The past week was a bit stressful...I decided to sell my massage and yoga studio in Warren and it's taken up a lot of my time. We were supposed to be in my hometown just two weeks, but it's already been two weeks and looks like we will be here a lot longer.
These past two weeks have been full of so much emotion. I was so excited to share the news of our pregnancy with close family and friends (which also included Leo sharing in this excitement, incase you read the previous post about him not sharing in my excitement the first two days). We were thrilled to hear the sound of the baby's heartbeat and see it on the ultrasound screen for the first time. I watched as family members shared in our excitement and my mom was so proud to become a grandma, AGAIN. Her joy of being Mimi to my niece and nephew is incredible to watch. She is the best grandma ever, next to my grandma Joan. But then there has been stressful emotions.... Leo soon shared in excitement of fatherhood a few weeks ago. The first day or two he wasn't expressing his emotions, but as soon as I heard him share the news with a few very close friends, I saw his eyes light up and heart seep out into every ounce of his being. He was so proud to be stepping down the path of having a child. He was loving with me, and recognized that I was carrying OUR child. But then we got to my hometown and fear seeped in. Leo grew up in a military family, which means he was surrounded by women. He felt most comfortable sharing space with women as he had little father figures in his community. So when we got to my house, he saw my dad being a grandpa to my niece and nephew, and my grandpa being an involved great grandpa. He saw all the men in my family being engaged and hands-on with all the children, no matter what the age. His fears around being the type of father he desired to be started to creep in. Could he be the type of dad that I was used to having in my life? Could he be the type of dad he wished he had in his life? Could he be the partner to me he desired to be? As these questions dug into his heart, he put up a wall. He was short, and argumentative, which was something I have never experienced with him. As a partner, Leo has always been supportive, patient, loving, and peaceful in conversing about emotions we went through as our partnership grew. So here I am pregnant with his child, and now he decides to become difficult to communicate with? Am I the one with the hormones raging through my body, or is he the one with a hormonal shift?! The daddy effect of men having symptoms was occurring before my eyes. All he wanted to do was sleep, argue, or be in silence...WHO WAS THIS MAN? This is not the person I committed to as a life partner and as someone to raise a family with. And then it all made sense. He shared his fears, he let me into his mind and heart, and I was able to see all that he had been struggling with. He wasn't trying to push me away, but he was trying to find any little demons inside of himself that were tying him down from excelling in fatherhood. He is amazing with kids. He is an amazing partner. He is all the things I could have ever wanted for this commitment in life, and there he was questioning himself. He wasn't purposefully trying to put up a wall and leave me feeling confused on whether he was regretting the baby. But instead he was exploring how he could be the best dad and partner. How could someone who just spent the past few years traveling alone now become someone who is financially abundant to be able to raise a family? Where would he want to live to support me and the baby? Could he meet up to his own expectations as a dad and the ones he assumed I have based on the great men that raised me? We spent the past few weeks exploring all these emotions and in the end, all I really ended up doing was loving him. Hugging him. Giving him the support I wanted. All we needed from each other was love, support, trust and honesty about the types of fears that becoming a parent brings up. And then there is this question: Where are we going to have the baby? I want to be near my family for delivery. Everyone in my family, all my aunts/cousins/sister are always surrounded by the love of our family during the birthing process. Everyone has delivered in my hometown hospital. The waiting room is filled of grandparents, siblings, parents, cousins, and friends as everyone celebrates in the arrival of the new baby. Meals are made, baby is watched so mama can sleep, and so much love is shared during the first days, into weeks, months, and years. I know I don't want to live in my hometown, but to imagine delivering my first child without my mother, sister, grandma, dad, brother, grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins near...well I just can't imagine it. I have spent afternoons in tears at the thought of my mom not being by my side. So, why not just have her fly out to wherever we are living the week I am due...well it's just not that easy. My mom has been dealing with cancer since 2013. She is currently in chemo treatments and there is really no guarantee of how her health will be. She has been very healthy and doing great, but then there is the time off work. She uses all her time from work for chemo days, recovery days, and doctors appointments. She doesn't have the finances to just take off and not work. So I sit and I try to find a solution and I cry. I cry because I can't have it all. I want a home birth, far away from my hometown (Hawaii preferably where Leo grew up), and I want my mom, sister, grandma, dad, brother, and grandpa all there. Oh and my aunt and cousins, and Lindsay, and Linda, and other women from home. But this is just one of those times that I can't get what I want, or at least not all of it. So WHERE do we want to nest and ground and deliver our first child? In a hospital? At home? Where is home? In the middle of exploring all of these emotions, I decided what we really needed was some time reconnecting to ourselves in nature. I took Leo to Rimrock, a local hiking area, so we could get outside and enjoy the fall air, feel reconnected to the Earth, and then remember