Having Number Two: A Clear Yes or No

Up until recently, I’d pretty much convinced myself that I was going to be okay with just one kid. I cringed when I imagined how hard it’d be to take care of a newborn and a toddler at the same time. I cringed when I imagined how I’d go back to having hardly any time to myself, even less so than the first time around, and how I’d have to put all my teaching and writing projects back on hold. My husband was pretty much in the same boat.

With one, we could gain back our freedom to travel sooner—whether on weekend trips with just the two of us, or family trips that involved more distant locales (even China, I fantacized, for several months… we could rent out our house, take up in some quaint town (or tolerable city), immerse the whole family in Chinese).

Then there was also the question of money and space. With just one child, we would not be pressed to add on to our one bedroom cabin as quickly; we would not be forced to take out a loan before we felt like it was a smart financial decision. Hell, if other factors outweighed a desire for more space, we could even put off remodeling indefinitely. It’s been working out just fine the last couple months with our bed in the living room. Plenty of families all over the world wouldn’t blink an eye at raising a family in 850 square feet.

It wasn’t that I’d made up my mind or anything; I knew that there was a distinct possibility that I could feel totally differently in a year. But when I’d see moms with a baby and toddler and feel a wash of relief that I wasn’t them as opposed to envy, I thought that was a pretty good indicator that I was happy with what we have. Cedar is an awesome kid. But he wasn’t an easy baby with all his food sensitivities and sleeping challenges. He’s bright, active, and will keep delighting and challenging us for years to come. He’ll have plenty of playmates; I don’t think he’ll be lonely. And meanwhile, Matthew and I continue to reclaim vestiges of our former adult life back.

One of the major elements that we’ve recently started to reclaim is sleep. Cedar is finally sleeping through the night, pretty much every night, in his own bed. That doesn’t mean he always gets enough sleep, seeing that he wakes up around 5 a.m. But we no longer have to spend half our night listening for his waking whines, then rushing in to put him back down before he fully wakes. He no longer depends on nursing to fall asleep, and he knows he won’t get any milk from me now until 5 a.m. (which I’d like to try and change to even later; that’s the next goal).

In addition to all this, he just recently started going to sleep without anyone staying in the room with him until he drifts off. This feels huge! We do our usual stories, I leave, then him and Matthew say night-night to various animals, objects, and people, and then they turn on the noise machine, say a final night-night, and Matthew walks out and closes the door. Brilliant. This whole shift happened quite effortlessly one night after Matthew had enough of Cedar squirming about, climbing on top of him, and keeping himself up by distraction. Matthew decided to say goodnight and leave that night—and Cedar let him without a cry of protest. So that was it. Matthew then did the same thing the next few nights, staying in the room for an even shorter amount of time, and Cedar hasn’t protested at all. The most he’s done is get up and crack the door open, listening, then shut it and go back to lie down. I wish I could see what he looks like as he lies there going to sleep on his own and know how long it takes him, mostly to bask in the pleasure of my little guy getting to be so independent and taking so many changes in stride. But I don’t need to see him to know how good it feels to have an entire evening now where me and my husband can both relax, off duty for hours, by ourselves.

So needless to say we’re pretty happy about all this, and it’s probably no coincidence that now that we’ve FINALLY gotten over this poor sleeping hump, I’m lo and behold a bit more open to the idea of having another. It’s totally ironic, yes, that the minute I start sleeping better I’d begin considering being thrown back into total sleep deprivation and chaos. And on top of this, I’m thinking about weaning soon—almost looking forward to it as much as I’m dreading it—and I don’t exactly want to go straight from weaning to nursing again. I’m banking on having at least a good few months, if not more like a year, to remember what it feels like to not be producing milk as a primary occupation.

Here’s the thing. If I wasn’t 37 and a half years old, I wouldn’t be in a hurry. I’d say, let’s wait until Cedar is at least four or five, out of the toddler stage, before we even go there. Let’s give ourselves a few years off from this early intensive stage of parenting. Let’s get our finances together and remodel first, and let’s not kid ourselves about how long that process might take in itself. Let me also get my teaching life that much more established, not to mention self-publish that dusty manuscript of memoirs that I’ve been saying I’m going to publish for so long. Let me achieve some major goals that make me feel good and satisfied as a writer, before I dive back into the intense beauty and torture that is mothering a newborn. In other words: let’s take our time and think about it.

But the reality is, I don’t have a ton of time. After you hit 35, it becomes significantly harder to get pregnant each year that passes—the curve sharpens dramatically. I know people over 40 who are trying to get pregnant now, and who are mourning their belated realization of just how much difference a year makes at this stage. I know that if I were to decide that I did indeed want another one, I should just bite the bullet and do it NOW, or in the next year at least, because wouldn’t that suck to finally decide you wanted one and then to not be able to get pregnant?

Other people my age seem to know this too, because there’s been an explosion of births in my world this spring. I know of seven or eight women in my son’s preschool co-op class alone who just gave birth to their second or are due in the coming months. Then there are my friends on Facebook; the three babies born recently on my block; two of my oldest, dearest friends; and, finally, my sister who gave birth just last Friday.

Seeing people get pregnant and hold their new amazing babies doesn’t have anything to do with my new (old, revitalized) line of thought, does it? Nah…. Of course having lots of pregnant women and babies around me is tugging at my tender heart strings that holds this process up as one of the most amazing gifts in life of all; of course it is. But I also want to make sure that I’m not just caving to some kind of socially accepted norm and unspoken peer pressure—the kind that carves into our psyche from the time we are young that families are supposed to consist of two parents and two or three kids; and that it’s the most natural wonderful thing in the world to want more than one.

I told my husband the other day, the same day we went to meet my sister’s new baby, that I wanted to talk to him about the possibility of having another. He immediately got defensive and antagonistic, forcing me to play devil’s advocate and act as if I indeed knew I wanted another one, when what I really wanted to do was just explore and hash out the idea verbally, see how it sounded saying it aloud, return to the part of me that had always imagined I’d like to have two, a pair of playmates, a pair to grow old with, share holidays with, share affections with, preferably a daughter and a son, the so-called “perfect” family.

I also told my husband the story of some friends of ours, a couple who was trying to decide if they wanted to have another. After much soul-searching they finally decided that no, they did not, they were fine, they were done. And then the minute they decided this and made it real, they realized that they did indeed still want another. It’s that element of regret at play. Wanting what you could have had, but didn’t choose.

