Benjamin Penguin

Dear Benjamin,

You are a year old now. Let’s all stop and let that sink in. An entire year has passed since the moment I first lay my eyes upon you. Never mind that I was strapped to a table in an operating room and I was slightly loopy from the medication. Those details seem wholly inconsequential now. I find that I spend most of my time focusing on other details. In fact, I have spent the last week attempting to remember all the little details starting on December 30 and continuing through to today, January 3. You see, December 30, 2007 at 6:00am (or thereabouts) was when my water broke and January 3, 2008 at 4pm (or thereabouts) was when we left the hospital with you. So I have been in this continual state of memoryness, and this monthly letter will be less of a letter and more of a novel as I attempt to recount all of the thoughts and feelings I have experienced over the past year.

I realize, now, that I never told you the story of your birth. And, since I don’t fancy traumatizing you, I won’t go into the more graphic details of the day. Make that days, since you took what I like to call a leisurely approach to exiting my womb. I remember that on the morning of December 30, I was laying on the daybed in the living room feeling some cramps. In my head, that translated into a vague realization that I would probably be going into labor at some point that week. And why, you may wonder, was Mama laying in the living room while Daddy was in the bedroom? Oh, I was roughly the size of a Ford, for one. But more importantly, I was always hot when I was pregnant with you and if I lay next to Daddy in bed, the heat exchange between our bodies was so unbearable to me that I couldn’t sleep. I’d have been no less uncomfortable had I been dozing on the surface of the sun. But I digress. That morning, at about 6:00am, I decided to get up and use the washroom and see if the change in position would help with the cramping. The daybed was about 6 feet from the door to the bedroom, and I started waddling down the hall when all of a sudden, right in front of the bedroom door, I felt the tremendous whoosh of my water breaking. I froze in my spot and for a moment, the rarest of events happened – I lost every thought in my head and every ability to speak and just stood there, unsure of what to do. I finally gathered my voice and called into the bedroom to your slumbering Daddy that my water had broken. I say this now like it was just this thing I said. “Oh hey, not to bother you while you rest, but if you wouldn’t mind, perhaps you could awake and arrange transport to the hospital, as it appears I might be in labor.” In actuality, I can recall that my voice wavered with fear and excitement, and I am pretty sure my hands were shaking. I was a bit scared, true, but not for me. I was ready and willing to handle what was going to come my way, but for some reason, I saw those moments before we got to the hospital as some of the most vulnerable in my pregnancy. Maybe it was because my water broke so dramatically – in any other situation (such as a dam breaking or a tub leaking), such a gush of water could not be a good thing. I remember Daddy handing me some clothes to put on and a big towel to help soak up the fluid. For the next twenty minutes, I ambled around the apartment in a dripping daze while Daddy baked chocolate chip cookies. I know. I know. He means well, but he is so resistant to changes in plans and dammit, when I said three weeks prior that I wanted to bring cookies to the hospital with me, he was going to bring those cookies with us. After a half hour, I began to get my wits about me and I started packing my bag for the hospital. You know, that bag I was supposed to have packed 4 weeks prior? Yes, that bag. I am thankful that I also had the good sense to snap a few pictures of Daddy and me before we left for the hospital since it was the last set of pregnancy pictures I would ever take during my pregnancy with you. All in all, we were in the apartment getting ready to leave for about an hour. That whole time, my thoughts came in a rushing torrent. Would labor be painful? Would you be OK? Were you OK now? How long would it be until I met you? What would you look like? Would the snow make it hard to get to the hospital? Should I eat something?