that all the human emotions we had been letting take over were going to come and go, but that we would always still be there supportive and loving. It felt so great to be walking and hiking and breathing in fresh air. I could tell that my body had been pretty stagnant for the past few weeks. I also could tell that I was pregnant! Climbing up the stairs along the path totally exhausted me and I was breathing harder than I ever had during that hike. My baby must be really starting to grow. We took pictures with the beautiful fall leaves and enjoyed the day. Happily we returned to my parents house feeling recharged. As I sat in the kitchen waiting for dinner, I spoke with my mom about coming out to be with me for the birth of our child if we settled in Hawaii or California. As I sat there talking with her, I suddenly felt a warm rush of liquid pouring out of me. I ran to the bathroom and my heart broke as I saw the toilet filling with blood. I called in my mom and Leo, and I saw in their eyes that they were trying to be supportive and tell me I was ok and the baby was ok, but they were scared that everything wasn't ok. I started to cramp in my lower abdomen and also in my back. I laid on the couch in pain while some more blood seeped out slowly. My mom tried to convince me to go to the hospital but I refused. If I was losing my baby, there was nothing that could be done at 8 weeks, and I would rather be in the privacy of my own home. My sister came over and I broke in her arms. Was I too old? Was I not meant to be a mother? Was it all the stress of selling my business? Or the stress of processing with Leo? Was it the hike? Would I ever get to be a mother? I called the hospital and they recommended I see the doctor at the OBGYN office first thing in the morning. I kept myself in bed the rest of the night and felt a little better that the bleeding slowed down and the cramping disappeared. The next morning I went into the doctor's office and they set up a sonogram. The woman who took my vitals couldn't make eye contact. It was as if she already was telling me I lost my baby. The doctor came in and put the gel on my belly and immediately we heard and saw a heartbeat. I couldn't believe it! Tears filled my eyes and I had a lump in my throat. But then the news was delivered that I had a subchorionic bleed. There was a bleed around my uterus that was about the length of the baby, and in order for the baby to grow and be safe, the bleed would need to heal. The only way for this to happen was for the body to heal itself. I was immediately placed on bedrest for two weeks. The doctor left the room and I was sitting there with Leo crying over the joy of still having a baby inside of me, but the fear of losing it. So I went home and got on the couch. And I will remain there for the next week and half until the next ultrasound can confirm that my body has healed itself. Looks like our stay in my hometown just got extended another two weeks...
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We rushed home to Pennsylvania from Minnesota, and went to the OBGYN to confirm our pregnancy. They ordered a blood test and ultrasound. We heard the baby's heartbeat immediately and the reality of becoming parents became all the more real.
We thought, based on my moon cycle, that we would be about 8 weeks pregnant...but the ultrasound stated that the estimated due date was May 15th and that we were 6 weeks pregnant. After a quick look at a calendar, I realized that this meant we conceived on Sacred Ground at Sacred Stone Camp at Standing Rock Reservation. We honored the sacred space at Sacred Stone, and only had one or two intimate engagements in the privacy of our tent during our two week stay. The day we conceived I already thought I was possibly pregnant. It was right around the Full Moon in August as we camped near the Cannonball River to protect the water from the DAPL. We felt so strongly that we had a Peaceful Warrior coming into our lives. One that would being us lessons, healing, and wisdom for the new consciousness that was transpiring in our world. Are we bringing in an old soul full of warrior wisdom, yet peaceful intentions to lead us into a new way of living? As we looked back at all the signs we had been receiving while at Standing Rock, we realized that it made perfect sense that we conceived there. It was a time of great shift, and it was a realization that the world is shifting into a new reality, and here we were Birthing our own New Reality of Life. The sound of a heart beating inside of you...another little human beginning it's life...I felt overwhelmed with indescribable emotion. I was excited, scared, happy, emotional, and curious for our new life journey. I was so excited to be pregnant...still in shock, but full of excitement. I was sitting in a cabin in the middle of Iowa celebrating all alone. Well not entirely alone, my partner Leo, the baby daddy, was there by my side. But he checked out, he wasn't present, he was zoned out on television (we hadn't watched TV more than five times since May). He was in shock I guess, but more so he was being selfish. He had had his mind set on being in a cabin relaxing and recharging. Sleeping, watching old movies, sitting on the porch listening to the birds, making love, taking naps...but never did he consider that he would be processing becoming a dad. So he didn't, he avoided processing and feeling the reality of becoming a father because it wasn't part of his two day "plan". He avoided it...he watched as I put together a home video for our family and close friends to watch as our first pregnancy announcement. (See video here: vimeo.com/182023047 ). But he didn't really truly celebrate with me...I called my sister and brother and celebrated with them, until my video was done being edited so I could share it with our close family. I got frustrated and wanted to see emotion come out of him....but it just never did...well not never, he did kiss me and hug me occasionally and laugh at my silly excitement and random exclamations of "Oh my god we are having a baby!". But then he just went back to watching a movie or sleeping.
