Birthing a New World Part 1

My son was conceived on a glorious day of love, a celebration of my marriage, which is also my birthday, specifically on our wedding day. We intentionally created him with love, had just weeks prior made a wish at a Shiva celebration asking for a healthy, fun, baby boy. We offered up our milk, ate some lovely Indian food, and made love each time with full intention and presence.

I started to get sick on the honeymoon, but didn’t think I was pregnant, just thought the circumstances of stress from the farm, getting over a flu, the exhale moment when the wedding is done and life moves along, and being out on an island in the Whitsundays taking trips out in the Great Barrier Reef.

By time we got back home, I knew I was pregnant. I still took a test to confirm at 4am with my first mornings urine which is supposed to have the best rate of truth, I wanted to be sure, and I was. I woke my husband up and told him excitedly, he smiled at me and then we went back to sleep. I was pregnant and it certainly didn’t take long, I had only taken my IUD out less than a month before hand. Everything was happening very quickly!

I had what seemed like a mini period after that, which caused concern, even though I was feeling nauseated. The GP suggested I go in to the radiologist to have a sonogram as soon as I could, so I booked the next appointment I could, and went in. As I laid on the table, I was scared, what if I had lost the baby? I was so new to all of this. My husband wasn’t available to come with me, so I was there alone, and I felt just that, all alone. Then all of a sudden there was a heartbeat, and I was both relieved that it was there and also sad that I couldn’t share this first heartbeat experience with my husband. I saw my insides on the monitor and baby looked like a little dot amongst it all, but alas baby was there. It turns out that was implantation bleeding, which can occur for some women when the egg plants itself into the lining of the uterus.

For the rest of the first trimester, I experienced the most nausea I have ever had in my life. I took ginger, I went to acupuncture, I ate small bites of food regularly, and it never subsided. I really pride myself in the fact that I can avoid puking if I want, every so often I just cannot handle it and I have to vomit, but in this case, for weeks, months actually I was so sick but never actually vomiting. I was hot, like burning up hot most of the time. The acupuncturist would try to lower my heat from my upper body into my legs, and it did work a bit, it at least gave me peace of mind and I was able to cope a little better. During that first trimester I had to really take it easy, but I couldn’t, not really.

Also during the first trimester, the climax of a big dispute of the processing plant tenants at the farm came, it had been building as they had not been taking care of the animals and we even had to intervene and feed the starving animals ourselves on the eve of our wedding night. The whole time during our honeymoon, we, more so my husband, had to deal with the issue, and it was intense. When we got back my husband had to get to work in Sydney, so I was there at the farm with his parents and a few woofers trying to make a presence and not let anything happen. They were hostile and very volatile and we did not trust them at all to leave peacefully. I was on edge and I know that certainly did not help my pregnancy. Along with that, the farmhouse upstairs has this incredible way of syphoning all of the cooking smell from downstairs to the upstairs where the rooms are. So every day I would have nausea and have to smell cooking flesh on the stove, it was almost more than I could bear. I had to ask the woofers to wear deodorant, but only a non fragrant kind. Nausea and farm life really don’t go so well together, with animals being slaughtered, carcases decomposing, and all of the chicken poop and animal smells that come along with a farm.

It was so hard for me to be away from my husband, but I did not want to move to Sydney. I did not want to raise our son in the city, I did not want to move away from the group of friends I had made in country, but I missed him so much, that eventually in the 2nd trimester, I made the move down with him full time. As soon as I was in Sydney, in our new penthouse apartment, I hardly had nausea or morning sickness. By the way, whomever called it morning sickness may have been thinking globally at the time, because it is certainly not contained to one morning in one hemisphere, mine lasted all day and night every day at the farm.

During all of this, I had many different projects going on. I had hired on a coaching team to help me build my own business from scratch, which was becoming harder and harder to manage with my fluctuating levels of energy, feeling unwell, and a totally spacey head. I had a very candid conversation with one of the coaches, and she told me to stop doing it, if there was any advice she would give it would be to stop and not do it, being a soon to be new mother and trying to start a business at the same time was a disaster recipe, and that the most important thing was my child and to not make the same mistake she made by trying to do it all. She also suggested getting a really comfortable reclining chair to live in with the baby. I took her suggestions on board and she was right, although I will get back to it and finish what I started, when the time is right.

