The rest (of the Caribbean)

Surprise of surprises, school is not letting up like I'd hoped.  (Yup, I have "naive" written on my forehead).
So many tiny, fleeting, visceral thoughts dance in then out of my head with nobody taking time to make sense of them.  It's plenty depressing.

But I did promise to make a record of our trip, and an abbreviated one will have to do.

Mr. Renn, blessed man that he is, got all goal-oriented about doing something "big" to celebrate our 10th anniversary.  When we first discussed this idea, well before grad-school landed in my lap, I was totally on-board.  But when it came time to actually plan something I was up to my neck in navigating strange waters, and had no space in my brain for tackling extra stress.  So I told Mr Renn, "Sure, we can go.  But you'll have to plan every last bit of it. I simply cannot."

He opted for a cruise in mid-January.  Optimizing bang-for-buck is a priority for this man.  I have mixed emotions about cruises on-principle, as they offer only a glossy peripheral sense of a space.  One cannot really say they've "been" to a place after only a 4 hour excursion there.  So that's the fault of it.  But the culture going on in the space of the cruise ship was its own anthropological wonder.  There were crew members on our ship from more than 100 different countries, and it was fun (and rather proletariat of us) to visit with them.  And frankly, having housekeeping and room service and dining out every night was a delightful diversion.  Watching the systems in place to keep that vessel running was crazy impressive.  Everything was always so clean, even though we were constantly watching messes get made.  The speed with which everything from spills to fingerprints were eviscerated was just awe inspiring (For this lady who can't keep up with 4 kids' messes).

So - the trip.

Day 1 - We flew to Florida and stayed a night there.

Day 2 - Boarded our Ship, spent a Day at Sea.

Day 3 - Ocho Rios, Jamaica.  We toured the Coyaba Gardens, then hiked Dunn's River Falls.  We missed the "wear a swimsuit" memo and looked pretty silly, also Renn's phone died a watery death.

Day 4 - Grand Cayman.  Because snorkeling on a sandbar out in the ocean holds absolutely 0% attraction for Mr Renn we visited the world's only sea-turtle farm.  We played with baby sea-turtles, and birds (I was supposed to be feeding colorful little birds, and instead got attacked by this lone ugly pigeon), and we snorkeled in an enormous salt-water tank.  (Controlled environment = only way Mr Renn's ever going to snorkel.)

Day 5 - The ship docked at Cozumel, Mexico.  We took a taxi, ferry, and then a Perrault to Tulum, Mexico where we got a private tour of the ruins.  Easily the most gorgeous place I've been in years.

Day 6 - Day at sea.

Day 7 - Spent sitting on the floor at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport.  Then retreated in poor spirits to a 1-star hotel where the bathroom door wouldn't even close and the floors were all TILE.  Imagine the implications.  Pretty well cried myself to sleep.

Day 8 - Finally made it home, with no time to recoup anything, as real life had to start the next morning.  I think, 2 weeks later, that I've finally got everything unpacked, caught up, and even most thank-you's distributed.

So ultimately, the trip, the break from reality, was lovely.  The transitions out of and then back into reality were painful.  Vacations are double-edged swords.  But I maintain that the vitamin D was unequivocally beneficial.  I can totally understand why some people regularly vacation in the Caribbean in the middle of Winter.  Being comfortable outside just feels so healthy when one has just spent a month in freezing temperatures.  

heads above water

Mr Renn and I are back from our Anniversary trip.  Being there was amazing, though the work that went into getting out the door and then into coming back through it again were rather ludicrous.



(Turtle Farm in Grand Cayman.  Also - I really hate Flickr's new embedding format.  A LOT.)



(Coyaba Gardens in Jamaica)

I did my best to be thorough and prepared and to assuage my parenting guilt over being unreachable for a week.  We made freezer meals and cleaned, and organized, and wrote a novel on our kids' routines, and cleaned, and made videos of ourselves for the kids to watch each night we'd be gone.  We were trying to make things easy on our babysitters and on our kids, and a lot of it was overkill, but it's hard to leave your kids for a week when you're in the trenches.

