hot mess express Archives

Until now.

02/28/2021 No Comments

I’ve been managing. Despite being always at home while on mat leave, juggling an infant, and my daily adult in-person interaction since early November being limited to just D and my son’s educators during child care pickup (you’d be proud, Dr. Bonnie Henry, with how well I’ve listened), I’ve managed. Until now.

Then this week happened.

Something snapped, and I let the loneliness and isolation “grief” finally creep in through the cracks. Despair set in, acutely and deeply.

I give up, Covid. You win.

As a deeply introverted, shy, homebody (who married someone that is the same exact way), I am profoundly lucky and privileged it took me this long to get here. I admit to that fully.

Yet, here I am now missing things I have *never* missed before in my entire life. Super busy play cafes, shopping in packed malls, full to the brim drop-in programs, over flowing movie theatres, and grocery stores with isles that have so many people in them you can hardly move. All things I would have non-jokingly told you I was allergic to a year and a half ago.

And when I remember back to the slow and simple days of park get togethers, play dates, and meeting up with mom friends to chat while our kids were being kids — it physically hurts now.

This was not the postpartum experience that I thought it would be. This is not mat leave I wanted it to be. The summer ahead of us, the first with our completed family of four, it will likely not be the experience I wish for it to be (at the rate Canada is going with the vaccinations). I hate all of this.

Perhaps next week I’ll be able to start seeing again the other things to look forward to, the silver linings in our time outside, and the positives in the small joys to keep celebrating.

But, right now? I am in mourning.

There is so much more I wanted to do this time around while I was off work. I had plans. M’s an easy enough baby that it would have worked this time, too, unlike with O. Yet, when I pulled out her diaper bag the other day prior to leaving for her sixth month vaccinations, upon it was a layer of dust. I was at a loss.

There are no thought provoking words or inspirational wisdom to end this piece, and it feels weird without it. Yet, I’m not sorry for it, for all I want and need to say is this:

This really, really sucks.

Mental Health, Motherhood, Postpartum, The magic (in the mess). ♡

The “if only”s.

02/21/2021 No Comments

My sweet boy.

As I’ve built this website, I’ve unintentionally had to remember and relive the “trenches” that were the first six months of your life.

I had realizations that came five years late.

Fraught discoveries at all that I didn’t know.

Wishes and hopes for the should-have could-have would-have but never-had.

I got stuck in the if onlys.

If only I could have better known your sleepy cues.

If only I could have better known your hunger cues.

If only I could have better known your signs of teething.

If only I could have better known the million things you were undoubtedly trying to tell me.

If only, if only, if only.

Instead, you were my bundle of hot, angry, and frustrated tears. Exhaustion, worn edges, and frayed emotions became you (and me, if we’re being honest). We lived, cried and grieved as one in the cavernous hallways of colic.

I tried.

To hear you, to see you, and to truss out from the misery of everything the need you were trying to communicate.

But that everything became one, and more often than not, I failed.

Yet here in the now, this is where I stop myself.

For in those failures – failures of first time mothering, failures of laughable pre-birth expectations, and failures of selflessness I wasn’t yet ready to let go of – I grew.

Those were the days that defined me.

If I had those if onlys, would I have learned to say fuck it and let go? To laugh at my utter lack of intuition, and just go for it on a wing and a prayer? To wade deeply into the murky Nile of motherhood, and still be able to find it’s soggy, muddy, messy beauty?

I don’t think so.

I intend not to write these soliloquies through rose coloured glasses, my mental health would have frankly moved mountains for those if onlys. My marriage with your father would have breathed sighs of reliefs in their reprieves.

But in those days, weeks and months — I became. In that battleground of exasperation, love, annoyance, and adoration (and the bravery to admit I felt all those ways), you taught me. You pushed me beyond myself. You gave me the greatest lesson I ever learned.

You made me a momma. ❤️

Mental Health, Motherhood, Postpartum, The magic (in the mess). ♡

This time around.

01/27/2021 No Comments

I recently sat down and did a bit of reflection on this piece I wrote a few years ago, but from my now second time mother perspective. Here’s what came of it..

