Please, Time Move Faster and Also My God-Slow It Down
“Just hang on one second Ez, Mama just needs to finish up changing Goldie-“ CRASH. My heart jumps. “That’s definitely his head hitting the floor” – the thought forms in my mind almost immediately. “Oh my God, EZRA?” I sprint into the kitchen to see my two-year-old perched precariously on the stovetop smiling. On the floor below him is the bowl of pancake batter, which had been so neatly sitting on the counter moments before. His fingertips are reaching for the oven knobs-
“Oh no. NO.” I grab him and place him firmly on the floor.
“NO! NO!” He parrots, and shakes his head back and forth as he smiles up at me.
I hear my four-month-old start to cry from the family room. “Just a second Goldie.” I turn to start hastily scooping up handfuls of pancake batter from the floor. Not the greatest clean up method, but I’m looking for speed, not quality.
“Oh my GODDDD.” I hear Ezra from the family room. (Yet again, parroting a phrase that he hears from me far too often. I don’t love love that he can be heard screaming “OH MY GOD” multiple times a day, in a cadence that makes Janice from Friends sound timid- but then again I don’t truly have the energy to care.)
I abort the pancake clean up mission and sprint back to the family room. Hearing your two-year-old shout OH MY GOD while alone in the room with your four-month-old takes precedence. I enter the room to see Ezra pouring a formally abandoned smoothie pouch on to Goldie’s forehead while she screams. I sigh. “Is it nap time yet?” I mutter, as I begin the dance of cleaning her up whilst Ez bounces to create yet another chaotic scene in different room.
After all of that, I don’t even think I need to say this to you, dear reader. But I will anyway. This-this being the mother of an infant and a toddler-this is hard.
And before you start to tell me about how it only gets harder- please don’t.
Every second of my time is demanded. I can’t go to the bathroom alone. Sleep alone. Shower alone. When I am playing with one I am feeding the other. When I am nursing one I am using the other hand to turn the page of a book for the other. I am constantly trying to stop the older from his constant mission to put himself in grave physical danger upon entering any given space- while also comforting the younger one who stays permanently strapped to my chest.
A lot of the time, this stage of motherhood feels very akin to drowning. It is both physically and mentally demanding. The frequent crying of an infant is tough on its own (I mean- there is a reason that the military blasts the constant sounds of babies crying as a form of torture for their prisoner of war training, right?) But when paired with a highly active toddler who is only comfortable when creating anarchy- it often feels impossible. Hell, it often IS impossible.
I spend many a 3am feeding repeating the affirmation, “This won’t be this hard forever.” “I know I know” I argue with myself in the darkened room, Hatch sound machine humming next to me as she hungerly latches yet again. “But please time, move a little faster. I’m so damn tired.”
And yet- simultaneously- I am acutely, painfully aware that I am living those days. Those very days that I will think about when I am much older, when the house is quiet and clean, when little hands no longer reach for me in the night. I know I am living the days that I will reminisce about in the silence and think to myself “what I wouldn’t do to have them be that tiny, nestled into my chest again. What I wouldn’t do to have those days back.”
I am living the days of hearing, “oh hi Mama!” when I walk to get my son up first thing in the morning. He stands upright in his sleep sack, wild blonde cupid hair a nest on top of his head, and smiles brightly at me. My chest literally tightens with how much I love him in that moment.
I am living the days of holding a brand-new human, and feeling absolutely humbled by the experience of being so in love with her gummy smile that it physically hurts. I sit and smell the top of her head or her milky breath, and literally feel high.
Motherhood is such an unusual experience, isn’t it? It is fascinating to witness the hardest and the most beautiful part of my life every day-a glorious mess of technicolor highs and lows. I can’t think of any other role or life event quite like it. Some days I am literally counting down the seconds until bedtime. I stand in the shower crying and text my husband semi-alarming things like “I can’t do this.” And then, when I finally do have a moment to breathe and just be- I find myself looking at one of the 3500 pictures I took of them that day, and feel that tingly, chest-tightening love ache again.
I have found that the either/or mindset that our culture tends to promote permeates the societal discussion around motherhood. It’s either awful OR perfect. You are either deliriously in love with your children OR they are crotch goblins that you want to “send back.”
In the past, I have found myself getting sucked into the “perfect mother myth.” I hesitated to ever express overwhelm, likely because I struggled through so many years of IVF and miscarriages before finally having them. When I had my son, I spent the majority of his first year feeling like he was about to slip through my fingers. I had to be grateful, because if I wasn’t- well then I was ungrateful- ungrateful for this miracle that I spent years yearning for. Ungrateful and undeserving.
What I have discovered, though, is that motherhood exists in the and/both. It simply does. We can try all we want to make it complete perfection OR horrible, but the fact is- it’s both. An incredible mash up of the most difficult and mind-numbingly beautiful parts of your day. The part of your life that you are likely the most grateful for, and the part that you can also resent the most. Motherhood is wondering in one moment how you ever lived without them, while in the next moment longing for your life before them- you know, the one full of long, hot showers, date nights, and books?
It’s a complex thing, this motherhood thing. I think we would all be better off if we stopped trying to make it fit into an either/or box. Instead, let’s let it be messy and gorgeous and invigorating and exhausting and beautiful and brutal and life-giving and life-consuming. Let’s legalize every feeling and thought. Let’s foster a collective understanding that being a mother is the very best part of life, and also the most trying. Let’s normalize saying “Please, can time move faster and also MY GOD- slow it down.”
In love and mama-camaraderie,
Colleen