WEBVTT 00:00:02.500 --> 00:00:04.500 My father said life without children is not complete. And I internalized 00:00:08.329 --> 00:00:11.546 that, but I also at the same time knew I wanted to be a writer and an 00:00:11.579 --> 00:00:17.467 artist and I was never one of those kids or girls who played marriage who 00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:23.166 wanted babies. I didn't play with dolls that was just not part of my dream. 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.355 So having an actual child is a much richer and more complicated 00:00:28.388 --> 00:00:34.726 experience, I think, than what. I thought it was when I was a little girl. 00:00:34.759 --> 00:00:40.085 Looking back, I realized just just how isolated I was because I think it 00:00:40.118 --> 00:00:43.885 must be really nice to go through a pregnancy with your friends and your 00:00:43.918 --> 00:00:49.406 family around you to support you. I didn't have that village around me of 00:00:49.439 --> 00:00:55.786 , you know, friends who'd had babies or aunts or. None of that. The day we 00:00:55.819 --> 00:00:59.826 found out we were pregnant, I think was also the day, if I remember 00:00:59.859 --> 00:01:03.667 correctly, that he passed his dissertation. They were like really sort of 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:10.826 close to each other and then within months he had a job in Arizona and we 00:01:10.859 --> 00:01:16.245 left Charlottesville and all of our friends. And landed in Arizona in July 00:01:16.278 --> 00:01:24.278 , I think, and I was pregnant. And it was a little. Jarring People would 00:01:24.969 --> 00:01:29.576 say that I looked, I was very skinny and, you know, I kind of looked like 00:01:29.609 --> 00:01:32.495 I swallowed a basketball like that was sort of the only place where the 00:01:32.528 --> 00:01:38.967 weight. Showed Like a lot of women, I think, you know, I, I didn't like my 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:43.587 body and I thought it needed to be different and. After I gave birth, I 00:01:43.620 --> 00:01:47.156 was like, no, my body's good, my body's a machine that can do an 00:01:47.189 --> 00:01:51.906 incredible thing and I felt much more connected to my body. I think that's 00:01:51.939 --> 00:01:56.385 what it was. I don't think I'd ever felt particularly connected to my body. 00:01:56.418 --> 00:02:02.245 I wasn't really in it a lot of the time. And having Anna change that 00:02:02.278 --> 00:02:07.046 being pregnant, I think changed that. It was like a project. It was like 00:02:07.079 --> 00:02:11.967 my body had this really interesting project and I was kind of following 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:18.967 along and I kind of I kind of couldn't believe that my body was doing that. 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:24.286 The whole pregnancy was very smooth. I'd had some depression before the 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:29.975 pregnancy and somehow. When I was pregnant, it's like my moods stabilized 00:02:30.008 --> 00:02:38.008 . I was even keeled really no sort of complications whatsoever. I'm kind 00:02:38.500 --> 00:02:41.745 of effortless, you know, up until the end you just want the baby out. It's 00:02:41.778 --> 00:02:46.146 like, OK, it's that your home is too small, you need to come out into the 00:02:46.179 --> 00:02:52.737 world and it was 2 weeks late. I had about. 24 hours of, I don't know if 00:02:52.770 --> 00:02:56.656 it was false labor or Braxton Hicks, but I had a friend who was a midwife 00:02:56.689 --> 00:03:00.136 , interestingly enough, and she checked me and she's like, yeah, you're 00:03:00.169 --> 00:03:03.327 you're dilating, you know, but you're not at the point where you should go 00:03:03.360 --> 00:03:07.696 to the hospital. So I did a lot of, you know, sitting in the bath and 00:03:07.729 --> 00:03:13.136 walking around and we went to the hospital like 4 a.m. something like that 00:03:13.169 --> 00:03:15.517 eventually. 