This Mama’s Dharma

The way he…

smiles with his eyes and a wide-open mouth, sticking out his tongue (see above)
giggles when his dad or I kiss him repeatedly on the neck or tummy
snorts when he is about to cry
falls asleep while nursing
“phantom nurses” while asleep by working his little mouth every minute or so
stretches like a kitten after a nap or stint in the car seat
after crying, does a “sniff sniff, sigh”
sighs periodically in his sleep
sleeps with his arms outstretched to the side or extended up to his ears
“makes himself heavy” when he doesn’t want to be picked up
rests his hand on my boob while nursing
“talks” to my boob when I don’t get him on there fast enough
raises his legs up while staring at his cloth book
pulls off while nursing to look into my eyes for a few seconds, then pops back on
the way his eyes roll back in his head when he nurses

Added 4/16/05:
smiles so wide that he drools out of the corner of his mouth
the way his forehead crumples up when he cries
the way he doesn’t look at me when he is “mad”
laughs when I lift him up and down in the air really quickly

will add to this as I think of stuff!

Hi there Mumma,

You would have been fifty-six years old today. If you were alive, I would have called you in the morning to sing happy birthday. Or better yet, you would live near us and we’d celebrate in person.

Oh, mumma, if you were alive… I know you would have been crazy about your grandson. I wish you could have known one another. I wish he could sit in his grandma’s lap and I would snap away with the pictures. Sami has your hazel eyes…I know his eye color might change, but I hope it will stay the same, a constant reminder of you.

If you were alive, I would have complained to you about all my breastfeeding issues, and you would have understood how very important it all is to me. You would have understood my despair at things not going as planned. We could have talked about Attachment Parenting and you would have dug it — you were the original crunchy AP mama.

Oh, mumma, if you were alive. Becoming a mama without a mama is hard. I have so many questions for you — what was my birth like? How did the breastfeeding go? What did you struggle with about being a mother? What did you love about being a mother? I know your struggles must have been so much greater than mine — you, a “crazy woman” trying to raise a baby all alone. How I respect what you tried so hard to do. How I thank you for giving birth to me. I hold you in my heart today, and always. I celebrate you today, and always.

Love,
Leah
p.s. Sami says “hi, grandma!”

Six days ago, I gave my baby formula. I now occupy that space in the great divide between breast-feeders and bottle-feeders, and it feels weird. But I know I’m doing right by my babe, and I’m still a crunchy mama, damn it!

Before Sami was born, I always thought I would breast-feed effortlessly. My breasts would be copious fountains of milk. I’d shoot huge gushers across the room and hit the ceiling with my bountiful streams. My baby would grow and thrive and develop rolls of fat on my milk alone. I had read books and taken classes, but nothing prepared me for the breastfeeding nightmare I’d go through for almost twelve weeks.

This is actually the second time I’ve given my baby formula. Both times, I believe it was medically indicated. When my son was five days old, he was jaundiced and had lost an unacceptable amount of weight. He was sleepy and wasn’t nursing well. My crunchier-than-crunchy midwife, my post-partum doula, and a La Leche League leader all agreed that it was the right thing to do. We weaned him off the formula after about five days, when the jaundice had gone away and he was on the road to gaining back his birth weight.

Sami was gaining acceptably well until he was about nine weeks old, around an average of one ounce/day. Then he slowed down for a week, only gaining 5 ounces, then the following week had only gained two and a half. I watched his slow weight gain with growing apprehension; my lactation consultant suggested we give it one more week to see if he’d make up the weight. After six days and only an additional half-ounce gained, I could not bear to wait another day. If he was a slow gainer, and happy, then I could have accepted the status quo. But Sami was crying hysterically after every feed. He woke up hungry multiple times in the night. He’d nurse until both breasts were drained and he’d still whimper and cry. The high, piercing cry of a hungry baby is like shoving a needle in a mother’s ear.

It’s not clear what caused a dip in my supply. We’d had myriad problems — I’d had mastitis three times and a staph infection in my right breast. He has a very slow, weak suck. He would nurse endlessly, hours on end, and still seem hungry. I began to eat oatmeal daily. I pumped as many times a day as I could stand. I drank teas, took scores of foul-tasting herb tinctures, ate copious amounts of lactogenic foods, tried visualization, even resorted to drugs– taking 90 mg/day of domperidone, a pharmaceutical known to aid in increasing milk volume. I think it has helped a bit, but is not a panacea. Maybe it is something hormonal with me? I am getting some bloodwork to try to figure out if it’s a thyroid issue. It would be nice to know if there was a physical reason why I am not making enough milk. I’d definitely feel less guilty, like less of a failure.

