Being a mom is so so different than I thought it would be. And maybe it's different because of the way my pregnancy ended with so much fear and uncertainty, and then Bella's life began with so much fear and uncertainty.
I feel like I am having a hard time connecting with other moms. I feel isolated with everything that Bella and I have gone through together, because there's nobody that really understands that. There's a mom and baby group at the health center that I keep meaning to go to, but in talking to a friend the other day, don't know if I'm up for it. I need to be more positive about things like that. So many of my feelings are different that I know they would have been if everything had been okay. Maybe this isn't making sense. I'll grab another coffee and think about it.
Okay, here's the thing. I feel like the only thing moms talk about is parenting. Go figure right? And of course that's fine. It's even good. But I feel very much like an outsider in these conversations. Because I just don't care, and I can't figure out a way to get myself to care. When I was pregnant I was always on Baby Center. What milestone was my baby blueberry at this week? Fingers and toes! How exciting! A heartbeat! A gender! There were all these things you looked forward to. And generally, you do the same with a new baby. She looked at me, smiled at me, held up her head, rolled over, sat up, talked, ate solids, slept through the night, etc. Moms LOVE to talk about this. They compare and contrast and give advice about how to get a baby to eat solids, take a bottle, sleep through the night. There is a wonderful sense of community they feel when they do this, and I'm glad that it's there.
Our milestones are different. I don't check to see if she's doing anything new this week, and I couldn't tell you when she rolled over for the first time. I check her mark. I check her brain for swelling and I try not to think about what I'd do if her brain swelled and I try and keep her medications coming on time. I call her doctor, her pharmacist, her specialists. I don't have any advice about getting her to sleep through the night, because until very recently, with her steroid dose, it wasn't even an option, and she still doesn't do it. And I don't feel like participating in a conversations about it because I don't care if she's a year before she does it. I can get up with her. I know she's not going to be ten and waking me up three times a night to make her a sandwich. And I become easily frustrated with moms who are exasperated at three months that their baby isn't sleeping through the night, and exasperated with moms who are so proud that their baby does. Because it so doesn't matter.
Okay, so here's the confession, and I realize I'm a jerk for feeling this way. I really do. But I simply cannot take hearing a parent complain about their child in any way. I get that being a mom is a HUGE change and that moms need to be able to vent, and I know your whole life changed and nothing in your daily routine is the way it used to be, whether you have your first baby or your fifteenth. I know that we all don't know what we're doing and we need each other and we need the community of being able to share and vent and ask advice. But I came too close to having my routine change not at all. I came so close to having no reason to get up in the middle of the night, except to stare at an empty bassinet and cry my eyes out with an ache that would never go away.
I know if none of this had happened, I would be the type of mother that I feel so different from now. I'd have been such an anal, by the book mom. I'd have gotten Bella on a strict schedule and tried to do everything just right, and maybe she'd have been a better kid for it, and maybe I'd be a better mom for it. But I can't. I don't care about those things. I don't care when she sleeps through the night, eats solids, walks, crawls, etc. I care even less than Peter sometimes. And I don't know if that makes me a bad mom. I don't know if I'm a bad mom if I let her co-sleep, not only because she needs it, but I do. I need to wake up in the night and feel her warm sleeping body breathing softly next to mine. I need to convince myself a thousand times a day that she's okay, that she's going to be okay. My liver isn't going to kill her, and her mark isn't going to affect her brain or her eye or her airway. I need to convince myself that that horrible day in the hospital was just a really close call. That I haven't hurt her in any way from having her on steroids for so long. I need to know that her heart murmur is gone and that her heart is working fine and that these current drugs aren't going to change that.
I need her. She's the most amazing thing in the world, she's such an incredible treasure, and I need her. I don't need her to sleep through the night. I wouldn't mind, but I don't even try and work at it. And when we sit in the dark in our rocking chair and I feel her little hand crawl up the front of my housecoat to find my skin, and I hear her sweet sighing sounds that she makes when she's happy and falling asleep, part of me hopes that she never sleeps through the night and I feel sorry for people who have babies that do. Because I know that one day that is not too far from now, she'll walk into the house, toss her car keys on the table and call "Night mom!" and go to her room and shut the door. And I will LONG for this. My arms will long to hold her in a bundle on my chest and snuggle her to sleep.
