I had a moment this morning. I was driving to preschool, and suddenly I just felt awash with fullness. In a moment I felt full and at peace and at rest in my life. Not surprisingly, I was listening to Bon Iver. But suddenly I just felt…well, full. My life is full. And good.
The last few days have been challenging. We had a busy weekend, so maybe it was just that that caught up with Emma. I don’t know. But all the progress I feel like she’s been making seems to be out the window for a moment. It’s like she’s regressed a few weeks, and she’s taking us all down with her. At the end of last week she was sleeping well at night, happy during the day, napping well, and simply being unhappy and crabby during the evening hours instead of spending two hours wailing to Europe about how miserable she is. But the last few days she’s been napping terribly, waking up every hour at night, screaming through the evening, and being miserable throughout the day. Yesterday would have qualified for one of those terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days. She threw up in the car on the way to school. All I had was a short-sleeved onesie to change her into. It was raining, and we were running a little late. So I had to park far away, change her in the backseat, and walk a fair distance in the rain with her in the baby equivalent of a bathing suit. Then all the way back. When we got home my neighbor had swiped our good parking spot, so I had to park a fair distance away and walk home…in the rain…with Emma half-naked and wailing. She took a handful of 45 minute naps throughout the day, which isn’t good. I had to wake her from her one good nap to pick Ben up from preschool, so she cried through the lunch hour. My mom and I took turns going outside and holding her while the other ate with Ben. She didn’t nap well after all that, so she cried off and on for a solid five hours in the afternoon/evening. Ben dropped a relatively heavy toy on her face, which didn’t make things any better. It was my night to get out of the house and take a break, and Matt called me after 30 minutes (as I was moments from ordering a soy mocha I’d been craving for a week) because Emma had been screaming herself into oblivion. So I came home, mocha-less. She refuses to bottle-feed, and every time I leave the house she screams the entire time, and usually projectile vomits. I’ve been handling things pretty well for a while—taking the bad in stride and trying to focus on the good moments, patiently waiting for them to outweigh the bad ones. But last night I hit a plateau. I felt crushed and defeated. It feels overwhelmingly like we’ve been in damage-control mode for far too long. Every day and night is spent trying to abate her misery enough to where we can function at a base level.
I’ve had a few things in the last couple of weeks—book club, a baby shower—and I haven’t brought her, much to everyone’s disappointment. Trying not to be all negative and complaining, I just say that it wouldn’t be much fun for anyone. Then I feel bad. I feel horrible that what I really feel is the fear of how bad she will be, that I don’t want to inflict that on anyone else, and that it would be impossible for me to enjoy any kind of social life with her in tow. So most of the time I just don’t even try. I don’t do anything. Because if I take her with me she is awful and it’s too stressful, and if I leave she just beats up whomever I leave her with and I feel guilty about that. So I do nothing. I stay home and hold my miserable little girl.
This last weekend we visited with some family that was here from out of town—with Emma. Matt and I spent the entire time trading her off and going outside with her while she cried and the other one of us tried to enjoy time with our family. At the end of the day, my sister-in-law said, “wow. She’s really high maintenance. She just needs a lot of care.” I know it sounds petty, but I think I really needed someone to say that. I needed someone to see just how hard life with her is, and to validate the difficulty. I shouldn’t need that, but if I’m honest, it was really nice to hear someone acknowledge it.
Of course through the challenge, I love her immensely. That’s what makes it so hard. I’m miserable seeing her miserable and feeling completely helpless. And selfishly, it destroys me to feel like I can’t take a break without her completely falling apart. Yes, I know that she’s okay, that it’s okay for her to cry, and that it’s healthy and necessary for me to take breaks to be a good mom, and that I can’t just never leave her. I know all that. But my mother’s heart just shatters, and my human heart just feels defeated. Obviously I need to take breaks, but obviously I can’t enjoy them knowing that my poor husband is punished every time I go out for a mocha. And his defeat is no less heart-wrenching, feeling like every time he cares for her she just cries.
Which brings us to this morning. Life with Emma is hard. Really really hard. But in that moment this morning, I was able to see past it. To think of soon sharing with her a first Halloween, a first Thanksgiving, a first Christmas…all those beautiful firsts. And to think of the other firsts—the joy I felt when she first rolled over, how proud and excited I am when she stands up and sits up and grins from ear to precious ear. It’s totally worth it. She’s worth it. One day she’ll get better. She’s already making her way there. All things considered, the good days now outnumber the bad. So I hold close mornings like this one. I savor the better moments and drink in those times when her real self comes through. Then when I’m holding her as she cries through dinner, I call back those sweet minutes and know that there will be more.
“And then my heart with pleasure fills/ and dances with the daffodils.”
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