I am parked in a car on the main street of Smalltown outside a bar where I once fell in
love with a guy who asked me to meet him in New York for Christmas. He said he’d fly
me there and I was young. Regrettably, the timing was wrong.
I contemplate going in.
Several things have happened. Sir Dick, the Guppins and I have moved from Big City
to this Very Large Village. Although I still have my apartment in Toronto (subletting
for three months) THANK GOD. It has been a complicated journey. There has been
the packing: his house, my house (not really), the Guppins sleeping at his place, then
at my place, camping in the new small-town house, the move itself, the episode of
Hoarders Sir Dick could have shot while I packed and rid his house entirely of debris
(yes, “debris,” as stipulated in the buyer’s contract). There has been stomach flu, the rat
who scurried — nay, boldly strode — around the living room while I packed.
When the movers picked up a couch, it darted into the kitchen.
(A squeal from within)
“The baby’s in the kitchen! The baby’s in the kitchen!” (me, running, anguished)
Mover guy: “Don’t worry, if it bit her she’d be making a heck of a lot more noise than
that.”
There has been the intense, almost indescribable mental anguish of Sir Dick at having
to burn away his old life for one anew at age 68. And, of course, the disintegration of our
relationship, which is a shambles, a reeking ruin of despair. But let’s keep this related to
babies.
I have discovered, through this journey, several new uses for the disposable baby
diaper:
A. To vomit into while driving.
B. To relieve myself into in the parking lot of the Mennonite thrift store.
C. To use as an overnight maxi pad when in desperate need.
Here’s a little movie I made of my Tenant In Two’s apartment. I call it “The Never Cry Again Home.”
When the Guppins was a new little baby and in a bit of a grouch I’d take her into the apartment across the hall (with permission of course), and it still gives my tenant (and friend) such delight. And it continues to work like a charm on the Guppins to this day.
About five years ago, I participated in a ten-week course called Mindfulness, created by Dr.
Jon Kabat-Zinn. It was facilitated by a social worker who taught techniques to manage pain of any kind through mediation and breathing. This course explores ways to stay present in the moment, to use meditation and breathing techniques to bring you to a place in the present. In doing so, you can explore the reality of your pain in order to manage the day-to-day chaos we call life.
It was actually amazing. I learned a number of different ways to tackle stress, sleeplessness,
and physical pain, and I managed to let go of something that surprised me. Halfway through the course, I was starting to get serious about my meditation. I was able to get to a place of physical and mental balance — which I had never imagined I could do fully. I was able to focus. One evening our facilitator was leading us though a meditation dedicated to unpacking the messy. I was absolutely calm…and out of the blue I started to visualize a child, which was me, as a seven- or eight-year-old. I was watching my little self sitting in a corner crying, and I had an overwhelming sense of loneliness. I started to cry — tears ran down my face as I remained in a heavy state of meditation, while being completely present with my child self and my adult self watching on. When I awoke, I felt that a weight had been lifted. I had let go of something from my childhood that had been holding me back as an adult: loneliness.
When Lo came home from the hospital, all he did for a couple of weeks was eat and sleep.
There was very little crying, and if there was, my milk would soothe him right away. At about two months, Lo developed acid reflux. For any mother out there who has had to figure this one out, you know what I am talking about: the medical community will either push medication for the symptoms right away, or wait until the very last second to prescribe anything. Either option is hard for its own reasons.
Lo was in pain, and the breast was no longer cutting it. He would wake up crying and nothing would soothe him. For a first-time mother, this feeling of not being able to soothe your baby really takes a toll, and I began to feel like a failure.
The crying was getting to me, it was making me really anxious, and I was developing a real
sense of helplessness. I started to finally ask for help from my partner because I could not
take the crying. It was really bringing me down. As I walked away from Lo and listened to him
cry from a distance, I started to ask myself why the crying was bothering me so much — why
could I not listen to my son ask for help? What is it about his cry that puts me in a tailspin? At
that point, I broke down and started to cry myself. I started to feel like I was not cut out for this
mother thing — my biggest fear going into the journey in the first place. As I continued to cry,
I started to pay attention to the familiarity of this feeling. It was this raw feeling, the feeling of
life unravelling for a purpose (which I have experienced many times before). And yes — I pay attention to this stuff. Weird, I know! I had an overwhelming sense that I had been here before. At that point, I had a vision of sitting in meditation, and remembered the lonely feeling that I had revealed and shed many years ago…or so I thought.
Over the next couple of weeks, the crying did not seem so loud, and the middle of the night
became a time when Lo and I would listen to each other — or a podcast. Seriously, though, I
started to sing to him, and instead of crying he would listen and eventually fall asleep. At that
point, I no longer felt lonely — I was being a mother, trying to figure it out and remaining in the present.
Breathe in, breathe out.
