I might be able to unpack any one of these and make separate posts, but I can't count on myself to find the time, so I'm just going to document some thoughts from the last few weeks in fragments :)
Losing Game
For a long stretch, motherhood just felt like a constant losing game. I could never make the right choice. If I let Elle keep sleeping, she woke up too hungry and I felt mean. If I woke her up to feed her, I felt mean for disturbing her sleep. If I changed her diaper before she ate, I was mean for delaying the milk she so desperately wanted. If I fed her first, I was mean for letting her eat in a soiled diaper. If she fell asleep while I kept her upright after nursing, I felt mean for waking her up to change her diaper. If I changed her diaper quicker, before she fell asleep, and she spit up on the changing table, I felt mean for rushing the process and "making" her spit up.
A Race
Everything also feels like a race. Can I finish my food before she wakes up? Will the chiropractor come in before she starts crying? Can I change her diaper before she spits up? Can we get home before it's time to nurse? How fast can I shower? How fast can I change her diaper? How fast can Gabe heat up the bottle?
Antithesis
Motherhood is forcing me to act contrary to myself in three particular ways: I must be slow, and gentle, and quiet. I have always been fairly fast and rough and loud. Every moment of every day, I must exercise myself in a way I never have before. It's exhausting, but the growth is unbelievable. I would not have thought I had it in me to control myself to this degree for this long.
Scary Sounds
Sounds that now send a pang of dismay through my body:
- Thud of a paci hitting the mattress: Elle will either keep sleeping or wake screaming
- Creak of our bedroom door opening: Gabe coming to wake me to nurse Elle
- Silence: Has Elle entered quiet sleep or is she dead?
It's Constant
I find myself forgetting that this is forever. There's no "until" with motherhood, unless it's "until I die," or—God actually forbid—she does. There are no days off; there is no "mute" button on her crying or "pause" button on her hungry tummy. Giving up isn't an option.
Every once in a while I'll notice a thought in the back of my mind that's something like "Okay, I'm done now, let's go back to regular life" and then I realize that that can't happen. This thought pattern makes me realize how few things I've forbid myself to quit lately. The fact that my brain automatically generates the thought, "This is difficult; I'm going to quit" feels like a lesson in character. Have I really become so quick to give up? So unaccustomed to exerting myself? Whether or not that's the case, I won't be quitting motherhood, and I know that will be good practice for other areas of my life too.
To Sum Up
It's been a lot. But it is getting better. Glancing over this post, I realize that it sounds negative, but that's not an accurate reflection of how life feels—anymore. I'm just catching up on the note in my phone that says "Blog," and most of the bullet points were added during weeks that felt more hard than good. However, Gabe and I have moved from staring at each other and talking about how we can never do this again to thinking that maybe we could. And that's progress.
Now that my phone's Blog note has been cleared out a bit, I think the next post will read less "suffering for the cause" and more "such a magical time," because it genuinely is :)
~Stephanie
