ElementalMom

I mentioned the other day that Aurora is starting to talk up a storm, and someone asked me what her first word actually was.

It does my heart good, after two prior attempts at gender-neutrality that failed utterly, to let everyone know that Aurora’s first official word was:

Yup. Her word was “truck.” Just the first, my friends, of many, many things that will be as they are because she’s the little sister of two very enthusiastic and generous older brothers.

I’m working on writing a book about moving aboard the boat. I’ll write more about that more on my other blog. But I’m doing a lot of cannibalizing of content from this blog and the other one. Most importantly to this post, this morning, I rewrote Rowan’s birth story.

Most of my readers here know that Rowan’s birth was insanely traumatic for me. An unplanned, unwanted cesarean, that birth catapulted me into a year of depression followed by some of the angriest years of my life, and a vocation of activism in the arena of birth. No woman anywhere should have to go through what I did, and yet, the (unnecessary) cesarean rate in this country continues to skyrocket. It’s a crisis, it’s a human rights violation, and it’s a complete international embarassment.

But that’s not what I am writing about this morning.

I wrote the story once, when I was still recovering, and it was the sweetness and light that women usually describe their cesareans as. “Totally necessary” they say. Bullshit, says I. But at the time, I’d have killed you for suggesting mine wasn’t. I wrote it a second time, once I was recovering, in the depths of my depression, in the hopes that women reading it would learn from my journey and not have to take the same one themselves. It was all about figuring out where things had gone wrong, in order to make different, better choices later.

This time, I am rewriting it as what its deepest meaning and highest purpose (for me) might possibly be. Rowan’s birth is what finally, unequivocally taught me that if I wanted it done right, I had to do it myself. That relying on the System for anything at all was a sure path to madness, and that while independence carries its own problems, those problems are at least unilaterally the result of your own choices, and not someone else’s. Someone else who almost certainly has their own paycheck and ass as a higher concern than your  well being.

So here’s to Version 3 of Rowan’s birth. It’s taken me seven long, hard, uphill, introspective, kick-in-the-teeth years to get to the place where I am grateful for the lesson, moreso than grieving of the process that got me here.

Unemployment #1 and Unemployment #2 are over at my other blog, Excellent Adventure.

This morning, I am grateful that I am unemployed.

Aurora is cutting teeth. By this, I do not mean she’s teething. No. She’s doing exactly what Rowan did; running a fever so hot it’s scary, being listless and uncomfortable and unhappy, and simply waiting for the teeth to push through. Her gums are red and puffy, and she’s doing the diarrhea thing (thank goodness for EC!).

Last night, I think I got maybe three or four hours of sleep. In fifteen-minute bursts. And through it all, I was able to stay relaxed and groovy, understanding and empathetic. Why?

Because I am unemployed. Because I knew that I could take it as easy as I needed to today, catch up on naps as necessary, and just focus on alleviating her suffering. Had this happened just a few weeks ago, I’d be juggling childcare and meetings and hostile emails and not giving her what she needed to come through this. But as it is, we’re still in our jammies, hanging out. working on ways to make her more comfortable, catching up on sleep as we can. And it’s all good.

The world is a far more peaceful place this morning, simply because I am able to be present with my child. And that is worth more than a paycheck.

Guess who’s sitting up on her own?