After well over a thousand dollars spent on lactation consultants, breast pump and scale rentals, herbs, and pharmaceuticals, I had to admit it. All my efforts to get my baby gaining weight on breastmilk alone had failed. This was no longer about me and my hatred of the evil formula companies. I had to get food in this baby. And I feel good about the way I am doing it. With the exception of an occasional bottle, I have been giving Sami my pumped milk and formula through a supplemental nursing system (SNS), a device that allows me to give him a supplement at the breast, via a bottle that hangs around my neck, and a tiny tube that I tape to my nipple. Mosy women report that this device is a royal pain in the ass, but I have not found it to be that bad, honestly. Sami has no problem with the tube, and drinks very well through it. It is annoying to have to clean the damn thing all the time, but worth it to me to keep my baby at the breast.

I had thought about getting donated milk, and even put an ad out on a local message board and got some responses from very sweet and generous women. But then I developed this paranoid fear that Sami could catch something from another woman’s milk, since I couldn’t bring myself to ask the women to get screened. I am sure they are all perfectly healthy, disease-free women, but I was too scared to give Sami their milk. I have heard of a recipe for an infant formula made of goat’s milk, and may pursue that eventually, but right now I am just too tired to make my own formula. I can barely cook a meal for Hani and me. I feel terrible for saying that, but it’s true…

So, Sami has gained almost a pound over the last week, and is developing some chubby cheeks. Temperamentally, he is like a different baby. He smiles ten times more often, sleeps well, and barely cries. And here all this time I thought I had a fussy baby! He may be borderline fussy, but I think mainly he was just hungry. I can’t quite express the levels of guilt and inadequacy that this fact brings up in me. When these feelings arise, it is an opportunity to practice mindfulness of emotions. I just try to watch the emotions as they come up, acknowledge that they’re there, have some compassion for myself, and do the next right thing for my child. Which, for now, is to give him formula.

I feel like I’ve been in a fog since Sami was born. Mommy brain is real. I know it must go away, because there are a lot of smart moms in the world, but man do I feel stupid these days.

Yesterday I locked the keys in the car — with the keys in the ignition. All I could think was, THANK GOD Sami wasn’t locked in there too. If it wasn’t for the good samaritan mechanic across the street, I would have been fucked, waiting two hours for our roadside assistance people to come and take care of it. Thank goodness I am breastfeeding, because Sami got hungry and I was able to whip out a boob and feed him while this whole ordeal was going on.

I’m in a weird space where I can see and remember my pre-Sami ambitions, but it’s as if they are dangling out of my grasp. I spend an inordinate amount of time cruising baby-related websites and reading inane posts about cloth diapers and diaper bags. I envisioned spending my down-time reading novels, plotting the revolution, things of that nature. Instead, I cruise Craig’s List for great deals on used baby gear that we don’t need. I watch “Desperate Housewives” on DVD because I can relate to the show’s title.

Clearly, Sami doesn’t give a shit about what kind of booties he wears. So, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in clinical psychology to determine that I am trying to fill holes. Motherhood is all-consuming, intense, and mostly amazing, but I miss the other-than-mommy parts of myself. I’m trying to figure out who I am now–to take all the disparate pieces of me and reassemble them to make a semi-coherent whole. Which will of course always be changing and rearranging.

I guess one way of looking at this is: how would I want Sami to remember me? What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind? I don’t know that have the answers now, but it feels exciting to be formulating the questions. Sami is not quite 12 weeks old — the “4th trimester” is almost over, and I feel ready to step into an enlarged identity, a new sense of self. Meanwhile, I balance that against the Buddhist concept of not-self, anatta. I love to hold these paradoxes.

I had a bit of a setback with my book today — long story, don’t really want to go into details, but my agent told me that the proposal isn’t wowing editors, let’s put it that way.

My friend Yael and I were talking about how I vaccilate between wanting to give up and being a pit bull. She lovingly pointed out to me that those are two extreme positions. Well, true enough — I joked that I am feeling “extremely extreme” today. I’m kind of an extreme person when it comes down to it. I think I need to find a new Power Animal–one that is persistent but gentle. The Pit Bull has her place, but I’m not feelin’ it right now. I do feel defeated and just need to sit with that. As Yael said, no need to problem solve right now. I just got dealt a blow, let me sit on the ground for a minute before I rise.

I am offering my book to the Gods of Writing, the Gods of Plot and Story, the Gods of Publishing Your Memoir. I don’t know what to do with the damn thing right now, but I am ready to accept any inspiration that may come. Richard suggested last semester that I read E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. I need to get back to that…

Last night I went to Cheryl Strayed’s reading at AU. I read some of her nonfiction work in a workshop I took last year, and was deeply moved by “The Love of My Life,” a memoir piece she wrote that got published in The Sun, about the loss of her mother at the age of 22. Having lost my mother at the age of 20, I could really relate…

It was weird getting out at night–my first evening event since Sami’s birth–and seeing everyone from my MFA program. Everyone kept asking me about the baby, which was wonderful and made perfect sense since I hadn’t seen anyone since the baby’s birth, but still…I was so glad when EJ (one of my professors) asked me about how my writing is going, had I sent out “Mary and Me?” Am I coming back in the fall? It meant a lot. Last night reminded me that I still do have an identity beyond motherhood.

