We put Mahko in his cradleboard this morning at sunrise. It was a pretty special moment. My dad was able to find a person to make us a cradleboard, and it arrived in the mail last week. Sweets gathered the appropriate things we needed for the ceremony to put him in the cradleboard, but then sweets went out of town so we had to wait to do it. So this morning, at 5:22 we did the ceremony in our bedroom and Mahko fell asleep almost instantly. It was nice.
It's funny, I have all these special ceremonies for Mahko that I think of as being uniquely Apache or at least uniquely native. But then the other day I was talking with a Catholic friend of mine. We were talking about what we had been doing lately and I told her that we had gone to the forest to do a ceremonial bathing of Mahko in a stream and take care of his placenta. She replied, "oh, yeah- we had our kid christened too." I was totally taken aback by the connection. Then I realized that my Apache ceremony of washing our infant in a fast-running stream isn't all that different from dribbling holy water on the head of a christian baby. I spend all this time looking for differences, someone has to hit me over the head before I will see the similarities.
Another biggie around here was the first bottle feed by sweets. He had been pressuring me to pump milk so he could help with the feedings. Yesterday he announced that it was time. I tried to procrastinate as much as I could, but there is some information somewhere that says that the best time to introduce a bottle is between 4 and 6 weeks. Well, here we are so we better get down to business. After an entire afternoon of dragging my feet, I finally did the deed and pumped about 1 1/2 ounces of milk. When Mahko was ready, sweets fed him. Much to my relief, Mahko really didn't care for the bottle and resumed his normal nursing with gusto when given the option.
I don't really know why I am so reluctant to give up this responsibility, especially considering how much I bitch about nursing. The relentless nature of it, the pain associated with it, the trouble with getting the kiddo to latch on and stay latched on and not cause permanent damage to my nipples... yet I really am not happy about having him bottle fed. I guess I want to pretend that he is all mine for just a little bit longer.
When we took care of the placenta there was a moment where I made my last look at it. The placenta was a deep purple, bloody mass of tissue. It looks a lot like any other visceral organ- like liver, or even a heart. I looked at it and thought about how that was the last bit of the birth. I thought about how it was the only object Mahko and I had left that we had shared. It represented the time when he and I were both of the same being. I even cried a little as I said good-bye, which is a miracle in and of itself considering how much I didn't enjoy being pregnant. So we returned the placenta to nature and went on our way. Not bittersweet, but not entirely one or the other either. I'm having a hard time describing the hesitant nature, the emotional confusion that this process has been.
And now he wants to eat again. until next time, my friends!