Getting back home again was worse, though. We were in the Fort Lauderdale Airport by 9am, and were not allowed to check in until 4 hours before our 3pm flight.  Then, our 3pm flight got delayed after everybody was on the plane, then delayed some more, until they made everyone deplane, told us everyone would certainly be missing their connecting flights, and set to work rebooking almost the entire flight.  The earliest we could get out was the next day at 2pm, so we resigned ourselves to a shifty 1 star hotel for the night, bought ourselves toothbrushes in a gift shop, and I cried my eyes out while we attempted to sleep through crazy noises via paper thin walls and tile floors.  After a week I was just ready to be home again, and not in a shifty motel without any of my belongings.  So that was a rather devolved, anticlimactic way to end an otherwise nice trip.

Once we landed at home, utterly exhausted, Bunny and Sir O got sick and took turns keeping me up all night.  I'm trying frantically to get caught up in my schoolwork again, and watching the house fall to pieces after I had worked so hard to get it unembarassingly neat and clean.  Coming back to the world of mealplanning and doing dishes is rather painful after a week of indulgent dining out.  But there you have it - I'm back to my middle class reality, ever so slightly sunburned, and rather missing my housekeepers, waiters, chefs, dishwashers, drivers, and babysitters.

 I know it looks like I was on this trip by myself, we weren't very good about getting our picture taken together and I'm saving a few we did get for a vacation recap once I finish reading about 400 pages of authorship theory.

 

Decade

Milestone of milestones - Mr Renn and I celebrated out 10th wedding anniversary.
We got our annual reminder that the convenience of getting married over Christmas break does not make up for having your anniversary get lost in the bustle of the holidays forever more.

But.  This year we will really be celebrating our anniversary, just not on our actual anniversary.

We are crazy kids, us two rather adult-aged people.  We are constantly sharing looks across the room to share a silent laugh at something hilarious one of our kids say or do.  We buy each other cookbooks like they're going out of style.  We are both really rather hoping (though for differing reasons I'm sure) that this is the year that our family gets a home of their very own.

Mr Renn has really held his own since I started school.  He's had to.  I allow him space to do things his way and he's really very comfortable homemaking.  He is the only person in the world I can leave the kids with without giving instructions, and I can let him order food for me with total trust that I'll get something I like.

School has been fairly rough on our marriage so far.  It has steamrolled our already sparse moments for real communication.  We are more like ships passing in the night than ever.  (Which inevitably paves the way for too many miscommunications.)  But, since we both undertook this endeavor with the understanding it wouldn't necessarily be pleasant, we are so far weathering that storm ok.  And it's terrific for me to feel supported in pursuing my goal, and I think it's terrific for Mr Renn to feel like he's doing something for me that not all husbands are willing to do for their wives - to prioritize my education and skill set.  We're really blessed to be able to make this work for our family right now, even if "making it work" sometimes looks really frantic.  We evaluate often enough that I think if it ever starts really not working for our family we'll both be able to fess up.

But truly, despite the rough patches, sending me back to school is my love language. I'm experiencing a ton of growth there and growth is almost always both good and difficult.  I'm still able to be home with the kids during the day, and somehow the laundry is still getting done, food prepared, and the house occasionally gets cleaned.  We are making it work.

Though blogging about it?  That is not doing so well at making it to the top of the list.  I will continue to not give up.  I will also continue to post my homework over here. Hopefully I'll eventually get some self-initiated content going there too.  (Next semester is History of Animation and Screens Theories.  Try to contain your rapture.)

So just let me say, that if you are going to try to carve out a life and make it mean something, Mr Renn is an awesome guy to have in your corner. My luck is not lost on me.

Christmas "Break"

When you are a young undergrad student, Christmas Break is a very real thing.  You survive finals, then you crash at your parent's house, sleep for 2 or 3 days straight, grace extended family gatherings with your presence, get a horrendous illness and nurse yourself back to health before school starts again.  Simple, straightforward, and insanely self-centric.


