Tags: Published On: Thursday, March 1st, 2018 Comments: 1
“What the hell have I done?” I asked myself in tears. Catherine had been crying for an hour, I had been in my pajama pants since early in the morning, and the only reason why I was wearing my Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers sweatshirt was because she had spit on my pajama top, twice. My hair was messy and begged for a shampoo, the dark circles under my eyes had gotten deeper and deeper, and my breasts were incredibly sore.
It was February 18th, a windy afternoon, the last warm one for a while in Los Angeles before the much-awaited wintry weather. The world I could see through the cracks of the white shutters in Catherine’s nursery looked beautiful, bright, and vibrant; and yet I was sad. To tell you the truth, I was more than sad. I was depressed, tired, angry, and overwhelmed.
Ben had just put Catherine down for a nap.
“I am going to bed,” I told him with a resentful tone in my voice. But I didn’t want to just sleep, I wanted to disappear.
In the past week, I had grown increasingly jealous of Ben, for he had gotten the chance to go out in that world I had only seen through the cracks between the white shutters. He had been dressing up nicely and playing sessions, even a show with the Watkins Family Hour. He had been to business meetings, and he had also seen some friends. I, on the other hand, had ventured only as far as Target, I hadn’t seen my friends, and my pre-pregnancy jeans still refused to fit as they used to.
“What have I done?” I asked myself, hidden under the blanket.
The week had been awful. Even though Ben and I share every baby-task, he had been working long hours, Karla’s presence at the house had come to an end (the life of a doula), and I had gotten stuck in the ending of Mary Poppins: the world sang “Let’s Go Fly A Kite” and I was Dick Van Dyke, selling kites, but sad. I felt trapped with a baby at my breast, a baby that I loved, but that had completely turned my life upside down. All of a sudden, I questioned my ability and willingness to be a parent, a good one. And then of course I felt ashamed: I had wanted a child for so long, and now that I had Catherine in my arms I couldn’t bear how the world as I knew it had crumbled beneath my feet.
“What am I going to be?” I had asked Karla the day before, her last day with us. We were talking about the new life with a baby after 12 weeks, when they are not newborns any more. I was scared.
Since a very early age, I have always become emotionally attached to situations, to people, and to our roles in each others’ lives, so when the roles changed, the situations evolved, or the people left, I’d lose my fragile sense of identity.
“I won’t be a ‘new’ mom any more, people won’t feel the need to help or bring me food. I mean,” I continued “I’ll be ‘just’ another mom.”
I had gone through a similar transition after giving birth; literally overnight, in fact, I wasn’t a pregnant woman any more. People tend to smile at pregnant women, they genuinely want to help them, they are much more kind. I felt as if, without my bump, I had been thrown back into the real world of current human nature, not exactly the best our species is capable of.
Karla leaving, in a way, represented a rite of passage. And I wasn’t ready for life without her, life as a mother, life with Catherine. I think that having a newborn shielded me from reality with an existential cushion, a limbo in which to linger, a bubble in which to float, and a very distinct identity in which I could clearly recognize myself.
I had been having such feelings ever since Karla had started her last week with us, but on that sunny, windy Sunday of February, those emotions ungracefully came to the surface. I even thought about the leftover prescription of Vicodin from earlier in the year (why had I kept it in the first place?), I thought about a drink, a cigarette, anything to calm me down and anesthetize the way I felt.
I was angry. I experienced the tingling around my mouth that used to precede my old raging outbursts, irritated skin throughout my body, an old sense of discomfort that I believed gone forever. Anger always conceals pain. And I hurt.
These days, I seldom wear any make up, I have to tip toe my way into our bedroom because Catherine still sleeps with us, being 10 weeks old, and I miss Ben’s arms around me as we fall asleep. Our intimacy seems to have disappeared together with my tiny waist.
Cooking is a dread, and I loved cooking!
Groceries are a dread, and I loved grocery shopping as well as going to the farmers market in Calabasas every Saturday morning.
Two of my best friends are staying on the East Coast for several months, and while I was recovering from birth and nursing Catherine around the clock the world kept spinning. And the world did move forward; every time I adventure in it I feel lost, a stranger, not belonging.
I cried and cried in bed on that windy Sunday, on February 18th. I cried, and with tears in my eyes I took notes for what you are reading.
I am new to all this, to motherhood, so I wanted to share my truth: no matter how much I wanted a child, no matter how much I love my child, having a child is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my entire life.
“There isn’t a translation for postpartum depression in the Cambodian language and culture,” Karla said to me one night. We were having pistachio ice cream on the couch, Ben was showering, and Catherine was sleeping. Karla shared with me her postpartum experience. “There is no translation because they don’t need it,” she explained. “They consider the difficulties and the darkness of the postpartum experience a natural part of pregnancy, of giving birth, of recovering from it, and of becoming a mother.”
How interesting that — by not labeling as ‘wrong’ something that is intrinsic in human nature — we can accept it as part of who we are, and we can move through it at our own pace. We can ask for help without feeling guilty or ashamed, and we are allowed to embrace our feelings, not always filled with love and joy, but also with anger, fear, confusion, and frustration.
On that Sunday afternoon, as I said at the beginning of this essay, I wanted to disappear, rather than to sleep. But life had other plans for me: I was not meant to hide, I was meant to be shaken by the loud karaoke party that my neighbors were hosting.
At first, of course, I was infuriated because they were interfering with my afternoon project. But by the time they performed a completely out of tune version of Living on A Prayer I had surrendered to a laugh.
They were enjoying themselves so much!
I hadn’t had fun in a while, for lack of sleep, because of the difficulties transitioning into the new life with a baby, for “postpartum depression”, etc. I wanted to have fun, too, instead of playing hide and cry. So I went live on Instagram and shared the karaoke with my followers. The music wasn’t good, but that was not the point. I left the dark bedroom for the bright garden where the music was loud, the sun high in the sky, and where the wind blew strong. More and more people joined the event, we had a blast, and Ben even delighted us all with an impromptu version of Roll Over Beethoven at the grand piano.
The afternoon turned out to be the perfect metaphor for my life with Catherine: I am often tired, frustrated, scared and confused, but then I hold her, I look at her angel face sleeping on my chest, at her beautiful eyes, and at her perfect hands delicately resting on her cheeks, and I feel the deepest kind of love I have ever experienced. Life as a mother, to me, is going from the need to disappear rather than to just sleep, to an out of tune version of Living on a Prayer.
So I hope that if a new mom reads this blog will find relief and comfort in knowing that there is nothing wrong with how we feel. There is no room for shame in parenthood.
“I love you,” I said as Ben walked to the door with Catherine. The day could have turned into a much darker one, but when I let my guard down and let people in, it turned around completely. That is all we need, sometimes, to let our guard down and listen to an out of tune song that may not be our favorite, but that will make us laugh so hard to push away the tears.
https://youtu.be/g89NxTTycxc
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Wonderfully written. Wonderful woman!! I am in tears.