Writing and mothering and the waiting game

My baby was born 15 weeks ago today, and I am still not back to writing.

I guess that’s not totally true: I am writing a bit, like right now, for instance, and I do one freelancing piece a week for Previously.TV (and will soon be resuming my duties as their resident Bachelor(ette) maven). So, it’s not that I’m not writing at all. But I’m not writing full-time, the way I used to, B.L. (Before Lucia). How could I? Taking care of this baby consumes my whole day, even when she’s napping, which is when I try to clear the mountains of laundry and dishes that accumulate while I am actively taking care of her. In the rare moments when I have free time — when the laundry is put away, the dishes are done, the errands are run, and the baby is actually asleep — all I want to do is sit on my butt and watch Shahs of Sunset. I’ve been so exhausted — mentally, physically, emotionally — for the last 15 weeks, I haven’t even been knitting much. Horrors! It’s only in the last week or so that I’ve picked up the baby sweater I was working on before Lucia was born, and even working on that single, simple project takes a concerted effort. I have to reach for my knitting needles and get out my measuring tape and look at my pattern, and boy, was it always this much work to relax?

Obviously, if my leisure activities have fallen to the wayside, you can imagine the hit that my work life has taken over these past three months. Before I had the baby, I had fuzzy visions of working on my novel while she napped, getting shorter projects done piecemeal over the day, and writing on the weekends while Al took care of her. These rosy-hued visions have proved to be entirely unrealistic, given the way that actual babies work, and the amount of intellectual energy and focus it takes for me to write productively. Long story short, I can’t write while I’m in the same house as this baby.

The decision I’ve come to is that I’ll resume my real writing when my parents move here in a month. I can’t wait for them to move close for a number of reasons, but having built-in, loving childcare for Lucia is a BIG one. My plan, as it stands now, is to drop Lucia with Grandma and Grandpa for a few hours each day while I get some writing done. We’ll have to see how it works in practice, but that’s the goal. In the meantime, I feel surprisingly okay with not working on anything day to day other than taking care of my little squid. Being a mother, turns out, is a tremendous amount of work. Yes, taking care of an infant can be stultifying and frustrating and crazy-making at times, but it’s also temporary. Lucia won’t be this small and dependent forever. This too shall pass, and when it does, my writing shall resume.

Until then, the baby is napping, and I need to see how Reza’s bachelor party drama shakes out.