We had our anatomy-screen ultrasound last week, and, inevitably, the comparisons began.
"This is an active one," the technician commented, as she tried, unsuccessfully, to snap a picture of the wiggling baby's heart before it shifted out of view again.
I told her about the time Jake wouldn't wake up for his ultrasound. And about how everyone in my breastfeeding group used to refer to him as "Zen Jake" because of his propensity for staring wide-eyed at the screaming infants around him as he calmly digested his meals.
"Well, this one sure is going to be different," the tech promised.
It's true, of course. This baby is going to be different from Jake, a fact that I simultaneously accept with ease and can not for the life of me imagine. How is it possible to think of having a baby who isn't just like Jake was? He's my only reference point.
Still, I looked hopefully at the baby's yoga-fied position—head down, butt in the air, legs stretched overhead so as to gain some purchase by pressing its feet against a convenient fold in my uterus—a lovely halasana (plow pose), really. Surely, I prayed, if this one was already displaying such a love of yoga, it would be Zen-like as well. After all, it was all that yoga I practiced while I was pregnant that did it for Jake, wasn't it?
Which, ultimately, was really the focal point of my thoughts: What did I do to make Jake so wonderful? Am I doing the same things for this baby? And, by the way, aren't there a few things I might want to do differently?
Take, for example, the other evening, when I glanced down from chopping tomatoes in the kitchen to find Jake quietly working at poking a second hole in the valve to one of his sippy cups. With a paring knife.
Not a good Mommy moment.
Or just yesterday, as we drove home from his friend's birthday party and I noticed a special urgency to his "All done!" offering of the apple juice cup. I glanced back to find him leaning way too far forward, cup outstretched in stiff little arms, and realized, to my horror, that I had neglected to buckle him into his car seat.
This is not the first time I have managed to forget about the buckling-in part. When Jake was four months old, I drove him all the way home from the pediatrician's office unbuckled; when we arrived, unbelievably unscathed, he was lurching sideways with a look of deep puzzlement on his face. I swore that it would never happen again. But, see, it did.
And so the real comparisons arise. Will I continue to do so much wrong? And will I be a good enough mother to get so much right the second time?
It's Really All About Judging Myself
As the younger child in my family, I am cringingly, passionately determined not to compare my children to each other. Teachers, friends, strangers, I figure, will do plenty of it without me turning it truly harmful for that poor second child with nowhere to be herself or himself.
I gaze upon Jake's perfection, I tell him what a miracle he is, and already I pray I will be able to say the same sorts of things to my second child. "Yes, Jake was an easy baby," I imagine saying to his sibling one day a decade or so hence. "But you could be cute, too. When you weren't crying."
Colic. A hot temper. Never sleeping. Accident-prone. There are a million things that could make this second round at motherhood even harder than the first. And, being a little bit crazy, I try to avoid these problems now. By, you know, doing whatever I did in my first pregnancy again. Because surely my prenatal self-care is solely responsible for how great Jake is.
Take, for example, my newly-popped belly. Okay, I'm 18 weeks in, so a little belly action is to be expected. It's my second pregnancy after all, and everyone says you get a lot bigger a lot faster after you've been through it once. Like your uterus figures it out and goes, "Wow! Another chance to stretch to the size of a large beach ball! Can't wait!"
But I was barely showing by the time I hit my third trimester with Jake. I assure myself of this fact by checking out the pictures from my 40th birthday when I was 25 weeks pregnant and wearing a bikini in Hawaii. At 25 weeks and 40 years of age, I could afford to chuckle at the notion that people probably thought I was just a bit thick-waisted, not pregnant. Somehow, at 18 weeks and 42 years, I find this prospect crushing. Especially knowing I have failed to live up to my own example.
Then there's the fact that I practiced yoga every single day during my pregnancy with Jake. I had my own special prenatal-but-tough practice that I did faithfully—for Jake's wellbeing, for my own, and, too, for labor prep. This time around, I'm lucky if I can make it to a class three times a week. The thought of repeating the same calming sequence I did every day for nine months before Jake was born sends me into a paroxysm of denial. Can. Not. Do. It. One. More. Time.
What does it say that I wasted all my best prenatal yoga on Jake?
