I've been speaking on and off with my sister today as she settles in with her new little Nora, introducing her to big sister Abby and all the family that dropped by the hospital for a visit. Tonight after everyone left and it was just the two of them, K.C. reminded me of how sweet and irreplaceable those first few hours with a new baby are. The world shrinks to the size of the space that can hold just the two (or three or four, depending on family size) of you, and you are overcome with love and the sweet, sweet smell of new life and birth and all that you've endured and all that is to come. I don't know why I'm trying to describe it because you just can't--it's something you experience but can't ever quite capture in words or pictures because it is ever-evolving, changing just as it happens, unrepeatable.
As K.C. experiences all this, I can't help but be a little jealous, and I'm confused by that. I'm certainly not ready to do that all over again (though I've certainly decided C. won't be our only kid), but getting back to the heart of the post I wrote on putting darling C.'s first clothes away, the letting go of each stage is hard, even when it gives way to something wonderful and new. There is part of me that feels like I didn't pay enough attention the first time around, that I didn't care enough about some things and cared too much about others, that I didn't have the perfect experience and didn't get it all right. Is that where the tiny flicker of jealousy comes from--that K.C. is getting to do it all again with the knowledge and experience that just wasn't there the first time? Maybe. But I suspect this feeling of wishing you'd paid better attention or wanting to give it one more shot doesn't go away no matter how many kids you have.
I think this is what's at work behind all the advice people hurl at new moms in the first few months: enjoy every minute, it goes by so fast, etc. etc. In reality, things feel like they're going extra fast because you never quite know the rules or what to expect. By the time you do, everything has changed and you're back to square one. It's like chasing something that can never be caught. When you've survived something, you look back on it and see it wasn't so bad; sure, there were things you could have done to make it easier or to enjoy it more, but you'll remember those for next time and it will be great. This is how I look back at labor, delivery (as sick as it sounds I'm looking forward to doing it again, this from the woman who screamed at her sweet little nurse to "Stop patronizing me--when I say I'm never doing this again I fucking mean it!"), learning how to breastfeed, the first few weeks, the sleeplessness and on and on. Never mind non-mom things like break-ups or grief or diets or fights or whatever. It all seems like no one has suffered as you are suffering, that no one knows how difficult it is to just get by, and then one day you're smack on the other side of it, looking back and thinking well, it sucked but I could do it again. I guess it's kind of like running--whenever I finish a long run (which is almost never now that I have to lug the jogging stroller out in the cold, cold air to do it) I look back at the places where I thought someone would find my body curled up and have to drag it home because I was going to die of a heart attack and think it wasn't that bad, was it? You could do another mile.
And even with this duh!-you-already-knew-this-why-are-you-acting-like-you-invented-survival knowledge, it doesn't mean that I've learned. I can't stand in the middle of today when it really sucks and truly know in my heart that it will get better, that I will end up on the other side tossing my hair back and coaxing some other poor sucker through the tunnel with platitudes like It will get better. Enjoy these times while you have them. That's the pisser about all this self-awareness, I guess. It's not that much different than survival--you don't know that you've really gotten it right until it's too late to do anything about it anyway.
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