Coming to terms with Christmas.

Well Thanksgiving is finally come and gone, so I am now comfortable preparing for the Christmas holiday season. Unlike Starbucks and Michaels craft-mart, I am not chomping on the bit at Halloween with Christmas decorations already in hand to ring in the jolly season. I mean, one holiday at a time, please!

Did I mention I only recently started to like Christmas again? Of course I loved the holiday as a kid. Lights, presents, treats, family... what's not for a child to like? Even though I felt a perennial guilty deep down that the non-custodial parent was alone that day, I nevertheless managed to have a bang-up time.

In college, something happened, though. I got some politics in me. I took issue with two aspects of Christmas then. One was a deep resentment that there were no girls whose birth we celebrated globally. "It's always the boys," I soap-boxed, and "I'm tired of a society that treats boys and men like they are the saviors of the Earth, when really they just destroy it!" Where were the girls who needed celebrating? Why weren't there any historico-religious female figures who got the world all up in a tizzy for two months? Growl growl.  Well, not that there's anything too wrong with that, but how much traction does that griping get? (Not much.) Plus, even I have to admit that Jesus was a pretty amazing person, but just not in the way that Pat Robertson claims.

But the much more substantial issue I took with Christmas, one with which I still wrestle, is the consumerist aspect of the holiday these days. Late in high school, some friends and I started to critique the commercial culture we lived in. Adbusters came onto my radar and it resonated with me throughout my teens and twenties. I started to notice and really feel upset by the way that a holiday commemorating a real and important event was being exploited for "the almighty dollar." Even though I wasn't brought up in the Christian church, I found this morally objectionable (and yes, I realize that since I am not technically Christian, some might find my celebration of Christmas morally objectionable too.). So I observed Buy Nothing Day on Black Friday (sort of- I didn't buy Christmas things, anyway) and I complained all season-long about the hypocrisy and pathetic-ness of our society. I longed to skip the holiday, but other family members were not about to let me have that pleasure. So I tried to make presents, but even I had to buy some gifts- it's time-consuming to make stuff and plastic is not easy or safe to make by hand!

Then a few years back, I made a fascinating discovery that revitalized my ability to celebrate Christmas merrily again. I was looking online to research the Tomte, a little gnome who figured in Christmas books my mother read me as a child. Her mother was from Sweden and the Tomte was a part of their Christmas tradition, as it is across Scandinavia. The deeper I dug, the more I learned about northern European Christmas traditions and their relationship to Christmas traditions across The Continent. Turns out, the winter celebration of Christmas has its roots in pre-Christian traditions. The importance of celebrating light, for example, during the darkest time of the year. Even Santa Lucia has her origin in a pre-Christian figure.

I don't consider myself pagan, but I am totally down with Mother Nature and with the need to brighten the darkest days of winter with bright lights and songs. And food. And a special present here and there. What I learned about the origins of Christmas helped me identify the parts of the holiday that I love: the candles, the shiny things, reading old Christmas books, listening to music, spending time with friends and family. And food. Presents are fun, too, don't get me wrong, but that's not the part to which I look forward.

My mom told me back when I was feeling Grinch-like that I would like Christmas again, once I had children. This is true, but only because I enjoy sharing the things I like about Christmas, not because I particularly like buying my kids presents (more things to fit into our tiny living space/for me to clean up) or seeing their expressions when they open them (which, at 2 and 13 range from mild interest, to indifference, to total disappointment). I still avoid the Black Friday crowds and try to make a lot of my presents. Those presents are more rewarding to give, for me, because they are more personal and represent my wishes for others.

This is the kind of Christmas I can deal with: Cheerful and bright, with love and light.

Amen.

Coming back for seconds.

My son is two and most of my mom friends have first-born children around the same age. Out of nowhere, an astonishing proportion (in my estimation) of them are pregnant again. I have been very clear with myself and my family that I don't want to raise any more children. This was a really easy decision for me to make, but now that my mama friends are having more babies, I have had confront some unexpected emotional challenges. I feel mostly embarrassed by these feelings, but on the off-chance that others have confronted similar feelings, maybe my own admissions will be helpful.

