Motherhood: Stepping Back or Stepping Into? 🐣

📝 Note: This will be my last essay for a bit as I go on Maternity Leave for lil’ Blueberry! More info on that at the end. <3

Welp, I’m closing in on the due date for our lil’ baby Blueberry! It’s been a long journey to get here, but goodness is it different than the first time I was pregnant.

With Butterbean, we got pregnant immediately with no interventions. After a smooth first trimester with hardly any nausea, I felt mentally terrible for the rest of the pregnancy. I wallowed on the couch, complained about everything, and cried everywhere I went. One particular memory—which felt quite serious at the time, but I can now look back on and laugh—involved crying at a museum exhibit about dinosaurs in Denver. Also, one time I cried because Declan made me a bowl of yogurt that was not… something? I don’t even know.

At the time, I suppose I thought it was all hormones. The curses of pregnancy and post-partumhood! And to be sure, that played a part. The pregnant/post-birth body is going through some pretty wild changes. But what I can see now, with this current pregnancy, is that it can be different.

When I was pregnant with Butterbean and adapting to new motherhood after she was born, we had just moved across the country from Washington to North Carolina. We didn’t know anyone here and didn’t belong to any form of community.

I was also experiencing some new-found success in my art career and was determined to continue working and growing even with the arrival of a our first baby. I worked long hours, often late into the night, running an online community, making classes, and illustrating my first (and second, and third, and fourth) published books with Scholastic. Somewhere along all that Covid hit, and well, you know how that was.

But this time… this time my pregnancy has been completely different! I learned so many lessons that first go-round (mainly by making mistakes), but also by refusing to just let go. It took me about 2 years to really do that.

I’ve come to realize that pregnancy and motherhood (especially in the baby/toddler years), while difficult and absolutely its own kind of work, is nothing like work-work. Standard rules of cause and effect, effort and result do not apply. Or, they may apply perfectly one day and not at all the very next day.

You can get pregnant immediately with your first child and then require IVF to get pregnant with your second. What? You can eat a very healthy diet and still get diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. Huh? You can give your baby all the love, milk, and cuddles in the world and it will still cry and throw up in your face. Why? You can cook a delicious dinner your child eagerly asks for seconds of, then cook it again one week later only for them to declare they do not like it and will not touch it. Argh!

There’s no predicting it! There’s no mastering it! There are no solid rules to follow that work for every pregnancy/baby/child and what works for one kid will not work for the next. And of course, as soon as you find a rhythm or method that works, the baby has already moved on to the next stage, and everything is new and different for both of you again.

In short, you know nothing and you are in control of nothing. Nothing stays the same for long, and everything is constantly changing.

That’s just the truth of it. And so, when confronted with this often illogical state of pregnancy and early motherhood, you can approach your new life and identity in two ways (spoiler alert: I’ve tried both):

1. You can puff yourself up. You can try to grab hold of everything new and wrestle it into submission, fitting it around your own existing needs, wants, desires, and goals.
   Or…

2. You can step yourself back. You can let go and accept everything new for what it is—whatever it is. You can allow your personal preferences and desires—your Self—to take a backseat. You can, for a time, put someone else’s needs above your own.

The two approaches to motherhood result in very different perspectives. Puffing yourself up makes everything feel unfair. Everything becomes steeped in comparison, guilt, and shame. When your own desires are fulfilled you feel selfish, and when they’re not you feel angry. Spend time working, and you feel like a bad mom. Spend time mom-ing, and you feel like a bad individual/worker/artist/whatever. There’s no winning.

Stepping yourself back, in contrast, feels like a complete change of perspective. Everything becomes a gentle nudge (or sometimes a firm shove) to step outside of yourself. This baby who, for a time, is utterly dependent on you can push you to realize that wait a minute… perhaps my wants and needs are not the most important things in the world. Perhaps there is more to life than just chasing my own desires.

In a word, you can transcend yourself.

When that shift happens, everything changes. Life opens up and lightens up, and you begin to realize how much more to life there is if you would just pull your head out of your own butt for one minute.

But that is, of course, not easy to do. Neither is it something we learn and choose just once in our lives. It is, like maybe all the truly important things in life, something we learn and forget, re-learn and re-forget, over and over. That’s why I’m writing this essay—to remind myself of the choices I have, both now and in the months to come.

Because I know there will be times when my coffee gets cold, my granola gets soggy, my hair gets oily, and I don’t have the time or energy to draw or write the way I’d like to. But during those same times, there will be two sweet pink-cheeked little faces floating around me whispering wisdom in their own way: Hey, life is more than hot coffee. Life is bigger than you. I need my diaper changed. I need a snack. And Mama, look… look at this beautiful flower blooming right here.

And so, in that spirit, I’m beginning my Maternity Leave from my work now! Stepping back from some things, to leave space to step into others for a time.

• As of today, all paid subscriptions are paused.

  • If you currently pay for a monthly subscription (thank you!), you will not be charged again until I restart paid subscriptions. You will be notified via email when I have done so.

  • If you paid for an annual subscription (thank you!), your subscription will pause where it is at right now. So if you had 4 months left on your year subscription, you will still have 4 months left when I restart paid subscriptions.

• I will not be posting here on a regular schedule for at least a few months.

  • I may still draw occasionally in my sketchbook (who knows how often!) but am not committing to anything and will not be sharing much, if anything, publicly.

I love my career as an indie artist, writer, illustrator, sketchbook-drawer, and bookmaker. It’s a huge part of my life and identity and brings me so much fulfillment and joy. And you, as a reader and subscriber, make my work possible. So thank you for supporting my work, my books, my classes, this Substack, and this maternity leave.

Sometimes it’s good to step back even from the things we love, and I expect I’ll be back in the months to come with a renewed spirit and inspiration for new creative projects!

Thanks for everything!

<3,
Christine