onederland

reflections on the first year of motherhood

My daughter turns one year old this week. Nothing, in my life, has turned me upside down and inside out like these first twelve months of motherhood.

She is magnificent. My love for her is intense, a magnet forever pulling at my chest. I didn’t know what kind of parent I would be, before having her, but now, I can say this with confidence: I am a wonderful mother. I have been many things in my life, a jack-of-all-trades, never the master. But in this role, I excel.

I do not do it alone, and I do not do it perfectly. The early days, punctuated with surging, swelling hormones and sleepless nights, a ripped up, swollen body and a mind full of worry, were exceptionally hard, but they were beautiful, too. So much vigilance goes into the months of pregnancy. So much preparation goes into the early days of looking after your newborn. So little thought goes into postpartum care for the mom.

If you looked at me, I mean, really looked at me, and asked how I was, I would burst into tears. There were no words, only emotions. They were raw and bubbling just below the surface, brought on by exhaustion and love and what I might call shame over desperately wanting someone to help take care of me as I gave everything over to taking care of my baby.

My husband and I did so much on our own, together and apart. We worked in shifts, 3-hour rotations similar to the ones we held when we sailed to Central America, this time safe in our surroundings, but terrified all the same. Our daughter would cry and I would cry and he would change her diaper and tell me to go to sleep. He’d offer to give her bottles at night, but I was too afraid to use the breast pump in those first few weeks, so unsure of how to establish my milk supply and not an oversupply, of how to set up all of the wires and the cups and then dismantle it all and clean it. Every new thing that I had to learn was daunting. My anxiety was high.

He watched me like a hawk, worried about postpartum depression, wanting to get me help if it was needed. What I needed was the support and the space to cry and sweat out the hormones, to heal and nest with my new baby. He wanted to get me outside in fresh air and around friends, and I acquiesced, because what harm would it do, but all that I wanted was to stay inside, to heal and nest with my new baby. We couldn’t figure each other out. Our daughter was easy to understand. But all of the sudden, after ten years of marriage, we did not understand one another as husband and wife. Caring for her was simple. Tending to our marriage was not.

For the longest time, it was as if we were two single parents taking turns to care for our child, instead of doing it as a team. I wanted so much to feel like a family unit, and was at a loss for how to make that happen.

With work and care, we got there. But twelve months in, my husband and I are just starting to devote energy into purposefully looking after our relationship.

I knew how to be a mother. It was everything else, outside of motherhood, that I began to struggle with. The balancing act of caring for my baby, myself, my husband, my dog, my household, my career, my family relationships, my friendships—the scale is never evenly weighted.

I find it hard to catch up. Time moves too quickly, even when the minutes feel stretched. I have found myself to be a little bit messier, late, forgetful—and I'm not as great at communicating and responding as I once was. But in all of this, I've found that I'm a lot less hard on myself than before. There are things that matter, and things that don't.

I wish that, in the newborn days, I knew that. I wish that I gave myself grace. So if you’re a new or expecting mother reading this, please, give yourself grace. If your baby is safe, and their basic needs are met, and they are loved, you are doing a good job. Oh, how badly I wanted someone to tell me that I was doing a good job early on.

Now, as I write this, I can hear my daughter laughing in the other room with her nanny and the other baby that we do a nanny-share with. I have 45 minutes left of childcare for the day, and am taking advantage of them to write (and answer Slack messages, and fold laundry). She is safe, she is loved, her needs are met, and she is excelling. Giving myself the space to write is my own version of excelling; it’s been so long since I’ve written.

Writing is a sign of getting my sense of self back. I’ve happily handed it over to the small, curious, funny baby girl who has made my life rich with meaning. And while I will continue to give her everything, I will start to give myself more, too.

Writing this is just the beginning.

We threw her a party to celebrate her first birthday a few days ago, an Alice in Onederland theme. Family flew in and friends pushed strollers

over and my husband built a baby-height table on the ground so the babies—so many babies—could sit around and blow and spill bubbles and pretend to have a tea party. My daughter wore a birthday crown the entire time, one that looked like it came out if Where the Wild Things Are, and not Alice in Wonderland, but that just made it all the more fantastic. I didn’t want things to feel too perfect, only magical. Oh how I love showing her the magic in this world.

Her actual birthday will be spent with just the three of us, and we’ll bring her out to our favorite breakfast diner for blueberry pancakes, and tie the semi-deflated birthday balloons from her party to her little push walker. We’ll open the gifts from friends and family together, and I’ll read the cards out loud to her as she pulls apart fistfuls of pink and white and speckled tissue paper, because I want her to learn at a young age that words matter, and these words in her birthday cards are filled with so much love.

This year, above anything, has been filled with so much love.