Motherhood is an adventure. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to continue to live your life while simultaneously providing twenty-four hour care to a helpless infant. Truly a mind-boggling brain-teaser. However, I’ve learned a few things over the past two months about prioritization, multi-tasking, and efficiency.

Reading – It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I could nurse while reading. Audiobooks may also be an option, albeit one I haven’t utilized yet.

Writing – Also something I can do while nursing or holding a baby, somewhat. A notebook for new stories, or my e-reader for editing make it possible, though somewhat tricky. The hardest part is balancing the notebook on the arm of the chair.

Housework and other activities – Two words: BABY SWING! Truly, my productivity has skyrocketed since acquiring this indispensible piece of baby furniture. It makes everyone happy.

Of course in another few months I’ll have to figure out a completely new system as his routines change and he goes through different developmental stages.

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Shortly after my last post, I went into labor. After a (relatively) short and easy labor, my son made his first appearance in the world. He’s healthy, if smallish, utterly adorable, and definitely a bit precocious in the development department. He’s also one of the most calm babies ever, which is nice for a first-time mother. He is now almost three weeks old, and I’m just starting to figure out my routine again. (As evidenced by the fact that I began writing this post two and a half weeks ago).

So far, motherhood has been like nothing I’ve experienced before. It’s terrifying. Exhausting. Frustrating. It’s also been completely special and wonderful in a weird way.

I’m continuously terrified that something will go wrong with the baby. Scared of his suffocating, or freezing, or getting too hot. I worry that he’ll eat more milk than I can produce, or that the formula I have to supplement him with sometimes will harm him. I’m scared I’ll do something wrong, and totally mess him up for life. I even worry that somehow I’ll drop him or he’ll flop around and hurt himself (newborns are really unbelievably floppy…).

I dream of one day sleeping deeply and for longer than a few too-short hours. My little Bookelet is a pretty good sleeper generally, but he prefers to be held, and he won’t sleep in his own bassinet at night yet. He prefers sleeping with his mummy, which means I don’t sleep very deeply at night as I’m constantly conscious of what’s happening with him.

My son utterly refuses to breast-feed for food, though he will occasionally do so when he’s not particularly hungry. He likes the comfort of it, and it will usually put him to sleep, but if he’s hungry he simply fights the breast until he’s good and angry. Since I really had my heart set on breast-feeding, this is only the first of what I’m sure will be many frustrations. It’s especially frustrating to keep him fully fed as he appears to have two hollow legs and possibly hollow arms as well (at this rate, it’ll cost a small fortune to keep him fed as a teenager) and I have to pump almost every bit of milk he consumes.

Yet, through the haze of exhausted, frustrating terror, I adore my son. I would do anything for him, and nothing brightens my day so much as when he grins up at me despite the development charts saying he shouldn’t be smiling yet. Motherhood is truly indescribable. I fully understand how some women can become overwhelmed, depressed, and even despondent. The random weepiness is no picnic, and I occasionally feel overwhelmed despite all the loving help I’ve gotten and continue to get from everyone around me. But I no longer truly fear post-partum depression for myself. My heart is too full of love and delight in the little life that’s just beginning to be overshadowed by darker emotions, no matter how wonky my hormones get or how exasperating he can be.

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I’m currently waiting on two relatively major events. First, my due date is rapidly approaching (about 11 days) so I am at the stage of pregnancy where labor could literally begin at any moment.

*Pauses hopefully waiting for a contraction to start….*

*Sigh*

Anyway, the second event is I am still waiting to hear back about the AW Spec Fic Anthology and my submitted story. My story made it through the first round of rejections, and the rest of us are now waiting on the edge of our chairs to find out who made it into the final volume and who didn’t. Again, we could literally hear any day at this point.

*Checks email in-box for millionth time.*

Needless to say, this double dose of hopeful waiting is making me horrifically restless. I’m not good at waiting patiently, and I am especially not good at waiting patiently when there is no certain deadline. Not being able to count down to a specific day makes waiting that much harder. I do have a few tricks to try and reduce my waiting-for-something jitters, however.

1. Writing. Sometimes, writing is a great way to take one’s mind off the waiting. I haven’t been doing as much writing as I should, but I have been doing a bit, as well as other associated activities, such as planning and research for various stories.
2. Reading. Reading always takes my mind off of things. My doctor even asked if I would be reading while I was in labor, to which I naturally replied “You bet your britches!” (Ok, I didn’t actually say that, but I wish I had). After all, I’ll need something to take my mind off of my body trying to turn itself inside out.
3. Nail-biting. A time-honored response to waiting to hear about submission-status!
4. Shopping and Housework. Shopping for baby-things and organizing the nursery of course, not those boring daily house-hold tasks or grocery shopping. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to run out of things I could possibly need for my son (I’ve started stockpiling diapers now) and the nursery is about as set up and ready to receive a newborn as it is possible for us to make it. Which only leaves…
5. Whining on the Internet. Really, the best time-waster and waiting tactic available to either a writer OR an expectant mother!