When you are the mom and the grad student, Christmas Break is a very un-funny joke.  Not quite as unfunny a joke as finals at Christmastime, but still lunacy of the first order.  You barely survive finals while doing your utmost to not fail at the family's expectation for what Christmastime is supposed to be.  You do your best to avoid the irritated vibes from your kids and spouse for all the balls you are dropping.  You really want, and rather need, to collapse in a heap once your last final is officially behind you, but there is no time.  There are new emergencies on your plate.  You have just over a week to throw everything you've got at salvaging the holiday from your previous neglect.  Plus, extended family gatherings mean managing your children in public - herding cats and all that.  And if, perchance, you were ever to come across an empty 20 minute pocket of time, you know you really ought to be getting ahead on reading for the next semester.  You never once manage to be in bed before 1am.  You manage to box away the flurry of decorations and realize you are nearly floored by sleep deprivation and illness.  You realize you have the flu, and a sinus infection for New Years, and that you are out of time.  Your break is over and you never actually managed to take anything that resembles a break.  You maybe cry a little bit.

But self-pity aside, a lot of things were really lovely about this holiday.  And I think I managed to leave everyone with good memories in their mouth.  This child is even still suspending his disbelief, rather willingly, but in spite of my many failings.  It may be the last year of that magic. You rarely in life get a chance to realize you may be experiencing a last.  They're tender and rare and appreciated.

As my baby bunny slips through my fingers

Remember when we necessarily rushed through Bunny's first birthday?  That was a blight of unfortunate timing.  I had class, and Mr Renn and I played our weekly game of ships passing in the night.  We quickly, and long after her tired eyes had come, did a birthday cake and a present that night.  Then, as soon as she'd had a chance to smear frosting all over herself, I whisked her off to a bath then her anxiously desired bed.  It was shamefully anticlimactic.



The thing is, Bunny doesn't care that she's been all the way around the sun.  I'm the one who's sentimental and certainly the only one who mourns how incrementally less celebratory each successive child's birthdays are able to be.  But really and truly, most every moment of every day is spoken for in my life right now.  Special occasions and their accompanying obligations are kind of like wrenches thrown in my barely functioning systematized engine.  Deep down I am a magnificently celebratory person, but in a world of finite time and energy, it doesn't actually take much to scrooge me over.  It makes me grateful that I can affirm that our current state of overcommitment is temporary.  Even if it's a rather long form of temporary.

So, baby girl, I'm sorry that your mom was in the thick of grad school on your first birthday.  You were an exquisite little sun spot regardless, and you are the most whole-hearted daddy's girl I've ever seen.  You don't mince words, you will take Mr Renn over me any moment of any day, and you've got him wrapped around your little finger in that absolutely universal daddy daughter archetype.

But, since I'm home more than he is, you settle happily enough for me most of the time.  You love to play peekaboo with the curtains.  You are thiiiiiis close to standing on your own, and if you can reign in your straddle you'll be walking soon too. Our gentleman is constantly wanting to hold you, even though you are nearly as big as he is.  I forget how remarkably comfortable you are hanging out with your brothers until I try to leave you with or near anyone else and you dissolves into a fit of separation anxiety.

Also - on the one hand, dressing a girl is so much fun.  On the other hand, dressing a girl is so much work.  I keep forgetting that I should be doing her hair, and playing the "keep track of that bow, and those shoes that she's likely to drop anywhere at any time" game.

To state the obvious, Bunny is the apple of everybody's eye around here.  It's sometimes like our immediate family exists only to bring together her most ardent fan club members.  But still, she's clearly decided to give the backstage full-access-to-my-heart pass to her daddy.   I'm not saying I'm jealous, except how can I not be?  Everybody wants someone to look at them the way she looks at Mr Renn.

Halloween

This could go down as the year I failed to get a decent picture of everyone fully in costume.  But we attempted festivity this year. And given all the other things we are attempting, that's SOMETHING.

Happy Birthday Dear Gentleman

Last week my littlest man turned 3.  How does an age manage to be so grown up and so tiny and tender all at once?



