We had T's 6 month check up on Wednesday. Six months. I wasn't sure we would make it this far. Everyone always talks about how fast the first months go by. For us, those first 4 months seemed like an eternity. I love my boy to pieces, but I would not relive those first couple of months for anything. Truthfully, they were awful. I don't think that you can expect any newborn to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, so the sleep deprivation is definitely a part of things. You can't understand how if feels to never get more than 3 hours of straight sleep in a row for months on end until you have done it. The body is not meant to function like that. It ain't pretty.
But, that (huge) part of things aside, the hardest thing with Thad was my complete inability to make the kid happy. There is nothing that can crush your maternal instincts like your baby crying and you not being able to fix it. (I take that back, the worst thing is when you cannot successfully breast feed, but that is a separate issue). It was awful. Call if colic if you want, but the bottom line is that he did a lot of crying, not a lot of sleeping, and was generally unhappy with his life for the first 4 months. Maybe I had postpartum depression, I can tell you for sure that I felt depressed. I don't know how you could be happy in that situation. I felt like everything was working against us.
Anyway. Fast-forward 6 months. I love this guy! We actually have fun together! He laughs! We play! He naps when he is tired! HE SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT! Yes, I am talking about Thaddeus! I know! I can't believe it either. I never thought it would happen.
Most amazingly, we had a moment. Last week, he woke up from a nap crabby. I was in the process of sewing his Christmas stocking. I was working on my last seam. He was fussy, but I put him down on the floor in the office while I was finishing my project. He started crawling to my feet (yes, he his 6 months old and crawling...a real prodigy, I know) and he sat there and pawed at me, crying, until I finished and picked him up. He came to me because he was sad, and he wanted me to comfort him. My baby was crying and that should have made me feel sad, I guess, but no, I felt SO happy. He came to me to make him feel better. He came to me because he knew I could comfort him. A little thing, but it melted my heart. It was a turning point for me.
My mom laughs at this story and says, 'of course he knows you will comfort him, he is your baby'. But until that moment, I had never felt that to be true. There have been so many nights that we have been up all night long, so many crying episodes where I felt I was doing nothing right, and providing my son with nothing that he needed. No more! I don't mean to say that everything is peachy keen and easy. But, I feel happy. I have never questioned my love for him, but I have definitely questioned his love for me. It's a process, it's tough, but things get easier. He still drives me crazy, but we're good. We're homies and we enjoy our days together.
On those occasions that he wakes me up at the crack of dawn, or we struggle for an hour to go down for a nap, I feel like I can handle it. My confidence is not shattered when he cries. I just feel happier. I feel like we can do it. I really feel for new moms. You just don't anticipate how hard it is. I didn't. I knew it was going to be physically demanding, but I didn't think about the emotional demands. HANG IN THERE, NEW MOMS! You have heard a million times that it will get easier, but here's the truth. IT WILL!