The thing is, how many parents ever regret having a child, whether that child is number one or number five? It seems like once you have a child, once they are real and breathing and in your life, there are few who would ever, on a deep soul level, regret having that child. The thought would be unspeakable, for that baby was here and thus meant to be. It might have made your life insufferably hard for many years, but in the end, it was worth it right? You wouldn’t have had it any other way? Or is it simply such an unspeakable taboo that we never hear from the parents who do?

That’s how it seems to work. Once they are here, you can’t imagine them never having been here. But what if you wanted a child, but never had one? Or never had the second one? It seems like the possibility to regret is much greater. I am almost 40, but I still have many years ahead of me to nurture students and to write and publish books. I am almost 40, but I don’t have many years ahead to have more children. This, my dear husband, is why I’m now starting to talk to you about this. This, because it does feel like now or never time. This, because even though we are both still on the fence, we love each other deeply, and if we do want this, we can make it happen. This because it will always be scary to contemplate something so huge as to choose to bring another life into the world and your life. But it will not always be possible to do so.

This is what I don’t want: I don’t want to passively choose to not have another one (by letting time slip away) because of money or space issues. Those are the things that we can figure out, make work. And nor do I want to passively choose to have one (how could you, really?) because of a fear that I would regret it if not. If we have another one, I want it to be because we are so fucking excited by the possibility of being able to experience the miraculous process of coming to know a new being so intimately related to the both of us, and yet so ultimately unknown and mystical, and to know all the joy and riches that such a darling spirit could bring into our lives. That leap of faith.

Yes, there’s always the chance that she/he could have a birth defect, or be a terribly difficult bad seed. (I have yet to see, Dear Kevin, but it’s on our queue). But chances are, they wouldn’t. And even if so, then they’d be meant to be ours to love and grow with anyway. I know of no other “path” than parenthood that rocks your world so tremendously, and that if you choose to accept and let it, will transform you in brilliant ways in the making. Despite all the sleep deprivation, time alone deprivation, and undeniable challenge and hardship.

What I want is to take a poll of all the new moms of two out there and to ask you: tell me the truth, how hard is it? How much sleep do you get, how much time do you get to yourself and with your husband? How much harder is it to balance the whole work-family continuum with two than one? Do you ever get pangs of regret?  I want to hear from the new parents, not the seasoned ones who have made it past the hardest years and are now coasting in the land of “kids are in school during the day” and “couldn’t imagine it any other way”. I want to hear from the newbies because if we do choose to go this route, I want to know what I’m in for. I don’t want to fool myself into thinking I might be that much wiser at hiring help or carving out more time for myself this time around that I’d avoid all the depressing, suffocating pitfalls of new-immersion-motherhood.

I’ve already heard sentiments from moms of two young ones about how it now feels like a “break” when you “just” have the baby to watch, and not both kids. My selective memory is remembering the days of long stroller walks where you could have long continuous conversations with other new moms and get exercise at the same time while watching the baby, and thinking, that wasn’t so bad… But then simultaneously wondering if this kind of activity would be the closest thing to a regular “break” that I’d get in a long time. And, of course, my problem is that I don’t just want your typical mom “breaks” to go work out, go to the spa, or to read on the couch—I want those too, yes, on occasion, but mostly I want time to write and do my work (writing and teaching)-- work that doesn’t pay much if any money.

So my conundrum has always been how to afford a babysitter to do my work that doesn’t pay for a sitter, and still have time left over for yoga or walks or necessary mental health breaks. In short, if I decide to have another, am I deluding myself if I think that I’ll somehow manage to have time for all of these? I can handle a sacrificial period without for maybe six months or so. But after that, I want back to it. I want to write, I want to teach, I want to work. This calling is like another child of mine, one I must take seriously. I don’t want to return to that deep motherhood cocoon quite so wholeheartedly as I did the first time. I want that elusive work-life balance.

My husband (and my selective memory) would do well to keep reminding me about how miserable I’ve been at times during the last couple years, and how it is only just in the last six months or so that I’ve had the energy, resolve, and time to teach again, in addition to everything else. Nobody needs to remind me of the joy of motherhood though. That reminder is breathing and singing and screaming with me every day.

Anyway. I know that after hashing it all out, by myself and with my husband, I know that in the end it won’t be a rational decision. It will either be a clear (but slightly fearful) yes or a clear (but slightly wistful) no resonating from within my heart.  

New Life

Yesterday, my dear friend gave birth to her baby. When we heard the news that she'd gone into labor we lit a candle and, when it went out the next day, we lit another one which we'd keep lit until well after the baby was born. Each time I saw the flickering flame, as I went about my daily tasks or got up to go pee in the dark, I was suddenly reminded again of what was going on for her, at this very moment, imagining her in the throes of the wildest, most intense ride of her life.

Today, I’m feeling immensely grateful. Grateful for the birth of her baby. Grateful that my husband is taking the week off, and letting me have a stretch of three mornings to go write. And grateful that on Friday we will take off for our first camping trip of the year, to Mt. Rainier, and that the weather is actually forecast to be sunny!

Yesterday, my online birth story workshop also ended, and next Monday, my “letter writing” workshop at the Hugo House will begin. In between the two, I have this wonderful week ahead of me that, despite the usual childcare duties, chores, and sleep deprivation, still feels like a vacation. A good part of this sense of pleasure I think comes from having completed the birth story workshop—a goal that started out as an idea, that I dreamed of long ago, then planned and advertised for, made a reality, dove into, and accomplished on my own. My daily work of motherhood on the other hand is also deeply satisfying and challenging, but it isn’t a job that one ever “finishes” and is thus allowed that sense of satisfaction that comes from something that has a clear beginning and end.

             

The birth story workshop was deeply satisfying in so many ways. I love the process of helping other people find the time to write, delve into their memories, let go of expectations, find their voices, confront their sorrows and joys, and go deep into their interior landscape. And I especially loved doing this within the context of writing about the births of our children—such a profound experience that so many of us women go through, and yet that the world at large so rarely gets the opportunity to hear about in detail.

             

Prior to being pregnant and preparing to give birth myself, I don’t think I’d ever heard a birth story told in person. Perhaps I remember a crazy video of a birth shown in a high school science class (or am I imagining this?), and perhaps I’d read some brief account here or there (right?), but to actually hear what it felt like, what it looks like, how many hours or days it could span, and all the variables of what could happen? Nope. Not a clue. How about you?