We also had the closing of the abattoir at the farm, which was a very big deal. There was also an internet business that my husband and I were getting into, which long story short, over a year of being dragged along, paying out our noses and still not getting to the point where we could sell the internet to others, Telstra finally got back to my husband with the contract. It’s such bologna that any independent resellers have to go through the one company which owns all the lines in Australia that were actually paid fro by the people before they fave it over to this private corporation, who more or less has a monopoly over all the lines across the country. Of course they don’t want competition, there is no reason for them to help someone compete with them, it’s a very flawed system. We didn’t think it was going to be such a big issue, but it was, had we have known we wouldn’t have been stuck into it as long as we did with our finances draining by the month.

Along with this I was still contemplating whether or not to take up the offer for Honours at University and to teach the Digital Marketing class part time. It would have to be all out of pocket as I didn’t have PR, and was considered an international student. The next question was whether or not I would be able to handle having a newborn, living in the Northern Rivers while my husband was in Sydney and trying to do it all. This had to wait as well.

I also started up a mini little network marketing business to help generate some income, which ended up me just spending a lot of money in the way of their products, which while the dollar was one to one, it wasn’t so bad. I sent out heaps of greeting cards and that felt really good, until the realisation that the only way you make money is not by having others buy your greeting cards, but they have to be distributors as well, it felt a bit strange, and I found that it didn’t work as well in Australia, especially as the US dollar increased in value, it became really expensive to keep this going. Eventually I stopped paying and my account has just enough to send a few more cards and then its done.

So there were all of these projects happening, lots of stress, and then a move, to a place I didn’t really want to live, but did because I wanted, err, needed, to be with my husband.

I started trying to figure out where to do antenatal classes that fit in with my husbands rotating schedule, I didn’t get into this alone and I didn’t want to do it alone. I found a birthing from within program in the Northern Rivers and it fit the dates in my 3rd trimester, and I felt better. I had luckily gotten in to the caseload midwife program at the local hospital near the farm where I could have a water birth and be assisted by lovely experienced women with the security of having the hospital as well just in case anything went awry.

There was still a lot of stress regarding the projects we had going on, but I was getting everything sorted one by one. Then at one of the ultrasound appointments, I was told that my placenta was low lying, and that if it didn’t move up, then I would have to have to have a cesarian. This was the opposite of the midwife assisted water birth I had planned to do without any kind of medication. I kept hoping it was wrong and was misdiagnosed due to me not drinking enough water so they could see inside properly with their machine. At the 20 week scan, we saw that my son was not shy at all and was showing his parts in full glory. I was going to have a boy. It was all pretty surreal and was happening.

After a quick trip back to the farm, I got back on the plane to Sydney and was required to show my letter stating I was okay to fly. I honestly didn’t feel very good at all. The day before I had spent a little time in the healing waters of Lake Ainsworth, a nearby tea tree oil infused lake, which happens to be my favourite lake in the world. I was told later that it was an aboriginal birthing lake, which maybe somehow my body knew that.

We landed in Sydney, I met up with a Uni friend and strolled the open gardens on a lovely spring day at Westmeade hospital, and I was tired, very very tired. I had only just finished my 2nd trimester, the baby wasn’t due for another almost three months, but I was so exhausted. That evening, I went to the toilet and found that I was bleeding, a lot of blood. Interestingly only a week or so before, as a precaution I booked into the local Nepean Hospital just in case I needed anything while I was in Sydney related to my pregnancy. We called and they said to come in, and this was the first of many experiences I had with the birthing suite. They wanted to monitor the baby’s heartbeat and to make sure everything was okay. Turns out everything was okay, and that bleeding was par for the course when it came to having a low lying placenta. After a couple of days they let me go home after it was clear that I wasn’t bleeding anymore. I was relieved and very tired.

Since we lived in penthouse apartment that was a walkup, that meant I had to somehow make it up 4 flights of stairs to my bedroom. It was horrendous. We had to move. We had to move for other reasons as well. We had these two older Sri Lankans who totally leached off of us for more months than I care to admit. My husband didn’t want to deal with it as he had his plate absolutely full, and they kept promising they would pay rent. We took on two additional housemates on top of them to help pay the rent, so there was a full house on top of it all. We started looking intently for another place to live that was clean, nice, and not too expensive. I had been looking when I would come to Sydney from the farm and just couldn’t find anything that would work, the one place that did was then pulled last minute and rented to a friend of the owner. By chance, we were directed by a real estate agent to a place we hadn’t even noticed online, and it was the right one, so we signed on, things were looking up. It was a ground level, stand alone two storied town house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms with a a cute backyard. Perfect for what we needed and it was brand new.

