Cultivate Joy

The word joy has been resonating with me this ENTIRE pregnancy. More specifically, cultivating joy. During this pregnancy, while I have been overwhelmed by love and support, I have had to find the balance between celebrating and grieving, all at the same time. I have had to hold space and allow myself to sit with uncomfortable truths. I have had to grieve the loss of the baby that we lost only a month before conceiving our second rainbow babe. I have had to grieve the loss of my mother (because pregnancy has a way of bringing it all to the surface.)  I have had to grieve and sit with the uncomfortable truth that I may never be as close to certain extended family members as I would like. All of these truths are currently reality. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel comfortable.

Truthfully, for someone like me, I hate sitting in discomfort. It sucks. My natural tendency is to avoid it all together. What does that look like? For me, avoidance looks like subjecting myself to same behaviors or thought patterns, hoping for a different outcome, all to avoid the truth. This pregnancy is where I finally sat with it all and didn't try to change IT or OTHERS. This time around, I sat in the discomfort and stared the truth square in the eyes. It hurt. I found that by sitting with the truth and acknowledging it as a reality that holds the possibility to change (or not) with no help from yours truly, it didn't break me. I found that by acknowledging these things that could not change, I was able to focus most effectively on the things that I could change. I was able to truly cultivate joy.

I began focusing on the healthy relationships that are present. I began to examine friendships/ relationships (business or personal) with the same light as I would examine the food that I ingest. Is it toxic? Does it bring life? Is it harmful? I began to celebrate this rainbow pregnancy, while also allowing myself to pause and feel sad for the loss that I had previously experienced. I listened to what felt good on the inside and didn't question.

So, what does Joy mean? It means, acknowledging reality or truth, yet choosing to see/find joy in what also is truth. For me, it means acknowledging that while I am not as close as I would like to be in certain extended family relationships, I have no shortage of a village within my friendships and within my immediate family unit (my husband and boys).  It means acknowledging, that while there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about my mother,  I have great hope that although she is not present in physical form, she is not absent in spirit.  For me, cultivating joy means acknowledging the loss and all the feelings that come along with it. It means pausing and holding space for myself, all while trusting and accepting that I may never know the why of loss, but perhaps my body knows. Joy means holding space for the present, because it truly is a gift. 

Turning Passion & Pain Into Purpose

My name is Siaba, i’m 28 years old and the founder of Boo.B.Smoothie. 
I first became pregnant at age 19 when I was in my second year of university. Mr B and I had been seeing each other on and off for about 8 months and then BAMM! I realized that I had not seen my period for a while (which was not strange because I had irregular periods.) So, just to be safe, I took a pregnancy test. He made it clear that he wasn’t ready to be a dad, and nor was I ready to be a mum. It still didn’t make the abortion any easier. Just before going into the operation room, I went on my knees and cried to God. I can’t even remember what I said. I just remember crying so hard and feeling so confused. I moaned for the baby  years after and was unable to come to terms with what happened. I fell into depression right after and gained a load of weight. Living away from home made it easy for my depression to go undetected. I guess I just grew out of it naturally.  After years of carrying the guilt around I went to see a therapist about the experience.  I Learned that I made a decision based on where I was and who I was at that time in my life and that it didn’t mean I would make the same decision again at a different time and age in my life. 

