notes from early motherhood
a collection of words tapped into the notes section of my phone with one hand while holding my infant daughter in the other.
I have more than 23,000 photos and 952 notes on my phone. Most of the photos are of my daughter, and most of my notes are grocery lists, and my iCloud storage is full. Many of these notes are incomplete, and they aren’t edited, but they so poignantly capture my early days of motherhood, and I don’t want to lose them.
September 29
I have two books on loan from the library but have only read a couple of pages in each. My eyes can only focus on her, the furrowed brow, the round cheeks, the little button nose. Beyond caring for her, and healing myself, my brain can only handle so much. Her face, messages to friends and family, scrolling on my phone. I eat, try to sleep, listen to her breathe.
September 30
September. The frustration of going past my due date. The driving down cobblestone roads in an attempt to induce labor. The month that I became a mother. The first moment that I saw her sweet, screaming face and watchful eyes. The elation of falling in love with my baby girl. Her funny faces, her furrowed brow, her Elvis lip when she gets hungry. The swing of emotions, hormones, raw, the crying in the shower, the crying when she cries, the crying, the crying. The breastfeeding around the clock, in clusters, her little underdeveloped trachea honking like a goose with every gulp. The haze of sleep deprivation, the insomnia.
The night sweats, the healing, the slow walks around the neighborhood. Time turned, upside down, no normalcy, no rhythm. The cuddles, oh, the cuddles, the holding her with one arm, the hours spent in the chair. The wanting her to never get bigger while simultaneously thinking, is this forever? The outpouring of love and support and generosity from friends and family and women, fellow mothers, from different parts of my past. The new landscape of co-parenting, watching him become a father. Crying together with her wrapped against his skin, so tiny across his broad chest. The redefining of self as wife, friend, sister, and dog mom as I became my baby girl’s mama.
October 8
She’s snoring on my chest, face relaxed, little left hand gripping the neckline of my green shirt. Her diaper needs to be changed, and I need to pee, but these moments are fleeting, she’s changing every day, and I want her to thrive and grow, but cry when I think about her changing too fast, too soon, so instead of getting up, I sit here a bit longer.
The October sun is setting and the room is getting dark. I can see pink strips of clouds through the kitchen window; normally I’d ache to be outside right now, in these last minutes of the golden hour, but I just want to hear her breathe, to feel her cuddle closer, so instead of getting up, I sit here a bit longer.
It’s a beautiful morning, but I watch it float by while inside, standing in the sunshine filtering through so it warms her face, so she’ll settle and fall asleep, nestled in the crook of my left arm, tiny enough to be held with one hand. I move to my pink chair by the fiddle leaf fig, lowering slowly, slowly, so she doesn’t wake. It’s past noon and I’m still in my bathrobe, guests are coming soon, but I just want to hold her thigh, watch her eyes dance behind closed lids, so instead of getting up, I sit here a bit longer.
October 20
You’re one month old today. It’s a cold morning but the sun is shining, and it’s only 8:30, so neither of us has been outside yet. You’re asleep in my arms, wrapped tight in your pink fleece swaddle, I’m in a big white bathrobe, we’re tucked into a soft blanket, listening to classical music, EM dozing on the couch next to us. Your dad is out fishing, and I need to shower before your doctor’s appointment, but you’re fussing whenever I set you down, and I don’t really want to give up this moment, anyway. I just love you so much. I love the goofy faces you make after nursing, with your eyebrows raised and bottom lip jutted out. I love how you shoot your arms up above your head for a big stretch. I love the way your eyes dance around behind your lids as you fall asleep. You are the most perfect baby, and I can’t believe that I made you, that you’re mine.
You’re growing stronger every day and eat like crazy. You nurse and take bottles and drink both breast milk and formula. You’ve been to a beach bonfire, restaurants, our sailboat. It’s been a little too adventurous for me to do all of this in your first month of life, but you’ve handled everything like a champ.
