With sleep sticking to my eyes, I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I looked at the clock on my phone and smiled. 5:36 a.m. After months of arising at 3:30, 4 a.m., this wake-up call felt as if I’d slept in until noon. I pushed the door to my son’s room open and he grimaced from the light. However, his cries instantly stopped and he flashed me a 6-tooth smile. He crooned, “Mama! Mama! Mama!”
As I picked him up, I kissed the top of his head, and wished him a good morning. After snuggling, I plopped him into his high chair and let him feed himself some bananas. And as I watched him giggle as he squished the fruit between his fingers, I couldn’t help but think: “This. This is why I became a mom.”
In the beginning
It wasn’t always this smooth. If you had told me 15 months ago that I’d be blissed out when rising before the sun to feed bananas to a tiny (albeit cute) toddler tyrant, I would have laughed in your face. Because, from the moment I brought my son home to about the time he hit six months, there was a nagging voice in the back of my mind that whispered breathlessly, “You made a mistake.”
It wasn’t that I regretted having a baby — it was more that I felt so ill-equipped to care for him. My kid cried incessantly and the only times he wasn’t crying, he was sitting in my arms, forcing me to be chair-locked in the worst way. I was constantly rocking and pacing, running down a literal checklist of possible ailments to solve, and trying to find at least three ways to solve them.
Once we were able to leave the house, I relished contact with other adults. But my joy would quickly fade, because if I ever answered honestly about how I was doing (aka not good) the response was always along the lines of: “The newborn phase is the best, easiest time. Just you wait, it only gets worse from here. Cherish this time.”
Worse?! I thought. How could this get worse? I’m not sleeping, eating, or showering. He’s constantly unhappy and I don’t know what to do about it. And it’s going to get worse?
I was absolutely hating the newborn phase, so to hear that it was going to get “worse” was enough to break me. It’d be enough to break any new mother.
The truth
But, dearest new mama, I’m going to let you get in on a secret: It doesn’t get worse. It gets better, and better, and better. And just when you think you can’t take it anymore, it gets even better.
Because once your kid grows out of that newness, they start to adjust. They start to trust the world around them and you start to be able to walk away for a moment. You start getting smiles and coos. You start getting intentional snuggles and experience first laughs. I’m not saying that there aren’t challeneges and slumps. There are — plenty of them. But with the passage of time, you start to find your footing. You develop grooves and routines. You start to understand your baby.
It gets better.
A final thought
Mama, in short, you aren’t a monster for hating this part of your journey into motherhood. It’s incredibly hard. Incredibly isolating. You’ll have beautiful moments, sure, but the newborn phase isn’t the beginning of the end as everyone would have you believe. It’s just the beginning.
You’re under no requirements to enjoy it, and in no way expected to actually love each moment. You’re allowed to feel feelings. You’re allowed to be frustrated and sad and angry. Motherhood is a beautiful chaos, but the truth is you’ve really got this. And the times you don’t … just know everyone has had those moments and you aren’t weak for reaching out during them.
My wish for you is to hold on to the hope and knowledge that things will get better, and that the hope you have is worth holding onto.
I can’t wait for you to get to the other side so you can have your own blissed-out moments too. Because I promise, mama, those moments are coming.
