Motherhood

I. Need. Him.

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Speaking of needs, I came across a realization of sweetness the other day.

While on bed rest with that hurt foot (one which has now thankfully mended — mostly!), D stayed home from work so he could look after O. Like most babies his age, O likes to move and be up to see the world, no matter how much we try to encourage his independent back play (many, many, maaaany times a day). I wasn’t really able to give him all that he needed with not being able to walk, so D had to take over.

As D was thrust head first into the experience that is my everyday life with O (something which he admitted made him feel entirely overwhelmed — welcome to my life, hubs!), I re-experienced some of what my existence was like before O. Laying around for hours, perusing social media like it was going out of style, watching Netflix uninterrupted — the whole nine yards. However, if and when O wouldn’t calm for him, D would seek me holding him as a reprieve.

And, after one time of having not done everything and anything for my son for a few hours (a very rare occurrence), he was given to me to help settle and soothe.

Once in my arms, something clicked.

Something fell into place.

A part I didn’t know was missing was now there.

My heart became sappy happy and got this strange full feeling.

My god, I realized. It’s not just that this kid needs me. I need him.

I. Need. Him.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve adored O since he crawled out of my womb. But need him? I don’t recall when that came to be or grew into my being.

And so, he was hugged a bit tighter, squished a bit longer and nuzzled a bit closer before demanding his desires of movement and exploration be met yet again.

Dad, and son, to my rescue.

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Mental Health, Motherhood

Thirty minutes.

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Like many other babies his age, O is in the midst of a period where he only sleeps 30 minutes for every nap he takes. He started this off and on a good month or so ago, and now has solely taken naps like this for the past two and a half weeks. Additionally, in between his every thirty minute nap, he has the tolerance for being up around two hours before cranky town hits. Naturally, our daily schedule has adjusted to accommodate this, though not by choice. If I didn’t have to constantly feel as if I was living life by the clock and always chasing the next nap, I wouldn’t. The needs of my child say otherwise, however, no matter how much of a schedule whore it may make me seem.

For me and I imagine millions of other moms, nap time is a time of reprieve. A time when, after giving every piece of you to your LO, you can give something back to yourself.

But in those thirty minutes do you…

Read (a choice I have made more so lately)?

Peruse other hobbies (a choice I have not made enough lately)?

Clean (a choice I made far too frequently last week as it had been neglected and we were expecting company)?

Play SimCity on my phone (a choice I wish I would make less of)?

Sleep (a choice that is a joke within a thirty minute time frame)?

Eat (a choice that should always take precedence, but often doesn’t)?

Write a post on Soundly Sarah (a choice I have neglected lately, oops!)?

Just be thankful you have that time?

Do you choose one of those?

Some of those?

All of those as you frantically try to jumble it into 1800 seconds and end up not satisfied at all as a result?

Evidenced by the fact that I’ve only been able to just now write this while on bed rest from a hurt foot, I don’t know how to answer those questions. Is this how it’ll always be?

In terms of better prioritizing, scheduling and letting go of the reins at times for things to happen as they will, I could have the answers I seek. But I did not expect this aspect of motherhood. I did not expect for my needs to be sequestered into 30 minutes time chunks. I (obliviously) imagined dreamy, two hour naps of bliss and relaxation. Eventually, those may come, but nap time in general will happen less if they do.

This obliviousness, or delusion, rather, it went so far as to tell multiple people before giving birth that I was worried I would get bored or stir crazy while on mat leave. I didn’t realize it would be nothing like that. I didn’t realize the second I’d have some time, it would be gone. Nap after nap, I find myself just getting started on ‘me’ when it’s nearly ended. So often, I hear O on the baby monitor at a point when things have just gotten ‘good’. Is that horrible of me to admit? Or merely human?

I write this for it leaves me in a spot of motherhood that I still find myself flailing, unsure and a bit ruffled. No matter the changes I could make, I am stuck at these questions. How do I redefine and pair down what I truly need while I am immersed in all that is motherhood? How do I make space for my desires and interests in a way that now accommodates times as a resource precious as gold? How do I refuse to loose myself among the demands that this new life entails? And, in this so often mother eats mother world, makes you feel like an selfish jerk for wanting it that way?

How?

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Mental Health, Milestones & Genetics, Motherhood

How can we ever really know?

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O was born with a couple of things that make him different than the typical baby boy. Some of these things will require surgery in a years time and one is something that cannot be seen by the human eye.

This unseen part about him is chromosomal. To be more specific, he has a large deletion in his 3rd chromosome. This deletion may be the reason for some of the other, differing, things about him — or it may not be. It’s hard to say. All that is known right now is the unknown, as his deletion is considered rare to the geneticists at BC Children’s and it hasn’t been seen enough to know what it could imply health wise, now or later, if anything at all.

In an attempt to understand how this came to be, be it from D and I or how our DNA combined, blood work was done on us. As of a few days ago, I now know that I too have this large deletion in my 3rd chromosome and that I passed it on to O in the womb.

I’m writing this here, in this space, because I need to better understand what this means to me. I need to voice it, to put it in text, to make sense of it. Selfishly, I need to be told it will be okay (even if the irrational side of me disagrees), again and again, on top of how many times I’ve already been told as much. I’m in the midst of scheduling a follow up with the geneticists to be told the same. Everyone is hinging on the fact that I seem to be okay, same with my other family members who may or may not have it, and so O should be okay too.

