The journey back from pregnancy and childbirth has been a tortuous one–and that’s coming from someone who never EVER complains. I feel as if I’ve slowly emerged from a cave over the last few months, with the first three of The Kid’s life not counting due to backwards-steps–a cyclical-seeming form of regression that rendered me hopeless a lot of the time. But now? Our journey is complete. We have arrived.

Okay, not really. There are still those cyclical-seeming forms of regression, like TK’s recent teething experience. The only thing he opted to chew on, besides his own fingers, were my mammaries–and after a couple of nursing seshes of that, it was weaning time. Then there are the general mistakes that The Husband and I (mostly I) make because this is our first time at this job and no one provided a company handbook, dammit. No HR orientation or anything. So when TK’s daycare teacher called me several times last week to describe some impressive oral formula explosions, I got agitated. For a few reasons. To quote one of my favorite mothers, and the only person I know who is more sarcastic than I am, “Don’t they know that’s why you have him in daycare? Because you don’t have time for that?” (Calm down, pearl-clutchers: it was a joke. Mostly.) There’s nothing more upsetting than feeling unavailable for my child because I’m dodging some other kid’s/patient’s puke. But the real kicker is what underlies all those other reasons, what forms the true foundation of my agitation: my hatred of being/appearing incompetent. And when it comes to my kid, I often am.

BUT. There are pediatricians for that, and we took him to one, and we jointly discovered that the issue was likely a touch of reflux, a sensitive gag reflex (“Thanks, Mom,” said TK), and an overwhelming volume of maternally-poured formula per bottle. To wit: he had gained a pound and a half in three weeks. Which all boils down to me loving him too much, if you want to devise a convenient truth out of the matter. (I do.)

So now his teeth have broken through, he’s not hurling, and my boobs are wonderfully shrinking. TH doesn’t even mind that–as he says, “What good are big ones if they’re off limits?” I can wear normal bras again and I don’t have to apply deodorant to the crevasse that was my cleavage. And yesterday, we went to church and even stayed after it was over to talk to people rather than running out and blaming TK. This after we took communion as a family (okay, TK didn’t–so he has some doctrinal issues, so what?). And then we went to The Sis and Bro-in-Law’s and watched Federer clean up at Wimbledon after too long of not doing so. I guess you could say that 2012 is the Year of Comebacks.

Of course, there is the issue of my sleep, which I’m coming to accept will never be what it was pre-TK. But I’m also learning to be okay with that, because in those pre-dawn moments, with the monitor glowing beside me, I’ll hear a noise from the other room. My spine will stiffen reflexively until I translate his sounds into the coos they are. It’s almost like our wakefulness is connected, our sleep and our gags and our double helices all reflective of each other, and I look at the clock, not dreading the exit from bed but counting the minutes until we turn on the light and see that grin. Some things weren’t meant to stay the same.