The induction was scheduled for 5:00am on a Tuesday. My husband Andy and I drove to the hospital before any of the new day’s light had cracked open the edges of night. We held hands walking to the check-in desk, nervous about the labor and excited to meet our daughter, Anthem. Our two-year-old son was at home with his grandparents, sleeping peacefully and not yet grokking how he was about to become a big brother to a little sister.

While pregnant, there are days when I am ravenous. I awake hungry and never seem to fill. I grow shaky before lunch and can’t suppress the need for a snack before bed. I run a hand along the curve of my belly, where my baby is growing steadily. My body is a vessel, and I am less in control of it than ever before. I cannot know why there are days my body demands more food, or feels sick, or leaves me exhausted. I can only trust the signals it sends me for rest or nourishment, understanding that miraculously, though I have no conscious part in it, my body is developing and sustaining a human being.

I don’t know why your mood can shift like a cloud

why you’re unhappy after breakfast

not wanting to stand on your new step stool and brush your teeth

You’re twenty months and ten days old, my son

and you cannot tell me what pushes sundry feelings to the surface

and you may not even know yourself

For several years (too long in the rearview mirror of life) I worked for a woman who prided herself on saying whatever she was thinking without apology. We were working at our desks in our small office one day when she made a pointed observation.

“You roll your r’s sometimes. Thrrrree!!” she chirped with a laugh like a short bark. “I’m going to call you Little Hispanic Girl.”

“I am Hispanic,” I replied, uncomfortable with the expression of self-satisfied amusement she wore.

Hair mussed

Sleep still slipping

from the corners of my eyes

Coffee piping

Rain chilly, pattering on the tin roof

of the first home which is fully ours.

The autumn afternoon was sunny and crisp. I was playing outside with my one and a half year old son, Ocean, when we heard the hum of an engine overhead.

“Look! It’s a biplane,” I told him, crouching down and pointing to the speck of aircraft skimming through the sky. By accident one day while driving down an unfamiliar road, I’d discovered a small airport on a hill just a few miles from our house. Ever since, I’d taken special note of the single-engine planes which would often buzz overhead, criss-crossing the sky as though sending me a message. Watching with my son, my heart twisted with an old ache.

Throughout my day, so often it becomes part of the normal rhythm of motherhood, it’s easy to be prodded by small worries about my young son, Ocean.

“Has he eaten enough? Is he hot or cold? On track developmentally? Sleeping enough? Well-stimulated?”

Many of these worries are vital to his care and are easily remedied or assured. Yet there will always be times I worry in vain. I imagine the worst, only to be surprised by the best.

Day 1: It’s a couple of hours after I’ve given birth. In the minutes following the delivery of my son, my breath came in ragged gulps. Seeing my baby for the first time, held aloft between my knees by the doctor, I cried with joy and relief while gasping for air after the great effort of pushing. As I held him to my chest, someone pressed firmly on my stomach until the placenta came out, the afterbirth, and finally I was covered and allowed to sit up. My baby latched onto my breast right away, and I marveled at the utterly new sensation of feeding a human – my son - from my body.

You’ve heard of goat yoga

a popular trend

For deep breaths and giggles

with downward dog bends

Well then let me share

what I learned of today!

Attempting pilates

while my seven-month played

Once, while I was still single, I sat down and wrote an open letter to my friends who were married, titling the letter “Rickshaws Have Three Wheels And They Work Just Fine”. I had become a little sad and hurt and frustrated by the comments of a couple of friends whom I saw less and less. Each claimed she didn’t want me to feel like a third wheel when it was her, her husband, and me hanging out. Each also said she didn’t want to drag me into the chaos of her life with young kids. In the letter, I laid out what I’d tried to tell them when we did see each other: I enjoyed seeing their kids, and didn’t feel like a third wheel. I just liked their company, no matter who else was around, and was in fact a bit honored to be allowed into the chaos of everyday life.

IIt was raining when I left the office on my last day of work. The power had flickered off for a brief instant, giving everyone a thrilling startle in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. At the back entrance, I chuckled with the guard about the automatic doors not working due to the outage as we pushed open the manual ones instead. In my arms I carried a box with the remains of my goodbye cake - almond mocha - and a bag of assorted desk items. Among the items was my office name plate; silver metal printed with my maiden name.

“Maybe one day I’ll show this to my son, and he’ll be interested to hear about his Mama’s life before he was born,” I told my boss. It’s the kind of thing I would have been curious about. You grow up thinking of your parents as your parents, an identity which feels all-encompassing. It’s strange to put any other name for them in your mouth, like something which doesn’t taste quite right, and stranger still to think of your mother as someone with an entirely different last name than the one she has now.

My baby slurped at his bottle with a commendable, if not alarming, focus and ferocity. One would think he hadn’t eaten in ages, when in actuality it was more like two hours. Towards the end of the bottle, his eyes fastened onto mine. He stared in the unabashed way of babies, then his face broke into a smile. I grinned back, my heart melting.

“What am I going to do, not smile back?” I teased.

My baby spends much time in my arms

Today while nursing he is active

Hands flailing , feet kicking

I ask, Why so busy?

Tell him, One day you will learn how to do things while eating;

a sandwich or smoothie while you walk, drive, work

But now is not that time

Being a mother means life is
grown
pushed
pulled
nurtured
from your body
An essence given to the world
yet tethered to you; eternally, intrinsically

I am eating while nursing my baby

Cradled in one arm

He fills my lap

making tiny grunts, squeaks, and gurgles