Into the Starlit Witching Hour
Plot twist: when you have a newborn, every hour is Witching Hour!
My parents have often referred to me as the family’s scribe due to my obsessive documentation of all life’s happenings. It started with classic diary entries when I was a little girl. You know, “Dear Diary, today I ate mashed potatoes. They were very tasty. Yum yum!” Or, “Dear Diary, today David gave me a special (spelled, ‘speshull’) Valentine. It was nice.” I indeed remember those mashed potatoes (so garlicky) and that second grade Valentine (so sweet). Words cement moments in history. Preserve memories. Allow for sentimental recollections over twenty years later, transporting me from the past’s turquoise glittery gel pen to the present’s black electronic letters online.
When I entered my teenage years and my love for creative writing exploded, I discovered the magic of The Journal. Leather-bound option — so mature! Sparkly option — so fun! Unlined option — to let my imagination run wild!
I have filled various journals over the years with daily recordings (including a very detailed description of my breakfast from July 6, 2009), inside jokes I made with my friends (truly horrendous absurdist humor), a list of my favorite emo bands ranked (Paramore supremacy), and angsty poetry that I scribbled frivolously onto my calculus notes (so rebellious).
I still journal today, recording as many days as I can, including the mundane moments with the milestones and often on the same page. Words help heal and process and make sense of things. They are lifelines in a sea of unknowns.
I think any of us who call ourselves writers share the experience of frantically running to put words anywhere they’ll land before they disappear. Filling notebooks, and now Notes app drafts and desktop documents, with our own answers to life’s mysteries and the rabid thoughts that spill out of our brains in fragments in the middle of the night. It’s entertainment and connection for others, but necessary for ourselves. And it’s especially necessary in periods of life when change and upheaval have a tendency to overwhelm.
So, naturally, I thought that having a baby would call for the most precious of journals. That I would be filling paper with new core memories while gallivanting into the starlit Witching Hour, holding my pen in a motherly way that would make the words somehow write themselves more softly, and make me feel oh so eloquent as I rock gently with my child in my nursing chair.
Plot twist: every hour is Witching Hour with a newborn. There is no time to document anything in the way that I want! Everything is covered in milk. The baby pooped on the nursing chair earlier. And I don’t rock gently — I rock into the wall, all the time. I do not feel eloquent; I feel inarticulate and manic. I know absolutely nothing about anything. I throw my pen and the baby wipes that won’t pull out of their container in a one-at-a-time manner at the wall in the most dramatic of fashions.
There is only time to observe and embrace my own existence right now — all the chaos and the joy of it.
I laugh! I cry! I forget to put on my pants before I walk outside!
Before I became a mother, I thought that I might turn on the rock lamp on my nightstand and write my “gratitudes” for the day after my baby fell asleep. That I might jot down all of my baby’s firsts on fresh pages with a clear heart, rushing to record my immediate feelings of seeing her first smile, or even her first blowout (an experience I will truly never forget), so that I can time-travel to these moments fifty years from now.
I have decided that it is too exhausting to rush to write all of these things down down. It is too overwhelming, the rushing. It is a jolt to my identity as the scribe. But if I am too busy rushing to write everything down, I might miss living all of these firsts that are so fleeting.
I have begun to wonder where I’m rushing to. I have begun to wonder why I’ve ever rushed anywhere at all.
Of course, there is no rush to feed faster or burp sooner or get the baby down before I…I…do what, exactly? Nothing. There are no clients to serve or obligations to be had or tasks to be managed. There is nowhere to be. There are no other things to do. There is only Joni.
(But maybe let’s revisit these questions again when I’m completely sleep-deprived again, and not when I’m seizing my short burst of energy to write this Substack post).
Before I became a mother, I also thought I might take curated milestone pictures every month (in other words, create more documentation in a different format). I thought I might capture the “expected” milestones, like baby length and weight and head circumference. I do know these adorable metrics right now; my baby is currently 23 inches long. I mean, that’s really cool (to me), but also, my baby didn’t spit up when I fed her today, and that feels like a real milestone in our ever-changing day-to-day experiences.
Celebrating the tiny wins has helped me live more in the present and appreciate all of the miraculous ways life forms and changes and grows. Other newborn milestones that feel as victorious as an Olympic gold medal:
Milestone: I brushed my teeth before Joni started crying!
Milestone: I flossed, too!
Milestone: Joni didn’t pee on me when I changed her diaper!
Milestone: I didn’t spill my freshly pumped milk!
Milestone: Joni’s hiccups only lasted five minutes!
Milestone: I caught the binky before it fell on the floor!
Every hour is the Witching Hour with a newborn. The days are strung together in 3-hour increments with no differentiation between 1PM and 1AM. There is no time to think about the next increment. There is only time to feed, burp, bathe, soothe, clean, and sleep. And most of the time, only one of those actions happens as planned. This is how it’s supposed to be.
This cessation of the rushing and the collecting of all moments big and small must be part of that promised identity shift in motherhood — the Great Change I’ve heard so much about before becoming a mother. It’s all part of the realization that all I have to do right now…is be Mom. I am under no obligation to do anything else, or be anyone else, except what Joni needs me to be.
My other selves will return to the forefront of my days again soon. For now, they are sleeping while I nurse and soothe and swaddle. And while they happily rest, I can focus on just being a mother without distractions. A very tired, but blissfully happy, mother.
Xo,
Violet Carol
More words from Violet Carol can be found on Instagram.
Other Mother Love Letters posts can be read here.
Mother Love Letters is a newsletter for intimate words on the messy and magical shared experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. If this post resonated with you, please feel free to “like” it, share it with a friend, or leave a comment to connect.
This one tugged at my heart strings. We have little to no documentation of my son’s first year, other than a obscene amount of pictures. I couldn’t keep up with anything. I started a journal to him on his first birthday that I write in even few months. There’s no rush, you won’t forget how you feel, I truly believe the more you let motherhood reach you, the more you will remember and the more it will shape you in the mother you are meant to be.
“Every hour is the Witching Hour with a newborn. The days are strung together in 3-hour increments with no differentiation between 1PM and 1AM.” - I relate to this so much! So true!