New Mom Thoughts From 2005

I came across this unfinished rambling I began writing five years ago, soon after my oldest son turned one. Although the paragraphs seem somewhat hopeful, the last line comes across as a rather jaded and abrupt ending. I remember thinking I would come back to it someday - the day I got it all figured out....

New Mom Thoughts from 2005

A little over a year ago I was what you would probably call a “Professional”. Every day I got up, took a shower, dried my hair, and joined the frenzied morning traffic in the work commute. I floated easily through predictable days, teaching rows of hyper active pre-teens the ins and outs of grammar, spelling, and reading. Their papers decorated my desk in organized bins labeled things like, “Section 8A Spelling”. When I told people I taught junior high language arts for a living, the normal response was one of sympathy and comments on how brave and dedicated I must be.

Brave and dedicated? They almost made me believe it myself. Now I know they were wrong. Keeping order among twenty eight thirteen-year-olds is nothing in comparison with what I came face to face with a year ago - one screaming little person who weighed in at only seven-and-a-half pounds and was shorter than my right arm. As they laid my new born son on my chest, day dreams of sunny days spent teaching and exploring with this little boy filled my head. Plans for being the model wife took shape as I plotted days of trying out new recipes, organizing the linen closet, and creating beautiful scrapbooks out of the heaps of pictures piled on the card table downstairs. Already a nicely organized and charted schedule hung on the refrigerator laying out specific chores for each day of the week. Next to that was a menu filled with all the multi-step recipes I was going to become proficient at, and in the final and third column was a list of all the books I planned to read while relaxing over colorful and nutritious lunches.

My dreams were shattered a mere week later as I stood at the top of the stairs and watched my mother leave for home and my husband leave for work. It was my first day alone as a mom, and I suddenly realized that I had no idea what to do. My beautiful little boy started screaming and screamed, it seemed, for three months. My meal plans were forgotten right along with the charted to-do list as I found my days filled with feedings, diaper changes, and piles of spit-up-on and pooped-on laundry.

Within a month my to-do list consisted of making the bed, getting the dishes washed, and fixing supper. On good days I even managed to shower and maybe even eat breakfast or lunch.
Each month since then has gotten easier. The pile of pictures in the basement is bigger than ever; I’ve discovered that life-size germs do not suddenly appear in your shower if you don’t scrub it religiously each week; and my linen cabinet is in shambles. I’ve read several articles on child rearing, but none of the books off of my “must-read” list. And I’m learning to just deal with it.