motherhood musings throughout the years

2014

I have been a mother for a good 14 months now, which is practically the time it gets to get a Masters degree, which makes me an expert. Hello, duh. Step aside while I tell you what's up.

1. I don't think of myself as a laid back person until I am around other mothers. At the park, I seem near neglectful. I often get looks because Sage is barefoot and still in her pajamas...or maybe those looks are directed at me because I too am barefoot and still in my pajamas.

2. Fred let me borrow his FitBit the other day. I was secretly nervous to take it for a spin because I thought for sure it would be a rude awakening. To both my surprise and my validation, I reached 10,000 steps before noon. I only wonder how many tiny steps Sage takes in a day.

2018

"He's going to wake her up," I hiss at Fred as I stumble out of the bedroom. I scoop up Troy, who is banging on Sage's bedroom door, knowing that I was on the other side sleeping. Fred is slumped next to him in the hallway, donning sweatpants and sleep-deprived eyes.

My tone with Fred gives it all away: that I don't want to be awake right now and that I am angry.

Troy is pawing at my shirt as I sit down to breastfeed him. Fred is in the kitchen now, and as he walks past me with a bowl of cereal to eat in his office, I think about asking him to eat it in the same room as me; I'd like someone to sit with me while I get my bearings, while I wait for the morning blues to burn up in the rising sun, but I feel too ashamed and too scared of rejection to ask.

Months ago, my mornings were different than this.

I was setting my alarm well before anyone was awake. When it went off, I would force myself to exercise, to shower, to eat breakfast in peace. It was brutal. I kept at it, thinking that it would get easier. It never did. A good friend finally told me, "Rachel, maybe you're just not a morning person."

But I wanted to be. Even now, the quest to Morning Personhood mocks me at every turn: at some hashtag challenge to nail down the "wake up earlier" habit, at my yoga instructor touting the benefits of a "morning routine", at Sage's dance rehearsal where Hot Mom is explaining (bragging! I can't help but bitterly think) how she fits in her marathon training and 90 minute meditation before her kids wake up.

And yet, here I am, still dreading every morning.

As I'm feeding Troy, I trace my finger along the curve of his cheek. He smiles, blinks, and confidently proclaims, "EYES!" while pointing to my nose. I am channeling every self-help tool I know to wake up and face the day: "All I have is now. This won't last forever. Dare greatly. Lean in. Girl wash your face?" And yet I can't quite get everything into focus, it's still so hazy, and I'm still desperate and grumpy.

This is a good metaphor for parenting, I realize.

Here's my one-year-old son, soft and warm and practically purring as he streeeeetches his little fingers apart to fit between mine, and yet something (my laziness? my genetics? my B12 levels? my years of sleep deprivation?) is literally standing in my way from cognitively appreciating any of it, at least not until eight o'clock when I suddenly feel a lot more awake.

"Enjoy it while it lasts," they say.
"It goes by so fast," they say.
They are the same people who scold me for letting my daughter wear mismatched socks in public, so I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be listening to them, but I have a feeling that they're right when they say that I will look back and wish I'd done things differently.

As much as I believe that to be true, I still fall short. I never feel so not enough of a mother, of a wife, of a PERSON than I do in those quiet mornings, the air chilled from leaving the windows open all night, my hair smashed this way and my face smashed the other, feeling uncertain about what the day will bring, what my children will do, how cruel will my self-talk be.

Troy has abandoned the milk and is bringing over a stack of books, and I pick up and read each one, two, three, four times before Sage wakes up and joins us. They squirm, snuggle, and sigh into me as I read each book one, two, three, four times again, and then Sage leans to my ear and says quietly, "I love you so much, Mom, and do you see Troy? I can tell he does, too, even though he can't really talk yet except to say 'dog' and 'Mama' and 'water.'"

Her words shower down on me like rain on sunbaked sand, loud and quiet all at once.

I am keenly aware of two truths: First, that these two children deserve an exceptional mother. Second, that I am not that kind of mother. Lately, my life has been a whole lot of learning to hold these two realities.

2020

My daughter used to wake up between ten and twenty times a night.

This wasn't a passing phase. This was my normal. She woke up between ten and twenty times a night, every night, until she was three.

Lately, it's become very important to me to tell people this fact. I find myself bringing it up in the most unnatural ways, sliding it into conversation as if it's relevant to the topic. (It never is.)

I want to take people by the shoulders and put my face inappropriately close to theirs and darkly tell them about what that was like. What that did to my body, my mind, even my marriage.

My daughter used to wake up between ten and twenty times a night.

I want to tell people about how she didn't eat a meal of solid food until she was two and a half. She held food in her mouth and spat it out hours later. She wouldn't take a bottle or a sippy cup. I remember how ashamed I felt when the pediatrician blamed me and told me she would become malnourished if I didn't try harder. I was seeing him because I didn't know what to do, and he acted like I knew what to do and that I was too lazy to do it.

My daughter didn't eat a meal of solid food until she was two and a half, after occupational therapy and lots of devotion and consistency. Let me make it even clearer for you: My daughter was exclusively breastfed until she was two and a half.