Learning About Enough

Here is something I wrote for the Bay Area Homebirth Collective newsletter a year and two months ago...

LEARNING FROM MY GREATEST TEACHER... MY POSTPARTUM EXPERIENCE

Fifteen months ago, my daughter Dahlia came into the world after an unexpectedly long and hard 38+ hours. She came out in the hospital, instead of in our bedroom, with the help of an epidural I surprisingly chose myself after laboring hard at home for 32 hours. Our midwife Leah delivered Dahlia, and my husband David pulled her out from me, while the doctor stepped back and watched. We waited as long as possible before cutting her umbilical cord, they saved the placenta for us in a plastic container, and Dahlia latched on right away. Afterwards, Leah and the doctor discussed the best way to stitch up my tears. I asked them not to wash Dahlia, and I brought my own natural diaper for her. They took no blood from her, because our midwives would be doing her heel test on her fifth day of life. I asked for dinner, and announced that we would be going home that night, as soon as the pediatrician had looked her over.

I hadn’t written a birth plan, because we weren’t supposed to be in the hospital, but I was able to negotiate how things would go – and felt blessed that they respected my requests. By midnight, we were home in our own bed with the tiniest little member of our family sleeping peacefully between us. We couldn’t believe that she was here… to stay. We all slept for seven uninterrupted hours. We had a glorious birth.

Before hard labor began the morning of the day before Dahlia was born, I had no idea I was so strong. I began early labor on Sunday morning, and when my painful contractions began on Monday morning, I felt ready for anything, but in the back of my mind I half expected that my labor would be quick – because both of my mother’s labors had been quick. I didn’t realize it would be more than another day and a half before Dahlia came out. I had no idea that she would be born at Kaiser, and not in our bedroom. I had no idea that my labor pains would be almost exclusively in my lower back (ouch!), and that it would hurt for what felt like an endless stream of hours that blended into each other, day into night into day.

I could not have predicted that it would be me who suggested I go to the hospital to get an epidural, so that I could relax and finish dilating from eight centimeters. I was ready to push my baby out before another day and a half went by, and I have a feeling that after spending so much time in the birth canal, Dahlia was ready to come out, too. I got to a very definitive point – I was done with the pain, and I was ready to meet my child. I learned that I am capable of enduring incredible amounts of pain with great calm, endurance and determination. And I learned that I don’t always have to. I learned how much was enough for me. Just as she was entering the world, Dahlia was already my greatest teacher. What I know now is that Dahlia’s birth was the just the beginning of the three greatest lessons I learn every day from my daughter.

LESSON #1: ACCEPT WHEN I AM DOING ENOUGH

During my pregnancy, I had a lot of big plans about how I would parent. I would use cloth diapers exclusively, though for some reason I never aspired to wash my own, and we signed up for a diaper service. I would nurse Dahlia as long as she wanted, as much as she wanted. I would do elimination communication with her and she would be out of diapers by her first birthday. I would probably not vaccinate her, and definitely not before she was a year old. I would give her homeopathic remedies. I would clothe her in 100% cotton, organic clothing. I would give her only wooden and cloth toys. She would sleep in our bed as long as she wanted, and would never ever sleep in a crib. I would use natural products to bathe her in, and feed her only organic foods. I wouldn’t feed her solids unless she was sitting undistracted. I would keep all her toys and things organized in boxes in different parts of our home, and would pick them up every day. I would never put her in front of something as inane as Baby Einstein, and wouldn’t set foot in a Gymboree class. The list of grand aspirations went on and on, and I was determined that, unless I did it perfectly, why even try. Then Dahlia was born, and reality came back into the picture.

I think we all have our own versions of what we thought we would do or never do and what we ended up doing, and in our own ways we get to a place of peace with our decisions. As sleep became more and more scarce and I learned a new way to “get things done,” I learned my own version of enough.

We still use cloth diapers most of the time, but when Dahlia goes to bed at night and when we leave the house (or when I just need a break from changing diapers for a few hours) we use unbleached paper diapers. I now nurse Dahlia just once a day, mostly for comfort, and I still love this time with her. Nursing more, I found myself depleted, getting sick a lot and not able to fully recover before getting sick again. We did elimination communication for a while, but it felt like too much when the weather got colder and Dahlia couldn’t walk around the house naked anymore. We did wait until she was one before vaccinating, and after a lot of research and thinking and feeling, we decided that we are only getting her a few vaccines, and only one at a time. Dahlia has a whole collection of homeopathic and herbal remedies, and we love them. But when she has a fever and is wailing and miserable from teething or a cold, we really appreciate Baby Tylenol… I’ve learned my threshold of enough when it comes to seeing my daughter in pain and my ability to cope with it.

