The Treasured Life

Deep Breaths

2012-01-15T22:18:00.000-08:00

I can enclose Patton's entire fist in my own. I stare at his pudgy hands resting against my chest and reach to stick my thumb in between his tiny fingers so that they are clasped around it. My heart swells up, and in my throat, I feel like I'm swallowing rocks. In the same way that he looks at the world with his mouth agape, his eyes wide and dancing, I look at him.

God, I hope I never forget what this feels like.

It is more than a prayer. It is desperate pleading, a call to whomever listens to it in the hopes that I may be granted a snapshot of this minute to carry with me through the rest of my life.

It is indescribable, the change that happened in my very composition when I became a mother. All at once, it is the most terrifying, captivating and thrilling adventure I have ever set out upon. And I admit that I am completely unable to describe anything about it with any accuracy. It would be like trying to explain quantum theory: I have neither the vocabulary, nor the understanding.

I have become a woman who needs no sleep. Well, to be fair I do need sleep, but the symptoms of my sleep deprivation are invisible to me, and it's Tim who has to literally put me to bed lest I go on like a drone until I drop in the middle of a sentence. But I have lost my recognition of feeling tired. My body seems to go and go without asking for breaks, and I am happy to wake in the middle of the night to a tiny grunting little man, the love of my life. Of course, at some point I must sleep, and I do. But on top of feeling like I'm wasting time with sleeping, I find a certain amount of guilt in missing any of the fleeting moments my son has to offer me. I hear from others, "Remember this, he won't be this way for long," and instantly I am filled with panic, an immediate desire to rush home and breathe him in. To burn into my brain the images of him small like this, his smell, the sounds that come from his heart-shaped mouth, and the feel of his baby fist inside my own. And so sleep seems wasteful.

I know there will be a day when other priorities return. Not more important ones. By that I mean that I will have more than one priority in the future. But for now, he is the only one. I wake up for Patton. I go to work for Patton. I eat and drink so that I can nourish him; I exercise so that I can live longer for him; I take showers so that Patton will have a nice-smelling mother. Everything I do translates somehow into his benefit, and I am okay with that right now.

I take deep breaths with my nose grazing the top of his head and close my eyes, committing to memory the texture of his hair, the way he smells filling up my lungs with the scent of sweet milk and baby powder. If he weren't sleeping so peacefully, I'd allow myself to cry a little, but for now, I will hold the joyful tears in and stay still, stay quiet. I love him so thoroughly. I don't remember where or who I was before he got here.

Thank you, Whoever Listens. Amen.

Baby Pics!!

2011-12-14T15:22:00.000-08:00

First trip to the beach!

Snuggling with Mama

My brother Jak loving on me

Daddy is so proud of me!

Welcome to the World!

Cuddling with my Mama -- Again!

This is my reindeer suit.

Sad face because I'm not cuddling with Mama.

Milk drunk baby!

Ok so this is just my favorite place.

But I'll settle for cuddling with Daddy, too

Yaaaaaawn...

My first bath!

Mama snuggles with me every chance she gets!

The Birth and After...

2011-11-21T18:33:00.000-08:00

On Thursday November 17 at about 1:00pm, I went into labor. I wasn't very sure it was real labor, so I went about my day as usual, pausing to wince a little during a contraction and then continuing on, allowing them to build up until I was really sure that calling family wouldn't turn into a "false alarm" moment later on.

Patton didn't get here until Saturday morning. There is so much to write about how labor went. Forty-three hours of intense, adrenaline fueled labor followed that afternoon, and no one realized Patton would enter the world in a posterior (sunny-side up) position until the moment of his arrival. I later learned that my midwife had her suspicions, but didn't want to let on because she didn't want to scare me. A posterior presentation is not necessarily dangerous, but it is notorious for being exponentially more painful, causing labor to be much longer and more likely to end in cesarean section.

The bodies of laboring women are powerhouses. We are suddenly able to function at peak performance for hours on end, exerting more force than we ever have before. In my case, I had been awake for exactly 48 hours to the minute when Patton made his appearance. Forty-three of them were heavy breathing hours, painful, sweaty, determined hours. By the time the pushing phase was upon us, I was so deliriously tired that I had begun to almost pass out between contractions, falling asleep for 30 seconds at a time, entering vignette dreams and waking up to push again for 3 hard pushes. I remember at one point mumbling something about needing to get a flat screen TV as I woke up to push again. But on we went, Patton and I, working on this thing together, getting him a little bit closer to his family with each push.

