A Real Look at Motherhood
I cannot tell you how many times I thought about sitting down and writing this, but now I feel that I must, especially with Roe vs Wade, 410 U.S. 113 on the brink of being eliminated as a constitutional right.
I want to depict an honest postpartum picture. Not one filled with Instagram-worthy pictures where I look blissfully happy and have some clichéd #blessed quote. Nor do I want to paint a comedic picture of a haggard and exhausted mother to be laughed at — mostly by other mothers that can relate. Because if we don’t laugh, then we will cry due to lack of sleep and a general sense of constantly being overwhelmed.
Because becoming a mother is not some simplistic process. It is not one thing, nor is it wholly another. It deserves to be told with the complexity that surrounds every breathe of it. It deserves this because maybe the people hell bent on being “pro-life” might realize that they are completely forgetting about the life of the woman who they want to force to have a child, regardless of her feelings about the situation.
Seven months of my pregnancy were quite blissful. This was a planned pregnancy and I was trying to enjoy all of it. Yes, there were the hormonal changes, but no sickness or scares. It wasn’t until my seventh month of pregnancy that the reality that I would be giving birth in two months hit me.
I was tired all the time, carrying around what felt like a fully grown football player inside of me. My pelvis felt like it was breaking anytime I walked more than a couple of feet.
My blood pressure escalated to the point that my midwife sent me to the hospital for observation. I was fine. The baby was fine, but my mind wasn’t. The anxiety of what was to come kept building.
My due date — the 13th of December — came and went. I was to be induced on the 16th. There was a relief to knowing somewhat when I would be having my child, although the flip side is neither myself nor my husband slept the night of the 15th.
There is something about knowing your life would be changing forever the following morning that keeps you awake at night.
I was absolutely petrified of what was about to happen to be completely honest. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry my eyes out. But I didn’t. I knew everyone around me was already worried — I didn’t need to add that to the mix.
Kai didn’t come on the 16th. He came at 3:23am on the 17th. Nine pounds, eight ounces. A weight I will never forget. Thanks to my midwife and the three other nurses at my side (he was the only baby born that night at Newport Hospital) I was able to have him naturally — albeit with a helpful epidural filled with fentanyl that still couldn’t mask the pain of such a big baby being born.
He was born and before I could understand what was happening, I was pulling him out of me on to my chest. He was slimy, warm and crying. From the vague memory I have of the moment, I told him that I understood why he was crying. That the world he had just entered wasn’t easy, but that I promised to protect him until the day I died.
No one had told me was how unstable I would be when I stood up for the first time. It hadn’t occurred to me that after my body’s balance would be so thrown off due to carrying around such a large load. No one had told me that would happen either.
The rest of our stay in the hospital (just over 48 hours) was the easy part.
The first week of having Kai home was a blur. The nurses were adamant that I wake up every two hours to feed him, regardless of him crying or not. I did so, and it was exhausting, as was to be expected, but the thing that was most challenging was the loneliness of being up at 2/3 in the morning sitting in a chair with this thing that more resembled and acted like an alien than an actual human being.
There was no smile to know if he even liked me or not. I would sit there and contort my breasts and body to make him feed correctly, trying to remember all that was said to me in the blur of the 24 hours from his birth to me leaving the hospital.
I tried to care for my healing body as well, but o only after I tended to his needs. It hurt to sit. I punched the wall every time I peed to distract myself from the pain between my legs.
When I would try to stand up from sitting in the rocking chair, my leg muscles, after months of disuse due to having a huge stomach, would give way.
I wondered why I had been so adamant to have a child? My life was pretty good before.
I felt hopelessly vulnerable and I convinced myself that my husband would leave me. He could leave. I couldn’t. My whole existence was now tied to this being that should he stop living, I would too.
These thoughts petrified me.
Racing thoughts of all the horrible things that could happen passed through my brain. I realized that any mental issues I had before, were now exacerbated. My anxiety was through the roof. My negative thoughts about myself were heightened.
I thought to myself how stupid I was to think that I would have my body back to myself once he was born. Now I worried about what I was eating and drinking because I was nursing.
Then I felt guilty for not having green milk like some of the mothers I saw on Instagram because of all the healthy greens and smoothies they were having.
Then I felt guilty about not producing enough milk for him and using formula to help feed him.
And then I realized that I was feeling guilty about pretty much everything, including feeling guilty.
Oh, and there was (and still is) the exhaustion. I have always adored my sleep and now it seems like a relic of the past. Gone forever. Other mothers would laugh and tell me that I would never sleep again, as if it was a funny thing to say to someone.
But slowly, I realized that I needed to take care of myself first in order to be a good mother. To be kind to myself. An act and intent that I wasn’t too good at.
I still struggle. I still feel overwhelmed and incredibly lucky all at once. I know that I am fortunate to work for myself. I know that I am lucky to have a partner in this (and boy do I bow down to women who do this on their own).
And now he smiles and he is becoming more and more of a person every day, which helps me see that we both have done a pretty good job (so far) with him.
It is still incredibly hard and my anxiety is still there as are the thoughts of the million and one ways that things could go wrong. But I am working on it.
I realize just how much of a driving force my anxiety was in my life. How I felt that if I made that extra 20K or got that next degree, that then I would be happier, better and less anxious.
But it doesn’t and it won’t.
I realize now just how wrong and unhealthy that driving force is. I appreciate it for what it has helped me achieve, but I know that there are better, healthier ways to live.
I am trying to realize that my son will be happy if I am happy. My mental health being good is paramount to him being OK.
At this moment when it seems like a woman’s right to choose when she wants to carry a pregnancy through to birth is on the cusp of not being a right anymore, it seems especially important to talk realistically of what it means — emotionally, physically and financially — to have a child.
Not just talk about the good parts, because there is some real dark and heavy shit that comes with motherhood.
It truly takes a village to raise a child, and those villages often don’t exist for mothers, especially during global pandemics. Would my thoughts be different about having another child if I was wealthy enough to have a wet nurse and pay for additional help? Maybe, but the fact is that this option doesn’t for many.
I feel that had I seen more honest conversations about motherhood, had my healthcare providers offered more emotional support not just during, but after the pregnancy, I might have realized a little bit more what a mental journey I was on.
Maybe I am missing something, but I have yet to hear about another medical situation in which you lose that amount of blood and go through that amount of physical distress and are discharged in 48 hours only to be seen six weeks later. And with zero physical therapy offered or recommended.
We have so grossly abused the strength of women in this country. That in and of itself should be evidence of who writes policy and wields power here. It should also be evidence of why it needs to change.
I have always been pro-choice, but I am more adamant in that belief now than I have ever been. The lack of support given to mothers after birth in this country is truly grotesque. Yes, it is a natural process to have a child, but so is losing woman during the birthing process. Never mind the mental toll on woman if they make it home with the child. It doesn’t have to be this way.
If I were to find myself pregnant again at this moment, there is no doubt in my mind that what decision I would make.
I would make this decision to protect my living, breathing child first, my mental health second, and my marriage third.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, which claims to be the primary source of research and policy analysis on abortion in the U.S., 59 percent of women seeking abortions are already mothers.
Objectively, doesn’t that tell us all something about motherhood? Especially in a country that cares little about what happens to baby and mother once a child is outside the uterus.
