@stillbecomingmama: scared to move is three words that contain an entire education in new motherhood and i want to stay with them because i think they describe something that goes beyond the practical fear of waking a sleeping baby. yes there is that. yes the calculation is always running, the weight assessment and the breathing check and the is this deep enough sleep to survive a transfer evaluation that you are running continuously without being asked to run it. but underneath the practical fear there is something else that i did not expect and took me a long time to name. a reluctance that has nothing to do with waking her. a part of me that does not want to move not because of what moving might undo but because of what this is. this specific configuration. her weight on my chest and her breathing against my collarbone and the dark room and the silence and the two of us in the particular arrangement that will not exist in exactly this way ever again because she is already different from the baby she was yesterday and tomorrow she will be different again and the 2:17am version of this, the scared to move version, is already becoming the past while i am still inside it. and i think that is what the scared to move actually is, underneath the practicality. it is the knowledge, arriving quietly in the 2am, that you are inside something temporary that is also the most permanent thing you have ever been inside. and the dots are all inside their own version of it tonight. all of us scared to move for reasons that go all the way down. #postpartum #newmom #postpartumsupport #momtok #momlife
