Eight Months: Love in Process

Eight months have gone by since I climbed onto that cold table and gave away blood and nerve endings in exchange for a daughter. Something about the milestone had me thinking about that this week. All the tugging and the slow, determined breathing; the shroud of denial in the form of a surgical curtain. My blood emptying out from the hole in my belly, coating gloved arms. 

The scar is now a pink line across my bikini line and even the stretch marks are fading. I think about how I can’t remember exactly what it felt like to touch that part of me before. How sensitive was it, really, and why did I never notice? Sensation comes back a little bit at a time. I process as I am able to digest. It’s all I can do. 

She has gotten longer and continues to expand into who she becomes. Her laughter, staccato and impish, comes more easily (though she is still a tough crowd sometimes). She looks to us and smiles at acknowledgement. She cries when her desires are frustrated, and she cries another way when she is tired and in need of comfort. She eats cooked pear, broccoli, beans, etc etc with curiosity and delight. She’s a three solid meals a day kind of baby now.

Last night, we sat on a blanket together beneath a tall canopy of trees, listening to friends play music while the sun sank low. She played with her hat and leaned against my belly - where the scar rests - and watched.

When she was born, gazing up at me with her night-dark eyes, it was as though the universe stared back. Now it is herself, the person she will inhabit while she’s here, that looks back at me. I know her. I am getting to know her. 

Some moments/lessons from the last month, included below: 

4/13

For a couple of weeks, I forgot to take my multivitamin (a prenatal), and I was ravenously hungry at all times and nothing would help (still breastfeeding). My mood also suffered. I have been taking it again for a few days, and the hunger has resolved. The lows are less low.

4/20

In the morning, after breakfast, we go for a walk. It’s still cool and pleasant in the mornings, and we’ll walk far enough for her to drift to sleep. Then I’ll come to a grassy field with large, wide oak trees and let her nap beneath the lobed leaves while I sit beside a trunk and meditate.

If I sit still for long enough, birds will alight on the branches above me and go about their business. I watched a woodpecker search mossy crevices for several breaths before he noticed me and flew higher and away. 

4/23

A few mornings ago, on a walk, I realized a new dimension to some projection I was working under and then noticed embarrassment. Some part of me imagined that I would need to confess this realization in order to be absolved of it. Yuck. 

But then another part argued that eventuality - is it actually necessary for me to confess the projections that I have laid upon others for me to begin acting better? Or can I muster up the discipline to go ahead and behave well on my own, without their explicit forgiveness?

It seems very responsible, no? But I question my motives even here, because I know I would prefer to avoid being embarrassed if at all possible. 

The more I try to remember myself and observe, the more embarrassed I feel! The number of late night/early morning “oh fuck, oh god, why did I do thats” that I have to contend with seems to have gone up, and so I’m less interested in actually doing it. It’s like the more I try to be present, the more disjointed and awkward I feel. Painful. Judgement abounds.

It feels hopeless sometimes, which is the point, if I could just remember. 

In the moments before sleep, she coos like a little dove and kneads my belly like a kitten. Body as sacrifice. As she slumbers, I risk brushing my nose against the soft down of her strawberry blonde head and breathe her in. A thousand peony petals could not match it, and just as transitory. It will be gone before I can properly appreciate it. Perhaps some part of this beauty can remain within me.

4/24

I have caught myself impulsively putting things in my mouth, the same way that my baby does - tasting in order to understand. I scraped something off of her onesie and, without thought, put it on my tongue. “What the hell?” I suddenly recoiled. The next time, I caught it before actually putting the mystery substance in my mouth. I can be taught.

4/30

We walked to one of the nearby parks, the one with a playground at the bottom of the hill. She was complaining by the time we reached it, so we parked the stroller by a shady picnic table and unbuckled her. She sat in my lap, watching older children play, watching the wind shake the leaves of the mimosa tree, watching us watch her. 

She laughs softly, in awe, and we laugh back. 

Her father takes her down by the creek running across the grassy slope, bright green with new growth. He steps onto a rock in the middle of it and squats down, lowering her down to hover just above the clear water, her small hands making small splashes. 

On the walk back, we order a pizza from a neighborhood place, and my partner goes to get it while I stop at a bench to nurse. She calms as soon as she gets enough milk in her tummy, gazing up at me and sighing. It is magic to me. When she is done, I stand with her, and she nuzzles her head against my cheek, holds my hand, and we dance in the golden light of evening. She sings her simple, turtle dove song, and my heart swells with gratitude to be hers. 

Her father arrives with the pizza box, and it fits perfectly beneath her stroller. We walk back, victorious. It feels normal? It feels nice. She joins us to eat a bit of curry leftovers, and then she falls to sleep in her father’s arms. 

It is a simple evening that took me by surprise, and I want to remember it forever. How many more times will she tuck her forehead against my neck and kick her little feet with joy? I don’t know, and I can’t know, but I know it isn’t infinite. I try to bask in it. I try to stay awake for it. Just be here and love her.

“To think about love is not love, in the same way that thinking about fire will neither cook your food, nor warm you on a winter night. Love is fire; it brings heat and light.”

— Red Hawk

If you enjoyed this post, you can Buy Me a Coffee Here