In Search of Bliss

On April 1st the universe shifted and the world turned completely upside down. Everything is different. And yet when I go outside and look around, it seems I’m the only one who’s noticed. How strange.

I’ve been a mother for 41 days. It’s difficult to put into words the experience of these first few weeks. The term that comes to mind is gut wrenching. The pain, the joy, the fear, the love.

There are so many cliches about being a mom and they are all true. It is at once the hardest and best job in the world.

In a past post I shared my biggest fears for these first weeks and sure enough, several of them have already come true. I’ve faced them, endured them and moved beyond them. Where I am now is a new place beyond what my former self could have imagined. Uncharted territory. Here the highs are higher than I could have imagined and the lows lower.

The thing that strikes me most about motherhood is the phenomenon of feeling two completely opposite emotions, intensely, at the same time.

Living abroad last year was the first time I had this experience: I wanted so badly to come home immediately and at the same time, to never leave. This is a thousand times stronger.

It’s as if my heart is trying to tear me in half. I rip myself apart and put myself back together again on a daily basis. It is agonizing and wonderful at the same time. Wonderful because I know in these moments that I am fully and truly alive. I’ve discovered the full depths of human emotion, the full capacity of the human heart. This is what life is all about, to feel this deeply.

The Pain

At the end of my pregnancy I was anxious to have the baby to be rid of the pain and discomfort I was feeling. Hilarious. Breastfeeding is some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. My son has a minor tongue tie and we opted not to get it fixed as we wanted to see if the pain would go away on its own. He’s five weeks old and it still feels like someone has attached booster cables to my nipples and given me a jolt every time he latches on. This is not to mention the sore arms, neck and back from hours of holding him and looking down while feeding. Then there’s the C section recovery. Let’s just say that once the meds wore off I was very aware of the fact that someone had sliced my abdomen open and pulled a baby out of it.

The Joy

Isn’t it great when you are really looking forward to something and it turns out to be even better than you expected? In many ways having a baby is like that. His skin is even softer than I imagined. He smells even better than I imagined. And the best part is – he’s mine. I never have to give him back to anyone or ask permission. Never have to stop kissing and cuddling him. He loves to cuddle even more than I do! When he falls asleep on my chest it erases the memory of all the pain that I’ve experienced and I’m ready to get up and do it all again.

The Fear

The first four nights of my son’s life I didn’t sleep. Not because I wasn’t tired, I was shattered. But I was terrified. I was convinced he was going to die in his sleep. No matter how irrational I knew it was, I couldn’t get past this thought (and it doesn’t help that my baby makes incredibly strange sounds when he sleeps). The first two nights he had to sleep on us because I was afraid of swaddling him and putting him in the bassinet in case he choked on the blankets. The next two nights he HAD to sleep in the bassinet because I was worried about him rolling off us and getting crushed. My body finally took over and forced me to sleep. And then, each morning that he successfully woke up I got a little bit less afraid. It was my first taste of one of parenthood’s biggest challenges: not letting your fear cripple you. I have a feeling it will be a lifelong battle.

The Love

The other side of the coin. The fear is crippling because the love is crippling. When I saw my baby for the first time on an ultrasound screen last September I thought it was the strongest love I could ever feel. I was, of course, again wrong. My heart keeps growing bigger to take in the increasing strength of love that I feel. Love for my baby, love for my husband. Love for this incredible experience of being human. I was at a funeral recently and the minister said something that really stuck with me. He said that ‘tears are liquid love’. What a beautiful thought. And how appropriate for the early days of motherhood. No matter the emotion, it all comes back to love. Everything is love, and love is everything.