Ever increasing separation

I forgot in yesterday's post to mention one other thing that someone said to me at church, and I really resonated with it and I think it's at the root of a lot of what I'm feeling.

She said that for moms, when you are pregnant, the baby is so close to you that she is quite literally a part of your body (or a parasite, if you prefer!). The moment you give birth, that baby starts a lifelong process of ever increasing separation from you.

At the moment of birth, dads meet their babies and begin connecting with them. Moms, on the other hand, instead begin losing connection.

It's why each little separation hurts ... and why I am so reluctant to stop co-sleeping (though we mostly have, but I miss that little body next to me so much, even though she wiggled so much I couldn't sleep most nights) ... and why even having her out of my arms feels strange.

And what really sucks for us mommies is that it just has to keep growing, this separation. In order to send a healthy human being out into the world, we must continue to allow her to be ripped from us in myriad ways as she explores and becomes her own person.

This is a hard thing. And it taps into deeply primal feelings, hard-wire stuff that many of us didn't know we had in us.

But, on a positive note, we found a support group of other parents that's starting up at church. That should help a lot.

And speaking of issues around babies, check out the Film Philosopher's (aka my baby Daddy) review of Lake of Fire. Now THAT was a seriously hard film to watch, and I wound up always watching it when nursing, which was all the more traumatic.