This child is a gem.  I hear it is common for third-born children to be the congratulatory pat-on-the-back from God to their parents.  "You've really invested yourself in this parenting thing, look at all that selfless, thankless service.  Let's make this one easy on you, you've earned it."



This one practically parents himself.  He has an oversized conscience that makes it easy to teach him, but rather hard to make sure he is getting enough attention.  He wants to do everything "right." He's still human and all, but he's got none of the oppositional defiance I deal with every day in Sir O.  The difference is huge.  It's fun to be his mom.  (I can have fun with all of my kids, but he's consistent.)

Despite his agreeability, he is finding his own way amongst the other oversized personalities around here.  He is learning how to be stubborn, for better or for worse.

Fireworks

I think I finally figured out some half-decent camera settings for fireworks this summer.  These photos are old (from Pioneer Day), but I'd meant to document how I finally have kids who see fireworks as something besides a reason to hide under the bed.  (For the longest time Sir O hated fireworks big time.)





This year, somehow, Mr Renn was gifted fireworks from a number of different specialists (orthodontists, endodontists, etc.), and we had the makings of a memorable front porch evening.





(Sir O was there, but thoroughly camera shy.  I think he's finally come around to fireworks.)

Seven seems so long

In the middle of last week Sir O had a birthday.  His birthdays will always seem like a big pit-of-stomach big deal to me.  As much as they measure his little man life, they also measure the years since the mother in me was born.  It's the sort of an event, that rebirth, that is difficult to reflect upon without feeling incredulous and running a zeitgeist gamut of emotions.  Motherhood is a kiln, for sure.

But, back to Sir O.

Despite this being his birth-month and him feeling entitled to lots of attention from everyone everywhere, he is going through a rather awkward phase.  The recalcitrant side of his personality has been winning ground lately, and it all tallies up to make him rather anti-social.  He tends not to be the child of mine that people look forward to seeing.  He is terribly slow to warm up to people and things and ideas, and when he decides that he likes something (or someone) he clings to it with a nearly obscene zeal.  He is loyal and stubborn and very often less than pleasant.  He is endlessly exhausting for his mother.

There is still a mountain of lovable traits in him, he just seems to be passing through a low point on the pendulum.  It has been a rough summer with relatively little structure imposed by anyone besides me.  And the troubles that arise when I'm the only one imposing structure are precisely the reason that he's not a candidate for homeschooling right now.  So summer has often felt like one long standoff between he and I.  I don't recommend it to anyone.


He's crazy in love with baby Bunny.  (He also thinks he's old enough to get her out of her bed and carry her around the house, which has led to her rolling off a sofa or two).  He's bossy but willing to engage with his brothers and they tolerate him well, so while there is sibling contention in my home, it's not a constant theme.  The only thing that is constant is Sir O's immediate negative response to pretty much anything that comes out of my mouth.  The kid does NOT like to be told what to do (or prompted, or persuaded, or bribed).  If I knew where to turn for one I'd say we need an intervention for some oppositional defiance.  It's not a violent problem, but it sure is an energy suck around here this summer.

But he's pretty brilliant at problem solving with Legos, he has figure out the code to unlock my iphone a number of times this summer.  He won't read if I suggest it, but I do sometimes find him holed away with a book.  He is constantly trying to snack.  He will seriously come up to me and tell me he is hungry 2 minutes after a meal ends while I'm still cleaning up the kitchen.  He seems morally opposed to meals but would snack until the cows come home if I were to stock the house with snack food (I won't, for just that reason).  He predictably leaves freezer doors ajar and never EVER remembers where he put his shoes.  He has told me he is bored approximately 3 millions times this week, and then proceeded to reject every suggestion under the sun for passing the time.



So, first grade is barrelling down the track and I can tell he's both nervous and excited.  He'll do so much better with the structure and variety of a school day, and I think he's looking forward to seeing some of his old classmates.  But he's also anxious up to his eyeballs about unpredictable things.  He gets hung up on the quirkiest issues.  He insists on dressing himself and looks borderline homeless most of the time.  He refuses to wear most of the clothes I buy him and instead is still wearing a bunch of holey 5T stuff.  I don't know where he'd have learned it, but toward me (and only me, I'm pretty sure) he's an emotional bully.