I had another bout of bleeding a week later and again, we rushed to hospital, this time there was more blood than I’ve ever seen rushing out of my body.

To be continued.

My Dad is No Longer Physical

I’m okay most of the time, but then I’ll be hit with this big emotional wave of sadness that my father is no longer alive, here in this physical world. It’s like I’m looking at the shoreline with my feet just in the water and then I’m pummelled by a huge wave and I get whirled around in the sand and have to make it back up again. It makes me so sad and I start to cry and all I can do is think of his big smile, his all encompassing hug, and his natural charisma. I think of the way he would kiss my forehead and tell me he loved me. I think of the times when he would choke up and even shed a tear when i would be leaving home back to Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon, or Brazil, or Australia. I feel like I was always leaving. I had to though.

My emotional heart feels so heavy, and my throat feels all blocked. I have tears streaming down my face as I type this. I feel such despair. I can’t call him on the phone and just talk to him anymore. I can write him letters and post them but he’ll never actually read them. This feels makes me feel so sad. 60 is so young. I’ve only just started my own family. I want to have him there so I can talk to him and grow in this way with him, as me a mother and him a grandfather to my son. I cannot help but think of all the things we cannot do together, all the memories that we can no longer make together, they have all come to an end.

Now he lives just in my minds eye, in my heart, in my body, in my cells, he lives within me.

Dad and Health

An emergency message

never good to get

call me, we need to talk

it’s not good

he fell a week ago

hasn’t gone to hospital

until now.

Scans, MRI, Biopsy

It’s been years since he’s been in.

Truth is he’s sick

he’s been sick for a while

He’s ignored it.

We have too.

It’s easier to ignore it than confront it sometimes.

This time it’s gone much further.

I’ve been trying to call him, to talk to him for months and months.

He’s been out of reach

no phone

out of reach.

Now it’s an emergency

masses in his body

around his lungs

around his heart

in his lymph nodes

in his brain

oh fuck.

he has to be in pain

and this is what pains me the most

i also feel bad that we haven’t kept in contact

he isn’t much of a letter writer

and doesn’t really do the whole internet thing

and doesn’t seem to have a phone

so the only way I know would be to actually show up

on his doorstep

hoping that is still where he is.

Even if we haven’t talked since we told him that we were expecting a baby

about a year ago now

I still wouldn’t ever want anyone to be in pain

especially not those that I love

especially not my family and close friends.

My sister said he was all choked up when she came back into his hospital room after we hung up

I could hear the strain in his voice, he couldn’t even say I love you back

and it was killing him and I could hear it and I couldn’t do anything

I was bawling and I didn’t want him to know that either

this pains me too.

My father has always been a very strong man, stubbornly strong

and even now he is still that way.

There is a part of me that feels like I need to come to grips with the fact that my father will likely die, soon. The other part of me is asking should I still hold onto threads of hope that he will somehow make it through this? With hope that the doctors will be able to reduce and remove the masses in his brain without majorly affecting him, that he will then be able to continue living his life. That he would then go through Chemo or Radiation or both to eradicate the rest of the masses so he will then be able to continue living his life. This isn’t about me, but I feel like I need something to hold onto because all of it hurts, all of it.

I live on the other side of the world, a 17 hour flight minimum. Baby’s passport will take at least 15 working days from yesterday. Time is short. Every day, every minute counts. It’s so easy to take life and all of the chances. I’ve been living my life, married now and haven’t been back to visit my family once in five years. I did strangely say that I would either be back in one year or five years when I left the states, I just wasn’t expecting nor wanting this to be the reason why.

He is just 60 years old. He isn’t even at retirement age yet. Not that he has a typical job, he hasn’t since I was just a wee little one. Most others of his generation bought into the work all your life so you can take it easy when you retire at 65 and live your golden years relaxing. However, that is the time when the body slows down, the health issues start creeping in. My dad at least was determined to make his own rules and live life how he wanted to, on his own terms, not saving anything until retirement age, burning like a holy roman candle, a mad one he is.

 

 

Fallen In Love

It’s taken me a while. Baby A is now 7 months old in actual age and I have just full fallen in love with him It feels great. I love to see his sweet smile and the way he looks at me. I love to watch and learn with him. I love to give him hugs and hold him close. I love to have fun and play with him. It feels very good.

