This time of year is always good for smacking me around. Even on a sunny day like today, when the quince and camellia are blooming and you swear it can’t be January it’s so warm, winter is in my bones.

And my mom’s too.  Right around this time in 1995, while I was doing my student teaching, she fell in her kitchen and broke her leg so bad it popped through the skin. At the time, my father was on his always-dreamed-about trip to New Zealand. Travel was not an anomaly for him; he’s done plenty for business and plenty for pleasure, including a trip to Thailand after he fell in love with the cuisine. I’m told he went bird-watching in Arizona (I think) shortly after I (his fifth child) was born. To say that my mother does not share his love for travel is a grand understatement.

When I signed up to read the novel The Art of Hearing Heartbeats for the From Left to Write book club, I hoped I would be able to reward myself with the novel read after finishing a volunteer project I was working on. But then I got more work tutoring in the last week of the semester at the boarding school where I help a few kids. And my children here at home kept needing a mommy. And their mommy needed more sleep. So she didn’t finish the book, but its tale of travel in search of a lost father is certainly intriguing.

Last week, I was on a high after the successful fundraiser, and I was pleased with how well I was feeling. And yet, I’ve also been reflecting lately on just when it is that my health gave me clues that I would have a challenging road. My mom has been wondering the same for years. Maybe that leg break was as bad as it was because she was (like me) celiac and didn’t know it, or because of some other health condition that weakens bones. The skin issues and digestive issues I’m having now are not new; they’ve been cycling through my body in various permutations for years. And even my mom has admitted that her body was not the ideal place to start a life, belonging to a stressed out (and a smoking) mother of four (ages 8-12 and up when I came along).

I bet she and I share more health issues than we are aware, though I hope that my discovering things at and earlier age and the newer research around these days will contribute to an easier road for me eventually. But right now, it’s a little challenging. The heaviness I feel around the time of a drop in my thyroid is knocking at the door like a canvasser who won’t disappear. And, even if this mild winter continues, it’s always tough to go into the month of February, recalling the death of my brother in 1987.

The year before he took his life, my parents and I went to the Bahamas for my seventh grade mid-winter break, a week that Michigan schools take off so that everyone can keep a little sanity. Finding green helps. The year before that, sixth grade, we went to Hawaii. My mom probably hated every minute of both trips. I loved them but wanted to do more activities and wished I had siblings closer to my age to join. When Pat died, I was on a vacation with a friend and her family on a small island near Barbados where we went on the most spectacular hike to a waterfall. A few days later — a week shy of my fourteenth birthday — I had to fly back home alone to the dreary Midwest.

Today, I still have my father’s zeal for adventure and his propensity to get and stay busy, but my body isn’t exactly keeping up. I’d like to join my sister-in-law’s yoga retreat in Costa Rica in March, but seeing as my thyroid really crashed just after meeting her family in Vermont for the Anusara Grand Circle and Wanderlust last June, and seeing as I have to cook all my food from scratch or face a lot discomfort, travel will have to wait.

I’m not even sure how I’m going to make it to Baltimore for even one day of the three-day Fourfold Path to Healing Conference this weekend. Although I fantasize about staying overnight by myself without having to wake to nurse my 18-month-old back to sleep, my not coming home Saturday night wouldn’t magically disappear all my issues. I’d still need to bring a bunch of food with me, and I’d probably want to pump. In order to reap the benefits of something that would be therapeutic, I have to make some sacrifices that might otherwise jeopardize my health (not to mention that of my daughter, son and husband, who I’m guessing wouldn’t have the greatest night of sleep since we haven’t done a dry run on the night weaning).

And what would they do all day Sunday if I stayed at the conference until it ends at 5:30, or would I leave at noon? How would my daughter react once I got home, and then had to go out after dinner to tutor? How would my body react?