Fast forward to 2014, after a long term relationship some years earlier, I find myself in another casual relationship... This time with Mr D who I had been dating on and off for two years. On June 4th 2014, we found out I was pregnant. I was shocked but also excited. He was just shocked and depressed about the news. I didn’t understand why he was so unhappy about it. We were so close, almost like best friends (well so I thought ). Eventually he came around to the news by which point I was scared at the reality of becoming a mother but still excited.   That all changed when 3 days before I was due to give birth I found out he had been cheating on me the whole time we had dated. I’m talking from week 1!! My body went into shock due to the high level of stress I felt. I was 12 days over due with my son. The stress also affected my ability to make milk ( I found out later on from a lactation consultant). Nevertheless, I gave all that I could to adjusting to motherhood. Internally, however I was broken. BROKEN!!  As soon as I was alone I would cry, screamed into a pillow or just sleep hoping I would wake up and find out it was all just a bad dream. I just couldn’t make sense of it. The hurt consumed me, yet at the same time the joy of my son brought me peace. My feeling were so conflicted I felt like two different people. I kept my shit together when people were around because I didn’t want to worry my family and friends.   I felt tourn apart, but my innocent little baby didn’t know that. He just needed me to survive. Truth be told, I needed him even more.  I can honestly tell you that my son saved me. He gave me something to focus on, to wake up for and pull through each day. Adjusting to single parent life wasn’t difficult because I didn’t know anything else. It was just the way it was. 

The saying "every cloud has a silver lining" is definitely the case in this story. When I struggled to make breast milk my mum began feeding me certain African dishes and other foods that she had researched. Within a week of eating high volumes of the foods that my mum was feeding me, my milk supply picked up dramatically. I had so much milk I didn’t know what to do with it. It made me want to know more about the foods I had been eating and what made them so good for breastfeeding mothers. So my fascination grew the more I read and researched. It became a bit of an obsession, and it kept my mind away from the hurt and pain. Being able to breastfeed my son successfully built my confidence. It made me feel able and happy to see him grow so healthy and happy. I started using the ingredients known as Lactogenic ingredients to make smoothies because it was more convenient for me. When a friend of mine was experiencing low milk supply, I gave her a week supply of my lactation smoothies. After a week she called and said “what do you put in those smoothies? My boobs are engorged.  You should totally sell them to breastfeeding mothers”. The rest is history as they say. Boo.B.Smoothie is my second baby. I started this business with a £1000 tax rebate that came at the perfect time.

In one year,  i’ve gone from making and delivering fresh smoothies all over London, to now making and shipping powdered versions of the smoothies all over the world. My son and my business combined have given me all that I need to move on with my life. Am I still hurt? Yes!! Do I still cry at night? Not as much. Somehow I took all the hurt and pain of the last few years and channeled it into something good. I can’t explain the amazing feeling I feel when I receive messages and emails from women saying how the smoothies have helped them feed their babies and encouraged them to not give up. That’s the exact message I hope my story and Boo.B.Smoothie sends out. Don’t ever give up! Not on yourself or what you want.

My Biological Father Tried...My story of forgiveness and gratitude

My biological father tried... He was an abusive husband, a manipulative father, alcoholic, and addict.  He wasn't a good person.  Truthfully, he was the textbook guy that mothers warned their daughters about.  My mother had run off with him at the age of seventeen. He was charming, handsome, an artist of sorts... and explosive. My mother and father had me a couple of years later. They remained married until I was ten years old. During this time, I witnessed my mother being beaten, stomped on, locked out of the house... abused. My father would tell me things that a father should never tell a daughter. He was suicidal... After their separation, he would share with me his thoughts on the possibility of taking his own life. I felt a twisted responsibility to keep my parents together. I was a child. I feared him... I was confused by him... My biological father had sweet moments. I remember moments of him doing my hair, preparing me for school. I remember going to the park.  I remember listening to his favorite band, Earth, Wind, and Fire. 

My parents finally divorced. My mother remarried my stepdad, Ronald, whom I often refer to as my dad. He was kind, funny, loud, and everything that my mother deserved. He loved my mother with every bone in his body. He wanted to heal her... He loved my sister and I. He was/ is love. 

