...in the Baby Carriage
How do you talk about childbirth and new motherhood and all that without ending up scaring someone or sharing too much or exaggerating too much or not telling the truth enough? How do you correctly explain the out-of-body experience that is giving birth, and the sudden rush back into your body in that moment when he rushes out to meet you and you hold your arms out, shaking, waiting for the nurses to hand him over so you can reconcile the child you thought you were having with this tiny, real, immediate human being with the crumpled face of an old man and a smell so sweet and primal all you can do is rest your nose against the top of his shockingly silky soft head?
Motherhood is FUCKING CRAZY.
The emotions, the hormones, the shit you go through giving birth, the shit you wade through (literally) for the first several years, and the shit I've yet to experience with my young son or grown stepchildren. It's messy and insane and you say things that make you sound like a crazy woman. ("NO, putting your penis on that 'a little bit' is going to hurt!") ← actual words I have uttered in the last three weeks, enough said?
Oh, but the sweetness of it all, from the moment they gave me my crumpled up little boy, to the first time my stepdaughter leaned her little blonde head on my shoulder and confided "we have so much in comment," to the first time my stepsons said "I love you" to me... when I was a little girl, I wanted to be so many different things, but I always knew I wanted to be a mother, and now all I dream of is the sweet moments of motherhood and the bright futures ahead for all four of my babies.
💘
So after a relatively short, mostly unmedicated labor (thanks to scoliosis which caused an incorrect placement of epidural #1), Baby Boy was born and things changed for my husband and I. Baby had jaundice and landed back in the hospital at seven days old to spend the night under the lights, and my husband and I were there together. He was my biggest advocate in my breastfeeding journey, despite asking at one point "when do we have to start adding formula? Breastmilk is only good for the first month, right?" 😒😶 Once he learned more, he helped me stick with it even when it was difficult. Our relationship got stronger with the birth of our son - we were both happier and more in love than we had ever been.
I was like Mary Poppins in those days. Bright and cheerful all the time and on top of everything. I ran an in-home daycare for the first year of my son's life so that I could stay home with him, and kept the house clean, made homemade dinners every night, made lunches for my husband, got up with the baby all night long (he never slept through the night), drove my husband to and from the subway station in the morning and evening, did all the shopping, the laundry - everything. Ms. Suzy Homemaker. It made sense, though, because I was the one who was home. We had already had a division of labor that was skewed heavier in my direction because my husband worked longer and harder hours than me a lot of the time and made 3x as much money so I felt like his time was more important (hellooooo anxiety, anyone else?), and also because he has a lot of social anxiety so many things fall on me simply because I'm more capable. So with the stay-at-home gig, I took on even more responsibility - namely, all of it, and rather willingly for the first couple of years.
I stayed home for thirteen months then reentered the workforce. I managed to get an entry-level administrative assistant position and I began working my way up the ladder. But we never renegotiated the division of labor and responsibility in our marriage, so even though I was working as much as my husband, driving him and the baby around then commuting to my own job, and in charge of everything at home and the baby, we didn't change things and somewhere along the way I began to internalize this as a fact of my life, and also began to resent my husband. The seeds of resentment grew over the years and burst out in occasional fits of anger, distance, or depression. When I weaned my son, when he was 2.5 years old, things got worse, and depression and anxiety really took over my relationship with my husband for a long time.
That's basically the short version of everything. Kiddo is 4.5 years old now, and thriving and still a pain in the ass at sleeping. My husband is still supportive and I'm still struggling with resentment and doing too much, but I'm making a lot of progress at getting myself out of some of the worst of my patterns and learning how to change how I relate to him. Finding the right therapist has made a huge difference, and a medication that is helping, though I'm unsure how much, and practicing mindfulness.
I'm working on learning to be happy in my life, because everything I need for happiness is contained in this single moment. I just need to feel it. And maybe you need to feel it, too? At the very least, this basically brings you up to date with how I got to be who I am and what it is that I'm trying to work on in my life.
Motherhood is FUCKING CRAZY.
The emotions, the hormones, the shit you go through giving birth, the shit you wade through (literally) for the first several years, and the shit I've yet to experience with my young son or grown stepchildren. It's messy and insane and you say things that make you sound like a crazy woman. ("NO, putting your penis on that 'a little bit' is going to hurt!") ← actual words I have uttered in the last three weeks, enough said?
Oh, but the sweetness of it all, from the moment they gave me my crumpled up little boy, to the first time my stepdaughter leaned her little blonde head on my shoulder and confided "we have so much in comment," to the first time my stepsons said "I love you" to me... when I was a little girl, I wanted to be so many different things, but I always knew I wanted to be a mother, and now all I dream of is the sweet moments of motherhood and the bright futures ahead for all four of my babies.
💘
So after a relatively short, mostly unmedicated labor (thanks to scoliosis which caused an incorrect placement of epidural #1), Baby Boy was born and things changed for my husband and I. Baby had jaundice and landed back in the hospital at seven days old to spend the night under the lights, and my husband and I were there together. He was my biggest advocate in my breastfeeding journey, despite asking at one point "when do we have to start adding formula? Breastmilk is only good for the first month, right?" 😒😶 Once he learned more, he helped me stick with it even when it was difficult. Our relationship got stronger with the birth of our son - we were both happier and more in love than we had ever been.
I was like Mary Poppins in those days. Bright and cheerful all the time and on top of everything. I ran an in-home daycare for the first year of my son's life so that I could stay home with him, and kept the house clean, made homemade dinners every night, made lunches for my husband, got up with the baby all night long (he never slept through the night), drove my husband to and from the subway station in the morning and evening, did all the shopping, the laundry - everything. Ms. Suzy Homemaker. It made sense, though, because I was the one who was home. We had already had a division of labor that was skewed heavier in my direction because my husband worked longer and harder hours than me a lot of the time and made 3x as much money so I felt like his time was more important (hellooooo anxiety, anyone else?), and also because he has a lot of social anxiety so many things fall on me simply because I'm more capable. So with the stay-at-home gig, I took on even more responsibility - namely, all of it, and rather willingly for the first couple of years.
I stayed home for thirteen months then reentered the workforce. I managed to get an entry-level administrative assistant position and I began working my way up the ladder. But we never renegotiated the division of labor and responsibility in our marriage, so even though I was working as much as my husband, driving him and the baby around then commuting to my own job, and in charge of everything at home and the baby, we didn't change things and somewhere along the way I began to internalize this as a fact of my life, and also began to resent my husband. The seeds of resentment grew over the years and burst out in occasional fits of anger, distance, or depression. When I weaned my son, when he was 2.5 years old, things got worse, and depression and anxiety really took over my relationship with my husband for a long time.
That's basically the short version of everything. Kiddo is 4.5 years old now, and thriving and still a pain in the ass at sleeping. My husband is still supportive and I'm still struggling with resentment and doing too much, but I'm making a lot of progress at getting myself out of some of the worst of my patterns and learning how to change how I relate to him. Finding the right therapist has made a huge difference, and a medication that is helping, though I'm unsure how much, and practicing mindfulness.
I'm working on learning to be happy in my life, because everything I need for happiness is contained in this single moment. I just need to feel it. And maybe you need to feel it, too? At the very least, this basically brings you up to date with how I got to be who I am and what it is that I'm trying to work on in my life.
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