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04082026 ode to the mets

Hello world! I’m a mother now. In fact, I have been for the last 9 months.

My world has evolved in every fathomable way. Some changes were quiet, many were large. All I know is that I am certainly not the same person I was a few months ago and there is no chance of reversion.

It’s also most definitely, mainly due to the lack of sleep. I think everyone, on a surface level, understands that having an infant corresponds to less sleep. The reality is that I’m quantitatively sleeping more than ever, but instead of all at once, my sleep is broken into tiny increments scattered throughout the day and I’m waking up every 2 hours on a great night to feed or comfort baby Mac. And that was before the 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 month sleep regressions which have brought it to a staggering hour increment. Ever since he turned 4 months old, I haven’t slept more than 2 hours at once at night. I’ve had many a sleepless nights before having a baby, but the difference was that they were one-off in nature. This has been a different beast and the first few weeks of adjusting to this new sleep cycle was brutal. It turns out I have a particularly difficult baby.

Yes, I’ve read all the Threads. Yes, we tried to sleep train. Yes, yes, yes, whatever you’re about to recommend, we have probably tried it. I have now deeply internalized that so much of a baby’s temperament is determined at birth, which is something I’ve noticed most non-parents cannot quite comprehend yet. There’s a lot of discourse around information asymmetry when it comes to parenting, in which a parent has the experience of being both childless and with child, and others only have the childless experience. As the first person in all of my friend groups to have a kid, this has become one of the largest thorns in my day-to-day life. “They won’t understand until they experience it for themselves” is cruelly true. You never realize how much time you really had pre-child, and I say this from the perspective of someone who worked so, so much. There was a time where I was working 3 jobs at once from 5am-11pm every night — one of which was manual labour in a produce terminal!! That pales in comparison to having a bad-sleeper baby because at least then, I had a safe haven of 6 hours of consecutive sleep. Then, I also had the freedom to walk away, to take a break, to have a weekend, to have any agency to do anything. For better and for worse, I am a prisoner of my baby who I love.

And although I find it hard to keep my composure nowadays around people’s lack of empathy, I know that I, pre-baby, also wouldn’t have been able to relate to myself in the way I need now.

Taking care of a baby is hard. But the days are easy. The weeks are less so. Counterintuitively, I find that taking each day one at a time makes it easier than naught. The weeks feel longer because baby care is a non-stop task. Even when I am (rarely) apart from him, I am thinking about him. All of this has been a beautiful test of human biology. Every part of me is wired to nurture my baby, and while it eats away at me, it also replenishes me with joys I’ve never felt before.

The feeling of having a newborn sleep on your chest is indescribable. The smell of him, the softness of his skin, the unspoken trust he has in me to care for him… there is nothing in this world that compares to it. When someone takes him away and he cries for me, I can’t help but feel joy in that moment that he wants me, even when I am exhausted and tired and sad, he wants me. But, I need to stop to discuss the newborn smell. As a self-proclaimed scent-head, nothing has come close to the warm vanilla milk scent that one’s own newborn emits for the first few weeks of their life. I have never smelled anything more addicting and delectable. I had no idea a scent like that could exist in our natural world. And there is no bigger dopamine hit than his audible, uncontrollable laughter. I am most at peace when he’s latched, grabbing my fingers with his miniature hands, letting a few smiles free in-between. Or when he wakes up from his night slumbers with his all-trusting eyes and grins while feeling the world around him; how he forgets that he woke up 8 times in the last 10 hour period is beyond me.

I’m exhausted, yet there is no doubt in my mind that I’ll do this again twice over to create our beautiful family for the rest of our lives. I don’t think it’ll get easier. In fact, I’m quite sure it’ll be more difficult considering how great Mac has been (other than his sleep). We’ve now taken him to San Francisco and Guelph twice now and have been able to introduce him to a large majority of our friends. He’s extremely socialized for a (then) 4 month old and gladly accepts being held by people who are not his parents. It’s been entertaining to see how our friends have reacted to him. Some are natural baby veterans, instinctively holding him exactly how Mac demands from caring for many other babies in their family. Many, without the privilege of having many babies in their lives, freak out at the first instance of a miniature fuss. I also find it amusing at how quickly most get bored of playing with a baby. After a few peekaboos and a lap around the house, Mac is almost always returned to our hands with our friends aghast on what to do next. It would be funnier if this wasn’t my reality everyday though.

It’s also incredible to see the progression of Mac’s abilities from when he was firstborn. I look at photos of him in the earliest days and barely recognize him despite being constantly aware of him everyday. I think it’s a biological defense for parents to erase the first two months of a baby’s life from memory because of how difficult it was. A piece of advice my coworker, who is also a recent father, proved its value in this case. He told me to log those first few weeks as he, too, had forgotten it and missed the gap in his brain. How sweet those first few weeks were… but not really. I read back on my journal and the day after day detail of the gruel and tiredness and hormonal plummets did not paint the warm picture I faintly have made up in my head, post-newborn haze. Yet, I also find myself mindlessly scrolling through my Google Photos wishing I had taken more videos of him as a new-newborn. Then I’m crying about how fast he’s grown already.