I remember arriving at the hospital around 7:45am and waddling into the emergency room. The nurse smiled at me and said something to the effect of “Looks like we’re going to have a baby today.” She would be the first of several dozen medical workers that would share a similar remark, each with an eager smile on their face. At about 10:00pm that night, however, I was much more likely to get a smile and a “You should rest” comment. This only goes to show that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I had plans to meet you that day. So did Daddy, your grandparents and all the medical team. You were decidedly less interested in this timeline, thank you very much. It was my first lesson in parenting – take all your plans and just go ahead and dropkick them out the window because it ain’t about you anymore, sister. We were transported up to the labor and delivery floor and after sitting in the hallway waiting room for a half hour, we settled nicely into a large, bright birthing room. There are a few things I remember from those first halcyon hours of labor. First, it was not painful. I was talking and laughing and smiling and walking around the room and joking with Daddy. Second, see preceding sentence. We were still on Birth Plan A at this point. I was then given medications to help speed the labor along since I was GBS-positive and the doctors like to have the baby make her/his appearance in 24 hours from start of labor when this is the case. Birth Plan B, it is. As the morning progressed into afternoon, I found that the pain was increasing and the doctors wanted to do some additional monitoring to ensure that you were handling the stronger, more rapid contractions. That meant no more walking around for Mama. Hello, Birth Plan C. As the afternoon segued into night, and as the pain became incredibly intense, I finally requested some medication to help with the pain. Welcome, Birth Pan D. After that point, I fell into the blissful numbness of drugged limbs. I’ve heard that a lot of people hate this particular medication because they find the inability to feel their legs unsettling, but I find it kind of interesting. There they were, ripe for the poking and pinching and I couldn’t feel a thing. At the stroke of midnight, I was lying in bed watching television. Your Nana had been there since the early afternoon and had passed out. Your Daddy was passed out in a chair. I realized that you weren’t going to be coming any time soon, so I started winding myself down for sleep.

The next morning, on December 31, I awoke to the bustling sounds of the nurses changing their shift. I recall now that the nurse that was with me all that day was a nice Latina lady with a name that starts with an R. She was with us all the way up until Birth Plan Unexpected went into effect. The day was blindingly bright and the room was awash in light. It put me in a good mood, as I am always happiest on bright, sunny mornings. Adam had awoken in his chair, and so had Nana. By this point, I was so hungry that I was tempted to eat my own foot, knowing that I would not feel the pain of it because of the medication pumping into my back. I resisted the urge, but as you’ll see in years to come, a hungry Mama is a bitter Mama. The enormity of the situation prohibited my usual hunger-induced testiness from taking hold, which was a good thing, though I can’t say the same thing for Daddy. He was like a broken record with his unending commentary about the need for a good meal. He was joking, of course, but only slightly. Only slightly. Throughout the morning, labor continued to progress, though I was beyond the 24-hour mark. Still, all of us were convinced that it was going to happen soon and that we would be meeting you within hours. And at about noon, that seemed just about to happen. I remember the doctor coming in and checking me and letting me know that I was totally clear to start pushing you out. I was taken aback, actually, because I didn’t feel that unbearable urge to push that women constantly talk about. I didn’t feel any urge to push, as a matter of fact. In retrospect, I think that was a pretty telling indicator that you were going to leave your house through the window and not the door. But, being the sport that I am, I pulled back my hair into a ponytail, grabbed Daddy’s hands and said, “Why not. Let’s give it a go.”

Oh, Benjamin, that it was as simple as that. I’ll keep this part short because, well, my memory of it is a bit patchy. I know that I started pushing. I know that we tried every position under the sun. I know that roughly two hours into pushing, the doctor came back and checked me and found that you had made very little progress down the birth canal. I remember that the nurse left the room for a bit to do something (eat lunch, one would hope, since she had been with me most of the morning) and that Daddy and I continued to work together to deliver you when we were alone in the room. And then, pal, that’s it. I totally knocked out. I don’t really remember much for a chunk of time there. I think I must have fallen asleep for a few hours. When I awoke, I learned that the doctors and nurses and Daddy had been talking and they all thought it best that we deliver you by c-section. If I would have had a pen in my hand at that moment, I’d have signed off on the procedure. I was tired and hungry and I just wanted to meet you so bad that I didn’t care how it happened at that point. I was a little sad that it was not going to be in the manner that Daddy and I had prepared for, but all of that was eclipsed in the moment by the fact that I now had an exact idea of when you were going to be born. The surgery was scheduled for about an hour later, so the interim was spent preparing and getting ready for that. Daddy went to talk to your grandparents (who had been waiting the whole time in the waiting room) and I talked with the doctors and nurses. About an hour later, I was wheeled into the operating room and as I made my way down the hall, I could see my mother and Daddy’s parents waving at me. I’m pretty sure I waved back, but I could have been juggling or knitting for all I remember. When we got into the room, we settled in and prepped me for the surgery. Daddy came in a few minutes later and sat with me in the room. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear what was going on. Daddy was standing there next to me and I can’t remember everything, but I distinctly recall him saying “He’s here” a mere few second before I heard you take your first scream. After that, Daddy took off to be with you as the doctors finished with me. There are many things I liked about that hospital, but the one that I really cherish is the fact that they seemed to get how important it was for parents to be with their baby after the birth, even if the mother had a c-section. Within minutes of your birth, you were cleaned up and handed to Daddy, and you never left our arms from that point on.