Girl, I love you, but oh my goodness such DRAMATICS. Then again, I remember. Those days would be impossible to ever forget. First time motherhood was quite the significant headfuck for you. ⁣
⁣After your second birth, for the sake of sanity you realize you are historically close to loosing at that point, you choose a different dish. It is one that asks of you way less cooking and close to no prep — a delightfully easy meal of perogies, sausages and corn. Not the healthiest, but it was needed. ⁣
⁣I won’t fool you, things weren’t perfect while you made those perogies, and nor will they likely ever be, frankly. You were anxious and scrambling, but the results were about twenty million times less of a hectic gong show. And not only do you amazingly get to eat that meal together as a family (newborn sleeping in your lap and all), you manage it at two weeks postpartum, too. Perfection be damned. ⁣
⁣You could thank the gods that decided to listen that time around, but truth be told, just thank yourself. Second-time motherhood will instill in you the ability to handle (like a hot, graceful mess) 458634884 *more* things all at once. It is also quite the headfuck, just a slightly more manageable one. We even come to love it. ⁣
💚⁣ ⁣⁣
⁣P.S. I’d be remiss to finish this with out letting you know that here in the future you haven’t cooked this chicken dish in years. O, now a preschooler, has long since refused to eat it. Something about all the items touching (how dare us) and him being seemingly allergic to any and all cooked vegetables. We’re having LOTS of fun with that one.

Motherhood, The magic (in the mess). ♡

Asking the REAL questions.

12/30/2020 No Comments

Here are the questions I asked myself as I attempted to make sense of this gong show of a board book collection:

Why do we own this many board books? W H Y?⁣
You know you can’t even fit all the ones we own on this shelf and you should probably stop buying them, yeah?⁣
Where the hell is our Gruffalo book?! I guess I’ll have to get another. ⁣
You know what makes for great photos, Sarah? A black bookshelf in a hallway that has dungeness lighting AND it’s a dark + dreary night. Bravo. ⁣
E-readers are so much easier to sort. How old can O be before he starts using one?⁣
Wait. No. Never. I have to have a reason to keep buying him and M pretty books for all of eternity. RIGHT?!⁣
None of how you’re organizing this makes sense, I hope you know. Do you?⁣
Why do we still own Rainbow Fish? Donate that nonsense.⁣
You didn’t buy “such and such” when you were out thrifting last. Why? Next time, next time. ⁣
WHYYYY DOES NOTHING FIT LIKE I WANT IT TOOOOOO?⁣
Have you ever heard of a damn library, woman?!⁣

I am a mess. No lie.

Mental Health, Motherhood

Today was not our day.

12/25/2020 No Comments

[I’m posting this because among all the perfect Christmas posts/photos you’ve seen these past few days, it can feel very easy to feel inferior or like you haven’t done enough. If this is you, I see you – I hear you – I am you.]

Today was not our day.

My body deciding that 4:30AM was a perfectly acceptable time to be awake. By 2PM I was running on fumes, which made it very hard for me to cope with…

A profoundly fussy, hostile and (slightly) soul sucking baby still feeling after effects from her most recent vaccinations. Literally un-put-downable, could only be with me and had to always be moving or nursing (when she let me) to abate her hysterics.

+

A tired, overstimulated five year not use to all the gifts, the screen time, and the very many “inputs” of the holidays, but trying so hard to hold his own.

D was able to thankfully hold his own, however, despite having been up the majority of the night before with what we strongly suspect is restless leg syndrome related.

But, to top it off, the Chinese dinner we ordered in (we’re either honouring the half Jewish part of D or facing the realities of 2020, you pick) has left me wth a terribly upset tummy.

We were blessed to be able to open gifts with good friends of our’s over Zoom. But, the other stuff? UGH.

For now, I’m off to eat Reece’s in bed (sorry, tummy) and get lost in the most mindless possible drivel I can find on my phone before passing out in a sea of wrappers.

At least we got new sheets for Christmas?

Tomorrow is another day.

Thank freakin’ god.