Stay at Home Mom

A little teary-eyed run-on sentence on my first four months of motherhood

I’ve thought about these days of motherhood my entire life…wondering who my babies will be, what my home would look like, what we would fill our time with. It took merely one day of post-grad work for me to realize I hated working in general, just one day for me to understand my preferred work wouldn’t begin until God gave me a baby. And so I waited patiently and prayerfully for nearly four years, and on a beautiful and balmy spring night this past March, my Kit was born. Immediately, she felt like a sigh of relief, an answered prayer, the most heavenly gift and the one I’d been waiting for all my twenty-five years.  

My husband had to go back to work less than a week later, and that first Monday morning, despite my lifelong excitement for staying home with my babies, he left me crying in bed, Kit curled into my chest and Annie curled at my feet. Just so scared. I remember laying in bed until she needed her next bottle, watching the sun hit the grass of the backyard through our window, watching her tiny chest fall, up and down, up and down, in the old striped onesie both my brother and I had worn as babies. Her sleeves were rolled up so her tiny, tiny hands showed. Her tiny, tiny fingers. I had no idea what to do…but somehow, felt certain at the same time.

The whole thing, becoming a mother, has been the most heavenly and divine intervention. The night she was born, after our parents left for home and we sat in the fluorescent hospital room, a baby in our care, I was in so much pain, of course. And near paralyzing disbelief. But then she started crying. And crying and crying and crying. And I couldn’t help but stand up and press her little body to mine, rocking her and talking to her, as if I’d been doing it my entire life, as if I felt no pain from what had happened merely hours before. I felt full of adrenaline, of emotion, of fierce love and desire to be as good a mother as mine. And it started now, if I was ready or not.

So those first few weeks at home were precious, but so, so very emotionally unbelievable. I just couldn’t even grasp the weight of being her mother, her caretaker, her whole entire world. Still, this week as she’s started a tad bit of a four month sleep regression, fighting sleep after her bedtime bottle so I say my prayers out loud to her, I catch my breath over certain little lines, little hopes for her. I watch her blue (and unfortunately wide awake) eyes watching my mouth as I whisper prayers…prayers for a good night’s sleep, for the Lord to wake her up, prayers of thanksgiving over our day together, for time on the porch swing with her dad, for warm milk and bath time…and I’m still finding it hard to grasp the weight of praying for her, of teaching her how to pray, how to be a little human. I could sit and pray for her all day long, willing away any hurt or pain or tragedy or heartbreak or sadness. However, I don’t cry as much as I did at the beginning, so I smile at that.

It’s been incredibly heartbreaking how quickly time moves now that her life is within mine. I cannot believe how tall she is. A few weeks ago, I dressed her in that old striped onesie of mine for bed, and it pulled tight on her shoulders, and I just held her so tightly that night after her bottle, knowing she would never wear it again, tears running down my cheeks. I could’ve tried it again…but I just couldn’t bring myself to dread trying to button it up and failing. So it sits in the back of her drawer, waiting to be worn by another little baby of mine one day.

I hadn’t known many babies before my own. I laugh that I’d only ever changed one diaper in my lifetime, and that baby’s older sister, who was surely less than ten at the time, told me the next time I saw her that I put it on him backwards. Which now that I know how to diaper a baby is incredibly stupid that I figured out how to do that in the first place. But because I didn’t know many babies, I didn’t realize how little time went by before they wanted to move, to talk, to play. Just as quickly as I settle into a routine with Kit, we somehow find a new routine. It felt like just a few weeks ago, we were napping every three hours, playing and baby wearing in between, and she was content. Nowadays, she catnaps in the morning, sleeps deeply once in the afternoon, and then thinks she’s a toddler the rest of the time.

She’s having a hard time with play recently. Sadly for her, she can’t crawl, much less walk, yet, so most of the things she seems to want to do, she can’t. Just this past Wednesday, I settled her on her little play mat with a crinkly book, a rattle, and my old stuffed jellyfish. I needed to answer a few emails for the inn, pay some bills by writing good old-fashioned checks, just some administrative work that needed about twenty minutes of my attention. And I’m serious, Kit was bored and mad and frustrated within maybe forty-five seconds. So I moved her to her little bouncy chair, propped a toy up in her lap to enjoy…all the while, my checkbook and laptop and tiny planner and envelopes spread out in front of her, because I never want to leave her side. I’ll just say this…it took me about an hour to get it all done. Really, she wants to hold my undying attention all day long, and so all day, I walk a line of knowing there are things I realistically just have to get done during the day, but also knowing being her mother is worth more, that if I really need to, any to-do list can be checked off at nine o’clock tonight, when she’s tucked into bed.

But as I write this, I am thanking Jesus for that divine intervention of motherhood, that innate desire for it, for my mother teaching me how to be one by just being herself. The day after Kit was born, both of our moms came to sit with us in the hospital room. I’ll always remember how beautiful it felt in that room when the sun finally came up, that endless night finally ended. I held her in bed with me all night, scared the nurses would yell at me when they saw, but I didn’t know another way to stop her from crying. I didn’t know another way to stop myself from crying. This baby, this beautiful baby, was just a physical part of me, and now she wasn’t. I couldn’t just let her go and sleep by herself. The room had a window the length of it, and it was so beautiful in there. I showered and got dressed while the nurses took Kit to be bathed first thing. I was so excited for that day, to see everyone on my daughter’s first day of her life. When my mom got there, Kit made a mess in her diaper, and Price and I just were laughing attempting to change a diaper that just kept coming. I remember saying to her, “We’re just learning, Mom!” And she laughed.