Maybe everything traumatized me to the point that I possibly have too much perspective. I certainly don't have enough grace. There are times where it's hard not to feel angry at people who have it so easy, and I know that I don't see what they may actually be going through. There are times when I feel annoyed at people for not having the same perspective that I do, and yet, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Not ever.There are times where I could kill someone for asking about her mark and times when I could kill someone for ignoring it. The worst is to ask and then ignore the answer. I know people are just trying to make me more comfortable, but I so long for someone who just understands this. Who doesn't think that I'm a bad parent because I don't know that I really do parent Bella. I play with her. I enjoy her. I don't try and teach her anything other than that I love her and will always be there for her. If she tries to crawl and gets frustrated, I pick her up. If she wants to eat ten times a night, then I feed her and my poor husband goes to work dead tired and we sit in our jammies all day. I forget to give her a bath because she was playing with me, and I forget that if I want her to sleep through the night, I should teach her to nap by herself. But I cuddle her and she falls asleep and I breathe her in and just can't bear to put her down. People who follow Baby Wise would think I'm a hideous parent, and maybe they'd be right, but again, I just don't care.
It's just that with very few exceptions, I don't know how to talk to other moms. I don't know how to not feel embarrassed or elitist when they ask if she sleeps through the night, or if she's hitting certain milestones. I feel like I'm neglectful if I don't know the day she rolled over, like how could a good mother not know something like that? Have marked it down in a baby book and remembered that date? And without giving someone the long story it's hard not to just feel like an outsider, even though I'm a first time mom too.
So I avoid the mom-and-baby groups. I give people answers they like to a question that is too complicated. "Are you sleeping any?" "Enough." "Is she a good baby?" This question always makes me laugh. Do people actually say no? "Terrible baby, this one. Don't know what we're going to do with her. " She's a perfect baby. I don't know if she's ahead or behind in her development, and I truly don't care, so questions about her weight and abilities are all hard to answer. I had no idea what she weighed for about two months. We had so much time away from the doctor that I forgot to weigh her. It felt too nice to not have to go that I couldn't even bear to bring her to the health unit to check. I currently don't know how long she is. I've never known what percentile of anything she's in. She's here. She's alive and she's happy and she laughed at Peter the other day and I caught it on videotape. Yesterday when he walked in she called "hi" from the couch, clear as a little bell, and we died laughing. Last night I almost forgot to give her her medicine, and I'm terrified of doing that. The other day her breath caught and for a moment I was so worried about her airway that I couldn't do anything else but hold her and cry and try to convince myself to be rational. I dreamed about being back in the hospital with her, and the way she looked on that little bed, so sad and small and sick and I woke up so scared I had to have Peter pray with me before I fell back asleep, with her snuggled into me and remembering that I said I would never co-sleep. I pray every night that I will wake up in the morning and that mark will have vanished and I can just be a normal parent, and not such a basket case. But I wake up and it's there and then she smiles so hugely at me and screams as though she's just won the lottery and I laugh and pick her up and we start another day together and I thank God that we do.
I don't know if after all this, this is still making any sense. I need to get it out somehow, and part of me needs for people to understand, and part of me needs to understand it myself and I still don't feel like I do. But she's here, and she's okay and that's all I ever wanted in all the world.
EDIT: Just to avoid any confusion here. If you're reading this, I'm not talking about you. Just so we're clear. I just needed to vent today, and maybe needed to realize how seriously screwed up this has all made me feel.
I feel like I am having a hard time connecting with other moms. I feel isolated with everything that Bella and I have gone through together, because there's nobody that really understands that. There's a mom and baby group at the health center that I keep meaning to go to, but in talking to a friend the other day, don't know if I'm up for it. I need to be more positive about things like that. So many of my feelings are different that I know they would have been if everything had been okay. Maybe this isn't making sense. I'll grab another coffee and think about it.
