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Willa Jane Harper
Born 2:17 pm March 28 2009
After three hours of unmedicated hospital induced labor
8lbs 2oz
19 inches long
Perfect in every way, welcomed into a home full of love.
I think that this Friday will be the last in the Five Senses series, unless I manage to get my act together to continue after the Bee is born. I’m hoping that I will be able to do a post this Friday, but don’t be alarmed if you don’t see me here.
Bee and I developed some complications that changed our original plans for a homebirth into a scheduled induction…this weekend! We may go in as early as Thursday, or as late as Saturday, depending on how things go this week. I’m very happy with our decision, which has been discussed and corroborated by a battery of specialists, OBGYNs, my midwife. It’s a huge paradigm shift, but I’m trying to focus on the positive (we get to meet her so soon!) and surrender to the change as a highly positive one. I still want to go into our birth with a vision of how beautiful the process is, how amazing our bodies are, how much they are capable of.
Thank you, again and again, for all your kind words, your comments, your support, your emails…it means so much to me to be a part of this web of women as I go into the labor process again. You have given me strength to move past the worry and fear into the joy.
The next time you see me in this space, I will have photos of our new little one! So exciting!
In the meantime, I will continue to be seen at our pregnancy/postpartum project, near:far.
First of all, I want to apologize for not posting as often here as I’d like- or getting back to all of you in as timely a manner as I’d like. The Bee and I have run into a few surprising health glitches this week, which has been full of discussion, prayer, and various appointments with various specialists, among other things. As of right now, things are getting worked out! I think we’ll be able to solve it all.
Thank you for joining me on my journey as I wait for our littlest one to be born! This week makes two down and three to go- just a short time until we meet our little girl.
This week’s sense was smelling. I really do think that scent is an amazingly evocative, important sense. The scent of pinon and sage always takes me right back to my twenties, when I spent time in New Mexico. I can remember just how I felt then, unsure and yet trying to be so bold. Wanting to have all the right answers. Feeling like that time would last an eternity.
The hot smell of asphalt being laid reminds me of all those summers I spent working with my dad on road construction sites- running equipment, being a grease monkey. How we’d get up far before dawn to get all of the day’s work done before it became unbearably hot. Eating 25 cent soft-serve ice cream cones on the drive home, windows down, a brown arm hanging out the side. The dust that got in every crease and pore. Feeling the closest I’ve ever felt to my father, feeling like in those summers we understood each other, working in the language of dirt and precision and hard labor.
This week I tried to focus on the smells I wanted to remember, the ones that would bring back this time period for me, when we were a family of four instead of five, this waiting period, during the spring.
What I smelled this week:
- my husband’s Earl Grey in the morning (he’s just switched, this week, from coffee)
- proofing yeast and baking bread
- the first line dried load of the season
- sunlight on my girls’ hair, the outdoors on their skin
- beeswax and apple cider at one of the last Winter Farmer’s Markets of the season
- onions carmelizing for mujadara
- fresh cut grass for the first time since autumn
- daphne blooming all around our neighborhood
- primroses, so sweet, picked in posies by the girls
Please leave your response/link in the comments to play the game. I can’t wait to see and smell along with you!
Next week’s sense is Hearing! If I’m not back sooner, I’ll see you all next Friday. Have a wonderful weekend, I hope it smells divine.
First, thank you all so much for your responses to Five Senses Fridays: Seeing last week- it was so amazing to go clicking around taking in the sights! Gorgeous. Be sure to look in the comments there!
Don’t forget this friday is Smelling :)
It’s a funny place, this in-between-seasons place. We went to the Winter Farmer’s Market on Saturday in the rain (fortunately it’s indoors) and got apples, fresh-pressed apple cider, leeks, beets, spinach, hazelnuts, goat cheese. Yesterday was a tangle of stormy weather with great huge lashings of more rain, hot chocolate chip cookies, a cozy midwife’s appointment in front of the fire. This morning, apple crisp (a little bit of goat cheese on mine) and apple cider, more rain, thoughts of beet salad or maybe borscht. It feels like autumn in so many ways.
And yet…the plum tree in our neighbor’s yard is blooming, quite gorgeously, setting forth frothy pink sprays. The birds sing continously, trilling and chirping like there’s no tomorrow. My magnolia that’s had big fat buds for a month now is finally starting to show the creamy white petals underneath, and the lilac is beginning to put out wee green leaves. Every once in a while, like right this very moment, the sun breaks through the grey, and when it streams through the window it looks different, feels warmer. Spring is definitely in the air.
I can think of no better time to have a baby than in the spring. I have one summer baby, and one winter baby, and this spring baby is just heavenly in a way that is special from the others. There is something primal and sweet about it, something that makes you feel like all is right with the world.
I’m daydreaming of the morning she will be born, with the window open so that I can hear the fountain in the backyard and the birds singing and singing, right in front of the fire, in the big watertub. I dream of rocking her in my rocking chair, sitting there next to the fire, crooning to her in that new mama way. I dream of her daddy dancing her through the house to Miles Davis or Bob Marley, the soundtracks to our other children’s births- or maybe something else, something just for her. I dream of hugging, really hugging, my husband for the first time in months, of the little one who was in the inside now on the outside, her own person as much as she is ours. I dream of the first time the girls see their littlest sister, eager, wary, all those conflicting emotions. I dream of the first time they touch her head, her hands.
