The changes that come with the end of the fourth trimester
Part 10*: Milestones pass but learning is forever
*I was foolish to think that my “series on motherhood” would be a themed run, eh? That it wouldn’t actually become a new lens that I apply to all my writing from now on…. But I made this naive editorial decision before I had a baby, so forgive the blunder. Needless to say, I will be dropping the numbering system after this post (because my neurotic brain requires that I end on a round number haha). I won’t stop writing though. Nope!
Continuing to write during this time has been my gift to myself. It’s time that I get to set aside to be with my thoughts—with myself, alone. Nora is always close by, whether physically or in thought of course, but when I write, there is a kind of solitude that becomes available to me that is absolutely delicious. My body becomes fully mine and directed to only one task, one that requires all my concentration. I enter a place that is timeless, where I pluck words like starry flowers out of a cosmic field of thoughts…
I meditate on what a mystical thing it is to birth a baby, to carry something—someone—inside of you for so long. It’s absolutely wild. I spent 277 days growing my little one. I look at her little face in the hallway mirror now as she bobs her head over my shoulder and I just can’t believe it.
My body funnelled nutrients and energy to her and then, when there was no more room for her to grow inside me anymore, pushed her out ever so gently (really, it was gentle on her (and not too terrible on me!)) She came out with all her little bits in the right places and passed all her tests with flying colours. Under “temperament” they wrote “calm with touch.”
Then, in the outside air, came the moment we were separated, the umbilical cord cut. I meditate on that spot where it was severed that made us two; I meditate on that spot and wonder, “Whose skin?”
I remember when I took blood tests in my pregnancy and they told me what percentage of the sample was my blood and what percentage was hers…
I also think of my mom. Me and my mom don’t really look alike (I look a lot more like my dad), but underneath my skin is an invisible layer of being that is undeniably her.
Even now as Nora and I move about in our separate corporeal costumes, I see it. In the same way I catch the muscle in my upper lip stiffen when I’m mad, or when I give Nora the bottle and pucker my lips into an O, how I feel my lips are my mother’s … Nora and I are indelibly connected through invisible strings called DNA. I see it in her eyes, in the way her eyebrows furrow…and I will continue to see this connection as she grows. It will grow beyond the corporeal, too.
But as the years go, how will she change me?
My baby Nora has been outside of my body for a total of three months and four days. Each week comes with new learnings and just as I get better at doing this mom thing (or rather, just as it becomes easier), she changes it up.
She pushes me to keep letting go of the idea of ever totally getting it and instead gifts me with the infinite pleasure of striving.
And if these past three months are a taste of what is to come, it seems that every aspect of parenting, from gestation to birth and beyond, is this continuous dance: between old and new, attachment and letting go, growing away and growing toward. I feel a constant desire to see her grow while simultaneously wishing she would stay the same.
But I realize that that relentless longing for nothing to change comes to a crux not because I don’t want Nora to change. No. It’s that I fear having to change myself.
With each passing day and week, I’ve learned to better cope with the growing space between us, increasingly recognizing that I cannot love and enjoy her for who she is without saying goodbye not to just her at that moment but also some old version of myself that comes along with that. Love is an alive thing and we can't trap it. We have to follow it forward, into the future.
It would be so much easier to not change though! To not have to rise to an occasion. To not have to step up to a new hard thing. To not have to…
But life requires change. It requires that we keep learning, which means it requires that we move through discomfort.
[Content Warning: fentanyl, SIDS]
Not to get too dark, but I recently came across two pieces of content — a Search Engine podcast episode on fentanyl and an article about SIDS. In them I learned two things:
that fentanyl kills not because of some physiological overdose but because the person who is high enters such a state of euphoria that they forget to breathe; and
that it’s advisable for parents to share a room with their baby for the first 6 months, and up to a year, to prevent SIDS, which is believed to be caused because infants sleep so deep that they forget to breathe…
When motivation disappears, so does life.
Without change, there can’t be any hope nor motivation to learn to overcome discomfort.
As Nora enters the next stage of infanthood, I’m excited to see not only how she will change (last week, she rolled for the first time, grabbed a toy for the first time, and put said toy into her mouth for the first time) but I'm also excited to see how my mothering will change in response. With every new thing she learns, I must learn her anew. And I must learn myself anew.
The other day, she was fussing because of gas and crying a bit and I took her into my arms and asked Google to play some music for us and we danced. Her cries became song. A song of frustration. Life is hard, she sang.
And I sang back: This life thing is hard, but it doesn’t mean we can’t make it fun.
We kept dancing and she burped to her own beat until we both felt better.
A most recent challenge
Something I'm grappling with right now is how I might adjust my pumping schedule to get some of my time back. Some part of me keeps delaying…I said I would drop a pump in Week 12. Then I pushed it to when she turned 3 months. Nora will be 14 weeks in two days and I’m still pumping eight times a day.
I can’t seem to let go—let go of the guilt that feels sown into every fibre of my being, but also the pride I have in myself for getting this far and without it draining my spirits. My milk supply completely covers her needs now and it's felt so good to be able to do that for her. And as I mentioned in my previous post, my pumping journey has had many silver linings as well as outright benefits. But it's also objectively exhausting to spend 4+ hours a day hooked up to a pump. Math-ing my day into three-hour chunks is a strange way to live. It robs me of spontaneity. Yet, never before have I woken up in the middle of the night to not only pump but to write (yes…while I pump—case in point.)
As with many things, the way forward is somewhere in the middle. I won't be outright stopping pumping because I value being able to provide her with my antibodies, and breastmilk, I believe, is easier on her young stomach than formula. But I also have to change according to her changing needs. As well as my own.
She will demand more of my energy as she becomes more physically capable. And I also want to be more physically capable. (My arms are already growing tired and she’s only 11 pounds!) I miss yoga. I miss being able to leave the house without my collection cups. I miss going bra-less. I miss sleeping more than 3 or 4 hours in a row.
My plan is to start dropping one pump to start. May not be every day but a least on days that I want to be more flexible, on days I'm out of the house more, or generally, when pumping begins to feel more of a constraint on myself than an act of giving.
And we will see how Nora adjusts her feeding rhythm too. I may just find we sync up anyway because she, too, has new energy and sleep requirements. She’s long been sleeping in 5- to 7-hour blocks. Perhaps it’s time my pumping schedule followed suit and I let myself sleep…
I have to be open to change in myself as much as in her. We are a pair, forever bound, helping each other get through the uncomfortable parts together and apart by doing this adventure together.
xx
Vish