So, maybe I lied a little in that last post.  Not lied, exactly, but…. omitted the truth?  Didn’t want to ‘fess up to what I had been thinking about?  Because, see, I think I do know the best part of me.  She’s sleeping upstairs in her crib right now.  And the person I’ve become because of her, the person I am around her, is absolutely my best part.  Yes, I love being a mother.  And in this day and age where people are defined by their careers, where parenthood is postponed until women have become “well-established” in their workplace, postponed until the last possible biological moment, I feel like I should almost hide this feeling.  But being her mom has been one of the best, most rewarding things I have ever taken on.  And I know I’m only eight months in.  But I already think about what it would be like to have another, wonder what our family will look like 5 or 10 years from now.  And it excites me.  All of this new discovery, each day being an adventure, an opportunity to learn and grow (for both of us)!

There is still the struggle to find balance, to keep myself from being defined only as “mama”, to keep a sense of self.  But that struggle doesn’t lessen in any way the joy and pleasure I take in my every day existence with her.  And along with the struggle is the frustration of how little support women receive to be home with their children, to be there for them.  I am extremely fortunate that our family can do this, that I can work from home and be here for my babe every day, but so many can’t.  They have to hand their children over to be raised by someone else.  What does it say about our society that there is so little value placed upon being there to raise the next generation?  Fortunately for me, I was able to be here, to discover this piece of myself I never knew could exist, to learn about this best part.

It’s 6.75″ long, starting on the right side as smooth silver for about an inch, followed by a half inch of smooth pink, another inch of silver, with the remaining 4.25 inches raised and red.  It curves down slightly, with the lowest peak about 2.75 inches from the right.  It’s sort of like a smile on my belly.

It’s funny – I never considered for a moment, not once, that my pregnancy would end in delivery via c-section.  I know, the national rate is over 30% (appalling!), but I sure as hell wasn’t going to become part of that statistic. I was strong!  I can tolerate pain!  Hell, I have “Tough Girl” tattooed across my back, cause I’m, ya know, tough, damnit!  For months, Tim and I worked through all sorts of labor scenarios.  Pain management without drugs.  Working through contractions.  Best pushing positions.  Relaxation techniques.  You name it, we talked about it, and how we felt would be best to deal with it.  We hired a doula to guide us through.  We felt comfortable with our midwives.  And not ever did the idea that I would end up on a table in an extremely bright operating room cross my mind.  Not ever did I consider what it really means to have a c-section, that you are undergoing surgery (something I had never done before), that it leaves you permanently altered.  Scarred. Which is particularly ironic, given the fact that I have chosen to permanently alter my body a number of times, with both piercings and ink.

On the one hand, I feel, nay, I know that we did everything within our power to have the natural birth we had hoped and wished and planned for.  All of the labor scenarios we had worked on came into use – for over 30 hours, I labored drug-free, with Tim by my side the whole time, holding me and talking me through each contraction, reminding me to move and take sips of water and breathe.  And I am so indescribably grateful for those 30 hours.  While they were hands-down the hardest thing I have ever done, they also reminded me in the most drastic way possible how incredibly fortunate I am to have Tim by my side, in any situation.  I couldn’t have gotten through it without him, and to know that we work together so well in the hardest of times is amazing.  It is an assurance I will care with me for the rest of my life, and never will I doubt that if there is something we need to get through, that we will, that we can, no matter how hard.

But at the same time, I’ve started doubting myself.  At the time, after the 30+ hours, I felt sure that I had done everything I could to labor naturally, and that it just wasn’t in the cards.  I had nothing left, physically or emotionally, with which to draw on to get through what might have been hours upon hours more.  I just couldn’t do it.  I know that.  I know I gave it my all.  I signed that surgery waiver confident that it was the right next step for us, to become a family.  And I know I should just hold on to those thoughts, that feeling, cause it’s right.  But that doubt…. the questioning.  What if I just pushed a few more hours?  What if I was able to just keeping going?  Would it have worked?  Why couldn’t I just be a little stronger, a little tougher?  Each morning as I pull on my jeans, I look down and am reminded that I couldn’t hack it.