             

Why is it that we don’t collectively hear or know more about childbirth and labor? Well, for one thing, once the baby comes, parents are usually so overwhelmed and deeply immersed in the intense care of a newborn and the desperate hope to catch up on their sleep, that there isn’t exactly time to sit down and tell everybody about the crazy ride they have just been on. And yet, no matter what happens in a labor, no matter if it lasts four hours or four days, it is nothing less than profound. Think about it. Birth. All of our metaphors for talking about the journey that a person, a country, or a culture go through can be framed through the lens of birth and death. All of us are born—again and again and again—as we go through different cycles in our lives, different lessons, journeys, travels, jobs, tragedies, accomplishments. These are the stories we live for, the stories we look towards for all of our hope and inspiration. And all of this movement, all of these lessons and cycles and metaphors stem from the actual physical process of a mother giving birth.

           

When you strip life to its core, we are left with the image of a newborn baby, naked and screaming and thrust into this new life through her mother’s birth canal. Covered with bodily fluids, connected the darkness of the womb through the lingering pulse to the umbilical cord, so dependent on the care of others to survive, and yet nevertheless out here for the first time in the world, in the light, taking in your first breaths on your own.

             

It’s crazy really to think about birth. What happens, how it happens. The countdown of days, then hours, as the mother’s uterus starts to contract, as the baby signals to mother it’s readiness to be born. It’s crazy, really. Crazy beautiful and intense. There is nothing else like it, this journey that mothers prepare for, this need for her to let go into the experience—to let go of fear, expectations, inhibitions, life as you know it. To know that everything you’ve just done to prepare for the birth is both enough, and also could never possibly be enough to prepare you for the unknown journey of this labor—what it will feel like, how long it will last, how you will respond, how you will know yourself—or not know yourself, not even identify with a sense of “self”—in the act of giving birth.

           

My dear, dear friend of many years, perhaps many lifetimes, just gave birth yesterday. I still have not heard the details, but I thought of her throughout the day and night each time I looked up and saw the candle we’d lit: burning, a constant reminder that while we were going through the daily acts of our lives, she was in the throes of sweating, breathing, and pushing—of what will probably be the single most intense act of her life. Unless you count her own birth—or her own death. Neither of which most of us are able to remember and put into words.

Giving birth to our babies, though? We do have the capability to translate and preserve these stories. For ourselves, for our loved ones. And as much as giving birth is an “out of mind” experience, as much as we seem to forget so much of it in its aftermath, there is still so much of the experience that we can convey-- for ourselves, and for others. To help us touch upon the mystery that is life, the mysteries embodied within nature and our internal cycles, the mysteries embodied within this act of a new life coming into the world.

             

Who are you, who will you be, little one? Why is it you, chosen, for this couple, and not another? Why is it you, only you, that is meant to be the one to radically alter your mother’s lives? How is it that birth happens all around us, every day, and yet there is only this one small window, when the memory of labor is still fresh and the sense of your unfathomable newness to this world still so breathtaking. Before long, at least on the surface, all the human rituals that we attach to babies seem to take precedence, or at least this is what we see and talk about: the cute outfits and photos posted on Facebook, then the endless conversations about feeding, burping, and sleep.

When you reach a certain age—mid-thirties for our generation—all kinds of people in your immediate world (tidily represented by Facebook) who had held off until now start to pop out babies. First, you hear the announcement, usually when they are about 3+ months (with a lesser risk of miscarriage), or else with the first cute belly shots, when they really start to show.

             

Then, depending on the person, you are reminded of their pregnancy through weekly updates on their changing sleep, eating, or energy patterns. We get updates about  finding out the sex, about going on a “babymoon”, pictures of the new nursery, and then finally those last posts when entering the final stretch of days left at the job, the Braxton Hicks contractions, and a mounting sense of anticipation, anxiety, and excitement.

             

Then: silence. Then: the first trickle of news, the baby is here! The name, the length, the weight. Then: the first photos. A giant wave of congratulations. The biggest news that one could possibly share. The greatest achievement to reflexively ‘like’. What’s not to like? A new being is here. No one has died in the process. Another fleeting reminder of the miracle of life. Something we’ve all gone through: the birth canal—or at least the transition from darkness and womb to air and light.

             

Then: silence. Mom and Dad (or Mom and Mom, or Mom and whomever she has) are exhausted. Learning. Overwhelmed. Busy. Swept up in a vortex of sleepless nights, breastfeeding, diapering and swaddling. On the sharpest learning curve of their lives. If they are lucky, they are brought meals, cared for by family, ushered into a cocoon of safety and soft voices, all for the love of the baby. If they are lucky, they are able to sleep a bit, to rest, to cry, to stare with wide open gaping mouths of sputtering love. If they are lucky, they have people around them to help them, to care for them as they are newborns themselves. If they are lucky, these same people make sure to give them their precious alone time, time to nap together as a new family of three, time to stare with mouths open agape, time to cry.

             

No matter the birthing experience, it is a proper response to cry. No matter vaginal or cesarean, no matter long or short, no matter tearing or no tearing, no matter boy or girl, healthy or not healthy—no matter the experience, there is no more appropriate response to the entrance of a new life into the world than to cry.

             

Oh, dear God, dear Universe, dear Allah, dear Nature, dear pagan gods of the underworld, dear unfathomable Unknown: a baby has been born.

             

Oh, dear mother, dear father, dear heartbeat, dear blood line, dear family and friends and all of my relations: you have helped give birth to a baby.

My dearest friend has just given birth. And soon, in a matter of days, my sister will give birth too. Just recently she asked if I could be available as a back-up support person, in case her husband needs help, or in case she wants me there at her labor. My heart leapt. Yes, of course! I will be there, if I can be. I had figured she was okay with just her husband being there, and also she’d probably assumed it’d be hard for me to commit to being there because of my responsibility for my son. I went ahead and scheduled a camping trip for the few days leading up to her due date, figuring it’d better to schedule it before the due date than after (as it is more likely that she’ll be late than early for first-time births). But now, I’m hoping more than ever that the baby won’t come early and that I’ll be able to be there for my sister and her husband. And, although I don’t assume this, that I might even get to witness the birth if she wants me there. This possibility feels akin to being offered the opportunity to go on a spiritual retreat of unknown proportions, for which you must commit to dropping everything in a minute, quite possibly emerging ragged and exhausted, but from which you can be absolutely sure you will emerge profoundly moved and changed.

Even if I only get to rush in with flowers and tears after the drama has unfolded behind closed doors, I am incredibly excited for my sister to give birth to her first baby, Cedar’s cousin, my niece.

I feel poised on the cusp of so much new life right now—with one baby just arrived, and another on its way. Also, with one workshop just completed, another on its way. And in between, this stretch of days left open to enjoy and revel in life, summer, nature, family, writing, home, my own incredible good fortune.

