Savoring This Stage

The difficulty of those first few weeks of new motherhood is already starting to recede into the horizon like tall buildings shrinking into dots as our train barrels ahead.

We dance to the same rhythm each day. We breastfeed on the couch in Henry's room. I caress his wispy hair, always smiling at his perpetual bed head. Then we move into his awake time. Sometimes he lays on his stomach, straining to lift his head to look at the black and white accordion book stretched out all around him. Other times, he is on his back, learning to track movements by watching his mobiles. Or we plop ourselves on a blanket outside and Henry's wide eyes soak up everything, while I read or drink the breakfast smoothie that Matt made for me before leaving for work. I shower during his awake time, while Henry lays on a thick towel on the bathroom floor and occupies himself underneath his wooden archway with dangling black and white images.

When I've counted a couple yawns, I wrap the Moby around my body and put the little piglet into his pocket. I sit on the front porch swing and sway him to sleep. Then, with about an hour and a half of time to my marsupial self, I decide what to do with my quiet time. I usually reference my ongoing list: write blog posts, finish thank you cards, schedule appointments, etc.

Our cycle repeats about every three hours. I usually try to fit in a visit with friends, often during one of Henry's naps in his piglet pocket, pressed against my chest.

I worked really hard to convince Matt to take a paternity leave. He took two full weeks off and then had another full week for spring break. Then he had two weeks of half days (which, for him, is a five-hour day). So when he comes home early, he becomes kangaroo dad, and I use one of the nap cycles to sleep all alone. Heavenly!

I still cry easily, although I tend to cry much more from joy than despair these days. I'm working really, really hard to savor the stage I'm in.

I've done a lot of work around the concept of savoring the stage one's in. As someone who enjoys planning, I'm always looking ahead, making lists, dwelling in possibility. Even though I continue to let myself keep one part of my brain in the future, I also try to dip myself into the warm waters of the present and relax a bit. When I was pregnant, for example, I tried to truly embrace the experience and fully enjoy that stage without wishing for Henry to hurry up and get here. When we were trying to conceive, I also tried to enjoy our life as it was, even though I was eager to get pregnant.

I think the trick to minimizing your suffering during the hardest parts of adjusting to an infant is to surrender. You have to surrender to the experience as it is and not try to change it.

Unfortunately, I was not able to do that for the first several weeks. I spent so much time preparing myself to surrender during the labor and delivery that I neglected to realize I would have to continue surrendering once he arrived.

At so many other points in my life, I've been able to avoid or go around suffering. In college, for example, I never pulled an "all-nighter." Either I planned out my time well in advance, or I opted for a lower grade. It just wasn't worth it to me to suffer from sleep deprivation.

But in this experience, there's no way around the suffering. You simply have to go straight through it. Even though I was able to do a lot to minimize my suffering by planning and preparing so much ahead of time, there were still things that I couldn't work around. I had to suffer through my post-partum pain. I had to suffer through a breast infection and a stomach virus--all while learning to breast feed. I had to work through the shift into my new role as mother.

As Anne Lamott writes in Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, "You've already gone ahead and done it before you realize you couldn't possibly do it, not in a million years."

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