A Letter to My Daughter Maeve on Her First Birthday

You and me today – just a couple weeks after you turned one

July 30, 2014

Precious awesome little person! My daughter Maeve,

I love you and I love being with you. So much I can feel it in every cell. As I look back at pictures I am struck with how much you have grown and learned in one year. So much more than you will ever grow in one year again. It seems to have gone so fast and its an interesting experience to love someone who is changing so much – its hard to not want it to go slower. You have been so continuously occupied with becoming you I feel like I have been able to perceive only a part of it.

Just a few weeks after you were born

Your birth went very well. You, your dad and I were at home surrounded by great people and there was lots of family near by eagerly waiting to meet you. Once labor started it ramped up quickly and the process was purely intuitive. We did great. And when you came out it was a truly amazing moment. There YOU were and we were so happy.

I want to write to you at your birthday every year about the proceeding year and some of the things you or we did and hope that you enjoy reading these letters in the future.

Two Months of Love and Some Pre and Post Natal Gems

Reading Dr. Seuss’ Hop on Pop with Maeve this week

All is going very well.  I am loving being with Maeve and Joe.  In particular, I love watching the way she moves her fingers, the moments when she looks in my eyes and, as the days pass, seeing the expression in her features and body becoming more clear, articulate.  I love the way she migrates around (surprisingly far and fast)  just by the wending of her limbs,  head and neck.

I love how utterly self possessed she is – she is sure – and I marvel, sometimes shudder, at how completely vulnerable she is.  Her presence seems to have flipped a switch in me around ways I have limited myself in the past.  I have more resolve to achieve my goals than before.  The days fly by.  I can’t believe it’s already been two months.

Here are three great parenting resources have come on my radar in the last couple of weeks:

Illustration from The Female Pelvis by Blandine Calais-Germain

My best friend Shinehah sent me a book called The Female Pelvis: Anatomy & Exercises – which gives incredibly clear, simple information (in words and diagrams -including the one at at the top of this post) about the organs in the female pelvis and what happens in the pelvis with pregnancy and birth.  I really appreciate having a clearer picture of all the parts and how they fit together and change through pregnancy and delivery.  Seems to me really great information for any female to have.  The Female Pelvis was written by Blandine Calais-Germain and published by Eastland Press. 

Maeve at Seven Weeks, Time Passing Quickly

In the last few days Maeve’s face seems more expressive, distinctly more articulate than even just last week

Tomorrow is seven weeks since Maeve’s arrival.  It feels like time is passing so quickly. I think its because becoming a parent just overtakes you in a way that not much else in life does.

Last night I dreamt that I was crying the way Maeve cries when she is really upset and in my mind I heard that what I was saying in baby talk was the word Mom, just Mom over and over. Maybe I was remembering how purely I felt when I was Maeve’s age – being around her is reminding me.  Its sad that many people in our culture are around infants as little as they are. It says a lot about our society.

I got connected with a holistic parents group in the last couple of days and feel a great sense of relief.  There are lots of other people who are cloth diapering and not vaccinating their young ones. Turns out I was going to a new moms support group that was just too mainstream.  I don’t think of myself as super alternative (always hoping/wishing I guess that my values aren’t the exception) but keep running into the fact that I am, even in a dense urban place like Jersey City.

She’s still pretty unpredictable. No discernable schedule. I get worried when she sleeps for long stretches during the day and worried/overwhelmed on other days when she doesn’t take a nap of any length.

When she is deeply asleep I get worried because her breathing is so shallow and her body gets so limp.

I think about writing about becoming a parent often but have a hard time getting myself to do it – partly because time seems to be flying by and I want to just be in the experience. From everything I hear, I’m going to be so busy for the couple of decades I won’t have a chance to read this again.