You might wonder about Daddy through all of the labor and delivery process. As you should. And I think he can tell you better about his experiences than I can, but I’ll try to tell you what I saw. Mind you, my memory is modified by the drugs and the pain, but there are some things I can recall (though there are others I cannot). When we first got to the hospital, Daddy and I were laughing and talking and joking, as I mentioned above. As things got more painful for me, I could see Daddy becoming more and more concerned, which generally translates into an occasion for making bad jokes and silly remarks. So every time I winced from the pain of a contraction, Daddy was certain to verbally acknowledge every time he felt his stomach growl, wincing as he pined away for a large vegetarian sandwich. The thing about Daddy is that he’ll often make a comment to gauge a reaction, thus helping him to decide on a course of action. You’ll see this in years to come. The comment is never an indication of an intention, but more the suggestion of a possibility. If he says something and one reacts with mild indifference, he might proceed. However, if he makes a suggestion and it is met with hysteria and/or a display of tears, he is much more apt to take a different course of action. Hence, when Daddy’s continual commentary about his hunger failed to get a rise out of me, he mined that joke for all it was worth. It even prompted me to encourage Nana to go out and find Daddy a meal so that he could stop talking about the hunger once and for all. However, when Daddy’s suggestion that he go home to sleep that first night was met with tears, he settled in to sleeping in the chair. He gets when things are important, though it might not always seem like it on the surface. So when it was time to deliver you, Daddy put aside all jokes and became very serious and very committed to working with me to make it happen. He was there the entire time, holding my hand, holding up my back and doing everything he could think of to help me in delivering you. He jumped in bed with me on some of the positions. He got me a cool cloth when I was hot and tired and he massaged my neck and limbs. He was, in every possible way, completely there for us, buddy, and was just as eager and anxious to meet you as I was.

After you were born, we were moved to the recovery room and that was the first time I was really up and ready to meet you. Daddy had been holding you in his arms for about 45 minutes and suddenly it was my turn. I don’t think I can really explain what that felt like, but I will try. I think it is really one of those things you just have to experience because the written word fails on so many levels. I was lying in the bed, supported upright by the pillows, and Daddy placed you gently in my arms. I remember feeling shocked at how soft and warm you felt. It was almost like snuggling up to the most luxurious teddy bear I had ever felt. I’m pretty sure I just stared at you in awe for several minutes and it was the nurse that finally mentioned that I should try to breastfeed you. It hadn’t even dawned on me to do so but that certainly seemed like a lovely suggestion. Of course, I had no idea what to do, so I asked her to show me and she helped me to get you set into place. That was the last moment in which I never questioned my breastfeeding ability, so let me just savor it here for a second. Pretty much every nursing session from that point on was fraught with anxiety or concern, so that moment of pure breastfeeding joy, with just Daddy and I staring down at you, was the best I ever had.

We spent three nights in the hospital and then came home on the fourth day after your birth. Daddy was there the first night and the last night, and Nana was there one of the nights to give Daddy a break and let him sleep at home. It was probably the last time he slept through the night uninterrupted. On the day that we were to leave, it was again a very bright and sunny day, though it was bitterly cold. The wind was brutal and very sharp. We left in the afternoon, about 4:00pm. We dressed you in little fleece penguin overalls and tucked you into your carrier. You looked so tiny in there and although I was excited to be returning home, I was scared, too. This was all so new and I had no idea what I was doing. I sat in the backseat with you as we drove, taking Lake Street all the way home to avoid the traffic on the expressway. Daddy drove so gingerly and slow, and I remember that I kept checking your breathing to make sure you were ok. Look, I’m an anxious person. I still do it to this day when you are asleep. When we got home, Daddy carried you upstairs and I made the slow trek towards our apartment. We park in a lot adjacent to the building and I did this slow, half-crazy looking shuffle towards the front door. I remember getting odd looks from the people on the street, but I also remember not caring. I couldn’t go faster and it couldn’t be less painful.

And that was that. There you were. Our baby. In our apartment. We were parents.

