Nine months into becoming a mom, and I'm finally able to come up for air.
Hello!
In truth, I felt things begin to ease up around the six-month mark (see: my very hopeful 2022 Year in Review). But then my baby, uh... had an episode of anaphylaxis, and we had to administer two baby epi-pens, and I had to stay at the hospital overnight with him, and then I had to deal with the intense guilt of giving my kid food he had a diagnosed allergy to (eggs), only to eventually get a new allergist who assured me that it actually was the right call to give him said eggs in this instance since allergy tests have lots of false positives and he's a baby so exposure is important, but then I had to keep working through food introductions with a constant fear that something else would trigger a reaction…
Anyway, that kind of thing keeps the stress going for a while.
But he's doing great now! (Thank god. Thank the stars. Thank everything.) We know exactly what he’s allergic to, and he’ll hopefully be starting a treatment program in a few months.
With that dark winter behind us, spring is here. The intense emotions of those newborn days have begun to fade into a fever dream.
There's relief in that, and more than a twinge of sadness. I'm finding that’s a common theme in this whole parenting thing.
But, spring. Spring! Do you feel it? Here in the Southwest, spring flies through faster than my dog when he hears a crumb hit the floor—one day you find you don't need a coat anymore, and then suddenly it's the oven of summer. So I've been launching myself out of the house as often as possible while the breeze is still cool.
Side note: There's an app called Peanut that helps you match with other moms and women Tinder-style (swipe! swipe! match!). I don't know how to make friends any other way. This app runs my social life now.
Of course, with all this interaction with the outside world, I’ve begun to notice my clothing more. Turns out my uniform of nursing tops and sweat pants that served me so well at home makes me feel dowdy as hell outside of it. But as I was browsing through my old wardrobe the other day—the clothes I haven't touched since before I got pregnant over a year ago—I realized just how little of it I actually wanted to wear.
It was like a photograph rendered in grayscale. I used to wear so much black, white, gray, tan... I think it's because I could never decide what style I wanted to have, so I always tended toward pieces that would "go with everything." (Which means they were a whole lot of nothing.)
But now, for reasons I'm only beginning to understand, all I want is color. Vibrant, painful color. "Dopamine dressing" they call it—it's a trend, I know. But it also feels a bit like a homecoming.
In recent years, bright colors have made me feel uncomfortable. Wearing anything brighter than a stately emerald green felt... childish. Too feminine, too girly, too ‘90s. Now, it feels like ice cream: indulgent, fun, and something I am always in the mood for.
Maybe it’s the postpartum hormones. Maybe it’s the fact that the ‘90s are cool again, so I have societal permission to embrace the little inner Jessie who never stopped wearing flower rompers with kitchy plastic buttons. Because at the end of the day, it turns out I'm not a Wednesday Addams, but an Enid.
And this need for color is bleeding into everything. I'm dreaming about painting my kitchen nook pink. Maybe yellow? (Who am I??) And then I get distracted by our sunny back yard—the weeds aren’t too bad, actually. They add some color to all the rocks. But couldn't we get some flowers out there?
I've been wandering Home Depot like a friendly but unsure ghost. I think the employees are starting to recognize me. Or at least the baby strapped to my chest and his endlessly blank stare.
It's a time of reemergence after a long cocoon. I'm grateful for it. I am damn good at introverting the days away, but it's the cashing in of all that pent-up social energy that makes life interesting.
Happy butterfly season,
Jessie