Mommy Comparisons

Mommyhood comes with a strange set of insecurities. It’s almost like being back in junior high school where every pimple and out-of-place hair was subject to intense scrutiny. We were so busy worrying about fitting in that we almost didn’t have time to worry about whether other people were fitting in. Almost. But there, of course, were cliques and in-groups and people who bonded together over common or shared experience and part of that was excluding others from the group based on often-sketchy requirements.

While at my moms-of-newborns group I noticed that I was becoming quite self conscious about my own experience of parenting. While Potamus is only 7 weeks old, and other women have babies of similar ages, I was the only one in the group who hadn’t brought toys to entertain him while he layed there on his blanket. My mind whirled through thoughts like “oh no, what stage is he at, should I have brought toys? I am a bad mom, I need to get on top of these things. What if he doesn’t develop normally because I didn’t expose him to toys early enough?” Clearly this thinking is delusional, as all over the world there are babies growing into healthy, well adjusted and smart, kids and adults without the abundance of plastic colored flashing first-world toys that are on the market today. However, I couldn’t help but feel inadequate.

And, because we are new moms and are trying to get to know one another on both a personal AND a mom level, the topic of giving birth came up. I was surprised that, once again, I didn’t fit in, as I gave birth vaginally, with only fentanyl at the last minute for pain, and the other four moms of newborns (versus the other moms who had babies a few months old and didn’t participate in this part of the conversation) had given birth via c-section, all not by choice. As they were commiserating about their c-section, the recovery, and how they were sad to have not had the experience of birth that they wanted (vaginal, no medication). While I could commiserate on having pain medication when I thought I could do it without, I, once again, didn’t fit quite in with the birthing experience that these ladies had. And while I tried to insert myself, there was this sense that even my trying to commiserate wasn’t quite welcome, because, after all, I had as close to the birth experience that they wanted and really didn’t have any need to complain.

I can’t escape the divide online, either. I am invloved in reading several forums and blogs and find that I am still not in any group fully. There are the offbeat mamas, which I consider myself a part of, but, while I consider myself a hippy at heart, I don’t really think of my mothering as all that hippy-like (though I baby-wear, and Boof baby-wears, and we might end up doing cloth diapers, and we co-sleep and sometimes bedshare). But I don’t have pink hair or go to rock concerts and I am not all organic and from the outside we look like just your typical all-american family.
So the other websites, where they have almost a disdain for breastfeeding and babywearing, but probably fit my personality in other ways, label us “crunchy” and “granolaey” which I normally wouldn’t take as an insult, but I want to fit in.

So I think thats what I need to examine…my desire to fit in…and why mommyhood is a club with cliques and why I feel so insecure, when really, we are all just trying to do a good job.

Baby Reiki

Something wonderful happened after our last crying filled reiki session. While lying on the table with Potamus, as he cycled from being relaxed and alert to fussy to full blown screaming and finally to calm rest. I have been seeing Courtney for four years and know that it is a safe place for whatever emotion that comes up, but I noticed that my thought patterns went toward anxiety, embarassment, guilt and frustration during those crying moments. I tried to breathe through them and tell myself “he is a baby, it is okay for him to cry,” but the other voice in my head kept saying, “you’re annoying her, you shouldn’t have come today, this is a waste of money, why can’t he be calm he was so peaceful last time?!”

Since I only had a few moments of incredible depression filled rage, it’s hard for me to remember that I AM still suffering from postpartum depression, and that it is the medication (and reiki) that is allowing me to be in a place where those negative thoughts are not taken as the absolute and automatic truth. I was able to breathe and process with Courtney the anxiety in my heart about wanting to calm the Potamus down and feeling completely helpless to figure out what exactly he needed.

But the shift that happened after that session has been life-changing (or perhaps, on a smaller scale, week-changing). Potamus has had moments-to-hours of fussiness, and I have noticed a difference in my heart and mind during these times where I want to scream ‘tell me what you need! i don’t know what to do!” I have noticed myself slowing down, breathing, not beating myself up about being a horrible mom who doesn’t know what her kid needs, and realizing that I have already experienced an “embarassing” moment where he cried and I couldn’t do anything about it, and we both made it through just fine (and still bonded).

