So, Here it Goes...

Well this is a time for a bit of reflection. I feel like I can and should write a day-by-day treatise on new-motherhood, but I am so freakin’ tired all the time I haven’t had a moment to gather my thoughts. So, I’ll try to make an effort to be relatively interesting.

Immediately after Devin was born I was an emotional cripple for about a week. I was horrified at everything. I couldn’t wake up to feed him because of all the pain meds- not to mention the pain of the C-Section. Rubin basically took over Daddy Duties. It was amazing to watch. He is such a great father. He found the energy to sing to Devin in the middle of the night to comfort him when he was changing his diaper! He found a lot of energy that I didn’t have at all. After a week Rubin had to go back to work and it was just me and the little Devin-monkey all day long. It was one of the most terrifying things I have ever faced- my own child. I was completely responsible for him. If he cried I had to fix it. I have never had responsibility like that before. The knowledge that he was a perfect little baby and anything that was wrong was, by default, wrong with me, was overpowering.

Overwhelmed with the gravity of this new situation and complete role identity crisis I feared I would become a perpetual soccer mom and drive a mini-van (or, worse yet, a Suburban). I could not fathom how I could go back to school. Quite frankly, I was terrified of being trapped and settling. Of course, the immediate response is the overwhelming guilt of feeling that way when I should be overjoyed and unselfish. Well, I wasn’t. The first week of Devin’s life I was this strange mixture of altruism and self-absorption. I would love to blame it entirely on Vicoden but I fear it has its root in my fundamental personality.

Things have evened out for the most part. Devin and I have got the daytime pretty much down. I have learned to put him down and let him cry if it is becoming overwhelming. That was really hard at first. I am not quite at the point where I can clean the house while he sleeps- mostly I just sleep when he sleeps. Tonight he started cooing for the first time. You know, the first steps of language acquisition are very rewarding! He was alert and awake for a whole 2 hours! He used his swing and then we watched Baby Beethoven together and cooed at the other babies on TV.

I went to school today because graduate studies has a remarkable ability to lose 3 out of every 4 documents given to them. I got my proverbial shit together…I proved to UCF that I wasn’t a menace to the stability of their fragile societal microcosm by showing them court dispositions from my youthful indiscretion phase in 1996. I also talked to Brent Marshall about topics of interest in environmental sociology. That made me happy. Talking to people who are intelligent and encouraging is nice. It also helps when they are willing to give you info about NSF funding and supplement your reading list!

I just read an essay by Hope Edelman called “The Myth of Co-Parenting: How it Was Supposed to Be. How It Was.” It was interesting, but it was dire. The author concludes that there really is no such thing. I think there is such a thing. I am experiencing it now. Granted, one day I may wake up and realize that I am 40, I am a homemaker and Rubin is still working at Sprint …but I really don’t think that’s how it will turn out.