I love you, my sisters. I love you, my babies. I love you, my students, my teachers, my friends. I love you, my life.

Thank you for the never-ending, unfolding reminder that this, this act of creation, is what it’s all about.

One Goal at a Time: Another Update on Sleep

I want to write about something besides sleep again, but until I’m actually getting enough, this topic will remain forefront on my brain. So here goes, one more time.

I’ve been tired lately. And busy. And we have tackled a lot in the last six weeks. We went from all three of us sleeping in one bed, with Cedar waking every few hours and nursing back to sleep for his entire life, to-- in six weeks—Cedar now sleeping in his own bed, in his own room, and sometimes for a nine hour stretch without nursing or waking. It sounds like we should be celebrating, right? It's hard to, though, when most nights he is still waking a couple times and the new wake up call is often 5 a.m.-- resulting in an even more sleep-deprived child than before.

           

The back story (last post): we moved our king bed into the living room, creating a little nook for my husband and I, and giving the bedroom to Cedar. Now, even if we still have plenty of bad nights, it does still feel like a small miracle each morning I turn to my husband and ask, “Did he wake last night?” And he says, no. Even if nine hours is still is not enough for Cedar to be fully rested (he needs at least 10), it is still a major milestone. Here is how we did it.

The first couple weeks after moving the bed, I would rush in whenever Cedar woke and nurse him, eventually just giving up and going to sleep next to him because I couldn’t fall asleep apart from him myself. Not only did he seem to be waking more (and not less like we’d hoped) without our presence in the bed, but I also didn’t realize how much I would miss sleeping next to him, how strange it would feel to be so far away from him. Of course, this feeling was only compounded by the fact that my body felt tensed on alert, ears listening closely for to any noise coming from the adjacent room—regardless of the fact that my husband said he would listen for Cedar and wake me. Somehow, just knowing that I’d be on duty sooner or later, and wanting to be able to respond right away to my son in order to ease the transition and any potential anxiety he might feel about suddenly being made to sleep alone, made it near impossible for me to drift off easily in a separate bed. Co-sleeping for two years was too deeply ingrained.

So, for the first couple weeks of the new arrangement, I more or less slept with Cedar in his new bed. I didn’t consider this a failure (despite the fact that I thought it sounded this way to others when they would ask how it was going), for to my mind it was enough just to introduce him to the new furniture arrangement and the idea of his new bed, all his own. That part actually went over really well. Step one was accomplished.

At this point, I decided that I needed my husband to take over. We agreed that what really needed to happen now was to night wean. No more milk at night. I’d heard from many sources that once night weaned (or weaned altogether), their former terrible sleepers finally started sleeping through the night. So I convinced my husband to take over for a couple weeks (to start)—meaning to be the one to go in when Cedar woke, and he’d remind him that there was no more milk at night. I could then put in earplugs and fall asleep peacefully, knowing that—for the first time in over two years—I was no longer on night duty. Hallelujah!

As was to be expected, the first few nights were the worst. Lots of waking and complaining. Then we had one breakthrough night where Cedar slept for eight hours. Then 9.5 the next night. High five! I couldn’t help but proclaim my joy on Facebook. Of course, I knew better than to think that it would be smooth sailing from then on, and true to form, the last several weeks have been up and down—some bad nights, a few more nine hour nights, and most nights, something in between. On top of that, my body still seems to be trained to wake a couple times each night, and when I wake I have to pee. In short, sleep hasn’t really improved tremendously, but when you consider the fact that Cedar is now in his own bed and night weaned, and that we’ve had a fair number of before-unheard-of sleeping through the nights, then I realize that we’ve already come a long way.

We decided that “after the sun came up” would be our way of letting Cedar know when he would get milk. Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally), Cedar’s been waking around 4:45-5:00 every morning, and at that waking he’ll either stumble out to find me or Matthew will nudge me and I’ll go in. Then, Cedar will proceed to nurse or at least be attached to my boob for something like two hours! And since it’ll take him a long time to fall back asleep at that hour (if he does at all), I don’t dare move him off of me for fear I’ll ruin my chance of him—and me—getting in another hour or so of sleep. Because otherwise, like I said, nine hours sleep (and averaging six for me) is not enough.

And so, that brings me to the present, where we’re all doing okay, operating most nights on almost enough sleep, but not really—which over the course of a week creates quite a deficit. Matthew gets to crash hard for another two hours after Cedar wakes at five, so that helps to counter the couple times a night he might still have to get up. And I get the peace of mind, at very least, of knowing that when Cedar goes down around 7:30 or 8:00 each night, I’m off duty till the next morning. There is great joy in that.

Matthew was hoping that around now he could be relieved of exclusive night duty and we could start switching off nights. But I’ve convinced him to give it a little longer, with the hope that the longer the new sleep patterns can get ingrained, the easier it will be when we introduce yet another new variation on the norm.  I did put Cedar down one night recently when Matthew came home late, and I was a bit wary of what would happen when I would have to put him down without nursing (something I’ve never done). But to my great relief, it went just fine; Cedar didn’t even ask for milk until about ten minutes in when a light suddenly went on and he remembered this missing ingredient in our ritual, but then he only gave me a few token whines when I reminded him that there wouldn’t be anymore until morning. I did sing to him still and rubbed his back for a bit, but mostly he just lay there himself, and was asleep in 15 minutes. Success.

Later that night though, when it was my turn to try out night duty, I couldn’t fall asleep again—the curse of my anxious listening body reigned. Rather than risk all-night insomnia, I woke and begged Matthew to go back on duty, and he agreed. The next day I asked if he could just keep being the default nighttime parent for now, and he could let me know if he needed a night off. I reminded him that at least he got that nice last two hour chunk in the morning, whereas I’d be hardly functioning if I had to wrestle with my own insomnia, go in if Cedar wakes, and wake up at five to boot.

He agreed, for now, and I thanked him profusely. He has been a great support throughout this process. It would be so much harder to make this transition without him.

If he’d protested, however, I might have reminded him that I’ve been on night duty for over two years, so surely he could stomach a couple weeks, or even months. “But we had no other choice then,” he protested once. “Yes, I’m not saying you’re at fault, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I’ve been doing this for two years.” He was silent. I also told him about several couples I know of where the husbands took over at night once the baby was night weaned. I understand how it might be too much to ask if Cedar was still waking a ton and if it was increasingly hard for him to function at work, but if he was functioning okay, then surely he could handle a little more sleepiness. After all, it’s not like I don’t value my brain functioning well during the day as well. I suppose one could argue that my work is flexible enough that I have the luxury of deciding not to work on the days where I am brain dead, but this is increasingly not always the case.

