Fuji Kids: Part 1

I have decided to change the title of the blog to "I wish I wrote more, but..."

Ha. Just kidding. That title would be so appropriate, but alas, it is a trifle unwieldy. I do love a good ellipsis though "..." but for now, we'll keep the title as it is.

I feel like the fates are against me ever blogging again, because even as I write this, the screen is literally jumping up and down and right and left with no warning. It's like my blog is having a seizure. Maybe the shock of being updated is just too much for it. If it looks weird to you, be patient with us, we're epileptic tonight.  (Another possible title: the Epileptic Ellipsis).

The storied mountain itself at sunset. Taken from base by my fave photographer, Tim.

		Speaking of Fuji-san, our daily lives have changed a bit, as both Adelaide and Graydon are now enrolled in Fuji Kids Montessori youchien. Fuji means wisteria in Japanese and I don't know if there actually is any wisteria at their school, or if it's called Fuji because there is a wonderful view of Mt. Fuji as you approach the school. Either way, it's easy to say and remember, and I'll take what I can get. My Fuji Kids One of the annoying things that happens when a person starts to learn a foreign language is that they then pepper their native tongue with tidbits of their newly acquired language.  I know it's annoying, but here I am doing it anyway. In part, because I'm trying to think in Japanese instead of mentally translating and in part because we don't really have an American equivalent to youchien. It translates to kindergarten, but that isn't an exactly equivalent term. In America that means a grade that is part of the educational system, meaning everyone attends, and it's one year. Here, youchien is not required, though most children do attend one, and they last for three years. Most Japanese children begin their formal education at age 3, five days (sometimes six!) a week for roughly five hours a day. The school year begins in April and you are placed in classes by your age at that time. So if you're five in April, you're in the 5 year old class. In our case, Addie attends five days a week. She gets the bus at 9:15 and comes home at 3:30. Graydon attends somewhere between once and four times a week, and the oddest thing for me is that I have no say in his schedule. The school sends out a calendar for the entire year that lets you know what days the preschool meets for the two year class. This past week he went once. Next week he goes four days. (Note: I think that is God's gift to me for my birthday week, as Graydon is firmly entrenched in what I oh-so-fondly refer to as "the jackass years".)  Yes, I'm referring to this guy. Super cute. Super difficult. Japanese women have the highest rates of working after becoming mothers out of all the first world nations, and it is easy for me to see why. The schools are incredibly accommodating. You can drop your child off as early as 7:30 AM and pick them up as late as 6 PM. School care is also available on Saturdays. For an additional fee you can have the bus pick your child up and drop them off beginning at age three. Lunch is provided every day, and it is invariably nutritious and  delicious. Tea and snacks are provided for children who stay for later care. You can also sign your child up for lessons after school, including foreign languages, dance, and sports. This all begins at age three, remember. This week's lunch menu. Pardon the shadow of my head. It's getting late and the niceties are going out the window. And it is surprisingly affordable...that is, after the initial mammoth payout to get started. There is definitely some sticker shock involved with the registration fees, uniform costs, school supply costs, and so on. It adds up to a few thousand dollars, which is done in part to discourage parents from bouncing around from school to school. It's an investment in the truest sense of the word. But after that? About $300 per month for full time youchien. I believe we paid $200 for Addie's two afternoons a week preschool last year, for comparison.That could be more or less depending on how often you order school lunch and do extra care, but still...very affordable considering the level of care you're getting. Never in life did I think I would send my child to school looking like an extra in the Sound of Music, but it is pretty cute. I say "formal education" but at least at Fuji, the emphasis is really on play and developing independence. This fits right in with the Montessori philosophy, which Tim and I both love. Their motto is "Help me to do it myself", which is basically parenting in a nutshell, at least in my view.

The school itself has won awards for its design and I was instantly smitten when we toured. The entire building is designed to be on a child's scale and to encourage play and exploration. The roof is a large flat circle with slides down to the ground that encourages the children to climb and run in circles until they drop.

The school! That large surface with all the kids on it is actually the roof.

Montessori also puts a lot of emphasis on exploring the natural world and using natural materials in play and learning. This meshes seamlessly with the Japanese aesthetic, and it's very, very well done at the school. There are no walls between the classrooms, only the type of accordion partitions you sometimes see in church basements, so it feels very open and free flowing. The buildings were all constructed around any existing trees.