I love him to the ends of the earth, but there's a lot of mystery inside this little crazy man I made.  He often refuses to speak English, and will only grunt and point until someone guesses his hangup.  As someone who's always been highly verbal and cooperative, he mystifies me to no end.





He spends so much time and energy being anxious, afraid, angry or reluctant.  It makes me tired and a little bit sad.  I had always envisioned having relatively pleasant children.  Other people were going to fawn over them and life was going to be peachy.  (And truly, it works out pretty well with the other 3).  I think a fair amount of parenting is learning to love the child you have, and not spend energy trying to turn your child into someone they are not in order to fulfill your own visions.

Sir O is quirky and often funny.  He can be curious and smart.  He's loyal.  He has the ability to anticipate needs in his siblings.  He loves responsibility (as long as I'm not the one conferring it), and he dances like you'd expect a totally crazy person to.

7 trips around the sun.  I'm still figuring out who he is.  And since I'm still figuring out who I am as well, this could take a while.

 

Blessing Baby Bunny

Back in January we had a lovely blessing for Baby Bunny.  We scrubbed and scoured the house, and I unearthed my own blessing gown that my mother made 30 years ago.  (It's gorgeous, but oh, so slippery) All kinds of lovely friends and relations make the snowy trek to join us and Mr Renn gave her a splendid blessing.  All of which was followed up by good food.



That's what I call a perfect day.  And my mother finally got all of her grandkids in one photo.  (Not all smiling, that's a tall order).



It was our first time blessing one of our kids entirely on our own turf.  Everyone else has necessarily been done at my parent's house or church.   I'm beginning to feel like a bona fide adult.



Ginormous thanks to my cousin Sam for the photos!

Lovey

You guys, Valentine's day is a big deal around here.  It has long been pegged as my favorite holiday, and Sir O seems to love it even more than me.  Probably because he associates Valentines Day with scissors and glue, and the kid loves nothing more than decorating for a holiday.

It's also a big deal because Valentines Day figures prominently in the love story of Mr Renn and me.  We started dating just before Valentines day in 2003, and that first Valentines Day was such a flop that it nearly did the relationship in.  Luckily Mr Renn was persistent.  And he's felt pressure to perform every year since then.  (He'll probably still never live it down, because it's going to come up every time someone asks us how we me.)

This year wasn't our best Valentines' performance ever, but it was really a lovely little day for our family.  The day before I happily stumbled upon a free train table, so we had a fantastic gift for the boys (that they have spent every spare moment with since then).  We spent the days leading up to Valentines day making sugar cookies and constructing ridiculously complex Valentines for the boy's classroom exchanges.




Somebody needs to tell me "Step away from the Paper Source Catalog, Emily." No child of yours wants to spend 10 hours making Valentines."

Mr Renn surprised me by coming home from work early with these:




Which I promptly turned into 3 arrangements to cheer up the house.



Then we left the boys with my cousin and a heart-shaped pizza and went to the Valentines Dinner at the Clarion, where the food is always good.  Bunny didn't quite cooperate with our attempt at enjoying dinner together, but we sure enjoyed it in shifts!



And for my gift?  Mr Renn picked up on my not-so-subtle hints and got some of my collection of floral paintings on canvases stretched and framed.  I told you, getting art on the walls is going to HAPPEN this year.

   

I also, coincidentially, got this Pascal Campion print framed for Mr Renn.  We'll call it romantic multitasking.

I just adore 4

This child. I tell you what.



He is the most alive little person you'll ever see.




He makes me think of Emily Webb in "Our Town" when she says, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" And her answer is "no." But she never met our Captain. He'd have relieved her mind.



He is just so incredibly present all the time.  And sometimes, this is a detriment.  His ability to forecast and follow through on moderately complex instructions is, shall we say, not his forte? It causes some grief between him and that other parent that lives here.  He is just too busy fully living in any given present moment.