You’ve gained two pounds and grown an inch. You’re blown away by high contrast images and shapes; my black and white water bottle is mesmerizing. Sometimes, you honk like a goose, especially when you eat. Your favorite place to sleep is in our arms or on our chests; you love to cuddle with your dad in the mornings, when we’re sleepy but awake, and your belly is full. You smile as you fall asleep, and cry when you poop. Your cries, they break my heart, and make me cry sometimes, too.
October 26
It’s October 26th; we’re at a cabin in the mountains. You’re snoring on my lap, in a cream ribbed onesie speckled with colors, a mustard yellow pillow behind your head. Your dad is snoring on the red couch across from us, the fire in the stove is burning out. It’s almost noon, and I thought we were going to hike soon, but you both were tired, so here we are.
The colors outside are spectacular. I wish that you could see them. Maybe you can. We laid on a blanket together yesterday and looked up at the trees as your dad fished in the river behind us. We should always come back here, in late October, to show you what a real autumn is like.
It’s peaceful here; we’re moving slow without any pressure or feeling to do something else. You’re content, a happy baby. You slept well last night, and I’m refreshed, at ease. You make me so happy. I just love you so much.
October 31
October. Inside, inside, inside. It’s so hard to get out of the house. But, all I want is to be at home with my baby. I start to do too much, maybe, too soon. Because I’m not pregnant anymore, I’m not hefting around that extra fifty pounds, and, although everything is different, I feel more like myself than I have in months. I have come back online.
We have family visit. We go to the beach. We go to breweries. We go to restaurants because everyone says, go now, when they’re this little, before they start to move. We go to a bonfire. We go away to the mountains. It’s all wonderful and exhausting and a blur, too much too soon, I’m in a daze.
She’s perfect. Happy, healthy, a good communicator. Taking care of her is the easy part. Taking care of myself and my marriage and my dog and my house…it’s all hard. I remember, this is all so new. So much change in so little time. All on so little sleep.
My sister cooks dinner for the family and takes the baby so I can eat. I shovel food into my mouth, feeling guilty. “Audrey,” she says sternly from across the room, “slow. Down.” Tears well in my eyes and I nod and I do. I slow down.
Slow down. It’s all going by too fast.
November 2
Most days, I don’t get out of my pajamas until noon, or out of the house—if even—until after 3. Mornings are slow, leaden, and hard to move through. Do I go back to sleep until 9, 10, sometimes 11, and wake up rested but feeling behind, or do I stay up, fold laundry, make breakfast, and feel a little more human, but that much more tired?
Strangely, in this new season, for the first time in almost a year, I feel like myself. Pregnancy numbed me, made me mellow, fatigued, calm. Now, I feel things again, see things, get inspired, cry, laugh. But I’m not totally myself. I’m a new version, a tired version, a healing version. A mother, a parent, a caretaker. Finding the balance between old and new is, at times, harrowing.
“Give yourself a lot of grace and compassion right now,” a friend said when I needed to hear that the most.
November 15
It’s a rainy November morning, you’re eight weeks old today. I’m exhausted and sobbing because we’ve been up since five, and you wake as soon as you drift off, and I’m so tired, so tired, and feel embarrassed that I can’t cope. You’re perfect, cooing, mesmerized by the world around you, staring at me as I bounce you in the BabyBjorn, your eyes drifting shut, then snapping wide open, defiant, fighting the sleep that you need.
Your dad is asleep in the bedroom with EM; it’s 9:30 and I don’t know how he gets her to sleep in with him, because when it’s my morning to take her out, she’s up and pacing the room by 7. I could have woken him and asked for help, but he was up with you from 2-3, and I feel guilty, like I should be able to do this on my own.
I love you so much that it’s all-consuming, that when I shut my eyes, I see you. That when we’re apart, I think of you. That when we’re together, I’m spending one minute looking at you and the other looking at photos of you on my phone.
