1/2/23
while we were nursing in the half-light half-dark, baby holding a small cut-out felt pig, he put his other hand to his forehead for a second, and his eyes were closed and it looked to me like he was sorting out big problems, and I felt sympathy – what kind of things has he seen or heard so far in his 15 months on earth that frustrate or overwhelm him? Which led me to think, of this boy. That I had a boy. Of my biases and prejudices for his gender that I know I still harbor, deep-rooted and stemming from one man in the past that hurt me, even though I’ve tried to recognize and cut them down as much as possible. And tears started forming, and I prayed, “God, help me. Don’t let me mess him up. I know nothing about raising a good person, a good man. Help me, please, push everything out of the way in my personality that might impede him. Don’t let me mess him up.”
1/4/23
not sure if this is a coincidence, or maybe partly because he’s so much cuter talking now, but since I’ve been getting more sleep and feeling a little better, I find im actually looking forward to when my parents bring baby back home at the end of the workday. I used to dread it only because I felt overwhelmed and like I could never get enough done in the time he was away, but now, even if I don’t get everything done, I miss him more than i want to get everything done, and I enjoy him a lot more, and I always wonder how he is when he’s away.
1/5/23
it’s so funny how he looks like a little man now. He doesn’t look like a baby anymore. His gait is also funny: his posture is very straight while his toddler legs bend at the knees and he keeps his arms kind of elbows turned out, like a bodybuilder.
with all the time restraint and warped sense of time and feeling like I am stuck in a never-ending loop and just all the radical changes in my perception of time in the last year since Hunter was born, just today realizing maybe there is a message. it seemed to say: it doesn’t matter how much work / how many chores you get done or don’t get done every day. You’ve been reborn as a baby- you’re growing up again- everything is new, all that matters is now, every day, playing, having fun, learning, love, joy, happiness. Forget the rest. Release it from your nervous system. Release everything that wouldn’t matter to a growing child.
1/6/23
i wonder how many hours of breastfeeding i’ve logged…it seems so many endless hours all through the day and all through the night up until recently. And he currently still breastfeeds for hours at a time, daily. Even though he stopped (or more accurately, we stopped him by me and R switching beds) breastfeeding through the night, he’s doing a thing now where he’ll breastfeed from early night (8,9,10 pm) until like midnight, 1 or 2 am.
1/7/23
even though things are getting better now with my sleep, part of me subconsciously is like: why did everyone around me let it get to this point? I know I should take care of myself, but this is the first time I’ve been through this- a first-time mom; I was just trying to survive each day, literally taking it minute by minute. Now in retrospect, the different points of my downward spiral of the past 15 months are just starting to come together for me as I look back.. Why didn’t my mom or my dad or my extended family or husband watch over me better, see the signs, see the changes in me and take some action before I got to the point where I was hospitalized?
main lesson from year 1 of Baby: without proper sleep, everything falls apart. Even the highest-quality vitamins and supplements won’t save you, if you don’t have that basic building block to stand on.
The hardest thing I’ve done so far with the baby has not been giving birth. It was sticking to my decision to breast-feed for the past 1 yr and 3 months. At least when you’re giving birth, there’s all this support around you: I was surrounded by midwife nurses doctor husband encouraging me to get through it. Once I left the hospital, even tho they said call if you need anything, it was kind of like, “bye-bye and good luck.” With breast-feeding, there’s so much aloneness, and darkness, and alone in the darkness. In the dark at 6 PM, in the dark at 9 PM, in the dark at 12 AM, in the dark at 3 AM, in the dark at 6 AM, in the dark even during the day because the shades are drawn bc Baby is feeding and drifting off to sleep, again. Today I also cried really hard (silently, cause he had just fallen asleep) when he bit down several times at the end of a feed – i couldn’t get myself out of his clenched jaws and had to just wait it out and it hurt so much.
Marriage Journal 