This is a heartfelt THANK YOU to all my loved ones who sent videos to Tory for labor encouragement and congratulations for the birth of our precious daughter, Camille. I watched all of the pre-baby videos as my contractions were amping up, while I could still laugh and cry and pay attention to your kind and thoughtful words. Thank you for knowing me, loving me, and for sending a message that was tailored just for me as I faced the most difficult thing I have done in my life.

Each one of you shared your unique perspective and love with me and I felt so known and so encouraged. Being so far away from family and friends has been challenging, and the days leading up to birth and after have made the distance particularly noticeable and felt. The videos bridged that gap and I felt the love and support of all of you behind me as I delivered our daughter into the world. Thank you thank you thank you.

The Wright's really brought it home and I was given permission to share their gift to me with the rest of the world. What a treat.

Resting with our daughter in the hospital just after birth

She came with the rain. The air was fresh and a slow drizzle started just as Tory and I were finishing up our walk through the trees on the Chiang Mai University campus after dinner and after dark. We spent the morning with Rebecca and Patrick, enjoying a brunch together and hoping that she might come that day. Contractions were coming but they weren’t consistent, and gave me no sign that Saturday would be different than any other day in late pregnancy since I’d been on a slow march towards labor all week. We parted ways in the afternoon only to call them back and share the exciting news late that night - we were in labor and would need that ride to the hospital after all!

Jasmine, our Doula was a huge support

I met each contraction in the moment, accepted it and moved through it with my breath. I was aware of what was going on around me, but was focused entirely on being present in my body, preparing for each coming contraction and riding the wave of it, repeating to myself, ‘it’s not pain - it’s pressure… and after pressure comes release.” It’s incredible to me that I did this for so many hours, experiencing so much intensity every 3-5 minutes. Time was lost on me. At one point I surfaced and asked Tory and Jasmine, “is it working?” and they both responded with a resounding “yes!” and I dove back into the waves along with their reassurance. I was unable to hold Camille’s arrival as the end goal, I was too focused on getting through each moment to see the big picture - which made meeting her for the first time that much more powerful. It was almost a surprise that I got to meet my daughter at the end of 19 hours of labor!

First kiss on that fuzzy little head

Camille's incredible arrival

She came out face up and wide-eyed. If I had known she had flipped posterior during the last few days of her life in the womb I would have been terrified since my own birth ended in a C-section after complications with posterior positioning. I am so grateful I was unaware because it allowed me to accept all the sensations of labor and birth as normal and expected and be as relaxed as possible as I’d planned. As I read about posterior births after the experience, I am so grateful that she was still able to be born naturally. I also understand why my labor did not seem to fit the typical stages of labor and that my active labor phase was so long and intense. After about hour 16 or 17 of active labor, our doctor recommended breaking my water. It was the strangest sensation and it certainly kicked labor into high gear. Soon after, I experienced my body pushing on it’s own. Even though I was told that my body would push the baby out on it’s own left to it’s own devices, I didn’t understand how forceful it would be without my conscious effort. I surprised the nurses by answering that I felt no particular desire to assist my body in pushing, and when they encouraged me to begin the pushing phase I was thankful that something was progressing but quite overwhelmed with the pain and intensity of the contractions. I remained aware but selectively oblivious to the large crew of nurses gathered around me in those final phases and instead focused on Tory's encouragements.
I didn't have much strength left after the marathon that was active labor, and I was still blissfully unaware that she was sunnyside-up so after many attempts to push along with the intensifying contractions, our doctor recommended an episiotomy. Everyone was a little deflated when she didn't arrive along with his quick cut despite all my howls and pushing, but we waited for the next wave of contractions, and as I screamed and pushed again and again, she was finally born. Pressure and then release. I instantly snapped into full awareness, completely engaged with the world again as she was placed into my arms and I realized, I'm meeting my daughter for the first time!

Tory and I overwhelmed with joy

Jasmine, our Doula was an incredible birth supporter for both Tory and I. I was amazed at her ability to be exactly where I needed her to be (with a hot pack on my lower back, unmoving for hours) and how she freed Tory up to be cooling my neck and face with a cloth, getting me water, encouraging me, playing just the right music for each phase, and countless things I'll never even know about. He gave the ultimate gift - to give and give of himself without receiving thanks - or even acknowledgement - for hours and hours, and the gift of knowing me, loving me and studying me over the last ten years so that in moments like these, he would know exactly what I needed, what to say, or simply that his presence was fully enough. He is doing the same thing for two of us now in fatherhood, and I am proud of him and awed by him daily.

Incredibly, it's been a year since we arrived in Chiang Mai with our two suitcases and a boatload of expectations and dreams.

