Four years ago today, I was a mother but I wasn’t a mom. I knew what motherly instinct felt like, that deep-seated need to protect at any cost even if it meant my own personal misery. I had felt the unconditional love that a mother felt. I thought I knew everything there was to know about being a mother. I had watched D parent the Munchkin. I had read some books. I was ready for it all.
I wasn’t ready for anything.
On this day before my oldest son’s fourth birthday, my oldest parented child, I am feeling nostalgic and introspective. I am feeling overwhelmed with emotion. I’m also somewhat amused at my past self. I think of how I felt and the things that I thought on this day, four years ago. I didn’t know that my kidney was shutting down and that I’d be induced the next day. I was just a 38-week pregnant woman who was uncomfortable, more so due to my kidney disorder. (My uterus at this point had totally pinched off the ureter out of my right kidney.) I was excited to finally be a mom after having been a mother for two years. It was a weird place to be and I felt alone in that thought process.
The things I didn’t know are the meat and potatoes of actual, everyday parenting. I didn’t know that my me time would be hard fought after my oldest parented child’s arrival. I didn’t know that you could love a child so very deeply and still be aggravated and frustrated. I didn’t know that everything you thought you knew about parenting was usually made null and void at some point. I didn’t know that the issues I thought I had overcome regarding the placement of my firstborn would rear their ugly heads and make it impossible for me to move forward as a mom until I got professional help.
It’s that last “didn’t know” that leave me feeling sad at times. I know that every mom claims that the first few months of her child’s life are mostly blurry, a series of sleepless nights erasing some of the memories. I worry sometimes that the blur was brought on by an inability to focus on the task at hand, caring for my son, due to a preoccupation with missing his older sister. I was so overwhelmed by the memories and flashbacks and guilt and feeling of loss regarding his sister that I found it difficult to truly enjoy our time together. I hesitate to take it so far as to say that I didn’t bond with him; I think we are truly bonded, deeply, on levels I didn’t know that I could be bonded with someone else. But I do feel that I cheated him out of some special time during his early days, weeks and months. I wasn’t as present as I could have been. I was lost in a world that the adoption industry doesn’t discuss with mothers who are considering placement. As I took care of that tiny infant who is now a smart, funny little boy, I kept wondering if I would have done the same things with my firstborn. I kept wondering if it would have felt the same. I kept wondering if I could have done it had I parented her.
I still wonder at times. Not as often as I don’t play the what if game (as much) after all of my years in therapy. But I wonder. Who doesn’t wonder?
I am so thankful that our small infants don’t remember their first days, weeks and months. I would feel eternally guilty if my oldest son asked me, “Mommy, why did you cry so much when I was a little baby?” (Of course, as I battled some pretty heavy postpartum depression with my youngest son, he could ask the same.) I love both of these boys with the fire of a thousand suns, just as I love their sister. As I reflect on this particular day in my history, I wonder how I would have changed my parenting had I known everything that I know now.
Would I have spent more time just cuddling in bed with my oldest son? Would I have allowed myself some more room to feel instead of ignoring the emotions for (approximately) three months? Would I have asked for more help? Would I have been more honest with myself, with those who loved me, when they asked me what was wrong? Would I have been easier on myself? Would I have laughed more at some of the things that I flubbed up? Or would I still have been tense and anxious, demanding perfection of myself since I felt, in my core, that I had failed my firstborn? I don’t know. I do know that I have managed to get one child to four (tomorrow) and another to almost two (next Tuesday) and they seem to be generally well-rounded. Despite my issues, they seem to love me. Despite my issues, I know that I love them.
So is it even worth asking all of these questions? In another four years will I look back on this post and laugh at everything I didn’t know about what was just around the next bend? I assume so. Life is like that most of the time. I’ve learned so much in the past four years, both about being an everyday mom and a birth mother. I assume that the next four years will bring about more things that I never knew I didn’t know… and hopefully a lot of wonderful memories.