Re-Born Through the Births of My Children

 

Today, as I watched a scene from Call the Midwives during my at-home workout, I fell apart. My body went into convulsive sobs. As I watched one of the nurses delicately, slowly, and skillfully birth a breech baby, I apparently had some grief to let go of.

I don’t think about the traumatizing births of my children often anymore. I am in no risk for a pregnancy. The man I am with is “fixed” and I don’t plan to be with anyone else…ever. So, the greatest fear of my life stays contained in it’s little box tied shut with a bow, for the most part.

Until I watch a birth…a precarious birth.

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These days, instead of thinking about all of my near-death experiences, I try to look at the positive stuff. It’s pretty easy, really. There is so much goodness that has come from my time as a mother. They have been the most difficult years of my life, but I have learned who I am, for good and for bad.

More than any relationship with a lover or spouse could, my relationships with my children have created a new me. And I’m not just talking about the saggy breasts and ample padding around my backside. That’s there, too. But…

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Who was I before I had children? Well, that’s tricky.

The pictures look like I was happy. I had many things I did that made me happy.

• Auditing a German class after I had to quit my degree program made me happy. I have great memories there, caroling in German at the old folk’s home and making gingerbread houses with my class.
• Adopting two little black cats, Tchuss and Ciao, made me happy.
• Having my young siblings over for sleepovers made me happy.
• Inviting the neighborhood kids over, making cookies and taking them to the library and the fire station made me happy.

 

I don’t remember my now-ex making me happy or prioritizing me, though.

After he abandoned me after my miscarriage, I became pretty independent. Something inside me told me he was not dependable. But, I still had the very patriarchal, misogynisitic programming that kept me in place, supporting him and all of his ideas. That would be my job, regardless of whether I got anything in return.

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Usually when adults decide to have children, there are a few things intact. If I had waited for any of those things — education finished, job secured, a home — I never would have had children. I was over 40 before he got a stable job. And he only kept that for 8 years. That was a record, though. His longest stint at a job before that was 3 years.

And I would have missed out…waiting for him to get his shit together. I could not go back to school and finish until he was done. There was no money for childcare, even if I had worked a “full-time” job outside the home. With four children, no education, and only blue-collar skills, my pay would have been less than childcare would have demanded.

It took years for me to allow myself to get pregnant again after the hemorrhaging miscarriage overseas at age 20. I had been devastated on every level possible. I had been betrayed by my own body. I had been abandoned by my then-husband when I needed him most. I had been far away from home, thus the direness of my experience had been missed on everyone in my life at home, including my parents.

Those years, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, who would listen to me cry. She could hear my pain. She had had a miscarriage many, many years before. She could understand. But she also knew that I had no choice but to have children. We talked about that frankly and realistically. Born as the first daughter in a large, beautiful Mormon family, I would have children. It wasn’t if, it was when.

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Five years later, while living overseas, in a moment of weakness which means “delusional peace and contentment” as I was living with a narcissist, I became pregnant again. After he refused a perfectly good, stablizing and exciting job, we returned home, to live with my parents, broke and destitute.

The six remaining months of that pregnancy were grueling and difficult. I felt humiliated and vulnerable. I felt sick and weak. I had nothing to stand on; no dreams of stability; no dreams of a life that made any sense at all. It was so elusive.

I became pregnant with next child, a daughter, while living in that same phase of delusional contentment while living in Austria, with friends, broke and but still hoping that he would get into school and stay there, and we could get stable somehow.

My most hopeful moments are when I allowed myself to get pregnant. It wasn’t in the water, really. Because it happened two more times in the US as well.

My third child, a daughter, I had after we had settled into our farmhouse and things felt relatively stable…for the short time being. He had finally taken a job in our state and would supposedly be home more. Joke of my lifetime…the only joke, actually.

My last pregnancy began when he quit a traveling job and decided to go back to school to get his doctorate. He would surely be home more now, right?

This whole time, I was fending for myself for the most part. My parents supported us, buying me cars large enough to transport all of my kids and myself and fixing the multitude of problems with an old farmhouse. Life was not what I had expected. But I made the best of it.

I do not regret my beautiful and amazing children. I do not regret any minute of my life with them. I needed them. I needed them because I was disillusioned about what real love was.

I needed them to teach me about love. They taught me what love really was. The longer they have been in my life, the more lessons I have learned about the conterfeits that I have accepted for myself. My feigned self-love, my hopeful, yet delusional love for men who only knew how to use women —my children have been the ones to call me out.

My children have saved me from myself.

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I know, your kids are not supposed to be your friends. But, as a homeschool mom with at least two part-time jobs, I had no time for friends. My kids were my people. They had other people, of course. But I really had no time for anyone outside the circle of groups and organizations who supported my parenting and my children’s becoming.

It was not an easy life. I was not really lonely, though. I really didn’t have time to be lonely. I slept hard, exhausted, starting on the couch each night. I fell asleep folding clothes, typing, making lists for the grocery and Walmart, craft store, etc. Then I’d make my way to the bed to sleep a few hours before getting up at 5 and doing it all over again.

I was like a machine, those days. I don’t remember asking myself if I was happy. I don’t remember asking myself if I could possibly NOT do one of the things I was doing. I don’t think I could have.

We needed money to live. My children deserved opportunities. So I volunteered, organized, donated time and skills, food, and filled out scholarship applications.

…

My children’s love has taught me to forgive myself and my faults. It has taught me to love my body, regardless of size and shape. It’s taught me that I have worth beyond what I had imagined. Their successes have made me proud, just as the moments they learn hard lessons, the hard way.

Their love is reciprocal. It is something that I don’t have to beg for, ask for, or demand. It just is. And they know how to love me.

The other night, after being told that my son would be going “no contact” for a couple of weeks, I got a random text from my him. He was too excited NOT to text me, I guess.

He is helping on a training for the Green Berets of the US Army. He “has the best job in the whole world!”, he said. One of the men he is working with is from a country the US is apparently training. The captain taught him how to make an ethnic bread that my kids and I love. And he just had to tell me. I love that kid so much.

This Valentine Day, it was easy to remember and focus on all of my loves — my partner, yes, but my children mostly, who have been with me through thick and thin and thicker and thinner.

They are my first true loves, to be sure.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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