We think Anna Kate is great!

My people.

Here she is in all her eight-week-old splendor.

more photos

Some days I'm surprised to wake up and be the mother of two!

I knitted this hat for the baby to come. Looks like baby torture to me.
But it was my first "serious" project, and a lot of fun to knit.

home with Anna Kate

Coming home from the hospital to a new lambskin for Anna and coffee and "jewish rolls" made by my mama was wonderful.

Four days oldSeven days old...at her doctor appointment yesterday we learned she had already regained her birth weight and an extra three and a half ounces :).

the birth of Anna Kate

It started last Friday evening, casual and cozy, with Joel, Yolanda, Bianca, then Becky. Henry and Noah and Eric, too. The moon was a pregnant crescent with a star below it.

Joel repaired the piano bench I had broken earlier in the week. With the support of Bianca and our two chosen companions I labored at home till 4:00 a.m. Then we drove to the hospital.Transition was amazingly hard. And amazingly amazing. Anna Kate was born at 6:23 a.m. on Saturday, February 28, one week past her due date. Pushing her out was one of my life's most unforgettable experiences.Welcome, Anna Kate, 8 lbs. 4 oz., 19.5 inches long. Your birth was everything I had hoped for: a safe, loving, natural VBAC. No meds, no external fetal monitoring, no interventions, made possible through Mystery, a supportive husband, an i.n.c.r.e.d.i.b.l.e. doula, dear friend/sisters, the prayers of dozens and dozens of people. Made possible by my body, made to do just what it did. Made possible by you, Anna Kate, because you made your way through. Welcome, welcome, welcome!

My gratitude to Yolanda for taking all these photos to help me keep those thirteen hours of labor and the following moments in my heart and mind. Being the clergy person I am, I can't help but paraphrase a favorite verse of mine from Ephesians:

²¹Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to You be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

so you can imagine we were really there

Henry thought it would be so neat if I would post this picture I took (at his request) of President Obama (at his recent speech before congress) so that people would think we were really there! You'll have to imagine the KPTS call letters and PBS logo out of the screen.

blessings

A few days after my last post women gathered at our house for a belated Candlemas / Imbolc birth blessing led by Jen and Yolanda. Here are some of the beautiful images they painted on my belly.One of the evening's rituals included planting birthing blessings into the soil in this bowl. A week or so later, I planted nasturtium seeds in amongst the blessings.

with great trust

About a year after I began blogging, a year after a second miscarriage, we wait for a second child, due around February 20. I met Rainer Maria Rilke when I was sixteen through his book Letters to a Young Poet. I'm not sixteen anymore, but a 38-year-old mother. Rilke's words, though, ring truer than ever.

Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms...

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

...[B]ut take whatever comes with great trust.

Wow! I have no idea how this is all going to shake out...how we will become a family of four. But I'm taking it with great trust...as much of the time as I can, and trying to knit my way through uncertainty. I hope to show photos of that endeavor soon.