One Year - - - One Day

 

On November 22, 2010, we celebrated James' 1st year into this world.  He learned how to clap hands, walk, play peekaboo (places hands over ears instead of eyes but we're working on it), blow kiss, wave bye bye and hello.

He smells of baby powder and baby slobber, milk and dreft detergent.  He likes to play Humpty Dumpty with mom-mom.  He loves to eat macaroni for dinner and waffles for breakfast.  He wants to dance to easy listening elevator music before bedtime and adores dancing cheek to cheek and watching it all unfold in the mirror.

On November 23, 2009, one day after laboring Jimmy into the world only to have him pulled from me via C-section, I crashed.

I crashed with the intensity of a meteor falling to earth.  I celebrate James' 1st birthday and the 1 year survival anniversary of this PPA/PPD maze I have now attached to my life.

"He's one year already?  Boy, that year went by fast!!!"  is the common phrase repeated to me by well-wishers.  BUT IN ALL HONESTY IT WAS THE LONGEST YEAR OF MY LIFE.

Jimmy is my ticket to a new life that I am creating every day.  He teaches me how to be a better person through understanding and patience.

I remember how this time last year I spent 90% of the day walking around in a daze...bleak grayness and dismal shadows following me as I tried to nurse a week old newborn.  Lack of Sleep + Outrageous Anxiety + Hypersensitivity to C-Section = MISERY.

I cried so much in the beginning I became dehydrated and would have spells of nausea and dizziness.  The anxiety was as intense as it could be, often resulting in frantic calls to my counselor and wondering if hospitalization was an option.  It was not.  We have crappy medical insurance. 

I sat looking out the window while the baby slept....tapping my legs in restlesness...wondering if the devil had taken possession of me.  The horrid thoughts that raced through my head and the secondary thoughts that pummeled over them, wondering why these thoughts would originate in the first place, left me exhausted and hollow.

Why did I have a baby I could not care for?  I could not attach myself to? It was too risky....To love something and someone THAT MUCH meant placing my heart outside of myself and always wondering if I'm doing the right thing. 

And did I love him?  I mean really? Just because I gave birth to him, who says I have to love him?  I will have to fake the motions of motherhood so people don't lock me away somewhere.  I'll just smile and nod when people tell me how beautiful he is, how lucky I am and how blessed I should feel to have a child. 

However, I knew the truth.   Babies, Children, People.... are a big hassle.  I felt like an 8 year old girl given a real life baby doll to handle.  Where were my instructions?  Why isn't someone with me 24 hours a day directing me on what to do, how to feel...

I needed a kick in the pants and this little boy baby certainly gave it to me. 
When I look back now to what those first few weeks, months...who am I kidding, I still have "it" (PPA & PPD) did to my psyche, I am amazed that I survived it.  I suppose someone out there will say by the "grace of God" did I manage to not get myself hospitalized.

Perhaps it was the Grace of God.  Perhaps it was cheap Health Insurance.  Perhaps it was a combination of both but what I do know now????  It has humbled me to a new beginning.

When my son smiles, his face lights up and illuminates the air with effervescence.  It is unbelievable how 12 months can make me appreciate that little face, those little pouty lips and that little twinkle in his eye he gets when he sees someone he loves. 

I thank God for him while I try to work on me.  What a difference a year makes.  What a difference a day makes too.

Almost one year later....

He's someone I didn't plan on ever meeting or being a mother to.  Yet he's here in my life as a new "normal" for the past 12 months.

I was scared of him at first.  He was small, intimidating and very loud.  I'm used to silence.  I'm used to order within my chaos yet here was this little person calling all the shots.

 I gave up very easily in the very beginning.  I wanted no part of mothering.  My body was in pain and my emotions were in overdrive. 

He was not planned. He was a surprise indeed. 

It took me 9 months to calm myself over the notion that I would have a permanent change in my life.

And then it happened.

He came into this world so calmly while an internal storm brewed inside of me...his one and only mother.


I was not suited to be a mom.  This new life deserved someone who could take care of him, love him, not resent him for being young and helpless.  

He deserved someone with a pure heart in the mothering world, not someone who questioned her own sanity to bring a person into her life....a life that was flawed in so many ways.

But he greeted me nonetheless with a faint coo and a smile.  I did not melt.  I did not sigh in wonder.  I did not do any of the cookie cutter Hallmark movie  motions of being a new mother.

Instead I clutched my fists in prayer and pounded my pillows in angst.  What am I going to do?  What am I going to do with a baby?  Why is mothering so easy for some and so foreign to me?  I have the ability to nurture and love....what was my fear?

Where did my freedom go?
Where did my common sense go?
Where did my lightheartedness go?
Where did I go?


The details will come soon enough as to the journey of motherhood that I had to take.  A tumultuous journey at that.  


Yet here I am 12 months later...my heart soars when I see this child.  A light to my irrational darkness, he leads me to beautiful discoveries.  He is like my flashlight into this gray life I sometimes create.

The day that I never thought would come has come.  Today.  Today is the day I realize how much I love my son...nothing special even happened.  It was just a realization that my world is brighter because he is in it.


Ask me 12 months ago if I thought I would say any of this and I would have looked at you as if you had a pipe growing out of your head.  No way would I ever feel better about being a mom....or so I thought.


My prayers have been answered.  My son.  My loving son is teaching me how to take baby steps as a human being.  All he has to do is be my son.


More to come....