Quickly, though, before I continue, I want to be really clear that my feelings about having more children myself are in no way a reflection of how I feel about other people having more children. I have nothing but admiration for my friends who are going for more. There are days when I really miss the feeling of being pregnant, days when I wish I could give birth again, days when I wish I had a newborn hold and smell (divine!). I wish I could do it again. That's part of what makes this so hard:

The first feeling I came up again is loneliness- I will be the only one without multiple children of my own. I feel like I'm out of the club!
The second, related, feeling is fear of losing my friends; will we lose touch because we have different parenting challenges? Will I be able to relate to them?
The third feeling is self-doubt: Why don't I want more children? What is wrong with me?
Reflection upon these questions brings on a wave of emotion #4: guilt. There is something wrong with me. I am a bad mother and a bad woman for not wanting more; I am weak for not being able to handle motherhood; I am selfish for wanting something else in my life, for not wanting to sacrifice so much for so much of the time; I don't get the satisfaction from mothering that all my friends get, or that I am supposed to get. Do I not love my son enough? Why do I want something more than caring for him? Isn't this supposed to be the best thing I can do with my life? Bad mommy!

Let me back up a minute and explain how I got to the "No more for me, thanks!" decision, but not because I feel I need to defend my choice. Okay, maybe I do feel like I need to defend my choice. It's the guilt... First of all, I have a step-son already. He is 13, I have been in his life since he was six, and while I think we have a pretty good relationship now, it has been a difficult road for me to get there. So I'm a little tired. Second of all, 13 and two. Think about those phases of life. I get both at the same time. Let's just be understated and call that "challenging," shall we? If I were to add more to that mix, I would lose my mind.

That's straight-forward enough, but it isn't the whole story. So here's my secret: mothering is really hard work anyway, but I especially didn't handle the transition well. I didn't really mind giving up my job, but I lost a lot of other things too. I was the first of my friends to have a baby and after my son was born, we lost touch. I was busy with a newborn and they just couldn't relate. I couldn't relate to them either, and I had some resentment thrown in too. I had to create an entirely new circle of friends, which was not easy for me. As a result, I was extremely lonely and isolated for a long time. Relatedly, I gave up social interactions. No more nights out. I was breastfeeding a baby who demanding small helpings of milk on an hourly basis. He never would drink out of a bottle, so I just never left him for longer than he could go between feedings. No evenings at the theater, no movies, no drinks with friends.... I also gave up my extracurricular activities because of the nursing and because I had been scared by parenting literature which made me feel like my son would be damaged for life if he was left with anyone else for more than five minutes. So I wasn't going to the dance and yoga classes I had enjoyed before I got pregnant. I had no time to paint, or read, or do anything else for myself.

Moreoever, my husband didn't get any leave from work; he went back to work the day I went home from the hospital. I had some help from my mother and other adults, but no friends came to see me and I didn't have the support I needed to eat well, take a shower, take care of the house and also take care of the baby 'round the clock. I lost weight and felt badly about myself.

So I got depressed. Not just sad, but not psychotic either. I functioned and I took excellent care of my exquisite child, but I was a wreck in my head. I don't know if it would be classified as post-partem depression, because it seemed pretty clearly to be circumstantially-driven, not biological. It's not like everything was going swimmingly and I was overcome with inexplicable sadness. No, I could have explained it. But I didn't. It was so humiliating. I felt defeated, like I was a failure because I didn't find ceaseless joy in my new baby and my new role. All of my mom friends seemed to handle motherhood well enough and I didn't want them to know how pathetic I was and how deeply I was grieving the loss of my sense of identity. So I didn't talk about it. And of course that just made it harder, because I felt that much more alone in my sadness, and that much more alone in what I perceived as my own incompetence. I was really overwhelmed with the guilt, too, of knowing that I didn't just slip comfortably into my new role as a mother, that it wasn't just naturally easy, and that I didn't just relish it as the best thing I ever could have wanted to do.

