Amanda
I’ll never forget when Marshall and I first opened the conversation about expanding our family. I decided to stop taking birth control while on a vacation in Taos, New Mexico. A few mornings after doing this, I awoke in a state of sheer panic. “Nope, not ready for this. I don’t want to be a mom… just yet.” Frantically, I searched for my pack of pills, exhaled a deep sigh of relief and resumed living our relatively predictable, lovely life.
We didn’t revisit the conversation until almost a year later. A lot of life happened in that year. We spent Butch’s (my late FiL) last days laughing, watching birds and holding hands up until God decided to take him back home (2 years ago today.) We moved. We started afresh. And then…
“Should we?”
People always asked how we knew when we we ready and, for me, I had always wanted to be a mother. But when? Do we get our ducks in a row first? I’ve never really had ducks. My life has been more of monkeys at a rave. But maybe we knew because, instead of a rave, the monkeys were at a chill, outdoor country concert. Life was a little more stable.
Two months (really ~two days) of trying and we were pregnant. I don’t take this blessing lightly. I know many who have endured years of countless rounds of IVF, long adoption processes and immeasurable heartache for a baby. My heart is with you.
We were not expecting to expect so quickly but, just like that, we were! I had a relatively healthy and textbook pregnancy, an incredibly long childbirth which unfolded in the exact opposite manner of how I envisioned it (head: humming kumbaya in a bathtub…reality: almost every medication they could give me…30+ hours…you can read more in Townes’s Birth Story.)
And then. The most perfect angel. She’s my everything. I made a career shift and left my job teaching to stay home full time and it’s been the most wonderful, challenging thing I’ve ever done.
I won’t sugar coat the hard parts. My journey into parenthood robbed me of my sanity and wellbeing. When Townes was around five months old I would set her down into her crib imagining that it was like giant, black hole eating her up, thinking thoughts like these were normal. And that was just the beginning. I experienced major postpartum psychosis and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in the postpartum period. I had to wave the white flag and ask for help in ways I never imagined I would. Our marriage suffered. Our finances were a mess. It was HARD and it still is sometimes.
But the joy. Oh the immeasurable joy. There is nothing quite like it. Regardless of the amount of sleep I get, I awake every day with a smile plastered on my face. My spiritual life has ascended to new levels. My relationship with Marshall is even more meaningful. Watching him father Townes is shot after shot of oxytocin. He is the most dedicated, loving, hands-on, and gentle father I could ever wish for our daughter. And getting to be his partner in parenthood is the best. After being wife, being mama is my biggest blessing and my favorite hat I don (and I am a woman of many hats.) Motherhood is as exhausting and ego-shattering as it is beautifully rich, meaningful and fun.
And fatherhood? Oh boy. We don’t talk about this enough! I am eager to hear Marshall’s take on his journey into parenthood…
Marshall
I don’t recall the exact moment Amanda and I agreed it was a good time to have a kid, but I do remember being quite shocked when she said it would involve trying for multiple months, even years, if it happened at all. I felt like my life was one big lie; either Amanda or every adult I had ever talked to about S-E-X was full of S-H, err poop. As far as I knew, kids were born when adults even thought about snuggling without pajamas on.
As it turns out, adults are a totally unreliable source of information[1], and I had spent hours and hours worrying about nothing. I could have spent that time worrying about other, equally unlikely imagined future difficulties but instead WASTED it thinking about having a child.
Regardless, I do remember the moment we found out we were going to be parents[2]. We were in Venice Beach, CA on vacation, and Amanda was complaining about “feeling different”. At first, I dismissed her comments as WebMD-induced psychosomatic illness (I joke that, based on her browsing history, WebMD tells Amanda “go to bed and it will all be better in the morning”), but I was more intrigued than usual, given our goalkeeper was no longer in the box, per se. I can still see the pregnancy test in my hand. Two lines. Pregnant.
I won’t pretend to fully understand what happened over the next 8 months, but it seemed like a really, really long time. It also didn’t seem real. I remember sitting in the OBGYN office, seeing a grainy picture of a little alien and thinking two things: 1.) I will play along with everyone else, but I don’t see anything that looks like a person and 2.) This doesn’t seem/feel like real life. Thought #1 changed VERY quickly. Thought #2 has changed much more gradually.
Our time at the hospital and the first few days at home were quite surreal. I almost felt like I was observing my life from a third-person perspective and everything happening wasn’t really happening to Marshall Munden. The first time I saw Townes, I remember thinking to myself, “this is the biggest moment of your life so far” then immediately feeling guilty, like I wasn’t able to appreciate it enough or love her enough because I was too confused. Everything happening was so far from my prior experience on earth that I really struggled to make sense of what was going on. During our first night as a family of three, I woke up annoyed to the noise of a baby crying, and it took longer than I am proud to admit for me to realize it was OUR baby.
To be honest, I felt like a bystander for a while. There was just so much for me to sort out in my head that I didn’t feel fully present. Our whole family had been reorganized overnight. I went from being the outspoken CEO to an unpaid intern in the hospitality group. The new boss never told us what she wanted. She would scream and cry until we figured it out. Often times, she sh*t her pants in the process. I never imagined Amanda could act like that 😉
In the last 10 months, I have learned to understand the Boss Baby much better. I have figured out what she likes – warm bahbah (bottles), peek-a-boo and staring at mom – and what she doesn’t like – cold milk, me going away for real and being more than 5 feet away from mom. As I have gotten to know her better I have grown to love her more and more. It feels really strange saying this, but I don’t think I felt the same type of love for her as Amanda did right when she was born. I know I loved her, but I think our relationship has really blossomed as I have gotten to know her more. I had to interact with her and get to know her to really feel a super strong bond, and that process didn’t happen overnight. It definitely happened, though. Now I can’t even describe my love for her – words are insufficient. When I see her smile, everything else goes dark, and I am so present and in love; my only goal is to make her smile.
I have learned a lot about myself through learning to love Townes. I constantly think about the example I am showing her, and my character defects have become painfully obvious. I want to be the best version of myself, so that she grows up with a healthy understanding of how men should behave and treat her. I still have a long way to go, but every moment of pain and self-sacrifice is made worthwhile with her precious smile. Don’t even get me started on her laugh…
[1] Brief parenting experience has shown me adults often lie for good reasons, such as: wanting children to go to bed early, saving money, and perpetuating myths about 24-hour surveillance by magical humans/animals.
[2] I tried to avoid saying, “WE’re pregnant”. I know it’s the PC thing to say, but it actually feels somewhat dismissive of mothers to me. I didn’t grow an 8 lb. miniature person inside me, carry it everywhere for 40 weeks and spend 24 hours in excruciating pain ejecting it. I fielded a few unusual meal requests and installed a car seat.