EJ invited me to dinner with Cheryl before the reading, but I had to decline because it would have been too hard to be away from Sami for dinner and the reading. I try not to see it as a missed opportunity, but damn it, I do. That is the honest truth. I would have loved to have dinner with Cheryl, but it wasn’t meant to be. I did get a chance to speak with her afterwards, got a book signed, and told her how much her work means to me. Turns out she is on a book tour with a 4 month old and a 22 month old — whoa! What an inspiration. Her novel Torch has been ten years in the making. I’m just starting it now and it’s a compelling read so far.

I have decided that if I can’t sell my memoir as nonfiction, I am going to make it into a novel. I asked her during the Q & A why she chose to write Torch as a novel and not a memoir. She said something to the effect that she can’t sustain the truth for that long. And that fiction gives her the freedom to see things from all the characters’ points of view, while in memoir you can’t speculate as much on the motivations of others. I was really intrigued by what she said.

This novel idea has been brewing in me for some time now. Anyway, I have to talk to my agent this week about the objections that one editor had to my book — it’s already been done by Breggin, I don’t have enough of a platform etc. Discouraging news, since she used this editor’s response as a way to gauge other editors’ potential responses. It’s a good thing I didn’t get too excited. This business is hard. You have to be determined. Luckily I’m somewhat of a pit bull and don’t give up easily.

I am on the down-swing of the roller coaster again. Yesterday should have been sad, because my grandmother died. But I didn’t feel any grief. Maybe I am just in shock at having lost two of my grandparents in two months. Grandma Sylvia is the only grandparent I have left.

Yesterday was beautiful. I didn’t weigh Sami, but only because I forgot. We went to a babywearing meeting and he was calm, he didn’t scream, and I had such a good time hanging out with the other mamas. I didn’t feel like the only one with a constantly screaming baby. We went home and played in his gymini, and he swiped at the dangling toys three times. He smiled so much and inspired a poem in me. I laughed and clapped and felt so proud of my developing boy.

Now today, I am a weepy mess. I weighed Sami, and he has only gained an ounce and a half in 6 days. I could feel myself sinking into fear and aversion as I reacted to that news. I went to the new moms’ class at the breastfeeding center and felt like I was the only one struggling, though I know it’s not true. Sami had about three meltdowns in the class and I ran out of milk in both breasts. Pat noticed how fussy he was, and how congested, and asked me to call her. Then I felt even worse. I didn’t stay afterwards for lunch, partially because Sami was crying, but even after he fell asleep in his car seat I didn’t go back because I was crying. I cried in the car all the way home and I’m crying now. I sent compassion to myself for being so afraid. I am so afraid. The fear is back, that there is something wrong with my son. The fear goes and I feel confident, it comes back and I am a holy wreck. How am I relating to the fear? At least I remembered to send some compassion to myself…

I know there is a correlation, or at least think there is a strong connection, between my fear and his crying. I know he picks up on my emotions. I can’t suppress them, though. The only way out is through!

I had a powerful moment while driving along K Street today. I looked at all the pedestrians crossing the street and remembered that they were all babies as little as Sami once. They were all as vulnerable and precious and resilient as he is. I felt an abiding tenderness for all those strangers. It was strange and wonderful, and I felt very alive and present amongst all those grown-up babies.

When Sami smiles
There is an alchemical reaction–
I turn from solid to liquid to air,
All that is leaden becomes golden.
A smile between us dances, so sweetly.
For precious evaporating moments,
I am happily lost in the curve of that wide-open mouth.
I see myself there, shining in the lights in his eyes.

Impermanence–anicca–is one of the three characteristics of existence, according to Buddhist teachings. I have been thinking a lot about anicca, and as far as I can tell, it can be summed up with the mantra “the more things change, the more they stay the same…”

I hung out yesterday with Debbie, a new friend who is also a meditation teacher and lived as a nun in Burma. Our babies were born two days apart. She has such interesting and heretical views on motherhood. At some point during our visit I babbled on and on about how different my life is, how everything has changed since I had Sami, how I look at my life in a “before” and “after way.”

