I became a parent on about 24 hours’ notice. We flew from the state where we lived to the state where my son was born in time to take him home from the hospital. Legalities mandated we couldn’t leave the state until one set of paperwork was done, so we had to stay in a hotel for awhile.
My husband needed to go back to work after about a week, we had no money left that hadn’t gone toward the adoption. The first night alone in a room with a baby I only knew existed for seven days. I loved him dearly and I was terrified to let him feel like “mine”, especially after a previous adoption had ended up not happening.
I was also exhausted. I didn’t birth him from my body, but there are several other exhausting things about parenting! I was wholly unprepared for the sensory assault of parenthood—how much touch and sound would suddenly become a part of every hour of my day, when I’m a fairly sensory avoidant person. I also didn’t have words for any of this because I wasn’t very self-aware of my body yet. I just knew I was freaking out.
Some very, very dear friends were texting me through it. They were parents themselves, and their advice was absolutely everything to me.
They pointed out that if I’d gotten a roommate who made noise constantly and needed me every second and actively smelled bad and touched me all the time, I would not like that person. An adult who did that, who I literally didn’t know, who I’d only known for a week, would be crossing SO many boundaries.
Of course a baby has reason to do all that, they explained. The baby wasn’t a bad baby. But the baby was a really bad roommate.
My body was perceiving this relationship as fraught and terrifying because it was following none of the rules for good relationships that I was used to. Because I’d never had a baby before. I was entirely unused to baby norms. I was used mainly to interacting with adults. And this baby was really bad at being an adult.
That framing was comical and also completely dear to my heart. I had been feeling horrendous guilt for not just loving this baby enough for my love to outweigh my tapped-out-ness. I knew the baby was beautiful and perfect and doing nothing that was out of the ordinary for babies. And now I had a reason to explain to myself why just regular babying was so hard for me: because he was a really, objectively bad roommate.
I haven’t thought of this story much in awhile until it came up while I was talking to a friend. It almost felt like it was my earliest mantra to repeat to myself, before I knew I was trying to parent differently or needed a mantra to remind myself to think in new patterns at all.
I brought it back on my family’s recent cross-country road trip when I was desperately angry and frustrated that my kid just would. not. sleep.
Yes, the logic-voices said in my head, of course they won’t, they’ve been through massive amounts of change, they’re out of schedule for sleeping and eating and they sit in the car for long stretches, they’re hot and cranky and tired and mostly subsisting on popsicles and ritz crackers and they’re in a new room with new sounds and smells and sights: of course they won’t sleep.
But I’m freaking exhausted, my inner-voice protested back. I’m exhausted and they suck.
Well, they’re doing a great job of being a kid….then the logic-voice admitted, they are a pretty terrible roommate though.
[Image description: Me, back in the olden days when I had long hair and bangs and it was brown instead of being fun and delightful, taking a selfie with both hands holding the phone up so it won’t accidentally fall on the baby who is lying on my chest, held by a baby wrap I barely knew how to wear. Only a fuzzy head, tiny ear, and little brown arm are visible of my lil guy. End description.]
