To ensure he is not lost in a sea of Haddock children, Salem has chosen to differentiate himself from his brothers by being the absolute worst sleeper we have ever experienced. Which, if you know my children, you know is really saying something. Therefore, the days of the past week and a half have all sort of bled into each other. A constant stream of nursing and pumping and feeding and snuggling and changing and dozing off and soothing and reminding each other to wash our hands. And in between there is cleaning up and making messes and playing hard and laundry and three other little humans that apparently still expect parental attention. And doctor's appointments and dentist appointments and friends and family eager to meet the newest addition (and us eager to share him) and gatherings and grocery trips . And a lot of hungry mouths to feed multiple times of day. In some moments, it feels entirely natural- almost easy! In other moments, I am paralyzed with fear over the sheer magnitude of the situation. An infant. A preschooler with special needs. Two school-aged homeschoolers. A lot of animals. The end of Ryan's paternity leave inching closer and closer with every tick of the clock and the settling back into a normal routine. Juggling schedules. So many doctor's appointments. Multiple children in multiple therapies. Making sure everyone's physical, spiritual and emotional needs are met. Not letting anything or anyone fall through the cracks. Inevitably failing and having to repair the damage. Maybe eventually possibly having a minute to do things I like to do again? …...vacuuming. A lot of times, people, including myself, conclude after looking at a messy situation that they "wouldn't change it for the world." But....the truth is... there is a lot about our situation I would change. To make things easier. To make things more pleasant. To be able to take a deep breath. To feel the weight that lives on my shoulders lifted. But it is really a silly thing to think about at all because no one is given the power to edit their life story to their liking. You get the ugly bits along with all the beauty. You soak it in, you process it, it becomes a part of you. Maybe you let the ugliness take things over and you become bitter and brittle. Maybe you try to ignore it, pretend it isn't there, while it haunts you like a ghost. Or maybe you figure out a way to use the ugly bits, weave them into the fabric of yourself so that you are stronger because of them.... or you sit with them until your nose longer crinkles in disgust, until they become familiar and you can coexist with them or, one day, even embrace them. However you deal with the ugly, it is there. The truth is, our ugly isn't so ugly. Or maybe I have just sat with it long enough that it has become familiar. If you had shown a snapshot of my life to my 20-year-old self, she would have been horrified. Particularly by the dark circles under my eyes, the fact that I so rarely make it to the gym, how little control I have over everything, the number of people I cohabitate with that pee all over the bathroom floor. If I am being honest...these things can still manage to horrify me...but in a muffled sort of way, you know. On the other hand, I never could have accurately expressed to my 20-year-old self how stunning my life is. My 20-year-old self who had never felt deep, bone-aching love for another person, who had never experienced the sweetness of true forgiveness, who had never known the freedom of letting go of expectations. She would have seen the mess and not how lucky I am to be in it. How it will never, ever matter that I had a flabby belly or no make up on my face during any of the exquisite and horrifying moments that make up the meat of my life. How close I came to not having any of it. How it can all be taken away in an instant. How it will all disappear eventually. How the impermanence of it is what makes it so sweet. And it is so, so, so, so, so sweet. Today, right now, it is raining and I have coffee. A beautiful baby I never thought I would get to have is sleeping by an open window. One boy is at a school he loves, thriving. Two boys are spending the morning with a Papa they adore. And, if you read between the lines on any of that...you could see the ugliness behind it...but today, right now, it is all woven together beautifully.
Today, right now, life is good.