My mother protected my sister and I from the emotional baggage of my biological father... We didn't speak or see my biological father for years... I didn't see him until I was twenty-nine years old... at my mother's funeral. It was a very weird moment. My husband met my biological father for the first time at that moment. I looked at this mysterious yet familiar man. There he was in front of me. He visibly older. I no longer was the ten year old girl that he had known previously. I look at him. The feelings that I feel, are not of anger... although it would have been warranted.  I don't feel the fear that I had felt as a young child. I feel... empathy. I don't see my father... I see a boy... a boy unloved. My biological father's mother was a teenager when she became pregnant with him.  His mother would leave him abandoned for days in his crib... in his dirty diapers. Although this level of neglect isn't typical behavior for most teenage mothers, this was my dad's reality... I can't understand how she could do something like that... I've tried not to judge her... I know very little about her mental state.. I never met her. She passed away before I was born. I know little about her parents... her upbringing... Was she unloved as well? He would eventually live with his grandmother. She wasn't the nicest person to say the least. Long story short, he was screwed. He had never been shown love. His mother and grandmother would fight in the streets over him. It was dysfunction to say the least. The women in his life were violent, neglectful... unloving. 

After having my first son, Jaxon, something changed in how I viewed my dad. Jaxon loved me.  He loved me in a way that only a little boy can love his mother. I was his world.  Having experienced this magnitude of love, I couldn't imagine how it must have felt for a young boy like my father to not receive love in return... to be met with neglect, abuse, abandonment. What does that do to a child? A boy? My father was the result. When I saw him at my mother's funeral... I saw the result. He was still a young boy...unloved.  Did my father love me? Yes. Did he know how to give the love that my mother, myself, and my sister deserved? No. He simply didn't know how. I could no longer be angry with him as I could not be angry with the homeless guy for not having a dollar. My father simply didn't possess the capacity to love. I absolutely believe that yes, at some point everyone has a choice to change... to heal... proceed forward... I'm not sure if he had the tools, or if his undiagnosed mental illness prevented him. I now believe that he was bi-polar. Either way, he never made the choice or simply couldn't. Of the two reasons, I'm not sure... I just knew, that I could no longer be angry for what the man simply didn't have... Love. 

That day at my mother's funeral, would be the last time that I saw my biological dad. He passed away five months later in a random house fire... I am thankful... I am thankful that I said, "I love you". I said I love you to the little boy unloved.  I said, I see you... I see you little one... In return, I believe that my dad in that moment, breathed a sigh of relief that despite his issues, his dysfunction, his incapability to love me, his daughter turned out ok. 

I am full of gratitude... Without my stepdad, perhaps I wouldn't have known what resembles a functional relationship... Perhaps I wouldn't have known that what my biological dad and my mother had wasn't healthy... that it was toxic. Perhaps without my dad, I would have been attracted to the very thing that I had grown up with... Abuse. If my mother had never remarried my stepdad, we would have never relocated, which means I would have never went to the high school that I attended, which means I would have never heard of the college that I attended, which means I would have never met my love, Jon (we met at Belmont Univeristy)... Which means I would have never gave birth to my two beautiful boys, Jax and Jedi... My heart is full of gratitude..  Thank you Ronald. 

I am thankful for my biological dad... Knowing his story has caused me to be a better mother. To hug my boys tight... To constantly remind them of their worth... My father, Greg, couldn't give me love, but he gave me my nose, my curly hair, and my dark skin.  He gave me my love for music... My laugh lines around my smile... His smile was electric... He couldn't give me love, but he gave me my existence.... and if that's all that he had to offer, for that I am grateful.  That was enough. 

My C-Section... and the healing thereafter.

Watching birthing videos, and hearing about all these vaginal births fills me with so much love and hope. However, I can’t help but feel hurt and bitterness towards my cesarean...

April is Cesarean Awareness month, and every motherhood page I follow has been acknowledging C-sections as equal of a birthing experience as natural or vaginal birth. In my head I’m thinking, 'Damn right, they are!'. But, that’s completely opposite of what I feel, and the broken heart for the natural birth I wanted shows. My first born, Elias Foxx, was my fighter babe, delivered via cesarean.

