|
| |
And This Unto You
My mom says I was born tense. Tense and intense. When she tells the story of how I was born, amidst the drama and gesticulation, I feel a little sad to know that I am this child she speaks of. I was taken from the womb dead asleep, a planned caesarean ...
Children's Discipline: How To Resolve Divorce Parenting Differences?
Did you know that inconsistency on matters of discipline gives double messages, produces anxiety and can be very confusing to your children? Children need to know where they stand in their behaviors. It is therefore critical for parents to resolve ...
Typical Language Accomplishments
I thought it was important for you to know the typical Language Accomplishments for Children, Birth to Age 3. Learning to read is built on a foundation of language skills that children start to learn at birth--a process that is both complicated and ...
|
|
|
|
| |
I think she must have seen that life is hard.
I was born nearly thirty years ago to a mother younger than I am now. The child my mother birthed before me had been a c-section and thus my path was set long before I ever materialized. I was a planned c-section, as was the custom in the early seventies among women who had previous caesarean deliveries. My parents picked my birthday and planned
accordingly. Their elder child was well taken care of; bags were packed and ready for the weeklong hospital stay; the house locked and pet sitters arranged. My mother was prepped for surgery and wheeled into an operating room. Conscious but sluggish, she held my father’s hand as the men in green scrubs set about their work. My mother’s body was sliced open to reveal a sleeping infant, jarred awake to the bright lights and cold hands of the ob ward. Their baby was whisked away to be cut and cleaned and wrapped in a blanket, then stored in the nursery with all the other luggage. This was in direct contrast to their plan of holding a wriggling and greasy newborn before the cord was even severed, but beyond their control. Despite protestations, I was transferred immediately to the nursery where I commenced to demonstrate my clearly healthy lungs with screams that began the moment I was born and lasted for days, until I was finally reunited with my mother.
There is a silver lining to the story of my birth, and that is the story of Ruby Jane’s birth. My mother gave birth four times before I felt my first contraction, and each time was a lesson to me. So this becomes the story of two births, a story to say how one birth grows out of another. For a quarter century I had heard my mother tell the story of my birth, cold and surgical. I had listened to her recount my days in the nursery, her heroic attempts to drag her broken body across the maternity ward and lift me from my screams. I ache to think of a mother so far from her baby. I do not remember, but I feel it in my gut. And in the collective consciousness that is me and my mother, I learned to help my baby into this world with kindness and warmth.
About the Author
Abigail Is 29 years old and lives in Southern California with her daughter Ruby Jane. Her writing has appeared in Loving Mama: Essays on Natural Childbirth and Parenting, on Mothering magazine's website and also in the periodical Growing Up In Santa Cruz.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Permissive Parenting, It's not Helping Keep Kids SafePatch.comPermissive parenting doesn't mean you are progressive, it means you are lazy. Ignoring our children doesn't make them better humans. Parents, there is nothing worse than having to parent another parent's child. Seriously. |
|
Parenting Lessons From Your DogHuffington Post (blog)After interviewing families in 20 countries around the world, I concluded the reality of parenting is something quite different: Humans have forgotten we are animals, and children are like dogs -- either you train them or they train you. |
|
