2024

This year I became someone's mom. Birth was real shitty, as was the immediately proceeding 3 months. But she's not a potato anymore and she's so fun and cute now. 

This year I experienced being the most uncomfortable I have ever been. I experienced pain that left me shaking and crying. I lost myself and am actively trying to figure out who I am again. I experienced ego death. I woke up at 4 am more than half the year. I strengthened relationships and made new ones and survived a lot more than I thought myself capable of. I got back to the gym and learned that the hormone known as relastin made my joints all wobbly and loose and even though it's supposed to go away after 6 months my knees still hurt after leg day. I changed a lot of diapers. I saw Tyler become a dad, which really feels like what he was born to do. I got contacts. 

Nov dec

With another trump presidency about to begin, it's a scary time to mother a young girl. But she doesn't know anything about politics or laws yet. She did learn how to stick out her tongue, and now she won't stop doing it. 

The complete ego death that has been motherhood has been freeing on some level. Now that I no longer have any idea who I am, I can be whoever I feel like. I got contacts, and am learning how to not make faces at people because I can't hide behind glasses. I forgot how fun sunglasses are. Eye makeup is a thing again. I'll be able to get strong as soon as I'm not sick every other week. Christmas with a kid is fun. 
 

36

It's my first birthday as a mom. I mean, I guess maybe last year I was pregnant - but unfortunately not all pregnant people get to be moms. This year I get to hear her giggle and dress her in cute outfits and dream of decades of Halloween costumes. I get to watch her experience things for the first time and become a person. But I digress. 

This is my first birthday as a mom, and I feel very loved and celebrated for my identity separate from motherhood. Part of me was worried about that - about everything in my life being about the kid from now on. I mourned that during pregnancy. But my husband did his very best to surprise me after hearing me say for years that I'd never had a surprise party. He told me that we were gonna have dinner with another of our couple friends, and then when we turned the corner there a good half dozen folks I had not expected to see. I got to eat at my favorite restaurant while my inlaws watched Ramona, and see people I loved. 

That said, Monday is a terrible day to have a birthday. I have to work, Tyler has to work. Bleh. But Mom is watching Ramona for dinner and we're going to go eat sushi. There's a cake in the fridge that Tyler's mom made, and it's delicious. That's for breakfast (and dessert!) 

Typing one handed because she's asleep on my left arm. Snoring a little, definitely her father's child. I'm overwhelmed with the amount of unconditional love I feel for her, even in these small moments. It's six am, the Saturday after a very hard week and my baby is sleeping so comfortably in my arms. Tiny body twitching and grunting. I wonder if my parents ever felt like this about me, before things got bad? I have to hope so.

Let me not recommend being sick with a sick infant

 

Weird thing I'm remembering now, three months post birth: 

When friends or family came to meet her in the hospital, they kept sniffing her head and enjoying the 'new baby smell.' She just smelled like blood until she got her bath three days later idk what everyone else was on about.