There is a global pandemic of amnesia and it is occurring everyday to millions of moms around the world.
I have joined a Moms and Babes class. It provides weekly sanity. Around 6 - 8 moms and their babes gather for an hour and a half to do baby exercises but really we are there to gaze at other glassy eyed moms and wonder if they have it worse than us. All of the moms in the class are on their second child. I am the lonely first time mom (it seems this status beguiles me wherever I go). All of them swap stories about food stuck on walls, projectile poop, the unbrushed teeth and unwashed hair of a mother of two. Another thing they all seem to have in common - they had all forgotten just how difficult a newborn can be. They must have, why else would they have opted to do it all again. (I do actually plan on doing this again, although there were desperate times when i thought NEVER AGAIN!)
Even now I can feel the memories of the early days slipping away. At almost 4 months we have settled into a beautiful routine. Chloe goes to bed at 6:30 and pretty much sleeps till 7am. This means we get to eat dinner together, talk, connect, watch an episode and get to bed early. Last night I had 9 hours uninterrupted sleep - whoop whoop! Now this all seems spectacularly below average to any childfree adult but to us new parents it is bliss. So now after a few weeks of this routine I can barely remember the truth of how bad it was in the beginning.
During the first 2 and a half months it pretty much was hell on earth. There were times that I handed our crying daughter to my husband and retreated to the laundry room where I put my robe over my head and just sat there in the dark softly crying, wishing the world would fall away. There were times when the thought of having to deal with her for the entire day on my own sent me into a dizzying state of denial, enough to keep my husband home for the day. I cried every day for 2 months. I cried because my instincts weren't just there like Ii had naively believed they would be. I cried because my baby cried and I had no idea why. I cried because I had no idea what I was doing. I cried because I was so so tired. I cried for my dead mother. I cried because I couldn't stop crying.
My husband and I did not eat a meal together for almost 3 months. We did not get more than 5 hours sleep a night. If I got 6 hours of sleep I thought it was a miracle. We barely slept in the same bed, one person on the couch either getting some sleep or sleeping sitting up with the baba in arms. I felt alone, I felt scared, I felt overwhelmed.
It took 6 weeks to recognise that the crying, the anxiety, the fear was not in the normal range. And after admitting this and getting onto a little drug called Eglonyl I calmed down. I started to feel my way through motherhood and not think my way through it.
I am proud and happy to say that at 3 ad a half months we feel like a real family. I am calm, happy and relaxed; happy to spend my days kissing chubby cheeks and eliciting smiles. My husband and I eat together, sleep together and even get date nights again. Chloe is happy.
It is easy to get into the trap of thinking - that wasn't so bad, it wasn't so hard...and forget. I remember vowing to make a video diary at 3am - i can see it now, crying into the camera begging for it to be over, wishing for another life. Because that was me for a time. Its painful to admit but its true. It was hard, by the hardest thing I have ever done. So instead of a video dairy I commit these painful truths to virtual paper as a reminder to myself and as an admission to the world that parenthood is not for sissies...its bloody hard make no mistake.
Do i regret any of it? No. The truth is my love for Chloe was forged through those sleepless nights, those nights and days of despair. Caring for her through that mental anguish is how my love for her grew into the tangible and solid thing that it is now.
So why do moms forget? perhaps it is because the joy eclipses the bad, perhaps it is because the brain is programmed to remember joy more than pain, perhaps because it was so difficult it is easier to forget, perhaps it is because in the greater scheme of things those first few months are just a blip on the radar of their lives, perhaps it is because we forgive ourselves those moments of madness and move on to love and cherish them beyond belief.
So yes there is a global pandemic out there, allowing families to expand one child at a time.
