Some Positivity

Both on Facebook and here, I tend to write a lot about the dirty side of parenting. This is both because I am generally a negative person and because I'm in what is by all accounts a pretty difficult stage of parenthood with a baby who is decidedly on the fussy end of the temperament spectrum.

A few friends, both parents and non-parents, have told me that they appreciate my thoughts on how parenting can suck. The rosy, unicorn-magic picture of motherhood tends to get a lot more play, and frankly that picture gets old, especially when you don't feel the magic as a mom or worry you won't when you have kids. Motherhood is isolating enough without feeling like you're the only one who is missing something that everyone else seems to have figured out.

That said, there's something to be said for some positivity among the "realness," and that's what I wanted to write here.

Motherhood has been the deepest, most real thing I've ever done. The love I feel for Amelia is mind-blowingly, soul-crushingly huge. I'm amazed by every bit of her, from her little turned-up nose to her long toes, to her grey and brown eyes, to the tiny red birthmark near her left elbow, to the veins in her forehead that come together to form a heart. The love and terror and joy and pain I feel with her is deeper, stranger and more foreign to me than anything I've ever felt before.

Even when Amelia screams, even when liking her feels difficult and exhausting, I never lose sight for a second how lucky we are to have her with us, healthy and increasingly happy. Lucky that my pregnancy was not only easy to come by but completely uneventful. Lucky that we get to experience the intensity of our love for her. Parenthood isn't for everyone, certainly, but we are so, so happy that she joined our family.

Amelia made us into parents, added light and love and noise to our home, added a leg to our journey that is unlike any that came before it. With every fiber, tendon, nerve, bone, cell in my body I love her and want to give everything I am to her.

So there you go. Some real positivity among the dirty, messy reality of parenting. I hope you are all having a lovely weekend.