And that last line is pathetic, cause it’s not about whether or not I was tough enough.  Our little babe wasn’t interested in descending.  She just wasn’t.  She never dropped, and if 2 days of labor wasn’t enough, I’m fairly certain that a few more hours wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.  But then I scratch my belly, and can’t feel it, and I cringe.  Such a stupid, mixed-up, irrational bunch of emotions, all attached to this thin, red line across my abdomen.  On the plus side, it’ll be there for the rest of my life, so I have plenty of time to work through all those thoughts and feelings and get comfortable with it.

It had been a long time, but this weekend, I pulled you out and reacquainted myself to you.  You were pretty dusty and I was pretty rusty, and we didn’t spend nearly as much together as I had hoped.  But now you’re all clean and sitting there on my desk, ready to go.  Each time I pass you on the way to the bathroom, you’re there, shiny and white and far too new looking for the 5 years you’ve been mine.

We’ve made some nice things together over the years, but I know I hold you back, I know you’ve been sitting patiently, waiting for me to catch up to everything you have to offer.  Well, maybe this is that time.  Maybe it’s finally here.  I have patterns, I have fabric.  I have ideas, oh, so many ideas!  (Although I never lack the ideas, it’s just the follow-through.)  And I have a mother-in-law who plants seeds of thought so often, little encouraging, ridiculous seeds of things she thinks I’m capable of, and in my fear of disappointing – her, myself, whomever – I start thinking more and making plans.  And these days, all of my plans focus around you.  Around getting to know you like the old pal you should already be.  Of learning how to better finesse your features, learning to build my skills.  And said mother-in-law has a sort of craft-fair festival thing in 2 short months (less, really), and my plans include having things to show and sell at said festival.  So, you and me, babe, we’re going to become fast friends.  Starting right now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about loss lately.  What that means, in so many aspects of everyday life.  What it means on a grander scale.  Loss is something we all experience and have an intimate relationship with.  We each deal with it differently, as individuals, as cultures, societies, but there is not a single person that has not been touched by loss on some level.  And the spread of those levels is amazing – to some, the experience of loss is so minimal that it is not even considered; to others, it is so great that it is felt at a catastrophic level, wrenching breath from body.

I consider myself to be a somewhat logical, stable person.  Yeah, my mood can occasionally swing faster and harder than Barry Bonds on the ‘roids, but overall, I think I present myself as a pretty functional member of society.   One of the manifestations of my particular brand of depression is my ability to imagine loss – to mourn the imaginary.  A movie in which a family member dies has me in tears over the inevitable death of my own parents.  A song presents that truth that one day Tim and I will be separated similarly, and I can’t decide which would be worse, to die first, or to be left living without him, and I find myself a blubbering mess.  It’s almost comical, really, the ways in which I let myself lose control, let my imagination go crazy, and the emotionally-wrought  Becky that follows.  It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, but it almost always surprises and embarrasses me.  As if there aren’t much larger issues in the world to spend one’s emotions on.  Alas.

We took our baby girl to the pediatrician last week for her four-month checkup.  (It’s hard to believe it’s been four months already, and yet, it’s equally hard to believe we ever existed without this joyous being in our life.)  When the doctor mentioned that we could start feeding her cereal, it was like a hand reaching in and squeezing my heart.  No, we cannot start feeding her food.  To do that means admitting that the wonderful place we are at with breastfeeding will someday come to an end.  And soon!  And those half dozen times a day that I share with my bug – nurturing her in a way that only I can, as she looks up at me with those big blue eyes – would be one step closer to ending.  I refuse to transition into having a baby who eats!  And as I’ve come back to this over the last few days, I’ve slowly been coming to terms with the fact that this is what parenthood is.  It is loss.  Continual loss.  Of who that little person is right now.  Of who she was yesterday.  But it is also discovery.  Of who she will be tomorrow.  Of watching her come into her own, watching her realize she is her own being, developing and growing into what that means.  And these realizations are helping me remember to be present with her every day, every hour, every smile and giggle and wiggle, to enjoy her for who she is, and be okay with the loss of who she was yesterday.  I still don’t have any intention of starting her on food yet, we’ve got time, but I know it’s coming.  And knowing that is helping me put loss into perspective, and helping me understand that letting go, slowly, is also what parenthood is.