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Today I sent out my first story submission in well over a year. A few weeks ago I saw the announcement of the Absolute Write Speculative Fiction Anthology over on the AW Forums, and a day or two later had a story idea to go with it. I wrote, edited and submitted it faster than I’ve ever written anything else. Now it’s just about the waiting. And that’s scary. If I was a nail-chewer, I’d be down to the second knuckle already. As it is, I think I’ll probably just give up on sleeping instead.

On the other hand, it’s also terribly exciting. I feel better about myself, both in general and as a writer than I have in weeks, or even months. I finished something, and I had a lot of fun doing it too! Even if the story doesn’t make it into the AW Anthology, that’s a big accomplishment. I will be utterly thrilled if my first story published for pay is from AW because that site has become my favorite internet hang-out and a source of some very good friends. But I won’t be heart-broken if I get a rejection from them either, since there are always other places to send stories.

Most importantly, this has me excited to be writing again, and already laying plans for polishing other completed stories and starting new ones. It may even lead me back to finishing a novel, polishing it, and sending it out.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll sit over here and work out how to train my dog to monitor my email while I sleep.

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I don’t normally read self-help type books, or advice books, or indeed generally any sort of non-fiction other than in very narrow fields such as Egyptology and Classical Studies. So, when my mother gave me a book on motherhood that she’d found in a bargain-bin, I sort of shrugged and smiled internally, and figured I would never finish reading it. But in order to not appear ungrateful, I sat down and began to read the first few pages of Mashka’s book This Is Not How I Thought it Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to get the Lives we Want Today. The tone of Mashka’s prose is conversational, rather like a chat with a friend over coffee, but at the same time she raises important questions about motherhood, fatherhood and social pressures.

The book crystalized and articulated a lot of the worries I’ve been having about motherhood in the last few weeks as my due date approaches. I worry that I won’t be able to cope, or something will go wrong with my brain chemistry, or that my husband won’t think to pitch in. All of these are actually fairly groundless fears (except possibly the post-partum depression one, but even then everyone around me knows I fear that and is on the lookout for warning signs). Still, the fear of the unknown and the high expectations put on new mothers has me far more worried about the part after the birth rather than the birth itself. Fear is not exactly the emotion I want my son to engender, so I appreciate having my fears articulated so expertly by Ms. Mashka. Having a fear out in the open where we can look at it helps us treat that fear as a problem to be solved rather than something to hide from. Best of all, This Is Not How I Thought it Would Be ends on a positive note of encouragement. Not encouragement to forget our fears, that it would “come naturally” or something like that. Instead, Maschka encourages her readers to remember to cut ourselves some slack, don’t be afraid to ask for help, and we CAN solve our problems.

So far, pregnancy has not been how I thought it would be. I expect motherhood will confound my expectations as well. I just hope it confounds in mostly pleasant ways.

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Generally speaking, I’m never shy about sharing what I’ve written with anyone and everyone. I’m a writer, and I like to have people read what I write. I’m not even afraid to share first drafts, so long as the people I’m sharing with understand that it is not (yet) my best work. Sometimes, however, I am embarrassed about something I’ve written. These bits of embarrassing writing are not stories that I consider terrible (those can be made better, after all) or eviscerated first drafts still in need of a tune-up.

Dear Reader, I’m ashamed of my poetry and songs. I’m not a poet. I don’t write poetry. That just isn’t me. Except of course, when it the urge comes upon me, and I find myself jotting down a verse or six in my Magic Writer Notebook(tm). Afterwards, I’m usually fairly happy with the result, despite it never being particularly technically correct. Nevertheless, I’m almost always afraid to share it afterwards.

Maybe I’m afraid of being laughed at, but who cares? There’s tons of bad poetry in the world, so who cares if I contribute a little more. As long as I am happy with the result, that’s all that matters, right? Yet, somehow, I’m still ashamed of my little bits of lyricism. I think part of my problem  may be that I don’t self-identify as a “poet” (whatever that may mean). Since I’m not a poet, I can’t write poetry, right? That’s nonsense of course, but the conviction is lodged in my subconscious. I have a similar hang-up about visual art. I “can’t draw,” and am “not an artist,” so I am extremely wary of showing my drawings to others.

Perhaps this is simply a case of poetry and drawing being something I do for my own private entertainment, with no particular interest in studying it extensively in order to get better. Whereas fiction and non-fiction writing are things I do for my own entertainment but with the desire to improve with every line I write. With the former, I need no feedback except from myself, whereas with the later feedback is my road-map to improvement.

Of course, I could also just be crazy. One never knows.

Currently Reading: Brother Cadfael’s Penance by Ellis Peters

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