And the truth is, I didn't grow up thinking very much about being a mother. I had dolls and I played house as a child, but I wasn't one of those girls who grew up dreaming about having a family. I babysat, but I didn't like most children very much. I didn't plan not to have children, but it wasn't on my list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. Learning classical Indian dance and becoming fluent in Italian were on there, but not having children. It is obvious to everyone who knows me and my family that I could not possibly love my son more than I do. He is absolutely the apple of my eye and I adore him more than I though humanly possible. Yet I do not find ultimate personal fulfillment in the day to day life that I provide for him. I work as hard as I can to make sure I do right by him every day, in every way, from what he eats to how I discipline him. I am glad to see what a delightful person he is becoming, but it has come at a tremendous personal cost to me. And even though a lot of things have changed in my life since becoming a mother- more friends with children and a better support system are notable examples- the thought of giving up the fractions of personal time I have struggled to justify and use sends me into a panic.

So what's wrong with me? I don't know. I won't believe that I am a bad mommy, though I sometimes have to talk myself out of that one. I have a lovely family and I have to give myself a little credit for how well cared-for its members are. Maybe I don't have the stamina or the patience; maybe I am just too easily overwhelmed and exhausted; maybe it's that 13 and 2 are enough challenges for me; maybe it's all of the above, or maybe there is no answer. The story ends with me not having any more children. Actually, no, the story doesn't end there; it's just a chapter break. The life I need to create more of is mine.

MotherLove

You’d think I would have gotten the hang of practicing compassion towards all people a long time ago. My mother has practiced Integral Yoga and Buddhism for decades and instilled in me at an early age the importance of treating all living creatures with loving kindness; that all sentient beings are endowed with divine light and deserve to be treated as such. I tried, I really did, and mostly I think I did a decent job. But there's always that kind of day, or that kind of person that just makes me want to start yelling. Okay, sometimes I do yell.

But it wasn’t until I became a mother, and particularly a mother of a newborn, that I found the key, for me, to practicing what some call "loving-kindness" towards all people (okay, disclaimer, I'm still working on it, but it's getting easier. Read on). The day my son was born was the best day of my life, a day I could relive over and over. Before he arrived, I had seen birth videos and I just couldn’t believe that all the messiness wasn’t going to bother me, that I wouldn’t insist someone hose him down before he nestled into my arms. If you know me well, you know I don’t handle mess very enthusiastically. Whenever there is a drain backup in the basement, it’s my husband goes down with the rubber gloves and the bleach. But when my own child was born, I don’t even notice how messy he was, I just wanted him right up against me, in my arms.

The love that most mothers feel for their new babies defies description. New babies are so entirely helpless, so small and precious and magical that it is hard to put them down, lest they stop working or disappear. Most babies need very few things to start out, but the one thing they do need more than anything else, besides nourishment, is love. Love helps babies grow and learn and it teaches them how to see the world, whether to be open to it, or to be afraid and closed.

Moreover, babies are cannot yet make judgments or choices for which they ought to be held accountable. The newborn baby, or the 9 month-old, for that matter, cannot be held responsible for all-night drinking binges, cannot be blamed for hurt feelings or for writing bad checks. So your love for your baby can’t be diminished by, say, that time he forgot to tell you he had to go to detention for being sent to in-school suspension so many time. The love mamas have for their new babies is total and unblemished.

Now, I don’t know why I had to have a child to appreciate these things, but it might be pertinent that before I had my own, I didn’t much care for children. These days, however, every baby and young child I see I love. I want to pick them all up and hug them and tell them I love them, especially if I know there isn’t someone doing that already. I can hardly watch TV for all the orphans and displaced children on the news, or on Red Cross commercials. It just makes me cry as if I was seeing my own child suffering, waiting for me to come find him and make everything better. After the earthquake in Haiti, I wanted to go pick up all those beautiful crying children and hold them and never let go (unless their families came to get them, of course).

These new emotional experiences have brought an unexpected gift: an easy way to get in touch with feelings of compassion for all people, even people I can’t stand being around. Here’s how it works: Look to the person closest to you. He or she was once a newborn baby. He or she was brought into this world totally naked, totally un-knowing and vulnerable. Every single one of us has been pushed or pulled out into the bright world, not knowing the difference between Democrat or Republican, black or white, Jimmy Chu or off-brand Keds. We have all been new and afraid and seeking comfort. Even Dick Cheney needed to be rocked to sleep at one time. When I see Dick Cheney on television, I try remember that he too was once an infant, calling for his mother or needing his diaper changed.... Okay, try to forget that last part maybe. The point is, realizing that even people we think of as un-compassionate, irksome or cruel were once vulnerable and helpless, wanting and waiting to be held and loved. When I can realize this, my heart softens and opens.

