This Mama’s Dharma

Last Saturday, I threw out my back. That means I have been living in pain for exactly five days. I feel like a science experiment: how does one cope with being pain free to all of a sudden being in extreme agony? Hey, I had a natural childbirth, which was by far the most painful experience of my life - but my mind and body still do not tolerate pain. And this is truly painful. Every move is predicated and followed by pain. I can barely lift my son. I can’t care for him in the way I would like to. I am grotesquely bent over to one side, twisted like a woman in her 80s, not a 30 year-old.

What’s the worst for me is that I licked this, or at least I thought I did, and now it is back. With a fucking vengeance. It’s the baby weight, I tell myself, and rail at myself for gaining so much weight during pregnancy, and not taking it off right away. My mind goes to the past, blaming and shaming. You fat, lazy, disgusting cow. This is what you deserve for bragging about your weight loss and your back healing through diet and acupuncture. Then it goes to the future, a harbinger of doom. You will always be like this, it tells me. You will have to live like an invalid, never going out. You will not be able to care for your son. Your husband will ruin his business staying home caring for the two of you, grow to hate you in the process, and your life will be ruined. Yes, the voices of the past and future are very seductive.

The objective fact of the matter is, there is inflammation in my back, which makes movement painful. I can still walk, albeit crookedly, and I can still pick up my son. Tonight I bathed him. I can still play with him and interact with him. I am alive and he is alive and my husband is alive and this is not a life-threatening situation. Tomorrow I am going back to the acupuncturist. He helped me earlier in the week (I had a setback today due to pushing myself too hard) and he will help me again. Eventually, I will heal, I hope.

Hani told me the other day that he thinks this is my body sending me a clear message to take fucking care of it. I have spent all my energy caring for the babe, and none for myself. Once I lick this, I am going to join the gym and get myself back in shape. I am HIGHLY motivated right now. Pain motivated me well before, and it will again. There is so much more at stake now. I have a son to think about. It’s not just about vanity now - not wanting him to have a fat mama. It’s about being able to care for him in the most basic way, to eventually run after him and play with him. I’m not saying that any mother with a disability that doesn’t allow her to do those things is any less of a mother - it’s just that I am pretty sure it’s within my ability to turn this situation around, like I did once before.

The only way I am going to stay sane through all of this is to focus on the objective facts. It’s when I go to the past and the future that the suffering begins. This is just pain. Pain + resistance = suffering.

Wow, writing this has really helped me to feel a lot better. All of this stuff has been rattling around in my head making me crazy.

On a lighter note, Sami discovered his feet today! What a joy to see him grab that little foot and place it in his mouth.

Sami has discovered my face. When I hold him in front of me, he reaches out and touches my cheeks, my lips, my nose. It’s magical.

Yesterday we were playing, and he took a hand, sopping wet with saliva, smeared it all over my cheek, and then proceeded to stick his spitty fingers in my mouth. By the time he was done with me, my face was coated in a gooey mess, but it was so much fun. I think to anyone else but a mother, this would sound quite gross. But it will be a memory I will always cherish.

I am bursting with pride over my gorgeous and sweet little boy. I got my hair cut today (a major accomplishment) and Sami was just flirting away with everyone at the salon. Everyone proclaimed what an unusually cute baby Sami is. He was just smiling and laughing and in such good spirits. CeeCee’s daughter remarked how Sami “looks just like one of those babies in commercials.” Sami is quite the show-stopper.

I’m feeling kinda depressed about being a low-supply mama today. So many days, I don’t spend much time thinking about it, but it sapped my spirits today. I felt like just hiding under the covers and feeling sorry for myself. This too, will pass…but it’s where I’m at today.

It was a very lazy Sunday. We basically hung out in the house all day - got out around 6:30 for a walk around Walter Reed. Hani wore Sami in the Bjorn facing out. He looked SO cute. He fell asleep like that. Our little prince. I can’t stay depressed for long when I look at his beautiful little face. Right now he is asleep in the co-sleeper, all peace.

Sami has started reaching out and touching our faces. It’s such a gorgeous experience, having his little hand on my face, those big hazel eyes looking up at me with such truth.