-Gray Mama
Here are some links for information on Mindfulness:
Yesterday I dropped J-man off at daycare. The other kids, as usual, were in the playground. He didn't want me to go, so he asked me to read him a book first. I wasn't in a hurry so I did. It was a cute book about healthy food choices. A few pages in, a little girl came and sat beside J-man. She was very interested in the story. A few more pages in and J-man tested the waters and put his arm around her. It was so cute I had to laugh. I continued to read but neither child was looking at me or at the book. They were looking at each other and smiling. She leaned in and puckered up, and they went for a kiss. They missed a bit — she kissed the air in front of him first and he kissed her cheek. It was very sweet. I continued to read and tried not to react, and when I was done I told J-man I was off to work. Normally he protests and says, “No work,” but not on that day. He didn’t even look up. I left and they happily played.
Today, he protested: “No Momma...up!” I picked him up and gave him a kiss. The little girl came over, so I said, “Look, J-man, it’s Kelly.” “Oh Kelleee!” he said, and off they went to play. Long story short: he’s not even two and he’s abandoning his mother for cute little girls. No big deal; see ya, Mom!
My brothers hated me. At least this was how I felt growing up. Interesting how now, after
growing up, we have almost no contact.
Truth?
As the female of the family, I was the low man on the totem pole, routinely accused of
being the baby, the manipulator, the irritant, the annoyer, the instigator, the bad singer,
sexually wise beyond my actual experience, etcetera and so on. When I was given the
opportunity to skip grade five, the news was handed down to me as if I’d committed a
crime against my brothers.
I became a goth. I listened to the Cure and Siouxie and the Banshees. I joined the
theatre club at school. I became sexually experienced. I learned to drink alcohol, shut
down, shut off, skipped school, took the bus downtown, ran.
It’s taken many years and a whole lot of pain and dollars to pick through it, to grasp the
full consequence of it, to work through blame.
Yet still I am ambivalent. At times. I work on love. It don’t come easy.
So here I sit, my daughter on my lap, some random book that wound up in my
apartment; I turn the page.
My daughter takes special interest, makes the curiosity sound, points, and looks up at
me.
Now what do I do about it?
How did this happen?
How did this image get past the many editors and publishing professionals?
I understand the sentiment. Big brother annoyed by younger sister. I know it. I lived it.
DW, the name of the sister in this series of stories (not even a real name, as a friend
pointed out) is guilty of the crime of being smart and expressing her opinion.
This is where it gets her, the laugh line, the punch.
How did this image get past us? Because it didn’t get past the Guppins.
I’m not exactly aware of my body, as a rule. I don’t make connections between food and mood or weather and headaches or any of that stuff, so it’s not surprising that I’m not too familiar with the area down there. I’ve never looked in a hand mirror out of curiosity, for instance. Ignorance is bliss. That goes double post-pregnancy, I assume, so I’m not going to start. But I am now very aware of what’s going on down there.
This blog is all about honesty, after all; the brutal, gory truth. So here’s the truth: my vagina’s
changed, and I don’t like it. I had a pretty easy birth, really, so if my vagina sucks, I can only
imagine what happens to women who are stuck in active labour for hours. I was in active labour for about 45 minutes, and much of that time was spent in the car trying to not be in active labour. Mind you, 45 minutes didn’t give me a lot of time to limber up, so to speak, and you can bet I wasn’t engaging in perineal massage in the weeks preceding, but the damage was minimal, so I figured I got off pretty easy. Right?
Well, for one thing, “get off easy” is not a phrase in my vocabulary now. Getting off is far from
easy. I haven’t had a decent orgasm since I was pregnant. (Weren’t those awesome, though? Many of my top ten orgasms of all time happened while I was pregnant.) Never mind the exhaustion and the body image issues and the complete lack of interest. Just the basic act of sex is a chore, with little reward. This really bums me out. I read something recently comparing post-pregnancy sex to going to the gym: you have to force yourself to do it, but you always feel great after. Not so! Things have changed, and almost two years later we still haven’t figured it out. Probably from lack of practice — not enough trial, too much error. Sigh. I do not want it to be like this, but there it is.
I know I should do Kegels, and I try, I really do, but after two and a half years I still haven’t
mastered the bloody things, and they’re clearly not working well enough. I can actually relate to those godawful commercials with Kirstie Alley as the pee fairy. Although I haven’t actually gone out and purchased such a product. That would be the last straw. Instead, I sit when I sneeze or laugh or blow my nose, and I’ve pretty much given up on running, my favourite pre-pregnancy sport.
But the most disturbing change by far is that my tampons don’t fit. I have to buy “super” now.
Gross. I know it’s not actually gross, it’s natural, but in my mind anything extra-large brings on big-time body image anxiety. Interesting note, though: once when I was in Italy, I unexpectedly got my period and had to visit the pharmacy. I bought the same brand and size as ever, but when I got back home and slipped them into a little carrying case I have (so they’re not tumbling around the bottom of my purse like my mother’s always did, along with restaurant mints and tubes of Chapstick — blech), I noticed they were very different from the ones I’d bought at home. Definitely longer and thicker. I was a little confused at the time, but now I think I know why: “regular” European women have had children. In North America, once you’ve given birth, your vagina is no longer regular. It’s distorted and distended and extra-large. Or maybe that’s the wrong attitude, just my self-doubt talking. Maybe I need to re-imagine vaginas. Maybe, instead, once we’ve given birth, our vaginas are “super”!
