Icky
Disclaimer: Just like some posts are specific to birth junkies, this one is directed to the subset of readers who share my religious background. I have beloved family and friends who are Jewish or...
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The Birthing Room
I attended a birth last night in the room where Rowan was born. Or rather, I attended a long, difficult labor there. This time, the birth itself took place in the O.R. down the hall. It was weird,...
View ArticleSoul Houses
You do not have a soul. You are a soul; you have a body. - C. S. Lewis At every birth – every prenatal visit, really, every interaction with a pregnant woman – I continue to find myself fascinated by...
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Brothers & Sisters
Last night well past bedtime, Delaney and Liam sat at the kitchen table, picking at their post-Tae Kwon Do sandwiches and arguing at length over which one of them was being more annoying. After several...
View ArticlePermission to Coast
I didn’t need a day off. I just needed a day I could half-ass. I contemplated taking a sick day today. That is, I disabled my alarm and stayed in bed snuggled next to a teething, runny nosed baby,...
View ArticleReligious Reasoning
“Mom, what's perfection?” We're sitting kitty-corner to one another, finally doing math. It's been a trying morning, the kind that has included a toddler breaking through the gate and falling down the...
View ArticleI Can't Do This
Parenting is a hard thing. That's my profound, hard-hitting starting point on this rainy Monday morning. I am starting my week annoyed at the nature of motherhood, at the demands on my time and how...
View ArticleThat Which Must Not Be Named
Disclaimer: Flying the geek flag today. You were warned. Harry Potter has a sworn enemy, as I would warrant approximately 100% of readers of this blog are well aware. His name is Voldemort. He is very...
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Dreaming of Quiet
I dream of quiet. I sit in a silence that I know is fleeting, the space in between the sounds of dog snerfles and car engines and shouts of “Mommy!” and gentle, tentative murmurs of “Honey, have you...
View ArticleKnowing (In Which I Grow the Perfect Baby)
A typical evening in Prenatal Yoga: “Can I still lie on my back if I'm angled like this?” “How late is too late to do Downward-Facing Dog?” “Am I twisting okay? Could this hurt the baby?” Eat this,...
View ArticleSelfish
Last week, a pregnancy page posted a link to an article regarding alcohol consumption. There are no spoilers here. Excessive consumption is bad; don't drink to get drunk when you're pregnant. No...
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White Belt
Every day, you are fierce. You are bold and confident, you know yourself, you like yourself. You run around vibrant and excited, embracing the world around you. But in the Dojang, you look timid. This...
View ArticleLove Your Doula? Don't Thank Her
I'll bet your doula is fantastic. I'm guessing that on the night your baby was born, she set aside other commitments and tasks to be present with you for hours, that she was probably, at some point or...
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The Dirty, Raggy, Ugly Story of Christmas
Today, I am in a terrible mood. I am stressed and overwhelmed and annoyed and despairing. December is happening all around me and I cannot keep up with its sheer . . . December-ness. So, the complete...
View ArticleIn January
Sing praise for stillness, for quiet, for the worn-out groove of winter life. (With three children, soon four, we shall not call it “order”.) Sing praise for the days that used to let me down, the days...
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Loss & Gain
I always wondered what it would feel like to be pregnant after a loss. I imagined a positive pregnancy test, followed by a countdown to the day something went wrong last time. I guessed at the fear,...
View ArticleHurry, Love
We all want to believe we love our children perfectly. The truth is, we don't. “Love and hurry are incompatible.” I heard this idea in our small group study last night. The context was spiritual...
View ArticleReady
And just like that, we're in the groove. Our alarms sounded in unison this morning, we snoozed once, then we were up. The coffee had brewed, socks were easy to find. We went about the first minutes of...
View ArticleOn Getting Real(er)
This is going a tad meta. I hope you'll bear with me. A close friend of mine, a professional photographer, is working on an off-season project about motherhood, particularly the trick of balancing...
View ArticleLife On Call
My SUV had plenty of gas to get me home last night. It was raining and chilly, getting late; I was tired. Halfway to the highway, I felt grateful that I didn't need to stop anywhere. Then I remembered,...
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