But he is the king of being excited, and tiny trivial things are miracles to him. And he says he loves me every.single.day. He wants to sit by me at every meal, and it's fun to be his favorite, because the kid gets fixated on his favorite things to an unbelievable extent. So if you happen to be a blue, sword-fighting, motorcycle-riding, motherly pig with chocolate milk and an iphone with angry birds in-tow, you are SET. And he will sing-song your praises in his adorable halted little boy voice all the day long. Marvelous stuff.



The poor boy has a birthday on Epiphany.  It is not an ideal time to have a birthday, as your parents are usually gasping for figurative air after the winter holidays.  But we did our best to celebrate this crazy cool kid who reminds us all to enjoy our brief and precious lives.  Mr Renn took requests and made home-made corn dogs.  I made a chocolate torte, and then took requests and frosted it in smurf-blue frosting.





But my favorite thing about this admittedly underwhelming birthday celebration was the card that Sir O made for his brother.  That he would take the time (of his own volition) to craft something so well-tailored to the recipient is just exhilarating to me.  





Sometimes, I tell you, it is wonderful to be the mother of these boys.  Exhausting, but marvelous.

That Post I Need to Write (with the least flattering photo ever)

Our Bunny is 2 months old now, and I still have not managed to properly sit and reflect on her birth.  Life with my particular 4 children comes at you a mile a minute.  There is no down time, and if you do sit still for 10 solid minutes your fatigue will come rolling in like a tsunami to remind you how foreign decent rest has become.
I persist anyway, if only because this promethian marathon version of my life is still infinitely better than my particular brand of being pregnant.  Sure everything I do is undone within minutes, but at least I can do it without puking.
Bunny is fitting seamlessly into our household of boys, and already she has a humanizing effect on their bedlam.  In many ways she is far more capable of taming the crazies than I am.
So now that she's comfortably nestled into our hearts and consciousnesses, it's getting tricky to recall life without her niche filled.  I'd better get this remembered and hammered out before my amnesia is complete.



It was late summer when my brain made the connection.  I was depressed.  Also, I needed to actually do something about it.  And God conveniently aligned some synapses to realize that a reasonable first step would be to read the book about spiritual aspects of pregnancy and birth that a blogger I follow had contributed to.  It's called The Gift of Giving Life. And it worked.

A rather fluid collection of thoughts, essays, and experiences, it impressed me primarily in 3 ways.  The first being that God is terribly concerned with how people enter and exit this life, and very willing to be an active participant in both.  The second being that most women have come to see birth as a necessary evil.  In public we make horribly degrading jokes about giving birth, but spiritually affirming stories are becoming rare.  Too few women make their birthing decisions prayerfully.  And the third being a truckload of insights into the things that women can glean from a spiritual birthing experience.  The sheer quantity of parallels between a woman going into labor and Christ facing Gethsemane is staggering.

And so I began to pray.  My 3 boys had all been induced with epidurals, and I knew I had prayed very little about those choices.  In fact they hardly felt like my own choices.  The inductions were always for someone else's convenience.  And I am a programmed accommodator.  I felt very little ownership for the experiences I'd had. 

So my goal became a simultaneous taking control while giving up control.  I wanted to have the most meaningful experience possible, and the one God wanted for me.  I played it by ear and attempted to involve Mr Renn in the crazy world of the inside of my head.  He was none too thrilled, but thankfully the book includes an essay on how husbands can and should support their wives through pregnancy and delivery, and thankfully I got Mr Renn to read it.

And so factors collided and I found myself with what might have seemed like a worst case compromise.  I was to attempt an unmedicated induced delivery.  I felt like a crazy person trying to explain it to my nurse.  But because God is in charge, it turned out that she'd done the very same thing once herself, and so I didn't have to endure it with a nurse thinking I was crazy.

From the beginning of the pitocin drip, I just positioned my brain in a place where I told myself it was too late to get an epidural.  This was probably not true until my water was broken (many hours later) but telling myself I had no choice but to get through this experience to the other side of it was essential to my morale.

