We will adapt.

My whole life-

It may have all been in my head, but something inside gave me the impression that I was “the black sheep” of the family or “the problem child“.

Maybe it was because I was fresh and spicy, while my sisters were sweet and docile that I felt the need to say everything I was thinking and feeling… with a tone.

All this to say, my immediate, very mature first reaction to getting pregnant was “I’m going to show all of them!” I thought “the people,” thought I was immature, selfish, naïve, and doing it for attention. Most of all, I felt like “the people” were sure I’d be a bad mother.
But I was going to show the WORLD that Chelsea Lewis was the COOLEST MOM EVER.

I am so blessed that I actually have a wonderful mother.…But I didn’t truly see her, or her superhuman qualities until my son was born and my eyes really opened for the first time.
She is faithful to her calling as a nurturing, attentive and loving mother. However, I’m ashamed to say that when she put her whole heart into caring for me and my sisters, despite the hard days and the valleys, I would grab onto it as a teenager and twist.

We seemed to bump heads over everything: The way I could dress, the clothes I could wear, the color of my hair, make-up or no makeup, blasted bikinis, and piercings. Out of my mouth would come horrible, hateful things that I didn’t mean for a second, but surely left category-five devastation in its wake. I have the gift of my own mini me now and when she is copping a “tude” and says things she doesn’t mean, I think of my childhood and I think of my mother and how much she taught me to love with everything in me regardless.

Why bring up the past?

Late in my pregnancy with my son, I began to have sudden, violent mood shifts, like panic attacks, where I would crash from my usual divine heights (there’s a story to that) into endless pits of despair where I fell sometimes for an hour crying on the couch and saturated with doom.
This was so extreme, and I had been raised in a Christian home and felt that surely it had to be a spiritual war over my sanity. I’d struggled with depression my whole life so I tried to pray it away in Jesus name like I’d been taught.
But the darkness and doom remained.
So ok then. This must be pregnancy hormones messing with me. …Yeah.
Still, I felt that doom and prayed desperately, repeatedly, “Please don’t let me be a depressed mom.” What I should have been praying for was, “God, please make me strong and steadfast like my mother…” .

………………………………………..

August 2006-
She didn’t remember the remainder of the first night. She just waited desperately for the daylight, heart beating like a baseball bat against her rib cage. The bassinet beside her bed had become its own evil entity. Darkness and doom surrounded it that she could not express without sounding mad, making it the enemy.

Come glorious morning she had her husband move it to the hallway between apartments. She wouldn’t touch the cursed thing; couldn’t look at it without everything freezing inside, including her breath. But her heart kept racing at mach speed as it had been since they’d left the hospital. She hadn’t slept in a week and whenever she’d try to nap, she’d feel her baby there with her, hungry on her chest again, his rapid breath on her left cheek.

But Isaac wasn’t there, so she gave up on sleeping altogether.

On her third night home that stopped working for her.

She collapsed on the guest bed in millions of shattered pieces and begged for her husband to come hold her. “I’m sorry. I‘m so sorry, I murdered our marraige. I’m so so sorry.” She was inconsolable, incoherent, and delerious. Maybe this was a huge mistake. How horrible would it be if they gave the baby back? Obviously, delusional in her own mind, she was trying to find a way to fix things and put them back how they were. But things would never be the same…and my marriage and relationship with my husband would indeed change forever.