Life With A Newborn: Remembering The Early Days

It’s the moment you spend nine months dreaming about.  You have visions of yourself soft and glowing in your new role as a mother.  You’re dressed in cozy cream colored loungewear, your hair perfectly in place, as you sit rocking your babe while looking at them adoringly as you sing soft lullabies and coo words of affection. 

These dreams are as much influenced by social media as your own dreams.  If you’ve looked at anything related to babies, your feed is surely filled with cute women dressed in brand name clothing looking like they just stepped out of “hair and makeup,” holding their little cherubs close.  The lighting is perfect so everyone has a healthy, rosy, glow.  

And you bring your baby home with expectations held high, and then that “Instagram vs. Reality” moment hits.  (Even those of us that had our children before Instagram had moments where reality surpassed the dream.)

You stop to look at yourself and realize you are wearing the same pajamas you wore yesterday.  Pajamas with milk crusted circles on front, where leaking breasts have left a mark reminding everyone exactly where they are located.  Not that you could hide them anyway – they’ve now doubled in size, making you wonder why you ever prayed for bigger boobs when you were twelve.

Your hair is in the messiest of messy buns, you’re sitting on a mega sized pad soaked in witch hazel, and you’re so tired you can’t remember which day it is.  To be honest you’d have to look outside to see if it’s day or night, and you’ve become more focused on the color and consistency of poop then you ever could have imagined.

You hold your little angel who is vacillating between peaceful sleep and red faced screaming, and just when they stop to look at you lovingly and your heart grows a tiny bit more, you realize they were simultaneously pooping from ankle to ears.

And still you find yourself blissfully happy.  Happier than you ever thought you could be.  Oh, it’s hard.  In the moment it is hard.  In the moment it is exhausting.  And in the moment it is the most pure and beautiful joy.  Sometimes with a little sadness mixed in.  You don’t always know why, but there is sadness too, but it’s there. Just below the surface of happy.  Because new motherhood brings with it an entire rainbow of every emotion.  

As a grandmother watching my children as new parents, I can remember those moments too.  I remember how when I was in the middle of the newborn seasons, it could feel so big.  So long.  So overwhelming.  But as a grandmother, I can also remember that the newborn season is truly gone in a blink.  

When you ask most mothers even a few months after giving birth, they will remember the newborn season with a twinkle in their eye.  They remember it was hard, but they will usually remember fondly those early days of getting to know their baby.

It is such a huge blessing that God lets the tough parts of childbirth and the newborn season fade in our memories, while also letting the beautiful, sweet parts shine. 

By the time you hit the grandparent season of life, I can say the tough parts fade enough that I can look back with only love and delight, while also remembering enough about the early days to know to offer help wherever I can.  To remember well that my kids need someone to rock the baby so they can shower and put on fresh clothes, to prepare a hot meal so they can eat more than cereal and cold pizza, to clean up, walk the dog, do anything to make the newborn season just a little less difficult and a wee bit more shiny and spectacular.  

Because life with a newborn is a magical time.  A lovely, charming, hard, beautiful season of growth for everyone – the baby, the parents, and the grandparents.