But how can we ever really know that? Am I okay? What about later on? Have I missed something my entire life? Was there something I should have questioned but never did? Is my son going to suffer because I didn’t? These are huge, unknowable, worrisome questions — I know. But how does one continue on as normal when they find out that something is missing in the base of their DNA? In the base of what makes them human? And that they’ve passed it on to their son, with repercussions entirely unknown?

Nothing I can do can change this, I get that, and I know that I need to be positive. I have to be. Not just for me, but for O and D. But how?

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

Precious, brutal, beautiful and exhausting reality.

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Before I ever became a parent and, at times, before I had an inkling that I might like to be a mom, I worked (and still technically do while on mat leave) in the field of early childhood education. To it I brought a bachelors of ECE and, prior to giving birth, racked up about four and half years of experience in the field — both with ITs (infant/toddlers) and TFs (three to fives). During the entirety of my pregnancy I was employed knee deep in the trenches of toddlerhood, and I believed that I’d be bringing to motherhood a cornucopia of knowledge and experience. Others in my life continually reinforced this thought of mine. With all of this on my resume, how could I not?!

Ha.

Haaaa.

Hahahahahahaha.

Too bad I had absolutely NO FREAKIN’ IDEA what to do with said knowledge and experience. Upon O’s birth, I was blindsided. My education, something my sweet husband anxiously worried would set me far ahead of him parenting wise, it felt like it meant nothing. My employment, and the fact that I had previously been working all day long with ITs, it was laughable and hardly the real thing — I got to send them home at the end of the day! My passions that I brought to the field of ECE, and the beliefs I garnered throughout it of children and childhood, it fell to shambles in the midst of a postpartum depression that could no longer even tell who I was when I looked in the mirror.

This should hopefully be news to no one, but nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can prepare you for being a first time mom. Anybody or anything that tries to tell you differently is lying. All that I brought to it (which I felt was a lot!) and the preconceived notions I had of it being otherwise, they were broken. Broken as in picked up, shattered to the ground, stomped all over, set on fire and then blown into the abyss. It was a delusional, humbling and hot mess of confusion for a good while there.

Now that I’ve survived the first four months of O’s life and know what it is to sleep again, I am thankfully beginning to see where my education, employment and passions can start being applied (more on that later). I am able to finally dig into those reservoirs and have them be useful, when before it felt as if they would drown me. I am excited for what awaits in that regard (also more on that later!). Most importantly and with relief, I have now added to that repertoire what I didn’t realize I lacked before. The grounded experience of REALITY.

Precious, brutal, beautiful and exhausting reality.

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Motherhood, The magic (in the mess). ♡

A Dish of Victory.

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This is a normal, probably too bland, basic as hell, dish of food.

It is also a dish of victory. Delicious (my husband better not argue that ;)) victory.

Many of you know that prior to giving birth to O, I prepped 10+ freezer meals to have food on hand that I could easily defrost and let our slow cooker prepare for us. Additionally, my lovely Douglas ladies came over two months ago and restocked my freezer full of even more food that I could quickly reheat and eat in a pinch. I was positively spoiled in that regard.

All of which meant that up until tonight, I didn’t have to legitimately cook a meal that followed a recipe for the past 4+ months.

Four months of not cooking (and I mean cooking where you chop veggies, prepare meat, add seasonings, ect.) it messes with your head. Yes, it allows you to be luxuriously lazy (#firstworldproblem), but it also leads you to wonder if it’s possible to forget how to cook. Will it even taste good? Will I enjoy cooking again? Will it be worth it? I’m not even gonna get into the anxiety I felt in trying to choose which recipe to use, making the grocery list and hoping D picked all the right things at the store while I looked after O. It was embarrassingly intense.

All of this also meant that up until tonight, I didn’t know what it was to cook a meal while also being a mom. Ha. Haaa. Hahhahaahaha. Holy effin’ GONG SHOW.

Those veggies? They were cut *days ago*, intended to be originally served several nights earlier but got thrown for a loop by a hostile infant that would not, could not (and what felt like SHALL NEVER NOT) allow me a few moments to be in the kitchen.

That chicken? It was defrosted, carefully cut up, tossed in a bowl and then promptly frozen AGAIN due to wrath of previously mentioned child. I’m sure any sense of tenderness or moisture it once had was sacrificed to the freezer gods long ago. Thank god for salt and pepper, and a doting husband who is too kind to call me out on it.

Speaking of said salt? While working on the rice, the realities that I am very much NOT a ninja became apparent as the container that once housed it went crashing down on our cement floors and shot shards of glass ALL FREAKIN’ OVER. Exactly what I needed, world! Thanks! Or thank freakin’ god O isn’t crawling yet.

And that rice? It was hurriedly and frantically made this morning between nap times (nap times which are even more achingly short as we work on transitioning out of the swaddle — a story for another time). The joys of listening to your baby monitor on high alert while cursing/staring down your oven to BOIL WATER FASTER, FAAASTER! Those joys are insurmountable.

Lastly, that bacon? It’s probably sacrilegious of me to admit this, but it’s totally the fully cooked stuff which comes in a chilled box from the store that you reheat in the microwave. Ain’t nobody got time to cook the real stuff with an infant. That is the one thing I did get right.

In the end, it happened. I made it, we ate it and while I’m 100% sure this is my denial talking, it tasted pretty dang good.

Victory!

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