This is not to say that I love Dick Cheney’s personal or political choices, but it does present for me the possibility of looking at him and seeing that even he has divine light deep (deep, deep) down inside. It makes it possible for me to be able to say to him, or the rude driver in rush-hour traffic, “Namaste,” and actually mean it. Maybe I don’t say it out loud, but I can feel it.

I don’t know if imagining someone’s “inner baby” is the equivalent to seeing his or her inner light, but being able to tap into a thought that allows me to see that person before he made the decision to go to war (or pull in front of me without signaling), has been at least important for me in my effort to be more open and loving to all people, no matter who they are or how much they bother me.

In defense of birth plans.

Lately, I have encountered, both in personal interaction and in online media, confusion and hostility regarding the notion of preparing a "birth plan." I really liked making a birth plan and was glad I had one, so I feel compelled to write about what a birth plan is in the first place and why it's worth writing one.

A birth plan is a document that a pregnant woman writes, in conjunction with her partner and relevant care providers, that explains her preferences for how she would like to approach her birth experience. It should be concise because there isn't always a lot of time for your nurses and doctor to sit down and, ya know, read a dissertation on what you want to do during your labor. A birth plan should include the kinds of things you would like to do to help facilitate a more comfortable and easy labor, to the extent possible. If you would like to have the freedom to move around, sit in a birthing tub, try nipple stimulation, etc., those are the kinds of things you can put on your birth plan. If you want the epidural, put that down, too. The idea is to give your care providers an idea of the range of things you would like to try (again, to the extent possible). There are a wide array of non-pharmaceutical, less-invasive strategies that can help ease long and/or difficult labors, which carry lower risks than many of the medical interventions nurses and doctors are trained to employ. Writing down non-medical interventions helps your care team know if you'd like to try things they don't typically think to offer, but that you can try with the help of a partner or doula.

Here's what a birth plan isn't (or shouldn't be): it isn't a list of demands or expectations for every thing you are going to do throughout the process, and in what order. When people scoff at the idea of a birth plan because "you can't plan birth," they aren't understanding the idea or reasoning behind birth plans. Obviously, you can't plan your birth. Nobody says you can. (In fact, it's funny to hear this being said by people who appear to have no problem with planned inductions. Not funny, haha, but funny ironic.) No, a birth plan is not a chronology of events, forecasting the process and outcome of your birth. If you are operating under that assumption, then you are potentially setting yourself up for disappointment. The idea is not to plan out your birth; it is to provide information about what kinds of techniques you would like to try during labor and delivery. Maybe the term is misleading and we need a new one. Suggestions, anyone?

Now to the other important part: Why does it matter?

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there began a major shift in how women gave birth in the United States. Before this period, almost all births were attended at home with midwives; beginning in this period, more and more women began to have (male) doctors attend their births, and then started to have their babies in hospitals (more driving for you, less driving for him). Medicalizing pregnancy and childbirth has brought both significant risks and benefits in the intervening years. There is much we mothers can be grateful for when complications arise (drug-induced respite, life-saving surgeries...). However, there have been- and continue to be- dark chapters to this story. The twilight sleep is one infamous and obvious historical example.

The twentieth century also saw great strides in another, related area: medical ethics. As a result, there are established patient protections, like respect for personal autonomy and the right to give informed consent. Medical patients are to be informed about their conditions and their treatment options, which includes information regarding risks and benefits. The applicability of these basic ethical safeguards has not, however, been clearly established when it comes to pregnant women in labor and there continues to be debate as to the rights of women in labor, particularly when respecting their autonomy may seem to conflict with the welfare of the newborn. I didn't realize it needed to be said in this day in age, but in March of this year, an NIH expert stated "In obstetrical decision making, women retain their rights of bodily integrity, just as people do in all other situations." Evidently, this is not obvious to a lot of obstetricians and hospital administrators.