0 Comments
Eight weeks ago, I had a baby. Early. Again. But you probably already knew that because it seems that everyone does. At least, the food dropped off on my porch with notes signed by names I don't recognize indicates that everyone does. I am so grateful to these friends and strangers for their thoughtfulness though....and also the food. It doesn't bother me that they know about the baby, but I cant help but wonder how those conversations go. Does how irresponsible it was come up every single time? When we discovered we were expecting this fourth little one, there were a lot of things I was afraid of happening. So far, every single one of those fears has been realized. Every single fear I had ever feared...and some I had not thought of... has come true. I have not quite figured out how to be okay with that. Mostly, for now, I am learning to be okay with not being okay with that. I think that might be the first step. A lot of people have reached out and said that they did not even know I was pregnant. That makes sense because I never really made any sort of announcement. Even though I knew from the very beginning, I never got used to the idea of being pregnant again. I kept not telling anyone until it "felt real"... and it never felt real so I just kept not telling anyone. I told a person here and a person there and finally spilled the beans to family after we knew for sure that it was a boy. I wrote about coming to terms with not having a daughter for the local mom blog I am a contributor for and that is as close as I came to any official announcement. I guess now I know who actually cares about what I write, hm? (This is a joke. The "serious" tone of this post makes me believe I need to be specific about that.) I was not pregnant very long really. I only have a single photo of my belly; a blurry photograph in a dirty mirror I snapped before I climbed in the shower. One that can never hang on the nursery wall or be put in a baby book. In the days I was bed-bound prior to delivery, I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed, trying to memorize the feeling of a tiny human moving inside me because I will never feel it again and I hardly had a chance to feel it at all. It was really quick and life was busy. Any time we had a minute, we sort of sat around stunned at the idea of a baby instead of actually preparing for the inevitable arrival of the actual baby. Because.....we were done. We were out of the business of creating new human beings. The idea of being done was too hard to examine closely... so I would pretend like maybe, possibly, in the future, if the stars aligned, in some way, some day we might have another baby ....but we were really, really, really done. I knew exactly how done we were the instant I saw a positive pregnancy test. I could not even say the words out loud for weeks but only sort of whisper them vaguely in Ryan's direction while he nodded slowly and the conversation always ended with, "But....what are we going to do?" And my body does not keep babies safe. My body actively tries to hurt the babies it so readily creates. Well...that isn't really fair. Really, my body just tries to stay alive to the detriment of the babies it so readily creates....but I am still in the phase where my body feels like the enemy and I hate it so you are just going to have to give me a minute. And also kids are expensive. And they eat a lot. And also a four bedroom house is starting to feel really small. And also we have Rory. Rory is our baby. We don't know if Rory will ever not be our baby...and how can we make room for another one? And what if adding another one diminishes the quality of Rory's life because we are distracted and cannot give him the attention he needs to thrive? And how will we ever give the big ones the life they deserve with a baby and a Rory? The answer is we can't and they will inevitably suffer so congrats on failing them. And what if something happens and this baby has special needs also? I know, for a fact, that I will crumble if put under the pressure of two special needs children. I just can't do it. And do we even remember what to do with a newborn? I am pretty sure the answer is no. And these are all the horrible things that can happen if everything goes right, so now let's think about all the things that could go horrifically wrong..... So, there is a small peek into my brain at any given minute of the day. Isn't it a trip? There is so much to be grateful for in an experience like this and everyone likes to remind you of that....including your own guilty conscious. You find yourself angry that feelings other than gratitude for your life and that of your baby keep welling up inside of you. But if there is one lesson that this life keeps trying to teach me over and over and over again... it is that things can be painful and beautiful all at the same time. Things are usually painful and beautiful at exactly the same time. You don't have to feel better about the things that are bad to acknowledge the things that are good. Gratitude and disappointment are not mutually exclusive. You can mourn for what you are losing and treasure what you have and probably that is what you are doing most of the time anyway.... it is just that big life experiences tend to get more scrutiny. It is okay to be scared. It is okay to be angry. It is okay to be sad. You can also be brave and calm and happy. You can be so many things. You are human. Humans are complicated. Sometimes, this can cause problems...but it also means you can do really neat things like feel many things at exactly the same time! And in the middle of it all, is this sweet baby. This sweet baby that feels like such a mystery to me. Who are you? Why did you come?
They came into my room and told me they were taking him. And I cried because this is not my first rodeo and I knew I would not get to meet him...and if I did not get to meet him, I could not make him real. I really, really needed him to be real. Finding out he was coming was shocking and overwhelming and I needed that experience to not end with me splayed open on a table, womb and arms empty. Except that it did. So, I kept my eyes closed while they prepped me for surgery, wheeled me down the hall, explained everything to me, put in an epidural, took my baby, wheeled me to recovery, put me in a room and for almost every single one of the 26 hours I had to wait until I got to meet him.... I kept my eyes closed and focused all my energy on these words: Please stay with me, Little Stranger. And it did not look like I hoped it would look but.... I think that maybe....he did. At least for now. |
WHO AM I?
I am Michelle: a wannabe hippie in love with a bonafide geek. We also spawned. I spend my days with our four wild, beautiful boy children and I overshare about our life online because I am a Millennial and that is what we do.
|