Motherhood isn’t what I thought it would be.
I hate even saying that.
Eight weeks in and I’m dreaming of a Mexican beach. Completely alone. No tiny fingernails digging into my flesh. If you’ve seen my Instagram feed then you know I had a baby. A long awaited, long fought for baby. A baby I desperately wanted.
And it’s harder than I knew it could be.
Motherhood is sacrifice and surrender. Surrender to the loss of control, to the life you built, to the plans you had, even the plans you made that morning. You’re not in charge anymore.
It’s as if no one tells you until you join the club how hard it is. Everyone waits with bated breath until you exhale a struggle, “He won’t latch,” “He isn’t sleeping,” “He has a rash” “I feel like I’ll go crazy at home,” then there’s the rush of “me too’s,” the commiseration of woes.
Like you’ve been hazed into a frat you didn’t understand the rules of.
Maybe you can’t know until you’re in the thick of it. Maybe it’s like missions in that way.
I knew it would be sacrifice, but I didn’t understand the sharp edges of his screams and how they would penetrate my soul with ache.
How when his lower lip trembled or he refused to eat, I would feel like a failure.
How deeply insecure and lonely it would be to not know if you were doing something right.
It’s as if everything else has died, has gone into hibernation.
Every part of me that used to be thoughtful, could string two sentences together with flair, every part that was creative or yearned for more, or had dreams of changing the world, or writing a bestseller. It’s as if those parts of me have all disappeared into the blue grey haze of his eyes, in the shadow of his lashes, in his toothless grin when he smiles up at me even though he is supposed to be sleeping. And email? What’s that? I can barely remember I left a load of laundry in the drier.
I used to juggle running a nonprofit overseas, now I juggle how to get a car seat into a shopping cart at Costco without losing the shopping cart and the baby at the same time. I am that crazy lady running after her shopping cart.
I don’t know how to do this.
They cut my body open and the flesh is still numb, my abdomen permanently bowed open. I used to take spin class, now I’m out of breath as I go up the stairs.
He sliced into my world and cut away everything that meant anything to me.
He is all consuming.
He is everything.
I will never be the same.
My outings will be ruled by the clock that is my leaking breasts.
I don’t have postpartum depression but I certainly have postpartum PTSD.
“Birth trauma casts a dark shadow on thousands of women. The Birth Trauma Association estimates as many as 200,000 women experience trauma after childbirth, of whom 20,000 develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)” (Netdoctor)
After 50 hours of labor where I didn’t progress, a painful epidural, then finally dilating to where I could push, only to have to have an emergency C-section because he was sunny side up and 9 lbs 14 oz.
They strapped me down while I was convulsing on the table, lips trembling uncontrollably. I felt the pressure of them cutting into me and opening me up as I trembled strapped to the table. Only to have our baby rushed to the NICU hours later when he kept screaming as I tried to feed him because he wasn’t getting enough because of blood glucose issues.
I didn’t sleep for 5 days.
Every time I tried, my body jerked awake with the sensation of falling. I wasn’t holding my baby but I was afraid I would drop him from my arms. Every time I closed my eyes I had flashbacks.
After the NICU stay the struggle wasn’t over. We had his tongue tie, and breastfeeding issues.
I thought I would just latch him on and we would figure it out together. Instead he screamed when he wasn’t getting enough milk and at his pediatrician appointment he had lost significant weight. I could barely walk into the doctor’s office because my legs were still so swollen from all the fluids, and here I was supposed to care for my son.
I couldn’t even feed my baby.
What mother can’t even feed her baby?
I was more prepared than the average person. I did the homework, I practiced meditating and hypnobirthing, and imagined my “perfect birth.” I exercised and ate well, I read books about birth and parenting, but I didn’t learn how to take care of myself in the middle of it all. Because how can you really when this baby is dependent on you for life, for sustenance.
My life is ruled by a tiny tyrant who yells when he needs something.
But I don’t get to be upset about it.
How can I be?
How ungrateful would I be to resent even small parts of this gift, this miracle, that I so longed for, for so many years?
I have friends in the infertility world who long to hold a screaming infant, who I pray for. How could I be so selfish?
I thought I could get a three hour stretch to write or get things done, but my son doesn’t sleep.
He’s just not a napper. Like his Mama. So 30-40 minutes is about all I get.
He’s on my chest now as I’m writing this and he slept for maybe 30 minutes. It took me 20 to get him to sleep, walking up and down the road like a madwoman.
It’s easy to feel I’m failing. I never knew such inadequacy until I became a mother.
We do women a disservice by glossing over how life-wrecking the postpartum period is. Your life is slowly absorbed and it’s as if you have no choice in the matter.
And you don’t know if you’re doing it right. Now with Instagram our mom lives are compared constantly along with our kids wardrobes and our postpartum bodies. We tend to only share the smiling baby photos, not our desperate moments.
But there are moments, and I say moments because they feel like milliseconds–
They happen in the span of a breath and just as quickly they flutter away.
This present gratitude, this awareness that dispels the bitterness.
The curl of his long lashes over his cheek, (why can’t I have those lashes?) The way he looks at the world in wonder, his blue grey eyes witnessing the pine tree for the first time.
How he reaches his tiny hands towards the snow alighting the world in glittering waves.
One afternoon I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed and ungrateful. So I drag a blanket outside to the 65 degree California winter. The trees are spindly and bare but there is sunshine. There is the single stem of a pink rose unwilling to surrender.
I lie on that blanket and just look at my son. I listen to his tiny noises, coos, as if he’s ready to talk. I watch his hands discover his own face.
I see him turn his head while a robin flies overhead.
I stop in between feeding him and pumping and laundry. It will be there tomorrow.
I stop and notice the sucking of his breath, rhythmic and innocent with new life.
His fingers curling around the moon shaped clementine.
My bare feet sinking cool into the grass.
The bright yellow of the chrysanthemum I twirl around his cheek.
The way he turns his head towards my voice and offers a gummy smile.
The way he looks at me as if he trusts me, he knows me.
This belonging is fierce and tender.
This is what I’ve been missing, the noticing, the life that is happening in between the Groundhog day tasks.
I am learning him, and he is learning me.
This is beauty and what my soul craves most is beauty.
I am a mother. This is me now.
I’m still here, the fact that I’m hearing that familiar click of the keyboard as the words pour out of me, means I’m still here. The fact that I take my milliseconds of self care of “me” time means I’m still here.
Maybe motherhood is a disappearing. It’s also an unfolding. It’s an opening wide, a spooning out, discovery of a grit and a grace and a love you didn’t know was there.
A love that says you’re more important than me.
I will descend into it and maybe part of me will dissolve, but part of me will rise too.
We don’t need to tell pretty lies about motherhood. We need more truth.
He’s awake now so I have to go.
All I can say is if you’re in the thick of it Mama, hold on, it gets better, hold onto the tiny moments, to the fraction of a second where you breathe deeply in the shower as you cry, or breathe in the top of his head against your chest. Because these are the moments to live for.
Don’t feel guilty that sometimes it’s hard and you miss your old life. Don’t feel guilty that you need time away, or you miss the you that was before.
She’s still in there.
You’re still in there.
I know it.
(and if you’re a Mama, thanks for reading this far, I know how precious those brief seconds are. We need more cliff notes)
Some books that are helping:
Long Days of Small Things: Motherhood as a Spiritual Discipline
Life Will Never Be the Same: The Real Mom’s Postpartum Guide
Operating Instructions