I’ve been thinking about body image a lot recently. I had lost 40 pounds prior to becoming prgenant, going from a size 18 to a svelte (for me) size 10. Then I put on 40 pounds in pregnancy. That may not seem like a lot, but I was still about 20 pounds overweight when I got pregnant, so a healthy weight gain for me would have probably been in the 25 pound range. As far as I can tell, the only weight I lost was the actual weight of the baby and the placenta. - we’re talking maybe 9 pounds total. I think I may have actually gained weight post-partum. Since I don’t weigh myself regularly (a healthy thing, for me), I don’t know. The last time I did weigh myself, I tipped the scales at 212 pounds, and I’m only 5′4″. It’s pretty hard to type that, to see it in black and white. This is probably the most weight my body has ever carried.

There are a couple of things going on here. I’m feeling bad about becoming fat again. Being a Fat Woman was shameful enough to me, but somehow I hate even more the idea of being a Fat Mama. Could there be anything more uncool? I feel so ugly that I don’t want to be in or see any pictures of myself at this time. Then on top of it, I’m feeling stupid about being so hung up on my weight, for being so superficial. I mean, Sami is only a little baby once - and I’m too ashamed to be in pictures? Shouldn’t I be proud of the weight that I put on to nourish a child, even if it was a little too much? Shouldn’t I have patience that the weight will come off, eventually?

But there is real pain here, real regret. I regret the afternoons sitting on my ass in the office, wolfing down chocolate chip cookies 4 ” in diameter. I regret not exercising for most of my whole last trimester, out of sheer laziness. In my last trimester, I went into a kind of dreamland where I KNEW the pregnancy weight would just magically melt off through breastfeeding and I’d be back to pre-pregnancy weight in mere weeks. Well, that just didn’t happen. I should have known that my body is the type of body to hold on to weight with a desperate ferociousness. I am not one of those magical melting types.

Other mamas who had babies at the same time as me post on the message boards about how they are now back to their pre-pregnancy weights. That makes me feel like shit. (In general, when I compare myself to other moms, I tend to feel like shit. Note to self: don’t compare self to other moms.)

Recently, I shared about my experience of body hatred with some friends, and one of them had some real wisdom for me. “How you look is not your business,” she said. “What you weigh is not your business. Your clothing size is not your business.”

“Anyway,” she said, “You’re glowing, with the love you have for your son. It’s written all over your face. So get in those pictures!”

She’s right. She is so right.

I have been wasting too much energy on the whole feeling-like-shit feeling-sorry-for-myself thing, energy that would be better spent cooking healthy meals and getting some more good quality exercise. Because behind this whole negative shame thing, I realize that there is a positive longing to be healthy and fit. This is heavy baggage - excuse the pun. My mother died young, of complex reasons - obesity being one of them. In truth, I am terrified of sharing her fate. I don’t want to leave Sami any earlier than I have to.

OK, I know I can’t control when I die. Fitness guru Jim Fixx dropped dead of a heart attack in his 40s, while running, right? While I certainly could die young very easily at a trim 120 lbs, I know that the extra weight is not healthy for me. I want to be well, to feel good. I want to have energy to run after my son when he is old enough to run around. And I know that I feel better physically and emotionally when I am in better shape. The key for me is exercise. While I try to get out for walks with Sami, they just don’t feel like they are giving me enough of a cardio workout to affect my weight very much. I was really despairing about this not getting enough exercise business, until I realized, DUH–gyms have child care!!

There is hope for me yet. I have six weeks until Sami is old enough for the (free!) child care at the local Y. I just met another mama who goes to the Y regularly, and maybe I will ask her to be my gym buddy.

Meanwhile, in these next six weeks, I am going to practice radical self-love, when it is my impulse to indulge in self-hate. My son deserves a mama who loves herself unconditionally. So I’ll grab on to my thigh folds and my ass cellulite, my squishy mommy tummy and my double chin, and I’ll send them love. I’ll stand in front of the mirror naked, and I’ll hug myself, damn it. I’ll get in front of the camera, holding my awesome son, and I’ll smile, big.

