beauty of spring. Green love hung my apartment all around with blossoms that he'd spotted with a careful eye and brought to me. A painted butterfly landed under my door one day, and I was suddenly captured.

Then there was one singular moment, in the golden light of some morning or afternoon, when a thought flitted through and said there was nothing to worry about. This is right and good, the thought said, one minute before we shook our green soda bottles and let the caps fly. All in good fun, what we did that day. Somehow I knew. Somehow he knew. Somehow despite everything in us that was too young, too poor, too reckless, we both knew she had come, and we wanted her there. Our microscopic love child, blessing from the spring, flew into the room and curled up between us.

"Okay," he said, petting her long cinnamon hair.
"Okay," I said, when her turtle green eyes turned to shine into me.

We are glad you are here.