I teach a birth class. The longer I do it, the more that I realize that I am teaching less about the mechanics of the event, and more about the preparation for the massive shift in perspective that is about to take place. Sure, I'll teach them about dilation and where the perineum is located, but I also send little pep talks out each week. In the pep talk, I give them a phrase to focus on for the week. After the first class, when I see the "oh shit what have I gotten myself into" looks on their faces, I send out a a reassuring note with the focus phrase: "I have no idea what's going on, and that's perfectly fine." I explain what surrender that phrase can bring when you're feeling the control freak in you start to control freak right on out. When you get overwhelmed thinking about all of the details that go into a birth experience, what a relief it is to know that your body knows exactly what it's doing, and in fact would just do it without your thinking interference. In fact, it might do it even more efficiently if our brains weren't meddling in the process and nitpicking every detail. It's more or less the equivalent of Step 1 of the Twelve Steps: Admitting that you are powerless in the situation and that some system that's bigger than you and your worrying is at work. If you'd just shut up and give in, the system might just do what it's supposed to do.
I don't know why I haven't taken my own advice up to this point. After all of the back pats I have received from the large support net that has shown itself since I began this endeavor, at the end of the day, it's just me and Truman. Some days that feels like a crowd. This week it really felt like a crowd. Ever since he was a baby, we have likened him to the Princess and the Pea. If one tiny little thing is off, by gosh, the whole household is going to know about it. But the cause might remain a mystery until all of the mattresses are pulled off and the tiny pea is revealed.
The pea this week was a super bad summer cold. On Tuesday, he was off - noncompliant and exhibiting what I call the "pinball" behavior - just physically bouncing off of things very randomly without any direction. On Wednesday he was tired and out of it and grouchy and had no impulse control. By Thursday, I too had that "oh shit what have I gotten myself into" look on my face since we had gotten no work done and I felt like I had fought roadblock after roadblock with him with no result other than we made it to the next roadblock. But by that afternoon he was sick. And just like when he was little, the little lightbulb dinged over my head, and I knew we had found the pea.
At some point in the mattress removal, the phrase "I don't know what the hell I'm doing." popped into my head. At first it was a taunt: " You don't know what the hell you're doing." But after it echoed around in there for a while, I realized that it was very similar to the phrase I send my birth class couples. So I changed it slightly, tacked on the ending, and it became a buoy: "I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and that's perfectly fine."
We're bobbing along trying to figure it all out: how to help his executive function, how to bring him up to grade level in math and teach him to write a paragraph on his own, how to get him to control his body and to find things that pique his interest in learning. It's a lot of ground to cover, and when he's feeling the pea, there isn't a thing in the world you can do to get him to join you in learning those things. All of his senses go into the pea with not much left over. I don't know how school has done it all of these years. I have had phone calls and emails from teachers a million times to tell me that they had hit an impasse with him and he seemed completely unresponsive to any kind of learning. Almost always it ended up being a pea of some sort, and once it was uncovered, things moved back to (his version) of normal. I know that the pea will make him unable to function, and I still don't recognize that that's what's wrong most of the time until I actually see the pea. If you were a teacher trying to get him to produce work on a very tight schedule, you might get a little frustrated. And if you were Truman, you might spend a good deal of time with people feeling frustrated with you.
I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I founder. We founder - Truman and I. But something in me tells me that we are not doing the wrong thing. Something tells me that if I shut up and give in, it actually all might be perfectly fine.
