When you wake up most days to realize you want to crawl back into your dreams, it starts to make you wonder. My dreams of late have taken me on adventures all around the world with scintillating characters… and in some of them I have hours upon hours to just relax. Dream on.

Most days since Oran was born I roll out of bed with my legs already running toward his room or if he’s sleeping next to me, I am physically yanked out of bed, as he yells “Mama, get out, get out! This way!” Then I proceed to drag myself from one chore to the next, baby on my hip, never completing them all satisfactorily as he is running toward the next thing. I never was a morning person. And I am no match for this little boy, who knows what he wants.

I really don’t think I have postpartum depression. I think that fighting to keep your eyes open through breakfast, while catching flying tomatoes and trying to sneak in a less-than-satisfying downward facing dog is just the way life goes with a baby/toddler. How could anyone want to get out of bed with less than 5 hours sleep? I am working on acceptance of the situation, loving acceptance.

Yet I certainly don’t have postpartum jubilation either. I am trying to understand how someone else’s experience could be so drastically different from my own that they would say “I love being a mom.” Don’t get me wrong, Oran is a blessing and he makes me smile and laugh all of the time. But it is a very different kind of smile – more of a fleeting one- than the feeling of wellness and serenity that I had before.

Any advice is welcome! Do you think I am struggling because Oran is a difficult kid? Or is it because I am an older mom, who was used to having her own life at age 34? Is it a control issue? Or maybe it’s a more difficult stage of life and I need to accept that I have very little control.