Linnea

[ailbhe]

I love Linnea so much sometimes I want to cry, or be sick, or explode. She's the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. She's the best gift I've ever been given. She's the most fascinating person I've ever met. She's the biggest challenge I've ever had to live up to. She's the hardest work I've ever done - and I'm not talking about the birth, I'm talking about every day.

I always knew I wanted to be a mother - a stay-at-home mother, probably one who wrote on the side. I've been sure of it since I was 14. But I never knew how much it would suit me - how straightforward and natural it would seem, how simple the decisions are. It's easy - all I have to do is what I want, which is always to put what Linnea needs first, above everything and everyone, all the time.

Of course it's much bigger than I expected it to be. Of course I didn't really understand or believe how enormous it would be. Because it's huge.

I am glad now that I didn't know I had a miscarriage when I was 18. I thought it was a heavy, late period. Now that I've been pregnant "for real" I know it wasn't - I know how it feels to be pregnant now.

But I cannot be sorry that Linnea is my first baby. She's so wonderful, and I have the opportunity to be with her exactly as I always wanted to be with my babies. I couldn't have had that at 18.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I envy you. I love Grace with all my heart, but I am not the natural caregiver that you are. I don't have the energy, the patience, or the ability to shift gears suddenly and frequently. I'm bad with toddlers. I'm enormously better at caring for my own toddler than I have ever been for any other toddler, partly because I love her so much and partly because I've known her since before she was born and I understand her better than I've ever understood anyone too young to do detailed psychological self-analysis. But that still means I can, with more draining effort than is really good for me, handle her for a few hours a day before I stop being good for her, or for me.

I like to think I'm still a good mother -- I try to be a good mother by giving my daughter directly all the attention and interaction that I can before I run dry and stop being good for her, and arranging for other good, caring, capable people to give her what I can't, when I can't. But I wish I could do it all myself (or at least most of it customarily myself; almost all stay-at-home moms get help sometimes, if only from their partner, and I wouldn't want to give up that or prevent Manny from having his turn). Grace loves me, but isn't as bonded to me as she is to Manny, because he has more physical energy to play with her the way she likes to be played with right now. I know that, and I know it's natural and reasonable, and I am glad for them both that they have that, and it breaks my heart that I'm just not strong enough to give her the same and more.