I dream of watching the sun come up, that sun that actually has warmth in it, with a baby in my arms. I dream of wrapping her up, snug against the chill, a hat on that sweet-smelling head, and going out to the garden to check on the peas, the berries, the apple trees. I dream of putting a baby to my breast again, for the first time in a long time, of how it feels to feed another person with my body. I dream of watching her sleep as the squirrels cavort in the backyard, adding their chittering to the mating and nesting of the birds.
There have been a few little troubles as we come into the end of this pregnancy, nothing too serious. In other news, she’s had a huge growth spurt and instead of measuring a little small, as she has for so long, she’s actually measuring a little ahead. I don’t even really know what that means, or if it means anything. She’s dropped, for sure, but I’m not sure that means anything either, except that we’re getting towards the end, as we already knew, of course, we are approaching the end.
We’re having another ultrasound this week to get a better feel of what’s going on. Frankly, I’m excited about it, and I’m not particularly a fan of tests or ultrasounds or what have you. I think I’m just eager, as is every mother in the end of her pregnancy, to meet our little one, and to see her so close to the end seems nearly like shaking hands. She’s going to be here soon- I hold that thought in the springtime of my heart.
I’m a bit behind everywhere, with everything. I’m behind at happy minutiae, behind with the house, behind with finishing up Easter baskets for the girls, behind getting back to people’s emails, behind, behind, behind. I’m sorry if you are part of that behind-ness. I’m catching up in other ways, I hope. With the springtime, and the baby-growing, and the daydreaming. Catching up on loving my little family just as it is while it’s just this way. Catching up on the moments and letting the other things pass me by.
What did you see this past week? What do you want to remember? There are so many moments that pass us by every day- did you take the time to see this week? I was struck, as I always am, that most of my photographs are internal; moments that I want to hold in my heart, even if I can never hold them in my hand.
For me, it was:
- the heartbreaking beauty of morning sunlight on Bunny’s bedhead
- little bare feet in freshly mown grass
- little fingers poking pea seeds into the soil
- my husband with a shovel in hand
- Bunny and Birdie glowing with pride and concentration, sitting side by side on the couch sewing happily
- little hands full of worms
- Bunny curled up next to me for a nap in the sunshine
- my dad’s smile as the girls sang happy birthday to him
- tiny perfect shoots on everything outside- the lilacs, the blueberries, the rhubarb, the pear trees, the hydrangea…
- my husband’s hands as they held a book to read to our girls
- the utter joy on my sister’s face as we laughed ourselves to tears
- my own belly, distended and stretch-marked, that seems to glow with an inner light
Don’t forget to comment here with a link to what you’re seeing- share your moments with us (and have a chance at getting a photograph from me…more information here).
Next Friday, smelling- one of the most evocative of all our senses, don’t you think?
Five more weeks. Five more weeks (or a couple more? or maybe a little less?) of waiting for our little Bee to be born. There is hardly anything else to be done now- I’ve been very industrious this pregnancy, readying every corner of our house for her arrival. Now all I can do is try and keep up with the endless day to day tasks- the cleaning, the dishes, the laundry, all of the things that would have to be done, no matter what.
I’m still trying to brainstorm, trying to imagine what having an infant again will be like. It seems like such a long time since the last one, even though it really hasn’t been. I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Forgetting how much laundry they make, or how much they sleep, or how helpless they are. Forgetting something that I really NEED in order to take care of her properly, even though I know that in the end, her mama is the most important thing, after all.
So I was trying to think of some way to help me count down the last five weeks, something that already comes in fives, something that I could share with you and that maybe you could participate in, too. Here is what I’ve come up with:
Five Senses Friday.
Beginning this Friday, I’ll be focusing on one sense for each of the five weeks, which means my last sense will come three days after my due date (my last two babes were born quite late, and frankly, I’m not expecting this one to be any different…maybe I’ll have to tack on some extra senses!). I’ll be posting a photograph and a list of things that I am sensing about that week, and if you want to play, you can comment on that post with your link.
At the end I’ll be offering five random participants a 5″x7″ print of any of my five senses photographs, or of any photograph at my sister site, happy minutiae. I can’t promise that they’ll be sent out right away, because I’m hoping to have a daughter in my arms by then, but I can promise that they’ll be sent out as soon as I can. :) You don’t have to participate in every Friday, but the more Fridays you do, the better chance you’ll have of winning.
Okay! This week’s sense is Seeing. What are you seeing this week that you want to remember? Post a photo and a list on Friday, then come back here and show me your link so you can be entered in the giveaway.
It seems I cannot get away from moss, even in my own house. I found this little arrangement left behind by the girls.
I hope you enjoyed green week! I know I did.
Coming next week, I have (hopefully) a good way to spend my last five weeks of waiting for Bee…and you can join in, too, if you like! See you on Monday with more information!
Yet more from my parents’ place…
The area where we were married
Shoots at the water’s edge
A rose trellis on the chimney
Near the front door
Pale green inside the gazebo
The dusty grey-green of the dormant lavender field
Honeysuckle starting to leaf out
Daffs, getting ready to bloom
Along the drive
For a list of participants in Emily’s green week, look here. There’s a flickr group, too!
Ferns- also taken at my parents’ property.
I must be the only gardener in the world who bemoans the fact that I have a yard that is sunny in every corner. I can’t grow moss or ferns to save my life! One day I shall have a lovely shady glen…
For a list of participants in Emily’s green week, look here. There’s a flickr group, too!
Mosses edition. Oh, how I love moss! These are all taken at my parents’ home.
For a list of participants in Emily’s green week, look here. There’s a flickr group, too!