You are the best baby, so happy and good, easy to read. You love your parents and go easily to friends and family. Twinkle, twinkle little star makes you smile, and your changing table is your favorite place in the house. Your eyes are changing, I think they’ll be green; whatever color they are or will be, they’re stunning. Your eyebrows are the most expressive, you carry so much in them, frowning at us so often, lifting them in amazement when you see something you like. You’re my beautiful, strong, sweet baby girl, and I’m just so grateful that you’re mine.
The sleep deprivation is hard on me, but everything else, for the most part, comes easily. I’m working on being more decisive, on being stronger for you, but also giving myself grace and compassion. I’ve never done this before, and neither have you, really. We’re learning together. And there’s no place else I’d rather be.
December 6
I woke up with my black pajamas covered in white dog hair, EM cuddled in the crook of my legs, you and your dad at the grocery store picking up ingredients for birthday breakfast blueberry pancakes.
December 16
You have wrist rolls and knuckle dimples, and today your eyes look green. You slept through the night for a week, and I felt human for the first time in months, but you’ve been waking more the past few nights, and that’s okay, but it makes me wonder if I’m doing something wrong. I’m building a routine for us, but not yet a strict schedule, and you go down well for naps, but only sleep for forty-five minutes. Before each nap, we say goodbye to your stuffed animals, “goodnight, Mr. Sheep, see you after my nap, Dorothy, see you when I wake, Mrs. Elephant,” and so on, and your eyes droop and I place you in your crib, tired, but awake, and you drift off to sleep on your own. We’ll transition you out of a swaddle soon, so I’m practicing letting you nap with one arm out; if both are free, you fret and wake yourself up. This business of sleep, it’s very important and involved.
We look at your hair every day, this day it’s brown, that day it’s red; today I think it looks a little blonde, but your dad just said it looked gingery. I think we’re all expecting you to be a redhead like me.
Your dad and I hate making you do tummy time on your mat because you hate it, so we don’t do it probably as much as we should, but your neck is strong and you’re pretty good at holding your head up.
You’re a baby now, no longer an infant. You have full-body smiles and love to chat, chat, chat. You’ve found your voice and have so much to say. “Tell me more,” we say to you, and you kick your legs and raise your eyebrows and yell “awwwoo!” and chatter about your big little world.
December 24
It’s 6:14 in the morning on Christmas Eve and I’ve been holding you in my arms for two hours. It’s too cold—negative two degrees outside and forty-nine degrees inside. The pipes are frozen and the space heater your dad bought yesterday is barely helping, although our room feels a bit warmer than the rest of the house. He’s snoring next to us, loudly, not feeling well with a winter’s cold, and Ellie Mae is burrowed under the blankets, curled up in my legs.
You were too cold in your pack and play on the floor, even with quilts underneath it to create a barrier between the hardwood and the mattress. You’d fuss off and on and I’d pacify you, but the night got colder and colder, so I scooped you up, fed you, and now am cuddling you, feeling you breathe, your cheeks and ears finally warm, your little body snug in your fuzzy pink swaddle. “Snug as a bug in a rug” is how you got your nickname, our Bug.
I just want you to be warm and safe and healthy. My eyes are watering from exhaustion but I don’t feel tired, not yet. I’ll nurse you again when you wake next, and then see if your dad or aunt can take you for a few hours so I can finally rest. I haven’t slept much tonight, but that’s okay. It’s my job—my favorite job—to make sure you’re warm, to make sure you’re safe, to make sure you’re healthy.
Somebody will make a fire in the stove and the sun will rise and house will heat soon. But for now, it’s you and me, under a heap of blankets in the dark, your dad snoring next to us, EM sleeping at our feet.
January 18
It’s January 18, two days before your four-month birthday, and you’re sleeping in your own room for the first time tonight. We had a couple of false starts because I wasn’t ready. But I think it’s time.
February 15
February. The birds start to rise and sing in the five o’clock hour, and for a few mornings, so do you. You’re starting to wean yourself, to prefer the bottle, and it’s making me sad—how is this chapter of our lives already closing? I could try harder to make it last, but I was thinking about weaning you when I went back to work anyway, so I’m just letting it happen. You’re an intuitive little thing; so much with you just falls into place.