Tonight, when my husband was trying to use playful parenting to get my son out of whining mode during dinner, he took on the voice of a train conductor. E didn’t understand the “sh-clunk” sound of the pretend hole punch. We realized our little boy, almost six, has never been on a train other than the Metro. Maybe my husband could take the kids up to Baltimore on a train partway through Saturday, and we could all drive back home that night, I suggested. “With both of them?” my husband asked, his eyes practically reflecting the shine of headlights. After a few minutes, he said he’d look into it.

Maybe the promise of adventure can somehow give me the space to pursue some healing without a whole lot of guilt. But probably just for one day.

—

How do you balance physical and emotional needs?

What did you inherit from your parents?

What pushes and pulls?

—

When Julia travels to Burma to search for her missing lawyer father, she discovers much more than she expected. Join From Left to Write on February 1 as we discuss The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

The instant I read the words, I regretted picking up my BlackBerry that one last time before going to bed. A well-meaning relative of mine had read my recent post about my health and my leaky gut problem and told me: “This is not the time to volunteer for things.” She intended to point out that there would be plenty of time later in life for me to pursue my interests when I didn’t have as many health challenges to face and when I wasn’t in such a busy time of motherhood with a kindergartener and opinionated non-verbal toddler.

I get her point. Really, I do. The problem is that her note assumes that volunteering is something that detracts from my well-being. Sure, it might have seemed that way in the post she read. I’d rushed to finish it and get it up rather than wait until who knows when I’d get a free moment to sit down again. I did, I realize, sound a little overwhelmed. And yes, balance is something I’m working on.

But I don’t regret my choices, and I don’t want them restricted. That wouldn’t help. If I weren’t busy with something that felt meaningful, that contributed to my priorities, that gave me joy, or that fueled me with passion, I would be, simply put, depressed. Staying busy and engaged in something bigger than myself is a necessity for me to stay mentally healthy without medication.

And staying off medication is something I feel is a physical necessity as well; I simply don’t think my body can handle being on anti-depressants. They made an amazing difference for two years, and then again for a year while I sought treatment for hyperthyroidism (Graves’ Disease).

But they are drugs. Even if I weren’t a true believer in the healing power of nutrition and energy work, my system has shown me it simply cannot handle anything artificial. As much as SSRIs helped, I’m also pretty convinced that they contributed to the mess I’m in now — a much smaller role than 30 years of eating gluten, probably, but a role nonetheless.

No amount of saying no to volunteer work is going to undo all the damage that was caused by decades of eating food my body couldn’t handle, to say nothing of mild but young substance abuse. What will help me heal is continuing to eat real food, pursuing what makes me happy, and cultivating a mindfulness practice. It takes a lot more time and energy than popping a pill, but I really don’t see that I have a choice if I have my long-term health in mind.

Until I got this late-night email, I was, I admit, stewing a little about the lack of time to do everything I cared about. But rather than push me to step aside, as was its intention, the note inspired me to remember why I have chosen what I’ve chosen to do and to be grateful that I have the opportunity to do it.

The fundraiser I was working on was a great success, both in money raised and in positive momentum and a spirit of community, which was probably even more valuable to this project about which I care deeply. Even as I wished for more hours in the day to proofread the program and organize the volunteer schedule, I remembered that I proposed this event because I believe in the cause and that I offered to head it up because it’s something I knew I could do well. I knew it could be a great thing, and I wanted to create that.

So I carried that purpose with me into the event and sincerely enjoyed it. I lapped up the kudos with nary a self-critical remark or “if only we could have” lament. It was just good, plain and simple. We can debrief and learn from it, sure, but the thing I am most proud of is just enjoying it.

And then, when I came home after being gone at the school 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and launched right back into domestic goddess mode, I took on that role without resentment. Sure, there was a smidge of “really?” in my brain when my husband said he was super tired, but rather than go to a place of bitterness, I just chalked it up to a confirmation that the job I usually do of managing house and home is, indeed, a tiring one!

I wanted the laundry and dishes dealt with, so I did them.

I wanted celery and other veggies for the next day and to not cook that night or ask my tired husband to rally, so I went out to the grocery store after picking up take-out.

I wanted to do yoga before eating in peace and quiet, so I waited until after the family meal and bedtime to get on my mat and then eat my own safe food.