Anyway, this argument is moot, because my husband has agreed to keep going like this for the time being. Our next hurdle to tackle is to try to get rid of Cedar’s 5:00 waking. We are thinking of getting one of those devices where some kind of light comes on or animal pops up at the time that you’ve decided it is okay for your child to call for you—even 6:00 would be so much better than 5:00. We’ll try to teach Cedar that he cannot get out of his bed until this magic moment. Although it sounds like a stretch, I know it’s worked for some parents and I also know that a mere couple months ago, the idea that he’d transition so smoothly to sleeping in his own bed for most of the night would have blown me away. Never mind that he’s not sleeping through the night every night yet still. We are on our own timeline. Other people’s norms do not apply.

And… the next step after that? Total weaning. Maybe by the end of summer? Or mid-fall? “Why are you waiting?” my husband asked. “Why not now?” Well, think of all the changes we’ve already introduced recently, I explained. I want to do this all gently, one thing at a time. Also, every week that passes, his diet expands. I’m still gauging each day just how much more dairy I can get away with giving him, thereby increasing his protein options exponentially. (Soy is not an option; meat is often rejected). I know he’d be “okay” without my milk nutritionally, but there are plenty of days still where he doesn’t get much more down than fruit, almond milk, and bread products, and on those days in particular, my milk source still feels like such a blessing.

The other hesitations? The fear that tantrums will increase, or be harder to calm down once full-blown. And? Of course, just losing our precious bonding ritual. All those chill moments of cuddling and winding down together. The end of an era, I suppose. And, yes, certainly I know this too: the beginning of a new one, filled with so much more freedom to get away. The ability to go on a week-long writing retreat, in theory anyway, if I could convince my husband and our parents to take over for that long—not an easy logistical feat. 

We’ll get there when we get there. For now, we got plenty on our plates. Namely getting over this whole sleep saga hump, which can be likened to the metaphor where you’re climbing a mountain and think you’re nearing the top, only to then realize that there’s yet another big hill to climb, and so on and so on. For now, we just need to remember to celebrate that what we've already accomplished is huge, and we just need to keep taking it one goal at a time.

Sleep Deprivation, Bed Swapping, Night Weaning, and the Pain of Separation

Last week, an acquaintance I was talking to on the phone commented on how tired I sounded. I was surprised. Yes, I was tired, as I often seem to be, but I hadn’t realized that my voice had betrayed this. After all, there have been plenty of days recently where I’ve been even more tired. I had thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping up my end of the conversation despite my occasional pauses where I’d grasp for the right word.

After hanging up, I felt a little sad as I thought about how for the majority of these last two years since my son was born, I’ve been functioning at a sub-par level. How although I’ve been able to congratulate myself for still managing to write, volunteer, and finally get back into teaching, all while taking care of Cedar, I’m still only achieving a fraction of what I might be capable of if I woke up every day refreshed-- if I, for just one night, actually had an unbroken night’s sleep, and didn’t still consider a night where Cedar “only” wakes two times a “good” night. Big sigh. Yes, sleep has been a saga.

A lack of sleep has been the main reason why I have posted so little on this blog over the last couple months. It’s not that I haven’t tried to write new entries, but I’ve been so tired every time I actually have a chunk of time to write (and not pay bills, do dishes, shop, cook, etc.), that I’ve just ended up spewing out a convoluted tangle of words. I’ve logged three attempts at blog posts in the last couple months, and not surprisingly the topics have revolved around sleep—or topics related to sleep, like breastfeeding and weaning (for if I night-weaned perhaps I’d get a better night’s sleep?) or co-sleeping vs. giving Cedar his own bed (because maybe he’ll sleep better if he’s alone, or maybe he’ll sleep worse?).

It’s sad when you’re so used to sleep deprivation that you don’t even realize you are functioning in a compromised state anymore, when it’s just become your reality. If I pause to think about it, I can specifically recall the few mornings at Cedar’s preschool co-op where I’d gotten more rest the night before (and/or indulged in coffee), and thus actually had the energy to start up conversations with the other moms around the snack table. I can’t help but wonder if non-sleep deprived moms still do things like leave the keys in the front door. And I get so tired of answering the question, “How are you?” with “Tired” because that’s the only word that really sums up my condition.

Anyway, needless to say, I’ve been sorely needing some change on the sleep front. Initially I considered night weaning as the first line of attack, banking on what others have said about how night weaning leads to fewer night wakings. But the idea of night weaning while co-sleeping, of having to lie right next to my son and then deny him my breast which he has used to fall back to sleep from day one, and then having to listen to him howl and rage (and quite possibly hit or grab?), does not sound ideal. I would probably end up getting out of bed to “sleep” on the couch (or rather to listen on the couch, since you can hear everything in this house), while letting my husband deal with the brunt of my son’s fury. There’s no knowing how long this might have to go on before my son would accept the new status quo, and no saying if once I moved back into the bed if he wouldn’t just fuss for “milk” all over again.

So, I talked myself out of that approach. Instead, we decided that an easier strategy might be to first make the transition of getting Cedar used to sleeping in his own bed—no small task in itself since we’ve co-slept since Day One. Then over the last month we have slowly began to clear room in the corner of our living room where our king-sized bed would now live, and in the bedroom in its place we installed a full-sized futon for Cedar.

Week by week, friends kept asking if we’d moved the bed yet, and I would explain how busy my husband and I were, and how we had to pick a date a whole month out in advance where we would both be home and have childcare for Cedar while we made the final furniture switcharoo. (We didn’t want him to be home while we did it because, based on past experiences, we figured it would be more upsetting for him to be involved in the chaotic rearranging process—especially while Matthew and I were both busy-- than to simply come home to it all nice and arranged anew.)

Finally, after a month of anticipation, we moved the beds.

From one perspective, the move has gone quite smoothly. Cedar liked his new bed, sheets, and rug, and with the exception of seeming a little weirded out by the changes the first few nights (as in, being hyper-aware any time he woke up and calling out, “New bed!”), he hasn’t seemed upset at all that his “old bed” is now in the living room. But I know that this “success” is only the first small step toward our larger intentions of one day having him sleep alone, and one day, finally, please Lord, sleeping through the night.

So far when Cedar wakes up around midnight, I’ve ended up crawling into his new futon and staying for the rest of the night. Prior to that, I lie with my husband in “the big bed” in the living room, feeling strange to not have his little body and sweet breath at my side. So strange in fact that I could not go to sleep hardly at all for a few nights, hyper-alert of any sounds coming out of his room, knowing he was going to eventually wake up and that I would then rush to his side, ready to assure him that Mama was still here, even if he couldn’t find me immediately upon waking.

