The Duality of Motherhood
Heavy feels, high chairs, and honest updates.
I love being a mother so much, and I can’t remember the last time I was ever this exhausted.
Choosing to stay home with my daughter this year has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I miss producing paid work that I’m proud of and contributing to our household income.
I cherish spending time with my daughter, and I strongly desire both solitude and solo time with my husband.
I’m excited about having a second child, and I’m anxious about how the shift will affect our family dynamic and already limited free time.
Coloring and playing pretend with my curious toddler makes me feel like a kid again, and I crave the daily interaction with adults that I once had when working a full-time job.
I wish I had started my career pause sooner because it has been so wonderful for our family, and I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the resulting identity shift and obscurity of what’s next.
It’s rewarding beyond measure to watch my daughter bloom before my eyes, and it’s a swift kick to the heart to see her grow up so quickly.
My almost two-year-old transitioned out of her high chair this morning after several Saturday Night Live or American Horror Story adjacent family meals, depending on your sense of humor. Leading up to the big move from tray to table, chaos ensued for multiple days and nights. Plates were thrown, demands to sit in our laps were yelled, and eating seemed to be a new optional activity in favor of playing musical chairs.
I don’t use Google for parenting advice nearly as much as I did during Soleil’s first year of life, choosing to rely more on my own intuition, and yet sometimes one needs to resort to AI. Dear Google, a little help? Within seconds, I had quickly scanned and checked off a list of Five Signs It’s Time to Transition Out of a High Chair. It seems so obvious looking back that she was ready but maybe we weren’t. As new parents, it can be hard to believe that it’s time for another phase when it feels like you’ve just barely mastered the one you’re currently in.
And so we dismantled the chair Soleil had been sitting in for every meal and snack for the past 20 months. We scrubbed the tray, removed the legs from the seat, and stored the pieces in two separate closets. Why two? Well, we were running out of room. Each new chapter of our daughter’s life seemed to require additional storage space. My husband texted me from down the hall after the light morning labor. He said he wasn’t ready for her to grow up and that this was happening too fast. A crying emoji was added to emphasize the real emotion he was feeling in the moment. Honestly, I couldn’t relate.
While I admit that I felt comforted by the fact that we didn’t need to donate the high chair just yet because another tiny body would find its way into the same seat this time next year, I mostly felt relieved that it was no longer taking up space in our dining room. I felt excited that our daughter could now join us at the table in her chunky little booster seat. I felt ready to begin to have real conversations around a candlelit dinner table as a family. Most of all, I felt hopeful that one day she wouldn’t throw a plate and its contents across the room ever again. No, I wasn’t sad at all.
Perhaps my response to our daughter’s latest transition is a result of being fully immersed in Soleil’s world this past year, no longer missing the moments I used to miss so much when I was working an 8-6. I know the relentless challenge of that side all too well, where my husband still resides, balancing a full-time paid role while trying to be a present parent. It can feel like the universe is cruelly pressing a button to fast forward your limited hours in the day to 2X speed, and I have enough archives from my Notes app to prove it.
On November 6th, 2023, two months before I left my job, I jotted down a quick one: “I hadn’t noticed Soleil grew a third tooth. How did I miss it? Time is going too fast, and work is taking up too much of it.” I can remember how both devastated and torn I felt in that moment, weeks away from making The Decision to leave my fast-paced marketing position for the most important role of my life to date. I have a lot of notes like that one to remind me why I chose a sometimes more challenging path.
The pace is slower, in my opinion, for those of us who are with their kid(s) seven full days a week. That’s not to say that it’s better, but it’s slow enough to marinate in each phase for enough time to more peacefully welcome the next. And yet here I am as a Stay at Home Mom, not missing a thing nor wishing for more hours in a day, but time is still doing what it does. It’s moving right along.
In fact, I’ve been sitting at this coffee shop for two hours and am already starting to have pangs of nostalgia for that damn high chair. Maybe I’m not so un-sad about the transition after all. It occurred to me then that I might always long with grasping fingers for the moments that have passed while yearning with open arms for the promise of what’s next. Stay present, I remind myself. The days can sometimes feel so long, and it’s just as true that the years can feel disproportionally short.
Perhaps that’s just the bittersweet duality of motherhood.