Somehow, that email sparked — or stoked — a fire. What started as angry turned cozy and glowing. The email inspired me, in part, to take the Mother’s Self-Renewal workshop to explore issues of balance and honoring our many selves. That first session then gave me the sense that I am both not alone in my dilemmas about time and also that my process is one to honor. It is part of my mothering to model not perfection but an embracing of personal growth and inquiry.

So thank you, dear relative, even if noting you wish you’d gotten advice from your elders still doesn’t convince me that you weren’t being more judgmental than supportive. Regardless of their intent, your words helped me see through the messiness of internal conflict and to look toward something varied and beautiful.

When a two-hour workshop that requires almost an hour of driving leaves you feeling recharged like you had a nap, I’d say it lives up to its “self-renewal” title!

Today was the first meeting of a “Monthly Mother’s Self-Renewal Group” based on Renee Trudeau’s book, The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal. We centered, we talked, we drew. It was great! I can’t wait to start working on some of the exercises and sharing them here! What an inspiring way to start the new year!

Thanks to Lil Omm yoga studio and parenting counselor Jennifer Kogan for putting this together. I’m so motivated, I’m going to cheerily clean up the house while my husband puts the kids to bed, even if he has made at least two or three wisecracks about my taking three hours out of the day on a busy weekend to do this. It’s up to me to keep up my mama mojo.

And yes, I did notice that one of the other books Jen had resting on her yoga mat was Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family by Amy Tiemann. Next on the list!

Baby girl has been a little under the weather, so we’ve been spending more time together — less babysitter, no outings. There were lots of things I intended to accomplish in the past two days, but many of them had to just go out the window. Or, rather, she sat on my desk in front of the window while I sorted files of papers in my overgrown office.

At 17 months, baby A is still not talking much, but she sure does have opinions. And she does nothing half-assed. Every act is intentional, whether it’s putting a random tea bag into a new box, taking my credit card out of my wallet and sliding it under her booster seat, or inspecting the tampons she finds in the non-baby-proofed bathroom cabinet. (When you have nothing toxic lying around, it’s easy to get complacent about latches. And then really easy to get embarrassed when little o.b.s from 1998 end up unwrapped in unexpected and cringingly public places).

This child has a lot more hair in the back than her brother did at this age. It’s coming in straighter but the same color (red!) and in the same location as her brother’s: party in the back. She doesn’t get dressed much in girly clothing, and I was just resigned to her having the same homely mullet her brother had until he was two and a half. It just occurred to me that I could consider actually doing something with that hair.

Even though I feel like I model busy more than bodhi, she actually came over to my yoga mat the other day intent on doing down-dogs with me. Looking at her increasingly long red locks, I said to myself, “You have a girl. A daughter.”

Someday she’s going to care how she looks, and she’s going to be embarrassed by my clothes, if she isn’t already. Her brother recently asked why I looked “fancy” when I put on jeans and a 10-year-old ribbed turtleneck that flared out at the bottom “like a ballet shirt,” he remarked. “I’m not fancy, honey, I’m just dressed.” My husband reminded me that he was the one to pick out that sweater back when it was in style, and from Bloomingdale’s no less.

Without my fashionisto boys, where would I be?

By the time the girl is in the mom-sucks years of middle school, I may have taken frumpy to a whole new level. Or maybe I’ll be in my midlife crisis-cum-renaissance, but I find that hard to believe.

At any rate, the cute barrettes my daughter’s brother insisted we buy her months before she was sporting anything like enough hair to stick them in, finally got a trial yesterday. Each attempt to put them in lasted almost long enough for my husband to take these photos.

I think pretty soon we’re going to have a Pippi Longstocking on our hands.

—

How did you handle hair differently with your daughters versus your sons? Or how did you manage not to?

Yesterday there was no childcare or playdate. Just a lot of rain. I truly felt like a stay-at-home mom, like back in the day before I took on freelance work or started up a chapter of Holistic Moms.

Some of yesterday was full of giggles. Some had me wanting to rip out my hair.