3 weeks and 5 days was how far along I was when I visited the clinic. It was also when I found out my blood type is Rh negative. What? What does that even mean?? So, the Rh factor is a type of protein on the surface of red blood cells. If you have the Rh factor, you are Rh-positive. If you do not have the Rh factor, you are Rh-negative. When you are Rh-negative, you may develop antibodies to an Rh-positive baby. If a small amount of the baby’s blood mixes with your blood, (which often happens), your body may respond as if it were allergic to the baby. Your body may make antibodies to the Rh antigens in the baby’s blood, in which then you become sensitized, and your antibodies can cross the placenta and attack your baby’s blood... resulting in serious illness, brain damage, or even death in the fetus or newborn. Scary thing to first hear as a new mother, right? So schedules for Rhlg (Rhogam) injections throughout my pregnancy were made aside from the usual pokes and pricks.

Around week 16 for blood samples, I learn I am a carrier for fragile-x. What?? Onto lesson number 2... Fragile X syndrome is a genetic condition that causes intellectual disability, behavioral and learning challenges and various physical characteristics. (I will provide links so you can find out more information about being Rh-negative and about fragile X syndrome. Also, I'll have a partial video of my C-section.) Of course, fear is planted.  We get an amniocentesis (the scariest thing aside the cesarean itself), only to find out our baby has all 46 chromosomes, not even a carrier, and a boy. I was tired of feeling like a lab rat and at that point of my pregnancy, all I wanted was a natural birth, the way our womanly bodies were created for. From week 34 through the last 39, there was no change in Elias’ position, and my OBGYN scheduled me for the cesarean.

I couldn’t help but feel helpless, and a sense of guilt, as if I was not good enough and that my body was failing to perform up to it’s God-created potential. I was beginning to enter a dark place. I was angry with myself, feeling undeserving to my child, and I constantly thought my OBGYN just wanted another (c-section) so she could go on with her schedule of other deliveries (mostly cesarean at that hospital as so I’ve discovered). It was towards the end of my pregnancy that I finally sat myself down with my journal and just prayed for peace with having the cesarean, and that if there was the possibility of having a natural, vaginal birth that God would make the way of having that happen.

From the breech positioning to the Rh-negative scares,  and being a carrier for fragile-x, all I wanted in the end was my baby boy in my arms. Unlike other mothers, I did not struggle with gestational diabetes, my uterus was not abnormal, nor was my baby too large to deliver vaginally. During my cesarean, actually, I was having contractions that ended up prolonging the procedure, and his head got stuck in my uterus through the incision! So they had to cut more to get him out. (You'll see where one of the nurses ask my sister to stop filming.) If only I had planned out this pregnancy and found the support I needed. Perhaps I could have had the birth the way I believe women were so divinely created to... But, the cesarean happened... and my son is here alive and well.

Don't get me wrong… I'm more than grateful for the wellbeing of my son.  Nor am I shaming those who choose to have a cesarean out of convenience.  But, the fact my son was not born the way I dreamt, naturally, is still a hard pill to swallow. When my husband and I decide on the time for our family to grow, we will take the initiative to do our research, look for a doctor who is willing to go for a VBAC as long as I am eligible, and that the hospital or birthing center doesn’t have a high cesarean percentage.

For you mothers who look at your scars everyday... I am with you. When you see those beautiful birthing videos and photos or crowning and prolonged umbilical cord cutting... I am with you. When you hear about other mother's water births and how many hours of labor they were in... I am with you. When you think of how you were not the first to hold your baby... I am with you. When the memory of being alone in that OR while your baby was taken off... I am with you. I pray that the voids in our hearts our filled with love, hope, and peace. I pray this will bring unity for the mothers out there with this same hidden hurt that we realize, “Hey, I am still upset about this,  and that’s OK.” 

One day I'll heal,  I'm sure.  But until then, I have every right to mourn over the reoccurring moments of grief not having the birth I wanted for my son. So do you.

http://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-complications/rh-factor/

Fragile X Syndrome - National Fragile X Foundation