But the thing is, I was not really prepared for motherhood. So few are, but I was REALLY unprepared. Before I got pregnant with you, I spent all my time thinking about how to get pregnant or how to keep a pregnancy going. I’d never had a whole lot of success there and it tended to dominate much of my thinking about motherhood. I never really thought beyond the part where I got pregnant because, well, I never really got very far beyond that point. At your prenatal checks – at every single one of your prenatal checks throughout the entire pregnancy – I went into the appointment with a racing heart and sweaty palms, certain that I was going to hear bad news. I always held on to the hope that everything would be fine, but I was anxious in a way that I have never been in my life before or after. I was so close to this thing that  wanted that I could touch it, could feel it kicking away inside of me, and the thought of that being taken away was too much to bear. I had a hard time buying things for you before you were born. I just couldn’t. When you have a history of the things you want being taken away from you without your blessing, the celebration of pregnancy takes on a more muted tone. It has to, because dashed excitement and dreams are an unhappy thing. So I spent all my pregnancy thinking about how to keep you safe and sound and secure while you were still inside me. I thought about labor. I thought about delivery. I thought about all the things that could happen during this time. But I never really thought about, say, the things you’d be dong at three weeks old, three months old. I think this is why my mouth fell open in jaw-dropping awe when I first held you. Are you really here? My God. Thank you.

So the first year of your life was one big, long lesson in what happens when you finally get what you want. Upon reflection, it is like a mobius strip of memories with no definable beginning and end. They replay in my head in a constant loop, reminding me of challenges we’ve overcome, expectations that required changing and uncertainties that will surely confront us in the future. Having a child causes you to live simultaneously in the moment and in your memories – while you are encouraging your child to move forward and helping them to learn, grow and experience the world, you are never far removed from the past; from where you have been, the things you have seen, the tricks you have learned and the skills you have gained. You cannot move forward without both appreciating and acknowledging what once was. Parts of the past are seen in the form of vignettes: little one act plays that unfolded throughout the course of the year that linger in my memory as inexplicably defining moments. But the memories of this past year are also crucial in helping me to understand and define my role as a mother and my experience as a parent. Were I not to have these experiences to reflect upon, I might not be as effective in my efforts to assess the type of impact your presence has had on my life. Indulge me, Benjamin, as I write out a review of this first year through a series of vignettes. I fear that if I don’t write them down, I will lose them forever, and I want to be able to look back on these and remember, in vivid detail, the whirlwind that was this first year of your life.

The day we went to Chipotle for the first time: I can’t express how much I needed to leave the house after you were born. Mama is the kind of person that gets really anxious when she is pent up for long periods of time. When you are five and busting at the seams to explore the world, you are going to love this about me. But when you were an infant, it was really tough to stay cooped up indoors all the time in the dead of winter. The experience had the unintended consequence of making me hate winter a little bit. I used to love the snow and the chill in the air and the way that a sunny day in winter seemed brighter than any other sunny day during the rest of the year. However, these things are considerably less charming when you are sore from surgery and married to a man so anxious about leaving the house with a child that you can only enjoy them from behind a dirty window. The remarkable thing about that day wasn’t the burrito, or the iced tea that I allowed myself to have (my first sip of caffeine since I became pregnant with you). It was breathing fresh air and walking a distance further than the living room to the kitchen. It was emerging from our third-floor cocoon to see that the world was still turning, people were still moving and life, as I knew it prior to your birth, still existed beyond the door of our apartment. This was a simple, but humbling, realization. MY world had been rocked in profound ways, but to everyone else, it was just January. My life would never be the same but it was very likely that the people standing in line for their chicken tacos had nothing about them that marked them as a person having gone a complete life overhaul. I wanted the world to celebrate you and to acknowledge what was to become of me. But for most people, it was just time to bite into a tortilla chip. How amazing is life, such that one person in a fast food line can be embarking on a personal experience that has completely altered their world while in the same line stands a person that wonders if they put their socks in their drawer last night.

