Arya is 1 (ok almost 18 months)
I started writing this a long time ago (clearly) but only finished it recently. This site is supposed to mostly be about food and music but I realized a lot of what I want to talk about now is about being a mom. So here’s probably the first of many posts about that.
It’s February 2nd. As the rest of the area hums and haws over The Superb Owl in town, I have bigger things on my mind. In 13 short days, my daughter will be a year old. A whole year. The fastest time and the slowest time of my whole 35 years is the first one I spent as a mom. I have a lot of thoughts about her being 1, many not even about her, some about me and the 20+ pounds I’m still carrying in my skin from the arduous task of growing her inside my body. I can almost laugh a bit now at all the things that scared me and stressed me to my core as a parent of a newborn. How I fretted so much about the temperature of her bottles, the temperature of her feet, her room, her bath, her forehead. I had immeasurable anxiety about germs and accidents and SIDS. Oh my GOD, SIDS.
Now we have amazingly made it to this place with this (mostly) sweet, fun, smiley, silly girl who sleeps like a dream and has met all of her developmental milestones [knock on wood]. My husband and I love to watch her discover new things, react to new things, and speculate about what her future profession or interests might be. I love reminding him about how many more opportunities she’ll have in this new world where women can do anything and everything. Maybe she’ll want to dance or play football, or work on cars or bake or go to the moon.
I’m already planning future conversations in my head I will have with her.
About money – SAVE, SAVE, SAVE some more. Start saving for a down payment on a house when you’re 15. Have six months of your income in the bank at all times so if you need to walk away from a job at moment’s notice, you can. Find a credit card with a good rewards program and use it every month but pay it off every month too. Don’t spend money you don’t have or live beyond your means. Keep a budget. Put money in your 401K. Give back to charities that mean something to you. Buy quality things that will last.
About education – Find something you love and really go for it. Study abroad. Ask questions. Be open to new ideas, know when to admit that you’re wrong. Accept failure. It’s ok to spend money on higher education as long as you know realistically what kind of job is waiting for you on the other end. Intern a lot, learn how to network. Search for truth. Be a critical thinker.
About sex and consent – You are the boss of your body, No one can make you do something you don’t want to do. It’s always ok to say no, at any point regardless of how far you’ve already gone. You don’t owe anyone anything no matter how much they spent on dinner or drinks. Communicate, communicate. If you’re not comfortable talking about it, then you shouldn’t be doing it with that person. BIRTH CONTROL.
About kindness, understanding, empathy – Put yourself in other’s shoes, ask yourself how you would feel, how you would like to be treated. Lift people up and remember once harsh words are out, they can’t be put back in. Listen, listen, listen first, then respond. Be the kind of friend you would want to have. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Say please, thank you and I’m sorry when necessary. Hurt people hurt people.
About building a life she loves – Your life can be whatever you want. You can be a beach bum or a ski bum. You can travel the world or stay in one place. You hop from job to job or stick with one you like forever. You can be a teacher or a drummer or a trash collector, but find something you love to do. Be honest with yourself about what truly makes you happy. You can get married or never marry, you can have kids or not. No matter what you choose, do what’s right for you and it doesn’t matter what other people think. Your dad and I will love and support you no matter what. I hope you fall in love with a guy or a girl or something in between just as long as they treat you with mutual love and respect.
On 1 year of Mamahood
Being a mom is everything they say it’ll be. Parts of it are definitely magical, it truly is a miracle what your body is capable of (especially 1 week post surgery at 3am with a screaming baby) and it is a love like you’ve never known before and all the other flowery common quips people say to expectant parents. But I read a lot of mom blogs and I have a lot of mama friends and it shocked me how much people don’t talk about the terribleness of those first few months as a new parent. Or maybe that’s because there aren’t words for that kind of hormone surge coupled with extreme sleep deprivation and constant state of worry. As a woman you’re dealing with body changes, hormones going every which way and then this new fresh baby not to mention trying to have some kind of relationship with your partner. How in the actual fuck is anyone supposed to do all those things at once and be normal? And host guests? And schedule baby photos and make dinners and be cheery and bright. Not to mention the whole, after (for me it was 10 weeks) going back to work and carry on like a regular adult person.
One year later and I think I’m still mourning the loss of my former self. Which is not to imply I don’t love my life now, because I very much do. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted and I wake up some mornings and still can’t believe I get to have this life. On the other hand, my life before I had my baby was pretty damn awesome too. I feel grateful for that life also. One year in my pre baby life I went to 67 shows. For all you smarties who did the math, that’s more than 1 a week. I went to a lot of shows alone, I loved eating brunch alone at the counter at my favorite diner, I painted my nails once a week and went to spin class twice a week in the morning. Sometimes I went to happy hour 3 times a week. Yeah, my pre baby life was awesome. And now happy hour is often replaced by dancing in my living room to Britney Spears with my one year old. And we read Where’s Spot ten times in a row. I don’t make it to very many shows, once a week turned into once (sometimes twice) a month and dragging my butt off the couch to drive downtown takes a lot more effort these days than it used to. Being alone is a luxury I don’t get very often, and when I do there’s usually too much to do around the house to spend the precious time painting my nails. Or bingeing Grey Anatomy and scanning my Instagram feed seems more appealing, whatever.
