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.

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.

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!!

You’ve accomplished a lot in a relatively short amount of time. Give yourself a break, girl! You’re doing fine.

Love your blog!