Christina:
Welcome to the club. Two months from now, if all goes as planned, you’ll be holding your baby boy, and I will be an unofficial (but very enthusiastic) auntie.
I can’t even explain to you how much I’ve waited for that day. Though, if my incessant nagging has been any indication, you already know. Wanting my own friends, especially my most cherished, beloved friends, to have babies is a pretty self-serving desire, admittedly. After nearly four years of mom-ing, myself, I now know how absolutely integral a Moms’ Club is. I only have a couple of friends with babies, and I’ve leaned on them–especially in the beginning–for survival. That’s not hyperbole.
I was terrified, and I was a mess.
You are probably terrified, too, and you should be. You are about to be tired in ways you never knew you could be tired. I’m talking whole-body exhaustion that will take away your ability to think rationally.
You are going to forget who you were before you were a mom. Some of that evolution you’ll welcome, and a lot you’ll resent. You’ll forget how to be a partner, too, for a while at least. It’ll take its toll, and you will feel–you will be–beat down and bedraggled.
You are also going to be worried and scared and frustrated beyond anything you’ve ever experienced. This is the trope people focus on when depicting parenthood—and I get why. That part is awful, and people should know what they are getting into. (Though, really, how can you ever know until you know?)
But the part they don’t do a good job of explaining, the part no movie or TV show or book or sappy Hallmark commercial gets quite right, is just how good it is.
It is so good. Life-defining good.
And that’s the other reason I want so badly for my friends to become moms. Yes, so we can commiserate over texts and alcohol, hair disheveled and sweatpants stained, about how worn out we are. But also, yes, so you can experience “so much wonder that wonder is not the word,” as a poet I love writes.
Let me paint you a picture: it is 4:00 in the afternoon. I’ve just finished my last class of what has been a really trying semester. I have approximately 27 things to do, and I know the kids will be home in less than an hour. I could be doing those things. I could be eating the salted caramel macarons I just bought, against my better judgement, at a local bakery. I could be prepping dinner or putting away the groceries that were delivered 45 minutes ago or taking a quick nap, which we all know I need.
Instead, I’m sitting in the rocking chair in the boys’ room, obsessively watching videos of when they were babies, mascara trailing down my face. It’s a pathetic thing to see. I’m a cliche. And I don’t care even one little bit.
I am obsessed with my kids. My life is damn-near unmanageable because of them, and yet I still want more of them. I count down the minutes until the boys’ bedtime each night, and then I crawl into my own bed and scroll through photos and videos of them.
I have never known a fear or sorrow like what I experience when I think about them growing up. So, I just try not to think about it all that much.
My life is harder, more stressful, less creative, less glitzy, more taxing than it has ever been. It’s also better in unimaginable, indescribable ways.
You won’t understand what I mean completely, now. How can you? It’s like trying to explain the ocean to someone who has never left the sand. You might not even understand immediately, in the weeks after the baby is born. Don’t give yourself a hard time about that. The fog can be hard to see through.
But you’re going to understand it, soon. You’re going to be sitting in a corner of your bedroom–which will, undoubtedly, be a mess–and the baby will have finally gone to sleep after hours of fussiness; and your face will be dirty and your clothes will be spit-up stained; and you won’t have had 5 minutes of quality time with your husband in as long as you can remember; and there will be more laundry than you think you’ll ever get done; and you’ll figure you have about 40 minutes, if you’re lucky, to shower for the first time in days; and you’ll reach for a bath towel but spot the baby monitor out of the corner of your eye, instead; and, against your better judgement, you’ll grab it, turning the volume up just high enough to hear your baby cooing; you’ll zoom in, panning the camera around so that you can see his lips in the shape of a sweet “O,” his belly rising and falling, and one soft curl on his head; and you’ll think, “What’s one more day without a shower?”; and you’ll sit back on the floor, instead; and you’ll watch your baby breathe; and you’ll be filled with so much wonder that wonder isn’t the word.
And I can’t wait.
Danielle