I want to do this whole thing gradually and gently. After all, it isn’t as simple as what most parents go through when they make the switch for their children from a crib to a toddler bed; it isn’t just about changing the bed. It’s about changing his—and my-- entire way of sleeping at night. I don’t want it to feel like we are “banishing him” from his old place of belonging next to Mama, and forcing him to “grow up” overnight, tears be damned.

Maybe if I could actually fall asleep again before midnight then I wouldn’t be so hyper-aware when wakes, and maybe he’d surprise me some night by actually going back to sleep on his own. But so far, it doesn’t seem this way. So far, neither Mama nor Cedar are used to being in separate beds.

***

When you’re chronically sleep deprived, it’s hard to embark on any big changes that threaten that sleep is going to first get worse before it could potentially get better. After several nights last week with insomnia, (and prior to that about 3-4 months of a downward spiral of Cedar waking more at night-- was it from teething? Teething’s always an easy target.) I still just want to get a decent night’s sleep. Not great, just decent. So after lying awake for a couple hours away from my son, I practically run to his room now when I feel I’ve “given the separation thing a fair shot” and can call it good, settling back in snuggled next to him where it feels like I belong.

I don’t think I realized how hard not sleeping--or trying not to sleep-- next to my son would be on me. I don’t think I realized just how much of me truly loves it, or is deeply attached to it, despite the agony of being consistently woken or squished or lay upon by a thirty-pound nursing toddler.

I love the intimacy of being able to snuggle in and settle down with relief at the end of the night next to my son. I love the way his head will stretch out to find my shoulder in his sleep, or his hand will rest on my arm, and how I can tell that this physical closeness—even as he sleeps—comforts him. All is right in the world; Mama is here.

But I also admit that perhaps I suffer from my own form of separation anxiety. From the beginning it did not feel right to sleep apart from my son, and my desire to stay close to him has not abated. It was heavily reinforced during the first year and a half of his life when he’d often wake up in pain from gas; I would rush to his side or else already be right there to bring him to my breast and offer physical relief to his tummy. And by now? I’m just conditioned to hurry to his side.

           

Perhaps I have a touch of PTSD from this period I joke, although I’m actually serious (even if a diagnosis PTSD may be too extreme). Because there is some part of me that still bolts up to attention when my son cries out for me at night, especially now that I’m lying in the big bed apart from him, trying to go to sleep on one hand while the other part of me is just lying there, aware of the silence, waiting for Cedar to wake up.

For now I console myself with the fact that even though we are a way’s off from proclaiming any true success in the sleep department, at least we’ve already reaped some benefits from the big move. For one, it feels great to have another comfy space to hang out in the evening hours, to luxuriously spread out and read in bed, or to lie, talk, and be intimate with my husband, just the two of us. I am also fond of sitting on the bed during the day and reading or writing, occasionally glancing up to look out the adjacent window. Miles, our cat, likes the added lounging space as well and has quickly tried to assume his old spot sleeping next to our sides. And the space that the bed occupies actually looks more streamlined and visually pleasing now than it did before when it was filled with a bunch of clutter. And finally, even if I’m still mostly sleeping with Cedar and he’s still waking, I think overall I’m sleeping a tad better because I’m not sandwiched between two people.

After sleeping next to my son for two years and counting, after never having felt like there was a right month, developmental milestone, or moment where he or I were “ready” to make a sudden change, it’s hard to try and change it now all at once. It starts to make me question if even a good night’s sleep is worth the sadness of taking away the bond we have through co-sleeping. Though a larger part of me feels like it’s time, I still worry about how this could lead to more separation anxiety for Cedar or more tantrums. It makes me wonder (not aloud until now) whether it’d be such a bad thing to go to bed with my husband and then keep sleeping with Cedar for part of the night. After all, it’s up to us to decide “what works.”

At the end of the day, I just want the solution that will guarantee the most and best sleep for everyone.

And yet… at the end of two years, I gotta ask myself if it isn’t time to bite the bullet and do something hard. Now, two weeks into this whole bed-change thing, I’m starting to suspect again that the more critical change that needs to happen is night weaning. So many people I have talked to who were in similar situations have confirmed that once they night-weaned (or weaned for good), their chronic poor sleepers started sleeping SO much better. The lure of this promise looms big. Not to mention the fear that taunts, The longer you wait, the harder it may get.  

Every child is different, of course. Some kids “wean themselves” at 12 months, 18, or 24. Others, like mine, I suspect would just keep going and going if I let him. I’m not okay with nursing Cedar until he’s five. At least I don’t think I am. Even until he’s three is sounds a bit long, even if I have always said that is my cut off point. I do want to keep going for a while, especially since nutritionally it still helps my peace of mind so much to know he's getting the extra protein from my milk since he can't tolerate much dairy or soy. But now, I’m thinking I’d like to wean by the end of the summer—by the time he’s two and a half or so. Mostly because of the fear that the stronger, more verbal, and more demanding my son gets, the harder it will be to wean.

Basically, until we’re willing to lose more sleep while I night wean (meaning telling Cedar that Mama and milk need to sleep and that he can no longer have milk at night-- or at least “until the sun comes up”), I’ve realized that sleep isn’t gonna get a whole lot better. And so Matthew has agreed to play the role of the enforcer, going in when Cedar wakes up to bear the bad news, because it feels like it will be easier this way than if I tried to deny Cedar my milk while it was right there in front of him (especially if, say, he’s been crying for an hour and we all just desperately want to go back to sleep).

I told Cedar last night about our plan. That in a few days, there wasn’t going to be any more milk at night, and Baba was going to come in to Cedar when he woke. I didn’t elaborate much further; I didn’t emphasize how Mama and Cedar would no longer be sleeping together at night. I just said, no milk.

Cedar listened closely, then clung to me. I’m not sure what he understood, for instance I don’t think he knows what “in a few days” means, but obviously he got the gist of it. I will continue to remind him in the coming two days, and then on that last night, I will tell him, “this is the last night,” just so the pain of change will come as less of a slap of surprise. Then our plan is for Matthew to start putting him down every night (right now we alternate), because we think it will be easier for Cedar to wake to Baba’s presence if that’s what he’s gone to sleep with as well.

I know that once we start this process, we’ll have to stick with it lest we want to backtrack and erase whatever work we’ve already invested. So we’ve picked our night to begin; we’ve steeled ourselves for a long, sleep-deprived weekend to follow. And then we hope, pray, that within a few days it will already start to get better, and that within a few weeks, the transition will be complete.