I’ve loved him for some time, in varying degrees. It is nice to finally allow myself to fall in love too. I know he’s going to live, I know we are both healthy, and I know my husband is in love with us both too. It is important to me that my husband is in love with Baby A too. I really want us to be a family of love, of full love, not just between mother and son or father and son or even mother and father, but all of us in love together, as a unit, as an alliance.

The feeling of being in love is so magical. It makes me feel very good, it makes me happy. It makes everything in life so much more viivd and brighter. It makes life more joyous, and any perceived challenges as laughable and something that is kinda funny. The power of love is incredible.

I feel a sense of relief as well. It has been a rough patch for all of us and I’m glad that we are finally moving on with our hearts, minds and bodies.

Here’s to love!

Total Transformation

It has occurred to me in such a magnanimous way today out of seemingly nowhere, that I am undergoing the most profound and ultimate transformation of my entire life. I am reminded of this truth when I look to my navel and see that it now protrudes substantially from my core, that my belly has stretched in ways it has never known before in order to house the growing love being inside of my body. The emotional and physical flares that arise in the way of stuffy noses, tiredness, sensitivity, extreme joy, blissfulness and heightened sexual energy, all of which comes in waves and reminds me that I am amidst change. My mind is morphing with the hormones and the additional heart that is growing inside of my body. My mind may be having some conflict, which is creating these physical and emotional reactions, but nonetheless, my mind, my body, my emotional landscape are all changing in every single moment.

It is surreal to think that as I type this, as sit here thinking about life in the current state of now, that I have within me, not just one heart, not just one brain, but two of each. My body and spirit are feeding and giving life to another human being in this very moment. It feels slightly superhuman and absolutely divine as there are no other words to identify with right now. It feels like the idea of unison has been achieved and is happening all now. It was the united love and intimacy that brought this about. It is the joint wishing for this amongst an altar to Shiva, Ganesh & Paravati. It is the manifestation of our love on our wedding day, which allowed for this divine act of creating new life, creating a third life out of two.

It is only now that I am ready and prepared for this. It is only now that I am able to completely give of myself this transformation, this life changing process. It is only now that I truly love myself, that I found true love in another, which has prepared me.

I am learning lessons in each moment. I am learning how to be more kind to myself, to be more generous and gentle with who I am. My energy comes in waves and, sometimes, I just need to take it easy. This self love and compassion is growing daily which I know I will need once I give birth and am responsible for another. The fierceness of love and loyalty I feel for my husband is growing stronger and stronger. There is nothing greater to me in this world right now that the two of us, and our child that is growing inside of me, it is my family that takes complete priority above all else. It is in the ability to convert my own research and knowledge of food and nutrition that I am now able to easily create healthy meals for us. This may sound trivial and if this were the younger version of me speaking, she would have been outraged that I would even consider this to be so huge, but it is. I am nourishing myself, my husband, our child, our life with prosperity and healthy in mind.

It’s Thursday. I’m 23 weeks pregnant. I will never again be who I am in this moment, and it has never felt more true than it does now.

The Name Game

What’s in a name? Is it the name that makes the person or is it the person who makes the name? Does the vibration of the name really matter? Does the numerology really play an important role in that vibration? Does giving a child an “older” name weigh heavily on them? Does having a name that starts with an “A” automatically make them first to be called up and hence more available for leadership?

When we thought we might have a girl, we had already decided on a name that we both liked and that we felt could be a part of our life easily. However, now that it’s certainly a boy, that task has become a paramount effort! We’ve sat with these names so far: Alister, Alec, Riley, Theodore/Teddy, Abraham/Abe, Apollo and are still looking. I love when the name has some kind of significance. Would naming our child after Abraham Lincoln who was one of the greatest American Presidents who abolished slavery and forever changed the history of my homeland too big of a name to step into? Or would it lead to inspiration because Abraham Lincoln was such a stand out character and led his life with such high integrity?

My hope is that we will raise this child in a way that he is confident in who he is, regardless of his name. That he will be creative, generous, kind, strong, and gentle. That he will be a mixture of both my husband’s characteristics, mine, and of his as he develops them himself. That he will carve out his own sense of self in this world and be uniquely who he is. Inspiration comes from all areas of life and can also come from the name that one is given at birth.

It’s amazing how different it is to think about boy’s names versus girl’s names. There is a sense of weight that seems to be involved that wasn’t with the girl names. Is it because I had a father who developed a very tough shell in part because his name was a typical girl’s name? Honouring that “boy named Sue” complex that Johnny Cash famously sang about. Perhaps there is a sense of importance based on a name given as to what they will do in the world and how they will impact it.

