Motherhood: A Year

Today, I went looking through older photos and found one from March of 2022. In it, I am curled up in front of a cave and I am also twelve weeks pregnant. My partner took that photo of me while we were on a hike. I didn’t like it much, at the time, because I suppose I looked too much like myself, not enough, or some other made up hormonal complaint. I think the woman in the photo looks quite lovely now. 

I was crouching in front of a cave because I was in the northern part of the state for training and my partner had come up to visit me. I can still recall the drive home, at the approach to fourteen weeks, when I could feel little bubbles in my belly and wondered if it was her. I wouldn’t know for certain the difference between her movements and mine for another four weeks, but that little spark of recognition, that small, “Is that you?” in the beginning of second trimester was pretty magical. 

Now she is nearly a year old. A year old! She snuggles and eats pasta and hands me the book she would like me to read to her and laughs when we’re funny and fusses when we’re too slow. She is a wonder to me. She is so curious and sweet. She is sensitive, and she is resilient. She recovers well. 

The older she gets, the more I am able to believe: we will get through it all. Anything, we can survive, so long as we are able to love one another well. 

My surgery is approaching and it is starting to feel a bit like tunnel vision - most things are quickly and easily forgotten about, I confess, in service of just getting through the next big thing (which is a pretty big thing). I don’t know what to do for her birthday except make her a little apple cake and let the people who love her come see her. Maybe that’s enough for a first birthday. Her father’s birthday is a few days before, meaning he will have to share the spotlight for the rest of time. I suspect this is a positive for him. 

I would feel a little more entitled, I think. 

So my task is celebrating the sweetest fruits in the whole orchard in a way that truly recognizes everything that they are whilst sitting with the anxiety of a big change. 

It’s weird and morbid to explain how my mind is conceptualizing this big thing. I keep noticing the thought, “Won’t be able to do this for much longer…” as though it is a goddamned funeral I’m arranging rather than medical leave. I keep having to remind myself that I am not going anywhere. 

In fact, I’ll be going pretty much nowhere for eight weeks. A bitch can’t even drive. 

It will be different. 

I won’t be able to pick her up for a while, swing her around, hold her on my hip while I mill around the house. I may not be able to breastfeed anymore. I had hoped to get her through the next cold and flu season, since nursing has been really helpful during the last couple of daycare colds, but a year is pretty good! I think, more than the actual timing, it’s that my choice may be taken away. Weaning whenever (or never breastfeeding at all) is all valid and good. It helps to be able to decide, though. 

We’ve night-weaned, and she’s doing great with it. She nurses maybe four or five times a day anymore, anyway. So this is not the worst time for this to happen. And good or bad time, it is happening. 

There are some positives, though. Because this isn’t the C-word, merely (merely is relative) a benign tumor that can be operated on, and I have a decent amount of certainty that I will survive and make a full recovery, it’s sort of like I get the gut check of “HEY HERE’S YOUR MORTALITY LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT IT!” without the actual mortality. And there’s some benefit to that, if you’ll humor me. 

The first is that I have no more patience for time wasters or bullies, including myself. If you know me, you might be thinking, “Is that new?” Yes. Because I value doing a good job and being a good therapist (and have been given feedback that I could be softer around the edges), there have been instances in which I have let therapy clients dick around or be late to appointments, and I have been so gentle with them to the point of swallowing resentment within myself. I overcorrected. I was being a pushover! In the weeks since discovering this stupid tumor, I’ve been trying to let that go. If I smell any resentment at all, I address it. And if there is anything that needs to be forgiven, I make the intention to forgive. With boundaries, though. 

The second benefit is gratitude. I am so lucky that I get to go for runs! That I can do that. I am so lucky that I can work and write and drive! I am so lucky that I can play with my baby girl and make my partner laugh! I am so, so lucky. It’s so obvious to me. I am the luckiest woman in the world. 

The third benefit is that a lot of fear has begun to evaporate, and I am finally stepping up for myself and doing things that I have always wanted to do. I have been working on this novel on and off for over fifteen years and I have been waiting on myself to feel confident enough and competent enough and deserving enough to share it. I have been waiting on it to be perfect and complete and unassailable, and it was never going to get there because that’s impossible. YOU HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR. And you’ll be fine, but JUST A REMINDER, YOU ARE GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY. YOU WILL NOT LIVE FOREVER. Just fucking start however you mean to go on. Just do something. 

The fourth is love. I am so in love with everything. And I have been so loved and taken care of already. I am nervous about how much support I will need, but it is there for me. I am so grateful that it borders on humiliation, but I’m trying to stay with grateful. This is the divine. This is God. 

But back to parent stuff.

Motherhood has been the most transformative thing I have ever done. I am not the same woman I was a year ago and I am also more myself than ever. I am more in love with my partner than ever, certain that he is a refuge in the most violent of storms. The beginning of it was hard - excruciating. I mean…

You go through this painful, debilitating thing that takes months of recovery, but you’re also given a small noodly newborn whom you love more than breathing, and you have to keep her alive while you are recovering from birthing her and whatever complications came along with that. Not only that, this little tater needs to eat at least every two hours, including overnight. So you’re sleep deprived and you’ve never done this before, and even though you read books before she got here, there is still so much you don’t know, so you’re furiously scrolling at 2AM looking for information because at least that helps you stay awake enough to feed her. And it lasts for months. And your hormones are recalibrating so you sometimes feel euphoric and other times feel like you could walk straight into the ocean. And if you mention the ocean moments in casual conversation, you’re told you might have a diagnosis, which you might, but also it’s not that way all of the time and you really just want to be normal, whatever that is, and is it possible that this wild ride is just normal and not pathological? Is it just a symptom of a society that isolates its new parents because everyone has to work so hard so much of the time to make ends meet? Can it feel hard without it feeling wrong?

And then one day it’s less like drowning and more like what you hoped it would be. And then it’s drowning again, and you scream into a pillow in the other room so that you don’t scare the baby, because it’s not her fault she’s a baby, and it’s not even your fault for being overstimulated and sleep deprived. It just is. And then it’s okay again and then it’s magical and then it’s hilarious. 

Then you find that you’ve all wandered together for a year and the milestone seems hard-won and like it has shown up far too quickly. How can it be possible?

It just is. 

To my baby girl: Happy birthday! The best is yet to come. 

To my partner: Happy birthday! The best is yet to come. 

To myself: Happy birth day! You did it. You’re doing it. You will do it again. And the best is yet to come. 

Love love love.