Many of our hopes have been realized, many of our expectations were completely off-base - in some ways due to the fact that Chiang Mai has changed over the 7 years since I was here last, and in more ways, because I've changed since I lived here as a college student. Living here independently from school, as a married couple, as a pair that have been impacted by years of living "adult" lives in the US system, made our actual experience of this place different than what I'd imagined - different in ways that I could not have planned for when we were trying to imagine our lives here.

One thing I've realized living in Thailand over this year is that America is distinguishably convenient. It's of the defining characteristics that underlies life in the United States it turns out. A habit of the "developed" world that I always took for granted until I left and wondered why I found myself frustrated by little things so often. It's not that Thailand is exceptionally inconvenient, and part of this is just that I live in a place that's not originally catered to my native language. But because I've grown up in a culture that values and offers convenience, it took some self examination to realize that it's not a way of life everywhere.

This was especially challenging as we moved into a large and empty, completely unfurnished townhouse right in Chiang Mai. By completely unfinished I mean it did not even have kitchen counters, cupboards, a sink or stove. All of that is now freestanding, sourced from all separate places. Over the last year, we certainly did our share of buying, acquiring, and filling up our space, occasionally getting frustrating enough to pay a premium for that slightly more convenient delivery service or shiny new item.

Photo by Hellen Koroleva

And it's funny - it's the very lack of convenience that has offered new room for re-evaluation and creativity that I value. The fact that it's not just a click of a button on Amazon to have my whims show up at our door, gives me time to slow down and actually question what we really need. Having a baby is one of those tracks in life that are so unknown it's easy to make fear-based purchases in hopes of being "prepared". I have a feeling that no matter how many things we're able to source, we will not be prepared!

It's amazing how fast that instinct to fill a perceived need immediately can take over and trump whatever values I think I hold. It's one thing to believe something - it's another thing to put it in practice. I'm becoming grateful for the pause - the barriers to entry that are part of living life in Chiang Mai. It's a long standing habit to break, but more and more often I am remembering to question our consumption.

• Hollie Chastain
• Lisa Congdon
• Andrea D’Aquino
• Bill Zindel

• Hub of history = Haight Ashbury, San Francisco
• Emerging counterculture
• LSD was legal at first?
• The San Francisco Oracle newspaper
• Book Conclusion [emphasis mine]: “The sixties is a good place in history for us to check out. The general populace then was feeling what many are feeling now: tremendously powerless, engulfed in apathy as we grappled with the monster we had created in Vietnam. Our leaders seemed heedless of our wishes and it took a new generation of young people to show us how corrupted our values had become, and how we could speak out, demonstrate against iniquities… and be heard! The magic of the sixties lay in the power and energy generated by this new generation – a positive power that surged through the world like electrical current, affecting not only the United States and its policies, but Europe, and finally piercing the Iron Curtain.
    Now, as perhaps never in the years since the sixties, we need to look back for solutions to present problems. We need to shake off our cloaks of powerlessness and apathy. The sixties seem particularly fit for the task. It was magic, and it all really happened!”
    – Gene Anthony, Magic of the Sixties

• Ruth Broadbent, String wrapped typewriter
• Geof Huth, perfection/reflection
• J.P. Ward, section through a tree trunk
• JW Curry, Aillusion #5
• Joanna Gibbs in general

Our little family has been talking a lot about rituals, as my belly grows, and we will finally stay put for the next several months. Thankfully through all this talk, we've been able to increase the rituals we practice as well. A blog I just read put it well: rituals are habits steeped in meaning. I'm not sure if "steeped" was from her wording or mine, but it's exactly the kind of word for me that embodies ritual. It's a tea word. I still drink tea occasionally here in the hot season, but it's a far less common ritual in my days. In cold MN where I stayed indoors mostly at a desk for so many hours in a day, tea was my treat, my break in routine, my ritual of peace and and allowable pause. Here in the heat I'm enjoying likely my only cup of tea for the day. It's still ritualistic but it's not the punctuation in my day. The beautiful thing is that the warmth is spread throughout my day - literally and metaphorically. I'm warm and free - to structure my days as I desire.

This gift comes with great responsibility. I haven't yet created a routine with new punctuation - new pauses, checkins, realigning in the microcosm of a day so that my days spent add up to a life lived with intention. But we are trying.

New punctuation that we've developed:

- Daily devotions and prayer for others together in the morning based on The Common Prayer
- Daily writing our thoughts down, not to be read by one another (morning pages)
- Finding and upholding our little family traditions for special days - starting with Easter, including the sunrise

Punctuation we hope to incorporate more of:

- Sundays as a holy day of rhythm, consistency, gathering with friends
- Designated special projects time (alone but aligned and intentional)
- Daily habits for me - drinking enough water, stretches, exercise routines
- Show and tell of inspiring articles, videos, things we're thinking about

When we add a third member to our family, our punctuation will undoubtably change. She will add structure in ways we could never build in, but she'll also fit into the rhythms we've created, which is part of the reason this feels like such an important time to find some of our own.