Last year was so busy. I completed the LitUp program under the guidance of my mentor Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country, and began a full revision of my novel manuscript.
Then, scant weeks after the fellowship ended, I gave birth to my son!
I was so hungry to return to writing after my son was born. Even though I knew that recovery from pregnancy and delivery can take a year or more, I was hung up on the notion that I might be good-as-new in six weeks. At that point, under our health care system, the OB/GYN checks you out one more time and sends you on your way. Cross your fingers you’re ready!
My immediate postpartum experience was brutal. Sitting down was excruciating–it felt like I was sitting on fish hooks. I also had De Quervain’s tenosynovitis in both hands, which made it challenging to hold my own son, never mind write. As I told the hand specialist I saw, my right wrist felt like it was going to explode. And then there was the sleep deprivation… One night, I “woke up” in the hallway, rocking what I thought was my baby. It turned out to be a stuffed dinosaur. My baby was still in his bassinet.
Very gradually, things got better. The newborn phase finally ended. My baby started smiling.
Today, I’m a stay-at-home mom. My day starts at 7 a.m. and doesn’t end until 8:30 p.m. I’m on-call every night, waking up two or three times to nurse and change my son. I am constantly fighting dehydration from breastfeeding. I keep a mental checklist of everything that could be upsetting my little one: hunger, a dirty diaper, gas, tiredness, not being given the object I’m holding, not being lifted into a sitting position, not being held, not being in the same room as mom… I want to answer his every need so he’ll smile all the time, but of course that isn’t possible.
I love him. Every night, I look at pictures and videos of him before I fall asleep. I love taking him to events at nearby libraries. I love pressing my cheek to his cheek. I love giving him purees that I’ve blended, mixing flavors that I hope will delight him. I love listening to him babble and bark. I love watching him take interest in our dog. I love introducing him to our neighbors and my friends’ babies. I even love singing baby songs to him, something I didn’t think I’d enjoy at all. I love him so, so much.
Am I still writing? During our stroller walks, I listen to writing podcasts. I occupy myself with the Books with Hooks segment from The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. When I’m trying to fall asleep at night, I mentally rearrange the scenes in my novel. Actually putting pen to paper, or fingers to keys, is nearly impossible. To sleep, or to write? I can’t have both, and my son needs me well-rested. Being a mother and writer at once feels impossible right now.
I recently started listening to the audiobook for The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom. Author Felicia Rose Chavez weaves her personal experiences into her guide to creating a supportive, artist-centered writing workshop. There’s nothing wrong with mothering, she argues. It isn’t weakness. She describes “learning how to mother” as a “marathon of self-suppression, discipline, and labor. Order and obedience, call and response, an everyday endurance fraught with claustrophobia.” I agree–there is no escaping the cycle of needs. Feed sleep play change feed sleep change play sleep change feed play. I haven’t slept more than four hours consecutively since last fall.
A “mother” isn’t “soft, powerless,” Chavez argues. “Mothering, for me, means willpower, fortitude, grit. It is the transcendent power to multiply oneself, succeeded by the supreme humility to serve that second self.” As daunting as it seems sometimes to have so much responsibility, I’m so grateful to be able to support this little human. Living life on his terms is challenging, physically and mentally. I’m working on cultivating a mindset that focuses on the long game, a future in which he and I are both thriving and sharing what we love with each other.
I haven’t shared photos of him online, but you can imagine–two large, possibly hazel eyes, a delicate nose, perpetually ruddy cheeks, and a mouth of five tentative baby teeth. A smile.