i am a super cool exploradora

Wow, its been a week already. I am just starting to come out of the fog. A week ago on Sunday morning at around 2am Tom and I had a baby boy. He was 9 lbs 15 oz …and 22 in long. A BIG boy. We named him Christopher Owen Wallace Ferrie. We nick named him “Kit” so to us his name is Kit until he chooses otherwise. Kit is his cowboy name, or maybe his baseball player name. I dunno’ we just liked it. The literary Christopher Marlowe (whom Marlowe got her name) was actually called “Kit” so I guess its a theme). Family will most likely call him Christopher though. I always loved how it is popular for surfers to wear a pendant of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, and mariners. I don’t surf or ride motorcycles anymore, but I learned a lot about the power of the ocean and speed and an engine and how one has to find the balance between its power and using its power… anyway, the life lesson stuck with me and I was attracted to the name. Tom works on the water too, so it seemed like an appropriate connection.

Kit’s birth went really well. My Ob broke my water and I walked around to get labor going and within an hour it was going strong and within 6 hours all in all he was out. He has a full head of dark hair and it looks like his eyes will be blue. He started nursing like a champ 10 minutes after birth and yesterday the pediatrician weighed him at 10 lbs 8 oz, so the boy is growing like a weed already.

While in labor we turned off all the lights and Dr. Russell just sat on the bottom of the bed as if we were having a nice chat and helped where she could. She has such a calming presence and was perceptive enough to realize that I paniced when I closed my eyes and made me keep them open. I remember the twin’s birth being less painful, but that can’t possibly be true. I think I resisted the pain longer and kept my energy up in my chest with this one, and when I finally got in a groove and pushed into the pain did I finally start making some progress. At one point she told me to rest and I yelled No! and kept pushing. I know it sounds rediculous but when I was in the early stages of labor I had a damn song from the kid’s show Dora the Explorer stuck in my head. The characters were annoyingly chanting “bridge… mountain… waterfall!” over and over like a broken record. And I thought, Oh God, is this going to go on and on in my head for this whole thing? But I decided to use it somehow and although I hadn’t planned to use any visualization I was able to go there pretty easily and had it take me through the contractions. I imagined myself on a small wooden foot-bridge on a hot day in the shade of the leaves, the sound of the stream underneath and the smell of the forest around me. I imagined that I was hiking and at the point in the hike where I was starting to get into a pace that felt energized. At the top of the contraction I imagined that I was hiking on the top of a snowy mountain. The cold snow blowing like powder on my face and the light from the moon making the path ahead of me shine, nothing around but snow and I felt like I was warm and had energy to make it to the top that was in sight. Then on the back side of the contraction I imagined that I was sitting on the edge of a pool watching a huge waterfall crash down in front of me. I heard its loud rumbling and I watched the water fall down with a sense of relief and release and its spray was refreshing. In transition and during the pushing all of this went out the window, but it worked for a long time. It was pretty poignant that Tom’s sister Kate sent us an e-mail a couple of days later that showed the daily poem that the Writer’s Almanac published on the day of his birth:

My Son, Under the Waterfall

by Alan Michael Parker

The weight of what falls surprises, the solidity of
the slapping water, its constant and different pressures,

the way when you’re thirteen everything seems
not to have happened, life itself, and yet be

dumped upon you, and you can spread wide
your arms, wide as the rest of July, and still

be filled with feeling while holding nothing,
like a movie screen, or the voice of the girl

who called on a Friday to ask about the homework.
Moss slimes the rocks, cattails rim the pools,

and the water rushing to arrive through the cut
feels like sunlight on your skin if only sunlight

would have mass and volume and pound
your head and shoulders, and with your mouth open

breathing is like laughing and laughing
is like breathing, and the surprise persists,

the sense of being between elements and standing up
in your swim trunks and sandals as though

on land and swimming at once,
and your resolve also matters, to keep hold

of these feelings, of each single feeling
no matter the future, to stay true to what you feel

and not to give the next kid a turn, the long line of
campers beginning to chant your name, and you

pretend not to hear, deafened by the lovely
crushing of the water on your head.

“My Son, Under the Waterfall” by Alan Michael Parker, from Elephants and Butterflies. © BOA Editions, 2008.

I am amazed that I am now the mother of four children. But somehow I feel that it was always meant to be, and that he was waiting for us. The post-partum recovery will take some time, and I have to take it as easy as I can with two two year olds and a teenager. I get so many comments on his size, even the nurses were amazed at how big he was and complimented me on delivering such a big baby. I figure that it is similar to pushing out an extra large bowling ball as opposed to a medium bowling ball. Either way its a bowling ball and still hurts. But I have big babies (J & M were 7 & 8 lbs about) so maybe I am the wrong person to compare. With all of the complaints of my aching nipples and sore body, a fever and chills not to mention sleep deprivation and feeling like Ive been hit by an 18 wheeler… its a pretty good deal all in all. Jack and Marlowe have been so sweet to him, and have been good about the attention diversion so far. Yesterday Marlowe picked up the phone in her play kitchen, put it to her ear and said “Hello nipples!”. That gives you an idea of the main topic of conversation around here.

Today I sat on the couch with my (don’t call it a boppy) nursing pillow as the “milk man” went for second helpings again, while Jack and Marlowe stood on upside down plastic bins listening to the Ramones and playing air guitar and drums yelling “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!”, Tom clapping and encouraging them and singing along, while Ruby laughed at them and texted at the same time. Welcome to your crazy family Kit. Its loud and a little insane sometimes, but there is a lot of love and fun ahead for you.

Tonight when we put the twins to bed they said goodnight to everyone they could think of. Marlowe said goodnight to Joey, Dee-Dee, Tommy and Johnny too (we were listening to the 1st record). Kit buzzed in his bouncy seat, the thing is so old it needs a kick start and runs like the VW bug in the Woody Allen movie Sleeper. He smirked milk drunk and all fuzzy from his first bath. Its hard to believe he is really here. And that I won’t wake up and find that it was just a dream. Pregnancy was hard, and although it was without complications, it still took more energy than I thought it would as I carried a big baby and still had to keep up with toddlers. Some days I don’t know where I found the energy, I tried not to think about it and just do it. And looking back I would do it again, and I would take a rickety bridge to the tallest snowy mountain to the remotest waterfall any day to get to him if I had to.