on mamahood: months four and five

Dear Birdie,

Your mama fell down a well of sleep deprivation these last two months, so I apologize but you are getting a two-for-one letter. And by 'I apologize', I mean -- I gave birth to you and wipe your bum every day, so... we're even.

You turned 4 months in April, and now you are 5 months old. 

That sentence does not even compute in my brain. 

I was looking through old photos of you on my phone just now, and baby, you were the size of a chihuahua! A pea! A pearl earring! 

And now? You are an ever-loving, full-sized Pinocchio little BOY.

Your big personality is becoming more clear. You are also no longer a newborn!

Here are things we know about you in Month 4/5:

- Your eyes are beginning to show hints of brown and sometimes a tinge of green, so my bet is that they will settle on hazel

- You smile at strangers-- so evidently you have your father's extroverted personality, not your mother's hide-in-a-hole one. 

- You learned how to shriek, so I'm not sure why I haven't entitled this letter: Dear Velociraptor 

(Seriously, you shriek so much. Can you stop? Your dad has sensitive ears, and he looks shell-shocked after one of your arias. It's like ahhhhhhhhh ahhhhhhhh eeeeeeeeeeee ahhhhhhhh and all our neighbours must worry about how we are treating you.)

- You understand what toys are for!

- Things you love: putting everything in your mouth, pulling mama's hair and baba's beard, when Gong Gong makes the clucking noise at you, being thrown in the air, any source of light that is on, touching your toes, Mr. Fox

- Things that have changed: you no longer cry and cry when you first wake up. If you are well rested, you smile so big, and are delighted to re-enter the waking world. You no longer require milk IMMEDIATELY or ELSE. Actually, you get super distracted and stop feeding if you notice other voices or movement. You graduated from your bassinet and sleep in a crib, in your own room.

So in other words, you are completely different yet wholly the same loveable being, and you're probably heading off to university next month.

//

We went on our first family trip this month!

People like to say that once you have children, you don't go on vacations anymore -- you go on trips. Vacations connote laying about and sleeping in and like, I don't know --margaritas. Trips, on the other hand, require a subaru full of so much baby stuff that you can't see out of the rearview mirror, and probably an extra day on either side to recover. 

For me, it was another juxtaposition of what pre-you and post-you life is like. Before you, we have made trips to Saturna that included me on the back of our motorcycle, or where we carried everything we needed in our panniers and biked the steeped hills to the cabin. I used to read books for hours there. Now, we pretty much kept to our schedule at home of eat-poop-play-nap repeat, and tried to not do anything drastic. Since you are getting older, you actually can't just sleep anywhere anymore, and so we prioritize being home for most of your naps. (#babyprison)

Still, it was really special for your Baba to be able to introduce you to Saturna Island. Oh love, this place is very important to our family. It's where your grandparents ferried over with your dad and your uncle when they were little just like you, where your mom and dad got married, it's where your cousins have tumbled and romped in the meadow, it's where there is calm and magic and the Salish Sea.

So yes, a lot of work to go on this voyage. And also, like everything we do with you: worth it. 

Real talk: these past two months were hard. 

In that fourth month, my sleep deprivation resilience hit a wall. All those lovely protective good hormones ran their course, and I was left with good ol' cortisol and some momsomnia and a fistful of anxiety.

It used to be that I wore sleep deprivation like a proud badge of honor -- oh yeah, I'm a proud parent of a newborn now, of course I don't sleep. But as the months dovetailed together, and you began waking more and more in the night, it became more a scar than a badge. Hello, sleep regression.

We had passed your 100 day milestone, and I naively had thought: we are out of the woods now, hey? The hundred days of darkness are over, yeah? Parenting is now just successive moments of beautiful photos on my instagram and endless joy?

It turns out that in many ways, it was harder once I was out of the fourth trimester. By month 4, you've been at the parent thing for long enough that people stop asking you how things are going, and your support system can pause. Not at all because people are unkind, but because life moves on, and your baby's newness has faded. People assume that things, while probably still being tiring, have at least reached some sort of homeostasis. 

So. There I was, exhausted and lonely. 

On one hand, not able to spend a ton of quality time with people because I'm taking care of you, and on the other, not totally being able to be present when visitors come over, because I'm eyeing you like a hawk out of the corner of my eye. Lonely either way.

There were some big gulps of tears this month, and they all said: who am I now? 

(A mama).

Why is this so hard?

(Because you're forging a new identity, and pain is as much a part of it as joy.)

Will it be like this forever?

(It feels like it. But I don't think so, love.)

You know what it is? It's like back in the day when I pretended like I was a Cool Girl for your father, ("Ohhhh you ride a motorcycle, that is so rad, like totally"), there is some societal pressure to be a Chill Mom. Like the kind of mama that goes barefoot with ripped jeans and is super relaxed and able to go with the flow, no schedule.

But in order to keep you alive? With no previous track record of having done so with any other human infant? I kind of have to be vigilant. I kind of have to keep all the bad dark shadows away from your halo of light. 

So I'm actively trying to embrace the part of me that is SO not chill, that is SO fiercely protective of you, even if it is not a cool way to be. Because the truth is, she is doing an amazing job of helping you thrive. 

(Thank god for your grandparents. 

They are the only reason I didn't have a thousand panic attacks and starve this month.)

I am gaining my footing in the new role, little one. It is the most challenging thing I've ever done.

Thank you for choosing me to be your person.

Love,

Mama