I consider it a victory that: I did a few stretches at home, then made it to the grocery store and then to yoga. My daughter had a few fussy moments during Lil Omm’s yoga playtime (an adult class where kids can hang out), but for the most part, I got in a decent practice. Of course, I was going just on fresh juice (kale, carrot, lettuce, parsley, lemon, beet) and didn’t eat breakfast until 11:30 after I’d put the babe down for a nap.

It would have been nice if she’d slept more than an hour and if she hadn’t been so whiny during the time of just us girls. At least, after her insanely mammoth poop, she amused herself in the tub while I folded clothes. (Note to self: get replacement plug for tub since husband threw out the old one). And then, before we headed to the bus stop to pick up her brother, we both gorged on Artisana coconut butter.

The happy surprise was that after she rejected my attempt to nap her again while her brother, ravenous after a hard day at kindergarten, was eating a second lunch, she was in a great mood. The two of them played individually and together for a good long while, during which time I chopped vegetables, washed dishes, and read and wrote emails related to work, the house, school and weekend planning.

Last week, I caught a piece on NPR about a study in the American Sociological Review that talks about how much more multitasking working mothers do than working fathers — and how much more stressful the mothers’ multitasking is. It’s worth a listen. When your brain constantly is engaged in three projects, it can’t do any of them well. Our circuits get fried. It’s tiring and not rewarding for us. And for our kids who have only a small pie piece of our attention, it’s got to be annoying. I don’t advocate dropping everything to coddle your kid 24/7, but some more focus on words that start with h, c, f, and d might be nice, I’m sure.

So the time from 3:30 to 5:30 was more productive than it was glorious. I got to plug in while they played well, and I only had to wear the baby on my back for a small chunk of time. She perked up when I fed her pomegranate, and I actually bounced on the rebounder (a few different times, since she kept climbing up to join me) and did a little more yoga in the few minutes between dinner being ready and my husband getting home. The physical activity alone made this a banner day!

But, after my son came downstairs at 8 p.m. complaining that he couldn’t sleep, I felt a little guilty for not giving him more focused attention and for not getting us all outside despite the rain. Ironically, I was in the middle of writing about natural playgrounds and playtime at school when he toddled in his too-small red jammies into the dining room, blinking at the light.

After I led him back into his room and tucked him back into bed, I realized, “Oh, you probably didn’t go out today, did you? No wonder you’re not so tired.”

“Just for morning break,” he replied, acknowledging that lunch recess was indoors. “We always went out in the rain at my old school,” he said of his Waldorf school. “I don’t know why they don’t go out in the rain at my new school,” he mused, pointing a knife toward the heart of his mom who chose free public school with a full day over returning to the outdoor-enthusiastic but tres expensive half-day Waldorf school.

I asked if he ever missed his old school, and he said yes, a lot. When pressed on what he missed, he described in great detail the joyful experience of playing with the rain that dripped down from the gutters of the old church that housed his school.

And then he switched his gushing praise to the current state of affairs, where he can pick to ride a trike or scooter on the track at school (and where he’s previously said he loves the big playground, and the soccer games at lunch). The enthusiasm about the new place was heartening.

I came back downstairs, checked a few items off the to do list my daughter had scribbled on hours earlier, finished an email, and went back to pacing out the floorplan of the next door house we are going to renovate starting as soon as we can make our decisions and get drawings ready to submit for permits.

When the baby started crying at 10:10, I said goodbye to the day, knowing that in the morning — after I got juice, broth, veggies, egg and sausage made, lunches finished up and packed, newly washed (and dried in the dryer because they were still in the wash when I went to bed) diapers stuffed and a new one on my girl’s bum before she went to the sitter’s — I knew that I’d get to pretend for a few hours that I am my own person who can do one thing at a time.

Like write about being a mom.

Fall’s draperies have fallen and are mulching on the ground. The woods behind our house are quieter, the tall trees naked of leaves even as deer nibble the green undergrowth.

I am astounded by the light.

