A Cry in the Dark
admin July 31st, 2008
So I haven’t written here in a while. Well, as they say, I’ve been busy.
Sometimes I feel guilty for not writing. I feel that slight guilt I feel when I really need to mop the floor, but choose to do something else instead, like it’s something on my to-do list that I ignore, but shouldn’t. And sometimes I feel silly for this guilt. It’s not like anyone needs me to write here. It’s not like I get paid, or someone is inconvenienced. But then again, I will never have more than a handful of readers if I never create something to be consumed. And don’t I know that feeling of disappointment when I visit my favorite blogs day after day to find nothing new?
But today, today, I write because I NEED to. I need to do something creative. I need to reach out. I need to have someone tell me, “me too.” I can’t help feeling that some time in the future I will take this post down. I will feel embarrassed by my weakness, or will be afraid that my son will read it many years from now. But at the moment, this is something I think I need. So here goes.
I graduate tomorrow. I walk across a stage while friends and family cheer for me, celebrate me, and applaud me. I take the final symbolic step to complete this incredibly trying, incredibly difficult, incredibly esteemed thing called the PhD. I do this thing that I have been working to do for the last half-decade. And all I want is to get it over with.
All I want is to get it done because of this other thing I have, this baby. This baby cries off and on all day. This baby forces me to wake several times every night. This baby I must keep alive day after day. This baby keeps me from doing other things. This baby is constantly on my mind.
Because I can’t expose this baby to germs, I am having some friends come by to take care of this baby. I am stressed hoping they get there in time, hoping we get out in time, hoping this baby doesn’t scream the whole time they are there, hoping this baby takes the bottle OK, hoping that I don’t get too engorged while I’m away from this baby, hoping I sleep the night before. This is half of me. The other half just wants to run away.
Really, this baby isn’t all that bad. He sleeps at night except for the hour he takes to eat every three hours that I feed him. (Isn’t an hour feeding a little long?) He doesn’t cry constantly, just off and on most of the time he’s awake during the day.
But still I can’t push out the nagging feeling that I have gone and done something horribly horribly wrong. Because, this, this is not fun. Why do women other seem to enjoy doing this? Can I please just give him back and have my old life back? I want my old life back. I want my husband and my sleep and my LIFE, my LIFE, the life I know how to live. And I want a job – any job that will get me away, and doing and thinking and not having to worry about this baby. Screw the dream job; screw me making a new start, a new career. I just want something that will make me enough money to have someone else take care of the baby for a little while. Someone who can do it better than I can.
And who thinks like this? What the hell kind of mom am I? This thing, this thing can never be undone. Never. What have I done? When does the fun part start? What is wrong with me? Do other moms worry that their lives will never be as good again, that they have made a terrible mistake? What if I’m just not the motherly type? What if it never gets better? Oh please tell me this will get better.
The thing is, I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know if it gets better, or just different. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to relax, to enjoy myself and my husband. I don’t know if I’ll ever get a job I really love, now that I don’t have time to devote to making that happen. I don’t know if this one decision has thoroughly screwed up my life. So please, tell me there is a light, that this gets better, that soon I will love my life again, that it’s worth it. Because right now all I want to do is go hide in a closet, and this graduation thing tomorrow just seems like some cruel joke. Congratulations, your life is over.
Honey honey honey!
I don’t even know you, this is the one and only blog post of yours that I have ever read, and yet I feel this mothering impulse to call you honey, pat your hand, and pull up a chair.
My first baby is 3 months old. I FEEL YOU. I am THERE with you. I am totally miserable right now. For different reasons than you, actually, but really I think that every mother of a new baby is miserable - she just fills in the Mad Libs blanks with her own reasons. But I think the deep-seated underlying common-to-all-of-us reasons are (a) hormones hormones hormones, (b) sleep dep sleep dep sleep FREAKING dep, and (c) exactly what you say here - that we have made an irreversible choice. Like, if we decide we don’t really like this all that much, well too bad. The beab is here.
