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?