the inconvenience of loving differently

breaking and healing generational trauma is a verb

Sleep has been a disaster in our household. Maybe for a week, maybe two—I’ve lost track, as the days have all blurred together. The culprit? A fussy toddler in the throes of teething, which I naïvely thought was behind us. I really am a first-time parent, and it shows.

Most nights, we’ve been up 3-5 times, usually beginning just as my head hits the pillow. Bill and I sometimes take turns, but we usually shuffle through the dark to Zora’s room together like exhausted battle buddies carrying each other onwards. There’s a shared sense of dread, knowing that this broken sleep will spill over into the morning and avalanche like a snowball through the day, derailing our plans before they begin. Going to the gym, tackling life admin, and keeping up with social plans have all gone out the window lately due to exhaustion.

Motrin, cold teethers, some singing, rocking, and swaying haven’t been enough to soothe her. Most nights, Zora ends up inconsolable, crying in a way that signifies real pain and discomfort. Through sobs and glossy tears running down her red cheeks, she pleads, “Momma dada bed!”

We always comply.

It breaks the cycle of us constantly getting out of bed to soothe her, but it creates another tricky scenario - if Zora is in our bed, she has to physically be on me. She can’t peacefully drift away to sleep between us, rather, she must practically cement her body to mine, demanding, “Momma hold you!!!¹”

I twist and contort my body to find a modicum of personal comfort with very little success. My body, like it was when I was pregnant, is no longer mine. At night, it is Zora’s anchor to comfort and the vessel for everyone to get a little bit of sleep. My sleep isn’t what I would consider entirely restful, but I prefer it to the alternative of being jolted awake by her painful wails on the monitor.

We’ve been blessed with a fairly easy sleeper from the start, and therefore never really sleep trained. If she’s tired (which, by the end of the day, she always is), the minute she’s lowered into her crib, she’s in dreamland. This has made our recent nights of disrupted sleep so terrible - we’re not used to dealing with a child who doesn’t sleep through the night.

Bill and I talked about how we’ve been letting her into our bed so often and if it’s creating a bad habit. Because again, we’re used to getting great sleep, and when Zora’s in our bed, no one is getting the best sleep, even if it’s better than getting up multiple times in the night. When she’s teething, should we let her cry it out once we re-upped her children’s motrin, checked her diaper, and given her a cold teether and some snuggles? Something about it just didn’t sit right with us, and especially me.

As a baby myself, the story goes that I cried a lot for hours on end. It wasn’t colic or the normal culprits, I was apparently “just a crier.” But, having spent the last few years exploring the impact of being adopted, I think my cries were a response to being separated from my mother at birth, whose body carried me into the world - my first safe space. In adoption circles, this is known as the Primal Wound². While just a theory, it describes the life-long psychological trauma that can occur when an infant is separated from their biological mother. Essentially, I was crying for the mother that I never got to have.

So when Zora cries, I feel a compulsive need to be there for her. I want her to know that when she’s in pain and needs the comfort of her mother, I will always be available. I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week, and how many parents in the millennial generation talk about doing things differently than the generation of parents that we were raised by. We talk a lot about breaking and healing generational trauma, myself included.

But it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me to realize that breaking and healing generational trauma is a verb. It requires us to act. Logically, and perhaps subconsciously, I understood this, but this week it dawned on me that this action is not always comfortable. If I want to show up as an emotionally safe space for Zora, and if what she needs right now is to be a barnacle on my body when she’s experiencing excruciating discomfort, then I might just have to deal with it. And I’m not saying this in a way that makes me a martyr to motherhood or suggests that my child’s needs supplant my own.

Rather, I’m coming to terms with the work, discomfort, and inconvenience of parenting and loving differently, especially when it doesn’t feel easy.

Please send all your good sleep vibes and tips for teething (molars!), friends. Here’s this week’s playlist and to hoping for a more restful week.

<3

Meghan

1. Toddlers mixing up me and you is so silly and cute to me

2. Coined by Nancy Verrier in the late 90’s in a book that explores the impact of separating mothers and babies at birth.