if you were free of all medical constraints and could opt for any kind of birth you wanted, which would you choose? a cesarean section delivery or a normal vaginal birth delivery? most women will opt for the latter but there are women who will opt for the former in spite of its being a major surgery with longer healing time.
perhaps i am not asking the right question here. after all, i am not trying to introduce some kind of debate on the pro's and con's of one type of delivery over the other; i think it is pretty much obvious that if no complications ever existed in the world, no one would think of a cesarean section anyway. but i discount here the kind of woman who does not wish to experience the excruciating vaginal tearing brought on by the relentless pushing of the child down the birth canal, or an episiotomy, and think that the smiley cut on the lower part of the abdomen is the "less evil cut", as it were.
perhaps what i want to ask is, after you have experienced both kinds of deliveries, what can possibly go through your mind and heart following such experiences?
so i zone in on my own personal experiences once again and have realised that in the 5 days of my confinement at the hospital on the hill (whih is barely a 10 minute walk away from our apartment), not only can thoughts flood my mind on the differences of the two methods of delivery, but a swell of emotions as well. i can honestly say that having experienced both kinds of pain associated with each type of delivery, there is a particular pain associated with each, i daresay, and that in the balance, i would still opt for a particular kind of delivery, because of the pain that it can bring. [ano daw? shet, ang labo non a]
i have never wanted to have my abdomen cut. i always had this feeling deep in my gut that my first doctor, the one who had delivered mikka by emergency CS, had not tried out all possible options to bring mikka into the world normally. this intuition was borne out, at last, when i delivered mikka's baby brother, our christmas gift, kimi jesu, at 12:05 pm (just 5 minutes past midday!) last december 25th. you could say that he had arrived on the dot, on schedule, just as projected. just like the christ child whose coming was heralded by angel song and wondrous starlight. it was the same experience of contractions, of waiting out the slow hours for my cervix to dilate, with kimi that i had undergone with mikka. the one big difference was that with kimi, i was wide awake, with only my abdominal area numbed by the pain of the successive contractions by the greatest technological advance in child delivery, the epidural. i will swear by the wonders of this local anaesthesia until the day i die, and if given the chance to promote its use, will do so over and over again. thus, being wide awake, i was aware of everything happening, even feeling when kimi was ready to come, every contraction that told me when to push, and all the attendant tearing that came from pushing out a 3 kilo and 590 gram (nearly 8 lbs) 40-week old baby boy.
there was a rush of blood and something warm when i finally pushed the head out, my knees spread out at 180°, my entire body open to the world. then there he was, blood matted in his hair, slight down on his shoulders, his face pink, his arms and legs wrinkled like an old man's, breathing atop my belly. my first words? "you are the biggest thing i have ever shitted out..." there was a slight pause and expressions of bewilderment on the faces of S, the doctor, and midwife before they all burst into laughter. now why the hell i said that eludes me, really, for i am not a logical person. i remember an ex asking me to close my eyes while he slipped what seemed to be a wedding band on my finger, inscribed with the words, "always remember" on the eve of his departure for new york for university, and my first words of surprise being, "a wedding ring? what for? it's so loose!" if magic was meant to define that moment, then we know why he and i never worked things out, i just didn't have the proper cue words for the angels to tip over their buckets of stardust on that moment of love and commitment.
so back to my kimi... when all the shock and trauma and fatigue of waiting and pushing had passed, all that remained was a sense of wonder and awe. always and forever with me, i believe. thank you, i whispered tremulously to my God, for letting this happen. i knew i could do it the normal way, a tiny voice kept singing over and over in my heart. there kimi lay, breathing on my belly while S prepared to cut his umbilical cord with the help of the midwife (who was wearing this nose stud, and dem, was she pretty). nature is amazing, S smiled at me. my uterus started descending, and when kimi first suckled at my breast, it started to contract. 4 days after delivery, my roommate janet, this sweet woman from england who had given birth to a beautiful blonde baby girl, matilda, told me, "you look very slim already! your belly has gotten very small so quickly." perhaps i had taken this phenomenon for granted, because i had breastfed mikka, too, and his constant suckling made my uterus contract in a week's time. by the time i was released from the hospital yesterday, kimi had taken in all the colostrum meant for him and was already controlling the ducts of my breasts with his hunger cycle. it hurts, that initial suckle from a hungry newborn, but something i will never exchange for anything in the world.