This shift has rippled out into other areas of my relationship with Potamus, as I have begun to enjoy the sudden shift to him latching perfectly and not needing the nipple shield, to late night feedings because he is growing again, to experiencing his first pacifier and first bottle moments. When I went to our session today, she asked me how the evenings have been going (since that was my initial crazy anxiety/depression time) and in looking back over the past two weeks I was amazed…night times are actually becoming my favorite time with Potamus. We’re sleepy and it’s dark and warm and snuggly. He nurses and then we both fall back into dreamland…him in his co-sleeper and me right next to him in the bed. These moments of sweetness are the result of these reiki moments, where I asked to recieve what I needed most, and while it wasn’t what I asked for verbally, it clearly was what I needed on a different level.

If you haven’t had a chance to experience a reiki session, I highly recommend it!

A Regular Zoo around here…

We got the nicknames Boof and Monk-Monk while on a trip to California a few years ago. Boof’s cousin’s son had these adorable little blankets with animal heads on them, an elephant and a monkey (you can guess which one Monk-Monk was, ha!). We thought they were cute and so we playfully started calling each other Boof and Monk-Monk.

We were a family of two, an elephant and a monkey (plus our real life doggy), and then we had Baby Boof, which we have begun affectionately calling Potamus (short for hippopotamus). We make quite a little jungle family, an elephant, a monkey, a hippo and a real life dog. I’m even thinking I need one of those window decals that are so popular, but instead of stick people, we need cute little jungle animals…

So in a turn of events, Boof has had the opportunity to stay home with our little tribe for the past week.I realize now how hard it must be for a single mom to raise a family, as it is nice to have adult company around the house (even if it is wating him play video games) and to have the ability to hand the Potamus off to someone when I want to pee or shower or put mascara on. I’ve noticed that my mood has increased dramatically with the additional help around the house during the day (and the sunshine that we are having currently), but then I have moments of sheer boredom and restlessness where the house feels like it is not quite big enough for a monkey, elephant hippo and real-life dog to co-exist peacefully. Perhaps it’s cabin fever, so I’ve gotten outside on a walk the past few days, but sometimes I feel like I’m living in a zoo!

Moms with Strollers

I used to think I was an introvert, but the more I learn about myself, the more I realize that I am a highly sensitive extrovert, raised in the clannish and isolation-minded Pacific Northwest, with a genetic and environmental disposition toward depression, seasonal depression and anxiety.

So now, as I struggle through postpartum depression, I have had to force myself to break away from all of these forces working against my health and healing. Medication, talking with family, taking daily showers and putting on mascara regardless of whether I am going to sit on the couch all day in sweats or not, and, most recently, meeting other moms.

Let’s be honest now, moms make me nervous. Before Baby Boof was born I was really nervous about having to make mom friends, because I am not necessarily intersted in talking about diaper sizes or wearing matching outfits with my child and pushing them in a pram. Moms can also be a judgy lot, and I am just not interested in trying to live up to some sort of mother-of-the-year-award. But my single and married-without-kids friends just don’t “get it” like moms do, so, with some trepidation, I have branched out to meet some moms.

My first solo venture into this arena was finding a local meetup for moms with babies/toddlers in my area. I figured that an event titled “moms with strollers” wouldn’t be that scary, especially since it was 2 blocks from my house, and worse case scenario I get in a good walk and never go back.

What surprised me was how awesome all of these moms were. While I didn’t connect with all of them at the same level, there were a few I could see myself actually hanging out with in the future. And my sense of humor shined through, which is often not the case in a new or strange place (I’m the girl shoveling food in her face at the snack table at parties). The weather was glorious, seeing the sun after “Winter Blast 2012” that we survived last week, was an added bonus. The combination of sunshine, exercise, and good conversation were so inspiring to my mood, that I found myself happy the rest of the day. Perhaps moms aren’t so scary after all?

Little Red Squirrel

This is not how Baby Boof looked at our last reiki session. Fortunately, Courtney is lovely and not disturbed by his hollering, and I found myself loving the moment of learning to breathe, in a safe space, through the crying, processing with her the feelings that come up inside of me when I can’t figure out how to help him go to sleep peacefully or get comfortable.

I’m getting to learn how to embrace the present moment without judging it or comparing it to other moments. I could easily have gotten embarassed by his crying this last session because our first session was so swaddled in peace. She sensed that his hips were bothering him, not acutely, but that he was, indeed, growing. And at the end of the session she gave him an animal card reading, and she landed on the Red Squirrel, as the one with a message for him. How appropriate, since it was all about storing up food and preserving energy. I had to laugh since that’s exactly what he’s been doing lately (eating every hour for 8-10 hours at a time), which is hard on my body, but I know he’s going to shoot up soon.

