Motherhood III - My thoughts
Motherhood. Motherhood is a strange thing, it creeps up on you. Slowly. Even when you’ve known you wanted to be a mom for a long time, there’s no way you can see it coming. Now that I am a mom, I have had my baby and I’m on the other side. Three months now. I look at first-time pregnant women and shake my head. They just don’t know. There’s no way they can know. They can read everything, talk to everyone they know, do everything in their power to be prepared and there’s no way to know everything. It’s an infinite pool of knowledge and potentialities, the point is no one knows, even women on their fifth childbirth/rearing don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a mystery, one of the last, true great mysteries out there. And yet every woman is completely and wholly prepared for what they are about to experience, because it’s made up exactly for them, for her, at this moment, at this time.
Back to my point. Motherhood sneaks up on you, it comes in layers.
Some of the things I’ve noticed.
Baby animals. Everything for your newborn is covered in natural elements, leaves, flowers, trees, giraffes, whales, wolves, raccoons, pooh bear, baby elephants, baby animals of all kinds. We celebrate them, we celebrate life and love and family. ‘Daddy’s little princess’ ‘I love mommy’. But out there in the real world, we are letting species die at an alarming rate. We wouldn’t dare give up our foreign vacation, our second car or strawberries in January. But when it comes to our babies, we know what’s good and wholesome. Life, the life that issues forth when babies are born. We recognize the value of the natural world, fresh air, bright colors, celebration.
That was one of the first things that hit me after my daughter was born.
Sad.
Of course hormone’s are raging you at that time.
My sister called it ‘You’re so happy you’re sad.’ That’s exactly, how I felt!
No one tells you you’re going to have feverish night sweats for the first nights to a week afterward, no one tells you about the panic.
My first re-occurring dream/nightmare was of waking and checking the baby to see if she was alright and then realizing that she wasn’t the real baby. And looking around in a panic for the real baby only to realize I was awake and the real baby was right in front of me and she was fine. Happened multiple times. My husband and I still joke about it.
Not to mention my actual paranoid question if someone could have possibly looped footage of my baby sleeping comfortably into my baby monitor to trick me. I literally had to talk myself very carefully through this one… a) why would anyone do that, seriously you think someone is stalking you and specifically wants to steal your baby badly enough to infiltrate your house, b) how would they do it, the monitor was from my sister who had gotten it second hand from her sister in law, this thing had been through 5 kids, it wasn’t even connected to the WiFi! Pretty nearly impossible and c) those are her clothes, that is from today, you just laid her down, it’s fine, you’re just paranoid!
That’s how much you love them, it’s irrational. You cannot control how you feel and what you want to do about it.
Speaking of which I better go check on her right now. :D
Ok, I’m back.
In the beginning, my mother, her grandmother, would be worried she wasn’t breathing, truly worried and asking me to check. Mother of both myself and my sister, olympic swimmer, early child development specialist grandmother, was so connected to this new little being that she was doubting her ability to pick up on the subtleties that might mean loss of life.
They scare you so much with SIDS and all the precautionary measures that it’s a miracle babies are even born. Of course it is a miracle.
Everything is upside down and inside out. But, gradually, like a frog boiling in a pot of cold water.
You become your child. Gradually, you start peeing your pants, you need to wear pads, like diapers. Your thighs start to chafe and stick and get rashes. You need diaper rash cream. You can’t reach your feet, you can’t clip your own toenails or coif your private area, you need help to do basic things. You have to eat small amounts, because too much will give you heartburn and an upset tummy. You’re uncomfortable, you wake up several times in the night. Not just to pea, also for no reason, you’re just AWAKE. Oh, and you’re nauseous, you puke, you can’t keep food down, you have a gag reflex and are super sensitive to foods, tastes and smells.
You are becoming your baby. Pregnancy helps you feel what it feels like to be a baby. And to know definitively that your life will never be the same.
This is the new normal. You have set sail.
Of course, men and other partners/caretakers have no idea. The women who know are women who have given birth, recently being the best. Because they have not forgotten the truth of it.
No one tells you you’re going to lose your core strength and the ability to control your urine, like maybe permanently.
No one tells you about the fluids. I was expecting the pee, poop and spit up, but being imperceptibly soaked in a cold sticky fluid that is your own milk, soaking down into your shirt, your sheets, everything at any time.
Or that you’re vagina may never be the same. Only afterwards will your girlfriends who are moms admit it. Oh yeah, I call it my ‘fin’ one friend laughs. Another recall’s going in for her 1 year check up, asking ‘what’s this’ and having it explained that this is now her vagina, it is healed after 2nd degree tears.
Mine is more a valley or a divet. The tear came back together at the top but the bottom remains slightly open.
Both my midwife and my primary care physician say it’s normal and that it will ‘granulate’ back together, gradually, of course.
And what about sex? Hmmmmmm, well after the three+ weeks of bleeding profusely out your bottom, not being able to sit up and still too weak to go on long walks or to lift even moderately heavy things. Not to mention however your nipples and breasts feel depending on how nursing is going.
Penetrative sex is not the first thing on your mind. Maybe a shoulder rub?
But on the other hand, you know it’s important and for some lucky reason you do feel kind of horny. Thank goodness for that! You agree to it.
And well, it kind of hurts. Not a lot but it’s very uncomfortable, especially in certain positions.
Now I know why in certain religions they promise you 32 virgins, because a woman who’s had a child birthed out of her is going to tell you exactly what she likes and doesn’t. Out of necessity.
My husband is a saint. He is so thankful we are sexing at all and so understanding of my courage, he only wants to do right by me and so we have a sex life, once again.
Different than ever before but a sex life. This is the part where I remember our midwife telling us about sex after baby, ‘it’s like meeting again for the first time, everything is new’.
And it is like that. Closer, more open, more understanding and compassion. More true love than ever before, this mutual purpose, this mutual accomplishment, precious beyond belief and yet fragile and needing constant faith.
No one tells you you’re going to be ravenous afterwards, wanting/needing to eat and drink even during the night – just like a baby.
The truth is there’s too much to tell. And we new pregnant mom’s we don’t listen, we simply cannot take in that much information. On some level we just have to wing it and hope, pray and prepare for the best.
Right after I gave birth the advice I had for women was – ‘Do your squats. Keep up with your yoga and your stretches. Walk every day.’ ‘This is an athletic event, better get your game face on.’
Which reminds me of my daughter, when she was learning to latch on to my breast, she would sway her mouth back and forth on my nipple with her mouth open to locate the nipple and then she would get what I called her ‘game face’, which was part growl, part bite and part lunge and go for it.
Mothers and babies, we’re more alike than we look.
Now that my daughter is 3 months old. Today! Happy birthday Melissae, you’re a quarter of a year old already! I feel like I have not only set sail, I’m in open water, out of the sight of shore.
Here’s to the best. For all of us.