The day of the faux hypothyroid diagnosis: Mama loved you from the very start, this you must know. The depths of my longing for you were limitless. When you arrived, I arrived. But, and this is a big but, Mama was not herself after you were born. When you have grown into adulthood and if you find yourself with a female partner, you may one day have a child with her. And you may see that while the birth of your first child is wondrous and exciting and very, very welcomed, it is also terrifying and anxiety-provoking and exhausting. When Mamas have their babies, their bodies go through many changes and there are many physical and emotional experiences that she has after her baby is born. Doctors call this “the baby blues,” but I like to call this, and you’ll pardon my foul language here, being scared shitless. This teeming cauldron of emotion and hormones can leave some Mamas feeling very much unlike themselves. I was tired and in pain and scared about my new responsibilities and my recovery from an unplanned surgery. So while I felt tremendous love for you, I had a hard time snapping out of this funk. I wanted to laugh and smile and hug you and kiss you and be this effervescent beacon of joy for you. But I couldn’t do it at first. If you’re mad about that in later years, that’s ok. I’m still trying to forgive myself a year later. Mama is nothing short of skilled in stewing in guilt. So I trudged through the earliest days with a love for you and an ever growing chip on my shoulder that, already, I was not the mother I wanted to be. Enter the well-intentioned pediatric resident. Apparently, when you are born, the doctors test you for 739 different medical conditions. In your case, you seemed to test positive for hypothyroidism. I remember that your Grandma had driven me to the appointment and as the doctor and I were sitting in the room talking, he received a phone call from a specialist stating that you were to start hypothyroid medications immediately. The resident started to toss around words like “mentally retarded” and “health conditions” and other such scary terms. And pal? I just lost it. Not my baby. Not my precious little man with the fuzzy hair and the soft skin. Not Benjamin. And in that instant, that gulf that seemed to separate my desire to cuddle with my ability to cuddle dissolved, and I hugged you to my chest, crying my eyes out. I’m pretty sure I terrified the physician, but I didn’t really have the words to explain that this wasn’t about the diagnosis, really. This was about me feeling, at that exact second, profoundly grateful for your presence in my life and profoundly in love with you. From that day on, things were different between you and me. I started to do those things I had envisioned when I was pregnant. I tickled your feet, played with your hair, stroked your skin and kissed your head. I’m sorry that it took a few weeks to have that kick in. I wish it would have happened sooner. And I’ve even forgiven the brouhaha with the misdiagnosis, as it was, in retrospect, quite the perfect gift. I’m sure I would have come around eventually, but I’m thankful that this experience forced that to happen sooner rather than later.

The day I walked home in a snow storm with library books: I never read baby books before you were born. Lord help me, I procrastinate. So I entered this entire motherhood thing woefully unprepared. For the first six weeks, I was recovering from surgery and just attempting to find my bearings. The last thing I could have done at that point was to add book-learnin’ to my days. But there hit a point, at about the six week mark, where I was so desperate for information about infants that I told Daddy to watch you so that I could go to the library and check out every single book on infancy. As was the case for most of that winter, it was cold and snowy. I drove to the library and parked myself in front of the appropriate shelves and selected the 3 or 4 hundred most appropriate tomes. I got myself back to the car and placed the key in the ignition, only to find that the car had died. Now here is the part wherein the fogginess of early infancy days renders decision-making processes a very questionable thing. So intent was I on reading this books and getting any kind of answer to even some of my questions that I packed my books into plastic grocery bags and walked home. In the snow. Still mildly recovering from surgery. The bags started tearing halfway through the walk and I was a mere moments from crying at every given step, but I eventually made it home. I couldn’t move my arms for days and my feet were frozen blocks of ice since I failed to wear boots and instead wore the only pregnancy shoes that still fit me (a nice, loose flat. Excellent!). I don’t even know if I got the answers I was looking for, but I remember feeling relaxed, somehow, that I had volumes of knowledge at my fingertips, should I need it.

Watching DVDs on the laptop in bed: I comment on this merely because of the frequency of its occurrence. When I am stressed and anxious, I don’t sleep. I just don’t. That whole sleep mechanism shuts down and I spend hours laying around with my eyes open, willing myself into unconsciousness. So if, years from now, you have trouble falling asleep, let Mama reenact for you every scene from the TV show The Office to help you get your sleep on. Because there is another truth to Mama’s habits and that is that the more out of control I feel in my life, the more likely I am to settle into odd routines. Such as watching the same shows over and over and over again. I rely on the expectedness of it – the same lines uttered at the same time every night. Helps me feel sane even though it appears, on the surface, rather insane. But if you’re ever in the mood for playing pop culture Trivial Pursuit, I make an excellent teammate, buddy. I remember everything.