I’ve felt most relaxed in Michael’s childhood home and I’m again reminded about how lucky I am to have married into his family. Becoming a mom has brought unbelievable perspective onto my own childhood and a greater appreciation for Michael’s parents. Michael’s dad, in particular, must be in the 99th percentile of patience and nurturance. It’s evident with the way he endlessly plays with Mac as if it is a treat and not a burden (and although that’s the way it should be, it certainly doesn’t feel that way after months of broken sleep!). I saw Michael’s dad massage Mac’s tummy for hours when he was 7 weeks old because he thought it must’ve been uncomfortable. I hear Michael’s dad sing to Mac for hours, walking in circles around the house in one-sided conversation with unfettered enthusiasm, touting him “Zhen Bang (most brilliant)!” in every moment. But what meant the most to me was during my early postpartum days, Michael’s dad was stubborn to a fault when it came to waking me up for Mac to eat. He insisted on me resting when the easiest solution was a quick feed. I never slept more peacefully than when I knew Mac was with Michael’s dad, the best hands possible.

This, put in shocking contrast to my own upbringing, has made me much less empathetic to my own parents. In fact, I think my respect for my parents has somehow gone to the negatives. The main difference here is that Michael’s parents had children selflessly. I feel very confident about my mothering because I truly believe it is impossible for me to be worse than what I endured growing up. There’s something beautifully twisted about how earnestly I believe in that statement, but it has given me the forbidden-pre to become the mother I’ve dreamed about having.

Yet, I feel so much shame all the time. I feel so much shame. I feel it when I wake up, when I go to bed, when I occupy space, when I exist, I feel so much shame. I feel like I have lost much of what has made me, me. The Arielle I was before would have been a better mother to Mac. She was so thoughtful. She was so creative. She was so endlessly infatuated with life. I don’t feel those emotions as much anymore. I feel tired. And sad. And most of all, I feel shame.

I miss her. I keep combing through my old journals and I know she’s there, and that’s me, my truest self, and yet she’s so far.

I’m back in my country hometown and I’ve been so lonely. I see other people: childhood friends, family, a lot. They see me a lot. But they see me for who I was and not who I’ve become. All of these people from my past remind me of who I used to be, and which versions of myself I am deeply ashamed of. The terrible part about being in Calgary is this constant expectation that people don’t change. When I am here, I follow the ghost of an angsty, mean teenager that never quite understood what it meant to life a good life. The joys of being selfless. Past selves are hard to erase no matter how much I feel disconnected from her. I feel so much shame of who I was and now it feels as if she is permanently etched onto me despite how much I try.

It’s disheartening. Sometimes, I try to be the girl I loved. And, I glow and glow but it’s a small, enclosed space and I smolder as soon as I start and, if you blinked in that instance, you wouldn’t have even know there was a light at all if it wasn’t for smelling the smoke.

I keep wondering if this is because I am in Calgary. Or was this always bound to happen? And I have to continuously believe that it is the former despite every fibre of my being that reminds me that, despite all the shame, I can never erase the past. I am stuck in a perpetual negative feedback loop where I am beginning to believe I am still her — or worse, she has always been there with me and I just got good at covering her up.

And it’s there when I parent Mac. It’s the moments when I see glimpses of my parents in myself and I feel shame, shame, shame. It’s realizing that my parents, too, were once young and discussed what “breaking the cycle” would look like when they became parents. And then they forgot. Or maybe they didn’t, and they just succumbed to it like I feel myself unconsciously doing.

So, I need to figure out how to grow older in my childhood town, in my childhood circles, in my childhood home. In many ways it is beautiful to spend your entire life with the same people. There is no need for explanations when they have experienced all the context alongside you. We are bounded by the sheer fact that we have grown up together and have become our own distinct people. In many other ways it is terrible. In every other place, I have been given the luxury of starting anew. With old friends, I need to prove that I have changed drastically in our comparatively short time apart when they only remember the person I was when I left. Most of all, I need to find the unwavering conviction that people really can change. And if I believe that I can, why can’t others too?

I must admit that I am quite sad. I love being Mac’s mother, but I am drowning and it feels selfish to feel when I have someone to tend for, someone who needs me to live. I am suffocating in a pool of shame, insecurity, mourning… but never regret. I have never once felt regret for the life I have lived, despite the shame, despite all the hurt I have dealt and felt, I have only become this person through it all, and she is going to find it in her to be the mother Mac needs to become the best, kind, all-giving person he can be.

If you have friends in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, please introduce me to them. I am going to be her again.

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