motherhood

the first year is a chaos.

“it will be tiring” they said, but i can’t ever imagine it would be the most exhausting thing i ever done. 

waking up every 3 hours to breastfeed, and then spend another 15 minutes to pump out the excess, another 10 minutes to clean and dry the pumping kit and bottle. went back to bed, just to be woken up again 2 hours later. good thing if my baby goes back to sleep straight away, but how if he’s alert and wants to play at 3 am in the morning? how if he cried and screaming while my husband got to work the next morning? who is going to entertain the baby then? 

they said it takes a village to raise a baby, and i wished i have my whole family with me back then. it would be nice to have hot delicious meals ready when i wake up, and to have the house cleaned before i went to bed. or maybe to have a longer nap during day time, or someone to play with little bean while i’m doing things i love to do.

i lost myself back then.

i was so tired and everything irritates me. i hate my body because it became so big, and when i went to take a walk for the first time, everything hurts. i hate how i didn’t have enough sleep, while i’m the one that should have enough rest and recover. i hate how my days were filled with poo and nappy change, screams and cries, and away from a normal adult conversation as i didn’t have any more energy to spare. i became this jealous person when i saw my husband comes home after a normal 9 to 5 workday, where he can chat, work, and function normally as he always does. it feels like then and there i want to throw all this baby sitting responsibility to him, get my nap, and wake up with hot meals ready. 

but of course, all men are so awful at multitasking. i can’t expect him taking care of the baby while cook dinner at the same time, can i? 

giving birth overseas, where there’s only me and my husband (and my in laws too occasionally), we didn’t have much options beside to pull up my big girl pants and do whatever needs to be done.

we received some help in the first month from colleagues and the connect group members, they cooked some meals for us and we are really thankful for it. food is the last thing you want to think of if your baby was born premature and needs to be in nicu for three weeks.the helps all comes in the first month, and from second month onward, we are on our own.

honestly at this point, i don’t even want to redo those moments. writing about it is like reliving the nightmare. but somehow there is a part of me that want a bigger family.

maybe one more mouth to feed, one more hands to hold, one more head to kiss, one more soul to love.

i’ll take it one step at a time. 

I have new level of respect to all mothers