Having a baby is a lot of work. News flash right? I thought so. But truly. The first three months are weapons grade exhausting and then things get easier just for a bit while life starts to catch up. I went back to work at five months but the Hubbs stayed home for six weeks so I came home to dinners and a happy baby and didnt have to worry about child care... Pretty dreamy. In addition, he is an amazing dad so I only really had to worry about me. Tiny girl hardly noticed I was gone.
Anyway, this past few weeks have been totally beautiful and exhausting. Tiny girl is learning to crawl. She gets up on hands and knees and rocks back and forth. She works so hard. She has been waking up at night to practice this too. She wakes at 1 and is up until 3 or 4. It is insane. She is happy and chirping and awake.
I occasionally freak out in the middle of the night when this is happening. I loose my composure and the sleep deprived self centered teenager erupts saying things like "I cant take it! She wont go back to sleep!" and "This is bullshit! Your turn" followed by me handing a happily squawking baby to the Hubbs and bailing out to the guest room for at least a few hours before she needs to nurse again. In those moments I feel so much emotion bubbling up inside and I just spark like a blown fuse. I loose perspective in the grey half light of dawn.
I have been reading a really awesome blog https://unraveledword.wordpress.com
And this mother is exploring spirituality through the lens of parenting. She has some really amazing observations but none yet have struck me as deeply as that about parenting, exhaustion and the work it does on ego.
I lived my entire life in a state of duality. I thought about everything all the time. How I looked, what I wanted, what my thoughts and desires said about me. I was constantly observing myself and levying judgement upon myself for every little thing. In addition I spent a great deal of time labeling things good/bad/neutral. I would find myself happy or sad or exhausted and very self indulgently spend all day grasping or rejecting or ignoring whatever it was. I was working hard to manage and control my experiences. Then I had a baby....
I have never spent so much time being totally present. It is very much as if there is nowhere else to be. I find myself too exhausted to manage and to in love to reject. All that is left is being right on the spot. Loving something so much and being so exhausted seem to cancel out eachother. I am pinned to the now or maybe freed to the now is a better expression of it. It is amazing to feel myself want something or need something but then to know that it is just not going to happen right now because Tiny needs something mire important. In my past that would have been too much. I would have bitched and whined and been miserable. The constant demands on me physically and mentally are grinding away at my sense of 'Me' as I have known for so long. I no longer think of myself as the pinnacle of importance I once did. Now, I have others I want to give to. Others I want to see happy and at ease. This is not to say I dont care about myself or I no longer have an identity. No, I still have some of that. It just doesnt seem to hold the same value anymore. It is no longer SO important to protect my 'ME'. She is tough, she is soft, she loves others more than herself (most of the time). These glimpses into 'Now' and more distilled Bodichitta are beautiful and quite ordinary. I find them most clearly in the days following the most sleepless nights. I have no choice but to get up and once I do there is so much to fall in love with it becomes hard to remain miserable.
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