 For safety, the openings in the roof are surrounded by nets. The nets are hand woven by Japanese fishermen using their traditional weaving methods.

A good view of the roof and the nets. The inclined glass structures are skylights.

The kids are allowed to climb the trees and jump down into the nets. They warned us on our school visit that sometimes children do get hurt and that we would need to be basically OK with that. Their attitude is that little mistakes with little consequences are the best way for children to learn. We completely agree. Besides, it looks like so much fun!


 


They also grow food on site, including rice, sweet potatoes, and eggplants and the kids are involved in each step of the food production process, from planting all the way to harvesting, washing, and eating the produce. As if that wasn't enough, they also have ponies and ducks at the school and the children get to ride the ponies on their birthdays.

It's basically the coolest school ever, and I wish I was five again, which is an envy I usually reserve for naptime.

So Tim and I love it, and I think the kids are liking it, especially Addie. Graydon...well he takes off running when he sees the bus and I usually have to drag him out of a pine tree kicking and screaming, but he'll come around. I hope. 

The computer is still seizing, so I'm going to break this into two parts. Part Two will contain all of my funny stories thus far. That's what we call a teaser in the biz. ;-) 

Our precious eldest girl. We're so proud of her! Even better, she's proud of herself.

But before I share the funny stuff, it would be remiss of me not to mention something very serious.

I'm so appreciative of this opportunity for a thousand and one reasons, but the one that sticks out to me the most is that we're very fortunate indeed to be based in a country where educating women is both allowed and encouraged. It could so easily be otherwise.

For so many bright young girls, school is a financial impossibility, or worse, downright dangerous. Every day when I watch Adelaide board the bus with her friends, I am grateful that I don't fear her being shot like Malala Yousafzai or kidnapped like the young woman taken by Boko Haram in Africa. The tears in my eyes are not from fear, but pride. Someday, she might be the President, or a surgeon, or a librarian, or stay at home parent. She could be anything and probably will be many things. Opportunities await. I never want to take that for granted.

Martin Luther King Jr., speaking on the steps of the State Capitol in Alabama, said "...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Tonight, I am thankful to be living on the far side of that arc as well as the globe. And if her school is a series of arcs, well...that's just perfect.

Shinjuku

Today we finally, finally, finally made it into downtown Tokyo. We've only been here for four weeks or so, but I've wanted to visit Tokyo for about 3 weeks and 5 days of that time, so I was pleased.

We decided to take the train from Fussa into Shinjuku. Shinjuku is a huge commercial district, the kind of place that guide books love to call "bustling". It boasts the world's busiest railway station (two million passengers a day!), the Tokyo Metropolitan government (housed in weirdly Gotham City-esque skyscrapers) and a huge red light district (we didn't visit that, natch), along with no less than four or five department stores with ten to twelve stories each. It's ...bustling.

In the midst of all of this, is the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, which has been a part of Tokyo since the Edo era, in one capacity or another. And this is why I love Japan. The world's largest city, where space of any sort is incredibly expensive, and yet there are green spaces everywhere. And not just little pocket parks, but enormous, sprawling, lavish amounts of green space. The Japanese get so many things right.

It reminds me of Central Park a bit, with its juxtaposition of modern buildings and venerable old trees.

 Anyway, before Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden was a public park, it served as a private garden for the Imperial family, where presumably they entertained themselves by creating various types of landscapes to stroll through. We wanted to see the traditional Japanese garden portion of things, so off we went.

At first, I was highly unimpressed, though it was not the garden's fault. Our large shipment of furniture hasn't arrived yet (it's coming in two days!) so we don't have a stroller suitable for Tokyo yet. The Double BOB jogger is definitely built on American lines, let's put it like that. I was packing Emilia and girlfriend puts off a lot of heat. It was basically like carrying around a small portable furnace in the 90 degree weather. So there was sweat. And there were mosquitoes. Lots of them. We were pursued through the forest portion of the park by blood sucking insects whilst carrying screaming children. I think that might have been one of Dante's levels of hell, but I can't be sure. 

Then all of a sudden we popped out onto a lawn and we were in historical Japan. 



 



There were dragonflies everywhere. I have never, ever seen so many dragonflies, nor been so excited to see dragonflies because it was mosquito free territory. We lolled under some trees and then lolled some more because we were totally defeated by the heat and blood loss.

