Postpartum Elation...

Unbelievable. Fiona is 2 months old today, which seems absolutely impossible. Impossible that two months could pass us by so quickly, to be sure, but even more impossible to imagine that 2 months and 1 day ago this little person lived inside of me, upside-down, her name and her face (and her sex!) still a secret from us. I can't believe that three and four and five months ago we lived our lives and got along just fine without her. A year ago, this little girl was hypothetical.

But now she's here, and I'm having a hard time remembering how we managed to get out of bed every morning without these *three.*


I've been meaning to post for some time--have actually started a post several times, only to get distracted, or bored, or frustrated and discard it (I'm not a "save-it-and-come-back-to-it" kind of girl)--about my postpartum condition. I'm here for the third time, and yet I've never taken the time to really reflect on the way it is for me in the first weeks and months after having a baby.

I'm not a very emotional person. Or, rather, I'm just a very, very cerebral person. I'm not unfeeling--not in the least. It's just that, when I experience something, whether it's a film, or a song, or a conversation with a friend--hell, even a kiss from my husband--I experience it intellectually first, and my emotion follows. It's sort of like lightning and thunder; both have the same origin, but we experience the lightning before the thunder because light travels faster than sound. So if, for example, I receive bad news, my first response will not be to feel sad, or angry, or afraid, although I might feel any of those things eventually. My first reaction will be to think through how something happened, or why, or what I can do, or could have done, or what ramifications it has for the future. Then, in a sort of second-wave response, I will likely feel something about it.

The effect is that my mind ends up working as a sort of filter for my feelings. If someone says something potentially hurtful to me, I typically process it mentally first, asking myself (and of course there's no "asking myself" anything, as this all happens in the split second after I've heard something), "Why did he say that? What did she mean by that?" et cetera. So by the time I'm ready to make an emotional repsonse to something, I've already analyzed it, at least preliminarily, and interpreted it.

It makes me a very rational person, and it's something most people who know me well point out to me about myself--in one way or another. Some see it in a positive light. I've been told that I am very "stable" and "reliable" and "strong." Others don't see it that way; I've been called "cold" and "unfeeling." My mother has often remarked that "nothing ever gets to me."

But in the weeks and months after I've had a baby (and, to a considerably lesser degree, while I'm pregnant), everything gets turned upside-down. Instead of processing everything intellectually and coming to a rational "decision" about how I should-and-therefore-do feel about a given thing, it happens backwards. I instead find myself asking myself, "Why am I crying about that?" or "Why does that song make me so happy?"

The result of the total disturbance of the-way-I-work is that I cry more, yell louder, laugh harder than I do when my brain is "in charge." A woman expecting a baby a month-or-so after Fiona was born wrote to ask me how long it took my pelvis to heal after I injured my symphysis because she had just sustained a similar injury a few days before *her* due date, and I burst into tears, because the part of me that says, "Oh my god, that was so painful and terrifying and debilitating for me and now someone else is dealing with it" got to be the lightning for a change, and the part of me that says, "Well, let's see...I injured myself on a Saturday, and I was 39 weeks on Sunday, and I still couldn't walk on Tuesday, but I went to the chiropractor on Thursday...so that was...5 days until I felt like I could walk, 8 until I felt like I could have a baby, 14 before I actually had to," just had to stand in line until crying-me was finished.

And I think it's really fantastic, living this way. I'm like Dorothy, falling asleep in black-and-white Kansas and waking up in technicolor Oz. My day-to-day dealings have more texture; they're richer, and fuller, and deeper. What was "provocative" becomes "moving;" what was "interesting" becomes "compelling." And I'm reminded that I am moveable.

I feel really connected to the things and people around me when I feel so freely. I'm less articulate, but more empathetic, I have less perspective, but I'm more present. It's why I posted that elephant birth video recently--I was so moved by it. The birth actually reminded me a lot of Fiona's birth--those early minutes when the elephant calf is limp and not breathing, and its mother tries to stimulate it, calmly at first, but you can see her becoming more anxious, and then she makes that desperate-trumpet-sound, because her baby hasn't moved or breathed and she knows, the same way she knew to push that baby out and the same way she knew to pick it up by its trunk and the same way she knew that that was her baby, she knows that it's getting to be too long and she isn't sure what to do next. And I'm not an animal-person--not at all, really--but in that moment I found myself moved because I was certain I knew what that elephant was feeling, and I knew what it was like to be compelled by so much instinct, to cry out with so much instinct. And I know what a gurgle and a breath and a cry sound like when you've been made to wait for them.

This won't last. It's happened twice before, and as the hormones rebalance, my mind seizes power again and my heart once again does as it is told. And it's not all bad--there is a place in this world for rational thinkers, and in a few months, I will have resumed mine. But for the time being, I'm enjoying my postpartum state, where feelings come fast and hard and without permission from anybody.