This weekend, we went up to Maine to introduce the girls to their new cousin, Deklan, who has now attained the ripe old age of three and a half weeks. He's a cute little dude. On Saturday night, my brother and his wife went out for a few hours, and my mother, Alastair and I babysat for him. I was reminded of how simultaneously sweet, exhausting and dull the newborn weeks are. It also made me think back on the surreal-ness of going from being childless to suddenly being a parent.
Once, when the girls were just a couple of weeks old, and my parents were in town, Alastair and I snuck out for a quick dinner at a Thai restaurant. It was the strangest thing to be suddenly back out in the world, doing something we might have done on a typical weekend night just months before. Since our babies were born, our lives had changed dramatically, but we hadn't yet made the full psychological shift. It was as if we were in a strange, prolonged dream, so that this -- being alone together in a restaurant, surrounded by mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings -- felt more like reality.
In general, the dawning of parenthood has been much slower than I expected it to be. The first year was challenging to be sure: exhausting, bewildering, etc. But it was also something of a honeymoon, in a way: Look at me! I'm a mom! I've got babies! Isn't this crazy? It's crazy!
In the two years since then -- as the girls have embedded themselves more deeply into my mind and my heart, as they (and their stuff) have started taking up more physical space, and as they've gone from babies to little people with their own desires and demands -- being a parent has become more woven into my sense of self. There's nothing surreal about it anymore. I feel about a thousand times more like a mother now than I did on December, 28, 2006 when I first became one.
Mostly, I think I'm pretty good at Mom-ing. And the great majority of the time I like it. Wouldn't trade it for anything. But the past month or two, I've found myself grieving a bit for my pre-parenting life. And it's not just because potty training the girls has been intense, or because Clio won't nap, or because Elsa won't poop, or because both of them can and do throw tantrums like nobody's business. I mean, it is because of those things, sort of.
But I think it's also that I haven't had the time -- or maybe I haven't made the time -- to recharge myself adequately so that the "being a mom" part of my life doesn't feel all-encompassing (when I'm not at work, that is). In fact, both Alastair and I have been feeling lately like we need a break --- a weekend away, or something, either separately or together, so we can re-collect and check back in with ourselves.
Interestingly several of my friends with kids around the same age as ours have expressed similar feelings of late. It's this sense of "Whoa, when did this being a parent thing suddenly take over our entire life??" Perhaps this is the point at which the novelty of becoming a parent wears off, and you're faced with the reality (both lovely and frightening) that this is for real and it ain't gonna stop. You're a person with kids. Just like your parents!! Yikes!
I'm not exactly sure what the answer is to resolving this feeling of "parent shock" -- or even if there is one. Maybe trying to take a bit more time for myself would help. Maybe I need to make some larger changes in my life. Or maybe it's a matter of accepting and adjusting my expectations and sense of self. In any case, talking (writing) through it to sympathetic ears (well, eyes) helps a lot. So, thanks in advance for being that.
And as you know, I don't think any of us should be afraid to air our struggles and even our occasional conflictedness about being parents, so feel free to do ye likewise.
PS -- Elsa pooped in the potty last night. I'm not getting too excited, as this may have been a fluke, but I attribute part of it to letting her run around with no pants on, and part of it to following commenters' sage advice about backing off. Thank you!