Historically, and today, women in labor have not been fully granted the ability to determine, in any way, the kind of births they have desired. We have been involuntarily laid on our backs, hooked up to machines and IVs, shaved, been given episiotomies, and told when we could push. We have been made to feel that birth is happening to us and that the doctors are the only ones who know what is happening and what to do. These things have been done ostensibly to help us and yet the United States has a miserable rate of c-sections and maternal deaths. We are not just "there." More often than not, our bodies can tell us what we need and we have the right to make it known whether or not we want to be cut here or there, or in what position we can best push the baby out, when our own bodies give us the cue. No, you can't plan out your birth, but you can put forth a piece of paper that says, "No thank you," if someone comes up to you with a fetal monitor and tells you to lie down.

Moreover, as indicated above, there are a lot of things women can do to ease labor and delivery that doctors are not taught in medical school (and are therefore not researched, not seen as effective, and not used). This is changing in some parts of the country, but it highlights the need to educate ourselves, because there is no guarantee that your docs or nurses are going to suggest, or be able to help you with, "alternative" (non-medical) strategies (i.e.- making out with your husband, massage, position changes). Having these on your birth plan alerts your care providers that you'd like to try things other than, or in addition to, medical interventions like Pitocin.

The fact that "you can't plan it out" is a primary reason why you write it down- you don't know if you are going to be in the best position to speak your mind, to argue or consent, because most of us get to a point somewhere along the line where talking isn't so much what we feel like doing. Sure, hopefully your husband or partner can speak on your behalf, but what if he or she can't? It's nice for the nurses to have something to post on your door for all to see, right? (That being said, hopefully you have also already discussed your preferences with your health care provider, so it's not going to be a big shocker when he or she gets there). Consider it to be like an advanced directive, but for birth. Maybe we should change the term to "birth directive."

Here's another reason to write a birth plan. It gets you to do your homework. Part of being informed should include informing yourself. Talk with other moms, doulas, midwives, doctors, nurses, anyone you can and gather up all of the information you can so you know what your options are, what suits you, and what sounds like a bad idea. This is your birth, so it's for you to decide. Read up on c-section practices, what kinds of drugs are available, alternative pain management techniques etc. to figure out what things you would like to try, even if you are "planning" an unmedicated birth. It never hurts to know all your options, as long as you are fully informed about the risks and benefits of those options. Almost nobody plans on a c-section (though it happens), but they are common and it's important to know what to expect, so read up on that too and see what you can work out with your medical team if you want to be able to see the baby right away, have her stay in the recovery room, etc. Plus, if you come in with a concise, well-researched birth plan that shows you have been reading about nipple stimulation, pain management options, etc., it is more likely that you will be treated as a competent decision-maker worthy of respect, and not a crazy lady who needs to be strapped down and told what to do.

Playing defense.

Medicated of un-medicated birth? Bottle or breast? Bed-sharing, co-sleeping or crib? Full vaccination, partial or vaccine-free? There are a lot of choices we mothers (and fathers, too) must make about which everybody has an opinion. There is a lot of information our there for us to peruse as we make our choices, but so much of it offers different, often diametrically-opposed positions. As a result, you end up feeling more like you are taking a major political stance rather than a personal choice. This can be difficult in two ways; the first is when your choices don't jibe with the advice/guidance/rules your doctors give you. I am sure I will write about this more another time, but what I'm inspired to write about is the second issue: how your choices are received by other mothers. Particularly, why are our choices or beliefs assumed to be judgments on women who make different choices?

Let me start by making some of my choices and beliefs clear on some of these "hot-button" issues:
1. I breast-fed my son and continue to do so.
2. I had an unmedicated labor and delivery, in a hospital, with a doula, nurses, and my OB.
3. I believe that pregnant women should be treated with dignity and respect and should be allowed to make their own, fully-informed decisions about medical care before, during, and after the births of their children.
4. My son slept in our bed, in his own little zone, between his mama and daddy until he was around 1 year old. He now sleeps in his own crib, in his own room across the hall from us.
5. There are a number of childhood vaccines I do not intend to give my son while he is a child. He has received some vaccines and will continue to be vaccinated through his school years, but we are following a drawn out vaccination schedule to limit the number of shots he is getting during his early childhood.