A new show debuted on ABC last week – Find My Family.  The premise, according to the show’s site, is simply “to bring families together”.   With the help of a dedicated team of researchers, hosts guide people searching for lost loved ones through the emotional journeys that will change their lives forever. On national television.  Yeah, that’s appropriate.  Is there nowhere that reality television will stop, no line at which producers will stop short and say “Hmm, maybe this isn’t really fitting for a national audience”?

Commercials have promoted searching for birth parents as well as long lost siblings.  I can’t speak to long lost siblings, but I do know that the search and potential reunion between a child and birth parent is an extremely loaded and emotional journey.  It is a series of months or even years filled with hope and then disappointment, dreams and then nightmares, questions, histories, hugs, tears, fulfillment, and insecurities.  To simplify this search into an hour long program, to belittle the journey, to bottle it into the predictable routine of 44 minutes of programming plus 16 minutes of commercials belies not only the producers lack of sympathy, but also their willingness to take advantage of someone so desperate to find answers to their questions.  It falsely glorifies this reunion, which can often be hurtful, harmful, and nothing short of life-shattering.

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I was reunited with my birth parents over ten years ago.  Which is hard to believe because my relationship with both my birth mother and birth father still feel new and raw.  We are still learning about one another, trying to figure each other out, to understand choices made, to accept personalities, to find room in our hearts and homes for this new family, to look beyond the often awkward interactions to try to see who the other really is, beyond the qualifiers of “birth mother”, “birth father”, or “birth daughter”.  Will we ever become completely comfortable with one another?  I don’t know.  I certainly hope so, but I can’t say for certain.

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I can see some positives to this show, I understand the opportunity tis might afford someone – the resources made available to participants, the time and money and expertise in seeking out lost people.  It may be their only real chance, their last chance, to find answers.  But the sacrifice you would make, to have to share your story, in cliff note version, to a judgmental audience, is not one I can wrap my head around as being “worth it”.  And you may read this and think that I am being overly judgmental, so let me leave you with this last little tidbit about the show….  After 50 minutes invested in someone’s story of loss, the reunion is held in a manmade field, with perfect lighting and weather.  There is a small hill with a path leading to the top, where a picturesque tree stands alone against the horizon.  The reunion inevitable always takes place here, under this tree.  Which, I shit you not, is called “The Family Tree”. {Groan………}

This isn’t about helping people.  This isn’t about individuals who have suffered enough.  This is about ratings.  This is about the next marketable product, and each person on the show is just that, a product.

So, here we are again, it’s been 2 months, and nothing. I’ve been accused of creating an orphan blog. Which I think is fairly ironic, considering that one of my main goals in starting this was to have a platform to write about adoption and families, and in doing so, try to make some sense of the multitude of family that I have due to my reconciliations with both maternal and paternal biological families.

I recently came across this blog post and found myself nodding along quite a bit. Not with all the nonprofit hub-bub, but the larger idea, about fear of failing. And thus, a lack of starting. I am notoriously guilty of this. Holy crap, am I guilty of this. My brain is always whirring with ideas, things i want to make and write and share and create. I carry a small sketchbook with me at all times to capture ideas, to scribble and visualize, etc. But I would say only 5% of any of my ideas make it into production. And that’s just sad. Pathetic, even. I have this blog set up, easy as pie, just waiting for me to give it life, to add content and thoughts, to create stories. I have no excuse for not posting more often. And ok, I have been busy, what with the gestating, but it’s not as if this hasn’t just created more ideas over the last 8 months. It has! So many ideas! Now I just need to act on them, need to stop thinking so much, and stop being afraid.

