19

WHEN LOVE FEELS HEAVY

by N’tima Preusser

I am at my friend’s baby shower. We’re sitting in a room deliberately adorned with hand-crafted blue and green baby decorations. There is a banner, balloons, cake. I am surrounded by women making lighthearted jokes about new parenthood, sleep deprivation, and pregnancy cravings. I hear exchanges of favorite swaddle blankets and butt creams. But underneath the small talk and oohing and ahhing over tiny gifted baby clothes, sits the realness, the hardness, of motherhood. I can feel that every mom in the room, behind the gutters of her chronically sleep-deprived eyes, knows what that means. Each one has felt that weight. But they only have the heart to give gifts and hugs and congratulations. I sit there quietly, when all I want to do is let the momma-to-be in on the secret that is the agony ever present in motherhood.

I want so badly to prepare her, somehow, for the wave that is about to wash over her.

I was there too, belly rounded with life, it seems like yesterday. I had the iPhone app, the “Welcome, Baby” books, the nursery that I had pinned on Pinterest. I had the pacifiers, the overpacked hospital bag, the pretty dresses my girl would probably never wear. We toured the hospital. I googled birth stories while rounding my hips on a yoga ball. And I learned all about how you breathe a baby out of your lady parts.

I remember eating whole pineapples and choking down giant evening primrose oil pills by the handful to will my baby out of my uterus.

I was ready.

I waited forty-two weeks and one day for her to arrive. Those extra eight days made me extra prepared. I remember sitting, ecstatic, in the hospital, after the epidural had been administered. I was too giddy to sleep. I was so ready.

Then in a blink, she was here. She was tiny and marveling. She was incredibly beautiful. She was perfect.

But wait.

I am not ready.

This is so hard.

I am so tired.

Why hasn’t anyone prepared me for this?

I. Know. Nothing.

If I were sitting across from that very pregnant, very eager and innocent version of myself, I would grab her hands in mine and tell her this:

The love you will feel will be nothing like you have felt before. It will be foreign and familiar all at once. It will fill you to the very top of your heart, nearly spilling over. The thing about this kind of love, though, is that it can feel heavy. Disproportional. You may feel like you will nearly break in half from the top-heaviness. You will not be able to tell the difference between exhaustion and depression, and that darkness will rob you from what should be the most tender months of your daughter’s new life.

Your baby will cry. A lot. Your days will both begin and end with the saddest screams you will ever hear. Your body will respond the way that it is programmed to—with panic. You will google everything from “dissecting baby poo” to “newborn who hates life.” And you will come up short. You will always come up short.

Your baby will only sleep in ten-minute increments. In the bathroom. With the water running. You will feel like you are going mad, day after day, alone in that bathroom. Between the sound of the water and her screams, you may feel like your nerve endings will be permanently frayed.

After the endless ER trips you take, you will be written off as “the Paranoid New Mom.” (Press on.) They will give you pamphlets on colic, and that will just not cut it. For a while, nursing will be excruciating, and your baby will fight it, hard. Contrary to the laws of nature, your baby will not come out knowing how to siphon milk from your body. Breastfeeding-induced anxiety attacks are a thing, and they will happen to you. (Hormones are jerks.)

Did I mention how depleted you will feel?

Eating, and sleeping, and showering are not a part of this season (not often anyway), and right now, in the thick of it, this season will feel never-ending. While others’ newborns are napping sweetly on Instagram in their stylish organic leggings, yours is miserable. There are more than two billion mothers in the world, yet you will feel deeply alone. Compared to everyone else, you will feel you are failing.

This love will crush your ego. It will destroy your capability to trust yourself. The fear that creeps in the shadows of this love will paralyze you. Strangers will call your newborn “mean.” Loved ones will say you are giving your baby too much attention. (Neither of those things exist.) You will feel guilty for not measuring up. You will feel guilty for feeling guilty. You will feel guilty for feeling guilty for feeling guilty. You will cry over absurd things, like not being pregnant anymore. And over massive things, like the way your body has transformed because of pregnancy. You may never feel like you will get the hang of carrying this love.

But what if I told you that one day your daughter will smile? That she will even laugh? And so will you. Her intestines will eventually develop and digest food, and she will not scream excessively anymore.

I would also tell you that it gets better. Oh, how it does. She will learn how to sleep and nurse. And she gets really great at both. I would tell you to find the hope in your daughter’s eyes. As they lighten, so will that weight in your heart.

Though you may never have parenthood all figured out, there will be a day when you will find a way to wrap that love around yourself instead of being buried in it.

And though it is hard to believe, one day you will have a vivacious, smart, and unbelievably happy little girl. A girl who absolutely adores the world. And you will have clean hair and time to make breakfast for yourself in the morning.

You will.

Hold on to that truth. There will be a day that you will marvel over the fact that the girl in front of you is the same baby that was so unhappy before.

You will be better. You will grow. You will adjust, and settle, and adjust again. That is what motherhood is, I think. Finding ways through the good heartbreak to fit more love inside of you. You will learn how to balance the goodness with the heaviness.

And, I beg you, embrace that things will always feel unfinished. Let unfinished be okay. Let unfinished be enough.

And forget what you see on Instagram.

You are one heck of a mother.