Labor and
delivery were intensive, and immediately after the birth, I got really sick. I
was confined to a bed, drugged up, and taking my nutrients in the form of IV
for a few days. It was miserable. When they finally let me return home from the
hospital, four days after Ami was born, I was exhausted—and still in quite a
lot of discomfort.
I didn’t
write, as you can imagine, for about three months. Then one day, I suddenly had
some ideas, some things I wanted to add into the nonfiction letters to Amalie I
had been writing during my pregnancy. I wrote for about fifteen minutes one
day, then again on another.
I started
planning out goals, and breaking them. I wrote some days, and other days I didn’t,
but on no days did I write anything I felt really excited about. Never did I
write something I felt stood a chance of eventual publication. I started
wondering if I might be suffering from post-partum depression. Started
wondering if maybe I’d lost my groove.
But then I
remembered something I’d promised myself, right here on this blog, before Amalie
was born. I’d vowed that I wouldn’t expect too much of myself as a writer
during those first few months after Amalie’s birth. I decided to give myself a
break, already. I was in the thick of the most difficult, important thing I
would ever do: raising my daughter. So what if I took a year or so off from
writing?
As Amalie
got older, she got easier to take care of. At first, I thought this would mean
I would start having more writing time. Especially now that I was getting a
full night’s sleep again, I thought I should be able to ease my way back into a
regular writing schedule.
What I didn’t
account for was that as Amalie got older, she got more independent, yes, but
she also needed constant supervision. When she started to crawl, she started to
find things on the floor that she would instantly put into her mouth. When she
started to pull to a standing position, suddenly things that a week ago had
been out of her reach weren’t anymore.
She’s one
now, and she’s going to start walking any day, I’m sure of it. This, I’m sure,
will bring with it a whole new list of dangers we can’t yet foresee. Do I have
more writing time now that she’s a little older? No. In fact, I have way, way
less. I could have been writing
during those first few, difficult months. The time was there. All Ami did was eat
and sleep. And cry. But still. The time was there. She slept like 18 hours a
day or something. I can’t remember exactly. I could have been writing during
that time.
But my
brain was so fried from the exhaustion of new motherhood, I could barely focus
to watch old episodes of American Pickers
on Netflix. I was up every two hours with her during the night, and sometimes,
inexplicably, she would just cry and cry for hours and hours and I would feel
like I was never going to sleep again. I had the time to write, plenty of it,
but I didn’t really have the mental capacity.
Now, the
mental capacity is there, and the drive. I feel very driven. I have all these
ideas just stewing in their own juices. I’m dying to get back into the game,
but the time is no longer there. I’m teaching two classes and working about
twenty hours a week as an online tutor on the side. On top of that, I’m
basically a stay at home mom. I’m on call pretty much 24 hours, every day.
But even as
I type that, I know there is still time. Some days, she plays happily with her
toys on the floor, and as long as I’m in the room with her and keeping an eye on things, I can work
on my computer. Now I think the real barrier is that I
am
afraid.
Terrified.
Because what if I was right during those dark, sleep-deprived months? What if I
have lost it? What if I can’t get it
back?
But that’s
a stupid reason not to try. So try I will. Try I must.
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