Recently after congratulating a college teammate and good friend
on the birth of her first baby, she texted back only this: Dude… being a mom is
hard. It was the truest thing I’d heard in a while.
It is hard. Extremely so, and ever since the birth of our first
child 3 ½ years ago, I've thought that we should have a better, more honest way
of talking about motherhood’s beginning. Somehow, based on the adorable baby
shower, the sweet baby bump comments, the pampering, the nursery decorations
(all good and necessary things), new moms don’t at all feel prepared for what’s
about to go down.
Um, of course they don’t. None of these things prepares a mom for
the trials of the first months. When anyone mentions the difficulty of being a
new mom, she never goes into detail. The typical remark goes something
like, It’s hard, but it’s worth it. Oh, ok. Thanks!
Isn’t there a better way to prepare moms for the absolute wildness
that is postpartum? One of my friends told me that, after her son was born, she
lay her head on her husband’s lap and cried through the night. This is not
out of the ordinary. Maybe half the reason new moms feel so overwhelmed is
because no one told us we would feel this overwhelmed. Perhaps women are afraid
that, if we go into detail about the intensity of those beginning months,
beginning years, we will scare other women off from having babies. Because it
really is true that the love is indescribable, yet it’s
equally true that some days you will feel crazy, and you will hate everything,
and you will have milk pooling in your bellybutton.
After our second son was born, a friend texted to ask how I was. I
painted a beautiful word picture for her: I can’t see the floor of the house, I
haven’t eaten all day, I haven’t had time to put pants on and my shirt is
soaked through with milk.
I’m telling you, it’s wildness. It’s wilderness.
But how do we explain such things to pregnant moms? Maybe better
conversations could help. One time I told a friend, It’s going to be
the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life, and you’re not going to think
you can make it some days, but then you will, and you will be so proud, and you
will love that baby fiercely. She said I scared her slightly, but I’d
rather be honest than let a friend be blindsided and feel inadequate.
Here are some other ideas that could be helpful
for moms awaiting the arrival of their little human, adopted, birthed or otherwise. Obviously I can't speak to every situation. Some will have more help than others and some will deal better with change, but I think that pretty much any mom can relate to these concepts.
First of all, it’s going to be extremely difficult, like boot camp. You can absolutely, without a doubt, do
it; it just takes focus. A baby, especially your first in the beginning months,
is your life, just like boot camp is your life. There’s no balance. There’s no
sneaking away for a mini vacay. It’s boot camp. It’s the
baby and then whatever fits after that. Think of it as
a challenge with one aim: to stay until it’s over. If you don’t quit, you win.
Secondly, you are going to be so tired you’re not going to know
what you're doing. DO NOT OVERTHINK. In the first few months of motherhood when you feel yourself thinking too much, turn on the tv
or take a nap with your baby on your chest or... do anything else. Do not
overthink. Thinking with no sleep is a bad thing to do. Very, very bad. When
our first son was six weeks old, my husband came home to our son sleeping and me
lying on the couch watching him, weeping. I had been thinking. On no sleep.
This was, as aforementioned, bad. I thought that I didn’t love our son like I
was supposed to love him. I thought I wasn’t a good mom because I wasn’t
feeling love. I was feeling dead tired and ill fit. My husband barely said a
word. Instead, he made me a massive dinner, then ordered me to bed at 7. And
would you believe it? I was a different woman the next day, able to see more
clearly. I realized that I did love our son, because love isn’t a feeling. I saw
that my actions—feeding the baby, clothing the baby, not yelling at the baby
for throwing up on me for the twelfth time in an hour—contained
the love that my mind and emotions were unable to grasp. Like every new mom, I was learning a new definition of love, extremely deep but incomprehensible in the moment. So when you’re sleep
deprived and hungry and alone, don’t analyze. It will lead to temporary ruin.
If you feel that you can’t escape the downward spiral, go talk to your midwife
or doctor about getting on medication. This is not a failure but a gift.
Thirdly, you are going to be stressed. Even if you're the happiest
new mother on the planet and you like your new boobs, you are going to be
stressed. Especially in the first several weeks, all of your old ways of
dealing with stress have up and gone (even things you didn’t realize were for
stress relief because you just called them hobbies.) You can’t have
alone time or go on a run, ya goof, so decide what else you’re going to do and
write them down. I wish that, like a birth plan, I had made a post-birth plan,
which included stress relievers and people to call when I needed tangible help.
I wish I had made wallpaper out of it. Some relaxing activities that can easily
be done with a babe include deep breathing, walking outside, listening to music and stretching. It’s better to know you’re going to be stressed and plan for ways to decrease
it than to become stymied and confused by it. I wish I’d known sooner.
Self-care goes along with this. It took me until recently to see that self-care
doesn’t just mean pampering yourself. It’s actually a discipline. It means
going back to the basics and doing them well. Things that, before, were just things that you did, like cooking a meal for yourself and showering, are now things that
must be consciously prioritized. In the first few months, self-care might look
like making sure your teeth are brushed, but for the rest of these young years,
a mom has to know how to keep herself going and then do
it. I’d rather research tiny houses on my phone for an hour than go to bed early.
I’d rather watch several episodes of Murder, She Wrote than make a satisfying meal for myself. I’d rather complain about the bags under my eyes all evening than make the effort to draw a luxurious bath that will rid me of my troubles and my greasy hair, but sometimes self-care means doing the more complicated thing in the short
run so you can feel better in the long run, or even in the next day. Once you see
eating well, sleeping well and bathing well as priorities, realizing that they
require discipline, the more indulgent aspects of
self-care like painting your nails or getting a massage become that much more
helpful and satisfying.
Lastly, recall that it’s a season. I’m not going to add that you
will miss it one day because I don't find that it empowers a new mom to do her job better. I
ran into my high school art teacher last year and she told me, pointing to my
one-year-old, I don’t miss this age. Not at all. I need my sleep. And
I loved her for it. Anyway the newborn stage, the first year, it is a season,
an event, in the same way that a 100-mile race is an event, and you have to
remind yourself of that just like a good runner has to remind herself that there
is an end to this race, no matter hard and uncomfortable the moment is. And if
you really don’t like this season of motherhood, it’s ok. It doesn’t mean you
hate your baby or that you made a mistake. It just means that running on no
sleep, feeding a human with your body or a bottle is a colossal job, and you’re
exhausted. It also means your life has changed 1000 percent. You’ve gone from
doing whatever you want in your off time to googling how many days a
two-month-old can go without pooping (it's fourteen to twenty-one). Of course you’re going to
feel crazy. You couldn’t dream of the work it was going to require.
It is also true that you can’t dream of the flutter you’ll get in
your gut when your one-year-old puts his arms around your neck and squeezes
you, then kisses your mouth with all the slobber he can muster, or the joy of a
three-year-old exclaiming, I missed you, Mommy! when you get
home from, yes, a Saturday out. There will be seasons of motherhood that are
harder than others, but we can’t pick and choose. It’s the hard times that
prepare us for the good ones, and vice versa.
Excellent piece
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