if anything, breast milk is my one great gift to mikka and kimi, to have given them something that will be with them for the rest of their lives. with my milk, i hope to free them from the usual illnesses of infancy that formula milk cannot shield them from, i hope to help them in developing their digestive and respiratory systems so that their toilet training goes smoothly and they need not suffer from primary complexes or baby asthma... also, the bond between myself and my sons is irreplaceable. even if i were the stinkiest mama this part of the universe, there is at least one person (now two in my case) who will know my odour instinctively, who can find me on the darkest night by smell alone, and be reassured by the presence of that smell, be it stink or offal. hehehe i couldn't help it...
i see that little face pressed against my breast at least 8 times a day, and am able to monitor the small changes that creep across that precious countenance with the passing days.
i am rambling... i've been given another chance to be a mother in this lifetime and each experience, with mikka and kimi, has been truly life-affirming.
thank you, mikka and kimi, for blessing my life and S's, for being our precious children, for forming our little family of four. i love you both, your father above all. :)
31.12.05
16.12.05
panganay moments
1. He's counting. i mean, he finally has mastered the concept that there is a one-to-one correspondence between a number and its object, so that when he counts his fingers, he can show me 6 fingers when asked for 6 fingers. he can count his clementine pieces without recounting the same pieces again and assigning it more than one number. he mastered this a month ago, but i can't help it, i'm still tickled pink by his breakthrough.
2. He knows his oppositions in terms of space. Above vs below. Right vs left. Inside vs outside. Black vs white. To be honest, he started mastering this at age 2, so when we had a parent-teacher conference two months ago, I couldn’t help but feel damn proud when his teacher told us that mikka is advanced for his age in terms of his counting skills, identication of letters, numbers, and colours. He knows animals his father taught him, he watches national geographic channel, bbc, and cnn and can identify the channel logos. Not only that, he can also identify the logos of Thalys, ICE, and local Belgian IC trains. He knows if we’re doing our groceries at Delhaize, Carrefour, or GB by simply looking at the signages of the stores. He’s fooled quite a few of his uncles at our Saturday gatherings, making them believe he can actually read. Two weeks ago, he was reading the digital display on the VCR and he identified the date, saying, “it’s 2006!” and it was. I glowed. Just that morning, mikka and I had a lesson in identifying numbers, from 10s to 100s to 1000s, and he was already applying it that evening. As for telling time, I can only teach him how to identify the hour on the hour time, simply saying, “every time the minute hand (he does know the differences among the hour, minute, and second hands on our wall clock) is on 12, it’s always an ‘o’clock’.” At this point, I can’t expect him to transform the numbers 1-12 on the clock into the minute equivalents yet. As far as he knows, those are only numbers 1-12, and not 60 minutes. That will come, but not yet.
3. He’s improving with his colouring and writing skills. I can’t get over it. To distract him from the Season 3 DVDs of ‘Alias’ S and I are avidly watching before our Sunday deadline (time is so short and it’s a great and suspenseful season! Sydney vs Lauren, talk about hot spy chicks!), I sat him down to a colouring practice session which evolved into a writing session as well. after months of seeing him bring home school work with haphazard colouring, mikka has gotten quite the hang of colouring within boundaries, so that his pictures now look neater and more… identifiable. Then out of the blue, he says, “mama, I want to write the letters I-C-E. (he’s an avid fan of the German ICE trains which we have ridden twice, the first when we went to hanau last year, and the second when we visited cologne last September). So I made him write with a blue marker on one of the pages. Grasping the marker awkwardly, I could see that he had an idea of how the C should curve, and the need to attach three horizontal parallel lines to complete his letter E. the letter I must be the easiest thing to draw so there was no difficulty for him there. Then using some of the techniques of “positive praise” that super nanny jo keeps impressing in her tutorials, I saw mikka glow bloom and thrive every time I exclaimed “excellent! You’re a great colouring boy! Woohoo!” in the beginning it was mostly theatre on my part but when I saw him struggling to write his letters on his own initiative, and his colouring showing more control, I couldn’t help but let my excitement get the better of me. The first time he showed me his coloured cow, I fervently wrote the date on the bottom of the page and ran to S with the obra maestra, gushing like crazy. At the end of our colouring and writing session, mikka was strutting around the apartment, chest puffed out, stride filled with so much confidence, while S and I laughed at his newfound sense of new learning. To the point na nga that he wants to draw and draw more, kahit pagod na ako!
