Musings of a New Mom
I feel guilty that the dishes aren't put away, I haven't called my mom, and the laundry is piling up, but I also know I need to take time for me. A wiggly one-month-old squirms in the mamaRoo and a cat is curled on the couch.
I could clean, walk, SLEEP, but instead I choose to write.2016 is drawing to a close and my familiar New Year's resolution echoes... "write more." A goal that I didn't come close to achieving.My blog is in desperate need of an update--it still says Aly LEWIS and that I live in Guatemala. My last post was about pregnancy and Aidan is now here. Life has changed so much since then. It's so full now. I tell myself that's why I'm not writing, but that's not true. Writing is hard work--being honest with yourself, taking the time to transform nebulous thoughts into words. It's work. But it's work that I know I need.And so I'll start with what I do best--baby steps. A friend challenged me to write every day to get back into the swing of blogging and to hold her accountable for posting too.I want to write about the labor process. Anxiety during pregnancy. My unexpected c-section and recovery. Ryan's role in all of it. I want to write about the details of Aidan--the soft fuzz on his upper shoulder. His new bald spot on the top of his head. All of the smirks and frowns and expressions he makes as he's both falling asleep and waking up. The way he arches his back and clasps his hands under his chin like he's posing for an Anne Geddes calendar. The way he stares into space, focusing on nothing at all. His hungry tongue flicks and gummy screams. How deeply satisfying it feels when he settles into nursing, knowing I'm giving him all that he needs in that moment. His chirps and whistles and grunts and yips.I want to write about being a new mom, teaching citizenship classes, how my faith has changed these last few years. Depression and hope and God.But my baby step today is writing about wanting to write. So here is my post to say that I want to write more. That I will do my best to squeeze in words between nursing and soothing, soothing and nursing, nursing and soothing again (#growthspurt). That I will find moments to write as the mamaRoo whirs and Aidan whistle-snores in the background like a clogged kazoo.My friend is offering daily writing prompts to get us going. I'm late on both prompts she's posted thus far, but I'll do my best to respond to them briefly. The prompts: Christmas and goals for 2016. Clearly I did not meet my goal of blogging more in 2016, so there's not much to say about that. On to Christmas.
Christmas was different this year. With a baby.This year was the first time in my entire life that I didn't spend Christmas Day with my parents. My parents always set out our stockings and my dad records our walk down the hallway to see what bounty Santa has bestowed. We unwrap an embarrassing amount of presents--even since we've been adults. This year it was just the three of us on Christmas morning, my little family. And I am now the parent.
I woke up at 4:30am to nurse Aidan and didn't go back to sleep. I had to finish putting together Ryan's present--an Ikea cabinet to house all of his adult beverage supplies. I filled Ryan's stocking with dollar store goodies and baked salted caramel cookies. I Facetimed my mom. I saw the sunrise.And it was perfect. I didn't want anything but the three of us together.We're starting our own Christmas traditions--eating cookies for breakfast and catching a drive-in movie Christmas night.We had lunch at Ryan's parent's house where they doted on Aidan who slept through it all. The bitter of not being at my parents' was overpowered by the sweet excitement of knowing that in just a couple weeks my entire immediate family will be living in San Diego. We'll celebrate the Lewis family Christmas with my parents and siblings and stockings (and video recordings I'm sure) when they're all moved in to their new houses. This will be the first time we've all lived in the same city since I was 18.Aidan can grow up just minutes from BOTH sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles, a smattering of cousins, and whole host of friends who feel like family. And that, as cheesy as it sounds, is the best Christmas present I could ask for (along with fresh baby snuggles and a nap). 
Thoughts on my first Mother's Day
I'm going to be a mother? Me?Whelp, I have the morning (ahem, can strike anytime) sickness and bone tired fatigue to prove it. And, of course, the sonogram of our little blobby alien love that they assure me is a developing human.We’d been trying for a couple months, so when that second pink line started inking itself across the pregnancy test, I thought I would be ecstatic. Instead: terror.All of my “trying to get pregnant” worries (What if I can’t get pregnant? What if there’s something wrong with me? What if there’s something wrong with Ryan?) were supplanted with new sickening fears: What if we lose the baby? What if the baby is sick? What if, what if, what if?I have friends and friends of friends who have struggled for so long to get pregnant, or whose pregnancies haven’t lasted. I’ve read about infertility and miscarriage and the long struggle of hoping for the chance to be a parent.I feel premature in my celebration. I feel undeserving of the double pink line. I want to be sensitive in my sharing. I never knew I could be this scared.But then I remember my favorite quote from Ann Voskamp,
“I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives…Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering, the converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring the fullest Light to all the world.” One Thousand Gifts
I only deepen the wound of the world when I fail to give thanks for squiggly sonogram screenshots and mayonnaise-craving embryos (the struggle is real).All the good things that a good God gives.This may be the only time I’m pregnant. The pregnancy may not last full term.
