Seven and a half years ago, I went from working full-time, often with more than one job, often with night shift and/or grad school thrown in, to majorly slowing down and staying home with my new baby Monday through Friday. At first, it didn't feel like slowing down because I had a colicky baby and postpartum anxiety and severe sleep deprivation. I still worked weekend nights, and we finagled it all without family in town or childcare, so I didn't have much downtime.
I eventually found a better weekend job that was life-giving and I put in literally thousands of hours, in the tiny margins of mothering, to become an IBCLC. It was maybe one of the first times I'd experienced the work being hard but joyful because I loved the material and it launched me into my dream job.
Then I started my own private practice in addition to hospital work, took a MOPS leadership position, and started growing another baby. Thus began a 4-year streak of over-functioning, to which I piled on physical illnesses, emotional distress, marital separation, and so many fluctuating iterations of working and momming. I felt like I was always frantic, never meeting anyone's actual expectations or needs, always disappointing the next person, my kids, myself...
That was a deep pit to climb out of. Expensive, too: financially, emotionally, and energetically. I am so different from that lost 29-year-old new mom now that it's hard to believe so (relatively) little time has passed. Now that first baby is a school-aged kid as tall as my shoulders. My medical chart says G5P2 and "advanced maternal age." Something about the time elapsed makes me feel like I should be a seasoned mom, like the last 7 years have been worth 70. They kind of have. The other night, Rosie asked what those lines on my forehead were. I've changed inside and out. Like I often tell my clients in the throes of postpartum struggles, some people have a steeper learning curve for motherhood than others. I'm totally willing to own that I know this from messy experience.
I'm not sure that I had any vision of what I wanted motherhood to look like 7 years in. On one hand, maybe that's good because for once I can't be disappointed when expectations aren't met. On the other hand, I think maybe I did have expectations for how it would feel. I didn't expect it to feel so hard. I didn't expect the tension between what I want my career to look like and what I want my mothering to look like to constantly feel at odds and require re-evaluation every 3 months. I'm always reminding myself that my identity isn't in my productivity OR in my kids. Yet each day feels like making a million tiny choices between those two things. And if I'm not really careful, I burn out and then choose to numb out and escape instead of pouring into something or someone I care about, or doing something that will actually be restorative for my tired heart.
So is it any wonder that I'm even more introspective than usual as I round the corner on the final weeks of this pregnancy? Baby seems to have finally committed to being head-down and I can feel that all 4-5 pounds of him have dropped into my pelvis this week. Suddenly there's a new urgency to everything. I'm accepting that night wake-ups, sore hips, and fatigue aren't going away any time soon. New for me, I'm also willing to acknowledge that I'm kicking butt at homeschooling this year WHILST being tired and sore and pregnant. Not because I'm doing all the Pinterest-worthy things (or even some of them), but because we hit most subjects most days, and the kids and I actually have a rhythm for maybe one of the first times ever. I make mostly healthy food mostly three times a day. My house is slowly getting more organized when the nesting urge and windows of kid-free time outweigh the physical and emotional fatigue (don't mistake this for looking more clean if you come over unannounced).
Reframing things by looking at what I HAVE done well instead of what's still on my to-do list is one way I have learned to remind myself that it's enough to do what I've been given in a day. Even if it looks different from what I thought it would. Even it it looks different from my friends or that one person who surely has it all together. One moment at a time is all I can really offer.
I'm not saying I am "mother enough" or even that "motherhood is enough." I will always have room for improvement. I will always have an identity deeper than my roles and responsibilities. I will also probably always have a restless heart and big dreams as well. But I won't always have a curious 7 year old and a spunky 4 year old who think I hung the moon. I won't always have a house brimming with excitement over meeting the tiny person who will fill these freshly-washed baby clothes soon. I have a few more weeks of feeling these kicks and wiggles from the inside. I have another season of babyhood to look forward to. An opportunity I never expected to get.
Seemingly suddenly, 18 months after moving and the start of a pandemic, it feels like career opportunities and networking are finally happening, and I'm saying no. Not yet. And it gets a little easier each time I say it. Because instead of worrying about what I'm missing out on, I get to focus on what I'm saying yes to. This life season will never come again. Work opportunities will.
So while I never originally planned to homeschool at all, or even to "just" be a mom without working from or outside the home in some capacity, I find myself craving the rare days when that's "all" I have to do. I'm realizing that "all" is actually everything. This time, instead of trying to cram everything else in anyways, I'm going to listen and slow down. And slow down some more. (The shifting calendar season helps so much.) I trust that when the time is right to ramp things up again, I'll feel that tug too.
One important part of trauma recovery has been learning to live in the grey. I'm not nearly as stuck in the black and white as I felt for so long. I have worked harder than I've ever worked at anything to simply get to where we are today: I like my husband. My kids are safe. We live near family. It's all so far from perfect, but it took consistent little choices as well as some big scary ones to get here. And I'll be darned if I'm going to shame myself out of sitting right here and enjoying it, bleary eyes and medical bills and bickering kids and all.
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