Magic 8 Ball Mind

I had a baby but sadly no creative renaissance

As I sit here, sixteen weeks after giving birth, I wonder how it is possible that I have not yet done the one specific task I had identified for completion during this maternity leave: selecting and printing a handful of photos to finally complete my first child’s baby book (two and a half years after the baby). This is the kind of task that wallows in everyday life, that always finds itself in last place and therefore sits for years on the fringes. But maternity leave! That seems like the perfect time to get this kind of thing done. Sure, I’m tired, sure, I can’t predict my schedule, sure, I’m always interruptible, but in sixteen weeks surely, surely, I can do this one simple thing, this thing that will take a cumulative two hours of time. Just two hours out of 2,688 hours. Surely I can do that.

But I haven’t, I can’t. And this is the thing about caring for a baby that feels almost impossible to communicate, something recognizable to anyone who has done it but still baffling to me: what happens to time during the twenty-four hour, never-ending cycle of care, how it disappears like a magic trick—poof—and it’s gone. It is impossible to explain how 2,688 hours can just slide through your fingers like water, how they can spiral down the drain so smoothly, and how you can find yourself sixteen weeks later with not a single additional photo selected for that photo book.

Things are going well here, as well as you could hope for with an infant. She has no major health problems. She eats and sleeps fairly regularly. There are times, when it was a good night and I manage a nap, when I even feel rested. But I am not, how do I put this, doing anything. Or rather, I am doing endless caretaking acts—feeding, and rocking, and moving the baby from place to place, and laundry, and occasionally dishes, and in the in-between times I’m managing a walk, or watching a show, or listening to an audiobook. I am also doing this mostly alone, talking mostly to a sweet tiny human who doesn’t talk back. Sometimes she catches a glimpse of my face and we lock eyes and she smiles like she’s never seen anything more amazing in her entire little life, and I forget where I am. It is hard a lot of the time and easy a lot of the time. Is this making any sense? It doesn’t make any sense to me either. And that’s the total mind-melting, incomprehensible, frustratingly indescribable, and also wonderful thing about infants. Time with them has no goal and operates in a strange nonlinear fashion, and you are doing so much but nothing gets done, and sometimes they smile at you.

And then there’s your brain

Ann Friedman recently called it “Swiss cheese brain.” I’ve heard it referred to as a sieve. The postpartum brain is sleep deprived, awash in hormones, and immersed in this parallel universe of circular time, and so also operates, to insert my own metaphor, somewhat like a Magic 8 ball. My brain now takes a very long time to come up with the answer, often gets stuck between two answers, and when answers are finally provided they are usually generic and often only tangentially related to the question.

I have heard tales of creative rushes during the postpartum period, of women who ride the energy of human creation to power other creative acts. It is a beautiful idea, and one I would of course hope to experience. Make a human AND have a personal creative renaissance!? Yes, please. But alas, this is very, very far from my current state of affairs, in which it has taken me three weeks to write this post (I had to update the time since birth referenced in the first paragraph three different times to remain truthful about the sheer number of hours that have passed with no baby book progress—fourteen weeks, fifteen weeks, sixteen weeks...).

So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s hard to write in this state, but I think I’ll try, though I don’t know why I would, because sentences come out very clunky and weird, and I am wondering if they will ever come very easily again, because right now I am very prone to grammar issues, and using the word “very” too often, and writing massive run-on sentences. And so we arrive at another great metaphor for my postpartum experience, one big run-on sentence. She eats, she sleeps, she smiles and I bounce her, I eat while she’s sleeping, I try to stretch but she wakes up right when I start and I feel frustrated, but also this is my job right now, so I go get her and she eats, and then she’s happy and does tummy time, then I scroll on my phone, then I remember I’m trying not to do that and put it on the table and I lie on the bed next to her, then I try to fold some clothes, then she gets fussy, then…yeah. I’ll stop.

So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to try and embrace state of affairs, I’m going to try and be OK with the fact that this period of wiggly time and Magic 8 ball mind is still going on. This is a very hard project for someone like me, someone whose wits are so core to her identity, someone who gets stuff done, full stop. I will try to let go of the fact that in the previous sentence I yet again failed to select a better adverb than “very,” and I will not go back and change it, because if I do I just might make it to seventeen weeks without finishing this thing.

I’m going to try showing up at the writing desk when I can. I’m going to let this space be a little less polished, a little more wiggly, and a little more postpartum than it typically has been, because that’s where I’m at. And I’m trying to be very OK with it.

Life fertilizer

Before I get any further, I need to address my paid subscribers. You all are THE BEST. Seriously, thank you for your continued support as I grow my family.

I will be starting a series of paid posts full of “life fertilizer.” A little loose, a little dreamy, these are the raw ideas and thoughts that will eventually get processed into more polished writing, projects, and personal philosophy. They’ll inevitably include personal updates and life stuff, and my hope is that we will both feel nourished by this series. The first post is coming next week, so I hope to see you in the comment sections soon.

I’m curious…

…About you! What’s a life update you can share in 5 words or fewer?

Also curious if you’ve experienced a phase of life that felt like one big run-on sentence? What was it like?

That’s all for today, folks! Feeling a lot of love and gratitude towards you as I write this. I’ll meet you in the comments!

—Rachel