Staring up into the trees

Perfect patches of shade under each tree

We didn't move an inch, but we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a flock of ladies that surrounded my children, cooing and snapping pictures and pinching their cheeks and declaring things like "I love you, little babies, you are super kawaii" (rhymes with Hawaii and means cute). Tim and I were slightly bemused because we suddenly experienced what it was like to parent Suri Cruise, minus only the wealth and the looks and the strange alien religion.

We were happy to let the ladies take pictures with the kids, as they (the women) were radiating goodwill and happiness and also because we were slightly stunned. Our kids were filthy. I mean, dirty in the way that only small children can manage. Graydon had grime in the folds of his neck. Addie's feet were smell-able at ten paces due to her refusal to wear socks with her sneakers. Her face is sporting several scratches thanks to an attack by Graydon and more bug bites. We had been walking around Tokyo in 90 degree heat for several hours and no one was at their best. Some of us (ok, me) were decidedly at their worst, sporting streams of sweat, lank hair, approximately 86 mosquito bites and a broken foot. (Note: Yes, I have broken my foot. I wish I could say it was doing something coolly Japanese, like sumo wrestling or one of those game show obstacle courses, but alas, I simply walked into a chair.) No one wanted my picture, that's for sure, and the kids were not in much better condition.

In addition to THAT, the women taking pictures with them? They were in full kimono. Brilliant cloth bright with embroidery, flowers in their hair, those divided socks with the high wooden flip flops, fans in their hands, the whole stunning, glittering array of traditional Japanese attire, and all they wanted to do was take pictures with my dirty, cranky, corn-fed American kids. "Exotic" is very much a matter of perspective, it seems.

Sweaty. Bug bitten. Dirty. But those eyelashes...

And the dimples...

I guess they still are pretty cute.

Strangers in a Strange Land

Tim told me that I needed to blog tonight and that he did not care for the little tidbit posts. Humph. So here I sit, trying to manufacture some coherence out of a brain that is still hovering somewhere around Alaska.

We are here. Boggling, my mind is. Yoda, channeling I am. Because the name Yoda sounds like it could be Japanese.That's funny to me right now, which gives you a clue to my enfeebled mental state. God, jet lag sucks. More about THAT later.

First, Japan. Introductions are in order.

According to Wikipedia, Japan is an island nation and a nation of islands, composed of over 6,852 islands in total, though I think the actual number is subject to debate and climate change.

We are on the largest island of them all, called Honshu, seen in that fetching shade of mauve below.

And on Honshu, we are located in Tokyo prefecture, in a small town called Fussa, highlighted here. We are about 1.5 hours from central Tokyo, heading generally northwest, but we are still considered to be in Tokyo, because it's huge. That's a bit confusing to me, and it feels as though North Carolina suddenly decided that the entire middle portion of the state was just "Raleigh". But hey, this is the world's largest city, so I guess they can make their own rules.



About a third of Fussa is taken up by Yokota Air Base, which is where we are living.

 As you can see, everything centers around the airfield. I have already gotten used to feeling the hum of jet engines deep in my bones and to seeing large aircraft flying around at low altitudes. This is basically THE hub for all Pacific operations, as I understand it. There is apparently a typhoon heading into the area this week, so aircraft from Okinawa have been coming in to ride out the storm in the safety of the enormous hangars here.

We picked out our house this week and we will be living in the East Housing area, which is the area closest to the hospital. There are parks everywhere, two elementary schools, swimming pools, a library, and even a Chili's, among other American restaurants.Right now we are living in the TLF*, or temporary living facilities, which is basically a three bedroom apartment.

*So far I have gathered that if the military can create an acronym for something, it's going to do it, even if it would be easier to just say the words. Example: We live in the TLF and shop in the BX at the YCC which is located beside the AFRC where people might ask you "Did you just PCS? What's your MOS?" among other things. 

We haven't set foot off the base yet, mostly because there has been so much in-processing to do and it seems like everything has to be done in triplicate. The strange land I'm referring to in my title is not Japan at all. Technically, I haven't even touched Japanese soil yet. That's fine because we have the minor culture shock of military life to adjust to first.

Things are different here. Uniforms are more common than civilian clothes. Everyone needs military I.D. to do anything, even buy groceries. Tire shredders, vehicle barriers, and heavy machinery are much in evidence. It's all quite intimidating and vaguely menacing to my civilian eyes.