Lying next to you: Much of the earliest parts of this year are comprised of vast swaths of time in which we just laid next to one another dozing or hanging out. In time, I did learn that you really should nap with the baby when the baby sleeps. For the first six months, we exclusively coslept with you. At night and for naps you were constantly snuggled up to Daddy or me while we all slept. Even to this day we cannot resist the urge to cuddle in bed with you, and even though you now sleep in the crucifix or swastika positions, it is still such a joy to have you sharing bed space with us. Nowadays you start out in the crib, but by around 3am, you are standing in your crib chattering and waiting to come into our bed. We pop up and bring you over, and not at all grudgingly I might add. We can’t help ourselves. It’s so great to wake up to you smiling and punching us in the face. Every parenting book that I own, every website that I read and every Mama that I talk to secretly or not-so-secretly judges us for this decision. It’s ingrained in our culture to believe that babies have a need for their own bed and their own space from a very tender age. Part of our inability to do that lies in the nature of our dwelling. We share a bedroom because we have to do so. But that excuse has become the reason that I give some outsiders for continuing to do something that we love, while deep down I know that we continue to share a bed because we all like it and we all sleep really well that way. You don’t monkey about in the bed. You sleep until morning and then we all get up. I could do without some of the late night kicks to the abdomen, but it’s no more distracting then when we allowed 4 cats and a dog to sleep in our bed. At least I’ve never awoken with your filthy tail in my mouth.

Sitting on the steps in Coloma singing Feeling Groovy: One day, I was in Coloma at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and I decided to take a little walk to the steps leading down to the lake. There are some days that are just perfect in their composition. The perfect temperature, the perfect number of clouds in the sky, the perfect blend of pinks and blues and yellows painted across the horizon. This was such a day. The summer prior, I had taken a walk down to those same steps when I was about 22 weeks pregnant with you and the architecture of that day was strikingly similar. I sat down at the top of the steps with you in my lap and starting organically singing “Feeling Groovy” by Simon and Garfunkel. You tolerated the experience and humored yourself with a leaf or twig or some such item, but the moment really wasn’t for you. It was with you, to be sure, and existed only because of you, but it was one of those special moments for me – a snapshot that I will remember fondly for the rest of my life. I won’t always remember to share them with you, and in fact the spotty nature of my memory will ensure that I will forget to mention them more often than not, but I want you to know that when I am holding you, standing by you, talking to you or interacting with you, these experiences are etching a permanent imprint in a very special place in my mind. I will always forget to brush my teeth and I will never remember to return my library books, but I have reserved a distinct section of my brain for these little snapshots that somehow seems impervious to the usual failings of my mental faculties.

Breastfeeding: I would be remiss to not mention the breastfeeding. I wish I could tell you, buddy, why it brought me so much stress and anguish. I think it is just how my mind works. When I cannot see and cannot calculate something in a quantitative way, I get very unsettled. I knew that you were breastfeeding, but I never knew if my milk had the right amount of nutrients or if you were getting enough ounces or spending enough time at the breast or gaining the appropriate amount of weight. I became obsessed with these elusive numbers and could never regain that early innocence that marked our first few days of breastfeeding. I wanted it to be this thing I loved, pal, but sadly, it was only ever this thing that I tolerated for what I believed to be the good of your health. This is not to say that there were not moments when I loved the experience. There were a few weeks, around the three-month mark, where we just got into this great rhythm together. You were eating, I was milking and for whatever reason, I let go of the anxiety and just tried to enjoy the experience. I didn’t watch the clock. I didn’t obsess over the ounces pumped and potential ounces consumed. I stopped weighing you on the scale I hastily purchased from the baby goods store. I just sat with you in my arms and let you eat when you cried and stop when you pulled away. It was a glorious few weeks and one of the first periods, since your birth, when I remember feeling relaxed and somewhat happy about breastfeeding. My anxiety returned with a vengeance with your dropping weights and the slide downward on the growth charts around five months and then, that was it. Breastfeeding became a practice, not a hippyesque, La Leche League expression of love and nurturance. I don’t regret for an instant all the work I put into breastfeeding and I would do it again for you in a heartbeat, but when the anxiety of that experience was erased, we were able to begin forming a really close relationship in other, more enjoyable ways. Once the specter of a challenging breastfeeding relationship was removed, I think we enjoyed each other’s company more. I say this because I do think it was true for both of us. You started to self-wean around seven months old. From that point on, my breasts were not for food, and this was your choice. They were just another piece of me, in the way that my arms and legs and fingers were a piece of me. This is the thing about you that I have really grown to appreciate over the first year of your life. You are pretty clear about what you need and don’t need, what you like and don’t like and what you want and don’t want. If Daddy and I pause to pay attention, we find that you’ve charted the very path we’d been stressing about for weeks prior. I didn’t know how I was going to wean you from breastfeeding knowing that you were going to increasingly need supplementation via formula, but you seemed to be there already, a few steps ahead of me. I’m supposedly the older, wiser mother, but there is an inherent maturity in remaining true to our needs and you are able to do that so very well. Such is the paradox of humanity – authenticity decreases as our need for it as adults increases.