I am starting a list of things I want you to know, Sami… I’ll keep adding to this list as I think of new things.

1. I love you.
2. I will always love you.
3. You are my favorite person in the whole world.
4. Giving birth to you was the most incredible experience of my life.
5. Even though you were a surprise, I am SO happy that you are in my life now, and I will never, ever regret being your mom.
6. I will do my best not to put my stuff on you, and to let you be your own person.
7. I will do my best to follow my own dreams and encourage you to follow yours.

…I found out I was pregnant. It took three pregnancy tests and a call to a Kaiser Permanente advice nurse to verify that at-home pregnancy tests are indeed accurate, for me to fully believe it, that you were growing inside of me.

I’m sorry Sami, but when I found out that night, I had a cigarette, no two cigarettes, and an Ethiopian beer with your father at Lalibela’s. That was only because I didn’t think I’d be able to have you. I was just scared. I’m sorry. I know you forgive me.

One year ago, I found out I was pregnant. It was also a Monday, weirdly enough. And now here you are, lying here beside me, sleeping with your arms stretched out wide, as if you are flying in your dreams.

I love how Sami goes to sleep when Sami wants to go to sleep. At about 10:50 we both got a bit frustrated trying to put him to sleep, and so spent half and hour driving around Takoma Park and Silver Spring trying to get him to sleep. I sat with him in the back seat of the car and he just sat there calmly and stared at me with those big eyes. Finally, the little eyelids got heavy and he was asleep. As soon as we got home and took him out of his carseat, he woke up screaming. As we predicted, he didn’t go to sleep until around midnight, just as he wanted.

“Ana ureed wa enta tureed, wa sami yaf’aal ma yureed” - Hani said, making fun of the Arabic expression, “I want, you want, and God does what He wants,” substituting Sami’s name for God’s.

OK, now it’s 2:30 AM and I am going to sleep!

I have felt guilty all week that I have not been able to write about the 10th anniversary of my mother’s death. But I will now try to put into words what I have been feeling and thinking these past several days.

On the morning of April 11th, I woke up to the baby’s pre-crying whimpers with a dreadful anxiety. I nursed the baby back to sleep, but my own desperate mind kept me awake, spinning out all kinds of disaster scenarios- mainly about me dying, leaving my son behind, and not have achieved anything of note. Dying mediocre. “Why am I so anxious?” I asked myself. Then I remembered — this was the day. I think. Because she died in the middle of the night, she could have died on the 11th of April or the 12th. I do not even have the dim security of knowing exactly when she passed. But when I finally realized what was going on, I gave myself the permission to cry that I had denied myself, lying rigid in my bed.

I went to my meditation altar and lit a candle. I cried. I prayed for her to show me a sign that she was still around and watching over me. I prayed over and over for a sign. An MDC mama had posted something about “pennies from heaven” and that is what I thought I wanted. A penny in a place that no penny could have mortally gotten to. A penny to prove her spirit watches over me. A penny to prove that her spirit knows her grandson.

But I already have the proof - Sami has my mother’s smile.

I am reading Motherless Mothers, the new book by Hope Edelman, and she says something very interesting: “Before motherhood, a motherless daughter’s story has a distinct before-and-after quality: all that came before her mother died, and all that has come after. Motherhood, however, puts a conceptual frame around the loss. First, she had a mother, then she lost her, then she became a mother herself. The loss no longer breaks her story in two. Motherhood rounds it out.” (p. 7) I find that is very true: I no longer divide my life into that Great Before and After. There is another Before and After - a counter-balance.

I miss my mother, the true Gail Harris, but I also miss the idea of her. Like Hope, I want a mother who will swoop in and initiate me into the tribe of mothering. A mother who will know what to do, just how to comfort Sami, when I have tried everything and still his little forehead is creased in sorrow and rage, his tiny mouth wide open in a baby’s wail of suffering.

I have a grandmother, my mother’s mother, the woman who raised me instead of my mother. She has started to call almost every day to check on Sami’s progress, and is as in love with my son as anyone can be. I am eternally grateful that she is still in my life, but even she cannot replace the presence of my mother. Especially since she does not particularly approve of my attachment parenting practices, and can never understand my heartbreak at not being able to successfully breastfeed, because she herself never breastfed her children.

