Winter over these past two years hasn’t bothered me the way I expected it to. Living in what felt like single-season SoCal for nine years should have ruined me for cold weather, but putting mind over matter seems to have helped in so many ways. This year, we were ready. After scouring Mercari and Facebook Marketplace and (gulp) Amazon in October, the boys and I were set with good snow boots and snow pants and winter jackets that all served the purpose of actually keeping us warm. And thanks to the concept of “There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather,” we utilized our winter clothes for good almost every single day. It was truly a joyful winter.
Amidst the joy, winter 2021-2022 was also one of our hardest- living in a converted Girl Scout lodge that never did get quite fully converted, waiting on promised insulation for months that was to help our home keep in the heat … finally installed in January but the heating issues never resolved; searching for community in our second location of residence in less than a year; all four of us getting very sick over the course of three weeks throughout January … we had a lot going on. But we had each other. And warm winter clothes that we frequently wore in our 50 degree house (we hit 37 in the kitchen quite often). And honestly we were happy. And when the realization hit that what we were actually doing was paying rent to live in an unlivable house, an opportunity very quickly came up to move just down the driveway. To stay on this property we loved. To live in a house, an actual real house with a garage and a basement and closets and two bedrooms and an office … and not to mention oil heat and real insulation. A livable dwelling on 320 acres of wilderness. Wow! Any emotional ties I had to our quirky lodge quickly drifted away. We called on family and friends and with the help of them, my Dad’s flatbed trailer, a pickup truck, and our minivan, we moved in on February 5th … when I was just about 35 weeks pregnant!
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| about a month after moving into our new home, 12 days before baby was born |
The beginning of spring always gets me, and this year the change of season has caused me to be especially weepy at times. Nature is starting its perfect display of the renewal of all things. Canadian geese and a pair of ducks chattering overhead and on the pond and creek outside our windows, wild turkeys putting on a show for mating season- tail feathers fluffed up and loud gobbles piercing through the trees, and the little birds singing their songs from the branches while woodpeckers hammer for their breakfast. Jer and the boys saw a herd of deer swimming across the creek, neck deep in water the other day. A thunderstorm wiped away winter's last remains and the trees have started to bud. These details have made me FEEL. Spring is rebirth
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| turkeys outside our bedroom window, April 1st |
… and so four days after the spring equinox, as I took a slow afternoon walk through the beginnings of these changes in the nature surrounding our home, I found myself pausing for the more rapidly occurring pressure waves crashing through my abdomen. In these moments I appreciated all the more the rebirth I was in the beginnings of, and the new life that was in the process of emerging.
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| early labor forest walk, 3 hours before baby was born |
When the waves started to pick up, I took my last deep “forest bathing” breath and headed inside, knowing that the next time I walked outside, my baby and I would have been made new with the trees and grass and flower shoots.
Jer and the boys and my youngest sister made happy chatter in the dining room while I instinctively labored alone in the living room for a brief while. Ultimately, Oscar found me and jumped onto the back of the armchair I was leaning on, and insisted on putting his front paws on my stomach. A sweet and intuitive gesture. He’s been actively one of my birth partners for all three labors. I don’t understand how I got the compliment of being his person, but that quirky cat has my affections forever. I think Oscar knew labor was about to get intense.
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| Oscar the birth partner, paws on my belly, just as things were starting to feel intense, 2 hours before baby was born |
Everyone walked into the living room at right around that time, and suddenly as I felt another wave coming on, I knew it was different. I lost focus of the world around me, and motioned for Jer to follow me into the bedroom. I tried calling our midwife and was able to get out three or four words to her before throwing the phone down to work through another wave. Suffice it to say, Erin was in her car almost immediately, and by our side 45 minutes later. Leading up to and during that time, I labored through an hour of transition with Jeremy by my side. Between the rushes, I could hear my sister reading books to the boys in the living room, everyone contented and relaxed, even as I am not an especially quiet laboring woman. When Erin and her assistants arrived, I got into the birth tub between waves. The relief was immediate. Every tense part of my body faded into itself … this was what I was missing with the other two births (not for lack of trying! The tub was there in its box and left alone in a corner for each of my other two labors, due to how slow one was and how fast the other was).
Moments after getting situated in the tub, my waters released … and the hardest work began.
Reflecting, the pushing part of labor has always been a relief. It’s when the mental effort you're putting towards the waves combines with physical effort, and the combination gives a sense of purpose which in a way turns into a sense of ease. I enjoyed pushing during my other two labors. I was looking forward to this relief once the urge to push started shortly after my waters released. But the relief during these waves never came this time. For an hour, each time a wave passed, I did everything I could to work with my body. I pushed so hard that I briefly became fearful of it. And with a gentle prompting from my midwife, who told me I'd get better results by pushing harder, I did. I pushed through the unease and embraced the discomfort and pushed hard enough that I was certain my whole body was breaking apart.
And then, I rested. In the sweet, quiet moments between those intense waves and the body-splitting effort, I opened my eyes and saw Jeremy inches away from my face, his expression full of tenderness and love. I saw our boys sitting on the edge of the bed in rapt attention- the way they get when completely taken over by something- quietly and curiously and happily observing. And then another wave would start to rumble in, crash over me, and I would start the hardest work again. My brain brought me to the image of a lioness during a few of these moments, and for that hour, I emulated one. My voice was hoarse later that night, and upon questioning it I was reminded that my baby was born through a succession of roars. Apparently loud enough that the boys were covering their ears through many of the rushes. (Oscar was undisturbed.)