It pours in now, like sleepy eyes that have just awakened. It comes at funny times and at new angles, finding new crevices to creep into and casting tricks of shadows on the plainest of surfaces.

We are moving.

Moving into winter. Moving into a new season of emptiness ready for the filling. Moving out of babyhood toward opinionation. Moving out of little boyhood into large hands and strong muscles.

Moving, literally, next door.

Having accepted the rare gift of an opportunity to renovate a home at a cost we just might manage, my family is on the verge of beginning a renovation of the house next to ours, a nearly identical Cape in origin but one in need of much love and tenderness.

I intend to infuse it with beauty.

And intention.

As we embark on a new season of our family lives, we pore over design books and muse about forts and gardens in the bigger lot, I may heed the call to draw inward. While I remain committed to feeding myself and my family nourishing, real food, it may be time to break from following the news toward a time of looking at the light and seeing where we live within it.

If I am quiet, it is to think and imagine. To conjure home. This may take me toward other writing, toward writing about green in building more than the green in my morning juice.

Like everything else, it’s a work in progress.

But let the work be play.

Today my son stayed home from school because he looked like hell after our weekend trip to Dallas for the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference. He was beat. Shortly before we got home last night at about 8:00, he had a series of sneezing fits. I knew the prognosis for a child-free Monday was not great.

So we had a home day that was mostly okay but didn’t end until 9:45 p.m. after we stuck firm to our refusal to give him apple cider. I don’t know what happened, if it was the zinc I gave him or the epsom salt bath or what. But he was insane. He came downstairs I don’t know how many times. We both tried everything we could think of in the mode of playful parenting, empathetic listening, and sticking to our guns.

Whatever is happening in his brain right now, though, we were no match for it.

All day, I’d been reluctant to indulge him in a ton of mommy time so as not to give the impression that you can just stay home whenever and do fun stuff. A homeschooler I am not, as much as sometimes I might like to be.

So he might have felt a little ignored, but he just needed to have some chill time, you know? Rationalizing, yes, but also true, I think.

Still, tonight, as he was being a total spaz, I was feeling kind of guilty for having been so scattered and all “play on your own” and “sure, you can watch that French opera from your grandpa.” Husband guilt for the trip (since I had attended the conference solo leaving him to fend for himself with two kids) didn’t help either.

And yet. When I look at the leaves my little boy found and marveled over today with absolute joy and delight for nothing other than their beauty, I feel grateful and lucky.

Like maybe I am kind of a decent mom.

Being one of some 1500 traditional food enthusiasts here at the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference is humbling and exhilarating. So many people have regained health or healed their children through real food. The stories at the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS diet) lecture alone were amazing. It’s easy in mainstream circles to feel like an outcast, a weirdo. When your diet is so restricted, you just smile and nod when others wink and nod about chocolate, or wine, or even about fruit or raw veggies, which I still can’t tolerate after nine months on the GAPS diet.

Real Food blogger panel at the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference

But here, as I listen to people who’ve put their whole family or hundreds of their patients on the GAPS diet and who, unlike me, actually render their own goose and duck fat, I feel like I’m getting off kind of easy, doing okay after nine months on the grain-free, starch-free, sugar-free diet.

And yet, listening to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride talk about the physiology of damaged guts with damaged gut flora, I’m ever more determined to get well. As long as I continue to suffer from psoriasis, I will know that things are not okay in my body. Even if it goes away in a few months, as it did after my first child started sleeping (rather than nursing!) through the night at age two, I know I need to be very careful about what I eat. Forever. Not just in terms of no dairy or gluten but in terms of blood sugar fluctuations (which happen with a vengeance even just upon consuming fruit).

And the lifestyle component. Sigh. I need to give something up to simplify, but I just don’t know what that is. I need to make relaxation a priority or I won’t do it. I need to commit not to just taking care of pain and digestive distress but to the whole of my body. And not just to promoting and cooking real food and being an active volunteer in school and community but also to the whole of my home and family.

