Enjoy, and remember to drop by the posts of other participants!

(I can hardly believe the year is halfway over… crazy.)

01. Me: The Highs and the Lows (or, accepting that it ain’t all roses)
02. Nicole @ Grudge Mom: A Lighter Side of the Recession: Having a Baby in 2009
03. Emma @ Baby Log: 12 Little Things I Want to Remember About My Baby
04. Mamie @ The Life I Now Live: I Can Wait
05. Inconvenient Body: L’art Pour L’art: It’s Child’s Play
06. My Field of Paper Flowers: Babies of 2009 Carnival
07. Rebecca @ A Little Bit of Momsense: An Ode to My Sweetie
08. Myg @ Wiser Mom: Babies of 2009 Born to a Baby of 1969
09. Jinxy @ Jinxyisms: Baby oh baby

I’ve documented a lot about my little girl here.  I’ve shared some of the highest highs, but I’ve avoided many of the lowest lows.  It’s not that I don’t want to talk about them; I do.  There are times I’ve felt so overwhelmed at how much work this motherhood thing requires that I’ve sobbed while holding my crying baby, times I’ve been so resentful towards her that I just wanted to pass her to someone else and walk away to regain my senses, times I’ve called Chris at work and hardly been able to speak through my tears.  I don’t write about these things because I don’t want to relive them.  I want to reread this blog in ten years as Maia does her homework on the kitchen table behind me and find myself smiling at the fond memories, wishing I could again experience the feverish, all-consuming need for one another we have right now.

I love my daughter.  I love my husband.  Those are immutable facts.  I might as well say that I need air to live and water to thrive.  But it’s also undeniable that my relationships with them change day-to-day, for better and for worse.  Chris and I have argued and snapped at each other more in these past four and a half (!!) months than we have in the six years (as of today!) we’ve been together.  It’s difficult.  It’s really, really difficult.  I hope that every pregnant woman out there understands one thing, though: YOU are the mother.  YOU know best.  You must listen to and consider other people, but never, ever go against what your heart and gut are telling you when it comes to your baby.  Parenting is demanding enough without making it harder on yourself because of what a book, or your parents, or your frustrated partner suggest.

Truly, the struggle to accept that, since I set the basic parenting rules, I am responsible for maintaining them is the greatest frustration I’ve experienced so far.  It puts a strain on my self-esteem, my marriage, and even at times my emotional stability.  There is no way to explain to someone who hasn’t been here how absolutely low the lows can be.  We all read about post-partum depression while we’re reading our pregnancy books, and I have to say that while I don’t believe I suffer from PPD, I do believe I’ve had some depressive episodes in the past four months.  I think that’s an important distinction: for the vast majority of the time, I am delighted to be a wife and mother, I am confident in my ability to be fantastic at both, and I want nothing more than to be near my daughter and husband forever.

Yet there have been times that I think I’m a horrible wife and mother, that I’ll never make both of them and myself happy, or that if I could just get away from them for half an hour, the world would make sense again.

I know this isn’t the happiest blog post.  But I tell you — you know what makes me feel better, when I feel low?  Knowing that other women have been here.

So remember — when you are feeling despondent, when you doubt yourself, when you want to bury your face in a pillow and scream with frustration — you’re not alone.  I know you feel like you are.  But you’re not.  We’ve all been there.

And fortunately, the highs outnumber the lows.

In the spirit of celebration, I’m hosting a “Babies of 2009″ Carnival on this blog on July 1st.  All I want you to do is write a post about a frustrating or joyful experience in your life as a mother to a newborn, or as an expectant mother.  My hope is that I can help a few new moms connect with one another.   Although the carnival is focused on parents whose children were born (or will be born) in 2009, I will also have a category for babies born before 2009 — you are more than welcome to participate as well!

Please sign up with your post at the Babies of 2009 Carnival page on BlogCarnival.com.  If you are having problems with that, just come here on July 1st and leave a link to your post in the comments (or send me an email, or a tweet…)