It’s just he and I during the night hours.
He sleeps beside me, either curled into the crevice of my arm or just beside me on the bed, our faces turned toward one another. He changes positions throughout the night. He’s one of those people who needs to turn from side to side, and I can’t hold that against him because I am too. But unlike me, he is a small baby who does not have the ability to change positions himself.
He wakes frequently, as most small babies do – and even more frequently during certain phases. Sometimes it is just the change of position he needs, so I try helping him into this or that position until he is settled again. Oftentimes he wants to feed. He has his way of telling me this.
We speak no words. We make no sounds. Not even a grunt or cry. Our bodies do all of the communication.
If he wants milk, he rubs his face into my chest or throws himself to one side of my body. Then I know he is actually hungry and will gulp some milk down. If he’s not so hungry and just needs the connection or security, then his cues are different. But I know them all. I know how to respond. And I respond quickly because it’s the easiest way to get him back to sleep. To fight is futile. Fighting leads to agitation and longer awake time. As soon as his mouth is attached, his body goes still, his breathing is deep and peaceful. We both nod off again. By giving him what he needs, I get what I need too – sleep.
And so the night goes on. It is not the bed that we share so much as this dance, where our minds recede and our bodies take over. In the blurry, dream-like state of half sleep, our bodies know the dance so well – the cues and signals, the subtle touches, like a language all our own.
I never check the clock. Time is irrelevant. I’m not even curious about it even more. What can it tell me?
When he’s totally awake and it’s time to start the day, his eyes are big and round. If I’m not getting the hint, he will swat at my face with his little hand. As soon as our eyes meet, his whole face lights up with a smile. There is nothing like it in the whole world. My sun, my enormous heart. I cannot imagine waking up to anything else.
“It isn’t like a love affair. It is a love affair…. I have my baby and my baby has me. It is a buoyant Eros, an Eros without teleology.”
Maggie Nelson in The Argonauts
I wish I’d figured this out with my first child. Well eventually I did, but it took some time. We co-slept and breastfed through the night. But I also wrestled with him. I even blamed him. What is wrong with you? I would say harshly, refusing to feed again. I tried giving him to his father, which never worked, because they didn’t share a language, they didn’t share a body. I’m not saying they couldn’t have, but they just didn’t. And so the nights were filled with screaming.
Friends told me to buy earplugs and sleep in another room while my husband dealt with our shrieking baby, but I just couldn’t do it. Didn’t have the heart. This made me feel weak, and so I lied to people. Told them I’d tried ‘sleep training’ tactics that I had no intention of trying. Or I downplayed the horror that our nights actually were.
Luckily I had someone I could turn to. My first son’s midwife – her name was Karina – saved me, saved us. She was his nurse first, the one who vaccinated him and treated his cradle cap, etc. But Karina was more than a nurse. She went beyond the physical body, explaining how a baby’s psychological and physiological development were just as important to their future. She also invested in my wellness, as she believed that a child’s future was irrevocably shaped by a mother’s state of being.
What Karina fundamentally gave me was not a set of tricks or tools, and certainly no baby training methods either. It’s true that she discouraged all of that, but not by shaming me in any way. Rather she taught me about human biology and how babies develop optimally. She gave me plenty of solid research, facts and figures that shifted what I knew about parenting, and definitely what I knew about babies. But more importantly she taught me to follow my instincts. Little by little, day by day, my instincts would emerge, she promised. And I could really trust them. The more I trusted them, the more they would take over the parenting details, freeing me up to simply enjoy my baby.
This led me to so many questions…
• Why is a mother’s sleeping body considered a lethal weapon (back to co-sleeping myths)?
• When did we lose our ability to relate with our babies in a natural way, unencumbered by overwhelming anxiety and unnecessary stress around baby sleep?
• Why is it so hard for us to access our instincts today, not just as mothers but as women too? Why is it so hard to trust them?
• What does that inner voice even sound like, that intuitive one that’s supposed to be leading the way?
• Who can help me navigate the hallway between Maiden and Mother, help me grieve the temporary losses of one – particularly the freedom and autonomy I valued so deeply as a westerner – and embrace all that comes along with being a mother? Help me see that, eventually, I will embody both, that I am evolving, expanding in every way, rather than diminishing?
oh woman
Joy Harjo in “The Blanket Around Her”
remember who you are
woman
it is the whole earth
In the first months of motherhood, I was forgetting who I was.
Not in the way you hear about so often – mothers losing themselves in their children. That’s not what I’m talking about.
I was forgetting the woman within, the one with her own wisdom and voice, the one who just knew things, the creative force that was intimately connected to shifts and cycles. Where was the wild woman? What even is a wild woman?
During pregnancy, I read a book called Birthing from Within that sparked this journey. Like most resources, it focused on how to nurture my body during pregnancy and bring my baby naturally, and safely, out into the world by trusting my body’s innate wisdom. How to birth without fear.
I had so much support from others, friends came out of woodworks to encourage me, pump me up, give me gifts, share stories, ask questions, etc. I felt as if I was on the fringe of a new, deeper sort of community.
In my final weeks of pregnancy, I felt so strong and confident, so fully present and alive, that I actually enjoyed giving birth. Never had I been apart of something so intensely, joyously creative. Never had I felt so connected to the motherline, to my ancestors, all the women who had come before me.
But then after the birth… what to do with my shrieking baby who never allowed me to rest and demanded everything from me every second of the day? Where was my creativity, my inner knowing?
It was perfectly acceptable – encouraged even – to be wild in pregnancy and childbirth, so why then are we pressured to go straight back to the modern rat race woman as soon as our baby is out in the world, leaving behind (yet again) all of that inner feminine knowing and power? Why does all the advice we’re given involve stricter schedules, routine and rigidity?
Also, all of the support I had during pregnancy had fallen away. Never heard from friends, and when I tried reaching out, all I got was some pity and maybe some parenting shortcuts, which seemed to shortchange the baby.
“We did not evolve to parent alone,” Karina reminded me often, asking me again and again if there was anyone I could reach out to for support. “I know we worship our independence these days, but we are meant to mother – to parent – to caregive – in community.” Deep down, I knew Karina was right. But I had no power to change society, only to change myself.
I wanted to find my way back to the wild woman that I’d been in pregnancy. I had to. Not only for myself, but for my child too. That woman was tuned-in, she was wise, she was sure. Thankfully a tiny spark of that fire was still inside, smoldering.
“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With Wolves
I had several doors. Quite a few deep scars. Many, many generations of stories. I had unbearable loves too, and yearnings. And so I got to work. I did a lot of listening, forgiving and healing. I asked myself some difficult questions and faced some painful memories. And ultimately, I decided what sort of family experience I wanted to create. To hell with what others thought. Most people don’t even know who they are, so why did I care so much what they thought of me?
I’m not here to offer another mom blog post telling you how to parent, only to (hopefully) nudge you back towards your own wild self who already knows how to mother with heart and intuition.
I’ve by no means got it all figured out, nor am I striving for any sort of perfection when it comes to parenting. I almost always take the easy way out – co-sleeping being just one example, and yes I swear it’s so much easier for me than than other sleeping arrangement!
I’m thankful for evidence–based research that almost always confirms what my heart and instincts are already murmuring. So that when I have those moments of doubt, they can restore a bit of confidence. I’m also thankful for my first child who taught me and led me back to that wise wild woman within.
In forthcoming Wyld Motherhood posts, we explore this further, as well as other topics central to mothering, and to women in general.
Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by!
Featured title image by @ladygravy – one to follow for sure!