00:03:15.550 --> 00:03:21.596 They informed me that I was stuck. I was 10 centimeters dilated on one 00:03:21.629 --> 00:03:26.396 side and 8 centimeters dilated on the other one and I wasn't progressing. 00:03:26.429 --> 00:03:32.386 And so they wanted to give me an epidural and then Pitocin to get things 00:03:32.419 --> 00:03:37.427 going again. I didn't want an epidural, but at that point I think I was 00:03:37.460 --> 00:03:43.786 ready to have Anna and ready to be done with it. So I said, OK, and Anna's 00:03:43.819 --> 00:03:47.876 father said that that was the part where it became sort of scary for him 00:03:47.909 --> 00:03:54.047 because. There were needles and I was, you know, on the bed like a patient. 00:03:54.080 --> 00:03:57.096 About 20 minutes later I gave but they didn't even have to do the Pitocin. 00:03:57.129 --> 00:04:00.047 They gave me the epidural and I guess my body relaxed. I feel like I've 00:04:00.080 --> 00:04:05.386 just been working so hard to get this baby out and I had been anticipating 00:04:05.419 --> 00:04:09.916 a small dark haired child because I was a small pale baby with dark hair. 00:04:09.949 --> 00:04:14.106 My brothers were small, pale babies with dark hair. My mother and father 00:04:14.139 --> 00:04:18.116 in different countries had been small pale children with dark hair, and 00:04:18.149 --> 00:04:25.666 she had copper hair. She had like flame. Colored copper. Hair and I just 00:04:25.699 --> 00:04:31.086 realized this is. A whole other person. This is an individual who's going 00:04:31.119 --> 00:04:35.567 to turn into her own person so no longer just somebody who's part of your 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:43.600 little projected fantasy about motherhood, the reality of I am fully. And 00:04:45.689 --> 00:04:51.937 almost solely responsible. For this small person who will become a grown 00:04:51.970 --> 00:04:57.887 up, that's. That's big and I think for a woman especially that's. You have 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:02.526 to go through a readjustment. I had given birth to Anna, but Anna in a way 00:05:02.559 --> 00:05:07.476 had given birth to to me as a mother, in other words, not literally, but 00:05:07.509 --> 00:05:13.486 She, she made me a mother. I mean, this was like a whole different self. 00:05:13.519 --> 00:05:16.745 And without Anna, that never would have happened. I don't think it's 00:05:16.778 --> 00:05:21.947 better or worse, you know, it's. Very, very different, and that was 00:05:21.980 --> 00:05:27.106 exhilarating and. Then I would say within the next 24 hours kind of 00:05:27.139 --> 00:05:29.325 terrifying. 00:05:29.358 --> 00:05:35.137 Cuz in your fantasy, right, you're still you, you just have a kid and. I, 00:05:35.170 --> 00:05:41.416 I wanted to stay me and I wasn't sure how I could. Become a stereotypical 00:05:41.449 --> 00:05:46.187 you know mother of what I saw as a stereotypical mother and still be me. I 00:05:46.220 --> 00:05:49.666 think it was a kind of identity crisis and I, I realized having children, 00:05:49.699 --> 00:05:53.866 right, having a baby, you gained something critical but not in the short 00:05:53.899 --> 00:05:56.906 term you lost something, right? And so you had to sort of cope with that 00:05:56.939 --> 00:06:01.745 loss. I had a child like a mother gives birth you give something away in a 00:06:01.778 --> 00:06:08.627 sense and you get it back tenfold, but initially. It's losing something, 00:06:08.660 --> 00:06:13.495 literally the baby out of your body and then also a sense of kind of. Who 00:06:13.528 --> 00:06:19.015 you were I mean, I remember, you know, looking at women's magazines, those 00:06:19.048 --> 00:06:22.296 were a guilty pleasure of mine. And after I had Anna, like in the weeks 00:06:22.329 --> 00:06:25.776 after I had Anna, I just looked at those like, I can't make heads or tails. 