The day I belly laughed for the first time again: This happened fairly recently and it caught me completely off guard. I’ve not been silent in my expression that the first year of a baby’s life is very hard work. And Benjamin, you are an EASY child. I dread to think about what life would have been like these past 12 months had you been a more challenging child. I have lost count of the sleepless nights, irritable days and trying conversations held between Daddy and me. To date, this was the longest and shortest year of my life. In the earliest days after your arrival, I wasn’t laughing or smiling much at all and if I was I was faking it to give the appearance of normalcy. A few months after you were born, I felt my face more easily soften into a smile and by the summer there were things that could get a chuckle out of me. When you were six months old, there was enough of a routine to our days that we all started getting a little more sleep and then, when you were ten months old, I went back to work and savored the much-needed social interaction. This whole year has, in some ways, been a movement backward towards the old me and then a movement forward towards a brand new me. The new me was the one in which this motherhood job became old hat and I could entertain a child while cooking dinner with the best of them. I’m still working on developing her. The old me that I longed to get back to, however, was the me that took a profound joy in living every day of my life. Again, may I remind you, Benjamin, that some day, if you have a child, this will all make sense, but not every day is an overwhelmingly happy day when you have a new baby. There’s the oft-mentioned lack of sleep and then the struggles to regain your family dynamic when a new members comes bounding in and did I mention the not sleeping? It’s tough to crack a grin some days let alone laugh at the foibles of the world. So I was delighted, simply delighted, when I returned home from work one day in November and found myself genuinely laughing at some antic you were displaying. Perhaps you tossed a can of soup through the air. Perhaps you made a funny sound. I can’t remember, though I wish I could. But that’s ok, because what I do remember is the laughing and the feeling that it was really great to be doing that again. It started to chip away at those last remaining slivers of PPD that linger not in form but in spirit. So worried am I that I will ever feel that way again that there is this little well of anxiousness that springs forth when I have a particularly bad day. Will I start to feel bad again? And if I do, will I emerge easily and cleanly and with little residue on my soul? That laugh was one of the best confirmations I have had to date that I am on the path back to these old parts of me that I wish to reclaim. I appreciate that being a mother changes you. It is wholly necessary in some regards. But I miss that carefree buoyancy that marked the past few years of my life. It is coming back, though, heralded in by that wonderfully freeing belly laugh.

Crawling to me on the floor of the living room: I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor with you while you crawl around. One of my favorite parts of this activity is when you crawl away to explore something and then crawl back to me, smiling. I bring you comfort, I bring you joy and you love me. What more can you ask for, really?

The day I finally realized that I am ME as a mother: I suppose it is rather fitting that I learned this lesson a mere few days before your first birthday, knowing as I did that I planned to sit down and write out this lengthy tome for you. I remember that when I was pregnant with you – on those days that I would actually let my mind wander there – I had these fleeting visions of what life would be like with a baby. I would be this patient, nurturing, attentive mother that skipped around and sang lullabies and songs and paid rapturous attention to your every action. I would be this mother figure that was akin to the socially constructed version of mother, but I’d be different in that I have tattoos, am getting a PhD and am a vegetarian. So I’d be punk rock mother, sure, but conventional in many other ways. And here is where that daydream failed to take into account the reality of the situation. I am me. I am a good person and I have a lot of love to give. I am passionate and compassionate. I love people. But I am also incredibly impatient and impulsive and a junkie for stimulation. I need a lot of time to sit and think or I start feeling very irritable. I shout more readily than I should and I swear like a trucker on his worst day ever. I’m prone to anxiety and crippling panic attacks and I have so many phobias that I’ve felt, at times, like a walking psychology text book. Oh, and I have this little case of ADHD. Are you kidding me? I am a mother. Somehow my DNA failed to step in and mutate a gene just so to prevent my chaotic and disorganized self from ever reproducing (Or maybe it did. See random references to your metaphysical siblings). I’m very thankful, Benjamin, that my pregnancy with you was successful, as now I have you in my life. But as I’ve said time and time again, becoming a mother is hard work. More so when you have a laundry list of minor to moderate psychological impairments. I thought that somehow, after delivering you and the placenta, that I would also somehow also deliver all that is difficult in me. That by the sheer act of your birth, I would suddenly not be me anymore, but would be replaced by this organized, calm and patient woman that could stare at her child for hours on end. Only, that didn’t happen. I can play with you for about five minutes before my mind starts to wander. I can remember to make you breakfast, but I’ll forget to change your diaper. I’ll bring the formula on an outing but not the bottle. I’ll bring the diapers and not the wipes. I’ll tell myself that we are going to have a nice, relaxing day at home together and by 10:00am I am climbing the walls in boredom and packing us up for a trip to the museum. I don’t have the patience to put you to sleep, though I am great at reading you stories and getting you dressed for bed. In short, I’m not the Mama that I thought I was going to be. I fought this realization for a long time – for a year to be exact. And then one night as Daddy and I were eating dinner during a rare night out together, I did something very uncharacteristic of me. I stopped talking, turned to Daddy and said, “For whatever reason, things just aren’t coming together for me and I need help.” And Daddy just smiled in that knowing way and said he never expected it any other way. Of course I can’t sit watching you play for more than five minutes. I can’t sit and listen to him talk for more than five minutes without wanting to walk away and do something else. Of course I forget your wipes when I leave the house. I never remember to bring my lunch. Of course I forget to change your diaper. I don’t remember to wash my own face unless the soap falls on my head. I am exactly the mother that Daddy and expected me to be. And here’s the kicker. He’s pretty ok with it. And you seem to be, too. You both seem to roll with the punches and take what Mama gives you. There are some things that I still need to work on. I’m thinking of getting some help somehow for something. I’m not sure what yet. I don’t even know where to begin. I am a good mother. I am a great mother at times. I am also a disorganized, impatient, chaotic mother at times. So, Ben, I’ll do my part to keep up the good parts of me and work on making improvements in those areas that need help. For the first time ever, I’m beginning to think that we’ll all be ok.

