Too Soon

Every day Gabe gets bigger and older and more grown-up.  And every day I get sadder.

I noticed this trend sometime during the last year.  He was no longer a baby, no longer a toddler.  He was hardly a preschooler and was turning into a boy.  A real little boy with independence and humor and curiosity.  He had moved beyond the crying and the “whys” and the hitting (mostly).  It was an unavoidable observation.  For the longest time, calling him my baby made him my baby.  But not any longer.  I call him my baby because he’ll always be my baby, but he’s most certainly a baby no more.

And I?  Keep getting sadder.

For the longest time I thought it was because with each passing day his lack of a sibling grew more obvious.  His alone-ness was more pronounced.  And it was.  For me. For entirely unselfish reasons, I want a sibling for Gabe.  I always have, save for the first two months after his birth when I alternately experienced new-mother-infatuation (i.e. could never imagine sharing my love) and new-mother-sleep-deprivation (i.e. could never imagine voluntarily doing something that would deprive myself of so much sleep).  My husband grew up with a sibling and I grew up with several. It is a relationship unlike any other, one without which I would feel incomplete.  I want to give that gift to my son and to our family.

I realized, however, that this sadness has a more selfish root.  It was only recently that I was ready to admit it to myself.  It is also responsible for my quietness here (except for my septoplasty stuff).  I’ve hardly been ready to think it, let alone write about it.

The root?  I’m not ready to be done being a mom.

I know – he’s only 5.  There are miles to go before we sleep, and even then I’ll still be his mother and he my baby.  But there’s a point at which the “mom stuff” becomes less needed, or at least needed differently.  It’s already happening to a small degree.

And I’m not ready.

When Tahd and I decided to start our family we did so for the “noble” reason – we wanted to share our love and our lives with a child.  Or more accurately some children.  But for both of us – me especially – becoming a parent meant the fulfillment of a personal dream, a dream I’d held since childhood.  I can’t begin to recount the endless hours I spent playing house, the gaggle of dolls/children I dragged along behind me.  For me, becoming a mother was a dream.  In fact, it was The Dream.  I remember a “School Memories” book my mother purchased for me when I began kindergarten.  Each year, I filled out an identical questionairre to chronicle the changes in myself, my life, and my interests.  At the bottom of the page was a list of potential roles I might have as an adult.  The one I checked most faithfully?  Mother.  For the others, I rotated between things like teacher and flight attendant and nurse.  We’ll have to talk about gender stereotypes another day.

In some senses, I think parenthood is an inherently selfish dream.  To become a parent I must, by definition, have a child.  There’s no way around it.  It’s a different need than the way a doctor needs patients or  a teacher needs students.  A doctor needs patients but can still be a doctor if nobody gets sick.  The doctor doesn’t have to go around a la Tonya Harding clubbing people’s knees to get patients.  But the woman?   She must have a child to be a mother.  She must physically create and bring into the world another person (excepting for adoption).  So to me, the dream of parenthood can have some selfish undertones.  And that’s okay with me.  That’s the way the system works.  I get it, and I think there’s enough love and maturity in the equation to make the experience positive for everyone.  But at it’s root, the dream of parenthood contains an element of selfishness, and it is this selfishness I’m struggling with now.

I struggle especially because when we decided to start out family I had read it could take many months of trying have success.  Being the planner I am, I felt we should start slightly before we were quite ready so that when we were ready we’d have the system down to a science.  Also, given some of my former health issues there was some thought that I might struggle to get – or stay – pregnant, and I didn’t want to feel the rush of the self-imposed clock.

Imagine our shock when our first month of trying led to my very first (and second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth) positive pregnancy tests!  We were ecstatic.

And I was overwhelmed.

And giddy.

And scared.

It is regretful to me now how torn I actually was.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want the baby.  I did.  Greatly.  I was just so surprised at how quickly it happened.  I thought we had more time.  It happened before I could even imagine what it would be like for it to happen.  So I felt nervous and a bit ambivalent and conflicted.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t.  If I had known it might be the only time, I think I would have felt differently.

I feel the exact same way now as I look forward.  Except now I know what it feels like when your dream feels like it’s happening quickly.  I look at the previous five years and gasp with a little bit of horror because I can’t fathom how five years can go so quickly.  I’m not ready to leave it all behind, to wholly become the things a mother of only school-aged children must be.  I thought I had longer.  I thought I had more sleepless nights and more diapers and more chances to nurse a wee one off to sleep.  I thought I had more first steps and more first words and more swings in the baby swing.  I thought there’d be more.

It’s not so much that he’s growing quickly – it’s that this stage of my life is ending more quickly than I had ever dreamed.  It’s like the apex of my childhood dreams has happened, and now it’s ending sooner than I thought it would end.  I spent 26 years hoping and dreaming and planning for the time in my life when I could become a mother.  It took several years into our marriage before it finally dawned on me that I could have a baby any time I (more technically we) wanted.  I had the power to make my dream come true!  It was a magical, exhilarating realization.  Growing up, I loved babies more than anything and had always planned to have several that could be all my own.

Realizing that it was an illusion all along – this power to make my dream come true?  Depressing.  As time marches on and I more fully internalize the fact that what I’d always hoped for may never happen and I’m powerless to change it, I get sadder.

It’s like when Gabe was younger and we were outside blowing bubbles.  He’d want to catch the bubbles and then take them over to me (or inside to Tahd) to show us.  But the bubbles didn’t last that long.  He wanted to hold them longer but they were too fragile to survive his frantic excitement or the edges of the breeze.  They’d burst, and along with it so would his enthusiasm.

I wanted to hold this longer, these early mothering years.  To experience them more fully.  To adapt and adjust to life while holding the “bubble. “  But in my naivete, I didn’t realize how fragile it really was and it burst, almost before I knew I held it.

It just feels too soon.