So I found it within myself to celebrate on my own. At this point I had taken three positive pregnancy tests so I was certain it was real. So I had conversations in my mind with the little human growing inside of me. "I will try my best, but be gentle with me because this is my first time being a mother". I tried to stay grounded, to embrace the moment but not be overly emotional. But it was hard when the person I wanted to share in the excitement with had checked out for the day, or week...or what if he checked out forever? What if he wasn't ever going to be excited? What if he thought he wanted to be my life partner, but now with the reality of a child, he decided he didn't want this life for himself? What if he was walking away from us? I had to calm my mind. I had to accept his way of processing, or even his way of avoiding processing the fact that he was going to become a father for the first time. I had to allow all his fears, dreams, expectations, and thoughts to unwind and trust that he would be back to support me like he had been doing our entire relationship. That he would, in his own time, find the excitement amongst all the unknowns of this new territory. I had to trust that innately women and men respond differently. I had to believe that he really was ready and wanting to raise a child with me. I had to remember that the previous two weeks when I took three negative tests, for each test he was supportive and loving. But that during those tests he was prepared and knew I was going to the bathroom to take them. And that this time I really just shocked him with an "I'm pregnant", no warning, nothing on the radar to show it might be happening. I had to allow my partner to be himself, in his own process, his own time, his own emotions. So, I celebrated alone. Hoping that in the very near future, I would have a partner sharing in the joy, both inwardly and outwardly, as a proud father and parter. I suspected I was pregnant for weeks...I actually began taking pregnancy tests a day or two after we conceived. This was not because I was obsessing about it...not yet. ;) But because I had been having dreams and signs that I was pregnant. For weeks leading up to conceiving everyone around us, friends and strangers, were telling us that they saw our children coming into our lives very soon. We agreed as we actually had just begun talking about having a family together that month. And we consciously decided not to avoid it...we were doing the exact thing you need to do in order to conceive...but we thought it would take a little while to actually happen.
Let's backtrack a little...In July 2015 I nearly died. It is actually surprising that I didn't. In the wee hours of a summer night, I sat in a recliner in the most pain I had ever experienced, feeling like my abdomen was literally going to explode. You could physically see my insides pressing against the abdominal wall about to explode through. Hard as a rock, my small bowel had been not functioning for about 15 inches and my 84 pound body had very little left to help it heal. I had already been hospitalized for a week in May and June. I had been on the couch for five months, wasting away, hoping for a miraculous healing. I knew I had let stress in my life, bad habits, and unbalance mind and spirit tear open into my body at it's weakest area...my digestive tract. I tried to get back into my own healing, but it was too late. I waited six months too long to address all the areas in my life contributing to the degeneration of my intestinal lining. The most frustrating part was I knew all I needed to know to prevent it from getting this bad...but I still let it happen. So there I sat, knowing that if I took one bite of food, my insides would rupture and I would not survive. So I put nothing into my body. Drove myself three hours to Cleveland Clinic for a pre-op appointment for a surgery that wasn't scheduled for another three weeks, and prayer... A LOT. I made it to the pre-op and testing and happened to receive a phone call from the surgeons office. They had a cancellation and I was at the top of the list to get the spot. I declined, hoping for a test result to show any sign of healing. But during the test, my body screamed out to me in a way that I knew if I wanted to live, I needed to call back and have surgery that week. I called back and was so relieved that they hadn't found anyone else to take the spot of the best gastrointestinal surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. I was scheduled to have surgery in 35 hours. And then I began questioning my desire to live. I just spent five months on the couch, in horrific pain. But the past six weeks I found a new light. I reconnected to myself. I found love, not on the outside, but within. I had so much love inside of me that I ignored for two years after moving back home. I focused on helping my mother survive through cancer, I opened the only yoga studio in the county, and I navigated through a relationship that had many hard lessons. I was surrounded by people who thought I was a crazy liberal...but I really was a woman who wanted EVERYONE to thrive with passion and joy...who could do so with respect for all. But in my hometown, I was weird...a "witch" who practiced Reiki, an anti-Christian who practiced and taught yoga...all sorts of crazy things I have heard that strangers said about me...when all I was doing was returning to my hometown with visions of how it could thrive and be a great place for all people to live in. And in doing all of this, I lost my own passion. I felt defeated by the sadness that surrounded me. The lack of passion. The false friendships, the ones where as soon as