Life Updates

Today, coming down from the high of attending a beautiful wedding, I find myself full of emotion. Tomorrow begins the final week of my maternity leave, and will be my baby’s first day at daycare. This evokes mixed feelings, just as it did the last time I was in this position five years ago.

There is sadness about the inexorable passage of time, and the precious, tender moments unique to the very earliest days that you’ll never experience again. Guilt about handing off your own flesh and blood to other caretakers for eight hours a day, five days a week. Fear that your innocent, helpless baby will get sick over and over again.

Yet there is also anticipation. I like my job, and having business challenges and technical projects to tackle. It helps me be the most well rounded, confident version of myself. Even though it leaves me less time with my children, it gives me more patience with them and motivates me to make the most of the time we do have together.

There is relief, I have to admit, because these early days wear on me like nothing else. Sure, when the baby falls asleep easily for naps and stays asleep for long stretches throughout the night, it is smooth sailing. Days like that, though, are few and far between. When the baby screams and cries because she’s tired or gassy or constipated, and you’re running on six non-consecutive hours of sleep, it’s much less fun.

Don’t get me wrong—she doesn’t scream that much. She’s a pretty easy baby, for the most part. Plenty of parents don’t even get six hours of sleep a day. And as she grows, taking care of her gets easier still. I actually feel as though we are just getting over a hurdle and finding our rhythm. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to keep her home with me a while longer. Ah, there’s that guilt again…

At least this is the last “first day of daycare” that we will face as parents. Part of what makes me so emotional is knowing that every milestone we reach with this baby, good or bad or mixed, will be the last. There will be no more after her.

Most of you know that I was hospitalized for four weeks in March. Consequently, I missed out on the second month of our baby’s life, I can no longer breastfeed her, and I will likely die in childbirth if I attempt it once more. I was already thinking two was enough, but I know many people get that baby fever again after a couple years and wonder whether they should try for a third. That won’t be us. There’s a bittersweetness to having the decision made for us.

I have a lot more to say about that near-death experience. Since I’ve been home, I’ve been writing a collection of essays about it. I want to see if I can get it published. If I can save one person from going through the same thing, or simply move someone with my story, I will have achieved something great.

I haven’t forgotten about my novel draft, which I also still want to publish. Seven people have read it and provided very helpful feedback. It is clear in my mind how to proceed from here, but for now, the essays about my hospitalization are more pressing.

These days, I save most of my thoughts and ideas for future books. That’s why I haven’t been blogging much. However, it does feel nice to come here and share some updates like this every now and then, like catching up with an old friend. I’ll try to do it more often.

FOMO

At 7:41 pm on a Saturday, I was watching my baby entertain himself in his activity gym. He went from kicking at a musical light-up toy to pulling down overhanging toys and gnawing on them. His first tooth had very recently breached the gum line, and he was discovering he could use it to clamp onto things more strongly than before.

It occurred to me that the only agenda item left for the day was to put him to sleep in the next twenty minutes. What a strange feeling, to have just this one small to-do item while the sun was still up, and nothing after it set. This time two years ago, I might have been getting ready to board a train for a party in the city and not return home for five to fifteen hours. A couple years before that, I went through a months-long phase of being out every single night, when plans had to be entered into my busy calendar weeks in advance.

I look back on those times and have trouble believing that was my own life. Like a clichéd elderly person, I now shake my head and marvel at the stamina of youth. My 26-year-old self would have found it inconceivable and laughable that, at 30, I would be spending my prime weekend time with a baby—my baby. Hell, even my 28-year-old self, who was at least in a serious relationship, would have been skeptical.

It now feels like ages since I’ve been able to stay out and have fun without worrying about the possible repercussions on a tiny human being. In the past three weeks, we attended two weddings, one with the baby and one without. We left the first one early because we didn’t want to push too late past his bedtime, and the second because we didn’t want to keep the babysitter too long. Both nights, I really, really wanted to stay out longer. I wanted to chat with more friends, hit the dance floor, enjoy some cake and more wine. But then the deviations from our bedtime routine disrupted our baby’s ability to sleep through the night. He still hasn’t recovered, and I feel as if I am being punished for trying to have a social life.

For the most part, though, I don’t regret this lifestyle upheaval. I don’t have too much of that dreaded Fear Of Missing Out. I’ve been fortunate to seize many a day in my twenties, and gotten a lot of that itch out of my system. After a while, it’s only natural to outgrow certain scenes. You get tired of the “crazy” nights you can’t remember, the crowds, the hangovers, the swings in mood and appetite, the foggy and interminable stumble home with your dried-up contact lenses after crashing on a friend’s couch for the night.

This is my next big adventure for the rest of my life. After six months, we’ve already observed so much growth and change in our baby. Every day, I experience a moment of disbelief that we created this whole other human ourselves, that I nourished—am still nourishing—him with my own body. Most of my FOMO now is around milestones: that his first crawl, first (real) word, and so on might take place at daycare rather than at home with us. Even that fear has diminished lately, too. It’s not realistic to expect to be present for every hypothetical moment we designate as special. Instead, what we can control is what we choose to mark as a special moment as it’s happening in front of us.

Sentimentality

This may be surprising, but I am a very sentimental person. I love savoring moments present and past. When I close a chapter of my life—by graduating from a school, ending a relationship, leaving a job, and so on—I always want closure, one last good look around, a satisfying sense of neatly wrapped loose ends. I am a completionist who hates feeling as though I am missing out on part of any experience.

Parenthood exposes this aspect like an open wound that you can’t stop poking because you relish the sting. I don’t want to miss anything cute or funny or interesting from my baby. I want to catch every smile, coo, and even pout. I love holding his warm little body, looking into his wondering eyes, rubbing his soft cheeks, smelling his milky breath and his hair that smells like both mine and his father’s. Part of me hates that I’ll be going back to work full-time and will most likely miss his first steps and words.

And yet, the days are sometimes so, so hard because I worry so much about being the optimal nurturer. Is the baby crying too much? Is he sleeping enough? Am I talking to him enough to stimulate mental growth? Am I having him do enough tummy time and other activities for physical growth? Is he going to have developmental problems because I spend too much time on my phone and leave the TV on? Am I enforcing bad habits and associations? Some days, the hours pass at a miserable crawl. I count them down until the end of the day, the end of the week, and finally the arrival at some milestone when everything is supposed to get easier and better. At these times, I can’t wait to go back to work so I can stop obsessing over the baby and feel more like my old, “normal” self again.

They say, “The days are long, but the years are short.” My son is seven weeks old tomorrow. I can’t believe he’s already seven weeks old, but I also remember how far in the future this date used to feel whenever I was frustrated and exhausted. I remember how long my pregnancy felt, too. This baby takes so long to grow, and then he grows up too quickly.

The other day, I started a memories box for him. It contains ultrasound photos, hospital wristbands, medical charts, and cards from friends and family. Reviewing the ultrasound photos makes me so emotional. It is incredible to consider how this thirteen-pound living, breathing boy grew from a tiny bean. Eventually, my baby will be too big to nap on my torso. He may want to stop nursing before I do. Then, one day, I will have picked him up for the last time, not knowing it would be the last. There will never be any sort of closure.

Those kinds of thoughts wreck me, they really do.