You Can’t Always Get What You Want

May 12, 2013 by ·

Disappointment is a shitty feeling. It means you wanted something and didn’t get it, that you let yourself hope and that hope wasn’t fulfilled, that you opened yourself up to possibility and got shut down.

I am disappointed today and it feels petty and first-world-problem-ish.

It started with gratitude for a chance to sleep in and a small boy who put his heart (and hands) on paper. My boys said, “This day is for you” and I felt special and loved. All I had was one simple wish: to have a nice day with my family.

I did my part. I played along when the small boy wanted to lead me downstairs with my eyes closed. I let him make my breakfast even though it took longer and I was afraid he was going to pour milk all over the floor. I listened and responded and hugged and did all the things good mothers are supposed to do. But for the majority of the day he was—to be frank—quite beastly, and I stopped being able to do those things.

Banff-Springs-HotelOur outing got rained on, which made it not worth what we had paid for it. We had dinner in a place that should have been lovely but was instead simply a spot to get some food in our tummies, taking bites in between admonishments to hold the cup with hands not teeth and to keep feet off the table, before getting back in the car and driving home well after bedtime.

Maybe the small boy was beastly because he was bored or excited or simply because he’s four. There is no way to force him to stop doing the things we ask him not to do, and we can’t duct tape him to the roof of the car.

In any case, I didn’t get my simple wish, and that’s disappointing.

And then there are two pieces I was hoping would be published and (so far) have not been. And a dear friend was left out of something and my heart hurts for her, especially because she gives so much to others.

I want to invite possibility and joy and wonder. I appreciate that beauty when it’s gifted to me, and I’ve had a lot of perfect days lately with sun, friends, food and family. Today just wasn’t one of those days.

But there are bigger problems in the world. I got what was important today – time and love and acknowledgement.

You can’t always get what you want, especially when you have a four-year-old. But I’m trying to remember that I’ve got what I need.

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: ,

Say What You Need to Say

April 14, 2013 by ·

I’ve been thinking a lot about resentment lately. I suppose that’s normal when your entry into motherhood is a crying-filled, sleepless smackdown and you subsequently have a second baby who offers you the sort of experience you expected to have when you became a mom. At least it’s normal for me.

“This isn’t the experience with motherhood I wanted you to have,” I remember my mom saying to me one day while I cried on the phone to her when Connor was a baby.

It wasn’t the experience I wanted to have either. It’s not that I thought having a baby should be lullaby perfect, but I didn’t want it to be filled with quite so much despair.

The moment my mom said that to me is a milestone in my motherhood journey. From where I stand now I see that moment like a marker stabbed into the sand on my path, noting what came before and what would follow after. This is how the beginning will always be for you, says the sign next to it. You can’t relive those earlier months and your motherhood picture will always be shaped by this experience. You don’t get to do it again and have it be easier, more fulfilling, more fun.

No, I don’t.

But do I resent Connor?

No, I don’t.

***bench-and-blue-sky

I danced with Ethan this morning.

He was full of smiles when I went to get him out of bed to start the day. I fed him and then he played happily in his high chair while I had breakfast. He splashed in the bath, experimenting with what happens when he kicks his feet.

We’ve been working on sleep lately and this morning, not for the first time, he had a nice, long nap. He woke up, pink-cheeked and laughing. I fed him and then thought he might like some play time on the floor, but he didn’t. So we danced.

“Say what you need to say,” sang John Mayer, as I held Ethan around the waist and placed my hand in his small chubby one. He put his nose in the crook of my neck and leaned his cheek against mine. He let me sing and he stuck to me as I swayed, breathing him in.

***

If Ethan had been my first baby, I wouldn’t have spent so much time bouncing a screaming baby. I wouldn’t have logged hours in his room trying to get him to sleep and wondering at what point my sanity would actually break. I wouldn’t have been anxious about doing errands or shopping for groceries in case he had a colossal meltdown in public.

I would have been able to go to play dates without dreading having to go home and deal with him by myself. I would have had more hot meals. I would have had more meals, period. I would have cherished the time and his laugh and those slobbery, open-mouthed kisses without wondering why the lovely baby stuff had to be overshadowed by so very much hard stuff.

That sign in the sand is right. I don’t get a motherhood do-over, though my experience with Ethan has given me a glimpse of what might have been.

With a different baby, my early days of motherhood might have been more peaceful. They might have been more fun. They might even have been diaper-commercial sweet. With a second, very different baby, I can see it now.

***

Do I resent Connor?

No, I don’t.

I don’t resent him, neither the baby he was nor the boy he is now. But do I resent my introduction to motherhood and wish it had been different?

Sometimes. A little bit. I do.

Say what you need to say.

 

Filed Under: Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: , , ,

2:40 a.m.

April 2, 2013 by ·

“Goodnight,” I say, kissing him. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Then a whispered plea. Please sleep.

The chances of him sleeping from this 2:40 a.m. tuck-in until morning are next to none. The chances of him sleeping until 5 a.m. are…okay. I give it even odds. But he’s not likely to get to even 6 a.m. before waking up.

Which means I’m going to be waking up. Again.

I haven’t had more than four hours of sleep in a row since the beginning of October. And that’s rare. Really rare. Sometimes I get three in a row (more often lately – fingers crossed) but too often it’s two hours between wake-ups, or two and a half if I’m lucky.

