Parenthood is a mess. It’s a messy house, a messy kid, a messy you. Anything extra just adds to the mess until it feels like your life is an endless cycle of tidying – tidying just so your kid can go behind you and dump their toy chest in the floor, again. Work? A mess. School? A mess. Your relationship? A big ole sloppy, unattended mess.
Fortunately, you get used to the mess. It becomes a part of you. You grab your little messes and hold them tight to your chest. Other times the mess feels like too much and you’re standing in the middle of it asking why you did this to yourself.
Here are three of the times where the mess was too much for me.
The first day we brought Dylan home was a mess. She was beautiful, I was obsessed with her, but she was a lot of work. She went from living inside of me to being in the world demanding food and diaper changes and affection in the span of sixteen hours.
But more than all the things she needed, what freaked me out the most was that she was in this terrible and cruel world. I couldn’t protect her the way I needed to – wanted to. One night I found myself in the middle of my bed staring down at her and crying because all I wanted was for her to live beneath my heartbeat again. That was the first time I thought: I can’t do this.
The second time was when Dylan had her febrile seizure. Febrile seizures are minor seizures brought on by illness, usually, and can occur in infants to children six years of age. They’re pretty common and really terrifying. When it happened, Dylan had been kind of sick for a week. She had a bad cough, ran a fever on and off, but I just didn’t think it was that serious – until I got the call from her daycare saying they thought she was having a seizure.
When I got there the paramedics had her on the stretcher and were wheeling her out. She was undressed and curled up tight (during a febrile seizure they’ll ball there fists together) and it was the worst thing I’d ever experienced.
She had another seizure on the way to the hospital and it seemed the ambulance was just slowly rolling through traffic. My baby was in the back and here they were taking the main roads? I was a mess. Dylan was fine. It was her body telling us “hey pay attention to me there’s an issue here.” But the thoughts that ran through my mind during that experience are something I’d never wish on anyone.
Because I was faced with my worst fear and I couldn’t deal. I love Dylan in an insanely fierce, feels to big for my body, all-consuming way. The fear of losing her was just as overwhelming. I looked at her on that hospital bed and I thought, what am I doing?
The third time was under much better circumstances. I have a very opinionated little girl. It’s funny actually because we all thought she was going to be really timid, but we were very very wrong. So if something isn’t quite like Dylan wants hit, it’s a fight. I had some homework to finish, and Dylan’s father wasn’t home, and usually she can play on her own but this time she wanted all of my attention.
Except I was toeing the deadline for my assignment and I just needed like half an hour to finish it, but kids don’t really understand patience or responsibilities, so Dylan threw many tantrums that night And I found myself getting so frustrated – so angry. Angry in a way that scared me, angry in a way that made me want to scream.
I looked at her in the floor and my nearly blank word document and I thought, holy shit this isn’t right. How was I supposed to be a mom and a student and everything else that anyone needed me to be? How was I going to raise this kid without her resenting me? How did I do this?
And Dylan stopped screaming and curled up in my lap and my questions didn’t matter, because of course I’d make it work for her. Because life is as a parent is a mess, but it’s the greatest mess I’ve ever made.