Watching you watch your fingers and toes, your little mind blown that, woah, those amazing digits are yours. Laughing through encouraging your rolling, which really, at this point, is just a face plant. Crying over my approaching return to work. Trying to not be so hard on myself. Recognizing that you are safe and loved and happy and healthy, so who cares if we get off of our schedule every now and then? Reminding myself how little you are, still so new. Trying to navigate my identity and relationships and life outside of motherhood, and man, is it hard.
March 7
Our nanny started today. I put on mascara this morning to make me pause before crying, and sat in my bedroom looking up at the ceiling with tears welling in my eyes while I let someone else feed my baby.
Enough, I told myself, and clipped on EM’s leash to take her for a walk. She pranced next to me, a big smile on her face, happy to have me to herself, and I thought, this is good. There are other areas of my life that I can tend to now.
I walked past a man holding a Chick-Fil-A bag and instantly wanted to sink my emotions into a fried chicken sandwich. And then I walked past a woman smoking a cigarette and god, I wanted one of those, too. Instead I carried on and found myself at the bookstore, a place that’s always given me solace, and bought myself a novel called Maame and my daughter a tiny copy of Goodnight Moon.
I brought my books and EM to a park flush with Azalea blooms and dappled sunlight and remembered, this is what it’s like to move freely.
Since September, my days have been wrapped around my daughter. Tomorrow, I return to work. The beat to which I move is forever changing, and it can be hard to keep up.
The weeks leading up to today have punctuated with my tears, heavy, shoulder-shaking sobs over this beautiful, intense, exhausting, and raw chapter of our lives coming to a close.
Today was hard, and then it wasn’t. We’re finding our way, just like always, now with a couple of more lovely people wrapped into our lives, and a couple of more good books to read.
March 20
One block over, there is a crepe myrtle tree draped in Spanish moss. It sits in front of an old, tall stucco house with candlesticks in the windows and fat azalea bushes in the front yard, home to an elderly couple who, when they drive away from their street parking spot, put out an orange cone to hold their place. This is what I call the magical tree, and she and I walk underneath it at least once a day.
Sometimes she looks up in wonder at the magical tree; other times she has no idea what’s above her. But I always pause, to show her the brown camouflage pattern of the bark, or the pale green netting of the moss, or the pink and purple petals of the nearby azaleas, taller than the both of us. The tree itself will blossom soon, magenta flowers that will open and linger in the summer heat, and we’ll pause to look at those, too.
One day we’ll move away and the magical tree might not be a part of our daily commute, so I wanted to capture it, here, on a sunny Saturday morning just minutes before her second nap, with her pacifier in my pocket and wet hands wrapped in my hair. These are the moments and details I always want to remember.
She is six months old today. A milestone that felt so far away when we were in the newborn stage, but one that’s arrived in the blink of an eye. Time passes and change comes too swiftly, but every day is better—and a little more magical—with her in it.
May 18
You’re lounging against my belly, twirling your hands in the air as you drink from your bottle, the pair of us gliding back and forth in the rocking chair that always slips out of place on the rug.
I’m surveying the room, the nursery that was once an office, and then a guest bedroom before it became yours. I’ve spent so many hours here, in this corner rocking chair, staring out of the window opposite of us, admiring the change in foliage with the seasons that have passed, looking at the Parisian-style top floor of the mansion across the street, watching the sun come up, and then go down, showing you the birds and bats and clouds that float by.
This is your first room in the first apartment that we brought you home to. The one that you only played in, and then napped in, and then after four and a half months, slept overnight in. I tried moving you in sooner, but cried over the thought of not waking up to see your face in the mini crib on the side of my bed. Now, it is my greatest joy to open your bedroom door and see your smiling face when I draw back your curtains, both of us restored after a good nights’ sleep.
We’re moving, soon, and our days in this room are fleeting.