Wonderment

We spent a rainy day inside today, just breathing in the time we had to relax, play, and just hang out together. Evan and I watched cartoons, put together puzzles, colored, danced, and played guessing games. My friend, Sam, just had a little boy not too long ago, and is enduring those first trying, if not pyschologically painful, weeks of motherhood. She's going through those sleepless nights that get strung together to the point you lose your mind, and it made me think back to those nights myself.

Evan and I had a lot of good nights once I got the hang of the whole timing thing, but it doesn't come naturally, and it takes lots of practice, which I think mother nature intended. I mean, how else would you be able to hear your infant crying when you forget to turn the baby monitor back on? Normally such a state of sleep-deprivation would leave you dead to the world, but somehow mother nature tunes you into the soft little cries of your newborn (though they are only "soft" in retrospect when you can compare them to the fog horn set of lungs your baby has by age three!).

I had a hard time nursing, so I turned to full-time pumping at about week three. It was a godsend, because the minute my painful boobs went away, motherhood was so much more appealing. Up until that moment of truth, that terrible moment where I knew I couldn't nurse my child and be a good mom at the same time, I was miserable. Every time Evan cried, I could only think of the blisters of my poor boobs and the hell that was about to happen. To make matters worse, I had already been pumping, so I knew how much milk the kid would take out of a bottle, and how much less he would take from nursing. It was devastating, because I could calculate by week 3 just how much less sleep I would get from him nursing. It destroyed my mind.

I loved the daytime. Evan would keep me entertained for hours, babbling and learning and just being oh-so-amazing. Every little thing was photographed. When my husband went back to work, I loved the hours we had together during the day, but by 6pm when he came home, I'd hand Evan to my husband and I'd go upstairs for an hour long bubble bath to unwind. It became a ritual, one I still use to this day, and because of it, Evan and his daddy have such a great bond. They love their after work time together, and I love listening to them as I am off doing "me" things in the house.

When Evan was about 3 weeks old, I cracked. The last straw was when I had been asleep for maybe an hour, and Evan woke again, hungry from his nursing not too long before then. I was exhausted. I was in pain. I was losing my mind. My husband didn't even seem to hear the baby on the monitor, and I hated him for being able to sleep for more than a 3 hour stretch of time. I was seething and mentally anguished, and it was all because of exhaustion. This tiny creature wailed in his crib, and I remember looking down and simply losing it. I started sobbing uncontrollably, granted maybe in part due to hormones, but I sobbed like a little girl whose world was coming to an end. I sobbed about not being good enough, about the baby hating me, about being a failure as a mom. I'm pretty sure I dropped a lot of F-bombs in my ranting and sobbing, because my husband calmly came into the room, steered me to bed, and took over for the night. I had officially fallen apart.

That night, I think I slept for 6 hours straight. It was heaven, and I can still remember waking up and feeling guilty that I had been such a terrible mom. But that was when I concsciously realized that I couldn't do it all. I needed help, and if it meant giving up nursing so that I could regain some sanity, well, by all means, that was what I was going to do. And I did. Within 2 days of giving up nursing and going completely to pumping, I was a changed person. I was more relaxed at night, knowing that the middle of the night feedings were only going to leave me tired, but not in pain. I would nurse Evan about 9pm, then go to bed. At midnight, my husband would give him a bottle, and then he would go to bed. So by the 3 am feeding, I has slept 6 hours or so, and then could go back to bed for another 2-3. I finally regained my sanity and finally LOVED motherhood, including the night.

I remember one of the first really good nights, rocking Evan in his chair, making this silly whoosh noise that always made him nod off. I couldn't believe how big he was already, just 4 weeks old, and how much we had learned together as a family. You don't quite believe your husband will still find you attractive after you shoot a human being out of your body. You don't quite believe you will be exhausted when that first week home goes pretty ok. You don't quite believe that once you milk yourself like a cow, you will ever look at your boobs the same (well, ok, you don't really, but you certainly hope your husband gets over the image). But most importantly, you never quite believe how lucky you are to get to endure all of the craziness that is parenthood.

The bottom line is that I want to do it all over again. I can't imagine being that exhausted and not being able to nap during the day, but parents all over the world do it. And we have been through parenthood 101, so I think it's time we graduate to parenthood 202, right? I would give anything to have another baby turn our world upside down and make it so much better than we ever could've imagined.

Right now, Evan and his daddy are downstairs playing UNO. It's been 3 years and 9 months or so since Evan has made us a real family, and I wouldn't know what I would be doing know if he were not here. He's downstairs tell daddy, "I WINNED!". No, buddy, we winned. We got the most amazing boy who taught us how strong and loving and patient we really are. At night, when Evan kisses us goodnight, he says, "I Yuv You, you silly booboo!" or whatever silly name he comes up with on the spur of the moment. I still listen for his breath on the baby monitor, hear him toss and turn some restless nights, still go in to check on him right before bed. He's the love of my life, and I wouldn't trade a minute for anything in the world.