Hopefully this name will come along and become apparent that it is the name of this being growing inside of me.

Sex and Gender?

Perhaps I’m still trying to decide or decipher between the difference between sex and gender. I mostly see past these terms and see people as just people, which is likely why I accept homosexuality in such an easy way. We love who we love, we are who we are, we are constantly changing, we are souls housed in human bodies and we get to live on this physical plane experiencing life day to day in a tangible way.

People are very quick to tell me why I shouldn’t find out the sex of the baby. My husband and I are keen to find out though. Not for the reason to choose blue or pink or other stereotypical things, but more because it will aid in the bonding process. Also, it’s nice to be able to plan. Sure, we can’t plan everything, but at least I can visualise and start to dream about it in a more solidified way. Granted that in next week’s ultrasound where we can find out the sex, there is a possibility that we won’t, and even so that they may be wrong about it.

The sex of this baby will not necessarily inform their gender, although it might. It may have an influence on how they grow up in society, but ultimately it is up to them to choose who they are and what they want to be. We are just the parents, the ones who are to look after them until they are ready to venture out on their own. We are the ones who will lead them to the knowledge that we’ve discovered, but allow them to find out and discover and make up their own minds about things, about everything. This is true whether this baby inside of me is a boy or a girl. It doesn’t really matter. We’ll be happy with either, we just have faith that it’ll be healthy and will naturally bring joy with it. I know that we’ll also experience joy and love in ways that neither my husband nor I could have imagined. I know that all of this extraordinary change will happen regardless of what kind of genitals they are born with.

 

Creating Family

I was just overcome with the amount of excitement and joy that I have about creating my own family. I never thought that this was in my future and now that it is, it brings tears to my eyes. I didn’t expect that I would start to feel this way, that I would really want to have my own family, my own children, my own husband, creating our world.

To essentially create my own tribe with the people I love the very most even if they aren’t born yet. I get to create our own little dip in the world, our own version of life. I get to share the love that I have, I get to experience their love, I get to expand into this amazing gift of life. It feels like the only real thing that matters right now, creating a loving space for my husband, myself, and our soon-to-be child, and possibly children.

This would not be happening had I not found and seized the moment with my husband. He is the most amazing person and it is with his love and support that I feel like this can happen, and that it is happening. I knew it really early on that he was the person I would spend my life with. I even slipped up and wrote that I knew he would be THE Great Love of my life, not A Great Love as I had intended when I started creating the card. It was so early on in our relationship, nearly three years ago when I wrote it and it’s completely turned out to be true.

This excitement of being able to create my own world with my husband feels so good. It’s hard to describe as I type, but I’m actually tearing up as I write this, it’s the kind of excitement that is so unknown, so deep, and so expansive. I feel blessed. I know I am going to make the most amazing mother. I know my husband is going to make the most amazing father. I know we will create the most amazing and loving family, and this makes me weep with joy.

I just never expected to feel this way. I was so utterly against having children and getting married when I was younger. I am so glad that I have experienced life in such way, that it has changed my perspective on this completely. I wouldn’t change a single thing of the past, no matter how tumultuous, no matter how disorienting it was at times, because it’s from this journey that I have come to this revelatory place. My life is only getting better and better and I am so thankful.

Sans Nuclear Family

I’ve never really had a nuclear family

at least not for too long

it has shifted and changed along th eway

with moments of relative solidity

I am grateful for these constant shifts

its taken a lot to get to this point

of acceptance

of letting go of past hurts and pains

i have forgiven

i still forgive

myself and those around me

everyone does their best

this is true.

that best changes from moment to moment.

this is true.

my family has always been extended

this has helped to create a community in my mind

a global community that extends well beyond parent and child

so much to learn from one another

so much to absorb and exchange

an extended flexible family

an extended flexible attitude

an extended flexible way of living in the world

all of which I am thankful.

Back in the Valley 2

my shoulders tighten
my back aches
my nose becomes congested
in the thick air of conservatism
of sheltered rural life
i can and do play the part
but its not my natural truth
i’m close…
i respectfully walk
i slowly speak…
painting the view of another way
i’ve left this place
smelt other lands
felt air abroad
hugged and kissed the spectrum
danced under foreign skies
laughed out loud, until i cried
but we’re all the same
so if i feel this they do too…
if they feel this i do too..
in some way
in some fashion
waiting to be set free
wanting to fly