Sounds so easy, huh? Right. No one says it’s easy. But plenty of parents have done this before. I guess it’s finally our turn.

Guest Post: A Family-Centered Cesarean Birth by Stacy S. Hirsch

A few years ago I had the honor to work with a friend on her birth story. I asked Stacy if I could post her story on my blog, with the hope that it might inspire some of you to write your own stories. A version of Stacy's story was also published in Midwifery Today. 

A Family-Centered Cesarean Birth

by Stacy Hirsch

I was 34 weeks pregnant when we learned our little one was breech. An ultrasound confirmed the positioning and showed a nuchal cord (a cord around the neck). I had never worried about the possibility of a breech baby and in that moment the nuchal cord sounded more alarming to me. Our midwife assured me that many babies have the cord around their neck at some point during the pregnancy and this typically does not present any complications. The larger, more pertinent issue didn’t register for me immediately; I didn’t know enough to know that if our baby didn’t flip we were unlikely to have a vaginal birth.  

     We had chosen a midwife for our prenatal care and we had always planned to have a home birth. For me, home is where I reconnect with myself. It is the place where I can easily let my mind rest and where I can feel my body vibrate at a softer frequency. Having a home birth meant being surrounded by warmth, history, familiarity and love. It meant having our child born into an environment full of intention. The idea of not having a home birth was at first devastating. It seemed so unfair. To feel the vision I held for our birth slip away was incredibly painful. Unpeeling the layers of this disappointment took time.  

     I had already purchased a majority of my home birth supplies and they were neatly organized and labeled in brown paper bags. I was beginning to envision myself giving birth in our home and I eagerly began designing each detail for the event. The birth tub was ordered and I even planned the snacks I would have for our midwife and her assistant: hummus, herbed cheeses, hearty breads, fruit and vegetables slices, olives, nuts and seeds. All of my favorite finger foods that could easily be prepared ahead of time without a lot of fretting. The home would be warm, inviting and full of welcoming hearts, and the nourishing food would ensure my supportive team would have the strength to go the distance with me.

     I soon learned that in our region, as in many other parts of the United States, there really weren't many options for vaginal breech delivery. Providers typically view a breech presentation as having a great enough risk to necessitate a cesarean birth. Our midwife knew that it was possible and safe to deliver a breech baby vaginally but did not have the expertise to do so. We considered trying to find someone trained in breech delivery, even if we needed to travel to another state. It wasn’t difficult to find stories on the internet of women delivering their breech babies vaginally. I imagined these women as strong, rebellious, heroic, articulate and confident. They lived their lives with a silent certainty and they always achieved their goals no matter how big the fight. I envied these women.  

     My life is full of blessings, yet I am also a worrier. At times I posses all of the attributes I imagined these other women having but I often need a little extra support to overcome the fear that passes through my mind. I wanted my doctor or midwife to have training in breech vaginal delivery. I wanted the system to agree that it was a safe and sane choice. I wanted to know I was doing everything I could to give our daughter the very best start in life. I wanted to eliminate doubt and worry. The idea of choosing a vaginal breech delivery and then having a negative outcome was difficult for me to consider. It seemed like a choice with too much risk and not enough support.  

     We were concerned about the breech presentation but optimistic that with a little more time our baby would flip. We did our research and tried everything to gently encourage her to make the journey 'head down'. Our efforts included chiropractic techniques, homeopathy, acupuncture with needles and moxabustion, craniosacral therapy, hypnosis, counseling, swimming, biking, inversions/pelvic tilt, Rebozo, coaxing, vibrations and a bright light low on the pelvis, online prayer groups of various denominations, laughter, tears and finally an external cephalic version (ECV) performed under medical supervision at a hospital thirty miles from our home. An ECV is a procedure where the obstetrician manually attempts to rotate the fetus into the proper position while the mom and baby’s vitals are monitored. It is a relatively short procedure and, in our case, was unsuccessful.  

     We tried to hold it all lightly as we ultimately put our trust in our daughter, knowing that birth was a natural process and if she could flip, she would. With each appointment or technique I would go through a range of emotions. Part of me felt certain whatever I was doing in that moment was going to work and another part of me was slightly afraid of how it would feel to have this little creature flip-flop 180 degrees in my belly. Each day was a dance. Some days I felt I was the lead partner but on most days all I could do was follow.  

     Trying all of these techniques and connecting with all of these wonderful healers had a secondary effect. They were all women, all mothers and they all became an important part of our birth. They helped me to see that birth was not a single act. They reminded me that our birth experience began many months prior to finding out our daughter was breech. They opened my eyes to the larger process of birth. They also helped me to realize that this was my baby’s birth as much as mine. This was the first but it would likely not be the last time my daughter and I would have differing opinions about how to proceed through a life event. I could give up and settle for what the system had to offer us or I could let go, regroup and create the birth we wanted for our daughter within the system. 

     As the weeks disappeared, and our due date rapidly approached, a medically necessary cesarean seemed unavoidable. I had heard stories of women traumatized by their birth experience, and I was determined that this would not be me no matter what obstacles we faced. We needed to be informed. We decided to research our options for creating a cesarean birth that would honor both mother and child and allow us to not stray too far from our original intention. Our midwife was very supportive and helped us sort through all of the new information. She connected us with a midwife-friendly obstetrician in our region and a facility that would allow us some latitude in our birth choices. She also encouraged us to draft a birth plan. We went online and found a white paper on family-centered cesarean birth from the International Cesarean Awareness Network. Using the paper as guidance, along with other resources, we crafted a birth plan that offered us the best chance of giving our daughter the gentlest birth possible given the circumstances.    

     Version one of the birth plan sounded something like this: “I really wanted a home birth and I am only here because the system says this is where I need to be but there is a chance she will flip once we arrive at the hospital, and if that is the case, I want to leave so we can birth our daughter naturally in our home.” Version one also outlined a plan for a vaginal hospital birth and included a smaller section for a non-emergency cesarean due to the breech presentation. I was still struggling to let go. I didn’t fully identify with women who choose cesarean or even hospital births but I also had to let go of identifying myself as someone who was having a home birth. I felt very alone. I saw these sides and I didn’t belong to either.

