2 Months / The Return

My little one turned 2 months officially this week by date – 9 weeks if we’re counting specifics.  And what an amazing, life changing journey it’s been so far.  I keep having to remind myself how little time it’s been since she came into my life, but I swear that she’s always been here.  There is so much to recount… document… I don’t know where to begin but I’ll do my very best.

Reality –
The most shocking thing to me this whole time is that what they show us on television and what you actually go through being a new mom are so disparate, I understand why mom’s have the baby blues now.  I had them.  And it’s because you think you’re going to pop this little baby out of your belly and she’s going to fall into your arms and stare up into your eyes and love you immediately and unconditionally.  NOT.  TRUE.  Not even close.  Yes – there is the familiarity she/he has because they’ve been stuck in your belly for 9 months and so they only really readily recognize your voice and heartbeat – but that’s where the mush ends.  Bottom line – the little one is on survival mode – so who ever helps her/him to do that? is tops in their book.  They haven’t begun the differentiation on who is their fave or not.  And I acquiesce that this may solely be MY experience but I spent the first month and a half of this baby’s life thinking she plum doesn’t like me.  She would avoid eye contact with me at all costs (when they show you mothers breastfeeding on tv, the babies are always deadlocked into their mother’s eyes); she would cry whenever we tried to provide her basic care – changing diapers, changing clothing, bathing her – she only didn’t cry to eat – from a bottle – she’d cry when I’d give her the breast (and that’s a special kind of “rejection” I was NEVER ready for).  It took a lot of asking experienced moms and reading a lot of articles on babycenter.com to realize that I wasn’t in the minority and that NO, my baby doesn’t hate me (although I did quite revel in the look on her face after she’d cry that conveyed “why did they assign me to THIS family??? What were they thinking? I have to talk to someone about this in the morning… maybe I can still be reassigned…” until she drifted off to sleep exhausted by the thought of our incompetence).  She’s just as traumatized by all of this change as we are and was getting used to it. us. life.   So of course – now as my maternity leave comes to a close, I see glimpses of this wonderment everyone keeps talking about.  The smiling at the sight of me.  The laughing when I smile back.  The cooing when I sing to her.  The gazing deeply into my eyes as if to say “who is this person?  I think I like her…”   It makes me think that the initial was necessary.  She had to break down what our conceptions of care were… that even when she protested – we had to do for her anyway.  She had to strip away these technicolor dreams that had been weaved into our minds since we were kids and teach us to open up to this real, truly unconditional, I-would-give-up-anything-and-everything-for-you love.  When she doesn’t cry now when I change her or bathe her – or just in general when I’m holding her – i feel great.  And I’m out of this world when she smiles or nuzzles with me or when she lets out that contented sigh as she sleeps on my chest.  Would I have appreciated it as much if it came ready to serve when she was born?  Probably not.  But I do worry that if it took this long for her to get to this point – how quickly might she forget me now that I’ll be back in the workplace for the majority of the day and only get to enjoy her fully on the weekends?  I comfort myself with the thought that my mother did it with me with LESS time between her 2 jobs.  But the alternate thought creeps in – maybe I idolized her because she was completely unavailable….  I gotta marinate on that for a while longer.

Momentum –
If nothing else, this has lit a fire under my butt that I can no longer wait for someone to “bring me home” or for anyone to show up on my door step with the opportunity of a life time.  I need to get back into roll-up-my-sleeves mode and bring myself home.  Make me the first millionaire in my family… make sure that my child(ren) want for nothing in this world.  And the only REAL way of doing that is to make sure that I am working for myself in all these hours I put in under the guise of “work”.  It’s great to have a steady job with a regular paycheck and benefits.  Without all of that, there’s no way that this little one would be here today.  I needed insurance to cover ALL that surgery and even to try the IVF (although, God had a different plan on how the conception was going to go down).  So I’m not hating on my job(s) at all.  I just know and have always known that was solidifying someone ELSE’s future.  Not mine and not my family.  So I need to get on my marketing grind.  There is something about me… something about what I can do… or what I can produce (without losing any of my dignity LOL) that SOMEONE is willing to pay for.  Pay handsomely for.  My goal is to find it and exploit it.  SOON.  It may be a complete debunking of what I know to be my “talents” because whatever it is, I’ll have to be so passionate about it that I’d be willing to do it and make NO money if necessary (and sometimes, that won’t be an option).  So some serious exploration needs to begin and come to fruition soon.

Transparency –
I’ve been blogging for a long time now.  I think it’s safe to say that even with my month long (some times year long) stints of not writing on this blog – I started journaling in the 6th grade and I’ve always tried to write down what was happening in my life ever since.  When I become an amazing mogul at whatever it is that I love doing (see previous paragraph) and am a millionairess / billionairess who can afford someone to transcribe my MANY hand written accounts – I will get that done.  Digitally I’ve been blogging since 2000.  That’s 11 years of memories and stories and accounts that I swear if I didn’t write them down, would have been lost to my horrible memory.  This blog has acted as my sounding board… my dumping ground – clearing my head out and getting the images and thoughts out somewhere where I could read and review what I’m thinking… how I feel… see if it makes any real sense.  It just gave me more of an opportunity to explore myself.  Somewhere down the line I started over editing.  I think when I realized that a lot of people were reading what I write (cause I never really expected that)…  I changed what I was writing for the public.  I began to write in a code that as I read back in my own entries – I encrypted so well that I don’t know what I’m talking about.  All that? has to stop.  I need this space to do what it has always done for me – provide clarity.  Document my life experiences.  Keep me honest, sane and lucid.  I’ve been tip toeing around feelings and sensitivities that I just no longer feel the need to do.  I know that the world is now logging all these things in your digital life record and all it takes is googling someone to find out all their sordid details.  I’m not hiding this part of me.  When the progeny looks back (namely my own) they’ll be able to find a real account of their mom having been a real 26 year old having real experiences and growing into whoever she is when they come to know her.  Unlike me who wonders infinitely about who the woman who became my mother was – cause she wasn’t always my mom.  Who did she love before my dad?  What was her relationship like with her parents?  What kinds of relationships did she have with friends and enemies and the nuances therein?  Life stories that might have weighed very heavily for me as life lessons that I missed out on because all I knew was the “perfection” that was my mother.  So.  No more pussyfooting.  Back to being 100% me.  It’s the thing I know how to do best.  I owe it to myself and my family.

It’s GO time…

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