I've been a very selfish mom. I'll admit it. I've mourned the loss of my body and my life most days since the baby has been born. I can blame some of it on the Postpartum Depression, but a lot of it was I just was not adjusting well to motherhood. I've been a nanny, and damn good one. I loved it, loved the kids, treated them and cared for them as if they were my own. So even though this pregnancy was a huge surprise (not planned for at all), I assumed my being a badass nanny would easily transfer over to being a full time mom.
I have never been more wrong about anything in my life.
The constant demands on my sleep, sanity, and body drove me to the brink of snapping more times than I can count. I tried in vain not to think in terms of what his crying and not sleeping were doing to me, and focus on what he needed, what was wrong, why he was having a hard time. But there was always that dark part of me whispering in the back of my ear, "If he wasn't here, you wouldn't have to deal with this." It compounded my already present depression.
It's been getting better, little by little each month that goes by. I have to remind myself everyday though that he can't talk yet, his only method of communicating is crying and so I just need to figure his shit out when he's trying to tell me what he needs.
This Monday it all melted away. He woke up with an outrageous fever, no appetite and lethargy like I haven't seen since he was a newborn and having trouble feeding. My instincts kicked in, like normal, but this time I was present with him. I wasn't just going through the motions while lost in my head about how this was cutting into my to-do list, or how I wasn't going to get to work out, or that I couldn't get away from him because he was so clingy. I was there with him, figuring out what he needed and wanted to help him get better. I realized there was no way any of my list was getting done, and that was that. No guilt, no resentment, just acceptance. I finally accepted motherhood. I didn't feel like a care taker or live in nanny, as I have for most of his short little life, I finally felt connected on a deeper level than we had gotten to, where I knew at my core, my essence, that he was my son. Remarkably, he recovered from this bout of illness, quicker than I've seen him get over anything. By 10 that night his fever had drastically receded to 99.3, and kept dropping overnight to reveal a bouncy, happy, bright eyed little boy for me the next morning.
I'm nowhere near to being done realizing the depth of my "mom-ness", and still have to work every day (usually between 3am-5am) on not snapping, not muttering curses and sighing exasperatedly when I hear him wake again each night, not moping or thinking about what his actions are doing to me, but it's a start. A very, very late start, but a start nonetheless. I'll take it.
He's my little guy, my little man. And he just needs his mom.
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