speach tree

Amazing good stories out there, reminds me for the thousandth time the power of a good story. I wish I had read these stories earlier, when my friend was going through PPD and before I went into labor myself. I think I was trying too hard to only read and hear stories about easy childbirth and easy motherhood, so as not to "scare" myself. But in the end I went through a desperate labor, delivery, and 2 weeks of first-time-motherhood with no playbook and a sneaking suspicion that it would never get better. Everyone said the words I hated most: "It gets better," and every time I heard that I would hear a voice in my head say, "Only if you survive that long." But here I am on the other side of those promises, just like I made it to the other side of infertility treatments, and probably the only way I made it, like most of the women whose stories I read, is by asking for and sometimes demanding help. Yeah, I pretty much made people help me, except for those ...

In the heavily Sanskrit-influenced Japanese alphabet the first letter is 「あ」A, and the last letter is「ん」N. There is an idiom, [阿吽の呼吸」 , which means A-to-Z, or "From the beginning to the end," or baby's first cry to the last breath on his deathbed. Baby R's first cry was about 4 months ago, and already he has a growing vocabulary: Gyuu, U-kuuu, Urk, Aiya, Errr, etc. Sometimes when I say, "Helloooo" slowly, he looks me deep in the eyes and says, "Ye-llow!" and I flatter myself to think that he is some kind of genius 4-month old. These little baby sounds and involuntary noises are part of what I am now privileged to experience, a waking-dream I had only hoped for and almost given up even one year ago. But I digress...

I'm starting to try to run away again, but for the first time in my life it's not an option anymore. Using this blog again after almost a decade is my feeble attempt to document the progress I want to believe I've made since then. It may be delusional, but who's looking anyway? He's getting heavier...