Hortus Deliciarum

I posted this back when I thought this was going to be purely about parenting. I’m not particularly interested, now, in solely discussing parenting, although it ends up being a pretty significant part of my life, so will probably be mentioned plenty by default! And…just so you know, I’m not Angel-Mummy, so what I do post about the Wonderful World of Motherhood [tm] will not be censored to take out the hard bits. That’s just not who I am, even if I wish this all could happen without the difficult things!

So here you go – a christening post, first written a good seven months ago, on November 17!

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I’ve lost track of how many weeks we’re on since B-day, that is, since the day when young Master Ciaran decided to grace us with his presence, nine days late. I think we’re at about five and a half months.

I know all parents start out innocent in the ways of what they will become as parents. We all have our illusions that we won’t be like that mother on the bus, the one who never talks to her kid! Or like our friends who let their newborn watch hours of television. Or like…or like…or like. I knew that I’d probably rue the day I ever thought evil things at these poor, deluded individuals who just didn’t know how good a parent I’d be!

What I didn’t figure was that the universe would bite back. Instead of just making me rue it, Fate, Murphy, or whomever you choose to blame, has decided to stuff my words so far back in my throat that I wish I could choke on them, it feels so miserable. I have reconsidered every parenting strategy I ever thought I absolutely passionately would NEVER re-think…up to and including my most hated option, the dreaded Crying-It-Out sleep method.

For a first entry, this is a bit of a doozy. After all, parenting blogs seem to mostly be about parents who worship their babies. Entry after entry (and I read a lot of them before getting pregnant) is devoted to how beautiful a baby is, how funny, how precious. Sometimes misadventures are told but only in wryly humorous ways that make you think that somehow, deep down, the parent in question doesn’t really mind that the carpet has been pulled out from under their feet or that little Junior has spent nights upon nights screaming his head off while Mummy tried every possible solution to get him to sleep.

Which has left me, lost as I am in trickles and floods of postpartum depression, feeling like somewhere I have gone terribly wrong.

The fact is, I love my son. I’ve loved him since the first moment that I looked at that stick, little line rapidly changing color before my eyes. I’ve loved him since I felt his first kicks, which bypassed “butterfly-like flutters” and went straight for the Premiership! I’ve loved him since I first held him in my arms, fragile and blue, for those few seconds until they rushed him over to the resuscitation table to help him breathe. I’ve loved him every moment of every day since I first knew that he was there, a tiny microscopic bundle of cells that was more theory than proven fact.

Even in all the moments that I’ve hated him.

I just want to make that “I love my son” thing clear as I set out on this project. This journal that is not about Heidi or about Doughnut but rather about Heidi-as-Mother. Heidi the work in progress. Heidi the parent who does things the very imperfect way.

I believe I expected pregnancy to compel me into self-betterment. That wasn’t my end goal in wanting to have children (I’m not sure yet what my end goal was) but along the way I thought that I would be forced to be more patient, more mature, and wiser. Pregnancy and early motherhood blogs seem filled with Madonna and Child figures. These mothers have bad days but certainly never horrible ones.

Motherhood has come as a shock. I am not full of funny anecdotes about my baby, although I do have them (I’m guessing, however, that they’re funnier to me than they would be to anyone else!).

I’m just not one of those angelically-smiling mothers. While every fiber of my being rebels against the thought of any harm coming to my son and I want to wrap him in a safety blanket that will protect him from every source of hurt and danger in the world, I am envious of those online Madonnas. I want so badly to be able to look at my son as they look at theirs. I want to see only the halo of blonde hair, the gorgeous blue eyes, the grin that lights up my world. I want to see those things so clearly that the fact that I haven’t slept more than four hours in one stretch since he was born just doesn’t matter so much. Because right now, to me, it does.

I wish I’d had just one journal like this one to read before I became a mother – either the other mothers like me aren’t linked by that endless Net web to my friends, so I’ve never come across them or they don’t have time to write, don’t exist, or just don’t care to put their thoughts out there. So on behalf of those of us behind the curtain, I’m going to try. It won’t be the nicest parenting blog ever…but then, I haven’t had the nicest parenting experience ever! I don’t promise gorgeously-written posts or even particularly coherent ones but they will be honest. As honest as I can possibly be. Someday I want to be able to look back on these entries and see that I have been on a journey and that in five years I’m not here where I am at five months.

I hope!