Grandma loves to buy clothes for her first granddaughter – they’re mostly but not all cotton, they’re not organic, and they come from places like Target and Macy’s – and boy do we appreciate them! Dahlia loves both her plastic and other toys – and I’ve learned that it’s okay if some of those toys come from Toys R Us. The most important thing is that our daughter has grandparents who love her and it’s important for them to be able to give to her in their own way. We know how blessed we are to have such a tight and supportive family.

At around four months, our wiggly and extremely active little girl got too big for our little bed – my husband and I were not sleeping well during the hours we actually got to sleep, and Dahlia had taken to sleeping horizontally between us. So she moved to a crib we got from some cousins, on an all-natural mattress some friends passed on, right next to our bed. She seemed to like it right away, this little space that was just hers, and we all got to sleep. And halfway through the night, when she would wake to nurse, she would still end up with us until morning. Eventually, we moved into a new place with smaller bedrooms, and there was no room in our bedroom for a crib. So Dahlia now sleeps in her own room, and she sleeps wonderfully.

We bathe Dahlia in natural baby wash. She eats mostly organic foods, but not always. She is a wonderful eater, and she does play with her food – sometimes even I have to remember not to eat with my fingers. Her toys don’t always get picked up at the end of every day, and I’ve accepted that they are everywhere and probably will be for many years. I’ve actually come to love how they brighten up our home, even though one of us trips or slips on them regularly. Baby Einstein happened, and so did Gymboree – Dahlia preferred Gymboree, not a big fan of sitting still in front of anything, and I discovered how useful it was to give her a chance to run around and use her rambunctious energy, and play with other children.

LESSON #2: RELEASE ALL EXPECTATIONS

Dahlia teaches me the importance of nonattachment. I have learned that the minute I become attached to how something is going or “should” be going, it changes radically and I get totally knocked off my center. I have learned to enjoy the days that go smoothly – when Dahlia goes down easily for her naps and sleeps for more than an hour; when she not only sleeps through the night but wakes up at the refreshing hour of 7:00 AM, instead of her more usual 5:30; when we are in the flow of our “routine” and get outside for walks and play in the park; when we take time to cuddle and giggle on the bed and read books because I’m not in a hurry; when I get time to nap or shower or just sit doing nothing. I have learned to savor these moments without expecting that the next day will be anything like today. In the same way Dahlia and I had our perfect birth experience, each day – even the hardest – is important and perfect as it is.

I heard a speaker once who reminded us that we all start off at perfection – that perfection is not something to attain, but rather a starting point. Being a parent is the hardest thing I have ever done. Not the kind of hard that feels impossible, but the kind of hard that challenges my very essence, my integrity and confidence. It is a great comfort to know that, even as a parent, I start from perfection.

When Dahlia was just a few months old and I was spending more time with other new moms, I found myself – as I’m sure we all have at some point – getting caught up in the comparison game. What are other kids doing that mine isn’t? What is she doing that they aren’t? What are other moms doing that I’m not? What am I doing that they’re not? I learned very early on that this is a useless and frustrating exercise in holding to expectations and not recognizing the absolute perfection of what actually is.

There is no “perfect” age to start crawling, no “ideal” time for a child to go to sleep at night. I learned that each child is magnificently unique and perfect exactly how she or he is. And I learned that each of us new moms was doing a wonderful job caring for our new babies. I learned that the steps I have taken as a parent – helping my child learn to go to sleep earlier than 11:00 PM, leaving her with a babysitter a few times a week so that I could get work done and even relax a little, moving her into her own bed so that my husband and I could sleep better – have come out of our personal needs as a family. It has to work for all of us, not just our child. There is no “right” way to do things – we are all unique. Fortunately, I had managed to enter parenthood with no idea of what I wanted for my child – except a lifetime of health and happiness. I don’t come from that generation of Jewish mothers who wanted their children to become doctors or lawyers.

LESSON #3: BE PRESENT IN THIS MOMENT

Not being attached means, to me, one thing: living as much as I possibly can in the present moment. That's what Dahlia has taught me these past 15 months. I drop to my knees daily before her and recognize the countless gifts she bestows upon me. When I am distracted by the past (what I could have done better) or the future (what I’ll do differently next time), she calls me back to the moment. Her curiosity is boundless, and she wants to know what everything is. She wants to show me all she is learning. There is no more perfect way for me to be in the moment than to be right there with her, to respond to all her questions, and to share in her discovery of everything that is new.

The other day Dahlia wanted, needed to go on a walk, to get outside for some fresh air and a change of scene. And little did we know, but David and I needed that too. Luckily, we listened to our daughter, but only after a lot of fussing and trying too hard to figure out what we could do to calm her down. I finally listened as she came to my office and pushed at me to get off my desk chair, communicating very clearly that she wanted me away from the computer and out of our house. It takes incredible presence of mind, body and spirit to listen, really listen, to my child – but when I do, she never leads me astray.