How does our identity develop? How much is of our own making, and how much is at the hands of outside forces? And is there any way to distinguish between the two? How are we each set on our path?

How do you objectively map a person? Create a ‘field guide’ to Becky or Tim or whomever? There’s the obvious mapping tools – genetics, on the purely physiological level; Myers-Briggs, as a psychological assessment; so many other small markers we are held up against throughout our lives, even growth charts, to gauge what percentile we fit into among the general public. But in what ways can we look back (and forward), take a person into consideration, and see how they got to this point, see what direction it looks likely that they will head?

This feels stupid and pedestrian, yet so strongly impacts my thought processes and how I view so many aspects of the world. How do I ask the right questions? And maybe become a little more eloquent in the process?

So, it’s been two months. I’m really bad at this. And wanted to acknowledge it here, in public (sorta). But life! Life has been all sorts of exciting and new and crazy and tiring. And I often have a lot of trouble balancing life! and anything else. Sorry about that. I’ll try harder.

I feel as though so much of what I have written here has been very high drama. Which is funny, considering I try very hard to live my life with as little drama involved as possible. Maybe I’ve just been fooling myself all of this time. And while I wouldn’t say my story is ‘normal’, it hasn’t all been a soap opera, either. I don’t know, maybe I just like telling the parts that lend themselves to great dramatic effect. But I want to start sharing parts that are a little less so…..
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When I was a little girl, I had this wonderful storybook. I don’t remember the name, but can still envision the front cover as though it was right here in front of me. The story was about a family of rabbits who become stuck in their house after a big snowstorm. They decide to travel out and explore, and in preparing to do so, strap snowshoes onto their feet. I don’t remember much else, just the snowshoes. And from that point on, I was fascinated by the things. I already had a deep love of all things winter, but the idea that you could walk on top of the snow just blew my mind. Every winter from there on out, I would try to make my own, usually by strapping badminton rackets to my snow boots. These ventures very rarely worked. And my brother would get annoyed that I broke yet another pair of the rackets….

I told myself repeatedly over the years that I would go snowshoeing. That I would finally get out there and do this thing that I had been dreaming of for years. Well, this afternoon, I actually did. My good friend Bethany agreed to come on this adventure with me, and after driving in circles for almost two hours, we had acquired the shoes, were parked at a state park, and were ready to go. And it was lovely! I can’t claim to have been the most graceful, but the idea of walking through the woods, up hills and then down, on snow that only animals had trekked over, created a completely joyous calm deep inside of me.

I hope to get out there some more, to explore the snowy wilderness. To float on the snow. To be that bunny rabbit, leaving home after the storm.

So, I started this here blog six months ago. And I thought it would be so insightful and witty and wonderful, and with such good material and topics, how could I ever want for posts….? Obviously, my approach was faulty. Cause, well, six months later, with a total of 12 posts…. um, yeah. So, it being that time of year that everyone likes to go all introspective, I too am taking a look at things and have decided to open it up a little. I initially set parameters of talking about adoption, identity, and depression. I still plan on addressing those things… they are pretty integral to who I am and my life, so how could I not? But, I am also going to try to write more and censor less. I tend to get so caught up in my head with making things perfect that I fail to start, to just begin doing something (anything!), for fear of the epic failure anything I do will surely come to. Silly, I know, but so am I. So, this is me, telling all four of you (five, on a good day), my new intentions, putting it out there, taking a risk. Trying to stop censoring.

Consequently, you’ll end up reading more crap about my life. Run now, before my witty banter sucks you in too deep….