Wednesday, November 16, 2011

motherhood, one year on

My baby turned one last week. Of course, she had little, if any, idea about what it all meant, beyond the fact that she quite liked the balloons we blew up and playing with (or, more accurately, near) her friends for a couple of hours. I’d been told more than once that the first, and even second, birthday is more for the parents than the baby. I definitely felt the force of this in our case, not least because we were offered just as many congratulations for making it through the first year of parenthood as our baby was offered ‘happy birthdays’.


Given that the birthday girl didn’t register the significance of having lived for one whole revolution of the earth around the sun, what might it all mean? The day itself, beyond the event we made it into, was a day like many others: wake up, get dressed, feed, play, sleep, and repeat. Next year, she is likely to be more aware of the cake, the decorations and the presents - if only to feverishly unwrap them so she can play with the wrapping paper. Commemorations - of which birthdays are one example - are solidified by repetition: as she grows older she will start to look forward to this annual event, eventually counting down the days and looking forward to her presents in the way that I was this year.


It certainly felt like a significant milestone to me. Through the days that sometimes dragged every second, or the weeks that sometimes flew by, it really does feel like we’ve come a long way. Even though I haven’t forgotten the major details of her birth a year ago, the trauma of it all is fading from my mind. I’m reminded of a passage in Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, when the narrator observes a woman giving birth:


Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn’t groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again. (p 68)


I don’t know about the ‘going straight home and starting another baby’ - good lord! - but this November it has become increasingly harder to remember how I experienced her birth last November. Forgetting is part of commemoration too. When countries stage national commemorations, that which doesn’t fit with the narrative of solemn remembrance or joyous celebration is erased or downplayed.


So what do I choose to remember and emphasise for this commemoration?


Seeing the angry bruise on her cheek and cuts on her forehead from the forceps which pulled her out of me.


Marvelling at the ease with which she latched on to feed. She had been kept waiting for nine hours while I was in surgery, so learned the benefits of delayed gratification early.


Hearing her first cries, one of which had a distinct ‘no, no’ sound to tell me she didn’t like something.


Having to call for help from the midwives to pick her up out of the see-through bassinet by my hospital bed to feed her, because I wasn't able to do it.


Being reprimanded by one of the midwives for having a messy room and not picking my baby up myself.


Feeling pleased that breastfeeding was going well, largely without me leading the way.


Feeling dismayed when we were told the she had lost 11 per cent, not the allowed ten, of her birthweight when she was weighed on day four, and being hooked up to an industrial breast pump so my ‘output’ could be ‘measured’ and ‘charted’.


Listening to my husband remonstrate with the paediatrician about the breast pump, and being granted twenty-four hours to feed from my breast to get her weight-gain back on track.


Feeling devastated when she didn’t appear to have gained any weight the next day, until my husband pointed out the scales were not zeroed properly. Then feeling vindicated when they showed that she had gained more weight than was expected.


Wanting desperately to get out of the hospital and feeling jealous of the everyday people I could hear talking and laughing outside my window.


Being granted permission to leave, after yet more checks, and a temperature scare - it had momentarily dipped, and they wouldn’t let us leave until she was nice and warm and ‘normal’ again.


Buckling her into the taxi on a beautiful blue sunny afternoon for her first trip into the outside world after six days that felt like forever, and feeling every bump and corner of that journey home.


Settling her down to sleep in our room and feeling both more normal and more petrified than ever.


Holding her head up for her.


Hearing her snuffly breathing in the night, which my mother thought would bother us. It didn’t. Instead, I felt reassured that she had lived through another twenty-four hours.


Worrying that she wasn’t feeding every two to four hours like she was meant to.


Hoping that she was getting enough food.


Sleeping when she slept.


Moving her around the house - from bedroom to living room and back again - in her bassinet on wheels.


Watching her sleep, which she did a lot.


Having visitors.


Being congratulated.


Drinking kiwi crush and dreading going to the toilet.


Bleeding.


Being threatened by the Department of Internal Affairs - with one such letter being dated 26 December - for not registering her birth the split-second after she had been born.


Feeling her sleep on my chest.


Trying to carry her in a sling, freaking out when it seemed like she might get squashed, and realising that baby-wearing wasn’t for me.


Looking at her fists curled up above her head in triumph as she slept.


Mentally running through everything from starting solids, to toilet-training, to learning to drive, to moving out of home, and feeling stressed.


Realising, finally, that all she wanted for now was food and sleep, and everything else would happen in its own time.


I could go on, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. And I’ve barely scratched the surface of her first few days.


I’ve been asked a lot in the last year whether or not I am enjoying motherhood. It’s a question I don’t really know how to answer, and am probably, knowing me, way overthinking. But I can’t quite reconcile ‘enjoyment’ with motherhood, in the way I might enjoy a movie, or a nice chilled glass of sauvignon blanc (both of which I dimly recollect from the distant past). My experience of motherhood so far has been both less and so much more than mere enjoyment. It has fundamentally challenged me on every level: physical, for sure, emotional, definitely, and even intellectual. I’m still not sure of so many things - how I will juggle work and childcare being the most pressing - and I’m starting to question some of the things that I thought I fundamentally believed - like whether I should go back to work at all.


Some new parents momentarily feel envious or dismissive of people without children. But I don’t. I just feel like they’re at a different place in their lives, and they should treasure what they are experiencing in the here and now. If motherhood has taught me nothing else, it is to focus on the present. The future will work itself out in good time.


More than anything else, I feel transformed. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, life will never be the same again. I will never be the same again. And learning who I am now, as she learns who she is full-stop, is a shared journey that I can’t imagine not taking. Am I enjoying it? No, I’m cherishing it. And missing each moment as they pass by too quickly, with only photos to look back on to try and re-capture them.