someone leaves the room, everyone talks about them. BUT after five months alone, living at home with my parents but spending most of my time alone in a camper in the backyard, I found Myself, My Love, My Passion, All the Joys that Excited me before and all the New Joys that would Ignite me later in life. I found a reason to live again. I lost any fear of death at this point...I actually had accepted it as a reality. But I didn't want to die, I felt like I was just starting to live again for the first time in two years. So I accepted Western Medicine, signed up for surgery, and started to pray real hard for full healing and safety in the major surgery-removal of 15 inches of the small bowel, including the appendix and ileum and detaching a fistula from my bladder...hoping it would heal itself and I would one day live my dreams and passion. In the back of my mind, I was mostly frightened that if I did live through it, I would never be able to have children. A thought that I never expected to have. When the surgeon said "Do you have kids" and I said "No"; she then said "Do you want kids?", and something deep deep inside shouted "YES", but instead I responded "I want the option to have kids incase one day I want them". She proceeded to tell me she couldn't guarantee I would be able to...that after the surgery I may never be able to have children, or that I may not be able to conceive "naturally"...as in I may be able to have test-tube children? Plus, I hadn't had my moon cycle in months due to the drastic weight loss and malnutrition. So I prayed for healing, I prayed for an aware and precise surgeon team, I prayed to wake up without an ileostomy bag attached to me, and I prayed for the ability to have children (which was weird because I spent most my 20's wondering if I was just meant to be an aunt my whole life). When I awoke from surgery two days later, I already was let down to see an ileostomy bag...but they were confident that if I could gain weight and allow my body to heal that it would be reversed within three months. Learning to live with an ileostomy was a very unpleasant time. I got depressed. I felt like I would never be "normal" again. I wished I had let myself die...that I had never had surgery. And then I had to learn to give myself IV's through a PICC line every night for 10-12 hours in order to survive. I was literally living off of 2000 calories in a liquid bad pumping into my veins each night. And even when I started eating, the food came out the ileostomy so quickly that I wasn't absorbing nutrients, so I had to get everything from the IV to live. And I really just wanted to die...I spent ten days in the hospital, an extra few days due to an infection, and a near mishap by staff that I spoke up and questioned which saved my life...if you mix too many things in the IV, some tests can take your life...the tests trying to save you can actually take your very life away. Thank God I was aware and very observant and questioned everything in the hospital, because I saved myself from a mistake by a few overworked tired, end of the shift workers...Once I was home I felt confined to the house. IV's 4 times a day for an hour, and one at night for 10-12 hours...my life revolved around the IV. I found the depression taking over. My mom, who was healing herself from surgery a month earlier, had to witness my meltdowns. My breaking point was an evening when the IV wasn't functioning and I was about to spend the night without the 2000 calories and I knew that meant I may lose up to five pounds overnight. I was so mad I found my fist in the dining room table...and when I looked up and saw the heartbreak in my parents' eyes, I knew there was only one thing left to do. I needed to reconnect to that passion and love I found within, just a few weeks earlier. The next day, I sat on the floor inhaling my arms up and down, through the pain I found my breath again, I found solace and I found the sense of home. I made myself breathe, stretch, meditate, paint, read, sing, and cook to bring me out of the lowest low I had ever experienced. It was only a few weeks of misery, but it felt like a lifetime. How exhausting it was to hate my life. Once I climbed out of the hole, I promised to always move forward and higher. To accept that I may fall down and feel like I am stepping backwards at times, but to continue to reach within to find that which is always there. It was around this time of turnaround...this time of self love and a new freedom into passionate living that I connected with Leo (my future baby daddy) on Facebook. He himself was exploring passion and dreaming of what a community of passionate people could look like. We messaged a few times about possible future collaborations, but both went on our own journeys into more self healing for the next seven months. I spent time traveling and exploring my passions (music, dance, yoga, meditation) and found a new sense of self and purpose. I was on top of the world when I met Leo in May 2016. In fact, as he stood behind me at a Nahko and Medicine for the People concert, I thought to myself "Don't fall in love with me"...because, well I was just loving my life the way it was and I didn't need a man to interfere with the beautiful flow that was my journey. Little did I know Leo was thinking to himself "Don't fall in love with me Cassandra". But it was too late, we had already loved each other...though in denial for a little while...it was done. Leo and I spent the next three months together 24/7, living in my tent and car, traveling with our dear friend Ryan and many others (too many to name) who continued to spark us with passion and visions for how to live in