I'm a mother now.

My last post was so sad. It feels very foreign to me reading it back now. 

My daughter is here. She was born in the evening and climbed up my breast the minute they placed her there, ready to see my face just as much I was wanted to see hers. She held my finger and looked at everything - me, my husband, the room, the doctor. She was incredibly aware of the world and couldn't wait to be a part of it. Even now, 4 and a half months later, she has the worst case of FOMO I've ever seen. What a joy and a gift.

I haven't written about it at all since her birth, so please indulge me here. The practice of writing and journaling was once a daily affair for me. I've missed it.

No one had prepared me for the guttural, animal-like instinct that takes over during childbirth. I guess I had romanticized it based on movies. My mother had never told me about anything, and my father's answers about her time with birth was that she could withstand an incredible amount of pain, didn't need an epidural, and shooed him back home over night while she recovered only to fight to leave the hospital 24 hours after I was born. (Superwoman, indeed.) Now that I've been through the experience, I've added new differences between me and my mother to the catalog. I handled most of the birth without the epidural because it wore off halfway through, but it kicked back in for pushing (THANK YOU LORD.) I couldn't imagine my husband leaving me during the night there. And I would've stayed another day if they had let me, mostly because its a pandemic and we knew we wouldn't have help once we got home and the ability to send the baby to the nursery was sooooo lovely.

But the process of learning to breastfeed was traumatic. It was really hard. She wouldn't latch, and it was a struggle from the very first minute. Here again I thought of my mother, who used to tell me I was "allergic" to her and couldn't breastfeed. My father has since explained that she just didn't want to deal with breastfeeding me and put me on formula about a month in. Maybe that's why it was important to me to figure out - and we did. Five traumatic weeks of having an LC come to my house in PPE in a pandemic to help me and my baby learn. Five weeks of her screaming at my nipple and refusing the breast. Five weeks until she gave it another try and figured it out and made us both relax about it finally. Every time I nurse my daughter, I see a long line of women in my family history and our connection, and it makes me feel so... whole. Like belonging to something bigger than myself. I feel so right in the world, but also so sad for my mother. Perhaps that why our bond wasn't strong enough to get her the help she needed. I may never know. But I'm grateful my daughter figured out how to latch and build that bond with me. 

When I look at her, I see my own childhood through a completely different lens. Surely, my mother and I must have had these moments too... laying in bed together, her nursing, me playing with her hair. Bathing her in the sink. Watching my husband teach her how to stick out her tongue and make her giggle during diaper changes. (I could write an entire novel based on my husband's dad instincts, and how much I've fallen in love with him all over again.) Rocking her in my arms before bed. Picking out her outfits, and doting on her new discoveries of feet and her reflection in a mirror. 

How did my mother go from this period of love and mother-daughter bonding to willingly giving up our relationship just to stay off her medication? I am struggling more and more with understanding her. Before it had made sense. She told me the drugs made her feel dead inside and she'd rather feel something than nothing. I understood that. But to choose that over her relationship with me is more confusing than ever. Perhaps she really didn't make the choice the way I have imagined it these last 15 years. Perhaps the illness made her feel like she didn't have a choice, and it was her life over mine. Perhaps she didn't realize the choice I was forcing her to make. Either way, I cannot imagine ever choosing ANYTHING over my daughter. 

Every night, and every morning since she's come home from the hospital, I have leaned into her ear and whispered the same thing:

"Mama loves you. Mama loves you so much. Mama loves you more than anything."

I mean it. There is nothing I wouldn't give or do for her. 

...so why couldn't my mother do the same?

i'm still here.

It's been a long time. Many, many years at this point, which surprises me. Does anyone still even read this blog?

If I were to delve a little more deeply into why I haven't been writing, I'm sure that the usual answers would come up: I'm actually happy. I've been internalizing too much. I've been leaving my feelings at arms length, or ignoring them completely. How do I catch you up? What do I even write about right now?

My mother. It all comes back to my mother, and where we are now. Which is the same place we were. She is still off meds, still stalking me online, still a shadow in my life that comes and goes. This period of time after my wedding has been new and wonderful and heartbreaking in so many ways. Because after marriage, you start to want children. I've always wanted children, but now there's an urgency. I'm 37. I'm not getting any younger.

Exactly one year ago, I was pregnant. It was Mother's Day 2019. We had practically just found out, and the immediate family knew. Everyone wished me a happy Mother's Day, which made me insane because I'm Jewish. You don't do that... it's bad luck.

I couldn't believe it had finally happened - we had been trying for over a year. A year of heartbreak every single fucking month. If anyone out there has struggled with pregnancy, you know exactly what I mean. We had gotten to the point that my doctor had sent us off to a fertility doctor, and we had found out exactly how much money it was going to cost us to have a baby. My weight was a huge concern, along with my age, and the tests that they had done made us concerned about it actually happening without an egg donor. At literally the last possible second, we conceived naturally. It was a miracle. It was crazy.

It was too good to last. We lost the baby at the end of June.

So how does this all tie back to my mother? Well, I didn't know what a miscarriage really meant. I didn't get the full picture. The details and the business of losing a baby at 9 weeks are emotionally draining, but it was the physical affects that left me speechless. And I wanted my mother. I wanted to know if she had been as afraid as I had been that whole time. I wanted someone to take care of me. My husband and his mother were amazing. They held me up the entire time, and put me back together again. It was a messy, horrible and painful time, and once again I was reminded how lucky I was to be married to my husband.

My father also somehow stepped up and into my recovery. He moved near us a few months before that, and it's been incredible to have him so close. He came over almost every day while I lay on the couch trying to not fall apart again. He tried to remember my mother's health history with pregnancy. He did his best.

And I healed. Physically. I tried again. And miracle of miracles, we got pregnant again. I'm now 2 months away from meeting my child during a fucking pandemic. There are so many other feelings to unpack but I think I'll leave it for another day.

My mother's absence from the most painful experience of my life was harsh. But the older I get, the more I realize that there are other people in my life that absolutely stepped in and held me together. If I can get through a miscarriage without her, I know sure as shit I can get through a birth without her.

I feel my strength every day lately.