Rather Than Watching

Once I became a mother, I entered into this odd phase of sleep deprivation, marathon diaper changing sessions, and the realization that one must approach breastfeeding with the same care and precision needed to navigate the Panama Canal in a ship that’s five feet too wide. Now couple that with the period from hell you get after giving birth and the awful engorgment of the breasts, which I have aptly named “bloobies,” and you get one insane, identity crisis suffering, freak of a new mom.

I spent the first week in a blissful euphoria. My husband took two weeks off and we spent most of our time cooing over our baby, feeding her, changing her, etc…, while watching movies, tv shows, and surfing the Internet when possible. It didn’t really start to sink in until the following week just how much our life was changing. And there were moments where life just plain sucked. Suddenly my life was no longer about me. I had to be “on” every waking, and sometimes not so waking, moment for the sole reason of tending to this tiny, fragile being. Before I gave birth, a friend (who is a mom three times over) told me that there is a part of every new mom that dies. How depressing I thought. The remark kind of drifted over my head and I went on my merry, naive way. Having a baby was going to be like having a party - lots of fun with some annoying clean up along the way. But now I get it. There is definitely a part of you that dies. It’s the part that allowed you to spontaneously run out to the movies on a Saturday afternoon, to sleep until 10 am, or to spend your entire bonus on you or your spouse. To those without children, it seems rather trivial, but it eventually translates to a loss of autonomy. After a while, I got used to this major lifestyle shift. Jeff and I took turns changing her at night, one of us would make sure the other was fed, and we found ways to busy ourselves within the confines of our home. In the beginning, trips outside the house brought down a truckload of stress, but just as a sailor needs practice and time to get his “sea legs,” I needed a few weeks to get my mom legs. It got easier. The endless poo diapers subsided and the crying gradually changed to smiles and babbles. I found that I changed as well, specifically acquiring a patience that was probably only parallel to that guy who made sculptures out of microscopic dust. And then one day, as I was blissfully holding my baby, I realized this was the best job in the world. Maybe it’s a biological mechanism, causing our brains to flood our system with love hormones so that we continue to keep our species alive, but the amount of love one feels for their child is like nothing else. Even when I’m holding my pee indefinitely so that I don’t wake the sleeping munchkin in my arms, or when I’m up at 4 am calming her down, or when I’m wiping the gobs of spit up off my shirt, everything just feels amazingly, wonderfully right. This mentality didn’t happen right away, but it’s an emotion that defines who I am now.

There is a scene in the movie Parenthood where the family attends a school play that one of their young children is to be in. During the play, a mishap occurs and things quickly turn to chaos. If I remember correctly, you hear the sound of a roller coaster and the camera mimics the ups and downs of a roller coaster’s movement, playing off the parallel that raising children is a roller coaster ride. Steve Martin’s character (the dad) is freaking out, looking horrified at the children running around the stage, while the mom is smiling in delight. Some can handle the ride better than others.

Quite frankly, I’m looking forward to staying on this ride forever.