Day 9 of the NICU, with just two more full days to go. Saturday and Sunday were the “scary” days, before we really knew what was happening. Monday and Tuesday were stressful and frustrating, as we tried to get used to this new routine and figure out exactly what Clara’s diagnosis will mean for us. Wednesday through now have been mostly just…boring. There’s not a whole lot to do in a hospital, and Clara can’t go anywhere. If we were at home, I’d be up and about a bit by now, toting Clara around as I helped my boys with their homework or did the dishes or ate. But I can’t bring food into her room, there’s no bathroom in the unit, and I can’t really sleep in here. Many of the things I have to do in order to stay alive have to occur outside of Clara’s little world. While I’m with her, all there is to do is sit in a recliner and wait for her to wake up. (Though watching her sleep has a fascination all its own. She’s awfully cute, and smiles in her sleep more than any of my other babies. Like this:

Maybe it’s the phenobarbital).

Because of all the waiting (and the fact that Clara still sleeps away most of her days) I’ve actually had quite a bit more time on my hands this week than I generally experience as a mom of many, so I’ve been reading a lot. Today I finished a book my sister brought me called This Is Not Chick Lit. It’s a collection of short stories by emerging and well-known women authors, and it is one of the best compilations of short fiction I’ve read in the last several years. The stories are alternately funny and heartbreaking, with a couple downright odd ones thrown in for good measure. Definitely good for new-mom reading, as many of the stories are short enough to finish in one marathon nursing session or while trapped under a sleeping baby in a plastic recliner in an NICU all day while machines beep all around you. Or, you know, while you’re hanging out on your couch at home. Good read either way.

I also thoroughly enjoyed this essay at Literary Mama by writer Barbara G.S. Hagerty, about how mothering her four children, rather than hindering her from writing, has enhanced and maybe even bettered her writing. An excerpt:

From time to time I fantasized what my life would be like if I did not have the responsibilities and encumbrances of a family. What if I did not have to cook meals for six on a daily basis, settle sibling disputes, sit through long games in the gymnasium, call out vocabulary on flash cards, or find someone else’s missing shoe or lost jacket at 6:30 a.m.? What if each day were a luxurious tabula rasa on which to paint words, eat a carton of yogurt for dinner, sleep whenever, read for hours at a stretch, talk to fellow artists, daydream, or entice the muse? What would it be like to be able to call one’s time wholly one’s own?

Oh, yes. I find myself doing that, too. If only I had hours and hours each week to myself, I catch myself thinking, I’d have finished that novel long ago instead of adding a chapter or two each year, when I happen to have time and am in the mood. Or, I tell myself, I’d dabble in playwriting or poetry, things right now I don’t feel I have the brain space to explore at all. But she goes on:

To my surprise, I found that I missed — ached for — the messy complications of life, the interruptions, and the human encumbrances. In a word, I missed my family. I’d underestimated the ballast that they were in my life; I’d not understood how they enhanced, rather than subtracted from my work; I’d not realized that through being part of a family, I had fundamentally changed.

Yes yes and yes. Motherhood limits and reconstructs my time–absolutely–but when I had endless amounts of time, I can’t say I was a better or more productive writer, student, worker, or human being. Kids have anchored me and given me both fodder for my work and a sense of urgency about getting it done. I can no longer delude myself with the idea that I’ll have all week to finish that story, so what’s the hurry? Now I know that a moment of quiet or a nap time must be seized and used while it lasts. And I actually have something to write about, something that goes beyond my narrow little view of the world and my own self-interest. Perhaps I’d have grown out of that self-interest either way, but in my case, having kids definitely bumped me in the right direction.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I have a stronger need to write now than I used to. Writing is my work, and it keeps me sane amid diapers and feedings and squabbling kids. But when I was untethered, I didn’t need to write to keep sane. I could also spend my days shopping or watching daytime TV or laying around gabbing with friends…all time-sucking distractions that kept me from writing. Now I look forward to finding snippets of time to write, and when they come, I am grateful for them and jump on them. Even now, while in the midst of a hospital floor and at the tail end of a pretty traumatic experience, I’m finding ways to fit in writing. It’s not the best writing I’ve ever done, clouded by a touch of sleep deprivation and a general brain fog…but it’s something. How could I stop? This–the balance of mothering of and writing, of typing away while nursing a baby or thinking up snippets of prose or article ideas while I’m changing a diaper–is just what I do. There have been times I’ve felt guilty, like I’m not giving mothering my full attention; but then I realized it’s just the opposite. Keeping my mind working makes me a better, happier, less frustrated and likely more interesting mom. Caring for my kids makes me a more efficient, and in many ways more empathetic, writer.

If you’re a writer and a mom, has motherhood changed the way you write for better or worse?