This is it, exactly....

[bicrim]

"Her eyelids being to droop. The sight of them reminds me of the possibility that she might go to sleep and stay that way for two or three hours. She has done this before. The prospect is exciting, for it is when the baby sleeps that I liaise, as if it were a lover, with my former life. These liaisons, though always thrilling, are often frantic. I dash about the house unable to decide what to do: to read, to work, to telephone my friends. Sometimes these pleasures elude me and I end up gloomily cleaning the house, or standing in front of the mirror striving to recognise myself. Sometimes I miss the baby and lie beside her crib while she sleeps. Sometimes I manage to read, or work, or talk, and am enjoying it when she wakes up unexpectedly and cries; and then the pain of moving from one life to the other is acute."

From "A Life's Work" (Rachel Cusk).


This made me gasp and cry....it is the most perfect description of how I felt for at least the first year of Elliot's life...and still feel, sometimes. The pain was acute, and is still there, sometimes. I wish all people considering parenthood could understand this...and I wish all new parents would know that they are not alone in this. Wow.