But right now, I will choose joy.I will choose the hard discipline of quieting the voices of doubt and doom.Ann Voskamp also writes, “Awakening to joy awakens to pain.”And isn’t that the story of parenthood? A mesh of joy and pain, worry and hope?So today, I am humbled to say that I AM PREGNANT. OUR FAMILY IS GROWING. God is literally doing work in me.Ryan and I have chosen the word BRAVE to guide us through this pregnancy journey. We pray that we are brave enough to hope, to be fully invested in the little life inside me. We seek to be brave enough to hold out hope for our friends who are still trying. To be brave enough to enter their pain and mourning. We want to be brave enough to ask for help, to admit we don’t have it all together. To admit that we’re scared.Most of all, we want to be brave enough to choose joy and to invite others into our joy.Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there and I pray for strength and comfort for those who are wishing and waiting and hoping to someday be a mother.
Battling Bridezilla (the one in my head)
I’m getting married in 2 ½ months and I’m feeling insecure about how I look.I know I’m small, always will be, so I feel a bit uncomfortable writing about my own body insecurities. The rational part of me knows I look okay; I don’t need to lose weight. But my inner monologue is a different story. Whether or not my insecurities are well-founded--in my head, they are real. You see I used to be a gymnast, with no body fat, in peak condition. So this is the biggest I’ve ever been. “Grad school 15” is real.The part of me that thinks a wedding is all about the dreamy pictures and the affirming accolades is bummed that I happen to be getting married when I’m the least in shape I’ve been in years, the least tanned, the least toned.But then the part of me that knows a wedding is not a fashion show or a Pinterest party, but an outward celebration of commitment, of love, of deciding to choose each other in the good times and the flabby times. That part of me is floored by the beauty of the timing.Because I know know know that my fiancé’s love is not dependent on my looks or workout schedule. His love is not something I earned and therefore is not something I can lose if I “let myself go.”
He asked me out on a date when I was marginally employed spending my day caring for a 94 year-old-woman with Alzheimer’s in velour jump suits. He liked me for me. Not for my job or career or standing. Not for anything I did or do. I made a point of not styling my hair for any of our dates for the first maybe six months of our relationship. He liked me anyways. He didn't even seem to notice.I know this.But as the wedding planning amps up, so do my insecurities.I start to fear my frizz, my freckles, my back fat.Bridezilla is in my head, and I’m her main victim.It’s not Ryan that I’m worried about. I know he’ll think I'm beautiful no matter what. I know he’ll tear up when I walk down the aisle. I can see in the way he looks at me that he is a man in love.It’s everyone else I’m worried about. I’m worried about impressing my friends. I’m worried about what I will look like in photographs. On Instagram.It’s stupid, I know.I don’t want worry to win. So I hope in writing them out. In seeing how silly and vain my concerns are in light of the magnitude of the gift of love I have been given, I hope that joy will win. In writing my insecurities “out loud” I hope to loosen their grip on me, diminish their power.I can choose to let joy win. To rejoice and celebrate. To embrace marriage planning. To show up whole-heartedly to the upcoming wedding events, no matter what I look like. To let love, not fear, steal the show.In a couple months I will take a new name: Prades. I will choose a new role: wife.In front of my friends and family, I will commit to love one man for the rest of my life: that’s the easy part. I will also commit to be loved by him: that’s the hard part.To receive his love. To believe I’m enough.It is my hope and my prayer that Aly Prades is a woman who knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is loved.Who lives like she is loved. Who doesn’t listen to the voices that say I am my calorie count, my waistline, or my hairstyle.I don’t have to wait until I’m married to believe this. Since I began spending time with Ryan, this transformation has been taking place. His tender spirit, his faithful love has healed me, is healing me, of my perfectionism, of my own self-criticism.And I know it can’t just be Ryan that tells me this. I’ve been praying to a God of Love, communing with a God of Love, for years before I met Ryan. Ryan is just a new instrument to show me this love. To help show me I am enough. I am loved.Today, before my name change, before the wedding. I will choose to let joy win.I am Aly Lewis, an embracer of joy and a woman who believes she is loved.