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eih
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Birthday: 9/27/1980
Gender: Female
Interests: drawing; thinking deeply; learning new things; enjoying the outdoors; sleeping cozily
Expertise: succint, organized notes; efficient cooking; composing songs that are rarely finished; consuming good books in few sittings; listening for advice
Occupation: Medical
Message: message me
Member Since:
10/10/2003
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| “Our children don’t make us who we are; they reveal who we are.”
It’s been a while since I’ve written. Since then, E has continued to grow in chubby wonder. She gnaws on her fists like a lion with a bone. She punches out her belly, tucks in her chin, and grins from ear to ear when we smile at her. She drools like a madwoman, bubbles and rivers of spit joyfully streaming down her chin (and all over my shirt).
She looks at us and makes strange coo-ey sounds while gesticulating wildly, like someone trying desperately hard to say something. She stares with intense concentration at the same dangling toy every day, as if she hadn’t just seen it three seconds ago. Wow! There it is AGAIN!
Being constantly with her at home is wonderful but also incredibly difficult. The world would probably be more impressed by medicine than motherhood—wow, you cut into people? Memorized all that stuff? Took all that call? But I just want to say—this is so much more difficult. How strange we have it all backwards. I don’t think I would have understood it myself were I not here.
She is so demanding. There is no stopping, no half-way. I look at pictures of her and miss her even while she’s sleeping, but then when she’s awake I can’t wait until the next nap. I feel suffocated at times being with her all the time, but dread sending her to daycare. There are moments when I feel like my head will split apart with the ache if I have to hear her cry one more time, or worry about her crying when we go out. When I just want to be able to take a break when I feel like it.
In all this I suppose I learn that there is no such thing as natural unconditional love. I love her for who she is, for who she can’t help being. But I also sometimes resent her, get tired of her, get angry at her. Parenting is too unending, too demanding, for me to keep up any type of act or pretense.
In some ways it’s similar to marriage, the sort of in-your-face relationship that makes you confront the uglier parts of yourself. But she’s not consciously giving me anything back. She’s perhaps less forgiving, certainly less flexible. She’s not telling me anything. It’s me figuring it out myself, walking into the aimless, empty place that’s left after I’ve given all I can will myself to do.
I guess in the end, motherhood is not really about me. It’s not there to make me happy, fulfilled; she’s not some cute accessory, not there to define my worth or fulfill my dreams. She’s here because for some wacky reason God has figured me the best person to carry out this ministry, to serve her in a way that will hopefully change the kingdom and leave some legacy. I don’t do it for her, or myself, or my husband; I have to do it for Him, or I will never see it for the privilege it is. This is what I tell myself, and when I can really believe it, it is terribly freeing.
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| One of my favorite moments with E happens after she’s fed. We’re sitting in the rocking chair, baby comforter at my back, feet up on the rocking stool. She latches off, mouth agape and head full of silky hair rolling back on my arm, limp and happy, the soft folds of her neck exposed, her eyes closed. Her eyelashes are wondrously long, so long they curl at the ends, so long pieces of lint get stuck on the ends, like a dusting of snow. I’ll be watching her, not making a sound, listening as her breathing gets heavier, and then suddenly she’ll smile in her sleep. It lasts just a moment, a big goofy drunken-old-man smile, and then she relaxes back into sleep again.
I don’t know how she truly feels about life most of the time. It must be hard adjusting to the world after the safety of being inside. I think a lot of how she is these first few months may be her reconciling herself to living here, on her own, in the world. But her private smiles make me think she must be happy, even content, and I catch them like secret little gifts in the night.
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| “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things… And the God of peace will be with you.” – Philippians 4:8-9
I’ve realized that since staying at home with the baby all day, I have a lot of undissipated mental energy. I’m like a periodic quadraplegic. I spend much of my day nursing, or carrying her around because she won’t be calm any other way, without any real freedom of movement. Depending on which side I’m feeding her on, I can’t even reach over to get a tissue from the shelf near the rocking chair where I nurse; she’s been finicky during feeds lately and will latch off if I move too much. I’ve figured out this way to maneuver the remote control for the heater with my toes. Soon I’ll learn to paint holding a brush in my teeth like Joni Eareckson.
So I just sit around, or pace around, all day while my mind runs along ahead. It took me awhile to realize that my mind needs to occupy itself; that in a vacuum it will start to fill itself with all sorts of things. I stew. I get down about myself, or what my life is coming to. I worry about my next rotation, which I never used to do—I was one of those people who never knew if they were on call until the night before. Now I dread returning on a whole new level. When I’m feeling yucky at six a.m. after a bad night, I now think that in a month I’ll be getting dressed for work at this time, instead of just wondering when she’ll go back down so I can get in a morning nap.
I start to escape into imaginings, sometimes scary things, sometimes scenes from novels I replay over and over (I believe I have memorized entire passages of dialogue from certain books). I sit there feeding and rocking and enacting whole epics in my head. I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise!!
In all this stewing, it’s surprising how often I forget that there is any higher power in life. I have to kick myself into remembering. D says it’s because I live such a unidimensional life, and it’s true. Your mind becomes what you feed it, and when you don’t feed it anything, it runs around like a naked banshee on a deserted island. You lose touch with reality, particularly spiritual reality, pretty quickly.
I feel often like I’m searching for the holy grail of the balanced life. I’m either always working or now always with the baby, never normal. I keep waiting for life to get normal. It’s not normal to always be in scrubs, just as it’s not normal to always be in pajamas. D says you have to make your balance. As best you can anyway. This means I need to feed my mind something true, something good. I need to get dressed, to get out, to reach out to the friends who for some unknown reason still stick with me. I should think upon God for some time each day, even if it’s only praying for E as she feeds and wondering how God made her with such tiny fingernails. I think I can start there.
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