This week I am both beginning the new semester of classes and planning a trip to Lincoln, NE to see a new life begin. My daughter Nichol and her husband, Nate, are due to have a new baby within a week or so. Earlier I thought, since I have a real job these days and this is her fifth baby (sixth counting surrobaby, Isla), that I would sit this one out and tend to my classes. But, push come to shove (so to speak), I can’t stay away. I want to be available to the other grandkids, and to Nichol and Nate. What could be more important than the entry into life of a new child? Oh, how I wish we could get our priorities straight in this world and create the kind of place where life is so precious and so dear that all would gather to celebrate such an event.
Since I have childbirth on the mind tonight, I think I will post another unpublished piece that I wrote about the birth of my third child, Thomas. It was written about four years ago. I won’t say more about it but will let the piece speak for itself.
The Sacred Path of Parent
He’s nearly six feet tall, handsome and strong, eighteen years old and ready to step out into the world on strong legs. My son. It’s hard to believe I didn’t want him, this son of my heart, this child who cured his mother of selfishness.
You see, when my two daughters were young, I sought a higher spiritual path as a human being but somehow managed to keep my role as parent separate from my interior spiritual search. Sadly, I saw my children not as part of the search but sometimes an obstacle to it. The children required a tremendous amount of time and energy. This confused me. How could I raise my level of consciousness with these needy little beings constantly tugging on my energy? I didn’t get it, not for a long time.
When I got pregnant the third time, I was distraught. I didn’t want another child. My career as a writer and a speaker was finally lifting off and I wanted to focus my energies there. This inner distress was compounded by the troubles in my marriage. Things were not going well. Everything in me resisted having this child.
Determined to push on, I sailed through my pregnancy wearing blousy dresses when I was presenting at workshops to hide my growing belly. My husband went off to a construction job site and left me pregnant, angry, and disillusioned. I thought I belonged to the generation of women entitled to have it all.
When I went into labor, I felt only a deep relief that this pregnancy was, at last, nearly over. I had no idea that within twenty-four hours my perspective would shift instantly and forever with the birth of my son.
I delivered an eight-pound baby boy and, within hours, was making plans to high tail it out of the hospital and get back to my real life. Then, that evening, the doctor came into my room unexpectedly, sat down near my bed and said, “Your son is having some problems.”
I still remember that heart-stopping, time-stopping moment. “What kind of problems?” I asked.
The doctor explained that my baby’s white blood count was dropping, getting dangerously low, that his blood was unable to form the platelets needed for clotting. “An extremely rare condition,” the doctor said, “We don’t know what is causing it and will have to run tests. He also gently told me that my baby had a clubfoot-a poor, confused foot that, for unknown reasons, had twisted and turned in three different directions.
At that moment in time, the most amazing miracle happened. Suddenly, all of the grand goals and desires that had been driving me so relentlessly went sliding away like an empty sled down a snowy slope. I leaned forward toward the doctor and said, “Where is my son?” I still get chills remembering the way those words issued from my mouth. My Son. Some fierce and alert part of me was suddenly wide-awake.
Over the next few days my son underwent strenuous tests. He was continually prodded and pricked with needles and, because his blood was not clotting, the smallest pin prick trickled blood for hours. On his tiny back were eight bruises shaped like fingertips from where the doctor had assisted his birth. Every wound inflicted on my son was inflicted on my soul. I became a lioness, growling and scratching at every procedure, closing my baby in my room whenever possible to protect him from these terrible invasions. I moved instantly away from seeking “enlightenment” to displaying an animal-like behavior that made me want to lick his skin and curl him back into the crevices of my body.
From that moment on, I forgot everything outside those four walls. For five full days I spent every possible waking moment with my son Thomas laid across the top of my body. Something mysterious and wonderful happened during those five days–a self-centered and indifferent mother fell in love with her newborn infant.
For hours I stroked his back with feathery fingertips, sang him love songs, told him stories about the world. I whispered in his ear about rivers and lakes, about the sun and moon and stars above, and about his place in the world—and what a wonderful place it was. I held his crooked little foot and began the tugging exercises that would continue for the first two years of his life until the twists and turns could be repaired. I nursed his hunger and his fear until we both slipped off to deep, soundless sleep. The rushing pace of my life slowed to stillness. Nothing–and I mean nothing–mattered but that my baby boy find his strength. All my goals to find consciousness and spiritual attainment popped like the filmy bubbles that they were.
Finally, the doctors consulted with a hematologist in Denver and the diagnosis drove me even more deeply into rethinking the true spiritual path of my life. The hematologist explained that what was destroying my son’s white blood cells were antibodies from my own body which had not cleared out yet. While deeply relieved to learn that the condition would repair itself as my antibodies left his system, I was forced to face a certain ugly truth about myself.
I never spoke to the doctors about this but I believe that my careless and immature resistance to this pregnancy had endangered my son. I cannot confirm that my resistance caused the problem–but I believed the two were connected. Had my destructive thinking taken physical and visible form in his blood?
What a difficult truth to see, the truth of my own selfish desires.
Later I could smile about it. I realized a divine hand had interfered with my selfishness-that perhaps a greater force in collusion with the little soul of my son had outwitted me. If Thomas’s birth had been completely free of problems, I would have wheeled out of that hospital within twenty-two hours, new baby in tow and hopped right back on the fast track toward success. Instead, I was blessedly given enough time to form a lifelong love affair with my son. We were, in those enriched moments, linked together for life.
I was stunned into wakefulness by this birth. Now awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep but was forced to rethink my place as parent. The birth of my son has not robbed me of a career but deepened my teaching, given it weight and strength in the world. It has also taught me that the greater forces can be kind—they sent Thomas to teach me something important–that there is no greater spiritual path than that of a parent.
I have never forgotten the lesson.