I should write a newsletter soon

a bit of a brain dump and my first post back after giving birth

“I should write a newsletter soon,” I said to some friends over text, moments before opening Substack in a browser on my phone to look at my drafts and see if any were inspiring (because you can’t write posts from the app??? Hello Substack fix this/make us an app?!) At that moment my 5-week-old baby (now 7 weeks old) was asleep on my chest after eating, I had just started antibiotics for mastitis the day before, and my husband was in bed snoring next to us (his alarm was about to go off, and he’ll ignore it for 15 minutes, thankfully it’s one of the more pleasant sounding alarms). The house is a mess.

I’ve let about two and a half weeks pass since that initial thought. I still have a napping baby on me, but I’ve gotten better at leveraging the baby carrier at home so he’s suspended in that. I’ve (knock wood) haven’t had any other breastfeeding issues, and my husband is awake. The house is still a mess. I’ve been cleared for exercise and went ahead and got my first IUD. So I guess one could say “writing a newsletter soon” hasn’t been a priority, but it has been something I’ve wanted to do, even if I don’t want to look at any of those drafts and don’t really have anything specific I want to say.

So far, parenthood (and childbirth, that’s a story for another day though) has been a big lesson in releasing expectations on what I thought I would want to do or feel about something and being okay with making a split decision in the moment. It’s been a reminder to slow down and not to sweat the small stuff, and a realization that more often than not, I’ll find myself sitting on the couch at 8pm thinking ‘where did the day go? did we do anything today???’

I’ve had to rethink what ‘being productive’ means to me. I thought there’d be all this time to accomplish all of this stuff while on leave. Now, I try to think of just one thing I want to get done on any given day. Sometimes it’s ‘do the dishes’, or ‘go for a walk’ or 'fold the laundry’. Sometimes it’s simpler, like ‘take a nap’ or ‘shower’ or ‘watch a full episode of Suits, uninterrupted’ or ‘brush my teeth before noon’.

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s also the most natural thing I’ve ever done, as well as the most rewarding. It’s a feeling I can’t quite put into words, and all of the parenting books, blogs, and advice could not have even begun to prepare me for what these past almost two months would look like. I’ve had moments where I’ve thought ‘why didn’t anyone tell me?????’ But the reality is, they couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have understood.

Being a mother has quickly become the most important part of my identity, which is something I thought I didn’t want to happen but now I don’t see how there’s any other way. I notice a shift in how I navigate the world, in how I show up for myself and my family, and my priorities. I thought that this would mean that I would’ve lost a part of myself, but I’m realizing it just means that who I am is evolving.

This is, as expected, a post without a purpose other than to get back to writing. To share a glimpse of what life has been like as I figure out this new reality. It’s a short one, but it’s just me reaching out and saying “I’m still here, I’m doing well, and maybe you’ll hear more from me soon”.