It's Like Blondie Said

I am not a worrier by nature.  I don't do a whole lot of 'What if' kinds of thinking.  I don't obsess or ruminate about possibly scary and/or horrible outcomes or situations.  Obviously, I'm not saying that I am free of mental glitches (as you KNOW,) I am just saying that worrying about things over which I have no control isn't one of mine.  My dial is just typically set to 'things are going to work out, one way or another,' (a fact which, btw, drives The Little Sister around the bend and/or makes her love me--depending.)

That being my norm, I did no ruminating about miscarriage, birth defects, etc. during my first pregnancy.  I trusted that because I was so sick that things were progressing as they should.  Thanks to my AMA status, I got the genetic testing but really had decided that there was no use obsessing over it.  I was thankful that the tests came back as they did--giving me no extra reason to worry.

This pregnancy was a little touch and go at the beginning for me, what with the bleeding.  At first, I was overwhelmed, SURE that I was losing the pregnancy and trying to keep my expectations LOW.  I was preoccupied with it.  I eventually got to a place of more acceptance and there was less fretting then.  And now, it seems, that the sickness is again a reassuring pain in the ass.

But having a child already has changed the inner landscape of my mind, in a way that I could not have fully predicted.  Before having a child, stories of child abductions and murders, sick kids, women experiencing still birth, stories of families losing their children used to make me sad.  Now, they can wreck me.  Literally make me cry.  Like these posts, by Poot and Cubby.  Like, LITERAL TEARS.

It's like I now have a face, a sweet face with giant blue eyes, to superimpose on those stories.  I can take the gale-force love that I feel for my own girl and lay it overtop of the images of loss and devastation and FEEL the depth and the breadth and the weight of them.  I don't love it.  It's uncomfortable, the intensity of the empathy that I feel now. (Let me note that I'm a therapist and so I started out pretty empathic to begin with.)

Some of it is hormonal for me, for sure.  The pregnancy, the sickness, and finally going through the last stages of weaning are wreaking havoc for me, emotionally.  But as TLNG grows, as she develops, she only sinks deeper and deeper into me.  As she becomes and reveals more of who she is, I find that I am helplessly in love with that person.  All of her.  Even the fresh and sassy parts.  And it reminds me of so many of the comments that I heard at my mother's funeral from her friends and her co-workers.  They all said basically the same thing:

'She loved you girls so much.  You were all she ever talked about.  She just loved you so much.'

Maybe that's what everyone hears at her mother's funeral, I don't know.  But I do know that it was true.  I always knew it.  My mother WAS a worrier, a ruminator, an obsessor.  And I knew that it was her worst fear that something horrible would happen to The Little Sister or me.  I knew that, like me with my own child, she loved me as a person as well as a daughter.  That her heart, like mine, was transparent glass after I came into the world. 

And just as I am doing now, she freely and willingly handed it over to a toddler with sticky fingers, an unsure grasp and an unsteady gait.

But, really, what's the difference?

Sometimes, my heart wants to shatter into a million pieces from just looking at her.

Comments

[TB]

I know. Still have to constantly run my fingers through his hair or shower him with kisses. And when he comes to me on his own for a kiss and hug? Well it's better than just about anything I've ever experienced.

[Kelly]

Once you're a mother to one...you're a mother to all.

[Kristen Catrabone]

Oh I know, does he really have to get his drivers licenses in 8 months?? And how often is he kissing that girlfriend? Is it just kissing? What a tremondous journey!!

[The Domestic Goddess]

I totally know what you are feeling. It gets deeper as they get older. Something different as you get to know them more and more. It's like nothing I have ever felt before in my life.

And, for the record, you don't HAVE to wean, if you don't want to. Call me a hippie, but I nursed through the second pregnancy (wasn't easy, I can tell you, but he was so young!) and then tandem nursed (which is also difficult, but worth every second).

[A New Duck]

This is so true. Before I had my baby I worked with children who had been hideously abused, and I loved my work so much I built an entire career out of it. But now that I'm a parent, I'm haunted by my work to the extent that I'm not sure I can continue in this field. Becoming a mom opened my heart and that can never, ever be a bad thing, but it may have opened it too much for the field I work in.

[TLS]

Way to make me cry.

[amanda]

I totally 100% agree with every word of your post. Same thing - stories of bad things happening to kids made me sad, sure, but now I can't even handle it. And, oh yes, I have cried buckets of literal tears reading sad posts on parenting blogs, blogs by people I don't know and will never meet. I've heard the statement "once you have kids, it's like your heart is outside your body" a bunch of times, and wow, is it true.

[amanda]

Piercing, true and wondrous, you and this story. Thank you.

[Jan]

My boy is 8....and I STILL feel that way! Even when he's annoying!

[Clink]

Kay, now I'm in tears. You're so right, having a child makes everything much more real.

Spouse has forbidden me from seeing anything on TV or the movies that involves a child stubbing a toe much less something worse. This leaves me with very few options.

...and worrying a little bit about society in general.

[Domestic Extraordinaire]

wow.

[Mama Bub]

Yes. Just, yes.

[Manic Mommy]

My friend had her first child on Sunday. I asked 'so what do you think of him?' Silence followed by 'oh my God...' And it only gets stronger.

That was beautiful. I'm glad you dragged your head out of the toilet long enough to write it.

[Sam]

Congrats! Now I shall offer my bewbies to Egg for the zillionth time today.