00:06:25.809 --> 00:06:28.495 I don't, who are these for? They make no sense. It was like they were 00:06:28.528 --> 00:06:32.075 written in a foreign language. Because what I was looking for was 00:06:32.108 --> 00:06:37.205 information that was so much more kind of primal and. Just about how to 00:06:37.238 --> 00:06:43.805 survive. I did have postpartum anxiety and I was told postpartum anxiety 00:06:43.838 --> 00:06:49.036 wasn't a thing, and Anna was an easy baby. Anna was not colicky, but I get 00:06:49.069 --> 00:06:53.805 this rising panic. I don't know what it was. It was this sense of being 00:06:53.838 --> 00:07:00.226 trapped. That was really frightening. I joined a writing group called 00:07:00.259 --> 00:07:06.515 Mothers who Write. Pretty early on and I tried to write. About how I felt 00:07:06.548 --> 00:07:10.697 that, you know, feeling like. When are we ever going to be able to get 00:07:10.730 --> 00:07:14.726 back to our own creative selves, you know, all of this stuff that There's 00:07:14.759 --> 00:07:20.887 not a lot of room for, I think, in the traditional. Notions of motherhood. 00:07:20.920 --> 00:07:24.866 And so to find a place where there were women who were mothers but who 00:07:24.899 --> 00:07:28.745 also wrote who saw the world through that writer's perspective and saw 00:07:28.778 --> 00:07:32.805 motherhood through that writer's perspective, that was really reassuring 00:07:32.838 --> 00:07:36.906 because it's like, oh we can talk about the crappy stuff we can talk about 00:07:36.939 --> 00:07:40.947 postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, you know, there's no Mother's 00:07:40.980 --> 00:07:48.717 Day card for that mother it's. The selfless Mother who, you know, that 00:07:48.750 --> 00:07:53.437 that giving tree, we love our children fiercely, but I don't think we're 00:07:53.470 --> 00:07:57.836 any of us that tree stump. 00:07:57.869 --> 00:08:01.877 About a week and a half after I gave birth, she started pooping blood just 00:08:01.910 --> 00:08:05.877 like straight blood. They couldn't really figure out what was going on. 00:08:05.910 --> 00:08:10.317 They thought that either she'd contracted some sort of stomach virus or 00:08:10.350 --> 00:08:14.526 she was allergic to my breast milk. And I had been going to Leeche Lake 00:08:14.559 --> 00:08:17.736 religiously before giving birth, so I was like, there's no way she's 00:08:17.769 --> 00:08:22.616 allergic to my breast milk. That's not possible. They told me not to 00:08:22.649 --> 00:08:26.217 breastfeed, that I should put her on Alimentum, which was this very 00:08:26.250 --> 00:08:31.015 expensive formula that came in a can. And of course all the Leleche league 00:08:31.048 --> 00:08:33.525 ladies said, oh no, you can't do that. You can't do that. You must 00:08:33.558 --> 00:08:39.184 breastfeed her. So I started with the elementum, but I was pumping breast 00:08:39.217 --> 00:08:42.304 milk too, right? Because, you know, she was going to need my breast milk 00:08:42.337 --> 00:08:45.784 like that. And the Laleche league ladies, they said, Oh, well, you, you 00:08:45.817 --> 00:08:48.635 need to pump, you need to mimic the baby's feeding cycle, so you need to 00:08:48.668 --> 00:08:54.566 be pumping every 2 hours. So I'm trying to feed the baby. The bottle and 00:08:54.599 --> 00:08:58.875 pump every 2 hours, and then my mother was the one who said you're making 00:08:58.908 --> 00:09:06.908 yourself crazy. You Need to just give her the bottle and she's OK. And and 00:09:07.928 --> 00:09:13.196 she was, but I continued. Pumping breast milk and occasionally trying to 00:09:13.229 --> 00:09:17.236 put her back on the breast milk. And every time I did the blood returned, 00:09:17.269 --> 00:09:22.907 saying to the pediatric gastroenterologist, I really want. Anna to have 00:09:22.940 --> 00:09:29.797 breast milk. And she said You're being ridiculous, she said, if this were 00:09:29.830 --> 00:09:34.196 a third world country where the water was compromised, you know, of course 00:09:34.229 --> 00:09:40.476 , breast milk, but. The the the differences are