I think back to the pain of our early breastfeeding, how Mumma’s story intersected with mine. How desperately I wanted breastfeeding to work, not just for Sami and myself but for her. My failure was like yet another betrayal of my mother. No one can possibly understand how much it hurts to have failed.

I think of her separated from me, hospitalized after yet another psychotic break, breasts engorged, not able to nurse to relieve the pressure. When did her milk finally dry up? How she must have grieved the end of our short-lived breastfeeding relationship, when it meant so much to her to begin with. She fought for it so hard, at a time when women were led to believe that formula was just as good as breastmilk. What was important to her was the bonding, I imagine. I imagine, because I will never know why she was so keen on breastfeeding. I never asked her about these things, because when she died I was twenty and couldn’t care less about pregnancy or labor or breastfeeding or anything having to do with mothering.

(At the time, I thought I would never be a mother, because a gynecologist, suspecting PCOS, had told me I would have a very hard time conceiving. Turns out she was wrong.)

My mother’s legacy has shaped my own parenting choices. I know she would have completely supported, even cheered on my decision to have a home birth, to co-sleep with Sami, to eventually homeschool (which I am seriously considering). These choices resonate with me personally, but knowing she would have approved makes me happy. I feel like I am honoring her crunchy legacy. And I am mothering in the way I would have liked to have been mothered by her, if she had had the chance. It is redeeming. It is cleansing. It is healing. As a mother, joy and grief co-mingle in my heart, pulsating with every beat. They are both surrounded with love - the vast, all-encompassing love I feel for my tiny son. I now understand how much my mother loved me, and it’s humbling, awe-inspiring, to love and to have been loved like that.

I officially gave notice at work today. I just sent an email to my boss, and that was it. Done. My maternity leave ends on May 12, and I from that point on I will be officially a stay-at-home mom.

At the same time, I sent an email out to my MFA program list, looking for a mother’s helper to babysit Sami for a few hours a week while I try to write. I had an epiphany today. I am going to write my book, no matter what. Even if my agent abandons me and the smallest of small presses rejects me and I have to self-publish and orchestrate my own book tour. I feel a renewed sense of hope. Motherhood has dropped a bomb on my life, a beautiful bomb, but a bomb nonetheless. Now the smoke is clearing, and I am remembering the dreams of my pre-mommy self. They are still there. I will make my dream come true, even if the publishing world won’t.

I feel a sense of shame that I can’t do it all and be a mom - write my book, exercise an hour a day, meditate a half-hour a day, work on Sami’s baby book, organize my closet, cook the meals, and clean the house. If only I got up earlier, went to bed later, drank more coffee, did something different and better than I am doing, then I would the Efficient Mother. But no, I must admit that I need help. Help that I can’t really afford. One can only lean on friends so much, and I am afraid to ask for their help anyway.

I never would have thought that a woman named Grace would be responsible for me becoming a mother. When I was in turmoil just a few weeks from this time last year, trying to decide whether to have an abortion or not, I did not know that my grandmother was talking about my predicament to her friend Grace. My grandmother had at first encouraged me to have the abortion, because my husband and I were fighting about my keeping it. I did not know what I wanted, truly. I kept making appointments at Planned Parenthood and not showing up for them.

“Tell her to keep the baby,” said Grace. “My daughter had an abortion years ago and it has affected her all her life.”

My grandmother remembered her friend Patty Richman, who committed suicide in her forties. She too, had had an abortion, while she was in college, and it haunted her the rest of her life.

That same day, my grandmother had called me sobbing, telling me that she changed her mind, begging me to keep the baby, even saying that God had intended for me to have the baby. I remember it yesterday - the seemingly magical transformation that my grandmother had undergone. I sobbed along with her on the phone, relieved that she would support me keeping the baby, even if I had to raise it as a single mother.

I will always be pro-choice. But I personally believe that abortion would have been the wrong choice for me. It was Grace that saved a wretch like me, and made me a mother.