Everything you write here are things that I have thought at one time or another. It seems eternal, this land of the no-sleep. I’ll tell you one thing, though - now that my kid is 3 months, he can hold his head up. And now that he can hold his head up, I can hold him with one hand. And THAT, my friend, is amazingly freeing. Simply being able to have one hand free has helped me feel less chained to the ground. Also, as soon as he hits 4 months, I am doing the rice cereal in the bottle for his night feeding, and getting some sleep. This is the light at the end of my tunnel. And if this doesn’t work - I think I’ll be in trouble.
My husband just wrote a long email trying to cheer me up, listing all of our blessings, saying he missed the old, happy me, wondering what he could do. I wrote him back (we DO talk, but for this experience writing seemed to be more helpful), and said that all he can do right now is abide with me. I am sad, and that’s normal. So just ride it out til I’m not sad any more.
This is my 2-months-more-experienced advice to you. Abide. Ride it out. It will get better. It must! And you aren’t alone. And if you are really feeling bad, if you think you can’t get out of bed every day and you don’t have the energy to care for your baby, then don’t feel bad about going to a doctor for help. My girlfriend down the street has a beab 2 months older than mine, and on the day that she wondered out loud if perhaps they could just smother him? So she could get some sleep? And then they could have another one later? Well, her wise and loving husband just whisked her off to the doc to get some meds, and those meds have pulled her through the wretched postpartum depression. See? These feelings, and even more extreme ones, are normal. There is nothing you can say that can shock the doc. Or fellow mothers.
Be well. I will come back to check on you some time.
Oh and also? Congratulations on the PhD. My hub is in year five of his PhD pursuit, so I can appreciate how hard it is. You will stumble through your graduation in a miserable hormonal fog, but so what? You got the degree.
And Jack used to nurse for much longer, but now that he’s a little bigger and stronger, it only takes about 20 minutes. And at about 6 weeks is when it stopped hurting for me. Now I enjoy it - during daylight hours. Nighttime feedings are still brutal, but we do side-lying position, which I like to call barnyard animal position, and so I barely wake up for it now.
You know what? Motherhood pretty much sucks for the first few months. Here you have this whiny thing that can’t do anything for itself and wants to eat all the damn time (Baby Jane would pretty much eat non-stop every night from 7-11 for the first 3-4 weeks. It was a nightmare!) and cries for no reason and sometimes can’t be consoled…..and you’re stuck in the house and feeling fat because you’re still carrying around the baby weight and you’re sooooo tired that you will probably fall over while trying to make lunch….oh wait, I forgot, there’s no damn time to make lunch….and meanwhile, everyone on the outside is saying isn’t it great that you are a mother and have this precious little cutie in your life…..
Makes you want to leave the country w/ no forwarding address!
But it *does* get better. For us, it was around the 2.5-3 month range. Baby Jane slept longer at night, went a few hours between feedings, stopped crying between the hours of 8-10 every single night, got stronger, started to be amused by random things so that I could put her down on the floor for 10-15 minutes, and generally became more predictable. Especially with the naps—having a semi-predictable nap schedule means you can Get Things Done! And perhaps even Think again!
I’m finding, 15-ish months in, that motherhood is never easy, but it does get easier. The kids grow more independent, and while independence and mobility bring new challenges (running out into traffic, finding the few unbabyproofed areas in the house, climbing), they also make life a bit more manageable—Baby Jane can get in her own carseat, walk places, and generally tell us what she wants. And your kid’s independence frees up space in your brain to think like an adult again.
I probably didn’t start to “enjoy” motherhood until about the 4 month mark. It took that long for me to understand my kid and feel more confident in what I was doing. And yes, there were times that I felt like a bad mom because I wasn’t all in Hallmark-love with my baby, and even (*gasp*) resented her—a lot—as you describe. But you’re not going to be in love, or even in like, with your kid sometimes, and that’s ok. And it took me a while to come to terms with that.
So I guess this is just a long-winded way of saying that yes, it *does* get easier, and that you are completely normal!! So hang in there, take care of yourself the best you can, get sleep whenever you can, and *get help* whenever and wherever you can. (And feel free to email me if you want to chat—this is all still new enough for me that I remember those days quite well.) Remember that this is fleeting and that things will only get easier from here. Good luck!!
Long time reader, first time commenter.
You’ve accomplished a lot in a relatively short amount of time. Give yourself a break, girl! You’re doing fine.
Love your blog!