Love

I am not crying all the tears I have to cry lately.
I feel them there, most of the time.
Sometimes they come out a little, just a little,
Then they go back inside
Because they sense it is not the right time,
Not time when I can give them the attention they need
To really flow.

I know they're there, I feel them,
But for some reason they're not flowing
Even though they need to...
I need them to.
I don't feel good when I don't cry tears that need to be cried.
I feel edgy, clogged, anxious, frazzled, frustrated.
I feel like I just want to be alone, quiet, eyes closed, curled up,
Breathing deeply,
Waiting for the tears to come.

Sometimes it helps me to sit quietly, alone, and write.
Sometimes that helps the tears to flow
And if I keep writing, they keep flowing
Until they're all out
For now.
I crave time alone lately,
Probably because I have 20 hours less of that time than I did before I started working.
20 hours is a lot of time lost.

I think about Tikva probably 50 times a day.
Sometimes they're tiny fleeting thoughts that just pass through,
Barely noticed, without attachment.
I see her name on my necklace in the reflection of the mirror,
See her face on the cover of the photo album I made,
In the little shrine I made for Day of the Dead.
Sometimes I let my mind drift to a moment in time with her,
Or the possible moments in time ahead that could have been.
Today I even went to the past and imagined a moment that never was,
And what it would've been like if it had been.

It was a strange thought: I imagined what it would have been like to give birth to Tikva at home without having had an ultrasound.
I imagined her coming out looking perfect,
Our excitement at finally seeing her,
Her letting out a tiny attempt at a cry,
Then trying to breathe and struggling,
Struggling and eventually failing,
The rest of us noticing slowly that she was not alright.
The panic, the sinking feeling in my heart.
I imagined this to a point, then stopped myself and remembered,
This is not what happened.
We were so ready for her,
So able to help her with everything she needed.
Her birth was amazing, smooth under the circumstances,
Only good surprises, beyond our expectations.

A friend asked me today what I was thinking about for a subsequent pregnancy.
Lots of monitoring, all the possible tests, lots of ultrasounds, no surprises.
Comfort in knowing.
She asked if, once I knew what I could know, I would have a homebirth.
No. Too much has been imprinted in my psyche.
I just know too much about how things can go.
I used to feel safe with the idea of having my babies at home.
Now I feel safer in a hospital. A big hospital with a good L&D and ICN.

I imagine some of my friends might find it sad that I've come 180 degrees and ended up here,
Trusting hospital care more than the homebirth care I have trusted deeply since my mother studied homebirth in the early eighties.
But it doesn't make me sad at all.
Rather, the idea of being carefully monitored during pregnancy
And birthing my next child in a hospital that is ready for anything
Brings me great comfort, a sense of safety -
And I have always believed that a woman should have her baby wherever she feels most safe.
For me, that used to be home.
Now, it's not.

At least for now, I feel this way.
Actually, I have a feeling my next birth will be smooth and easy and quick,
Irrelevant where I deliver, really.

I planned three homebirths.
I had my first child - my Dahlia - in the hospital after 38 hours of back labor, with the help of an epidural,
Delivered by my homebirth midwives while the OB-GYN stood back and watched.
4 hours later, we were back home in bed with our new baby girl.
I lost my second pregnancy at 10 weeks in the ER.
Not because it was anything dramatic - I could have miscarried at home -
But I felt more held in the ER, more supported and validated in the experience that something important was happening.
I delivered my third child - my Tikva - in the OR at UCSF
And I got to see her beautiful perfect body for just a minute before she was taken away to be stabilized.
The next time I saw her was an hour later in her little corner of the ICN
In the wee hours of the morning.

I planned three homebirths.
Maybe some of the tears I'm crying now are for that loss.
I joke about it sometimes, saying, "Well, so much for that homebirth I wanted to have."
And really, who cares in what way or where a baby is born, as long as it's born healthy and lives a long life with you?
Still, it's sad to have lost that ideal,
That idealism that nothing could possibly go wrong with my baby.
There's another loss, too, something bigger:
The loss of so much of what I believed in.
It gave me grounding, calm.
I'm not sure what I believe in now.
I'm in between beliefs,
Forming new ones.
More liminality.

I looked at Dahlia tonight and in her sleep she made a face so much like so many pictures I have of sleeping Tikva.
Beautiful thick lips apart just a little,
Nose pointing out a little, down a little,
Eyes peaceful yet revealing something profound going on under eyelids,
Dark lashes in between them.

I know people might think that I'm missing the forest for the trees,
Neglecting to see the incredible child who is there before me
Because I'm busy thinking about the child who isn't.
But that's not it at all
For I don't see a separation between Dahlia and Tikva.
There is no dark thick heavy line separating where Dahlia ends and Tikva begins,
Or where Tikva ends and Dahlia begins.
They are my daughters.
I carried both of them inside me.
They shared the same genes.
They came from the same love.
They are, both of them, each of them, always in my heart,
A part of me.

Energy is fluid, ever changing.
Out of the blue, Dahlia will say,
Mommy, I didn't want Tikva to die so soon.
In that moment where the feeling of Tikva comes through her,
Particles of each of their energies have melted together,
Dissolved into each other,
Bounced against each other,
Danced together.
They are two and they are one.
We are four and we are one.
I'm not missing the forest for the trees,
I am just noticing that they are all the same trees
Over and over again,
As far as my eye can see.
I don't know if I can even explain,
But I feel it most when I touch Dahlia's skin
And in that moment I can feel Tikva.
Sometimes I touch Dave's skin and I can feel me.

Maybe that's love... when energy melds like that?

Dave reminds me to focus on the love,
Our love
Which has made all of this unfolding
Possible.
Out of which we have given life to our mighty children's spirits.
Tonight he helps me cry,
Listens,
Hears,
Smiles,
Trusts,
Loves.

That is definitely love... when energy melds like that.