It took me about ten minutes to walk a few feet today. I’m not exaggerating. There was a toy in the baby’s room that belonged in the bathtub. I put the baby down so I could pick up the toy and she immediately pulled herself up to standing by holding onto the edge of my shorts. She then decided to practice her newfound walking skills by hanging onto my shorts and walking behind/beside/in front of me. In the process, she gave me some pretty decent scratches with her baby nails, got mad that I wasn’t walking the exact pace she wanted to walk, tried to bend down to pick up other toys, and fell over several times. You can see why a task that normally would have taken me about 30 seconds took me about ten minutes.
I hate to admit it, but I forgot how exhausting this stage of having a little one can be.
There were five years between the last baby and this one. Everyone was potty-trained. Everyone was sleeping through the night. It had been a long time since I had to zip up a jacket and even shoe tying wasn’t always the constant chore it used to be when none of my kids were capable of doing it themselves. But we are back to the baby stage and I am back to having my world revolve around a messy, noisy, inefficient tiny person that I love with incredible fierceness.
Ah, inefficiency, my old nemesis. I want so badly to run around this house and quickly tidy up, quickly load the dishwasher, quickly write a few emails. Nothing happens quickly anymore. Because my body doesn’t belong to me. There is a little person who wants to sit in my lap and no coherent email has ever been written in the history of humanity while a squirmy 12-month-old was sitting in your lap. I can’t quickly load the dishwasher because someone is trying to climb inside it or grab the plates out of it. As much as these feel like time wasting moments or scheduling frustrations, I find that most of all, they make me feel frustrated with my body. I just can’t physically do what my mind tells me I need to get done.
Each stage of motherhood is hard in its own way, but the toll motherhood takes on your body in those early years is something unique (and I’m not even going to address the whole pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding process). Yes, the middle school years are tough. Yes, tween and teen hormones are ridiculous. But those kids don’t typically pull your hair on accident or start crying in the middle of the night until you meet their needs, or rub banana into your neck. Blessedly, you do get your body back (your sleep routines, your bathroom privacy, your personal space boundaries) at some point, even if your mind has to become more and more focused on helping kids navigate harder choices and thornier problems. Each mom will feel these struggles differently, but for some of us, having our bodily autonomy infringed upon constantly is a very difficult experience. I don’t have any trauma triggers in this area, I’m just a person who likes personal space boundaries and dislikes being accidentally head-butted. Call me crazy, I guess.
If it’s making you feel crazy too, you aren’t alone. If when some mom says, “Just wait for the teenage years” you want to yell, “BUT DO THEY PINCH AND THEN TWIST THE FLAB ON THE BACK OF YOUR ARMS WHILE YOU’RE HOLDING THEM DURING THE TEENAGE YEARS??” I’m with you. And for the record, most teenagers do not.
Can I just take a moment and salute the moms of kids with unique challenges who look down the road and don’t see a day when they won’t be lifting, changing, feeding, or in some other physical way helping to care for their children? I hope you feel justified in giving yourself space to grieve the loss of your own bodily autonomy. I remember having a conversation with my dad once and having to stop to say to my child with sensory processing issues, “It’s okay with me if you want to chew my hair, but you need to ask my permission first.” The look on my dad’s face. . . you just get used to living this weird life where you are your child’s comfort object. It’s okay if sometimes you have to laugh about that or cry about that or go for a long walk just to know your body can do something other than childcare tasks.
I love my children with my whole heart. They are the sweetest gifts I’ve ever been given and I am endlessly thankful to be their mother. They know that. The whole world knows that. There’s no way you could know me and not know that. But I’m also a person. A person with a body that needs care and respect. Now that I’ve done this baby stage so many times, I’m learning that this season does eventually come to an end, but I will enjoy it a lot more if I acknowledge how hard this is and also look for ways to honor and care for my body for the work it has to do.