Because, you see, I was simultaneously terrified and comforted.  I knew my body could do this, it had done it three times before.  I had just never been fully participatory alongside my body.  I had elected to withdraw from my own body and to be a mere observer of it's wonders.  And that very choice sounded very sound and desirable to me through hours of not-terribly-productive pitocin contractions.

But I had felt so very numb inside for so many months at that point, that to feel anything that intense was in itself a relief.  I felt more alive and present and productive than I had for such a long time.  It felt good to moan and bellow and to care.

And then, after more than 6 hours of contracting in circles, my doctor finally arrived and gave the ok to break my water.  I had figured out that this would be the magic bullet that would really get things going, and that allowing my water to be broken was going to mean barreling full-speed into the hard, productive, real throes of having a baby.


birth photos by Samantha Johnson

And it was a profound moment, being surrounded by people there to love and support me, yet going into this totally on my own.  Having them there for me meant a lot, but there was nothing any of them could do to take it away from me.  I was the only one who could deliver her.  I knew it wasn't going to kill me, but I had no idea how close to the threshold of my capacity I was actually going to come.  I suppose I still don't know for sure, but it was infinitely closer to the edge than anything else I've ever felt.

I handed it over, with a "Dear Lord, if I am capable of this, it is only because You built me to be.  This is Your plan and Your miracle, and I am only the instrument.  Do Your stuff."

My body's particularly fast approach to delivery meant I literally felt like I was being torn into 3 or 4 pieces.  I screamed inhuman screams and felt consistently surprised that my body could make such a noise.  I couldn't open my eyes, I was so certain I would see myself in pieces.



There was that moment when I so terribly wanted it all to go away.  And the pressure to push was well matched with the pain that pushing added to my heap o'pain.  I had to pep-talk myself inside of my head.  "There is no way to avoid this pain.  There is no way to avoid this pain.  The only thing to hope for is to get it over with, and the only way to do that is to push until it's over."   And so I managed to push when pushing caused me the most exquisite pain.  The sort of pain that would normally make you recoil and never go back.  Imagine putting your hand on a hot stove and keeping it there.  That was pushing.



I was already in enough pain that I didn't even differentiate the pain of tearing.  2nd degree tear.  The pain may have felt like my flesh was being torn, but when my flesh actually tore, it didn't even touch the pain I was already in.

I was naively expecting instant relief after she was born.  And certainly the worst was over, but I was so exhausted and was beginning to be in shock.  And I still had a placenta to deliver and crazy painful contractions going on.  Oh, and the joy of getting an episiotomy with only a topical anesthetic.  Try taking a stapler to your most tender parts.  And once the shock settled in I shook uncontrollably for an hour.

But there she was, delivered.  And all I could think when I looked at her was how sorry I was for what she'd been through if it had been even a fraction as painful as my experience.  All I could say over and over was that I was so sorry she'd had to go through that, and weren't we both glad to be on this side of that experience.



What has surprised me is how gradually that experience has come to frame everything that will ever come after it.  It wasn't a magnificent apex all contained in that little labor and delivery room.  It's an entire paradigm shift that I'll have with me the rest of my days.  Every time I contemplate the Atonement of Christ for the rest of my life I will inevitable base my perception on the extremes I felt and faced there.  "If it be possible, remove this cup from me," "Could ye not watch with me one hour?"  and  "began to be ^asore amazed, and to be ^bvery ^cheavy; " all meant something they didn't before.  And Christ said himself, "A ^awoman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world."  (John 16:21)


And so, I am relieved that I have done it.  Especially so that if Bunny herself ever faces that experience I can know what it is.  It feels appropriate that I actually experienced labor delivering my first child who might ever know labor herself.  I'm not sure whether I'd elect to do it again, and I'm grateful I don't have to make that choice yet.  But I cannot deny it was at least as valuable as it was painful.  And considering it was the most painful thing I've known  (by a long shot), that is a life-changing decision I made, wasn't it?