Nothing really puffs up a mother’s heart more than seeing her own child blossom beneath her gaze… now if I can only think of ways to help him develop better motor skills with the scissors, because that’s what his teacher told me I could help him with at home… and in this department, I really am at a loss because I don’t know how to impart such skills to him! And by the way, I was a poor student of art in my student days. Partly due to my lack of self confidence and the trauma of having an ex-boyfriend’s mom as my art teacher, who I one day discovered had told my close friends, “lara sucks in art, I don’t know why I even bother to encourage her!” and I was part of the yearbook staff that did the layouting, and she was the moderator of that “division”. I don’t think I will ever recover from that stigma; the recollection of her plastic smile as she encouraged me with what I thought were super creative ideas while deep inside she was recoiling in horror at my work.
Which is why it takes a lot of effort on my part to really buckle down and do art work with mikka. In the beginning, S told me, after I told him exasperatedly that I couldn’t draw the planes and trains mikka demanded of me, “it doesn’t matter if you can draw it or not, dear, what matters to mikka is that you’re working with him. So even if you create these funny looking objects, just do the best you can and you’ll see, it makes mikka happy because you’re with him.” Of course I have seen the wisdom of his advice, but recently, it’s gotten a little comic when mikka tells me, “mama, that doesn’t look right, the train should be bigger.” Reminds me of the time I tried to draw the setting of a short story I was taking up with my freshman literature class years back… my students, after several minutes of trying to decipher my misshapen cows and horses, chorused, “ma’am, here’s aaron, he can really draw, maybe he can draw instead…” and since that day, I have always asked my classes, “who can draw and give me a hand?” I do so chuckle at the memory. I have crazy students --- and son!
2. He knows his oppositions in terms of space. Above vs below. Right vs left. Inside vs outside. Black vs white. To be honest, he started mastering this at age 2, so when we had a parent-teacher conference two months ago, I couldn’t help but feel damn proud when his teacher told us that mikka is advanced for his age in terms of his counting skills, identication of letters, numbers, and colours. He knows animals his father taught him, he watches national geographic channel, bbc, and cnn and can identify the channel logos. Not only that, he can also identify the logos of Thalys, ICE, and local Belgian IC trains. He knows if we’re doing our groceries at Delhaize, Carrefour, or GB by simply looking at the signages of the stores. He’s fooled quite a few of his uncles at our Saturday gatherings, making them believe he can actually read. Two weeks ago, he was reading the digital display on the VCR and he identified the date, saying, “it’s 2006!” and it was. I glowed. Just that morning, mikka and I had a lesson in identifying numbers, from 10s to 100s to 1000s, and he was already applying it that evening. As for telling time, I can only teach him how to identify the hour on the hour time, simply saying, “every time the minute hand (he does know the differences among the hour, minute, and second hands on our wall clock) is on 12, it’s always an ‘o’clock’.” At this point, I can’t expect him to transform the numbers 1-12 on the clock into the minute equivalents yet. As far as he knows, those are only numbers 1-12, and not 60 minutes. That will come, but not yet.
3. He’s improving with his colouring and writing skills. I can’t get over it. To distract him from the Season 3 DVDs of ‘Alias’ S and I are avidly watching before our Sunday deadline (time is so short and it’s a great and suspenseful season! Sydney vs Lauren, talk about hot spy chicks!), I sat him down to a colouring practice session which evolved into a writing session as well. after months of seeing him bring home school work with haphazard colouring, mikka has gotten quite the hang of colouring within boundaries, so that his pictures now look neater and more… identifiable. Then out of the blue, he says, “mama, I want to write the letters I-C-E. (he’s an avid fan of the German ICE trains which we have ridden twice, the first when we went to hanau last year, and the second when we visited cologne last September). So I made him write with a blue marker on one of the pages. Grasping the marker awkwardly, I could see that he had an idea of how the C should curve, and the need to attach three horizontal parallel lines to complete his letter E. the letter I must be the easiest thing to draw so there was no difficulty for him there. Then using some of the techniques of “positive praise” that super nanny jo keeps impressing in her tutorials, I saw mikka glow bloom and thrive every time I exclaimed “excellent! You’re a great colouring boy! Woohoo!” in the beginning it was mostly theatre on my part but when I saw him struggling to write his letters on his own initiative, and his colouring showing more control, I couldn’t help but let my excitement get the better of me. The first time he showed me his coloured cow, I fervently wrote the date on the bottom of the page and ran to S with the obra maestra, gushing like crazy. At the end of our colouring and writing session, mikka was strutting around the apartment, chest puffed out, stride filled with so much confidence, while S and I laughed at his newfound sense of new learning. To the point na nga that he wants to draw and draw more, kahit pagod na ako!