There is so much more that I could say and so many more memories floating around my head that could easily take up dozens more pages. I am relieved, somewhat, that I am able to recall so many instances from this past year. When you are in the thick of things it is sometimes difficult to expend the extra energy to catalog the various activities in your mind and then here in these letters and in the photographs I would so diligently take. Yet I am glad that I have always taken the time to do so because I have these very tangible reminders of the earliest months and weeks that I can always reflect on when I want to reminisce about your infancy. When I was speaking to your grandpa the other day, he remarked that he remembers so many more details about you as a baby now that he is a grandfather as opposed to details about me when I was a baby and he was a young father. And this makes perfect sense to me. Those early weeks and months are spent in survival mode. I remember what you look like and the things you were doing not because I can easily bring forth those images in my mind but because I have the pictures to remind me and help me bring forth the memories. As you aged, I noticed that I became more inconsistent with the picture-taking habits. I’ve always felt guilty about this until it dawned on me that as the year progressed, I was naturally spending less time documenting you and more time living with you. I wish, however, there was a way to draw more concretely upon the tactile memories of your first few weeks with us. I know that you were soft and warm in my arms because you couldn’t be any other way, but I am unable to recreate that feeling on my skin and I worry that I was too out of it at the time to cherish it in the way that I should have. I kept wanting to speed up time – I wanted you to be a little older and a little more interactive and I wanted me to feel better. Still, I don’t think I wasted all those early moments because I knew, even as I begged the universe to get the ball rolling and make me feel better and make you more captivating company, that I needed to try to be in the moment sometimes to appreciate what I had as I was experiencing it. I couldn’t be in that place very often in the beginning, but the passage of time has allowed me to be more present in my parenting in increasing doses. When I am with you now, I am with you and not this future you that exists in my head. It’s been great to get to know you in this way.

Motherhood has totally changed me in some ways and then I remain stubbornly myself in other ways. I could never have predicted how experiencing this past year would help to create the person that sits here today. Although we will have new experiences and new challenges ahead of us, nothing will ever be like the first year of life with my first baby. Nothing. Not my first year of college or graduate school. Not my first year with Daddy. Not my first year as a married woman. I underestimated the impact you would have on my life. I underestimated how little control I would feel and how much parenting you would challenge my notions of intent. There were so many things I was going to do in this first year. I was going to wear you in a baby carrier all the time. You and I both hated that. I was going to breastfeed you until your first birthday. You and I nixed that idea halfway through the year. I was going to return to my pre-baby body by your birthday. Just ha-ha, there. And yet, all of this is fine. In the moment, the disappointment may have not felt fine, but at the end of the year, it’s all good. I don’t care about the shouldas or wouldas or couldas. I don’t care that you took my ideas and plans and essentially laughed at most of them. I don’t care that this experience is as dizzyingly topsy-turvy as it is.

I have you.

Love,

Mama