Exiting the recovery zone

I haven't posted much on what Julian's turning one has meant for me. It's been a few weeks since the big day, which really wasn't that big of deal. I didn't expect any revelations to come immediately, but a few have come in the time since.

I feel like the first year of Julian was a recovery zone. Maybe it was the C-section that really knocked me off guard physically for the first couple of months. Or maybe all mothers feel this. Everything was off because everything was new. The first few (dozen?) times you go to the grocery store with the baby, it's a strange adventure. Same with going to visit your parents or friends. It's easily six months before the things you did before feel remotely "normal" but even then, it seems a vaguely familiar version of your pre-baby life. I think it took even more months for life with Julian to feel as natural as life without him did. I mean, we're still working on that, but it's leaps and bounds better than even just a few months ago.

The interrupted sleep I think really starts to get to you, too. And Julian is truly an all-star sleeper! I can't imagine what some of my mommy friends are going through with babies still waking up all night. It can really screw with your head. Just like the whiny, pick-me-up cry that Ian still cringes at. And I had my own aches and pains post delivery; I can only imagine the aches and pains that lingered for some of my fellow mommies.

It doesn't take a scientist to tell you that babies are so adorable, especially to their parents, because it makes them harder to resent for making life so difficult at times. But cuteness aside, there's something so intrinsically gratifying about raising Julian that makes all of the hardships easier. I tried to describe it to some of the What Not to Wear crew members who are contemplating babies, all of whom were over 30 and looking at my 24-year-old self like I was a nut for having a kid "so early." But they just didn't get it. Moving to Brooklyn, giving up their Manhattan lifestyle were foremost on their minds. I tried to delicately tell them that post-baby, those concerns that seem like such monumental hurdles to parenthood become insignificant.

It sounds like I had an awful first year of motherhood, doesn't it? Being on the other side of baby's first year is just allowing me to be really honest with myself about how difficult it was. It's still challenging, don't get me wrong, but that year, that recovery zone, is just now starting to fade. I'm starting to be able to do more things for myself that I didn't feel I could last year. I'm taking some online classes, planning a family vacation and a wedding, renewing my passion for running, thinking about joining a fall softball league. Ian is, too. He's getting down and dirty with this recording unit to finish the album he started. He's able to juggle Julian and his own wants and desires a little better. We're both in consistently better moods despite the wrenches Julian may throw in our plans.

But no one could have told me about that year, just like no one can really tell me about the years to come. You have to live it for yourself to really understand it. Religious folks all my life have talked and talked and talked until they are blue in the face about faith. And if I go on and on about the topic of faith here, I will join them. Suffice it to say that having Julian has solidified my belief that faith is an action that others do not have right to doubt. We all have brains and ambition and instinct. So when Ricci volunteers in Senegal, my best friend from high school remarries a year after she divorces, the Shelton family prepares to welcome a wee brother or sister for Julian's baby friend Adeline and BAT picks up her life in Austin and moves to the sure-to-be-fabulous Steamboat Springs, Colo., wish them well. Acknowledge that they are living the life they intend.

I'd like to think that's what we're all trying to do here.