At three months into motherhood, I’m nearly too late in writing this post. The forgetfulness is starting to cloud my brain and the parental words of survival are starting to form in my mouth, “Ohhh, its not sooo bad. And really, it’s worth it.” For the real deal, I should have written this a month ago.
My daughter, Sofia, is an amazing human. If you meet her on the street she’ll dazzle you with her loveliness. Nothing I write here takes away from her uniqueness and impressiveness as a being.
But I have to say, becoming a parent is a horrible process. No one prepares you for it. Even that statement sounds too light, sounds too much like what people always say. No, no one prepares you for it because if they really did, they’d say – hey, just don’t do it; it’s horrible. We’d never need to worry about overpopulation, ever.
In the initial weeks after bring our babe home, I kept asking friends, “why didn’t you tell me?!” They’d reply, “What could we say? You were already pregnant.” I kept contesting their answers by saying, “Use words. String together sentences and tell me how hard this was going to be.” They’d shrug.
There is a distinct firewall between parents and non-parents in this way. Non-parents ‘know’ it will be hard, that you won’t sleep, that you will enter a new life, but that in the end, you have a soft, cuddly baby. Once you cross the line, as a parent, you KNOW how traumatic this process is for everyone involved. When I look back at the line just crossed, I now use the traditional parent response, “Oh, there’s nothing I can say to prepare you.” And that’s because all my words would be horrible.
A glimpse of what my brain allows me to recall: hours spent rocking with screaming in my ear, days spent taking things out of my diet to determine if its gas, only to determine it’s not gas, it’s hunger, tears over incompetence, lack of confidence, resentment, loneliness and boredom, not being able to speak or have a conversation, when able to speak, only speaking about poop, Googling every possible condition known to man, reading countless bulletin boards to see if my kid is ‘normal’, listening to public health nurses tell me my kid is losing too much weight and telling me to pump, pumping only to create an oversupply that gives my kid gas, the pain of breastfeeding, the guilt of formula, the hate for my husband’s freedom to leave the house, too much Live with Kelly, never sleeping, never knowing when I will or won’t sleep, insanely watching the monitor, obsessing about SIDS, schedules that are not your own, no where to run or hide, wanting to shake your kid, having something called the red zone, asking your husband to sign consent letters to leave the country, blame for having this happen, saying it wasn’t my choice, knowing this is not what you signed up for, knowing you can’t return it (ever), wearing pajamas all day, not brushing my teeth, going to bed at 8pm, feeling like a zombie, trying to hide from all things from my previous life, and on…
It’s the run-on sentence that never ends.
People tell us that we’ll forget this period. As I mentioned, its starting to happen. They say at around three and four months, “it gets easier”. I’m not sure if that is true or if you brain just clouds over the really, really bad parts. Then, as they tell us, you forget the whole thing. That’s how you end up with two kids.
My husband and I don’t want to forget, so we made a little video.
Of course, any trying or challenging period inevitably creates new learning and growth. I have moments in my brain, already nostalgically romanticized, of the goodness of the experience. A 5am sunrise in the hospital the first night she stayed in my room, the lightness of the summer sky even in the middle of the night, the wind in the trees outside her window, the way she slept on my chest many nights, the first weeks of shared responsibility with my husband, the love and support of friends and family, and texts from my sister sharing in the horribleness.
You see, I’m already forgetting.
I wanted to write this because no one told me. This journey, especially after you leave the hospital and family leaves your house, is not just hard, but horrible. I’ve decided that people should stop saying the first three months are hard. The number ‘three’ conjures a short period of time. Rather, count the minutes of three months (131,487) and use that as your countdown clock. In the first three months, it is minute by minute (not even hour by hour). If you are okay with that number, then procreate.
Last night, our little one slept from 8:30pm to 3:30am. I went to bed at the same time, meaning I got seven hours of uninterrupted sleep. It is an amazing feeling and one, I know, that may not ever happen again. The one thing this journey is teaching me is that life is moment to moment. I can’t expect one day to yield similar results to the day before. For a gal who loves control and control over her schedule, this is a brutal way to learn this lesson. I’m also learning to rejoice in the do-nothing days. The days when I allow myself to lie in bed with her and watch her sleep. The minutes and hours simply pass and life goes on outside, and I am fine. I’ve learned that there are the same amount of hours in a bad day that there are in a good day.
My husband and I are finally at the point of saying goodbye and thank you to our old life. It took us two months to realize that we were never going back. No matter how hard we tried, how cool we are, how much we wanted to. It’s over. We’ve finally moved past our denial stage and that creates space for a new life to emerge.
If you haven’t had kids, don’t let anyone fool you. It sucks. And the first few months are horrible. But then the cloud sets in and it becomes normal(ish) and you become…well, I’m not sure what you become because I’m not there yet. If you’ve had kids, I get it now, there’s the code of silence on this horrible stuff. You simply shrug and utter, “it’s not so bad.” I see it as a rite of passage. After all, what words could you possibly use to describe all of this?
