Today the moment Scott walked in the door I handed Abigail to him.
Oh, yesterday. Yesterday I felt like the Queen of New Mothers, even though we’d slept an hour longer than we should have, even though she spit up a couple of ounces of formula all over me and her Boppy, even though as I made my way down Bell on our daily walk I knew that this feeling, this invincibility, this peace, this calm, this full belly because I’d managed to eat something for every meal and so did Abigail, was fleeting. I knew that this was the lesson in parenting – it is forever shifting, it is like the waves hitting the shoreline.
You can never, ever count on it to be the same thing each time. I know this already and I have only been a mom for three weeks.
And so today, even having coordinated efforts with Scott so that I could start the day in a clean pair of yoga pants and coffee before he caught the 8 a.m. train, it all came to pass. Abigail, oh poor Abigail. The wailing. The fidgeting. The rapid-fire, vibrating chin in concert with her lower lip that might as well have just been a dagger to my poor, inexperienced, ignorant heart. Well, I take that back. I knew what was wrong. I did. It wasn’t that she was necessarily hungry, though she was, and I’m learning that when my girl is hungry she will devour anything in her path. Soon it will come back up, so I’ve tried to slow down her feedings to avoid Mt. St. Abigail. I knew that she was probably a little gassy, but not overly so. I knew her diapers had been maintained appropriately, and really, she might have been tired, but …
I looked down at her and hugged her close at each wail, explaining that it was perfectly fine to be having a shit day, and that she was entitled since she has so much going on in that brain of hers and, really, everyone gets to have a bad day. Even babies.
All that worked, all she wanted, was for me to hold her and move. And so I did. For hours today. In the Sleepy Wrap. Slumped over my arm. Cuddled on my chest into a ball. I rocked on the exercise ball. I climbed three flights of stairs. I swayed and bounced. I talked her to sleep, when it came. The longest pocket today was about an hour, though she’s currently nestled in Scott’s arms and has been for about that long now.
My friend Cinnamon told me, almost from the moment we found out we were pregnant, that it was OK for me to be pissed off at my kid. I love that I have women in my life who give me permission to be a less-than-perfect person, especially a less-than-perfect mother. Here’s the funny thing: I was never pissed off at Abigail. All day long, I wished she would have slept more soundly, wished it would have lasted more than 30 minutes at a time and not on my right forearm, and maybe while I was sitting, not walking through every room of our home. I wished for a lot of those things today. And I was pissed that none of them happened, and I was pissed that sunshine and roses wasn’t in the cards for us today.
And when I saw Scott making his way up the street from the train, I readied her bottle, let him take off his coat, and handed her over to him.
Today I ate lunch. And I napped with her for 15 minutes during one of her rare sleeping spells. I gave her a bath and changed her outfit. I cleaned bottles. Even before Scott left, I managed to get some bills ready to be mailed, the dishwasher emptied and my contacts in. Two weeks ago, that never would have happened. When the women in my life – and oh, they are so many and so wonderful and you’re all counted in that group because I do not know what I would do without all of my Internet Mamas – implored me to believe them when they said, “It will get better,” I assumed it would be in a few months, not in a few weeks.
And, no, it is still not easy. And yes, I still wonder where my old life is and whether I will ever see the insides of a restaurant again, to say nothing of a night in bed with my husband, just sleeping side-by-side together and waking up the same.
(Oh God, I miss my husband so much. And I’m with him every day, but, you know, it’s different now. It doesn’t help that since having Abigail I’ve only managed to fall more in love with him than I ever thought possible.)
But oh. It’s easier. It is. I am doing OK. I will have more yesterdays. I will have more todays. I will be a good mother to Abigail on both, and I might just hand her off to her father at the end of it and then prattle on and on at my blog.
But it will get better.
