What's better this time around

I was prompted by a conversation to consider what's the same or better in this pregnancy than the last one. There are actually a few things so here we go.

Birth defects: Last time I worried that our baby would be not-very-bright or have a huge birthmark over her face or extra toes. This time, breathing and with all major organs would be the big win. That's a bit of a flippant way to put it, but in fact a lot of the major parenting fears about providing the best ever environment have waned somewhat, because although I still am committed to doing the best possible job, I have abruptly come to see the line between small stuff and big stuff.

And also, we lived through some of it (conceptually) very quickly, although this is different from any reality of raising a handicapped kid. Right after labour, I was told that Emily would have "learning difficulties" (this was actually given to me as the absolute worst case scenario, when I asked if she was going to make it - at East General). My brain at first interpreted this as "learning disabilities" like dyslexia and I admit I was lying there in that period when they left me totally alone in the birthing room thinking how hard it would be to be a writer whose child had trouble reading. But it actually didn't matter that much to me, way less than I would have thought.

Then, by 11 pm that night, it was sinking in (the word 'seizures' helping with this) that they meant what when I was growing up was called retarded. You would think a former social agency worker would have the latest lingo down but I did not. And that didn't matter.

And then on the weekend after she was transferred to Sick Kids, the discussion was beginning about mobility, like would she be able to move her own head or not (never mind limbs). And although I admit to a fair amount of fear and terror, mostly financially, there was never any doubt in my mind that we, her parents, would just deal with it.

I know that no snap decision in the hospital could ever relate to the reality of that kind of life - and having known a couple of parents with severely disabled kids I know it is harsh - but still, the abyss opened, I looked down it, and said okay.

So, I really am not so worried about some stuff as I was before.

The bigger thing - and less common - is the whole multiple deal. In Emily's pregnancy I was worried about bringing a child into the minor chaos that is our shared life. We're not like a television movie - most of the real crazy stuff, the flashbacks and the lack of communication and the waking up three months later stuff is mostly a thing of the past.

Abuse trauma can bite you at any point, and I think parents who've been abused as kids have a huge responsibility to really be careful about not laying that on their children, as much as possible. I think it's important for parents to have someone like a therapist to check in with about issues that come up as their kids age - and trust me, I believe they will come up.

An abused multiple system has that to the nth degree. Because not only will all the people ("personalities" in the literature) be moving at different paces and have different ideas about what's an issue, but how do you know if that's going on? If one person in the system makes a sarcastic or hateful remark to their kid, does everyone else know? How do you make sure it doesn't happen again, and that the child gets the feedback they need ("I should never have said that to you and I'm sorry. Sometimes when people are upset they say mean things, but that does not make it right to say them.").

So these are some of the things I worried about, although a lot of it we have been working through reasonably well in therapy - treating our significant others right is a big start towards treating our kids right, and so on. And that won't change - I think we will always have to worry, a little, in order to be sure that we are good parents, and I like anyone else in the system take 100% of the responsibility for that. (One of our axioms is that just as marriage is not a 50%-50% proposition, but a 100%-100% percent deal with both partners fully connected, so in our system the "big fucking deals" are everyone's responsibility. Parenting being one of the biggest ever.)

But overall I felt we were at a point where we could negotiate /behaviour/ pretty well. No, we don't tell our kids that they'll get their fingers cut off if they touch our guitars (Lynn, who sees that as a mild sort of threat). No, we don't eat gummy bears all day. Etc.

What worried me even more was the feeling, the undercurrents of reality of being a multiple parent. Kids are pretty sensitive and I think they would know, on some level, if someone were fronting (being the person interacting with the world) and didn't like them or want them or appreciate them, even if that person were performing all the tasks right.

Now I realize some of this is idealized; no parent in the world is happy about their kids all the time, and it is my theory that this is an important truth for the kids to learn - that if they bicker for an hour their mother may in fact put them in their rooms in a not-super-nice manner and go in her room and make annoyed, unhappy, frustrated noises, and later serve dinner without enthusiasm, and go take a bath early. So to demand that every person in the system be glad to be a parent all the time is unrealistic in /every/ way.

But still. I know from experience with my own and other systems that if someone is sitting there minding their manners but really waiting for the "person I did not choose" (husband they didn't marry, friend they don't care for, children they didn't want) to go away so they can get on with *their* life, it comes across.

No one wants to be merely tolerated without some kind of connection of caring underneath. In fact it's one of the most awful things to be stuck in a room with someone you know doesn't really want you there. And I think to a child that can be devastating. It's like growing up knowing your parents got married because of you and watching them hate each other.

And I had no solution for this one. You can't force anyone to love someone else. I mean I knew that even where I failed in loving my children, Lyria would succeed dramatically (particularly when they are very small). I knew that I would be a help when rebellion and school cliques and things hit. I knew that if there were a problem JJ would point it out even if none of us wanted to hear it.

But I didn't know if Lynn and Magdalynn and others would connect with a child beyond the (to them) huge concession of not actively hating or being destructive towards them. And that worried me considerably. I started to suspect that they might, but I really didn't know.

But this time, I have no worries about it. In labour with Emily, everyone connected. (And Magdalynn has chosen to express that with San in a way that leaves no doubts.)

Throughout those days of her life, everyone cared. And when she died, it devastated everyone.
I think this is mostly a triumph of love: of the love that we have all touched through the people we have been lucky to love and who have loved us. When the child appeared, the heart was ready. It may also come in part from her being a child of our body, that which we all share. And it may be because the big split in our system always was sort of those who had Awful things happen to them and those who had Unbelieveably Awful things happen to them (not that pain is any different) and now everyone's had an Unbelieveably Awful thing.

Or maybe the adrenaline rewired our brain.

I don't know the cause. I only know the result.

Although witch baby's mum is going to be eccentric, different, creative, complex us, there will be no failure in love and caring there that is exclusively out of multiplicity. It won't, I'm sure, save us from a zillion mistakes and moments and hard crap, but it will be there.

So those are the two big ones. I guess in the end it does come down to acceptance, and love.

Shandra