Cooper is One: A Mother's Love

05/23/2014

By Michelle R.
My baby is one, weighs 24 pounds, and has sixteen teeth.
Like every mother in the world, I don’t know how it has happened so quickly. So many times in the last year I have held him against me and begged him not to grow up…or at least not too fast. (Just today I did this). I see “big boys” playing at the park, and don’t know how he can possibly become that one day. I refuse to consider him becoming one of those pimply awkward teenage boys sitting in the back of our church, pretending not to care about anything.
This morning I sat still and quiet, watching him play—because like a tyrannosaurus rex, he can’t see me if I don’t move—and realized that with every new stage of his development, my love for him has only grown. So far one year old is WAY better than zero years old. So maybe, somehow, I’ll still love him when all he cares about is Lego, when he’s too cool to hug me (gah—I teared up writing that!) when he first experiments with swearing in front of me, when he wants to move to a bedroom in the basement just to be further from us.
But I’m writing this not to speculate about the future, but more as a reflection of this last year. Yesterday I was visiting with a friend who is pregnant and due with her first baby in a couple weeks, which only made me think a lot about my own labor and experience this last year. I read every mommy blog post on the internet while I was pregnant—10 Things You Don’t Know About Motherhood, 20 Reasons Not to Have Kids, 92 Reasons to Have Kids, 19 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Getting Pregnant, What No One Tells You About Babies—and I learned nothing from any of them. Nothing! Not because they don’t contain true good information, but because you can’t really know or understand this information until you’ve gone through it yourself. And sometimes, all that reading does is makes you realize how little you know, and you walk away feeling badly about yourself.
The millions of articles in this genre are not written to help expectant mothers; they are written so moms like me can reflect on their personal experiences. But every one of those moms would say the same as me—until it’s YOU, your body, your baby, your marriage—you can know nothing about being a mom. Run a daycare, have a million nieces and nephews, have younger siblings… nothing really equips you for being a full-time mother to your own child. Nothing but experience. Now I know that what I’ve always said is true—you can never really be ready to have a baby, until you have a baby. And that’s because not only do you not know how hard it’s going to be, but you simply can’t fathom the love you’ll have for that baby that will get you through the many storms that are coming.
So let me refrain from offering advice. You don’t need to hear it. What you’ll need to know in coming months, is that you are understood even when you feel alone, you are able even when you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing, this indescribable love you’ll have for your child will get you through, and you are the very best person in all the world—in all of time—to raise your baby. These are the words I needed to hear time and again during my “baby days”, when I was wracked with worry, insecurity, anxiety, loneliness, guilt and exhaustion.
Something I couldn’t stand hearing when I was pregnant was the many idle threats that experienced moms loved to throw at my head (whether they had been a mother for 6 weeks or for 16 years to 16 children): “You have no idea what you’re in for.” “Sleep now, because you will never sleep again.” “Go on a babymoon, because your marriage will never be the same again.” Etc etc. I knew it would be hard, but those words only seemed like a threat and were not the least bit helpful. Every time I turned around, I was offered nothing but negativity from moms who felt like no one warned them, and apparently felt these “warnings” would help prepare me. Of course they’re true, but what good do they do to say to an already fearful pregnant woman who can’t step back from the ledge of the most unknown adventure of her life anyway?
Don’t be dishonest with expectant moms. It will be challenging, and you don’t need to hide the struggles you had, but why not wait until she’s going through them too, when you can offer empathy and understanding instead of fear? Instead, remind her why she’s putting her body through this. Tell her why it’s worth it, and about the many incredible joys of motherhood. Though she can’t fully understand this either, try to describe to her the love you have for your child. If you must tell her the bad, at the very least balance it with the good. Because let’s face it—if it were all bad, no one would ever have more than one baby. They would choose celibacy before taking that risk again!
While I was pregnant, I tried and tried to love the tiny stranger inside of me, but it was hard. I was attached and devoted to “It”, but I don’t know if I can truthfully call those feelings love. Discussing this with my pregnant friend yesterday, I reflected on when my feelings for that baby turned into love. I had a hard, long labor, and when my son finally came into the world, my feelings weren’t love. They were RELIEF. I was just so glad he was out, I didn’t even think to question whether it was a boy or girl. He was put on my chest, and my feeling toward him, quite honestly, was gratitude. I was glad he was out, glad he was healthy, didn’t care that he was a bluish purple color or greasy and gross, and I was glad I could deliver him naturally without interventions. It was a blur of activity after that, of the midwives caring for me and baby.
