butterflylike network

(Joining for the first time - because I’m finally awake enough!)

small tender raindrops -

a mother weighed down with milk

instead of fireworks

___

Also known as:

We were going to drive to a friend’s house to watch the fireworks by the beach. But it’s rainy and there are thunderstorms coming. So we’re staying home instead.

And:

This picture is now a week old but she is still just as pretty: the girl with the 80’s-style baby mohawk. She’s going to be six weeks old on Sunday, and in our town the fireworks took place on Wednesday since it’s assumed that everyone leaves for actual 4th of July. But since the weather kind of sucks… lots of people didn’t.

I’ve been evaluating how I am, since six weeks postpartum is also when the doctor will evaluate me. I have to confess that so far, I’m rather well. I find my baby charming and being a mother exciting. Sure, I’ll have to look for a whole new career now, in six months or a year, I’m thinking, provided money doesn’t become an issue before that. I’ve also been trying to see how I feel about this: I finished my Ph.D. and straightaway got pregnant and removed myself from the academic job market (which I’d been dreading anyway). And I don’t feel pretty much anything about it. I’m excited about having so much time with my child, and I’m excited about having lots of stuff to read in off moments, including the random research article here and there. Not at all on a regular basis, mind you. I keep running into people, old friends I’d lost touch with or people I knew who’d left academia before me, and they’re all happy and still living around here. I consider this a sign, and a positive one.

I know I’m not really talking about my baby but she and starting over are intertwined for me. And I feel okay about both.

The downside (because there is always a down side): my recovery has been slow. I think I’m good at faking it because people I spend time with generally have no idea. I don’t think it’s being tired - although I am, like any new mother. It’s that my body is very slow in getting back even half the strength it used to have. This is the only thing I get frustrated with: that I still feel so heavy and slow, that there’s still bleeding and my belly’s rather largish and I can’t bear the thought of my body doing anything just for pleasure, if you know what I mean. I feel triple bad when people, entirely well-meaning people, tell me that they’d recovered so much faster than I, in just a few weeks they were up and about, flying to Europe, you name it. That’s not been my experience at all: it’s only this week that, finally, just a few days ago, I began to feel like I really might get back to normal one day.