For The Birthday Girl

Dear A on your 3rd birthday,

I’ve thought about writing to you for years now; a birthday email or post, a monthly missive, and needless to say, time’s passing whether I put my butt in the chair or not. So, it’s taken me three years to sit down and do this for you (for me) and now that I’m here, I can totally understand why.

Becoming a mother was very, very hard for me. There are pieces of the story that I know I will share with you as you get older, especially if you’re aiming to be a mama yourself, and parts that I, myself, have either forgotten or buried. It’s only in the last year that I understand just how much trauma I experienced conceiving, growing, birthing and mothering you in the first 20 months of your life.

All of this, of course, has nothing to do with you. You are perfect in every way. Whatever blurry vision I may have held of you as a newborn of what you’d be like by now are blown out of the water by your ever-present presence. Your presence requires presence. Over and over again, I realize that you have a level of focus and observation that other small children do not grasp yet. You ask questions I didn’t think we’d get to until you turned 4 or 5. You are concerned about what other people are experiencing, how they are interacting, what is going on around you, while other kids would just blow by on their scooters.

Writing this today, on your 3rd birthday, you still nap. You sleep about 2:30pm-4:30pm, sometimes almost to 5pm if you’re feeling super tired. You use sleep to reset and sleep best alone, in your crib, in the dark with a noise machine on. (Yes, you’re still in a crib) The last two days you missed your nap because my family was in town to celebrate with us, and you did fine. In the past few weeks your speech jumped a notch. You speak multiple full sentences in a row when you have a lot to say, and the questions keep coming. I call you various petnames: Sweets, Lady, Bub, and Bubbas. You love eating apples (“bite big pieces off, mama”) and “long cheese” (string cheese) and “flat bread” (flour tortilla). When it’s later in the day you ask if “it’s gettin’ dark?” and during bedtime you ask me to “sing all the songs” and then rattle them off “twinkle, abcs, and duck, and rowrow and bah black sheep, and twinkle, and duck, and abcs, and what’s that one called?” both a delay tactic and part of the routine now.

For your birthday you asked for a musical triangle, a stethoscope, a rainbow dress, and cake. We celebrated with my family at a beach house in Ventura and this weekend we’ll have a joint party with our neighbors so all the faculty kids can celebrate you. 

I find that I can write so much about what you do and say, and yet, I cannot capture your essence. There is something ethereal about you - you really are quite elegant and beautiful. That is not to say you’re dainty or frail. Not at all. You are a solid little lady who moves her body and uses her words to get what she wants. And you know what you want.

Lately, I’ve been joking that you’re “on the campaign” because you’re constantly negotiating for the things you want, whether that’s ice cream, TV, or to stay home when I need us to get out the door. It’s a very charming and smart way of being and I can’t wait to see how it carries you through life.

For me, so much of this day and this week are caught up in the trauma of your arrival and stay in the NICU. But I know it’s getting better for me with time, therapy, and your demanding pull on my attention to be here now, with you.

Through a myriad of ways I’ve become more wholly your mother: staying home with you/quitting my job, my work in Tend, somatic therapy, reparenting myself, reading about Human Design and Ennegram, asking for what I need, and taking care of myself first have all contributed to my being able to be the mama I want to be for you. And this feels really, really important because at first, I felt like a complete failure at being a mother to anyone, let alone to this amazing being that I grew, birthed, and was walking through the shadow of death with. I was not equipped for the beginning of our journey, but I’m almost at the point where I can see that maybe you chose me as your mama for this reason. The turmoil we went through was somehow necessary as a catalyst to bring us here, to the sweetest spot I’ve ever been to in my life.

Over the past few months I’ve learned to stay calm during your emotional waves, to give us both boundaries, to ask for help, to let your Dada step in, and to always, always just hold you. The more I take care of myself and see you as a separate, whole person, the more I am able to lovingly and patiently step in to support you. And almost 3-year olds need a lot of support.

I think these birthday letters are supposed to be “about the child, for the child” but you will learn as your grow older that I am forever bouncing everyone and everything through my own lens of experience. I cannot talk about you and your magic without also talking about the road of despair I walked for the first 2 years of your life (and before that the 2 years it took to bring you into this world).

That grief and despair somehow brought me to you and to us at this time and I am ever so close to being grateful for it all. Because you are a light. You are just the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I am delighted daily by your presence. Somehow, I finally feel I am worthy of being your mother, and I am so, so grateful for that shift.

So, happiest of birthdays to us, Sweets. Thank you for choosing me as your mother, and for bringing me on this journey that’s brought me closer to loving myself. I love you more and more each day and I am so, so, sooooo lucky to mother you.

Love you always, 
Mama