Be Still and Know...

In all honesty, it's been a hell of a week and a half. Baby L is now 4 weeks old, and absolutely thriving (as long as I calm myself down and remember not to compare her to everyone else's kid). I am now a year older, following my birthday on the 2nd, and am one organ lighter following an emergency appendectomy on October 1. Yesterday was the first day on my own at home following the surgery, and I felt as though I was plunged right back into the emotional turmoil that is part of bringing home your brand new infant all over again. It's been hard - it is not in my nature to be homebound - and I've been anything but emotionally secure. In my heart, I know that I will be back on my "feet" within the next week or two, but my head grows impatient.

Through all of this, it's easy to ask oneself "why me?" or "what next?" but during the last two days, this statement has been playing over and over in my head. "Be still and know that I am God." So my days have been going something like this:

Baby cries. Be Still.

I cry. Be still.

The night is short. Be still.

I'm lonely. Be still.

I am not alone. I will be alright. We will get through.

The Simplest Act

Many people will quite openly disagree with me on this one, but one of the absolutely simplest things we can do as humans is create new life. I understand the arguments against this: It's hard to come up with the money, the childcare, the time, the security.....

But really, these are all extraneous factors, and when you strip them away you are left with one very simple act that a man and woman were biologically meant to carry out, and that a woman was built to bear and give birth to and care for. If you can manage to cut past all of the pressure and expectations that we attach to the act of creating a person, it's all really quite simple, quite pure, quite violent, quite beautiful.

On September 11, 2010, I participated in Nature's simple act by giving birth to Baby L, a very healthy, petite chickadee of a girl, weighing in at 6 pounds, 11 ounces, and a tall 21" long. She looks everything and nothing like her father and me. Each and every time I look at her I see something and someone new, and I am amazed.

Giving birth was a long ordeal for me. It was 60 hours of back labor and pure physical effort, carried out from what I can only describe as another plane of consciousness. As I was working with all of my effort to bring this little girl into the world, I found my mind and body focusing only on that task - feeling every muscle move, focusing every breath so that it would be productive, moaning from within so that my muscles would contract and move my baby toward the world. I could feel every fiber of my body working to literally burst open and bring forth this new person. And as I finally began to bear down and push as my body has always been programmed to do, there was an explosion of life, emotion, relief, and energy. And it was all so simple. Messy and Gross? Yes. Difficult? Yes. Painful? Hell, yes. Wonderful? Oh, yeah....And simple. Connected to God and Nature and to the act that every mother has done before me. I am still humbled by the experience.

Many people have told me about the phenomenon of the pain of giving birth fading into the background of your memory, mostly so that you'll be likely to want to do it again later. And it's true. Three and a half weeks have passed, and while I am not exactly chomping at the bit to have another baby, my birth story is already losing some of its pain and blood-colored rough edges. But with all of my might, I am trying to hold onto that moment - the moment my whole body broke itself open to allow a new perfect little girl to enter the world. I want to hold onto the connection to the universe that I felt in that moment, and I want Baby L to always know that connection. May her life by rooted in all that is Simple.