This is to say nothing of the many rituals and customs of the military that we barely comprehend. I don't know a sergeant from a colonel or what to do when music comes over the loudspeakers. Every day has us furiously Googling something to figure it all out. And poor Tim is of course coming in as a Captain and is nominally "commanding" people that have served their entire lives. In reality, of course, they are showing him the ropes, at least until they scrub in the OR, which won't happen for another week or so.

Fortunately, the people are enormously kind. Tim's fellow orthopedic staff met us at the airport here at Yokota by waving a model of a hand in the air, which was a great foreshadowing of the role they've played in our lives. They have lent us their hands, and vehicles, and time to help us settle in. They've cheerfully ferried us around to buy groceries, look at cars, and attend classes.

We've tried not to drive them TOO crazy and we do try to catch the free shuttle that runs around base. We're not always successful at that, as I noted in an earlier post. Sadly, that wasn't the only time we missed the shuttle, but it led to us meeting a great woman named Marla  who took us home from the grocery store in her van. All five of us, and our bags. And then she babysat my kids during my driver's education class, for five hours, and refused to let us pay her. These are the kind of neighbors we've inherited and I'm already incredibly grateful. We know from our time in Rochester than having a family-away-from-family changes everything for the better.

There is SO much to write about, but my brain feels like goo right about now. It's only been a week since we got here, which makes my mind/goo slosh around alarmingly. I think this has been one of the longest weeks of my life, despite actually being the shortest, due to losing a day to time travel  the odd effect of traveling westward.

As you have probably gathered, jet lag is real and it is not kind. Tim is perfectly fine and thinks his years of torture training as a resident have enabled him to fall asleep on command, anywhere, and at any time. He is only slightly smug about this, the lucky bass...et hound.

Adelaide is approaching fine, waking up at 6 or 630 AM. Graydon wakes up at 530 AM, and Emilia is waking at 430. Poor Emilia is like a baby in a cruel science experiment right now. "Hey, I know, let's see what happens when we take a baby and move her every few days for the entirety of here life!" Well, after much testing, I can confirm that what happens is that Baby gets her security from being with Mom, preferably with a breast in her mouth at all times, the better to ensure that Mom doesn't slip away in the night. I can't blame that little punkin a bit, although I am very much looking forward to some stability, for her sake.

For now, we are here, we are adjusting, and we are happy if slightly confused at all times. Kind of like puppies tumbling out of their kennel for the first time, but with better control of our bladders*.

*Well, most of us anyway. Graydon did announce his presence at 5:30 this morning by climbing into bed with me and saying "Hey, Mom, I need  you to change my diaper." Good morning, son. Good morning.

SuperMan?

The day before we left for Japan, I excitedly informed my kids "OK, guys, tomorrow we are going to fly to Japan!" Addie cheered, but Graydon said "NO, Mom, we not flying!". I said "Why not, buddy? It's going to be so fun!" To which he replied "Because. I no have my cape."

Pebble Post

*My entire last year of blogging was filled with lots of posts about not blogging. And that's understandable, given what was happening at the time, but I'd like to post more this year, without always feeling like I need to give a narrative structure to the post. I'm going to call these posts "Pebbles" because ultimately all mountains are made of lots of small rocks. I actually just made that up and have no idea if is factually true, but if feels poetically true, so there it shall stay.

We missed the shuttle the other day and that was bad. There is a small bus that goes around the base and stops at the most important places, including the temporary living facilities where we are staying at the moment. It usually comes by every half hour or so, but this was the last shuttle of the day. And we missed it. So we had to walk home with our three exhausted children and bags and it was a few miles and it was hot. We were streaming sweat and berating ourselves and feeling generally cross and inconvenienced.

But it was also evening and the sun was setting and as we walked around and across the airfield, we stopped for a moment of rest and noticed that the sun was piercing through the clouds in a series of long shafts of light that colored the sky gold and rose and pearl. Clouds were breaking like waves over the mountains that cradle the base like an egg in a nest and lo and behold, we could see Mt. Fuji in the distance, massive and majestic and unmistakable.

We missed the shuttle and that was actually quite good.

Hiatus Part 2: The Revenge

Tomorrow at 7 AM the packers arrive to take some of our things to storage. And then on Weds our second shipment of stuff  heads to Japan. This is the smaller-but-still large shipment of things that go by plane. Our enormous shipment that goes by ship has already been taken.

