Is There Any Mommy Out There?: Over and Under

I suppose, to be proper, that this should be easy and light-hearted, with lots of pictures and gushing professions of love. We are in love, all six of us with each other, but that's not all that's in me right now. I don't know all that's in me. I'm scattered like this post.

The first few weeks post partum are hard, whether it's your first baby or your fourth or your tenth. Hard and happy and sad and intense.

I'm a little overwhelmed. There's no getting around it. Nine days ago I had a handle on my life. We had a routine that worked. I could take my three toddlers almost anywhere, though some places (the grocery store) horrified me more than others. Now, I feel in over my head. I forgot those insistent newborn cries and the unrelenting urge to respond immediately with milk, comfort, with both hands, no matter who is sitting on the potty, or crawling into trouble, or ripping wires out of my computer. I have a new weakness in my usually easy and consistent discipline and it's name is Nate. My underlings have identified it and exploit it with ease.

(I can't believe I'm sharing this picture, but it pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?)

I'm a little overwrought. I'm wound too tight, walking a narrow emotional ledge between laughter and tears. It's a combination of things. Hormones, I'm sure. Plain old overtiredness. Part of it is just that it's over. You plan and hope and smile and dream and then suddenly it's happening and then it's over. Our third and final pregnancy is over, the birth, that first crazy-beautiful week. No more trimesters, no more moments in the bathroom, heart beating hard as I strain to see that faint pink line, no more ultrasounds or names.

Now, we live our family of six. That is so right and so sad all at the same time.

I've never had post partum depression, but I can imagine it. I can imagine it in the bizarre sadness that strikes me at certain thoughts, small and huge. The way I can cry because we are out of turkey or because the stroller is too heavy for me to push. The same huge, sobbing tears overflow when I walk around the corner and find Garrett lying on his side beside Nate, not touching his blanket, because I told him, please do not step on, molest, trample and/or touch his blanket, but gently stroking Nate's head, murmuring loving words.

Those tears find me every single morning when Quinn patters into our room as I lay beside Nate, nursing him. The cool, still morning air soothes my tired eyes and his firm, insistent pull relieves the pressure in my breasts. Quinn waddles to my side around his full diaper. "New baby?" It's a demand. "He's right here," I tell him, "he's drinking milk." Like an emperor reviewing his troops, he's gone to get the newspaper and make coffee with Daddy.

I'm absolutely overjoyed. I've always thought that 'overjoyed' was a strange word. It implies joy that is too strong, almost too much to take. This week has been full of joy like that. There's too much to take in. I want to sit for hours, curled into the corner of our couch and let Nate sleep on my chest, full to the brim with milk and comfort. But, Quinn pulls my hand, "Baby down, momma," he says imperiously, "baby seat. Momma come." I want to follow him wherever he leads. He is going to be two in just 24 days and I can't let this time slip away. I can't let him, with his chubby toddler legs and contagious baby chortle, slip away.

Simultaneously, Saige and Garrett hurtle towards four with all the momentum they can muster. Right now, they will still sit in my lap. Right now, they still bring me owies for kissing and treasures for oohing and aahing. Tomorrow, they won't.

***********************************************
There's a bridge over the road that I take into the city. I drive under it at least once a day. It's a skywalk the connects a parking garage to the Women's Health wing of the largest downtown hospital. I have walked it twice, hugely pregnant, scared and ready, breathing quietly through contractions. Both times I've left the wing by another door, where Matt could pull up close with the car and collect me and our brand new baby boy.

That bridge looms so large in my consciousness. It never fails to draw my eyes and cause a pang in my heart. In it's constant stream of traffic, pregnant women, elated families, friends with balloons, solitary men walking fast, women in wheelchairs, it personifies for me the constant cycle. There's the day I am there, giving birth to my second son, and then there's two years of days in between, each one with other women, other stories, and then there's the day I am there giving birth to my third son. The very next day, after I have climbed into our red car and driven away, there are other women crossing that bridge.

*********************************************
Someone wrote to me a few days ago and mentioned that I was lucky. It surprised me a little because I know. I mean I really, deeply know that I am lucky. I wonder whether that part of me comes across here or maybe it is lost in my sarcastic sense of humor and the honest complaints and frustrations that I share.

I consider luck the golden thread that runs through it all. The unsaid addendum to every word I write. I'm overtired and lucky. I'm sick of playing with my kids and lucky. I just want a moment to myself and I am so very, very lucky. I am happy and busy and unsure and fallible and lucky.

I don't believe in being blessed. I don't have a god that rewards or withholds. I believe that the powerful force for order instead of chaos in this universe is too large, too cosmic, to smite or bestow. All that's left is luck and random chance. That comforts me, though I know it's hard for some to understand. Still, somewhere deep inside my pagan soul I resist drawing any attention to my perceived luck for fear that vengeful fates in billowing robes with wind wild hair might gaze on me with ill humor and take it all away.

We all have our griefs and our triumphs. We all have our intimate joys. We all have different words, I think, for that unbearable gratefulness that wells up inside of us and we all have different words for the place where we focus our thankfulness. For me, early in the morning with the sun-dappled maples outside of our window fluttering and this new baby curled like a kitten into my side I pray, in my own way. I thank the life force that holds it all together for maples and sunshine and new babies.