     A few days after we drafted version one, and after a few more days of processing, I was ready to revise the plan and mostly let go of the hope we would have a vaginal home birth. As I began to accept the cesarean, I was able to see more clearly what was possible. Our requests became more specific and I was able to differentiate which pieces I could and could not create. It began to feel I could still have most of what I wanted for our baby: gentle hands to welcome her into the world, being surrounded by loved ones, never leaving our side, nursing soon after delivery, no shots or pokes or vaccines, not even a bath. It was all possible if we used our imagination. I, on the other hand, would be undergoing major surgery. I was worried a bit but I was a mother now and mothers do whatever they need to in order to ensure the health and well-being of their child. I was healthy and fortunate to have lots of support. I would be fine. 

     Our next step was to discuss our plan with the birth team. My husband called the obstetrician, anesthesiologist, and charge nurse. With each conversation we carefully reviewed the details of our plan, learned more about what to expect from the upcoming process and made compromises as needed. Success! We had a green light for those items most important to us. In addition to the father being in the operating room we were granted permission to have our midwife present. I was to be administered an epidural, but requested not to have additional antibiotics or pain medications. I wanted to be awake and coherent so I could fully experience the birth of my baby. We were allowed to take pictures and video, my arms were not to be tied down, and we asked that extraneous conversation be limited during the birth. Initially, we also asked to have the lights lowered at the time of birth so the environment would feel a little warmer and less shocking for our new baby. But in the end we let this go when it seemed their version of dim was not much different from regular lighting. We had also hoped that our baby might be delivered onto my chest and even begin nursing while the sutures were being placed, but with the surgical drape and the protocols for keeping the environment clean and sterile this was not possible.  

     Picking a date for the cesarean birth was a bit surreal. How do you choose a date for your baby to arrive when you want to honor the natural process? From our research we knew that contractions, and subsequent labor, induced a release of stress hormones in mother and baby.  This was seen as beneficial to the new baby as an early survival technique and impetus into the external world. It was our hope that the little one would experience some of the benefits of those contractions. After conferring with our midwife, our obstetrician was amenable to a 42 week gestation. Knowing we couldn’t go too much past 42 weeks helped us to narrow the window and we selected a date, July ninth. Although I never went into labor, the last week was full of gentle contractions.  

     On the day we went to the hospital my contractions were more frequent and more intense. Our daughter seemed to be letting us know she was ready. I don’t remember much about the actual drive to the hospital. We arranged for my mother to stay at a nearby hotel and we prepared food for her to bring to us for each meal. The three of us arrived at the hospital and completed the necessary paperwork. Shortly after they showed me to the pre-op room, our midwife arrived. Our delivery team came to our room and we reviewed the birth plan one last time to ensure all voices had been heard. The stage was set and our little one was about to make her big debut.  

     As I lay in the operating room, life simplified for a moment. My husband and I had been on a rollercoaster for the past eight weeks. Now our only job was to welcome our daughter into the world. Time had been our friend, allowing us to lay the groundwork for the type of birth we both wanted when our original plans were no longer an option. All of my awareness was focused on being present; I didn’t want to miss a moment of this life-changing event. I was nervous, excited and deeply grateful for the support of my husband. He would be the one to first touch and hold our baby. He would be our advocate if necessary. I needed him to be where I couldn’t. I trusted him to take care of us as we navigated this new territory. 

     As the obstetrician gently guided our baby into the world, the anesthesiologist held my head up so that I could watch her little red bottom emerge from me. Once our baby’s head was out the doctor quickly unwrapped the umbilical cord from around her neck and body and gently held her upside down for the natural removal of mucus from her air passages. (Typically, this piece is done with suctioning.) Within moments there was a tiny cry followed by several more substantial cries. She was here, she was healthy and we were all happy. The cord pulsed while the proud papa held our baby and the Apgar scores were assessed. The nurse brought warm blankets and a hat. My husband cut the cord once it stopped pulsing and carried our baby to me and placed her next to my face. She gently suckled on our fingers and on my husband’s nose while the doctor stitched me up. She was so at peace in our arms, patiently waiting to nurse. Our midwife took beautiful pictures and video of our first moments as a family. Forty minutes later we were in our hospital room and our daughter was latched to my breast. The charge nurse for the neonatal nursery said to our midwife, “You know, there really isn’t any reason why all cesarean births couldn’t be like this one.” Hearing this made us feel something even larger could come from our daughter’s birth.

     We stayed at the hospital for two days. As part of our birth plan we also drafted a section on infant care. We requested our baby never leave our side and, that all routine exams be delayed until after we had time to bond with our child; we did not give permission to bathe her, use eye ointments, vaccinations or injections of any kind; and we informed them that our baby was only to receive breast milk and no formula. We brought a small lamp from home so our room could remain dimly lit and my mother brought us nutritious food for each meal. We asked for our privacy and did not consent to examinations that had more to do with hospital policy than with our health. The staff was very accommodating even when it seemed we had taken them out of their comfort zone.  

     I am filled with gratitude when I recall our amazing journey and everything it took to bring our daughter into this world. I will never forget the intention and care provided by everyone involved. I thank our midwife for supporting us and the vision we held for our birth through lots of change and uncertainty. Having been through this experience I strongly believe that every parent should have access to resources that empower them to create the type of birth they want for themselves and their child no matter what circumstances. I believe that those who facilitate birth —midwives, physicians, nurses —play a critical role in making this happen by cultivating trust and meaningful working relationships with one another at every level.  At 34 weeks we didn’t have time to change the system for our birth. We didn’t have time to advocate that every obstetrician and midwife have training in delivering breech babies vaginally. What we did have time to do was to work with our team to create the most beautiful experience possible for our family.  

Bio:

Stacy Hirsch lives in Olympia, WA with her beautifully curious 3-year old, talented husband and overly indulgent cat that never passes up a warm sauna. She is an Integrative Health Coach, Founder of Two the Root and Co-owner of Beyond Medicine, An Integrative Wellness Clinic. Check out more of her work at TwotheRoot.com.

Here's what Stacy had to say about her writing process:

"I knew early on that I wanted to write the story of my birth. I wanted it for myself, for my daughter and to connect with expecting moms who might face a similar experience in their pregnancy and birth. Writing gave me a way to process the disconnects of my journey and create a fluid, seamless understanding of my experience. It gave me closure and at the same time opened a whole new world of possibilities.

Working with Anne was a tremendous gift. She skillfully stepped into one of the most intimate moments of my life and held it with tenderness and integrity. Anne's insight offered me the opportunity to try on new perspectives that I may not have seen without her help. She was a sounding board - a mirror to reflect my own thoughts, feelings and words so I could go deeper. Even now, years later, I am filled with warmth and gratitude for the experience. It changed me as a person and I believe it changed me as a mother."