community. One night in August, just after meeting my parents, and a few days after the first mention of children, we decided to allow it...We were not "trying" to get pregnant, but we were not avoiding it either. We trusted in the Divine Timing of Life, and knew that our journey together as life partners, business partners, and parenting partners was really just in the infancy stages...and we opened up for what life would bring us if we just allowed it to flow in. So we found ourselves, along with many others, called to Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to Protect the Water, and stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. We arrived August 10th and found ourselves on the front lines. The land was magical. We arrived around midnight and a white horse and her calf greeted us at the camp gates. This should have been our first omen, had we allowed ourselves to see it clearly. The moment my feet touched the Earth, I knew we were on Sacred Ground. There was a presence, a feeling that swept through to the bones that is indescribable. We placed our tent near the Cannonball River, and I knew we were exactly where we needed to be. We observed as hundreds of indigenous turned into thousands. Tribes coming together for the first time in over a century, and some tribes coming together for the first time ever. Nations from across the globe joining to protect the next 7 generations. For two weeks we worked at Sacred Stone Camp finding ourselves learning how to live in community with people from across the globe all uniting for the common good of all. For Water is Life (Mni Wiconi). As those around us asked if we were expecting a child, I started dreaming that I was pregnant. I had clear visions and felt like something in my body was not "normal". My breasts were tender, and though I was about to start my moon cycle, this time it felt different. I felt out of balance, my hormones controlling my moods more than when I was a teenager. I had little patience and felt like being alone, although I couldn't help but love the beauty of the gathering of the tribes that surrounded me. I felt like the heat was getting to me more than normal...I was tired and took a nap (I never take naps)...And so I was convinced, we must have conceived a few weeks ago in Pennsylvania. Two days after my moon was late, I took a test. Surprisingly negative...but I felt let down, sad it wasn't a positive result. This was the first time in my life that I was wanting to be pregnant...I really felt like I was and I was so disappointed that the test was negative. But a few days later, my moon was still late...so I tried again...and again it was Negative...I felt so confused. I was convinced I felt like I was pregnant. I waited another few days and yet again another Negative result?! So then fear crept in...what if my moon was disappearing? Back in 2015 when I was sick, I didn't have my moon for 9 months and I didn't think it would ever return, but it did...and what if now there was something wrong inside of me and my moon was stopping again? I had to release any fear and doubt. I had to trust that no matter what was going on inside my body, that I was healthy. I ate well, I took vitamins, I tried to sleep well, and I tried to keep my mind still....but something deep within kept whispering "You are pregnant". Leo and I joined our tribe and traveled to a music festival to hold Sacred Fire and I felt like it would be a good distraction to whatever my body was experiencing. The weekend was full of love, reconnecting with friends we met earlier in the summer, music, Sacred Fire, releasing and letting go, healing, and community. . The first day there I started bleeding and thought my moon arrived...but I kept telling Leo it was weird, and just not normal. I was bleeding about half of what I normally would during a day of my moon. But I bled for a full week, so maybe all the traveling just brought me a weird cycle. The day we left the festival to head north to another festival, a two days drive away, we stopped to stay in a cabin in the middle of Iowa. This was the first time in our travels we were completely alone for 48 hours straight. No other humans with us for two whole days! We were excited to have a bed, a tv and old vhs movies, a bathroom and shower, a porch looking at a pond...and privacy! As we unloaded the car, I found one last pregnancy test that I thought I would get rid of. I just had my moon, but it was really light and I wanted one last confirmation that I had been just imagining being pregnant. I snuck into the bathroom as Leo finished unloading the car, and it took less than two seconds for the POSITIVE sign to show up. Oh shit, Leo didn't even know I was taking this test! He knew I was taking the other three that were negative last week and the week before...but he had no idea I was taking this test...how was I going to walk out there and tell him? So I just walked out to the porched, yelled out his name with a shaky voice, and prepared...as he came around the car and saw my face, he knew something was up...I couldn't beat around the bush and I am know for being straight forward and blunt...so I squeaked out "I'm pregnant" and held up the test. His reaction was not very much of anything....it was actually pretty emotionless. He hugged me but other than that, he didn't know what to say or do. But all I knew was there was a miracle growing inside of me. I was pregnant. And we thought we were finally alone for 48 hours, but we realized quickly that we would not be "alone" for a very long time. |
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February 2018
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