I Remember

Last night I held my friend’s 12-month son as he fell asleep. He lay against my chest sucking his thumb, reaching for my hair, searching the room with his sleepy eyes. Eventually he nodded off while we rocked gently to avoid the squeaks in the chair I’d spent so many nights with my own son.

I remember sitting in that chair, trying to find just the right position to simultaneously accommodate my newborn’s nursing needs and my post partum body, using every pillow in the house to get the right angle to prevent my back and neck from going out of alignment again. I’d reach for my bottle of water by the chair, because my thirst was unquenchable. I remember his little toes, tiny as peas, holding them in my hand and marveling at their absolute perfection.

I remember how I thought for a while that I needed to teach him to fall asleep without nursing. I tried to soothe him by rocking -- while his tears drenched my shirt, his back arched, and he rooted down, until I finally gave up. Then the feelings of frustration in me stronger than I knew possible, as I tried unsuccessfully to get him to nap, nursing for hours at a time, held down on the bed by his needs, while I needed to pee, or was ravenously hungry. I remember it dawning on me that I wasn’t alone in my experience, that other mothers were up all night, just like me, comforting their tired babes, pacing the floors, changing diapers, caring for others in the wee hours of the night, and I drew real strength and comfort from the universal connection with those faceless women.

I remember seeking out the wisdom of Ram Dass, and dwelling on his age-old philosophy of Be Here Now, and finding value in the simplicity of being present in the moment, because it was all I had. Each time I relinquished the illusion of control, and gave up some of the pressure I had placed on myself to have more than what was happening in the moment at hand, I learned the beauty of surrender without losing my self.

I remember how I thought, in the midst of massive sleep deprivation, sore nipples, aching back, and twisting screws behind my eyes, “There is no other reality than this”. It felt like this existence was all there was, and all that will ever be. And in the long hours of the night, meeting my humanity in a way I never had before: feeling discouragement, pain, hope, and love--all at once. On the few days of clarity when I could see beyond the tiny sphere of baby world, I would get a glimpse, like the glint off a prism, of a time when I would see colors again, feel energy to move about freely, and have my body back.

I remember being stunned by my lack of preparedness of having another being pressed against my body continually, day and night, without extended intervals of absence, and how it changed my every thought, movement, belief, and expectation. I thought I knew what was coming--having been a nanny, auntie, godmother, midwife. I knew nothing.

I remember being awash in the enormous complexity of the experience; how it filled me in a way nothing else had before, how it gave me a sense of wholeness I’d never felt, yet filled me with fear, anxiety, a fierce protectiveness of the irrational sort, and love that moved me to tears. I remember the vulnerability that crashed through me where once a powerfully independent, reasonable woman dwelled. I wondered who she was and where she had gone.

Last night, after everyone was asleep, I stood and watched my son dreaming. Where a baby once was, now is a tangle of long, sapling limbs that stretch across our bed, and I remembered…