Tonight my husband spent almost two hours in the car – including a bathroom and sushi stop at  Kroger – to bring me my baby to nurse and my son to see after I’d been at the conference all day, some 15 miles away. In the grand scheme of things, this is not the end of the world. The kids were both fine and happy during dinner, but I’m sure it sucked to be stuck in Dallas traffic for so long. My husband was pretty blitzed.

Other dads attend this conference with the whole family. Still other dads might go to McDonald’s rather than care about where their food comes from, much less want to spend money to sit in a hotel all day to listen to people talk about food. Mine is somewhere in between – supportive and on board but not an advocate or anything close to a purist. I don’t get criticized, but I don’t much get thanked, either. And I definitely get the sense that I kind of make things hard. Maybe I do.

I believe that my children and my husband benefit from all I learn — and practice — about health and wellbeing. Sometimes that seems to get lost in my pursuit of something like a writing and editing career (and the hope of a future career). And lost in my desire to spread the word about all the things that have made such a difference for me. It’s not just enough to live it; my life and my telling about it have to be meaningful.

So it can feel like an indulgence to go to lengths to have great experiences like coming to this conference. But then I meet someone

Annette Fischer of Wilderness Family Naturals and daughter Logan sell oils, nuts and other snacks at the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference

like Annette Fischer, who founded Wilderness Family Naturals with her husband in 2000. They were living in the wilderness with no electricity and no water, with seven children who were born at home, and they wanted to share information about living naturally through herbs. So they put up information (most of which had to be taken down due to pressure from the FDA), and now they sell the highest quality products they can find. I’ve been a happy customer for years, since I first learned about WFN from an employee at MOMs Organic Market. Now that I’ve met the co-owner and her eldest daughter of nine, aged 10 to 24 (they now have another two children who they adopted from Haiti), I feel like my passion and my family should not be at odds.

And I’ve just now heard Kristen of FoodRenegade.com talk about earning more money than her husband through her blog, with the biggest source of income coming from her own products: e-books and e-courses. She quit doing copywriting work – which allowed her to stay home with her kids – when a conflict of interest surfaced with a client, and now, three years after she started blogging, is performing such a service and earning a living to boot. While homeschooling three kids under the age of seven!

I can’t not write. It’s just not an option. And I can’t watch important things happen and not have a say. I think of my children’s future health and freedom to eat real food, but I’d also like to earn some green to go toward that food we buy.

Time to sign-off before I get picked up to head back to my father-in-law’s where I expect to be coaxed away about every two hours by a baby who wants to nurse. Before I leave again in the morning to learn some more.

How do you balance passion, work, and non-work?

—

Check out this post on my Washington Times Communities column — a quickie first-day update from the conference.

A few months before my daughter was born, in my sleep, a vision came into my head of a child with a crowded mouth of ill-fitting teeth. Then I heard the words, “She has Down’s.”

My eyes popped open. It was the middle of the night, and my 4-year-old son lay sleeping next to me, with my husband on the other side, oblivious to the pronouncement I’d just heard in my head.

Oh my God. I asked my baby — using the name we had recently warmed to  — “Does that mean you? Do you have special needs?”

Previously asleep, she started moving right away. And she replied: “We will be fine, Mommy. I am the perfect child for you to have. We will be fine.”

At first I remained concerned and wide-eyed, my heart racing. But I kept listening. What should I do? “Trust. Love. Breathe.”

Um, okay. Pretty wise for a 28-week-old fetus. But then again, who knows how long that soul has been around. It would appear that it has an edge on mine!

Most times during my pregnancy when I woke at this time of night — without any alarming warning, just with alertness — I had to get up. There’s just no use staying in bed. I make a snack or do a little yoga, or read, or all three. But this night I could tell my baby just wanted me to rest.

So I did. And I thought about her words. I fell back asleep.

The next day, I wasn’t shaken or upset. I felt peaceful. Accepting. It’s not up to me what child is going to come into our lives. There is no script of how things should be unless I make it up in my head and cling to it, which does no one any good.

