which isn't to say...

Which isn't to say that it's all sunshine and lollypops, especially lately. I'm frustrated on so many levels, frustrated from never getting any decent sleep, a situation which seems to be worsening by the day. Frustrated with my chubby belly, with inches that have sprung from nowhere and refuse to go away, with my lack of fashion sense in general of late - hell yesterday I didn't even manage to brush my teeth until the evening... I saw a woman walk past me today, wearing a tiny sylph of white dress (white? hah!) with little shorts underneath, tanned legs, high heels, hair blown out, makeup on, fashionable handbag. I caught sight of myself in a mirror, hat on, scraggle of hair escaping its braid (braid? I never thought so either...) plain jane shirt, jeans of a bigger size than I've ever owned and my ubiquitous running shoes and backpack (yes, I said backback) and I wondered to myself how I had gone from her to me in just these few short months. I felt a sadness descending on me that I haven't been able to shake - wondering if I am just watching my own slow spiral into middle aged mediocrity. I feel like I used to be pretty. I used to be successful. I used to be...something. Of course, now I am a mother and it is wonderful in a myriad of ways, but I still do long for some pieces of my old self. I wonder where went the person I had so long been, filled with ambition and dreams and fire - where now I could be a candidate on 'What Not to Wear' (please, please, don't dare nominate me...)
Aside from that, there's the usual issues - trying to be a good mother and wife, trying to salvage my sexuality and my career ambitions and wind them together with my desire to be a great mother. Nahanni has been such a wonderful baby and I felt terrible this weekend - I really was losing my patience. Friday night I slept so horribly and she was up so often as she has been of late (although she has also slept through the whole night twice and put herself to sleep at naptime too). Saturday she was good as gold until the evening and then she was so fussy, I was starting to feel crazy as it was another single mommy weekend with Ez on the river. Repeat the whole fiasco of Friday night, up every hour, never wanting to be off the boob and by 5:30 I was fit to be tied - and getting bitchy. 'Nahanni!' I said finally, desperately. 'Just f*cking GO to sleep!' - I was so tired, I was just worn through like an old sock. I just left her on the breast and finally, mercifully slept until she awoke at 11:30 Sunday - when the minute I felt her head and touched her little hand I could tell she had a fever - and let the guilt begin. I felt terrible, like the most awful, selfish mother on earth, trying to get sleep when my daughter obviously was so fussy because she was sick and needed me!
I couldn't help but think of Marianne Brophy at the mommy group, talking about a woman once pulling out a length of string, maybe 25 metres and calling that an 80 year life span, then gradually dividing it in half - 40 years, 20, ten... down to a few inches which represented this time in which I am embroiled now. A few inches is all that there is of this long life we hope for our children, a few inches of time in which they need us so completely, so maddeningly sometimes. When I think of those few inches, I feel differently about these sleepless nights, I hear her cries differently and I remember to relish these moments when she needs me so much. Okay, so I don't relish every second, and sometimes it takes a few deep breaths, but I do find that it makes these challenging times easier to bear when I think of that little piece of string, all that ties me to this vulnerable time in her life. Like they say, I'll sleep when I'm dead - for now, I live, a little ragged, but nonetheless swept up in the pink beauty of her.