It’s been a while since I’ve written anything (well, not for work), since I’m back at work, and when I’m not working I’m either doing my best to give my child all my attention or sleeping, which I should be doing now (as my son actually is sleeping for the time being) but my mind is racing with a thousand thoughts and I figure I might as well write a bit to try to quiet it.
So. Motherhood is… well it’s harder and easier than I thought it would be. Harder, because I didn’t understand what chronic exhaustion can do to a person. I was naive to think a baby might wake up only 1–2 times a night and that I could easily drift off to sleep again as my son would also pass out after a quick breastfeeding fill up. The reality is most nights my son at this point sleeps 3–4 hours and then wakes up every 60–90 minutes. If we stay awake and let him sleep in the bed with us, he’ll sleep longer, but we won’t.
Motherhood is easier in that some of it comes naturally. Even though my son can’t communicate with me in words, and even though I’m definitely not a “baby” person, I feel like I get him. I guess that’s what happens when you carry around a living creature from their creation through their entry into the world. In the little glimpses of his personality I definitely recognize the relation… stubborn, easily bored, and either calm and focused or intensely hyperactive, but not a shade in between. I look forward to seeing if these personality traits stick, or if I haven’t really met who he is yet.
Time is going through this strange extremely slow yet also very fast warp in which it feels like it has been a thousand years since I gave birth but then it also feels like just yesterday when my son was half his size and could not recognize a person from a tree or a wall. Every day, he gets a little better at something. In the past month, seeing his eyes really open to the world around him, and then, to be really seen by him, has been not short of magical. As an adult you know you’re no more important than the next person, but to your baby you’re a princess and a goddess and god all in one. Oh, and a cow.
I’m glad to be back at work now, in some respects, as it makes me appreciate the time with him more. We have our weekends together and our evenings and of course those sleepless nights. I hope that he knows how much I love him and that love helps nurture a stable, healthy personality — though one cannot control that entirely by nurture, whatever can be controlled I’d like to see to it that I’m doing the best I can. So I can’t give him everything I’d want to give a child, but I can give him everything I think a child really needs — and I hope that’s enough, at least for now.
So much more to write, but my eyes are closing, and that means I better sleep…
life with interest 