After that, for a while I was less anxious or worried (or avoidingly distant) than I’ve been much of this pregnancy and more of the mind that whatever is the right experience for me to have will be the one I will have.

Whatever life looks like, however hard the challenges we face, we can always choose to believe that things are, in fact, fine.

False ending.

The above came from a blog post back in 2010. Shortly after I wrote it, I did finally read Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. I found it beautiful and inspiring.

And then later I found out she got divorced, and that made me sad.

And then later, I gave birth to my baby in a pool of water in my living room, just 4.5 hours after my water had broken and about 3 hours after I started wanting to push. And I got scared.

I was tired at the end. The contractions were petering out just when they needed to be rumbling through. My daughter’s head hung out a little too long before I could release the rest of her body. When I pulled her out of the water, she was a little purple. And quiet. And limp.

But the first thing I thought was that her eyes were set wide apart. They were puffy little slits. She looked funny, nothing like my son who was born via c-section and stared wide at us immediately. Or at least at the doctor; I had to wait a few minutes to have him brought to me. Maybe that is why I was so clueless what to do with a natural-birthed baby.

I didn’t know how to sit in the middle of the tub with her head out of the water since her cord was too short to raise her all up with her still connected to me.

I didn’t know how to act.

I didn’t know if she was okay.

I was a jumble of confusion, but I also know that I was worried that she might have Down syndrome.

Within a minute, her Apgar was up to 9 (from 5), but I remained worried that perhaps we should have done some prenatal testing. I trusted that voice months earlier, but here I was, moments after a successful HBAC, and I questioned what kind of future I was going to have.

She’s only 15 months old, but she appears to have no known health issues. I can’t exactly say the same for me. This summer was rough with a thyroid crash worse than the one I experience after my son was born in 2006. I felt horrid and depressed. My gut is so sensitive I’ve been off of all starches and even most fruit since February. My skin is once again freaking out with a rough case of psoriasis that I expect won’t go away as long as I’m nursing through the night. A friend recently suggested that I sound like her before Lyme disease caused her to have multiple organ failure and a stroke! So maybe I will finally get tested and see if that bull’s eye we treated with mainstream antibiotics back in 2002 has been part of all these issues. We probably will not have more children.

If my body hasn’t regained fertility by the time I’m 40 + 3 months in June 2013, I’m calling it quits for sure.

I have my doubts that my body could handle another postpartum period, even if I had another easy pregnancy. And I  have my doubts that I could figure out a way to mother another child in a mindful way, even if the child knew how to sleep, didn’t have separation anxiety and were free of genetic disorders or other challenging conditions.

Sometimes I wonder if the universe will hand me a special needs child just to slow me down and make me seriously prioritize. If we did get pregnant, I would do prenatal testing so that I’d have the best shot of knowing what was to come.

No one ever has control. Nothing is ever predictable. But I wish my first look at my baby had been one of joy and ecstasy instead of concern and worry. I know most people do prenatal tests and don’t feel guilty about it. It’s just part of their pregnancy.

I want to have faith that things will be exactly as they are meant to be, however difficult that may be. If I did get a tough diagnosis and continue the pregnancy, I doubt I would get the negativity today as Martha Beck did almost two decades ago. But I do think I would benefit from having the time and space to be ready to welcome my baby with all the love he or she deserved.

Being pregnant while in graduate school is no piece of cake and even more stressful to learn your unborn child had Down syndrome. In her memoir Expecting Adam, Martha Beck battled almost everyone over her decision to continue her pregnancy. Join From Left to Write on November 10 as we discuss Expecting Adam. We’ll also be chatting live with Martha Beck at 1PM Eastern on November 10 on From Left to Write.

As a member of From Left to Write, I had the chance to receive a free copy of this book but, as noted above, I had already read it… and lent it to a friend who, after two miscarriages, had her second baby at age 40 and then lost her father suddenly three months later, the day after her older son turned four. She proclaimed Expecting Adam her favorite read of the year.

Hop on over to TheDCMoms.com to see my Green post today on making thoughtful plans as you head into holiday hosting. Let’s see if I can take my own advice this time.