The Weight of the World

When Rory was born my anxiety hit an all time high. I was running on very little sleep and it suddenly hit me that I was now responsible for keeping another human being alive and well. Almost a year has passed since she was placed in my arms for the first time, and though I am no longer sleep deprived, I am still as worried and anxious as the day she was born. As Rory grows and changes, so do my worries.

Our world is a scary place, and it may sound strange, but it wasn't until Rory was born that I understood why some people don't want children. And not because I regretted for a single second our decision to have a child, but because of the enormous pressure and anxiety that comes with bringing a child into the world. There are days, and sometimes whole weeks when I have this constant ache in my chest because I can't  stop thinking about every little thing that can go wrong.There are the normal, everyday worries: Am I doing enough to stimulate my child's brain development? Is my baby eating enough? When should she go down to just one nap a day?
And then there are the bigger, scarier questions that some people are lucky enough to be able to push towards the back of their minds: What if my baby gets cancer? What if I get cancer and my baby grows up without a mother? What if she's allergic to bees and I don't know it? Will she be bullied? Or worse, will she be a bully? Will she be one of the 2 in 5 people who is sexually abused as a child?

Social media and the news do little to relieve my fears. There's Ebola and child abductions and planes disappearing. There's the story of the mom who forego chemo to save her baby, and the little girl who was found 20 miles from where I live cut up into pieces by a 17 year old stranger who lived in her neighborhood. I remember watching a Dutch man being interviewed after the Malaysia flight was shot down over Ukraine. His only daughter was on that flight, and I remember he said, "Whoever shot that plane down, they ruined my life." By the end of the interview, I had tears streaming down my face, because every parent's worst nightmare is burying their child. Sometimes I just want to cross my arms, stomp my foot and scream, "It's not fair!" Why do such bad things have to happen to good people, and why do bad people get away with such awful things?

On an intellectual level I know that worrying about things like autism and car accidents does nothing to prevent them from happening, but I can't seem to stop myself from viewing the world through a mother's eyes. I have this beautiful, healthy, perfect baby, and all I can think about is that she could be taken from me in less time than it takes to switch lanes on the highway or close the gate at the top of the stairs. We like to think of ourselves as invincible, but human life is fragile.

My point is that being a mother is harder than I ever imagined it would be. I knew waking up in the middle of the night and no longer having any time to myself would be difficult, but I didn't understand the emotional weight that I would gain the day that Rory was born.  Is it worth it? Absolutely. Without a doubt. The joys of motherhood far outweigh the challenges, but becoming a mother made me realize that it's possible to love someone so much it physically hurts. It has made me painfully aware of all of the evil that exists in this world.

But being a mom has also made me see joy in the smallest of things. A first step. The shriek of joy that always accompanies bath time. The butterfly that landed on Rory's shoulder yesterday. So, with unimaginable pain comes unattainable joy. That's the way the world works, because without pain and heartache, we wouldn't know what it means to be truly happy...what it means to be a mother.