{"id":7642,"date":"2018-05-21T14:36:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T12:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kontemplation.dk\/?p=7642"},"modified":"2019-04-18T20:36:43","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:36:43","slug":"nybagt-mor-2-det-23-doegn-i-zoeys-liv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/nybagt-mor-2-det-23-doegn-i-zoeys-liv\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mom #2: The 23rd Day in Zoey's Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over four episodes, Jeanette Lykkeg\u00e5rd talks about practicing presence during birth, about love and exhaustion, happiness and despair, and about feeling one with a small child who is working to find himself from the very beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Read the first paragraph of New mother<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

\n

I try to feel my body. Down below I feel the cushion I'm sitting on, and the reindeer skin that softly supports my legs. I sense that there is air under the floor. That I'm sitting on the first floor. I experience a sudden longing for soil, for the power of the earth, for lying with my face buried in the grass and inhaling mother earth. I feel a tear roll down one cheek. My legs are in the familiar, but long-missed, tailor's position. The bottom of my body is still a little sore, but sitting is fine.
\nFrom the pelvic floor, I direct my awareness to my uterus. A year ago I couldn't feel it at all, but now I feel it clearly. As if I only now know my gender. Since April last year, I have felt my uterus grow, and in recent weeks I have felt it shrink. I have felt how it has formed a home for a new life. I have felt how it has trained itself to be able to push this new life out to us when the time came. Now it feels strangely empty, there is no fullness, no heaviness.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I direct my awareness to the tiredness of my breathing. I can feel it, but not hear it. I realize that I am listening to a different breath than my own. It is irregular. Sometimes it sounds as if something is sitting there and bothering me. Is she okay? I feel how I am almost sitting next to myself, as if my body is trying to break its own boundary to once again surround my daughter and protect her. I can feel the right side of my body, the left side's demarcation does not match what my eyes would tell me if they had been open. It feels as if my body has expanded by one and a half meters to the right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is the first time I have sat on the pillow since her birth 23 days ago. I have begun a whole new journey of discovery; life as a mother. Until now, my practice as a mother has taken place with my daughter in my arms; breastfeeding, walking or lying down. My boyfriend is lying next to her right now, and I know he is looking after her. But here on the pillow I feel how much of my consciousness is concentrated outside myself \u2013 constantly tuned in to the life I am now responsible for. To which I have been so closely connected, physically and in consciousness, throughout the pregnancy. Tears are rolling down my cheeks again. Of love and of something else, sadness or perhaps a form of anxiety? Love for the little creature in the bed next to me, sadness over the separation that has already begun. Part of me still wants to be one with my daughter, part of me still connects with her, but now her separate life has begun and every day she becomes more and more independent. Only now do I understand with my heart what I have heard before: \u201dFrom the day your child is born, a lifelong process of separation begins\u201d. I can already feel how important my meditation practice is to me. As support so that I can be in the best possible way in my new role as a mother; so that I can maintain an awareness of myself, so that I can stay within myself and be there for my daughter at the same time as I let go.
\nBut how do you maintain a practice as a new mother when your child requires all the resources you have?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The next morning I wake up with the awareness that I am being watched. I open my eyes and turn on my side. A pair of blue eyes are looking at me intently, and there is contact. Zoey has woken up. Just like that. Not because she is hungry, not because her stomach hurts, she has just woken up. \u201dGood morning,\u201d I say and smile. She smiles back. She seems comfortable and peaceful. A warm joy spreads from my heart and out into my whole body and forward towards my daughter. Right now it is just the two of us. The two of us and the rainbow colors on the wall from the crystal in the window. Right now life is rainbow-colored. Right now is happiness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Third paragraph of New mother<\/em> coming on Saturday, May 26th.<\/p>\n

\n

\"JeanetteJeanette Lykkegaard<\/strong>
\nPhD student in Anthropology with a special interest in how people around the world deal with existential questions about life and living it, death and what comes after. In addition to learning new perspectives on the world through my subject, I enjoy, among other things, the smell of earth, the sound of laughter, the sight of a sunrise and the other moments when I feel completely and utterly alive.
\nZoey was born in January and is thriving and doing well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over fire afsnit fort\u00e6ller Jeanette Lykkeg\u00e5rd om at praktisere n\u00e6rv\u00e6r under f\u00f8dslen, om k\u00e6rligheden og udmattelsen, lykken og fortvivlelsen og om at f\u00f8le sig \u00e9t med et lille barn der…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":[],"meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"person":[349],"class_list":["post-7642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faellesskabrelationer","person-jeanette"],"subtitle":"","embedded_audio":"","hasaudio":[],"hide_featured_image_on_post":"0","nobio":"1","infobox":"","quote":"","year_published":"2018","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7642"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10314,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions\/10314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kontemplation.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format?post=7642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}