5 Months with You, Josie Rue
Parenthood is the most rewarding and exhausting, confusing and inspiring experience of my life, and the ferocity with which I swing between each of these things has been dizzying since before Josie Rue was born. At times I have been:
In love with my body for creating the most perfect human, yet frustrated as I nearly outgrew my skin.
So excited to meet her I shook but so anxious about labor and the immense responsibility of raising her I couldn’t stop.
Eager to get her out of me and reclaim my body and lonely when she was no longer with me at all times.
Confident in my ability to love her ferociously, yet concerned about my ability to teach her to love others unconditionally.
Thrilled to show her the people and the place that make this world great, but fearful of the turmoil that plagues the world she would be born into.
As I prepared to be catapulted into parenthood, I wrote this in Josie’s baby book:
Today is Saturday, August 29th, just four days until your due date. The house is spotless, the freezer is full of pre-prepped meals, the hospital bag has been packed and re-packed, and the nursery has gone through multiple middle-of-the-night reorganization sprees.
The world is crazy right now: the COVID-19 Pandemic is peaking; even in rural America, major, devastating severe weather events are rocking regions with increasing intensity due to climate change; there are protests and riots all over the nation to end police brutality; and the US is as polarized as ever as Donald Trump runs for re-election and moves the country closer and closer to fascism. It is a crazy time to be expecting you, but despite all the turmoil, when you look around our lives, you can easily see that we, you included, are surrounded by dozens of people who love fiercely and are doing their parts to make the world a better place. Although your dad and I have so many hopes and dreams for you, above all, we hope you will be kind and love unconditionally.
I anticipated the stretch marks, the cravings, and the post-partum blues. But I couldn’t begin to be prepared for the enormousness of my love for Josie Rue or the gargantuan responsibility I feel to raise her right. Even before Josie was born, I knew what I wished for her:
I hope nothing more than for you to be happy, healthy, and kind, and for you to know how immensely you are loved by your dad and me.
For these first few months of Josie’s life, I questioned our ability to ensure these three things. Both Josie and I were awful at breast feeding, leaving her agitated and hungry and me questioning my adequacy as a mother. The difficulty of being a new mom was compounded by the isolation necessitated by COVID-19. Navigating fears stoked by our inexperience and Josie’s persistent health issues, from our first stay in the hospital for her jaundice to the last hospital stay to rule out seizures, was agonizing. And the baby blues took hold of me for a short time, wrapping me in grief when I should have felt immense joy and heartache when I should have felt healing. A quarter of the way through her first year of life, we struggled to keep Josie healthy and the baby blues had me questioning my ability to be happy, let alone my ability to show her happiness.
As quickly as it went away, my joy returned, and with the persistence of our amazing pediatrician, Josie is healthy and happy. And though the task of keeping Josie happy and healthy will forever consume us, these shifts have allowed us to turn our attention to raising a little girl who loves as big as she smiles. Loving each other and reading are two important tools we’ve used to begin teaching Josie to be kind. Frank and I know, though, that the greatest resource we have to raise Josie Rue to be kind in this tumultuous world is the people we’re surrounded by, who “love fiercely and are doing their parts to make the world a better place.” And for this, we are immeasurably grateful.
