Hello there. I’m reporting to you from my kitchen counter, having just eaten “lunch.” I use quotes because it’s 6:22 in the evening. But I have this thing that the order of meals, rather than the time of day, should dictate how they’re labeled. For instance, I ate my first meal of the day at 1pm today, having done the bulk of my “night’s sleep” between 8 and 11:30am when Olivia graciously went down for a looong nap. Scrambled eggs with fruit and coffee. Breakfast first, no matter what. This, at least, is dependable—there will always be breakfast, no matter what.
Aside from breakfast food, there are no constants in these early months of motherhood. Three weeks ago, Olivia slept through the night in seven/eight hour stretches. How lucky we felt. “Our baby is a sleeper,” we exclaimed. We’ve upset the gods, apparently. Now, we’re looking at two and three hour increments throughout the night. Four hours, lately, has felt rejuvenating, like returning from a yoga retreat in Bali. Then there are feedings, naps, and a list of other variables that don’t yet add up to a consistent schedule.
Someone asked me, the other day, how it feels to be a mother. I don’t know the answer to that yet, mostly because it changes day by day, sometimes hour by hour. Identifying my own state of mind feels like a moving target, an exercise in understanding contradictions. I find myself, at once, thanking and bargaining with the higher powers. How is it possible to be filled with gratitude and also deflated by what often feels like a deep well of my own incompetence, to hope for the future while feeling the intense fear that comes along with big responsibility.
Motherhood feels like a lot of everything all at once. That is my best answer, at least for the moment. I have no more use for the word, “but.” I feel simultaneously overjoyed AND anxious, capable AND under-prepared for this whole parenting thing, confident that I’m figuring it out AND worried that I never will (and also will never sleep more than four hours at a time ever again). You get the idea. Sometimes it builds up too much and mercifully spills out my tear ducts. If I didn’t understand emotional gray areas, I certainly do now.
Cooking has helped. When everything else predictable falls away, hunger helps. It helps that Adam and I still have to feed ourselves, that my appetite is back intact after the strange pregnancy cravings, aversions, and restrictions. It helps that Olivia, too, has an appetite. She’s growing, and that (to me, at least) is the surest sign that we’re doing okay. It also helps that I really, really like her and that she sometimes speaks in high-pitched gurgling noises that make her sounds like a robot or a mythical sea creature. It helps that she flashes me a big, gummy smile when she wakes up from a nap.
It all helps. Dwelling is a pitfall of mine, ignoring the moment to inhabit (worry about) the past or future. If I know anything about motherhood so far, it’s that it makes you stand still, live in the present. When I take Olivia out of her crib in the morning, sometimes we lie in bed and look at the thin sliver of light glimmering between the blackout curtains. Infants are mesmerized by soft light. I am mesmerized, too, mostly by how strange it feels to not only be okay with but enjoying these moments, to feel like they’re enough. That has been the biggest surprise of all.
