Surviving the First Day

Surviving the First Day

Please check out some of the Save the Children's annual report inspired haiku, here.

In honor of Save the Children's annual report, I'd like to talk a bit about my birth stories.


I wanted to be a mother. I thought I was ready to be a mother. I had doctors, doulas, grandparents accessible- practically at my beck and call. I had good food, access to good nutrition, clean water, even all the chocolate I could eat. I might have had a miserable pregnancy, but I had everything I might need to get through it successfully. I was incredibly lucky.

DD and SI were born five weeks premature, after I awoke in the middle of the night, hemorrhaging. We were unfathomably lucky. We live in a country with a profound access to medicine, in a city filled with hospitals, were were at a hospital with a remarkable success rates for delivering premature twins.


Despite their low birth weights and low blood sugar, they were cleared to leave the hospital in less than a week. We never had to spend a single night apart.

When I went to the hospital to deliver RH, it was the same story. I had another emergency c-section. My previous c-section scar was rupturing, if we continued to wait, I would have begun gushing blood and amniotic fluid into my abdominal cavity.

Again, if I hadn't been so lucky to live where I do, when I do, neither of us would have survived.

During the first months of life with my children, I was again incredibly fortunate. My doctors had access to a wealth of information, to medicine, and to facilities to keep us safe. To ensure that we were well.

I had access to lactation consultants, to clean drinking water. To a family that could care for me when I was unable to care for myself. To a community that supported me at home with my babies. To a culture that saw value in my contributions as a woman and as a mother.

Not everyone is so lucky. In fact, despite how advanced we Americans believe we are, the United States is ranked 30th in terms of the places you want to be to have a baby. Our infant mortality rate is shocking.

And each year, worldwide, one million babies die on their first day of life. Three million die in their first month. And of those three million dead children, seventy five percent could have been saved with the most rudimentary, basic care.

And here, in the United States, one in 2,400 women will die from complications of childbirth. That's a lot of deaths.

We cannot sit back and tell ourselves that this is acceptable. That infant and maternal death is a problem of the third world, or not our problem. It IS our problem, but further than that all the problems of the developing world are our problems. This is our planet, our species. We owe it to ourselves to live up to our own claims of the greatness of humanity.

We owe it to these mothers and babies to give them more from life.

Go to www.savethechildren.org and learn something. Contribute. Cultivate your relationship with the rest of the world. With the rest of the country.

You are not helpless, you are not distanced from these problems by a world and a culture. This is your culture, the culture of humanity. And this is your world.

There are things that all of us can do. Ways we can contribute. Even sharing our stories connects us all. Every mother has the same, fundamental experience- one day, there weren't a mother. The next day, they were.

And every day after that, for the rest of their lives.

Let's consider that number, 3,000,000.

And let's do all in our power to bring it down.

Learn about the state of the world's mothers this Mother's Day. And learn what you can do to help.

Experts

Experts on adorableness, at least.

My children are experts. On every subject. Just ask them.

They know how everything works. They know what everything is. They know what is right, and you are wrong. Perhaps this is a common trait to three and a half year olds, I'm not sure. But I do know that a few of my parenting techniques are in need of tweaking.

For example, I like to play a little game with them when we go somewhere familiar. I pretend not to know where we are, and sort of quiz them on the details of that place. Then they tell me all about it. It takes their memories for a little jog, and it's also adorable. However, there are now some serious drawbacks.

DD, Great-Grandmommy, and SI peruse YouTube

For example, the last time we went to our restaurant, when we showed up I asked them where we were.

"We're at the restaurant!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"Isn't this our house?"
"No, mommy! Our house has BEDS!"
"Oh, I see. And what does this place have?"
"Pizza! And grilled cheese! And chocolate milk! And windows!"
"Oooooh, but not beds?"
"No, mommy."
"We ARE at the restaurant!"
"Mommy- you were WRONG. YOU WERE WRONG! YOU WERE WRONG, MOMMY!"

...in a less and less pleasant tone.

Now, I hate to admit it, but I really don't like being wrong. In fact, I make it a habit to be wrong as little as humanly possible. That's not never, it's far from never, but I must confess that a part of me really rankles at my preschoolers announcing in their loudest voices, as frequently as possible, how unfathomably wrong I am.

But I feel that I must endure this indignity because I am also a learning, growing person, and humility is a virtue I have never had in spades. I sometimes think I get that trait from my father. He also really enjoys being right. He also really doesn't like being bested in superficial and utterly pointless arguments. He's spent the last several decades working on his zen, but you can tell it still bothers him to be contradicted when he's 100% certain of his position.

At any rate, I give my children these opportunities to tell me over and over again how wrong I am. And I try to laugh it off. And sometimes, they make that very easy.

Take Saturday morning, for example. I was telling them that we could watch some YouTube video, and they mentioned that it was on my computer. I figured that this was a fine time for a little lesson, and explained that, no, the video isn't on the computer. Actually, it's on the internet, and we use the computer to get to the internet.

Poppa and RH

The next question was both immediate and unexpected.

"But where is the internet?"

I balked. Where is the internet? Should I start trying to explain server farms in Alaska, or binary code, or intangible information? Ummm...

"Umm... you know who you should ask that question? You should ask Poppa. Poppa knows ALL about the internet."

Now, this is true. Poppa is, in fact, one of the greybeards of the internet. The girls are utterly oblivious to that.

So SI took the reigns of the conversation.

"No! I know all about a internet!"
"...you do?"
"Yeah! I DO!"
"Okay, SI, what is the internet?"
And without a beat, she told me.

"It's kind of like a circle, except it's a square. It's about this big (She held her hands about 14 inches apart), and it has round pieces that go around and around and around. With the square. They're red and yellow and blue. And green."

"I know all about the internet, too!" DD added. "It's might be just a scribble that has pink pieces too. The internet has a drink. The internet has a baby in it's tummy."

And as DD and SI blathered at me about all the babies in the internet's tummy, I scrambled for my camera.

In case you didn't catch it, the internet apparently has a lot of balls. And the internet is the potted palm next to my desk.

Even still today, if I ask them about the internet, the first thing they say?

"I know more about the internet than Poppa."

I'm sure he'll be delighted.