But after all that, I distinctly remember coming out of the shower in the hospital room and seeing him lying, swaddled in a blanket, on the table by himself. Though my husband says otherwise, I don’t remember there being anyone else in the room; in my memory it felt like it was just him and I. It was THEN that I was hit with the most confusing, powerful feelings of love for him. It shocked me actually, in those early days, because my love for my husband was strong but it had developed over time… this love hit me fast and hard.
I hesitated there, wondering if it would be OK if I picked him up and held him? It didn’t seem like he was really mine, like I should be allowed. But I did, and waddled my way over to a wood-armed brown couch by the window, and we sat there for maybe 5 minutes, maybe 2 hours. And I just stared at him and snuggled him. FINALLY. The midwives were talking to us, telling us how to keep a baby alive, but I remember I couldn’t make myself look up to at them or hear their words; I just hoped my husband was paying attention. This strange little baby was so pale, with flaky overdue skin and a bizarre swollen nose, the weirdest cliff of skull shooting out of his forehead and looonnnng waterlogged fingernails…and gosh was he gorgeous to me. I missed him terribly when they put him in the carseat, in the back of the car on the way home.
I barely slept that night, after two days of the hardest workout of my whole life, with no eating and no sleep. I was so excited, so happy, and so sad that he was so far away from me in his bed (right next to mine!) For days I just wanted to cuddle him and smell him; I hated being told to lay him down so I could eat or sleep or shower. THAT is why you go through those nine months of discomfort and two days of indescribably pain! And those moments are the kind no mother told me about while I was pregnant.
I worried about so much of the process when I was pregnant. I was scared of labor, distrusting of my own abilities, anxious about the descriptions of what the postpartum recovery would be like, I should have been fearful of the early days of breastfeeding, and beyond all that terrified I wouldn’t know how to take care of him. And all I can say is that none if it is what you expect. The entire experience is so much worse and so much better than your expectations.
The physical recovery was much harder than I anticipated, but no part of my worries about going through it again, because there was so much bliss in those early days. Labor and delivery was indescribably painful, but I look forward to the experience again because there is no moment of my life that comes even close in significance to it; it empowered me, strengthened me, showed me exactly what I’m capable of, and changed me irreversibly.
There are times I tell myself my labor story, just to be telling it… that is how important it is to me. The unknown is scary, but the incredible beauty of the unknown is the thing pregnant women forget to think about.
No one could have prepared me for what this last year has held. Cooper, my brilliant handsome hilarious and stubborn unadaptable intense little boy, has taught me more than everything I learned in the 29 years before. There were days I thought nothing would ever change… I was sure I would get about four fragmented hours of sleep a night for the rest of my life. I was convinced he would never eat solid foods. I spent hours and days and weeks worrying about sleep, stressing about poop, fretting I might be ingraining irreversible habits that would torture him long into his adult life. I thought he might be the only human in the world with hundreds of tiny sharp teeth filling his mouth because we have had no breaks from teething since he got his first tooth at two months old.
Some days I swore up and down I would never ever EVER having another baby as long as I lived. I put him up for sale multiple times, but there were no takers (kidding!). I was completely convinced he was the single most difficult baby in the world, and even more convinced I was the absolute worst mother in the world and should not have been entrusted with him.
Yes, it’s hard, and I have a feeling this will never be an easy job. But EVERY single day I fall in love with him again and again…and again and again. Sure, he makes me feel crazy at times, but he has a magical power over me that no one else in the world does, and redemption is easy. All he has to do is giggle at me, lay his head on my shoulder, or hide his grinning face behind his fat little fists in a spontaneous game of peek-a-boo, and the fight from 5 minutes ago is forgotten. (I imagine his tactics will have to adapt a little when he’s 17.)
Every day is a paradox of such incredible moments and such struggle that when my husband asks how my day was, I have no idea. But a mother’s love is a true gift from God; if it weren’t so powerful there is no way we could come back day in and day out to such a challenging unpredictable job. And there is certainly no way we would ever let ourselves do it all again.
And there is absolutely no way to describe it. If only we could move back and forth in time to calm our stressed selves, to know it gets easier, to see how worthwhile it all is. In our humanness we are so limited to comprehend such love and such a miracle, but this hardest more inescapable job in the world also has the very greatest of perks.
(*If you’d ever like to share your story with the community, we would be pleased to offer you the space to tell your story! Email katherine@mommyconnections.ca)