Looking back

In the haze of the first few months of having a baby at home, I missed things.  And it is only in the last week or two that I have been able to really notice how much my life has changed.

Part of this comes from reading two of my good friends' blogs. Both recently just had babies and wrote birth stories.  It is funny how no matter how different the stories, a new mama always feels one thing: that the minute that baby is born, nothing else matters.  I remember that when we left the hospital, it occurred to me that I had no idea what the weather had been for the last three days.  There could have been something as ridiculous as a hurricane on the Great Lakes and a snowstorm in Brazil, and I wouldn't have cared to know the difference. I was living in a world where nothing else existed besides that which revolved around my child, and I didn't care to reenter the real world for quite some time.

And then I did want to reenter the world.  After nursing, and nursing, and nursing, I wanted nothing more than to go out with my friends and have a beer.  Sometimes I still do, and I always get a little tinge of guilt for feeling that way. But I'm sure everyone does, because no matter how much you love your child, days upon days of every ounce of you being in demand, physically, mentally, emotionally, 24 hours a day is exhausting.

I remember feeling, at one point, that the world had split in two. There was the world inside my house, which revolved around sleeping, eating, snuggling, and a lot of laundry; and then there was the rest of the world, which kept spinning on as if nothing had happened.

And though I was mostly blissfully happy among the mess of having a newborn, I also remember several nights, awake and rocking/bouncing/nursing for the umpteenth time, when I prayed for the sun to come up, because it would mean that we had made it through another night.  One night, somewhere around 3am, I handed her off to Ryan, pulled the covers over my head, and cried myself to sleep, certain that I could not be a good mother to this child when I had no idea what I was supposed to do with her.

A college friend had seen some pictures I had posted on facebook and invited me to her house for a moms' group.  It was everything I expected it to be - a bunch of moms, temporarily off work, sitting on the floor with babies in their laps; at least one baby crying at any given time but no one really worrying too much because it's just a part of life for all of them.  But it was also more than I expected it to be.  Just like anything, motherhood is like a secret club that you can sympathize with from the outside, but not really truly understand until you're a part of it.  So when someone started talking about how they thought the baby would never stop nursing every hour on the hour, I knew I had found a group of people that really got this whole shenanigan.  It was like a breath of fresh air.

And so, when I finished reading each of the birth stories written by two friends who are just a couple of months behind me in this parade, I closed the window on the computer and went upstairs, picked Nora up out of bed, and rocked with her for awhile.  I said a little prayer for the new mama, hoping that she, despite the challenges she would inevitably face, would find as much happiness as I have.

I know we have a lot more ahead of us. She's not yet three months old.  But it also seems that I have lived half a lifetime in the last 12 weeks, and it's one that I don't ever want to forget.