Nothing really puffs up a mother’s heart more than seeing her own child blossom beneath her gaze… now if I can only think of ways to help him develop better motor skills with the scissors, because that’s what his teacher told me I could help him with at home… and in this department, I really am at a loss because I don’t know how to impart such skills to him! And by the way, I was a poor student of art in my student days. Partly due to my lack of self confidence and the trauma of having an ex-boyfriend’s mom as my art teacher, who I one day discovered had told my close friends, “lara sucks in art, I don’t know why I even bother to encourage her!” and I was part of the yearbook staff that did the layouting, and she was the moderator of that “division”. I don’t think I will ever recover from that stigma; the recollection of her plastic smile as she encouraged me with what I thought were super creative ideas while deep inside she was recoiling in horror at my work.
Which is why it takes a lot of effort on my part to really buckle down and do art work with mikka. In the beginning, S told me, after I told him exasperatedly that I couldn’t draw the planes and trains mikka demanded of me, “it doesn’t matter if you can draw it or not, dear, what matters to mikka is that you’re working with him. So even if you create these funny looking objects, just do the best you can and you’ll see, it makes mikka happy because you’re with him.” Of course I have seen the wisdom of his advice, but recently, it’s gotten a little comic when mikka tells me, “mama, that doesn’t look right, the train should be bigger.” Reminds me of the time I tried to draw the setting of a short story I was taking up with my freshman literature class years back… my students, after several minutes of trying to decipher my misshapen cows and horses, chorused, “ma’am, here’s aaron, he can really draw, maybe he can draw instead…” and since that day, I have always asked my classes, “who can draw and give me a hand?” I do so chuckle at the memory. I have crazy students --- and son!
9.12.05
another astrud moment
there is this one song of astrud i simply love with these lyrics:
who can i turn to when nobody needs me?
my heart wants to know
and so i must go where destiny leads me
with no star to guide me
and no one beside me
i'll go on my own and after the day
the darkness will hide me
and maybe tomorrow
i'll find what i'm after
i'll throw off my sorrow
beg, steal and borrow
my share of laughter
with you i could learn to begin on a new day
but who can i turn to if you turn away?
i used to sing this when i was single and S had not yet come into my life and transformed it into this colourful and meaningful tapestry of what true joy is. in so many ways, S has stilled my heart from so many traumas of the past but some things never go away, either.
here's one for the books: who can you turn to when your own flesh and blood spurn you? perhaps it is folly on my part to believe that i can let my hair loose in the presence of people i grew up with, with whom my DNA pattern is practically similar, hoping that since we're all past the age of 30, some unpredictable factors can come into play and hopefully, be forgiven?
in the tv series LOST, locke has resigned himself to a life on the island, isolated, apart from the life he knew, while other people like michael want nothing more than to get back the life they used to have so that they can forge a new tomorrow, their hearts always filled with hope.
in many ways, i am trapped between the wishes of michael and locke, and after a very revealing exchange with people i love over cyberspace, i realised that maybe, just maybe, the time has come for me to cross over to locke's philosophy and forget that i did have a past, that i did have a dream of some day belonging, of some day no longer having to be KSP with my own family, of some day no longer having to bear yet another moment the debilitating stereotypes of my childhood.
it is one thing to idealise relationships, and another to come face to face with certain truths, such as: no matter how much you change, no matter how far you've come, no matter how much you have gained in years and wisdom, the very people you love and wish to share all your life's discoveries, your own family, can be the ones who will not see your gains, who will choose to see only what they want to see, and forever box you into their impressions and opinions of you from time long gone.
if there is one thing my being in belgium has taught me, it is this: that family is important, even if it hurts to reach out to people who will not reach back to you across the miles, not even the cyber miles. i refuse to believe that this is payback time for sins of the past because if there's one thing i want to break in my family history, it's all the shit of previous generations being handed down to us, draped over us like a default hole-ridden ozone layer about which we can do nothing. right now i'm licking my wounds from the rejection dealt me by my own brothers and sister, but i know that this, too, will pass.
i'm in an island, cast out at sea, true, but i'm not Lost, not like locke and the other passengers on that ill-fated oceanic flight from sydney to los angeles. i know from where i have come, i know where i am right now, and i do NOT know where i will eventually end up, but i am not afraid of the journey before me.