sort of. Minimal, and you 00:09:40.509 --> 00:09:43.797 should feel fortunate because there are other children who've come in with 00:09:43.830 --> 00:09:49.206 very, very similar. Symptoms who may not leave here. You know, my kid was 00:09:49.239 --> 00:09:53.917 in for 2 or 3 days and then was able to go home and yeah she was on crazy 00:09:53.950 --> 00:09:56.775 expensive formula that came in a can that we had to pack in our luggage 00:09:56.808 --> 00:09:59.246 anytime we went anywhere because we weren't sure they would sell it where 00:09:59.279 --> 00:10:06.706 we were going but she was fundamentally healthy. And I've been so 00:10:06.739 --> 00:10:10.427 brainwashed by the Leeche league that I had the temerity to say to my 00:10:10.460 --> 00:10:14.787 mother, who had delivered, by the way, me and then twins, right, and 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:19.186 raised us, you know, pretty capably. Yeah, should you really be giving 00:10:19.219 --> 00:10:21.746 them a bottle? Like, what about nipple confusion? Like really shouldn't 00:10:21.779 --> 00:10:26.986 breast milk, it shouldn't they? I, I look back and I realize that first 00:10:27.019 --> 00:10:32.917 baby you're just grasping. You have no. Clue really and you're looking for 00:10:32.950 --> 00:10:37.096 gospel, right? And so you kind of take it where you find it and then I 00:10:37.129 --> 00:10:43.486 think if you parent well you sort of realize no baby should be parented by 00:10:43.519 --> 00:10:48.032 one approach. You need to tailor your approach to the. To the child, so 00:10:48.065 --> 00:10:51.672 the very early like I'm going to pump every 2 hours and give my child 00:10:51.705 --> 00:10:55.592 formula was kind of crazy. I remember having this revelation when Anna was 00:10:55.625 --> 00:10:58.270 little and we were on an airplane, and now people talk about it quite a 00:10:58.303 --> 00:11:02.672 bit. When the oxygen mask comes down and you're with a child, what do you 00:11:02.705 --> 00:11:07.576 do? You put it on the kid first. No, no, you don't. You put it on yourself 00:11:07.609 --> 00:11:10.217 first because if you put it on the kid first and you pass out, you're 00:11:10.250 --> 00:11:14.576 useless. So you have to put your own oxygen mask on first. You have to 00:11:14.609 --> 00:11:19.537 take care of yourself. I really had to value myself more and I really had 00:11:19.570 --> 00:11:26.015 to take care of myself if I was going to be able to take care of Anna. So 00:11:26.048 --> 00:11:31.346 that in a way gave me permission to take care of myself, to value myself. 00:11:31.379 --> 00:11:38.956 Cause I, I kind of hadn't. Before then. When you become a mother. It's, 00:11:38.989 --> 00:11:46.686 it's really altering, profoundly altering. I don't think I ever felt 00:11:46.719 --> 00:11:54.719 Quite as close to death as I did when when Anna was born, it's because 00:11:55.200 --> 00:12:02.525 you're at that. Door, it's the same door I was at when my father died. 00:12:02.558 --> 00:12:05.846 3 years before she was born, right? It's the door where you say hello and 00:12:05.879 --> 00:12:11.255 goodbye. And you can't be at that door and not think about. Passing 00:12:11.288 --> 00:12:13.765 through it. 00:12:13.798 --> 00:12:21.395 So Anna connected me. Back to my father. Who was the center of my world. 00:12:21.428 --> 00:12:28.557 She connected me to myself. In a funny way, that's where my father was. 00:12:28.590 --> 00:12:31.927 And 00:12:31.960 --> 00:12:35.236 She connected me. 00:12:35.269 --> 00:12:39.486 Forward in a funny way. I feel like in the same way that my father is 00:12:39.519 --> 00:12:46.025 around, I will be around. Not literally, right, but. My father shaped me, 00:12:46.058 --> 00:12:50.807 I've shaped Anna, even if Anna doesn't choose to have children. Every life 00:12:50.840 --> 00:12:55.326 she touches, every person that she has a relationship with, or, you know, 00:12:55.359 --> 00:13:00.558 the ripple, that's the ripple out, that's connected.