After my first baby was born, I felt like a Mac truck hit me more than anything I would describe as “wonderful.” My Wise Woman Mama Friend calls this phase “The Tunnel.”
First, there is an immediate post-partum adjustment period. Night sweats, losing hair, arguments with your partner, crying every day. You feel like you’re going nuts; like you’re existing in some alternate universe that apparently everyone knew about, but no one dared tell you about.
The Tunnel is this all-consuming feeling that life as you knew it will never again be possible. All of a sudden a tiny being is completely dependent on you, and it dawns on you that your every waking and non-waking moment will be devoted to taking care of this being for the foreseeable future.
Want to read a book? Sorry – no dice. Gotta’ watch the babe. Go out to a movie? Not unless you want to miss half of it. Dinner out? Let’s all just have a big laugh together.
You live in The Tunnel until your child is old enough to play on their own for more than 10 minutes without sticking anything in their mouth. You must follow them around making sure they don’t choke on any number of invisible, never before seen things – carpet fuzz, a stray piece of cat food, unidentifiable, microscopic schmutz. In your inexorable quest to be pregnant, never once did you imagine your days would consist of this.
The mind-numbing boredom is alleviated by moments of super-elation when your baby meets a major developmental milestone such as rolling over, pulling up on something or those much discussed first steps. You call everyone you know telling them that indeed, your child is actually alive and growing. The moments are like little slivers of light that make it through the cracks of The Tunnel.
My daughter was almost two the first time I was able to read more than a page in a book outside of our nursing sessions. We were playing with chalk outside. For the first time, she was actually drawing with it instead of eating it. Slowly, I picked up my book. Trying to appear nonchalant, I started reading, keeping one eye on her and one on the book. When I made it past two pages, it hit me that the end of The Tunnel was in sight.
Later, I emailed my Wise Woman Mama Friend. “I read two whole pages in a book today!”
She was ecstatic for me. “It just gets better,” she said. “Give it a couple of months and you can read a whole chapter.”
A whole chapter. Chalk in all its colors looked lovely. If I could read more than two pages in a sitting, I could be part of civilization. I could think and contemplate ideas. I could feel like myself again.
Eventually it happened. My daughter was playing with rocks one day, lining them up, making piles, and transferring them from one place to another. When she pulled me over to admire her industriousness, I realized I had read past a chapter.
Only an immeasurable two years, and The Tunnel was behind me. I waved it good-bye, not wanting to return for the life of me. I’m sure that would change with pregnancy hormones raging through me. But for now, if I really want to remember those tiny babe early days of my daughter, I have pictures. And a little microscopic schmutz saved with them.
Top Tip #10
Never ask your partner to "watch" the kids. A kinder way to ask for their help is to say it's their time with the kids. As in, "Sunday from 1-5 will be your special time with the kids. I'll be out at the bookstore.” As you can see that’s hard to say no to . . . exactly my point!