Patton Ray Teach Ellis was born Saturday morning at 7:24am. He weighed 8 lbs, 5 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

Either my heart has grown to the size of an 8 lb, 5 oz baby, or my whole life has shrunk down to the size of one. I can't figure out which one it is. But the shape and specter and shade of it is wholly different, a change I have longed for, and one for which I will be eternally grateful.

Til next time.

just born

2011-11-19T07:50:00.001-08:00

First Christmas outfit

2011-11-10T21:04:00.000-08:00

The Bump

2011-11-10T18:31:00.000-08:00

10 weeks give or take

14 weeks or so

32 weeks

37 weeks

Oh, Hurry Up Already!

2011-11-10T18:20:00.000-08:00

I'm not "over" being pregnant, really I'm not. Sure there are times when I fantasize about what it will like to have my own body back and belonging to just me. I think about what life was like back when I didn't singe my growing belly on hot pots on the stove, when I didn't have to plan out my path for walking through the dining room to keep from grazing the table, the exercise bike, the chairs, or any number of the tools that Tim has laid out what with all the work he is doing on the house. But I'm not "over it" the way other women talk about being "over it." I haven't had severe morning sickness, as a matter of fact I had exactly zero morning sickness. I didn't have major episodes of sciatica or terrible heartburn (mind you, I DO have heartburn, but it's manageable). I haven't gained 60 pounds and I have pretty much been able to eat what I want and sleep okay.

Oh, but I cannot wait to meet my son.

I have dreams about what he looks like; I daydream about the things I'll say to him when he gets here. Tim has had dreams about him, too, and comparing notes we have found that both of us think somehow this little boy is going to come out with blue eyes. Neither of us have blue eyes, but here and there, they are found in the family, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

It's just that, well, we've been waiting for so long for Patton to get here. Technically, the first conversation we had about trying to have kids was in February of 2009. That's two and half years we've been anticipating this new addition to our little family. Especially after the miscarriage I had a year and a half ago, there were times that I felt like Patton just wouldn't ever get here.

But here we are, 13 days away from my due date and so excited we're about to piss ourselves. So no. I'm not over being pregnant. But damnit! I can't wait for him to come on out and meet his family!

I'll leave you with an excerpt from a book I read a while back called "Baby Catcher." My miscarriage was one of the darkest times in my life, and I found little comfort in the words of others or the scientific explanations or the idea of my baby in some heaven with which I was unfamiliar. But the following passage changed the way I felt about all of it, and is part of the reason I am so excited to finally see Patton.

Colin, my twelve-year-old son, discovered me late one rainy afternoon sitting at the kitchen table, a damp Kleenex crumpled in my left hand, wiping my eyes as I tried to compose myself for his sake. It was the third week of January, two months after I’d miscarried a pregnancy, but I still found it impossible to get through a day without at least one meltdown into misery.

Colin asked, "Are you crying about the baby?" and when I nodded tearfully, he said, "Well, you just have to have another one, Mom, because it’s a Spirit Baby, and you should be its mother."

I must have looked puzzled because he said, "Don’t you know about Spirit Babies? How could I know about them if you don’t? I mean, you’re my mom!" But he could see my perplexity.

So my first child, this not-yet-teenaged boy, pulled a wooden chair to my side and draped his thin arm across my shoulders, saying, "Well, Mom, here’s how it is. See, I was one myself, so that must be how I know. Anyway, every woman has a circle of babies that goes around and around above her head, and those are all the possible babies she could have in her whole life. Every month, one of those babies is first in line. If she gets pregnant, then that’s the baby that’s born. If she doesn’t get pregnant, the baby goes back into the circle and keeps going around with all the others. If she gets pregnant but something bad happens before the baby’s born…now listen, Mom, because here’s the really cool part. It goes back into the circle, but it becomes a Spirit Baby, and all the other babies give it cuts. Each month, it’s always first in line. Isn’t that great?

"So you just have to get pregnant again, and you’ll have the same Spirit Baby. If you don’t, though, then the baby circle will just beam that little Spirit Baby over to some other woman’s circle, and it’ll be first in line for her. It keeps being first in line somewhere until it finally gets born.

"But it’d be a shame for you not to have it yourself, because I know how much you want it. So you just have to try again. Mom, remember that baby you lost before I was born?" I nodded wordlessly. "Well, that was me. Really. I’ve always known I was a Spirit Baby. I mean, I know what I’m talking about here, Mom."