Perspective

For me, blow dryers will always symbolize motherly love. That deep, unshakable nitty gritty mama bear love that swings you up sideways and smacks you silly when you first hold your babe. Yup, blow dryers.

I’ll explain in a moment.

Sleep has been a bit of a challenge in our house lately. After our big trip, Stella recovered beautifully, as she normally does. But then another round of teething hit, and all hell has broken loose. (Who knows why nobody ever prepares us for the fact that babies teeth for about, oh, three years straight. Why didn’t I know this?)

Granted, Stella is still sleeping fairly well. Considering she’s in a lot of pain, she’s coping like a champ. But part of how we deal with this whole situation is to rock and hold Stella a bit more than normal. I know, I know. According to a lot of experts, we’re supposed to be teaching Stella how to fall asleep on her own at this point. And really, she normally does. She’s one of the best sleepers I know – of babies and adults – and she usually dozes off with ease. But when my sweet girl is obviously hurtin’ and it’s my job to help her feel better, I’m gonna rock, by golly. Yes, sir.

So we’ve been rocking Stella a lot. I rock her before her naps, and I rock her before bed. And the Papa rocks her at night when she wakes all sweaty and sticky from a feverish teething battle. We’re a bit tired, but we’re also aware that this phase won’t last, and she’ll be back to her Super Sleeping Self in a matter of days.

And that’s what’s got me tickled (and ruminating on blow dryers). I have a perspective now that I didn’t have just one year ago. I have the awareness to know that all the tough stuff we go through as a family is essentially a phase. The tough stuff, thankfully, ends. The good stuff, thankfully, remains. Oh, how I wish I could have told myself this in those early first days, as Stella struggled to accept her new life outside my warm and cozy belly and as we coped with ridiculously little sleep and frayed patience. I wish I could have told myself that I would indeed get the hang of it all – the nursing, the sleeping, the soothing, the mothering – and I would eventually hit a groove and flow as a new mama. I wish I could have told myself that I would screw up, but Stella would still be okay. I wish I could have told myself to just relax a bit and just enjoy her smells and sounds.

The funny thing is that nobody could have told me it would get better. Actually, that’s not true. People told me all the time. I just didn’t believe them. Or maybe I just didn’t (or couldn’t) hear them. It’s not like we were living in a hell on earth. Despite feeling bone tired and emotionally wasted, we were also delightfully giddy about our new babe. But nobody can tell you how to feel. Or at least nobody can tell me how to feel. I’m a gotta-do-it-for-myself kinda girl, and my profoundest realizations usually stem from mucking around in the mess by myself. (I assume this is the case for most.)

So I was thinking about all this the other night as I was rocking Stella to sleep, affectionately looking forward to seeing myself evolve as a mama and gaining more and more of this kind of perspective. As I was listening to Stella breathe, I flashed to a memory of when she was about five weeks old, and we were still steeped in the exhausting frenzy of our new life. In this memory, I was rocking Stella in the same chair, in the same room, feeling a thousand times more exhausted as I am these days. Totally obliterated. And Stella just wouldn’t go to sleep, and she wouldn’t stop crying. After nursing her for nearly an hour, walking around the entire house, running the hair dryer as white noise, experimenting with different levels of darkness, singing everything from Hey Jude to Greensleeves and shushing her into oblivion, I was just about to lose it. And that’s when I pulled out all the stops. For some reason, in my completely wasted state, I came to the conclusion that Stella needed more darkness, more white noise, more movement and more shushing. That’s it. I just hadn’t found the right combination yet. This was going to work.

Go big or go home, friends. It worked. And it makes me laugh with great tenderness for myself as a loving, new mama that I sat in that rocking chair for another hour with a running blow dryer in an outstretched hand and a quilt draped over my head and the baby as I shushed and rocked, shushed and rocked.

I sort of look back at this version of myself and regard her as a little sister of sorts. Since I’m the youngest of four, I imagine this is what my siblings have often felt as they’ve seen me flail about in my own life. “Oh, look. Katherine’s figuring something out again. Poor, sweet dear.” But the thing is I look at this memory without pity or exasperation. I look at it with real tenderness for myself as a new mom. Because, if we’re all honest, I don’t think anyone knows what the hell they’re doing when they have their first child. It’s chaotic and exhausting and totally draining. But we all make it through somehow, sometimes with help and sometimes alone. And sometimes, we drag out the quilts and rockers and blow dryers to help us survive. This memory bolsters me right now since it’s not one of martyrdom or exhaustion. It’s a memory of the enormity of love that I felt for Stella during those first days. And it’s a reminder now of the ingenuity, creativity and goofiness necessary and inherent in this grand world of mothering.