A Supposedly Peaceful Experience: Walking with a Baby

The baby is crying for you but you’re trying to pack the stroller for your immensely peaceful fabulous morning walk. You need

• a pacifier

• a bottle of water. this is the only water you’ll drink all day and you’ll chug it desperately at traffic lights while you’re waiting for the crosswalk sign to blink on and if it happens to blink on the second you touch it and you don’t have those three minutes to wait, you won’t drink any water all day.  

• hand sanitizer

• a muslin cloth: when the sun threatens to hit the baby’s sleeping face, you’ll frantically drape the muslin cloth over the strollers sun shade. But you can’t drape it when she’s awake, otherwise she’ll lose her mind. She needs to be asleep with the sleep of a thousand dreams in order for this to work. 

• clothespins to pin the muslin cloth

• a snack. this is the only snack ull eat all day and half of it will fall onto the ground and fall through the sewage grate so even if you wanted to employ the five second rule you can’t. 

These items are surprisingly hard to gather and you’ll think “I should really procure and prep a little stroller go-bag so I’m always ready!” You’ll think this every time you’re prepping the stroller for about two months until you just accept that you’ll never procure a stroller go-bag. 

An hour later, you’ve amassed the goods. But it’s taken so long that the baby is hungry again, and as you’re feeding her, you feel a blowout ensue, the telltale warmth on your leg, so once you’ve fed her third bottle and changed her for the eighth time and changed yourself as well, you strap the baby in and, you’re off! 

Ahhhhh. 

She’ll get some good sleep today! you cluck.

The birds are chirping, the motorcyclist is revving the engine, the barge is honking its horn and an ambulance is bleating it’s siren. Each time the baby’s eyes flutter to close, one of these sounds launches itself across the air and she is jostled awake again.  And so the baby bucks sleep for the next 20 minutes then wakes up and cries to be fed but you forgot a bottle so you lift up your shirt while perched on a decorative rock on someone’s lawn and pray they aren’t home. 

Now you’ve got to add another 2 miles to the trip because baby finally fell asleep but your plantar fasciitis is flaring up again so you clutch the stroller like it’s your lifeline. The whole point of the walk was for her to sleep. but at this point the sun has gotten higher and so every path available, every turn you make, the sun is in her eyes and she opens them and starts to squawk. 

Defeated, you limp home and attempt to bring her inside—her eyes just closed!—but you accidentally bang the car seat on every possible wall and doorway and she awakens indignantly and you stare at each other.

Your eyes plead Please sleep. You watch praying that her eyes get heavy but they zing open, the size of pogs, and you know it’s all over. 

And people ask how things are going and you say we take lots of walks, it’s so nice! because you forget.

Ah how we forget.

Sunny Daze: In Praise of the Ephemeral

I’ve been thinking lately a lot about that fact that some of the best things in life leave no visible mark. They instead fill our heart with light and joy in the moment, and thereafter forever in the memory but we have no souvenir or footprint to show for it.

A flower. A baby’s smile. A wave. A good meal w a friend. A killer joke. 

We grasp so often at physical artifacts when so much of what we need, what fuels our hearts, is ephemeral, and yet infinite in the corner of our brain that it is stored.

There is nothing that lights me up right now like a smile from our daughter, who just started smiling in the last couple weeks. How does one tiny creature, who can’t talk or cook me eggs, inspire so much joy and mirth? So much of our days are just those tiny millions of moments that add up to this flowing river of love. Watching her breathe, tickling her belly, bopping her on the nose. A million fleeting beautiful searing moments that I have nothing to show for, no proof of, except the feeling of belonging and peace. <3

First Surf Post Partum

7 weeks and a day post partum

Today was my first day back to the beach with my surfboard after the birth of our daughter Sunny and after my unplanned C section.

I’d put some feelers out to a few girlfriends to see if they wanted to join but being that I was going early and it was Easter, I didn’t have any takers. I was ok with this—I love going out solo and it felt just fine for my return to be a private, quiet experience.

I gathered my gear up yesterday—my wetsuit and booties, mitts and wax, board and a belly board in case that felt more appropriate as I’m getting back on my feet (belly board was courtesy of Maddie, which is courtesy of Becca, which is courtesy of Jamie). I grabbed my bathing suit, changing towel, regular towel, beach shoes and figured I was set.

In the morning, I was about a half hour delayed from where I wanted to be, which made it better that my friends were unavail. I wanted some toast, my coffee a little leisurely and I wanted to kiss Sunny’s head approximately a hundred times before going.

“I’ll be back by 8:30!” I said to Nick, then internally wondered Where’s my surf watch? Luckily it was right where I left it in the center console. I put my board on top of my car—it felt just fine to lift it, I just went impossibly slow, then I threw on Maggie Rogers and drove north.

The ocean was bereft of other surfers, it being low tide and “knee high for a mouse” as Steph F would say but I was just happy to be there. I truly didn’t know if I’d be able to get my wetsuit on—that can be a major ab workout to get it on and off in and of itself, but I did it. It felt a lot tighter than it had last time I wore it, it squeezed my incision and I had to go really slowly but it worked. My old routine just felt like clockwork.

The tide was really low and it felt like I walked for a mile. Hoisting and carrying my board was just fine with my incision. Getting knocked in the gut by a wave didn’t feel great (you take for granted how you usually just absorb that) but lying on my belly and paddling, there was no pain at all.

The waves were perfect—infinitesmally small and clean and I got to ride a couple just on my belly. I held back from popping up—that quick snap / crunch didn’t feel right to me yet but I’m on the path, and it felt a lot less clumsy and less painful than Id expected to feel.

 It was pure joy, as it always, always is.

Maddie had lent me the belly board and normally I would have just left it in the car, and stuck with my familiar old reliable blue board. But something about having a baby and being thrust into the unknown and ejected out of my comfort zone meant I found myself marching back up to the car to grab it and test it out.

I mostly flailed about with it, having utterly no clue what I was doing but I was glad to try a new board and a new activity. And then, it was time to go.

When I got back to my car, I found myself thinking “That was perfect. I can’t wait to come back. And I can’t wait to get home and hold my baby.” And for that feeling, I am incredibly grateful.