Now, these are my choices, they are not anyone else's choices and in doing the things they way I have wanted I am not, in any way, making a statement about this person's choices or that person's. There are numerous cases in which it is not feasible or desirable to make the kinds of choices I have made. Sometimes the labor goes awry, or the milk doesn't come in, etcetera, etcetera. You do not need to defend your choices to me; I am not judging you. The flip side of this is when my choices are judged and I am the one playing defense. I am endangering my child for putting him in my bed, for not getting him the Hep B vaccine after he was born.

Judge, judge, judge. Why do we mothers feel so profoundly judged and judge so harshly and at the same time? I'm asking this rhetorically, of course, because I like to think I have an inkling why this is. I think we feel judged because our instincts and authority that we ought to have as the mothers of our children have been undermined by the massive industry surrounding pregnancy and babycare. Have you checked out the relevant section in Barnes and Noble? There are an infinite number of purported experts with lots of letters after their names who have their ideas about what we should do as mothers: the kinds foods we should eat while pregnant, the kinds of foods our kids should eat at 6, 8, 12 months of age, how we should discipline our kids, how we should put them to sleep... so many shoulds. If anyone was to say, "Hey, mama, trust yourself, listen to and watch your child," a lot of people would lose a lot of money. (This is not to say that there aren't times we need help or advice from an elder or a professional!)

We are made to feel that we do not know how to take care of our children, that we must rely on outside sources. And I think there is a certain insecurity in that because it isn't born out of our knowledge of ourselves or our own children. Confronted with a different way of doing something, we are made to question our choices and rather than feel confident and open we feel unsure and we close up. Who wants to be caught at feeling unsure about her mothering skills, right? So we make ourselves feel better by judging negatively someone else's choice. Not breast-feeding? Down comes the gavel!

This is unnecessary and damaging, both personally and politically (if you want to separate the two). Mothering is hard, often isolating, work and we ought to be there for each other, not estranging ourselves from one another. I have struggled personally over the last 20 months with loneliness and depression and I didn't feel so afraid to share my own feelings and questions with other mothers, I might not have felt this so acutely. Defensiveness, judgment, and fear of judgment are not conducive to open discussion. Moreover, there are a lot of big-picture issues that we could resolve if we just banded together, like improving workplace policies that aren't family-friendly. However, if my concern over the cesarean rate in the US elicits angry responses about how many lives are saved by C-section and how dare I question its use, then someone isn't listening to what I'm saying. (PS- My great-grandmother died in childbirth, leaving my grandfather and his brothers to be sent to an orphanage until his father re-married a mean, mean lady.)

So hear me now: I am not against C-sections or bottle-feeding or vaccines. I am FOR women making their own, informed and confident decisions about how they give birth and nurture their children. If we don't listen to each other because our ears are filled with scared, defensive judgy-ness, we will never improve the environment in which they can do that.

Undressed.

It's been a long winter. Thankfully, Spring is marching in and my brain is finally thawing (I think).

I had an interesting experience in January, while at the gym with my son. Three girls, pre-teens, were camped out in the women's changing room, texting and commiserating over some boy-related drama. For the first time in a long time, I felt self-conscious about getting out of my wet bathing suit, so I dried and changed my son first and let him toddle from locker to vacant locker, opening and closing the metal doors.

Inevitably, I also had to get undressed, of course. It was January and I wasn't about to go outside with a wet swimsuit under my clothes. I started with the bottom half of my I-had-a-baby-and-I'm-not-quite-ready-for-a-real-bikini-yet two-piece bathing suit and dried off so I could get my pants on. "Ew," I heard one of the girls mumble to her friend. I was caught off-guard only by the fact that she said this so audibly. I looked up to check on my son, who was still engrossed in charting new locker frontiers.