At the end of the session I felt incredibly relaxed and ready to face the rest of the day, which was surprising since I had just spent the better part of an hour with a crying baby!

The Sweet Spot

Boof rolled over a few nights ago and said, “I appreciate how sweet you’re being to him right now,” which was heartwarming to hear, even though I hadn’t even realized that there had been a noticeable shift in my ability to handle the nighttime clusterfeedings/crying jags. My medication is still ramping up, so I hadn’t expected to feel any different for awhile, but as I’ve told many people before, that family members tend to notice the difference long before the ‘identified patient’ notices a real change in mood.

But there have been moments in the past week, where I find myself lost in the smell of his babyness, have stroked his cheek and gotten simply lost in the moment of connection between the two of us. Perhaps I’ve slowed down a bit, especially at night, not frantically reading facebook or online forums, and simply allowed myself to drift in the moment, even when I can’t seem to figure out why he wants the boob AGAIN for the 6th time in an hour.

My midwife, at my follow up appointment, was very supportive of my choice to seek medication. She even disclosed that she had struggled with PPD, and so she understood the irrationality of the feelings and how isolating it feels. I couldn’t be happier with how she has handled my post-natal care, and it was nice to report that I could see myself heading back into the light of the sweet spot.

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It comes out of nowhere, and yet, in retrospect I guess there are signs and symptoms of the spinning. Like when you’ve been drinking tequila shots all night, thinking you’re doing fine, and then BAM on the dance floor you are suddenly completely wasted and you wonder to yourself “how did this happen?” Of course, there ARE warning signs, but it’s hard for me to see them in the moment. The ramping up of my irritability that becomes more than sleepy, middle-of-the-night frustration at a poor latch and moves into an uncontrollable, unexplicalbe anger-bordering-on-rage,that makes absolutely NO sense, and leaves me despondant, detached, with feelings of incredible guilt after the episode passes.

It didn’t start out this way. There was a mostly blissful bubble, punctured by perfectionism and my desire to be the best mom ever, get my kid to latch on without a nipple shield, exclusively breastfeed to get him back up to birth-weight (rather than supplement with formula given by our pediatrician), to lost the baby-weight, to be up and around entertaining people post-partum like a combination of Wonder Woman and Betty Crocker. I had showered a mere 1.5 hours after birth, was wearing mascara and eye-liner during our first pictures with baby, and had an awesome amount of energy in the first few days that felt brilliant.

There were a few little moments of irritability that left me concerned enough to at least mention it to my midwife and husband that I was afraid I was heading into a tunnel. Nights were particularly bad, but not always bad. That’s the dangerous part of all of this, is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the nights with spinning thoughts, irritability, despair, guilt and the nights where I nurse with ease and we go about our sleeping business with relatively little interuption, 1.5 or 2 hours at a time, before we begin our little routine of nurse-burp-change diaper-nurse-burp-sleep, again.

So last night, when I woke up and the only language I could must were “fuck yous,” I handed the little one to Boof and curled up in bed. I thought of dying. I thought of running away. I thought that everyone would be better off without me. I felt worthless and detached and angry. And then I felt sad. And my thoughts spun rapidly out of control down this horrible rabbit hole into a nightmare of Wonderland proportions. Though I am experienced with depression and anxiety, I have not felt this level of despair in years. And then, after almost an hour, it went away and I nursed with ease, and slept like a rock (until we did our routine again). My humor and sweetness and ability to communicate returned as switftly as it left, which should comfort me, but actually scares me more than anything.

Because, when drinking tequila shots and getting out of control wasted is a choice, and while I can’t necessarily know if 8 drinks will cause that out-of-control drunk space, I can know that 1 drink, or 0 drinks, will not. But this feeling of spinning isn’t caused by alcohol or drugs. It is something more sinister, inside of me, that turns on and off without any apparent reason. Though I suppose I can begin to analyze the ramp-up to the point at which I had to hand our child over because I couldn’t be quite sure that I was safe enough for myself, let alone to be a mother.

And just like being drunk, the incredible next-day embarassment and walk of shame, facing my husband who triaged the situation, lingers inside my mind. Human guilt and mom guilt colliding as I wonder “what the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I get it together?”