A Letter to Patton

I wrote most of this letter in September. It'll be folded up in an envelope ready for Patton to read when he gets ready. Until then, I'll share it with you.

To my son Patton,

Your daddy will pick on me for being wordy and putting down on ten pages what ought to be able to be said in just one line.

"Why not just say, 'Dear Patton, I love you,'" he says.

But he knows that I write as much for me as for you, and he loves me so much, he would read through a hundred thousand pages if that's how long it took me to say what I needed to.

I guess mostly what I want to do here is tell you a little bit about your daddy and me, and to get down on paper just what it is we set out to do here, bringing you into this world.  I just want you to know who we are and what we wish for you, before you get here. So no matter how life turns out, this is what we were aiming for, for the record.

I didn't know I would marry your daddy the very first night I met him, but it didn't take me very long to figure it out. By the third or so time I saw him, I knew, and I even gave him a hint that night to say I knew what was to come for us (but that's another story I'm sure we'll both give our own versions of to you one day).  But I will tell you this much now:  Your father is the best man I have ever known.  He loves me like one loves an old familiar song from childhood, and I love him that same way. He thinks of me before anything else, and my happiness fuels his own.  My heart swells up three times with overwhelming love every day as he crosses my mind, and I will thank whatever gods are appropriate for his presence in my life forever.  I really am the luckiest girl in the whole world, and I could never, ever rightfully ask for any more than I have right at this moment, for all the world's greatest things have been given to me in your father.

Until now, that is.  I still marvel at the idea you are coming, and am wholly unprepared for what I am told will be the new best day of my life.  How does one prepare for such a day?  You aren't supposed to get here until November 23, but I can feel you getting bigger all the time and have a small fear you will get here before we've finished all the normal preparations.  I could be a mother any day soon, it's really all up to you.

But let's back up for just a minute -- my first hope for you is an important one.  I hope that one day when you find someone to love, that you love them the way your daddy loves me.  And that you find someone who can love you the way you deserve to be loved.  Be kind to each other, remember to say "please" and "thank you;" be the one to get up in the middle of the night to get the water, and find someone who offers to get up instead. If you can do this,darling, I promise you that everything else in your life will fall into place.  Everything.  If you can get the love part right, I will guarantee you happiness.

I want you to know that there isn't a whole lot in life you can get really, irreversibly wrong.  What's important is that you always try to do the next right thing, and sometimes, that won't be very clear.  It's okay to mess up.  It's okay to go with your best guess because you don't know the right answer.  Life is not about getting it all right.  I sure didn't. (I bet your Grandma Jackie will be happy to fill you in on the details of my delinquent teen years). But even as an adult, I have messed up a lot of things.  I have made wrong decisions and wasted time and money.  I have hurt people I loved and hurt myself, too.  What makes all that okay is that I was willing to go back and fix it.  I mended the broken things and made up for lost time.  I earned more money and apologized to those I hurt.  I began to treat myself well. And things turned out alright. So it's okay to mess up.  Just own it.

I remember the first time your dad talked about planning for you to get here. It was about three years ago. He knew that my life's goal and purpose was to "have a regular family and not mess it all up" (more on the kind of upbringing which produced such a goal later, when you're older), and he was finally ready for a family too. We struggled trying to get pregnant for a long time, and there was a time that we thought you were on your way, but I lost you to a horrible monster called The Blighted Ovum. My heart was so heavy. I had felt a sense of unease about the pregnancy all along, so it was less of a surprise to me and more of a nail in the coffin I thought God was telling me I deserved.  I almost gave up for fear that the heartache of another loss would be my undoing. But your father picked up my broken soul and hushed the alarm. He told me you would get here. He told me it was okay to be sad.  I collapsed into his arms more than once in the coming months, but they were strong arms, and I healed slowly in them.

The second time a pregnancy test yielded a positive result, I had only taken it out of habit. I had no symptoms, and my period wasn't even due for another week. But I grabbed the stick and walked into my closet to peek at the results. Falling to my knees, I spoke aloud to myself, "I'm pregnant." It was a whisper, more than that, it was a prayer spilling out of my mouth, hushed so that no one would hear in case it went unanswered. But I knew. I knew this time you were really, really coming. I fell madly, desperately, wildly in love with you kneeling  right there in the messy floor of the walk-in closet that your father built for me, wide-eyed, white knuckles gripping a drug store pregnancy test, surrounded in dirty laundry.

Since then I have only thought of how to be the best mother for you. I have fallen in love with your father all over again, his giddy, boyish excitement overtaking him on a daily basis as he readies for your arrival. He may combust with hungry anticipation, his readiness to be your father drips off of him. We are both completely inconsolable in our impatience.

So that's why I've started writing to you. Not just to say what I want to say, but as a kind of exercise to keep track of all the important things I want to teach you as your mother. This will not be the only one, but I think it is the most important. Love, my dear. Love with your whole heart. It will never fail you.

In all things I am hopelessly yours,
Mom

The Birth and After...

On Thursday November 17 at about 1:00pm, I went into labor.  I wasn't very sure it was real labor, so I went about my day as usual, pausing to wince a little during a contraction and then continuing on, allowing them to build up until I was really sure that calling family wouldn't turn into a "false alarm" moment later on.