And then we leave on Thursday for what is sure to be a fun filled trip full of laughter and peace and deep thoughts and conversation ....oh no, wait, we're driving for 18 hours with three children under five. One of which will eat every half hour or so it seems. Dear God, let us all survive with sanity more or less intact.

I have thoughts,oh so many thoughts, about leaving Rochester and the end of Tim's residency and leaving my alternate residency family and leaving Tim's actual family, and Emilia's first two months of life and what it's like to see Addie with her sister and Graydon as an older brother, and oh my heavens, I want to blog so so badly. I'm so afraid that I'm going to forget how this feels and that if I don't pin it down, I'll lose it, and THAT makes me want to burst into tears for roughly the 875th time in the past four months.

Still, I'm going on hiatus due to technical difficulties. Really, I have two main problems. The first and most insurmountable is that we will be in North Carolina for roughly a month, and we will have internet access but only via Kindles and the iPad and have you ever tried to blog on a touch screen? It's awful. Seriously. The only thing that could be slower and more excruciating than "hunt and peck" is actually setting the type on a big ass printing press and cranking out a physical copy a la the 18 century. I would rather write it out longhand and kick it medieval style with illuminated capitals and awesome calligraphy than hunt and peck because at least then I could wear my robe all day and listen to Gregorian chants and get high on incense.

The second is that none of the devices mentioned above have my camera program on them and I don't like doing multiple entries without photos. A few here and there are fine but I like pictures and blogging actually spurs me to work on my (admittedly poor) photography skills.

Therefore I probably won't blog again until August. Ugh. Wretched but unfortunately necessary. So, until August, dear blog.

Emilia's Birth Story: Part 2

If you missed Part 1, start here

When we last left our heroine, she had just had her water broken...and we now re-join the scene...(I find this works really well if you imagine it in a Spanish accent, but that's just me)

The contractions went from a whisper to a scream much faster than I could process.

I actually think full-on unmedicated hard labor is something every woman should try to experience at least once. Even if you don't stick with it (as I didn't, this time around), the sheer force of what's happening in your body has to be experienced to be believed.

Time stops flowing normally. Minutes last for ages and yet somehow hours go by quickly. You're not moving much, yet you break a sweat and feel unbearably hot in your own skin.. You want to speak, to ask for help, to explain what's happening, but you can't form words. It's incredibly primal and all you want is for the pain to end and yet you want it to continue because each surge is bringing you closer and closer to your child. . You are surrounded by people but somehow the pain is entirely personal and private. It's simultaneously humbling and empowering as you cry and groan and breathe through each pain and work to channel the energy coursing through you. It both breaks you and strengthens you every time you ride the contractions through from crest to peak to ebb. It is a force of nature, immense and difficult to contain. Working through it, for any length of time, is a source of pride and strength for the rest of your life.

I labored for roughly an hour, trying to let my right side catch up to my left, and trying to maintain control of the process. Each time a contraction hit, my mind was saying "no, no, NO, NO!" which is not really the way you want to go into a contraction if you're going to labor naturally. You HAVE to accept the pain and work with it, and it really helps to have a good meditative practice. Needless to say, I didn't practice my hypnobirthing this time around...out of lack of opportunity, not desire...and it really showed. I just didn't have the mental reserves I needed to surrender to the labor.

I asked for an epidural. Tracy said "You're at full dilation and if I just push this little piece of cervix back while you push, we can have a baby" which I immediately vetoed. I was terrified to push, afraid that the baby wouldn't come quickly and I would be suffering for hours. Everyone had assured me that the second vaginal birth is worlds easier than the first, but I was afraid to believe that. As it turned out, since I did end up pushing for a little over two hours, so I'm very thankful I got the epidural. 

Anesthesia was amazing and got in the epidural super fast, along with a spinal which took immediate effect. In a funny turn of events, the anesthesia doc was the husband of a friend, and his resident was our neighbor. Did I recognize either gentleman? No. no I did not. It could have been Barack and Michelle Obama for all I noticed.

As soon as the spinal hit, I looked at Tim and said "Epidural. Number Two." No one knew what I was talking about until I said "Vaccination, Number One, but epidurals are the second best achievement of modern medicine". True to his calling, Tim said "What about joint replacement?" to which I replied "Not even close".