Next, I peeled off the top of my bathing suit, my cleavage obeying the law of gravity. The giggles from the corner were not remotely concealed. I wasn't angry or (the real shocker) embarassed, but I did start to feel a little defiant- "Just you wait, girls," I thought to myself. I finished drying, got dressed, gathered my charge and kissed his curly golden hair. My son has grown strong and beautiful on his mother's milk. I will never regret what I have given him, no matter what anyone thinks or says, no matter how it has changed my physical landscape.

I remember being young and being totally horrified when older women changed clothes in the locker room at the pool, so unashamed of the folds and the heft. I remember not wanting to look, but having to, and trying to peek without making it look like I was. We don't see naked people that much, but if we do, they are usually Photoshop-ed, airbrushed and made up past the point of realism. I didn't know what real women looked like under their clothes. Sure there was a degree of shock, maybe disgust and certainly fear (is that what I'm going to look like in 20, 30, 40 years?), but wasn't there also a degree of amazement, as if the curtain was being pulled back and we were seeing the truth for the first time? Not only about what bodies really look like, but that- hello- we will grow up and we will grow old. But we cannot find revelation in the naked bodies of mothers and grandmothers, right? That just wouldn't sell (and literally, how much of the economy depends on women fearing and fighting their bodies?).

So we mask the potentially revelatory experience of seeing things as they really are, and loving them, by expressing disgust. This is part of the process of rejecting ourselves, of course. And when did that battle begin? Oh yeah, when I was the same age as those girls snickering in the corner; when I started to separate, catalog and judge each part of my corporeal self.

By the end of the day, I realized, I don't envy those girls their young, beautiful bodies. I wish I had appreciated mine when I had it- maybe they are lucky and they do. As much as I feared the aging bodies I snuck peeks at in the gym when I was young, I had also hated the one I carried. One day those girls' bodies will do magical things like mine does and with any luck they will appreciate it, like I do- finally.

Year One: Retrospective

Summer is coming to a gentle end. The nights are cooler, the days are ending earlier, the afternoon sunlight has taken on its singularly autumnal angle. Just recently, we celebrated the first birthday of our beautiful curly-haired boy. This has been the most challenging year of my life, but I have also experienced more miracles than at any other time. I was fortunate to have an extraordinary and brief birth experience- I think that if I was given the chance to live any day over again, it would be that day, when our tiny son rocketed so magically into the world.

Since that day he has been such a joyful little light being. His little sleep smiles graduated into intentional and illuminated expressions of delight. What were once uncoordinated, involuntary (though still charming!) movements have evolved into more refined abilities like waving, walking, brushing hair, kicking soccer balls, and taking all the cards out of mommy's wallet and throwing them on the floor at Starbucks. And instead of a limited vocabulary of cooing, sighing and crying sounds (the sweetness of which I miss so much), we are now treated to a variety of meaningful babbling sounds, proto-words (ba ("ball"), ta ("cat")) and words (mama, dada, byebye). It's just astonishing to watch babies grow and learn- they pick things up so fast that it seems an inevitability, not learned behavior- certainly not anything I can take credit for!

I have changed, too. I left a job that paid well, but that wasn't very inspiring and didn't feel altogether important (to me personally), and took on full-time mothering (no pay, more inspiring, very important). This time last year, I was learning how to breastfeed, change diapers, understand my baby's cries and operate on a sleep deficit. I guess I've gotten those skills down for the most part (though I don't know what the tantrum in Chipotle this afternoon was all about). I have gone from hyper-vigilance ("Is he still breathing?") to plain old vigilance ("Has he eaten enough vegetables today?" "Is that paper in his mouth?").

Looking ahead (what's a retrospective piece without some looking ahead?), I expect this year will also be filled with challenges and adventures, magic and muddle-brained chaos. I am filled with anticipation as I see our toddler toddle and hear him making ever more intelligible sounds. As for me, I would like to set aside more time for myself this year, to write or paint or work- I have missed feeling a part of the world; I have missed having finality on a project; I have missed contributing something concrete at the end of the day (or the week, or the month). There must be some kind of balance for us, wherein we can feel confident about our jobs as mothers, yet also continue to pursue other passions, interests or objectives that make us who we are. That will be my Two Year's Resolution: Find balance.

Suggestions welcome.