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[Previous entry: "If You're Happy and You Know It"] [Next entry: "Field Report"]

08/04/2007: "Spinning My Wheels"

I can't sleep.

I knew it would come to this.

The morning Dessa was born, after the blood and stitches and phone calls, after I made sure everyone else had held her because everyone else had sacrificed something - sleep or sanity or both - after my mom and sister had gone home for a rest, after I was put back together but before I could feel my nether regions, after Dessa had her first bath, one of the nurses handed my naked but diapered daughter to me and had me hold her skin to skin.

It was the first totally focused bonding time we had and it was powerful. I took my baby in my arms, set her on my chest, felt her relax and I had the strongest, clearest understanding of a concept that I've ever had. I looked at my brand new baby and I thought, "I will never sleep again."

This wasn't meant to be funny. For once, I wasn't being snarky or trying to be clever. I wasn't thinking of cliche colicky sleepless nights or midnight feedings. It wasn't a matter of, "Oh Lordy! What did I get myself into? Here's my baby and babies mean nobody sleeps! Bummer!"

It wasn't cute. I was, frankly, overcome with terror. How could I ever sleep again? How could I let my guard down for one second? Anything could happen in one second. Anything and everything. I was completely unprepared for the hugeness of motherhood. It's bigger than anything.

The responsibility of it is overwhelming, sure. And the responsibility is a lot of the emotion - what if I screw up? What if I turn my attention to the cats, the dog, the dirty carpets, a rerun of the "X-Files" for just a second and Something Bad Happens? In my mind, Dess has fallen off every surface in the house including those I cannot reach without a ladder (so why is she on those surfaces in my mind? Because my mind is insane). And what if I'm not talking/reading/singing/ensuring enough tummy time? What should I be doing at any given time that I'm not doing? Wait! I can come up with at least five things! How will I know if I'm doing something, anything, everything wrong?

The only way to know is if, in the future, something is wrong with Dessa and then we can look in hindsight at how I screwed up... and I can't take that chance.

So there's that.

But it's more than Responsibility. It would be too easy to say that I worry only about The Responsibility of Motherhood. I do - who wouldn't? But the real thing I worry about, the thing that keeps me awake long after I should be asleep, the thing that makes it so that I can't nap no matter who has the baby...
it's a deep and complete fear that I'm not enough. That no matter what I do, no matter how good I am, how vigilant, how many books I read... it's never going to be enough.

And it's the knowledge that I'm right.

Because there never is enough. I have spent hours and hours and hours trying to come up with every contingency, every need, every action I should take to ensure a perfect life for my daughter. And I know I can't do it because it's humanly impossible to think of everything or to do everything. There is no perfect life. It's knowing that I brought this person into the world knowing that the world was completely imperfect and how could I subject this person who I love more than anything, ever, to that??

And so I'm awake in the dead of the night despite the fact that Dessa has been asleep for hours and I haven't gotten more than 4 hours sleep any night this week. I should be asleep. Any sane person would be asleep.

But I just can't stop thinking about this exchange from "Finding Nemo".

Marlin: I promised I'd never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That's a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.