The Other Side
Three months ago today, I was woken by our regular 6am alarm. It was one of those wake ups that felt like a switch had been flipped, and I went from deep and dreamlessly asleep to fully conscious in an instant. The moment I opened my eyes, I knew our day had arrived.
By 10am, my body was in a rhythm consistent enough that it warranted a call to my mom to come get the dogs. At 2pm, we had settled into our room at the hospital. Then 5.23pm - I got to meet our little boy for the first time.
Remi Frost.
These past three months have been a blur and a lifetime.
II.
It’s all so fleeting -
These moments where we sit
Belly to belly,
Breath to breath,
Life to life -
The only two souls in existence
Awake and snuggled on the couch,
An island of our own making.
Sometimes I stall,
A minute or two (or five)
To suspend time altogether and
Make it last that little bit longer.
I miss my sleep,
But I will miss
This more.
I.
I’ve long been a bird
Of the morning -
Bright eyed, east facing,
Rising with a sky that drifts
From deep ocean
To clear shallows
In one smooth gradient of
Light -
But now, too,
My waking hours seep
Into the dark,
And in those hours
I am becoming something feral.
No, not feral -
Something entirely wild.
What a beautiful, brutal reckoning
To feel out the hard edges and
Find that what exists just
Beyond has eyes that flash
And has never known what it is
To be tamed.
III.
This love is not the kind that
Sits on my body like a
Lofty down comforter,
Tucked gently beneath my chin.
I, who struggle to
Put into words this thing
That exists for me
So solidly in the realm
Of action,
Feel the weight of it instead -
The (not unwelcome)
Heaviness that settles in
To crush me, or to
Make me into something
New altogether.
And so I must ask,
Is this it, then?
Will I simply live the
Rest of my life afraid,
With this ache in my chest
That feels like emptiness and
Bursting joy all at once?
In my current state, I am all loose ends and half-finished thoughts. My world is becoming steadier by the day, but it’s a new world altogether from the one I left behind in November. As I begin to step back into the roles I held before, the roles of artist and horsewoman and individual, I just want to pause and acknowledge a few things that have sort of shocked me about parenthood. In no particular order of importance, they are as follows…
••••••••••••••••
I chose to have an unmedicated birth and, as such, believed that that event itself (and the recovery of my body in the following weeks) would be the hardest part about these first few months. But no - the greatest challenge and the greatest pain I can remember came from breastfeeding. I would have squeezed this kid out twice if I could have skipped the breastfeeding learning curve.
Ultimately I’m glad I decided to stick with it, especially now that Remi and I have (largely) come to an agreement about how to make his mealtimes comfortable for both of us. But initially it was all struggle. And it was constant. I tracked his feedings from the start (always an app for that!) and in December, he fed for 160 hours. January was 135. This month? The average has settled on a solid 4 hours per day. And that is just the time he spends actually eating - it doesn’t include the time spent getting set up or burping or switching sides.
Simply feeding this child amounts to a full time job, hours-wise. That’s insane. I had no idea.
••••••••••••••••
I often feel sort of separated from my emotions - I believe, now, that this just comes down to the way I’m wired. I know I’m feeling something based on sensations in my body; scared is cold, a shivering in my stomach. Upset is hot, my face feeling puffy. Joy is lightness in my limbs.
But ohhhh my - the instinctual protectiveness/savagery that appears when my child might be sick or hurt or in danger. I know exactly what that emotion is without any logical deduction or feeling around in my body. I didn’t know if I would, but I do. I do.
••••••••••••••••
Newborns can be loud. I’m not stupid, I knew this going in. What I didn’t expect was for that loudness to extend into sleep.
Remi grunts like a pig when he snoozes. Lets out random, single wails in the night. Tosses and turns and stretches and wiggles around his crib like he’s actually trying to get somewhere. Maybe some kids do “sleep like babies,” but not not our kid. Most of the time his eyes close and he becomes a little noisemaker.
Initially, we planned to have Remi room with us for at least six months, maybe a year (as is the current recommendation). But now we’re hoping we can give him the boot, and his own room, as soon as we can manage. It’s hard enough to be a parent as it is, and all those nighttime antics keep us awake - which sometimes then keeps HIM awake. It’s a vicious cycle that we’ve got to break (and the doctor said it was fine, so we’re going for it!).
So the room that was my studio, the little one off the kitchen, has been cleared - my tools and knickknacks and ideas once again relocated to the basement. Today we begin painting and next week my dad will be by to instal some kid-friendly builtins. There are quite a few emotions mixed up in all this change, so much happy and sad, but more on that at a later date. For now I’ll just say it was a surprise to find ourselves with such a loud and disruptive little roommate!
So I guess here’s where I’m at : completely into this whole baby thing and ridiculously bored at the same time. Ready to get to work and hoping to exist in this slow world for a little longer. Mourning a past life while embracing the new one I’m in.
Hello, hello from the other side.