Okay, here's the thing. I feel like the only thing moms talk about is parenting. Go figure right? And of course that's fine. It's even good. But I feel very much like an outsider in these conversations. Because I just don't care, and I can't figure out a way to get myself to care. When I was pregnant I was always on Baby Center. What milestone was my baby blueberry at this week? Fingers and toes! How exciting! A heartbeat! A gender! There were all these things you looked forward to. And generally, you do the same with a new baby. She looked at me, smiled at me, held up her head, rolled over, sat up, talked, ate solids, slept through the night, etc. Moms LOVE to talk about this. They compare and contrast and give advice about how to get a baby to eat solids, take a bottle, sleep through the night. There is a wonderful sense of community they feel when they do this, and I'm glad that it's there.
Our milestones are different. I don't check to see if she's doing anything new this week, and I couldn't tell you when she rolled over for the first time. I check her mark. I check her brain for swelling and I try not to think about what I'd do if her brain swelled and I try and keep her medications coming on time. I call her doctor, her pharmacist, her specialists. I don't have any advice about getting her to sleep through the night, because until very recently, with her steroid dose, it wasn't even an option, and she still doesn't do it. And I don't feel like participating in a conversations about it because I don't care if she's a year before she does it. I can get up with her. I know she's not going to be ten and waking me up three times a night to make her a sandwich. And I become easily frustrated with moms who are exasperated at three months that their baby isn't sleeping through the night, and exasperated with moms who are so proud that their baby does. Because it so doesn't matter.
Okay, so here's the confession, and I realize I'm a jerk for feeling this way. I really do. But I simply cannot take hearing a parent complain about their child in any way. I get that being a mom is a HUGE change and that moms need to be able to vent, and I know your whole life changed and nothing in your daily routine is the way it used to be, whether you have your first baby or your fifteenth. I know that we all don't know what we're doing and we need each other and we need the community of being able to share and vent and ask advice. But I came too close to having my routine change not at all. I came so close to having no reason to get up in the middle of the night, except to stare at an empty bassinet and cry my eyes out with an ache that would never go away.
I know if none of this had happened, I would be the type of mother that I feel so different from now. I'd have been such an anal, by the book mom. I'd have gotten Bella on a strict schedule and tried to do everything just right, and maybe she'd have been a better kid for it, and maybe I'd be a better mom for it. But I can't. I don't care about those things. I don't care when she sleeps through the night, eats solids, walks, crawls, etc. I care even less than Peter sometimes. And I don't know if that makes me a bad mom. I don't know if I'm a bad mom if I let her co-sleep, not only because she needs it, but I do. I need to wake up in the night and feel her warm sleeping body breathing softly next to mine. I need to convince myself a thousand times a day that she's okay, that she's going to be okay. My liver isn't going to kill her, and her mark isn't going to affect her brain or her eye or her airway. I need to convince myself that that horrible day in the hospital was just a really close call. That I haven't hurt her in any way from having her on steroids for so long. I need to know that her heart murmur is gone and that her heart is working fine and that these current drugs aren't going to change that.
I need her. She's the most amazing thing in the world, she's such an incredible treasure, and I need her. I don't need her to sleep through the night. I wouldn't mind, but I don't even try and work at it. And when we sit in the dark in our rocking chair and I feel her little hand crawl up the front of my housecoat to find my skin, and I hear her sweet sighing sounds that she makes when she's happy and falling asleep, part of me hopes that she never sleeps through the night and I feel sorry for people who have babies that do. Because I know that one day that is not too far from now, she'll walk into the house, toss her car keys on the table and call "Night mom!" and go to her room and shut the door. And I will LONG for this. My arms will long to hold her in a bundle on my chest and snuggle her to sleep.
