Breathing

It's 9:30 a.m. I'm sitting upstairs with the baby monitor by my side waiting to hear a peep, squeak, wail or all of the above. I woke up at 6:45 a.m. in anticipation of noise, and instead heard nothing but the occasional soft crackling of the monitor. The baby has been asleep since 11:45 p.m. last night.

The argument on the mommy internet sites rages on about when to wake the baby, or if you should wake the baby at all. My head is pounding with a consistent ache that has plagued me since yesterday. I say let the baby sleep until he wakes and let my head recover from a day of fussy behavior.

He was alert and cranky yesterday for hours. When my husband came home from work I immediately handed the parenting reigns over to him, pumped milk, and promptly lay down on the sofa and breathed steadily for five minutes. I thought I was going to explode.

But on a positive note, I haven't freaked out or hysterically cried in a few days. I don't want to jinx it, but I am starting to believe that the worst is over. Perhaps I've dodged the post-partum bullet. I'm hoping my hormones have settled into place and that I'm coming back to life again.

My feelings about the baby and being a mother have remained somewhat muted, if not detached at times. In one moment, I'm completely overwhelmed and unenthusiastic about this abrupt new life change. Then things change instantaneously and I'm in complete love with this little boy. I kiss his little fingers and toes with gusto. I eat his soft cheeks.

Breastfeeding goes along the same lines. I love touching his downy hair and slowly rubbing his cheeks with my fingers while he suckles. But then he'll chomp down and cause me real pain. It wakes me from a happy state of nurturing and violently shoves me into a creepy feeling of unsettled resentment. And although I do find some sense of accomplishment from seeing how much milk I can produce in one sitting, I equally dislike pumping with a machine. It feels like being milked like a cow.

But all in all I have more of a positive feeling about my new life. It's up and down, and never consistently good or bad. It's easier knowing I won't be returning to work soon. It's harder when I realize my husband will be returning full time October 1st.

Today he was required to go to a conference from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. It's the first full day away for him and the first full day alone with the baby for me. When he kissed me goodbye in the morning, I cried. I'm still afraid of being alone with my son. That's hard to admit, and not something I'm terribly proud of.

Now I feel like I'm just waiting for everything to normalize. My pain has subsided, the hemorrhoids have shrunk to a manageable size, my belly is slowly shrinking to a mass of jelly rolls that makes me think I won't be wearing a bikini anytime soon.

But I still wait for that feeling that everything is as it's supposed to be. That is still beyond my reach.