Monday, April 09, 2007
Coming to Calm
These days being a mom is less difficult than it was two months ago. Gretchen is 9 1/2 weeks old and the improvement in her is becoming more and more of a relief as time goes by. Part of it is her getting older and part of it is me starting to recognize patterns in her - her behavior, her moods, her expressions.
I have wondered if I was going to get beyond the exhaustion and frustration to the point where I would feel that maternal swell of love that most mothers talk about. Now that Gretchen spends less time crying, it's easier to see who she is, the baby she is without the pain of colic reducing her to screams and tears. When she nurses, I am sometimes flushed with this feeling of love so overwhelming it makes my chest hurt. The tinyness of her, the defenseless of her perfect skin. I never understood. I could never understand before.
Realizing how quickly the time is passing, how will I leave her when I have to go back to work? Yes, a part of me wants the definition of who I was before having a baby. Yet even in that desire to return to work so I can return to feeling like "my old self," I know that who I was before having Gretchen no longer exists. Not like before. The creativity is still there, the humor, the professionalim. But now the whole of me has an underpinning characterized by Gretcheness. There is no way to remove it. It can't be separated. Like India ink dropped into a glass of water, things aren't as clear as before. I am colored by a new life and the 2 constituent parts are indissoluble.
| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 9:19 AM
![[ Registered ]](http://dabot.homestead.com/files/Blog/lip/diarist_registry.gif)
