2011 - Talk Birth

abies, but I feel more intensely aware this time around how short this time period is—this time of complete
symbiosis and dependence. I also remember feeling more confused by my first baby and I remember worrying
and worrying about, ”what if he cries?” I think I thought he might cry and I’d never be able to calm him
back down or something? I’m not really sure what that was about, but I remember feeling like crying = bad
mother. With Alaina, I am 100 % confident that she will not keep crying (duh). I mentioned before that she
doesn’t cry much, but last night she had a fussy spell after our second day in a row being away from home
all day, and I had no doubt at all that her trust in me to care for her would calm the fussy (and it did).
Oh, and, she also laughed at me for the first time last night! It is amazing to be someone’s whole world and
it just feels extra special this time around. This morning when I was playing with her and she was smiling
with her whole body (love that), I felt like our connection is so pure and basic that it feels almost holy. I
have to confess that she makes me feel like having another baby—how can I not do this again?! I’m still
pretty certain we won’t have any more children, but I surprise myself by frequent thoughts about maybe
ONE more...
My boys still think I’m pretty awesome and prefer being with me to pretty much anything else (they do
adore their grandpa and he is their most fun person to hang out with), but they really like me a whole bunch
and I still have the power to make their worlds ”right” as well. I enjoy their company and their wild, funny,
enthusiastic, creative, complicated personalities and I feel like they are the treasures of my heart. I also feel
like my love for them is deeper in a way (or more developed, maybe?) than it was when they were babies,
because we are so invested in each other. I know them so well and we’ve had so much life together, I can’t
imagine not having them. I can still remember not having Alaina and I can remember how I thought I may
never get to have another baby ever again and I’m really enjoying this very uncomplicated, unconditional,
sweet, sacred love of and for a little baby again.
I am currently reading and very much enjoying a book called She Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in
the World and the author critiques the foundations of modern philosophy as being based on independence
from others as the goal/highest state as well as critiquing spiritual traditions that see attachment as a flaw
and a state to be transcended (the book is based on process philosophy instead). She describes an anecdote
how a fellow student wrote a paper making a case for ”the existence of other minds” and no one else in her
class other than her seemed to find it bizarre. She discusses Descartes and his ”I think, therefore I am”
conclusion as inherently flawed saying that before Descartes could articulate this thought, ”he reached out
his hand for his mother.” It is relationship, not thought that forms our basis for life and our experience of
reality.
[2]
In her habitat (”the maternal nest”)
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