Dear Bee,
Holy moly, this week was a bit of an emotional train wreck. Here’s the thing no one tells you about new motherhood, Bee: as physically exhausting as it is, the mental strain that accompanies it? Ten thousand times worse.
You’re a wonderful baby, so I’m hesitant to tell you how difficult this transition has been for me. Because the truth is, you are a dreamboat. I’m madly in love with you; I really, really am. And I think that’s what makes this all so difficult – I care about you in a way that is completely maddening. Your cries break my heart, and then your smiles put it back together again. It’s like mixing uppers and downers all the live long day (and I don’t know from experience, but I hear that’s a crazy bad combo).
This week we had some nursing issues, because you, my love, are a huge fan of feeding time with Dad. And I get it. It’s 3am, quiet and you get to eat from a warm bottle while watching Andy Griffith. And this week, you decided you wanted feeding time with Dad to be all the time. It broke my heart in a completely irrational way. It was almost as if you rejecting our nursing sessions was the first of many times I’d feel rejected as your mother: the first time you want to ride your bike without my help, the first time you decline a morning kiss in the carpool lane at school, the first time you tell me my pants are horridly lame. I know it’s coming, and I know it happens faster than I’ll realize.
And even though we’re working out our nursing sessions (yay for a successful new position!), I know I won’t be able to work out every rejection years down the road. I need to learn to give you space. I need to give you room to grow; the chance to make your own mistakes. Independence was one of the greatest gifts my own mother gave to me, and I’m only now beginning to understand how hard that must have been for her.
It’s a gift I want to give to you, too. Just not yet, little Bee. Because even though you might be ready, I’m not. (Unless of course you’d like to be independent for eights hours a night. In your crib. Yes?)
XO,
Mama