Things I Knew and Didn't Know

Before this baby was born, I had a lot of theories about parenting. Years of nannying and baby-adoration led me to develop a lot of opinions about something many would have said I really knew nothing about. And in some areas, these people were right: there really were a few things I couldn't understand until I became a parent myself. Things like the physical bond of motherhood, the way my body knows it is her mother even when my mind can't quite grasp this monumental concept. My mind is at the mercy of my sleep-deprived hormones, but my breasts sting with the milk coming in a full minute before she wakes. Consciously I struggle with the debates of proper parenting and doubt my ability to make the right choices, but I fall asleep with her in my bed and my body, once so restless and prone to flailing in my sleep, stays curled protectively curled around her, still and solid as a wall. And I didn't know it would be like this, in this exact way, but I knew it would be like this, giving myself permission to be a mother in whatever ways came naturally. I have seen too many frazzled mothers dining daily on guilt and regret as they shoehorn themselves into the shape of a mother as outlined by some expert. Going against nature and instinct because a scientist told them to, and struggling every day under a rising sense of incompetence as they find themselves unable to actually become a different person, or to make their child into another child. So I knew it would be like this, resolving one thing because the research and logic seem sound, and then doing something completely different, for no better or less debatable reason than that it works.

I didn't know it would be so strange to meet her. I didn't know it would be so hard. I thought I would give birth in the birthing tub, in my bedroom, surrounded by peace, and my husband would pluck her out of the water and give her to me, and love would pulse between us with the blood in the cord still binding us like we were one beast. And in that moment I thought everything would fall away and become unimportant as I felt a rush of love unlike anything I'd ever known.

I didn't know that my labor would span over four days, from late Sunday night to early Thursday morning. I didn't know that by the time I was dilated enough to get into the tub, I would be so tired that my midwife would make me get out after an hour. I didn't know that the baby would be posterior, and have her hand stubbornly up by her face, and refuse to descend. I didn't know that my midwife didn't believe I could push out a posterior baby. I didn't know that around 11:00 the baby would pass meconium, or that shortly after that her heartrate would skyrocket, prompting the midwife to ask Mike to call the ambulance. I didn't know I could be as scared as I was when they strapped me to the gurney and pushed me into the back of the ambulance and we drove through heavy rain to the hospital, where I was sure I was headed for a C-section. I didn't know that my baby would be born not at home, in the dimmed lights and warm water and familiarity, but in a bright, sterile hospital room, surrounded by strangers hollering "PUSH." I didn't know that I wouldn't get to hold the baby for a long stretch of minutes, while they whisked her away to be suctioned and examined and scored, and I would be dazed and searching for a glimpse of her while a doctor whose name I didn't know gave me what felt like many, many stitches in a place where you definitely don't want to be getting stitches. I didn't know that when they placed my healthy baby ( my healthy GIRL, another thing I didn't know) on my chest at last, all I would feel would be exhaustion, relief, and a strong, buzzing disbelief. No rush. No love, at least not as I define it. No monumental re-configuration of my sense of self. No bonding. Just me and a little stranger, wearing hospital bands with matching numbers. I didn't know any of that. I'm glad I didn't. It wasn't the kind of thing a person could face all at once.

But I also didn't know what I was made of. I didn't know that I could make it through days of labor and then push out a posterior baby, unmedicated, in an hour. I didn't know that I could power through unending, sleepless days of painful breastfeeding, of depression and numbness. I didn't know I could do it. And keeping doing it, every day.

I don't want anyone to misunderstand me. I know I'm so blessed that my labor was relatively uneventful, that I'm healthy and that I have a healthy baby. I know many women are not as lucky as I was. I'm grateful for the medical system that helped me in this terrifying time. I'm grateful for my daughter, and I do love her. But it's harder and more complicated than I ever imagined.

Perhaps most importantly of all the things I didn't know, I didn't know her. This being, this human person, grew inside of me for 10 long months, and yet when she was born, I didn't know her. She was a stranger to me, a little redheaded stranger who bore no resemblance to the dark-haired boy I had pictured. She looked like my sister, not like me. If the nurses had at any point taken her out of the room, I might have believed we had a switched-at-birth situation.

She made it clear from the first moment that they set her on my chest, though, that she knew me. She knew my heartbeat, my smell, my voice. She quieted in contact with my skin. She latched on quickly when I offered her a breast, and she suckled peacefully while staring intently at the crease between my arm and my chest. (It would sound more romantic to say she stared at my face or into my eyes, but in this blog, we tell the truth, even when it's less cool-sounding.) I thought that when I gave birth, I would end up in awe of how much love I could feel. Instead, I ended up speechless and humbled in the powerful revelation of just how much someone could love me. How much someone could need me. In every way, from her protection to her food to her comfort, I was (and am) utterly vital to this tiny person. I felt honored. I felt overwhelmed. I felt horribly, painfully, guilty.

I didn't know then that babies are patient. Babies are forgiving. Babies don't need you to feel cosmic, soulful love for them all at once. They just need you to do the basic actions of caring for them, and in many ways, those are the easiest parts of parenting. Change the diaper, feed, burp, rock, watch while sleeping, repeat. This is easy. This I can do. I didn't know that as each day passed, I was training myself to feel like her mother by just doing it. I didn't know that the feelings would follow. The haze is still clearing for me now, but I can see the joy on the other side.

And she does look like me, after all.