The midwife and nurse left for a bit to allow the spinal to wear off and the epidural to kick in and I recall absolutely nothing about that time except for the blissful absence of pain. When they came back, Tracy said "OK, let's have a baby!" and I started pushing.

And kept pushing. And kept pushing. For hours. The goal was to get in three pushes (or more) to each contraction and to keep moving the baby further with each push. The baby was moving down the canal, but she just was NOT coming out. They brought me a mirror and I kept watching her head advance and retreat and I could see that I was making progress, but not quite enough. I was getting upset because I was totally confused as to why I sucked so much at birthing babies. Shouldn't pushing be easier than this by now?

And then the baby's heart rhythm started to show signs of stress during each contraction and Tracy told me very seriously that I needed to be done, that I needed to deliver the baby now. I was terrified, of course, because this is a road I've been down twice and it's not very pleasant for anyone.

The rest of the labor I only remember in fragments of conversation and flashes of images.

Push. Push. Push. Nothing. "Tara, you have to be done. You have to get the baby out now."

Push. Push. Push. Nothing. Asking: "Is the baby OK?" Hearing: "You need to have the baby. We need the baby here now. Give it everything you've got."

Push. Push. Push. Nothing. Asking through tears: "Is the baby OK?"  Hearing: "Yes, but you need to be done." Saying: "I'm trying. I'm trying so hard, I just can't do it." Hearing: "Yes, you can, you are doing this, I'm going to help you, ok? I'm going to give you an episiotomy so we can get this baby out. Don't look".

I close my eyes, in order to avoid the mirror and the sight of my flesh being cut.  I push with all my might. I see stars flaring on my eyelids, suns wheeling across the darkness, and my whole being is pleading "Please, please..." my whole body feels like a prayer, both lament and praise, and most of all, supplication, and then...

I hear Tim say "Oh my, it's a big one."

I look down and there is my baby's face, gray and chalky and huge cheeked and facing my left thigh. (Children are normally born face down, and not sideways!) Only the baby's head is free, but as I push, I watch, and my child slides into the world, whole and perfect and suddenly free of me and belonging only to itself.






They bring the baby right to my chest, so fast that I can't see if I have a girl or a boy, all I see is cord and baby, and Tim says "It's a little girl" and my heart breaks and my face crumples and I am sobbing as I kiss my daughter's hot, wet head.





She is slimy with blood and vernix and she is howling, but she is just about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I can't stop sobbing and I keep saying to her "Oh, baby, that was so hard. That was so hard. Are you OK? I'm so glad you're here. Mama loves you" over and over again.

At some point, I realize that Tim might want to see his child as well, and I look up at him and say "Can you see her?"I see him wipe his tears away and lean in to examine our newest addition, our precious daughter. It's one of the best moments of my life.

Our first photo with our precious youngest daughter

The rest of the morning is a blur. Emilia is weighed, cleaned, named, and nursed, in some order I can't remember. I'm stitched up from episiotomy #2, and I also manage to lose a lot of blood after the birth, requiring the administration of a  medicine that is given rectally. At this point, I'm just like "Sure, WHY NOT and let's try to find something to stick in my ear as well. Let's leave no orifice out!"" As it turns out, when babies are delivered "Sunny Side Up" as Emi was, mothers have a greater risk of postpartum hemorrhage. I don't know how delivering sideways contributes to all that, but it's probably not good.

Our big girl getting her vital statistics taken!

All things considered, I was physically battered and bruised and bloodied, but I was also over the moon happy about Emilia. I'm also pretty relieved that I am not a physical weakling, just oddly shaped: the midwife and I decided that I must have a weird pelvis because all of our children have presented in a decidedly difficult-to-deliver fashion.

But she is here, she is healthy, she is so worth it.

We have the exact same picture of Addie and Tim. Daddy loves his girls.

This is obviously a very personal experience, and it sometimes does make me nervous to share a moment like this on a public blog.  The reasons to write a birth story are obvious: so you don't forget anything and so you can process the whole crazy glorious mess of birth. The reason to share it is less so, but truthfully, I've learned something from every birth story that I've ever read. So I suppose this is my small contribution to the communal process by which women become mothers. 

And it's also the beginning of our family's journey with Emilia and if that's not worth sharing, nothing is! Welcome to the world, precious and beloved baby girl. Beautiful and terrible things await, but don't be afraid. We are right here with you.