But the hardest thing about the first year of motherhood, which hardly anyone talks about (so much of becoming a mom is centered on the baby), is accepting your new identity and your new body. The meme about wanting to be the size you were the first time you thought you were fat is an all too real truth for most women. I sad thing is, the first time I remember I felt like I needed to lose weight I weighed 95 pounds. I was in 5th grade which goes without saying, is pretty frickin sad. Also it took me ohhh 30 years of life before I truly felt comfortable in my body. 30 was when I stopped caring so much about what size I wore and let myself focus on buying things that actually fit me well. Clothes that fit look the best, who knew? Versus trying to squeeze my size 6 butt into a size 4 to feel better. Fast forward to postpartum me who finally felt good about what kind of clothes look good on a 5’ tall frame with 34DD boobs. Suddenly my hips are size 8 and boobs? Who the fuck knows how big they are now? (Per Nordstrom, they’re 36G for those wondering). No, it’s not a big difference but it’s just different enough to make me feel totally lost in a clothing store. 30 years it took me to figure this body out and now I feel like I’m back at square one. My body changed just enough so none of my old stuff fits right so I wear maternity clothes still for the most part. Another thing, 9 months of wearing maternity stuff also set me back in the trends area. No idea what’s trendy anymore. I used to be able to walk into a store and grab things off the rack and just buy them, because I knew it would look good and I knew what size I was. Now I stare blankly at racks of clothes and even when I hold up shirts to my new body I can’t determine if a medium will look ok or if I should get a large just in case. I was starting to become afraid Target would say I met my quota for returning clothes. It’s not the sizes that bother me, it’s having to get used to my new size and shape. I never thought I would want to use a service like Stitch Fix or Trunk Club because I love shopping, but part of me wanted to join just so someone could tell me what to put on this new body.
When I was pregnant I ran into a friend at Target and she told me even if I could fit into my pre-baby jeans, that they would not fit the same. I was glad she said that to me because it’s so true! And she was the only one to tell me that. Why don’t people tell you these things instead of pretending if you lose the weight everything will look the same as it did before? Nothing is the same and really, it shouldn’t be. A 6 lb human grew inside me and then was taken out. Everyone told me it took 9 months to get that way, it won’t go back to normal in 6 months. But it also won’t go back to normal in 9 months or 10 months. Here I am now, 17 months and I’m still an 8 carrying 20+ lbs on top of my pre baby weight.
I love people who work out all the time who say things like, “if you want to lose weight you have to decide that’s what you want and then make the time to do it.” “If your health is important to you, you’ll MAKE the time.” You know what else is important to me aside from having a smaller waistline? Spending time with my baby who changes every day and is growing faster than I would prefer. Spending time with my husband, without a child around so we can talk about adult things and do adult things. SLEEPING. Sleep is ALSO important to your health FYI Beach Body freaks. I have to work 8 hours a day and travel time to and from is an hour. Arya goes to bed at 7/7:30 so let’s see, i wake up at 5:30am and get home from work at 4 or 5pm depending what day it is so then I have 2 or 3 hours with Arya and maybe 2 hours with my husband before I fall asleep. So yeah, working out is tough to carve out of that time. Not to mention trying to fit in running errands, other social engagements etc. But yeah, keep preaching to me to MAKE TIME. You make time. Make the fucking days an extra hour long. Then get out of my DMs. End rant.
That brings me to my next struggle of new mom life. Balancing my time is an act I’m very much still working on. As a person who was accustomed to a full social calendar the learning curve on determining how many nights out were too many was very high. And this is just another thing that stings in your gut trying to reconcile your new identity against your old one. There’s a part of yourself that you have to say goodbye to when you become a mom and it’s not bad because being a mom is amazing. But it is sad sometimes and mostly it’s DIFFERENT. It’s just so different! And it happened in an instant. The instant that baby was in your arms everything changed. No time to ease into it or practice what it would be like. Only trial and error by fire.
Before I had my baby I visited a couple friends who had a new baby and they told me if I have kids to set up a joint google calendar with the future dad because it will save me from a lot of headaches and arguments. They were giving me some real talk about struggles they had as a couple in those first few months and I didn’t forget it and I was so so glad they had tried their best to prepare me for how hard it can be. Again, things no one else had the guts to tell me.
I love being a parent (and a wife). It is also the most physically exhausting job I’ve ever had (which isn’t saying much I suppose because I’ve always had desk jobs) but honestly in the beginning there were moments (those 3am moments) where I didn’t even know how my body was able to still be upright. That’s how exhausted I was. I watched my hands change a diaper but I felt numb almost because I was so tired. But 1 year in (ok almost 17 months in – this post took me a long time to finish), I am happy, grateful and honored every day to be Arya’s mom. The gratitude I have for this incredible life cannot be measured. And I can feel that gratitude simultaneously with the things that I struggle with, they’re not mutually exclusive. Supposedly having a toddler is the most physically exhausting phase of parenthood and having teenagers in the most mentally exhausting so I’m looking forward to that :P.
sarahowrites.com 