on motherhood (part 4)

Selene and I spend a lot of our day in bed. 

Sometimes we move to the recliner or the couch. We nurse and cuddle and take naps and selfies. 

We rest. 

Sometimes I watch something, I often scroll (more than I’d like) and I read a lot of novels. 

Sometimes I arrange work on the house or shop or meal plan. I make appointments. 

I work on a few creative things like writing pieces or making videos (anyone interested in the uncut 3 hour pregnancy one?😆) and writing in Selene’s baby book while she sleeps on me. Occasionally next to me. 

We take salt baths. 

In the afternoons we sometimes walk to the library or the park or the grocery store. Sometimes my cousin comes and holds Selene and we trade off doing some Pilates. Or a friend comes by to meet her. 

But Selene and I are back in bed between 7 and 8. 

She’s still eating at least every 3 hours over night. It can be more like hourly. I don’t expect she’ll slow this down anytime soon. This is what she needs and I’m not going to try and get her to do anything differently. 

Chris brings me breakfast before he works. Meals are our toughest topic. Neither of us love to meal prep. I enjoy cooking but only when there is real time and space to do it and with a new baby that’s nonexistent. Wearing a 17lb baby this soon postpartum is hard on the body and I can’t do it too long. 

The house gets messy quickly. We have someone come once a month to focus on the bathrooms and kitchen. We do our best to keep up with laundry and dishes. 

Sometimes the clutter and projects I can’t work on overwhelm me. I get frustrated by all I can’t do and haven’t been able to do since I got pregnant a year ago. 

Life is slower than my brain wants. 

And this is what my body requires. 

Even with this rest, my body hurts. A lot. 

I have lots of thoughts like ‘I have so much support, so many resources and my body can’t even keep up with this’ and ‘other people have it so much harder and don’t have to slow down this much’ 

But I know what I’m doing is true. It’s our pace, it’s what we need. 

And it’s permission. For others to rest. 

A couple of people have said to me some version of ‘I can’t just lay around like that’ or ‘must be nice’. Not knowing that they, too, can rest.

Rest is confronting. Rest can be isolating.  Rest can be lonely. It can feel like the world is passing you by. 

And. 

I’m healing so well from birth. My body just doing what it needs to regain balance and restore nutrients without force. My energy is coming back. 

Our baby is so happy and calm. She cries very little. The time she can be put down without fussing is increasing with trust.

I chose a partner who fully supports us in our rest and I support him in his- he gets uninterrupted sleep at night. (It helps that he can sleep through anything). 

I’m always looking at ways to increase space in our lives. To reduce stress. 

I used to believe we were supposed to just handle or endure a certain amount of stress and compression- that this is what made me ‘productive.’  It’s taken a lot of rest to see this isn’t true. Our bodies are meant to have space, to feel safe, it’s only from an overflow of energy that we can truly create. 

So I’m seeing what is possible when I do less and then even less than that. What’s truly necessary, and all the ways I’m taken care of.