It says, I think to myself, that the colic, the temper, the inability to sleep, the attempts to crawl into that interesting porcelain thing filled with water that this second child manifests will all be my fault. Because I've eaten too much chocolate during this pregnancy. Because I don't spend enough time communing with my unborn child. Because I read books to Jake instead of to his five-months-distant sibling.
It will be my fault.
Whenever people say something nice about Jake's disposition, Mike is quick to point out that we can't take credit for it because then we would have to take credit for any less-desirable traits of subsequent children. I am happy to agree. Except, of course, that, secretly, I'll take credit for both.
If We Can't Control Anything, Why Even Try?
I've said it a bunch of times before: One of the biggest revelations that has come from my yoga practice is that I'm not in control.
I can not, for example, ensure that I will get enough legal work to pay the bills every month, no matter how good my work might be. Or, where my child is concerned, I can't guarantee that he will do well in school, go to college, be a happy person, fall in love with someone I can love too.
I can hope for these things. I can hope so hard I start to think I can make them happen. I can push and prod and state my expectations.
And, most likely, Jake will turn and run in the other direction. Or, at the very least, end up feeling conflicted and sad about following his own heart instead of my desires.
So if I can't make all the wonderful things I want for my child happen, if I can't guarantee myself happiness simply by being a good person and working hard to make the world a better place, what's the point?
If you can't control everything, why even try? Why try to be good, to be happy, to be secure, to be a good mother? I mean, if things are going to turn out the way they turn out anyhow, what difference does it make what I do?
But, see, not being in control—admitting that there's something bigger than you—doesn't mean that there's a predetermined way things will turn out. I might not be able to guarantee a particular outcome, but I surely have choices about how to play the hand I'm dealt.
In other words, the Universe is full of powerful surges of energy, of people and animals and things all living and moving and exerting their own pull of energy so that no single one of us could realistically hope to have a loud enough voice, a strong enough presence, to exert our own will on the world, or even on our own, intertwined lives. We plainly don't control everything. We need to surrender to that fact. So we don't drive ourselves and those we love to despair trying to achieve a certain outcome that it isn't within our power to achieve.
At the same time, it is my choice how I respond to what the Universe brings my way. I can, for example, ignore it and push on in the same dogged path, tell myself that if I keep trying hard enough I will make it all just the way I want, regardless of what the rest of the world does around me. I can say that I am totally and uniquely responsible for the health and disposition of this child I am carrying, and that I am contantly at risk of screwing up this child's chances at the richest happiness possible.
Or I can open my heart to all the energy around me and celebrate the positive things while refusing to be swept away by the harder things in life. I can look at my bulging belly with the roll of fat donut-ing around my collapsed navel that never went away after my first pregnancy and I can ask myself whether I really care about a little doughiness when I'm so very lucky to be pregnant at all. I can embrace and celebrate everything my child is and show patience and love if part of what s/he is is colicky or short-tempered or on the hyperactive side. And by opening myself up to the hard stuff as well as the stuff that's easy to embrace, I may just realize that it's all a joy.
The sweet thing about taking a chance and opening up, letting go of the concept of control, is that it ends up giving you so many more choices to celebrate. You think you will be more vulnerable if you stop taking charge. (My child will be sickly because I find myself compelled to drink a can of organic ginger ale every day.) You think you will be responsible for life's difficulties if you let go for even a moment. (It will be my fault if, for a second time dammit, I am unable to produce enough milk for my baby.) But if you let go of these notions, you let go of all the baggage that is weighing you down.
You find that if you open your arms to the changes all around you you will in fact invite in more happiness. Sure, some dark stuff creeps in as well. But it's going to anyhow. The difference between inviting it in with open arms and turning your back on it is that if your arms are open, you might just find something in there to embrace, shape, infuse with your own love, and transform.
Sort of, I imagine, like a colicky baby.
A Sequence to Observe Yourself and the Energy Around You
One way to embrace how things change—things around us, things inside us—is to include in every practice a short sequence that becomes so familiar you are free to observe yourself in it. The less you have to think about each asana, the more you can free your mind to observe how your body responds to it on any particular day. Feeling unbalanced? Okay, I accept that. Heart beautifully open today? What gratitude I feel.
It's about letting go of the responsibility and the blame. It's about recognizing something larger than yourself and how you are connected to it. And it's ultimately about discovering the joy in letting go and choosing to embrace what comes when you do.
No comments:
Post a Comment