Family Values

Again it’s been a while… but this time I’ve got a really good excuse!

Ari has joined us… in fact, he is nearly 11 weeks old! There’s lots of changes to reflect upon and even more to do… The list is ever longer (washing, cooking, working, playing) but, as always, time seems to diminish in inverse proportion!

Anyway… first things first! ‘How was the birth?’ everyone asks…

Well I’ve distilled it into a pithy summary… it started really well and ended beautifully… with a brief interlude in the middle for an emergency caesarean…

If you're interested in the blow-by-blow, check out the blog of my gorgeous independent midwife, Lisa... www.homebirth.net.au

It was so different to my previous caesar experience. Labouring at home, rocking on an exercise ball or wallowing in the birth pool, surrounded by a beautiful group of people I love; knowing that the transfer to hospital was utterly necessary (Ari’s heart-rate was dangerously low and I was bleeding). My unerring faith in Lisa gave me great strength and I discovered within myself a certainty that ‘no matter what, everything would work out fine’. There was a surreal moment as I was loaded into the ambulance (refusing to lie down!) when I seemed to be outside my body looking down at the whole scene…‘That’d be right!’ I thought ‘Plan a water-birth and end up with a more dramatic caesar than first time round!’. It was a thought flavoured with humour, not bitterness and I felt the spirit of the little guy I was soon to meet…

Emerging from a general anaesthetic, someone laid my naked baby on my bare chest... Much to my surprise I felt tears flooding down my cheeks as I recognised the perfect little person I'd been carrying around inside.

Later, buzzing with happiness in a hospital bed, a 'helpful' nurse informed me of the so-called 'risks' of co-sleeping and I calmly informed her that I had done some research on the subject and felt comfortable with my ability to feed, cuddle and sleep with my new baby...

‘You go Girl!’ comments the little self that hovers on my shoulder, normally so verbose with constructive criticisms…

Big sister was disappointed to have missed the moment when Ari entered the world but was glad to have the first cuddle. Within weeks she would be proclaiming other ‘firsts’ and currently holds the record for making Ari smile (27 in a row).

We only stayed in hospital for a day and a half… I was so glad to escape… after all hospital can’t really offer comparable pleasures to watching your daughter and midwife making placenta prints on the lounge-room floor!!
My fairy-family kicked into play straight away with slaves a-plenty making cups of tea and toast... camping on the edge of the bed as Ari and I inhabited a battered old lounge chair re-dubbed the 'feeding' chair.

Every parent in Rosie's school yard stops to cluck and coo... endless queries about the babies sleep and feeding patterns... ‘is he good?’ (as if a baby can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’). It strikes me how utterly ‘normal’ it all is - nobody asks how he was conceived. Donor M’s mum even gets flowers from a woman at work to congratulate her on becoming a grandma for the first time.

There are aspects of all this conventional ‘nuclear family’ stuff that I still find unsettling, because it’s not a true reflection of our reality… But I’ve also arrived at a place where it just doesn’t matter right now. I’m willing (and proud) to get into the real complexity of it all, but only when there’s time and an appropriate space…

What matters is that Nan and Gramps are both charmed by his face-cracker of a smile and my sister can’t get enough cuddles. Whilst part of me wonders what story she’ll tell her kids about where Ari came from, the rest of me is so happy about how ‘our mob’ has come together, that I just don’t care whether or not anyone really understands or approves.

The challenges I face now are not dissimilar to those faced by any other mum - how to juggle work and study with house-cleaning and the very different needs of two kids. Lots hasn’t changed - there’s still not enough hours in a day; R’s dad still picks fights at every available opportunity despite over 5 years of mediation; there are still crack-pot religious homophobes on too many street corners…

What has changed very profoundly, very deeply for me is… I finally get it! So much past sadness is healing… as I re-visit each baby milestone, the journey gets re-written with new tales. At eight days old R had brain surgery; at nine days she started screaming every time I offered her my breast; at three months I finally stopped milking myself every three hours; at five months a baby-care nurse reported me to social services because I’d rated off the scale on a post-natal depression questionnaire. Soon after we moved back to Adelaide from Sydney… I was a fragile shell of my former self; I remember pushing a pram around a massive shopping complex, feeling like poor white trash, ashamed when I had to ask a cafe to heat the baby’s bottle.

I wonder whether a large part of my depression was, in fact, an identity crisis. I’d been an out-and-proud baby dyke, then reluctantly bi… then, when I had a baby, I became invisible. No sexuality = No spirit. Just a tired young mum struggling to hold together a bad relationship. I was pretty sure my baby didn’t like me and I was always surprised when other people admired her.
I pause and celebrate how much I love this little baby and my big girl. I can't wait for Ari to grow into a crawler then a toddler then a big kid... and I love that I get to remain myself whilst sharing this whole journey with R and the family we have worked so hard to create. Not to say there aren't bad days, but I won't let them overwhelm me... because this time I know who I am.

And the bad days are just like that… I don’t need to fix them or dwell upon what caused them. I’m managing to get through work and feel like I’m doing a good job on a variety of projects; I have good relationships with a variety of people. I can’t wait to start my PhD. One day soon I’m thinking I might even find myself capable of falling in love again… not in any desperate hurry though ; ) Too busy enjoying being just the way we are!!