Maybe everything traumatized me to the point that I possibly have too much perspective. I certainly don't have enough grace. There are times where it's hard not to feel angry at people who have it so easy, and I know that I don't see what they may actually be going through. There are times when I feel annoyed at people for not having the same perspective that I do, and yet, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Not ever.There are times where I could kill someone for asking about her mark and times when I could kill someone for ignoring it. The worst is to ask and then ignore the answer. I know people are just trying to make me more comfortable, but I so long for someone who just understands this. Who doesn't think that I'm a bad parent because I don't know that I really do parent Bella. I play with her. I enjoy her. I don't try and teach her anything other than that I love her and will always be there for her. If she tries to crawl and gets frustrated, I pick her up. If she wants to eat ten times a night, then I feed her and my poor husband goes to work dead tired and we sit in our jammies all day. I forget to give her a bath because she was playing with me, and I forget that if I want her to sleep through the night, I should teach her to nap by herself. But I cuddle her and she falls asleep and I breathe her in and just can't bear to put her down. People who follow Baby Wise would think I'm a hideous parent, and maybe they'd be right, but again, I just don't care.
It's just that with very few exceptions, I don't know how to talk to other moms. I don't know how to not feel embarrassed or elitist when they ask if she sleeps through the night, or if she's hitting certain milestones. I feel like I'm neglectful if I don't know the day she rolled over, like how could a good mother not know something like that? Have marked it down in a baby book and remembered that date? And without giving someone the long story it's hard not to just feel like an outsider, even though I'm a first time mom too.
So I avoid the mom-and-baby groups. I give people answers they like to a question that is too complicated. "Are you sleeping any?" "Enough." "Is she a good baby?" This question always makes me laugh. Do people actually say no? "Terrible baby, this one. Don't know what we're going to do with her. " She's a perfect baby. I don't know if she's ahead or behind in her development, and I truly don't care, so questions about her weight and abilities are all hard to answer. I had no idea what she weighed for about two months. We had so much time away from the doctor that I forgot to weigh her. It felt too nice to not have to go that I couldn't even bear to bring her to the health unit to check. I currently don't know how long she is. I've never known what percentile of anything she's in. She's here. She's alive and she's happy and she laughed at Peter the other day and I caught it on videotape. Yesterday when he walked in she called "hi" from the couch, clear as a little bell, and we died laughing. Last night I almost forgot to give her her medicine, and I'm terrified of doing that. The other day her breath caught and for a moment I was so worried about her airway that I couldn't do anything else but hold her and cry and try to convince myself to be rational. I dreamed about being back in the hospital with her, and the way she looked on that little bed, so sad and small and sick and I woke up so scared I had to have Peter pray with me before I fell back asleep, with her snuggled into me and remembering that I said I would never co-sleep. I pray every night that I will wake up in the morning and that mark will have vanished and I can just be a normal parent, and not such a basket case. But I wake up and it's there and then she smiles so hugely at me and screams as though she's just won the lottery and I laugh and pick her up and we start another day together and I thank God that we do.
I don't know if after all this, this is still making any sense. I need to get it out somehow, and part of me needs for people to understand, and part of me needs to understand it myself and I still don't feel like I do. But she's here, and she's okay and that's all I ever wanted in all the world.
EDIT: Just to avoid any confusion here. If you're reading this, I'm not talking about you. Just so we're clear. I just needed to vent today, and maybe needed to realize how seriously screwed up this has all made me feel.
1:00 PM
Gack. I want to talk to you.
1:41 PM
Fine. I'll try and type it.
Mel, I would have been very surprised if you hadn't eventually at least partly felt all the things you're feeling now.
I remember one day just after Ben was born, and he was crying and he wouldn't stop, so I held him and rocked him and cried with him. And I wasn't crying because I was tired and dirty and overwhelmed, which I was, I was crying because I suddenly realized that someday I wouldn't be able to hold him and comfort him. Someday he would have hurts that I couldn't help, and someday he might even tell me he doesn't like me and wants nothing to do with me.