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| curious and attentive brothers |
This lioness externalized was bringing baby down. Many rushes, three different positions, and an hour later, I felt the telltale ring of fire, and baby’s head finally came earthside. For the first time in any of my labors, my mind felt clear enough to move one of my hands down and rest it on the top of my baby’s head and stroke its hair for the couple of minutes we had left to labor together. Partway in, partway out, the hardest work still felt like the hardest work with this baby, and my midwife found baby’s little left hand resting on its cheek. She gently helped it come free, and with the next wave, we got to meet all of this baby. With some help, baby was brought out of the water and I held it to my chest. The only things I was capable of in the next few minutes were laughing, vocalizing a tearful “hi” over and over again while kissing baby’s head, and silently sobbing. 41 weeks + 2 days led up to the beauty of these moments and beyond. I felt new again. A mother to three. A family of five. Jer and the boys (and Oscar) climbed into bed with me once I was able to get there (with lots of help) and we all existed together, reveling in the newness.
I found out shortly after that there had been a blue heron just outside the bedroom window, standing silently on the closest side of the pond to our house, throughout the time I was pushing my baby out. No doubt it was fishing, instinctively taking care of itself while happening to be in close proximity to me. But all the same, the timing was impeccable. Upon looking up the meaning of a blue heron sighting, one of the first things that comes up is “spiritual transformation.”
The parallel continues to astound me … all the way back to scouring the Internet for winter clothes in October, to finding my warm maternity winter coat, to embracing the cold season with the boys, to dealing with an uninsulated home in the dead of Pennsylvania winter, to moving homes a fourth time in 15 months and nesting while setting up our new space, to spending some final sweet family of four moments together while in early labor, to working through transition with Jeremy in the peacefulness of our bedroom, to ultimately pushing our baby out while the presence of a blue heron was just past the glass pane of the window … birth is transforming. Life is transforming.
There’s a video of me from about fifteen minutes after baby is born. I’m laying bed, filled with birth hormones, newborn on my chest and we are both covered in blankets, the boys and Jer surrounding us. Harrison and Dylan had already asked a few times if baby was a boy or a girl and we felt ready to find out. I peek through a few layers of blankets as Jer pulls them back, and my face immediately turns into that stereotypical surprised face- eyes wide, mouth in a circle. All I can say is “is that …” and as I’m internally processing there’s a nice long pause before I externalize “are those balls?” Cue the laughter in the room. My motherhood journey has led me to be a boy mom of three now. And I am fully embracing it. Bring on the continued boy antics … these three have fires in their hearts that will keep me smiling and laughing for a lifetime.
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| one day old |
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| all three boys have worn this onesie now |
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| the boys |
And would you know, we actually had TWO boy names ready this time! We weren't entirely certain which one suited him best that first night, so we waited until the next morning to make the decision. Ultimately, we chose the name we had thought of during the early weeks of my pregnancy; a name that I used in a very vivid dream at some point later on during the third trimester- a dream that maybe I should have given more clout to, considering how I saw this baby and used his name in it, yet still was mostly convinced I was having a girl for the duration of my pregnancy with him
Denver Elijah, we can't imagine anyone else but you, the perfect addition to our family.
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| Denver Elijah, 2 days old |
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| proud of this birth, proud of this boy the sweetest outfit, gifted by our midwife |
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| settling in, 10 days old |
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| yes, he has a namesake |
Open up your hands and feel the rain come down,
taste the wind and smell the flowers' sweet perfume.
Open up your mind and let the light come in, the earth has been reborn and life goes on.
Do you care what's happening around you? Do your senses know the changes when they come?
Can you see yourself reflected in the seasons? Can you understand the need to carry on?
Riding on the tapestry of all there is to see, so many ways and oh, so many things.
Rejoicing in the differences, there's no one just like me.
Yet as different as we are, we're still the same.
And oh, I love the life within me, I feel a part of everything I see.
And oh, I love the life around me, a part of everything is here in me.
A part of everything is here in me, a part of everything is here in me.
Those three bolded lines at the end were an anthem for me during the last weeks of pregnancy with Denver, though to the tune of the "Summer" song. And in the first trimester of my pregnancy, the boys and I drove back and forth from Kentucky to Pennsylvania quite a few times. This drive involves going through all of West Virginia, and our tradition is to listen to John Denver's greatest hits album a few times during that part of the drive. It's sweet to think back on those drives, knowing now that little Denver was growing inside me while we sang along to his namesake.
And here we are, the end of April, a little over a month after his birth. I've slowly become more active as the weeks have passed; emerging from the intensity of labor and the quiet moments of caring for an infant at the same time the trees are blooming and the daffodils and dandelions are peeking out like sunshine through the green grass. The birds are surely singing and the tree frogs put on a chorus every night. There is new life everywhere.
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| taken two days late, third child woes |
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| these boys have expanded my heart, and they have all of it |
Kozeluh family of 5, joy abounds