As we enter this sixth month with Ethan, I now know with much greater certainty that sleep deprivation was a huge contributor to my PPD with Connor. I look back and wish we had done something different, but I honestly don’t know what that would have been. We tried everything.

We tried a night of bottles so I could sleep when Connor was three months old, after which he refused to take a bottle for months as if punishing me for wanting to sleep. It was after that option was taken away—that one thing that would let me sleep sometimes instead of having to feed him—that I started to feel like I was going to die. From exhaustion. From desperation. From despair.

I don’t have that issue this time, thank goodness. I started to feel those same feelings of being desperate for sleep, thinking about it all the time, wondering how long it will last this time, and I asked for help. I can’t do it again, and luckily I have a husband who’s at home and can get up with the kids in the mornings so I can sleep just a little bit more.

So I’m not desperate. I’m not in despair.sleep-quote

I am feeling it, though. I stood in front of a shelf in the grocery store last week for at least 10 minutes before I was able to choose an item and put it in my cart. My brain just wasn’t processing.

I’m clumsy. I walk into things a lot and am always sporting a bruise or three. My synapses just aren’t connecting.

I stood in front of the toaster the other day waiting for it to pop and then realized I hadn’t put any bread in. The next day I managed to make toast for myself, but then without thinking I cut it into four squares the way Connor likes it. My neurons are firing, but perhaps not quite in the right order. (But that’s okay; toast in little squares is actually pretty good.)

I spend a lot of time looking at Ethan these days. I’m soaking him in. Breathing in his smell and imprinting the rolls of his thighs on my fingers. I want to remember what his baby laugh sounds like and appreciate the gift of watching a person learn to navigate the world. He will be our last baby and there are many things about that fact that leave me a bit teary.

But the lack of sleep isn’t one of them. When my brain rebels against wakefulness and my eyelids refuse to stay open I remember: It’s the last time. I won’t have to do this again.

I want it to be over, this quest for sleep over which I have no real control.

But at least I know this: It’s the last time.

 

Filed Under: Hard things, Postpartum depression · Tagged With: ,

Four

January 10, 2013 by ·

I’m too sharp with him sometimes. Too impatient.

“Mama?”

“Yes, love?”

He’s talkative lately.

“Mama?”

“Yes?”

Especially early in the day.

“Mama?”

By the eighth time on a too-early morning, I’ve moved on to “hmm?” And after two days, during which he has called for my attention countless times, I resort to a curt, “What?!”

Just say it, my duck. I’m listening to you, so just say it. I don’t want to have to acknowledge you every single time you want to say something to me when I’m sitting right there.

He deserves more from me. He’s four, and sometimes I forget that. And then I get frustrated and impatient and I don’t pay attention enough and he tries harder and I snap at him. And all of a sudden there he is in front of me – my boy who’s only four, which really isn’t very big at all.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things · Tagged With:

Surviving Doomsday

December 21, 2012 by ·

If you can read this post then a celebration is in order.

I survived doomsday

Yes, apparently the world hasn’t ended after all. Of course, as an increasing number of people are pointing out, the Mayans didn’t actually predict the end of the world on December 21, 2012. That just happened to be the day this particular cycle of their calendar ends. But that’s not why we should be celebrating.

You see, it’s my birthday.

December 21, 2012 also happens to be the day this particular cycle — this particular year — on my calendar ends. Coincidence? I think not.

I do sort of feel like I’m on the cusp of something. A new chapter in life. We’ve now lived here for a year. It’s been a year of getting to know a new city and settling into a new job, a year of adjusting to (and loving) a proper Canadian winter. I’ve met new friends and kept in touch with old ones. We’ve started again with a whole new life that has only just begun.

We went “home” again recently. I’m not sure that’s the right word, but it’s the only word I can think of to use. We went back to the city I grew up in, the city where Connor was born and the city where my husband and I lived together for 11 years. And it felt distinctly unlike home.

I drove past our old house for the first time since we moved just over a year ago, and I got a little verklempt. Last year we sold the house to another family; their chairs are on the porch and their Christmas lights decorate the railings and flower bushes, but it still feels like my house. The city doesn’t feel like my city, though. I moved there when I was almost five years old, so in many ways it was the only “home” I had ever known. I’m not sure why it doesn’t feel that way now.

It was grey and rainy while we were there. I don’t miss either. I don’t miss the slow drivers or the traffic lights or the way the city feels dark even when it’s not. Those are all things I didn’t notice when I lived there (except for the grey raininess, which I did notice and was thrilled to move away from). But when I thought about the city beyond all those less-than-ideal, sort of frustrating things, I just didn’t miss it.

Rich thinks it’s because I left a lot behind when we moved away. The year prior to our move, and all the challenges that time brought with it, is firmly planted in the ground that is that city. The seeds were scattered there and the rain soaked them, bringing them to life. All that stuff sprang up and I had to hack it down, which was a long and painful process. And when I was finally better I found myself unable to tolerate all the other stuff that had previously just lurked in the background.

So I fled.

Or at least that’s what it feels like to me. But as much as there are things I do miss — people, mostly, and a certain kind of chicken burger at a restaurant we don’t have here — all my visits home have confirmed that it’s not home anymore.

My home is here now, and (happily) so are some of my people. It took the better part of this year to scatter these new seeds and let them settle, but they have. And now it’s time for a new cycle to begin.

I survived doomsday, but it wasn’t today. Today, I’m pretty sure, is more a beginning than an end.

Filed Under: Happy things, Hard things · Tagged With: , ,
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