It hit me. Hard. And I think most moms are hit, at least to some extent, with what you've been hit with. And we check our babies ten times a night just to make sure they're still breathing. And we miss milestones because of one reason or another and then feel guilty about it, when we know... We KNOW that just having them and loving them is enough. More than enough. It's everything.
Right now, Bella is still not okay, so I'm glad you are giving yourself room to feel differently and act differently than moms with healthy babies. But someday, when she's safe (as safe as any kid ever really is), I think you'll find it easier to hear other moms complain, and you might even find it within yourself to utter a complaint of your own.
Right now? You can't. And that makes perfect sense. You almost lost her. We could have lost both of you. It's just too close. So it's no wonder you just want to grab her and hold onto her and somehow keep her safe and all the other stuff just seems like a waste of time and energy.
But Mel, you would have got there to some extent. Because all of us moms have our hearts walking around outside our bodies now. All of us moms sometimes have trouble letting our treasures out of our sight for fear of what could happen. We all stress and worry. And it hits all of us, we can't make them safe... We can't stop them from being hurt. We really can't even 100% make sure they won't die today. Or be stolen from us. Or... Whatever is scaring us.
I guess I'm trying to say, you're not as alone as you think you are. Yes, most of us can only imagine what it has been like for you, most of us only experienced Bella's mark as very frightened relatives and friends. But most of us have felt the things that you're feeling, maybe not as intensely, but we really do get it because we only have to put ourselves in your shoes and imagine the same thing happening to our babies.
And you'll get there with the rest of us measuring/weighing/comparing/complaining mommies. It just might take you a little longer. (And seriously, why would you worry about percentiles when you know the steroids are messing with everything?) AND in one way you are lucky in that when you get there you will always have in your heart that overwhelming sense of "winning the lottery", just to have her and know her and be able to weigh her and someday even complain about how she's driving you mental. It really is part of being a mom, and I'm so glad you get to experience it... In your own time and in your own way.
(And really? A lot of what you wrote about the milestones and stuff? Most of us only manage to do and worry about those things with our first. By the second or third we've learned your zen approach to parenting. We don't even compare them to our last baby because we seriously don't have the mental capacity to remember when things are supposed to happen. They happen when they happen, which is a hard thing for a first time mom to get. You're ahead of the game!)
2:11 PM
Thanks Becky.
I should probably clarify that it's just complaining about things that should be fun, or not a big deal. I heard a parent really worried and upset that their baby didn't walk for about 16 months. It just seemed like a stupid thing to be upset about when the child showed NO other delays. I wanted to say, excuse me, but if that's all you have to worry about... But then like I said, I'm still being a jerk about this. I know I need some distance. I'm totally fine with things like trying to figure out how to discipline, potty training, and how hard that is. I felt bad that you ate with one hand today :) I totally get that. I do occasionally vent and the other day I handed her off to Peter and got away for a bit not because of some big health scare but because that day I was more tired than grateful ... So maybe I'm still slightly normal :)
2:35 PM
I agree with everything Becky said. And you will get to be "normal". After Chloe had her seizure, if she sneezed, I was panicking. I'm just finally getting to the point that I'm not giving her tylenol if she feels a little too warm to me. I would take her temperature and it would be normal. But if she felt warm to the touch, she got tylenol. Like I said, I'm getting better now, but if the thermometer says her temp is even 99, I pull the pills out. And as far as milestones go, I have no clue when either of my kids rolled over. They did and that's what matters. That's the way I approach them. Did it happen? Yep. Good enough!
And I rocked Chloe to sleep until she was 1 1/2!
3:14 PM
I remember that. I remember wondering how you stayed sane and praying for you and trying to think about what that would be like but it was before I had a baby, so I really didn't grasp it. I totally understand. Today Bella's mark looks really red, and this makes me nervous and I watch her every facial movement. Thank God for Peter's split shifts today, because he's home for a few hours this afternoon.
I'm going to rock her until she's old enough to tell me to quit it already :D
7:19 AM
12:29 AM