A Month into Mommyhood

Alright, let’s see how long Skylar’s nap lasts…I’m on the clock! I’ve got heavy rain white noise YouTubed right now, so hopefully that’s just what Sky needs for some solid sleep.

Speaking of solid sleep– this girl (me) got 7 hours basically straight last night! New Father of the Year, Matt Grevers, took the night shift. I slept in the guest room. MG texted me at 3:15 a.m. to let me know when she was last fed, then again at 3:44 a.m. saying, “you missed her first projectile spit up.” haha. I migrated to the bedroom at 6 a.m. As I crawled quietly into our bed Matt mumbled, “Careful, there’s spit up over there.” Eh, not enough for this mama to care.

I got up to feed Sky 45 minutes later and saw everything she had gone to bed wearing strewn on the floor. I pieced together the story of the night based upon the trail of clothes. Skylar must have spit up on her SwaddleMe wrap, then peed on her onesie while sleepy Daddy changed her at 3 a.m. The other two SwaddleMe wraps we own were dirty. I had thrown them in the hamper because our forever-puppy (but almost 3-yr-old) dog Gretel was snuggling with/chewing on them yesterday. They were in the dirty hamper with other christened-by-pee onesies and wet changing mats. But this morning, Skylar was snuggly wrapped in one of them. 😀 It still had a few Gretel hairs in it, but it probably just smells like loving dog sister to Skylar. So I’ll go ahead and attribute my pristine newborn’s current deep sleep to the Gretel saliva and hair swaddling her.

I’m a month into this mom thing and I’m not really sure what I’ve done right/wrong, how much I accomplish each day, but I do think our child is awesome. Really, I’m in awe of her every feature, function and sound. I read an article about maternity leave the other day and was firmly nodding along with some of the points made. One- don’t have visitors…or if you do, make sure you are OK with them seeing you/your house at its worst. There’s something in me that feels forced to play hostess, even when tending to a new human. Everyone says, “don’t clean, don’t cook, just hold your baby and lower your expectations.” But that’s not in my makeup (makeup: that stuff I no longer wear). If people come into my house, I don’t want them placing their hand on a table and seeing their handprint in the layer of dust. We live in the desert and have a doggie door, therefore there is always a layer of dust. Pre-baby, I did a quick once over the house with a rag before people came over. With baby, I tried to do the same…pretend like the house was “in order” and somehow things were unchanged, but that is just a lie!

Everything has changed. No amount of reading I did before Skylar prepared me for the emotions newborn screams would rouse, the constant paranoia felt when baby does finally go to sleep (is she breathing?!), the feeling of incarceration of new mommyhood (gotta be available every 1-3 hours to feed the little piggy!), and so much more. The author of this aforementioned article talked about her naive view of maternity leave pre-baby. Constant snuggle time with large blocks of time in which baby sleeps peacefully. That’s precisely what I thought the first month would be. Sure, there’s snuggle time, but often it’s as you have your wee one straight-jacketed in a swaddle and attempting to calm her down from a demon within. That demon is sometimes obvious- a dirty diaper, a hunger pang, an overtired babe – but often times it’s unknown. A total mystery. And that’s when parents go crazy. I now attribute 90 percent of Skylar’s fussiness to gas. The poor girl farts as loud as a human 20 times her size. It can’t be pleasant to house all that air in a tummy the size of an apricot.

Oh, she woke up…I shall return.

So as everyone says, there’s no preparing for how hard this parenting thing is. There’s also no way to prepare for the excitement I feel in the morning when I see her after a few hours of sleep. I swear every morning she gets prettier, her eyes grow wider, and she “smiles” more (or has more poops?).  I love my morning studies of Skylar. We learn a new cue of hers each day– God’s way of giving us a confidence bolster. A little “You kind of know what you’re doing”…for a few minutes out of each 24-hour challenge. My mom told me shortly after Skylar’s birth, “Now you know how much I love you.” She was right at the moment…but with each day I love Skylar more…so I can only imagine the depths of that love after 29 years of life!

No, I don’t have much time to sit down and tackle a project right now. But I’m coming to realize Skylar is my project. She will be my life’s work and no piece of writing is ever going to outweigh the importance of loving her and striving to meet her needs. Funny how God subtly prepares us for this child-rearing business. As a child, you don’t really notice babies. As a teenager, I didn’t know what to make of newborns. They looked all too fragile and needy for me to handle. In my 20s, I watched my brothers and sisters-in-law chase their kids around. I thought, “man, that looks exhausting.” In the last two years, I’ve been transfixed by babies. Their features, their smell, their noises. Matt and I started looking at young parents and envying them (hah!).

Now we are those young parents. We walked around a crowded street fair on Saturday and I was wearing Skylar. She slept the whole time, like a perfect baby (a facade!). I heard seasoned parents and young people “ready” to become parents oooo and ahhh over tiny Skylar. The older parents looked at us with empathy, but also with a hint of jealousy. A look that served as a reminder that this phase is transient and sweet. Skylar’s complete dependence will not last. “This too shall pass” is the new parent chant, but surely we’ll miss her newborn perfume, her naps on our chests and feeling accomplished as we get to know more and more about our little human.

I’m standing and swaying as I wear Skylar now. I’m far from an old, wise mommy, but I already feel transformed. I don’t go to the gym everyday (or ever) and I don’t care. My little girl tones my arms each day as I lift her to my boob, bounce her as I walk and press her to my chest. The only reason I care about my body right now is because it’s the vessel that is feeding my daughter. Vanity has been thrown to the wind and thank God for that! If I donned makeup, worked out six days a week and actually cared to change out of sweats, I’d be missing out on some of the most fleeting moments of my daughter’s life. This mom thing is hard, but I can’t think of a better occupation.