“Really?” she said, “I don’t think things are so different. Yes, my life has changed, but in superficial ways. And everything’s always changing anyways.”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was right. Yes, Sami is here, and most of my time is spent caring for him rather than doing my own thing. But I’m still the same self-centered person I was, in many ways. Most of my concerns about Sami are not really about him, but about me. What am I doing wrong? How am I failing as a mother? This is basically the same pattern I’ve always had — anxious, relentlessly self-critical. I’m what they call an aversive personality type. That is not to say that I am not changing at the same time.

My friend Vicki told me that dharma teacher Joseph Goldstein calls this constant self-evaluation (usually negative) the “defilement of conceit,” and assured her that it is one of the last to go before arahatship. So I may be closer to enlightenment than I thought– ha! He told her in an interview not to take all that mind-stuff personally. I love that: don’t take your mind personally…

Here is a change: I am through with the experts. No more lactation consultants. I’m done. I’ll take those $85/hour fees and buy a new sling or add them to Sami’s therapy fund. (OK, I will still read Dr. Sears — I love him.) Here are the objective measures I will be concerned with: is my son gaining enough weight? Is he peeing and pooping? Is he meeting developmental milestones within a rough time frame? And that’s it.

The experts have all been helpful in some way, but I think I am actually ready to let go and try to start really trusting that Sami and I are OK. I think all the changes that they have suggested are to make life easier for me — such as “cut him off after a 45-minute feeding.” I just can’t do that. I think he must need to nurse all the time for some good reason, unbeknownst to me. I mean, it takes him an hour to finish a 2 ounce bottle! The kid is just a conaisseur, he likes to savor his meals. He sure didn’t turn out like his dad, Mr. Wolf-it-Down, in that regard. Anyway, he won’t be nursing around the clock by the time he is in college. Everything changes, right?

A big snowstorm hit DC this past weekend and it’s still pure pristine white outside. Sami gained an ounce and all is right with the world. It’s amazing how often my mood correlates with his weight gain or lack thereof. I think about the second noble truth: all suffering comes from clinging… but how do you not cling with your children? I am so attached, of course I am. How do I find just the right balance, so that I do not smother my child with anxious love? I want him to be free. I do not want to ever weigh him down with my neuroses, to pass on the anxiety baton to him. I know this is ambitious and a big old cliche — to not want to fuck up your kid like you were fucked up. Perhaps that is a recipe for fucking up your kid. I know I should just do my best and start saving up for his Therapy Fund just in case. I know that if I don’t let go, I will always find something to be dreadfully obsessed and concerned about where my son is concerned. Like Joseph Goldstein says, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” Oy vey. I woke up today and realized: I’m a Jewish mother! Poor, poor Sami…

Today Ria and I went grocery shopping with Sami. He used to automatically sleep when I took him out in the car, but no more. He’s older now and has become more alert and awake. He was having none of his car seat and would not stop crying until I picked him up and held him, and then he was fine–looking around at all the brightly colored stuff in the store. I remember the all-encompassing feeling of shame and panic when he started wailing in the Whole Foods — like people would all simultaneously turn around and waggle their fingers: ” You’re a Bad Mother!” I am OK with Sami crying at home — I mean, I want to comfort him, and sometimes when he screams, it really scares me, but most of the time I accept the fact that Sami is a baby and babies do cry. It’s a primary mode of communication for them. But in my perfect world, Sami is never upset in public — if he is, that means that there is something wrong with me and my parenting skills. I imagine Child Protective Services agents lurking around the corner waiting to snatch him away from me and put him in a god-awful foster home. “Your baby is crying, ma’am. We’re going to have to take him away from you, for his own good…”

I made a mental note to self — when out shopping, always bring the sling. I don’t blame the kid for not wanting to be stuck in the stupid car seat. Who would want to be strapped into a five- point harness, when you can be snuggly and warm against your mother’s body? Attachment parenting is not just a nice-sounding set of theories–it’s actually easier for mother and baby.

After the Whole Foods, Sami was the paragon of chill for the rest of the day. He barely cried all night, and we played together and he smiled lots of big smiles, the kind that light up his face, and I was thrilled. Then, and you gotta love this part, I started to worry that he wasn’t crying! I know, how neurotic is that??! I started to worry that this was a sign that he was dehydrated and not getting enough milk and getting weak and my god I am starving my child and Many Other Anxious Thoughts. Which I am proud to say I promptly banished from my mind, and returned to the moments of me holding my smiling baby on my lap, and basking in the glow of his eyes locked with mine, beaming. I lived those moments.

Sami has taken every limited preconception I had about love and smashed it to bits, exposing me to a love without boundaries, without anything to hold it back. But the flip side of that love is the greatest terror I have ever known, the fear of losing the object of my love, the fear of hurting him, of damaging him in some way, of mishandling my responsibilities as a parent somehow. That is the dark side of attachment. I think that’s what the Buddha was talking about in the Second Noble Truth. I think I really get it now. Sami is my greatest teacher.