there is a weight in my chest right now, because i would like to share my pain with others, and my first choice is to share it with my siblings, but if they will not be there for me, then as the cliché goes, if a door closes somewhere, god opens a window elsewhere. and in just a matter of hours, little peepholes have opened not just a crack but wide open, casting warm sunlight on my wet cheeks and teasing me with a view of beautiful blue skies.
the path before me lies half in mist, half in sunshine. each unturned stone shivers with promise and the chill snaking its way beneath my scarf promises pockets of joy yet to discover, even if it means being on my own. sometimes, all you need is the rest of the world to realise that family can be just a construct we can tie around an oak tree for posterity.
so who can i turn to if you turn away? the answer is not clear-cut but i can see it basking in the soft winter glow: there is someone out there who loves you, and that's all that matters. i can feel his hand massaging my heart gently and already my life is settling nicely into a new groove. for yet another adventure.
who can i turn to when nobody needs me?
my heart wants to know
and so i must go where destiny leads me
with no star to guide me
and no one beside me
i'll go on my own and after the day
the darkness will hide me
and maybe tomorrow
i'll find what i'm after
i'll throw off my sorrow
beg, steal and borrow
my share of laughter
with you i could learn to begin on a new day
but who can i turn to if you turn away?
i used to sing this when i was single and S had not yet come into my life and transformed it into this colourful and meaningful tapestry of what true joy is. in so many ways, S has stilled my heart from so many traumas of the past but some things never go away, either.
here's one for the books: who can you turn to when your own flesh and blood spurn you? perhaps it is folly on my part to believe that i can let my hair loose in the presence of people i grew up with, with whom my DNA pattern is practically similar, hoping that since we're all past the age of 30, some unpredictable factors can come into play and hopefully, be forgiven?
in the tv series LOST, locke has resigned himself to a life on the island, isolated, apart from the life he knew, while other people like michael want nothing more than to get back the life they used to have so that they can forge a new tomorrow, their hearts always filled with hope.
in many ways, i am trapped between the wishes of michael and locke, and after a very revealing exchange with people i love over cyberspace, i realised that maybe, just maybe, the time has come for me to cross over to locke's philosophy and forget that i did have a past, that i did have a dream of some day belonging, of some day no longer having to be KSP with my own family, of some day no longer having to bear yet another moment the debilitating stereotypes of my childhood.
it is one thing to idealise relationships, and another to come face to face with certain truths, such as: no matter how much you change, no matter how far you've come, no matter how much you have gained in years and wisdom, the very people you love and wish to share all your life's discoveries, your own family, can be the ones who will not see your gains, who will choose to see only what they want to see, and forever box you into their impressions and opinions of you from time long gone.
if there is one thing my being in belgium has taught me, it is this: that family is important, even if it hurts to reach out to people who will not reach back to you across the miles, not even the cyber miles. i refuse to believe that this is payback time for sins of the past because if there's one thing i want to break in my family history, it's all the shit of previous generations being handed down to us, draped over us like a default hole-ridden ozone layer about which we can do nothing. right now i'm licking my wounds from the rejection dealt me by my own brothers and sister, but i know that this, too, will pass.
i'm in an island, cast out at sea, true, but i'm not Lost, not like locke and the other passengers on that ill-fated oceanic flight from sydney to los angeles. i know from where i have come, i know where i am right now, and i do NOT know where i will eventually end up, but i am not afraid of the journey before me.
there is a weight in my chest right now, because i would like to share my pain with others, and my first choice is to share it with my siblings, but if they will not be there for me, then as the cliché goes, if a door closes somewhere, god opens a window elsewhere. and in just a matter of hours, little peepholes have opened not just a crack but wide open, casting warm sunlight on my wet cheeks and teasing me with a view of beautiful blue skies.
the path before me lies half in mist, half in sunshine. each unturned stone shivers with promise and the chill snaking its way beneath my scarf promises pockets of joy yet to discover, even if it means being on my own. sometimes, all you need is the rest of the world to realise that family can be just a construct we can tie around an oak tree for posterity.
so who can i turn to if you turn away? the answer is not clear-cut but i can see it basking in the soft winter glow: there is someone out there who loves you, and that's all that matters. i can feel his hand massaging my heart gently and already my life is settling nicely into a new groove. for yet another adventure.
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