Patton didn't get here until Saturday morning.  There is so much to write about how labor went.  Forty-three hours of intense, adrenaline fueled labor followed that afternoon, and no one realized Patton would enter the world in a posterior (sunny-side up) position until the moment of his arrival.  I later learned that my midwife had her suspicions, but didn't want to let on because she didn't want to scare me.  A posterior presentation is not necessarily dangerous, but it is notorious for being exponentially more painful, causing labor to be much longer and more likely to end in cesarean section.

The bodies of laboring women are powerhouses.  We are suddenly able to function at peak performance for hours on end, exerting more force than we ever have before.  In my case, I had been awake for exactly 48 hours to the minute when Patton made his appearance.  Forty-three of them were heavy breathing hours, painful, sweaty, determined hours.  By the time the pushing phase was upon us, I was so deliriously tired that I had begun to almost pass out between contractions, falling asleep for 30 seconds at a time, entering vignette dreams and waking up to push again for 3 hard pushes.  I remember at one point mumbling something about needing to get a flat screen TV as I woke up to push again.  But on we went, Patton and I, working on this thing together, getting him a little bit closer to his family with each push.

Patton was born Saturday morning at 7:24am.  He weighed 8 lbs, 5 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

Either my heart has grown to the size of an 8 lb, 5 oz baby, or my whole life has shrunk down to the size of one.  I can't figure out which one it is.  But the shape and specter and shade of it is wholly different, a change I have longed for, and one for which I will be eternally grateful.

Til next time.

just born

First Christmas outfit

The Bump

10 weeks give or take

14 weeks or so

32 weeks

37 weeks

Oh, Hurry Up Already!

I'm not "over" being pregnant, really I'm not.  Sure there are times when I fantasize about what it will like to have my own body back and belonging to just me.  I think about what life was like back when I didn't singe my growing belly on hot pots on the stove, when I didn't have to plan out my path for walking through the dining room to keep from grazing the table, the exercise bike, the chairs, or any number of the tools that Tim has laid out what with all the work he is doing on the house.  But I'm not "over it" the way other women talk about being "over it."  I haven't had severe morning sickness, as a matter of fact I had exactly zero morning sickness.  I didn't have major episodes of sciatica or terrible heartburn (mind you, I DO have heartburn, but it's manageable).  I haven't gained 60 pounds and I have pretty much been able to eat what I want and sleep okay. 

Oh, but I cannot wait to meet my son.

I have dreams about what he looks like; I daydream about the things I'll say to him when he gets here.  Tim has had dreams about him, too, and comparing notes we have found that both of us think somehow this little boy is going to come out with blue eyes.  Neither of us have blue eyes, but here and there, they are found in the family, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

It's just that, well, we've been waiting for so long for Patton to get here.  Technically, the first conversation we had about trying to have kids was in February of 2009.  That's two and half years we've been anticipating this new addition to our little family.  Especially after the miscarriage I had a year and a half ago, there were times that I felt like Patton just wouldn't ever get here.

But here we are, 13 days away from my due date and so excited we're about to piss ourselves.  So no.  I'm not over being pregnant.  But damnit!  I can't wait for him to come on out and meet his family! 

I'll leave you with an excerpt from a book I read a while back called "Baby Catcher."  My miscarriage was one of the darkest times in my life, and I found little comfort in the words of others or the scientific explanations or the idea of my baby in some heaven with which I was unfamiliar.  But the following passage changed the way I felt about all of it, and is part of the reason I am so excited to finally see Patton. 

Colin, my twelve-year-old son, discovered me late one rainy afternoon sitting at the kitchen table, a damp Kleenex crumpled in my left hand, wiping my eyes as I tried to compose myself for his sake. It was the third week of January, two months after I’d miscarried a pregnancy, but I still found it impossible to get through a day without at least one meltdown into misery.

Colin asked, "Are you crying about the baby?" and when I nodded tearfully, he said, "Well, you just have to have another one, Mom, because it’s a Spirit Baby, and you should be its mother."

I must have looked puzzled because he said, "Don’t you know about Spirit Babies? How could I know about them if you don’t? I mean, you’re my mom!" But he could see my perplexity.

So my first child, this not-yet-teenaged boy, pulled a wooden chair to my side and draped his thin arm across my shoulders, saying, "Well, Mom, here’s how it is. See, I was one myself, so that must be how I know. Anyway, every woman has a circle of babies that goes around and around above her head, and those are all the possible babies she could have in her whole life. Every month, one of those babies is first in line. If she gets pregnant, then that’s the baby that’s born. If she doesn’t get pregnant, the baby goes back into the circle and keeps going around with all the others. If she gets pregnant but something bad happens before the baby’s born…now listen, Mom, because here’s the really cool part. It goes back into the circle, but it becomes a Spirit Baby, and all the other babies give it cuts. Each month, it’s always first in line. Isn’t that great?

"So you just have to get pregnant again, and you’ll have the same Spirit Baby. If you don’t, though, then the baby circle will just beam that little Spirit Baby over to some other woman’s circle, and it’ll be first in line for her. It keeps being first in line somewhere until it finally gets born.

"But it’d be a shame for you not to have it yourself, because I know how much you want it. So you just have to try again. Mom, remember that baby you lost before I was born?" I nodded wordlessly. "Well, that was me. Really. I’ve always known I was a Spirit Baby. I mean, I know what I’m talking about here, Mom."