Just keep going. No feeling is final.
This morning started around 3:30. I brought S into bed for his second feed in hopes that he would sleep better wrapped between my arms and the wool duvet after not seeing me all day. He nursed off and on until he finally woke up at 7:20 am. I wear a bathrobe in bed to cover up my breasts when I have had enough of him insisting on sleeping with my nipple in his mouth. Most of the feed is for comfort because we are separated regularly now. I want to give in and let him soothe and drink but sometimes I have to push him off of me several times and grip my bathrobe to stop him from prying it open. He winces. Sometimes he screams. Sometimes he just rolls over with a huge toothy grin knowing he’s exactly where he wants to be and falls back asleep. I love seeing him sleep-smiling on his back. My exhaustion makes it difficult to fall back asleep and I try to meditate using the body scan method. I can’t be sure when I finally fall back asleep because I don’t always check my phone. The anxiety of knowing how many times I’m woken up and how little sleep I’m getting makes the sleep deprivation much worse. I use to be fastidious about keeping track of S’s every move, even at night—quantifying his life made it easier somehow, gave me the illusion of being in control. I still keep track of his sleep but with less compulsion. Sometimes I don’t want to care when and for how long he is up.
The obsession with his livelihood has slowly turned into an obsession with him, his expressions, moves and general being. I wasn't in love him for the first few months of his life. I didn’t know how to love a creature completely dependent on me for survival, a creature so attached to me yet not able to articulate any response that I could understand. Newborns take—that is how they survive. Your whole body moves for them. Your whole body exists for them. They don’t have an understanding of being anything besides an extension of you, and you an extension of them.
Slowly S became his own person expanding his proprioception.
Slowly I began to fall in love with him.
We are in a magical time now. We are in the YES time. S says yes to almost everything. He is up for anything. I can manage our environment to play together and watch his own Self unfold alongside me. He can be gently coaxed into doing anything.
I know it is also a transition time. The YES time will not last long (I've been warned). Unlike during the newborn phase where I couldn’t see, feel or imagine anything outside of it, I do now. I cannot precisely know what will happen but thanks to Rilke I know to Just keep going. No feeling is final. As such, I can manage to be more present and more accepting of all that is happening, even if I am still not sleeping like was promised during the newborn stage. The newborn stage is a fucking vortex that spins you around in all directions simultaneously. There is no chance to escape it, no chance to try to get out (or be whoever you thought you were before) because you’ll get caught up and thrown back in again harder. Now, I don’t want to be whoever I thought I was before. I thought I wanted her back. Of course, I still miss her freedom and regularly spend time crying exhausted wondering if I will ever catch up to time. But now I live a life that expands optimistically in spite of me and the residue of that yen.
That woman wanted to be a mother. I am the result of that desire. I am a mother!
How could I want to be the person that resolutely wanted to be who I am now?
It took me over a year to realize the impossibility of that scenario.