When you have a major life event happen people are quick to line up and give you their advice. They don't care what the situation is, what the backstory or history may be, or if you even want to listen to them. I remember it well when we got married and it definitely happened when I got pregnant. Between the unsolicited advice, the repetitive questions and the reading that I did, I was done hearing or taking in any information by my third trimester. I heard it all for eight months and was just as overwhelmed, if not more so, than month three or four.
Are you going to breast feed?
Are you doing a natural birth?
What if you have to have a C-Section?
Do you want to be induced?
Will you stay home or take him to daycare?
What about your dog, you're not going to get rid of him are you?
Will you have him vaccinated?
You need to get out of the house! You need to exercise and be social!
And then came all of the unsolicited advice and know it all knowledge.
Breastfeeding is best. Using formula is bad for the baby. Breastfeeding is the only way you can bond. I can't believe you would risk your health or the babies by getting pain medications or an epidural. You don't really experience birth if you don't do it naturally. C-Sections aren't really labor. I can't believe you would take your kid to a germ infested daycare and let someone else raise him. NO, we are not "getting rid" or our pet. And no, the baby won't be allergic to him because he's HYPOALLERGENIC! Don't you know that vaccines cause Autism and are really just a bunch of poison and scraps of animals?
Like I said I had heard enough and then some. I can't believe some of the things people told me, or asked me, or thought they needed to share (think horror stories of their pregnancy/labor) with me. I took it all very politely in the beginning. By the end my answers were so sarcastic and unbelievable that it got people to stop repeating their questions.
Out of all of the information and advice thrown at me, nobody told me anything about what to expect when I got home from the hospital with a brand new baby. I was never told that I would cry every time I tried to nurse my baby and he would latch and unlatch ten times before he actually started to eat. Or that by the time I fed him and got him back to sleep an hour or more would pass. Nobody suggested that the nurses were full of shit and I shouldn't listen to them when they told me to wake him up every 2-3 hours to eat. I had to call my mom and ask her because I was about to end up in the loony bin. We tried to wake him up once at night to feed him and it went so poorly that I felt like a failure of a mother in my first week. Needless to say, we have not done so since. Yes, he did lose more weight than he should've and I blamed myself for that but have chosen to focus on the fact that he turned a corner and is gaining a healthy amount of weight at this point. I had NO idea that I would cry more than my newborn baby in the first couple of weeks. And that most of those crying spells would come out of nowhere and I'd have no idea why I was crying. I didn't expect to have such immense anxiety about being alone that I begged Matthew not to go to work and asked him several times a day when he was coming home. I did not anticipate ever feeling ant amount of resentment about every detail of my life now revolving around a tiny little human.
I continued therapy throughout my entire pregnancy working on new mom related things as well as other issues. I thought being proactive and working on potential feelings and anxieties and exploring the unknown and why I feared it was going to significantly minimize my cjancha of falling into post partum depression. I guess I was too hopeful. The baby blues came after what was the most intense adrenaline crash I've experienced. But they didn't, and haven't, ended.
I am not crying every day, I got through the fear or being alone, I quit trying to get out of my therapy aesssess, and I leave the house with Theo on my own terms. What hasn't changed is my anxiety about breastfeeding, feeling inadequate in my role as a wife, telling myself I'm not good at this mom stuff (even though I have so many people telling me otherwise) my social anxiety is as high as it's ever been, and I'm second guessing literally everything I do. I feel sad and disconnected from so much of reality. I'm facing a kind of isolation no one ever talked about or brought to light during the countless hours of advice I endured. And in all honesty, the isolation has been the worst out of everything I'm feeling and going through. Not only because it hit me like a ton of bricks, but because the only way to "fix" it is to get out of the house, change my environment, be social. And guess what, that's all easier said than done. It's taking a shower, putting on clean clothes, packing a diaper bag, loading the baby into the car, stressing about the assholes you may encounter if your baby starts wailing in public. It's putting on a brave face and conquering some of your biggest fears. And all of that is exhausting and honestly it's not always worth it.
I know it will get better. I'm working on it and I care so much about all of this that no matter how difficult or frustrating or exhausting it can be, it will only keep getting better.
So, I'll keep rocking my baby, neglecting chores to watch him sleep, and work on myself everyday.
Are you going to breast feed?
Are you doing a natural birth?
What if you have to have a C-Section?
Do you want to be induced?
Will you stay home or take him to daycare?
What about your dog, you're not going to get rid of him are you?
Will you have him vaccinated?
You need to get out of the house! You need to exercise and be social!
And then came all of the unsolicited advice and know it all knowledge.
Breastfeeding is best. Using formula is bad for the baby. Breastfeeding is the only way you can bond. I can't believe you would risk your health or the babies by getting pain medications or an epidural. You don't really experience birth if you don't do it naturally. C-Sections aren't really labor. I can't believe you would take your kid to a germ infested daycare and let someone else raise him. NO, we are not "getting rid" or our pet. And no, the baby won't be allergic to him because he's HYPOALLERGENIC! Don't you know that vaccines cause Autism and are really just a bunch of poison and scraps of animals?
Like I said I had heard enough and then some. I can't believe some of the things people told me, or asked me, or thought they needed to share (think horror stories of their pregnancy/labor) with me. I took it all very politely in the beginning. By the end my answers were so sarcastic and unbelievable that it got people to stop repeating their questions.
Out of all of the information and advice thrown at me, nobody told me anything about what to expect when I got home from the hospital with a brand new baby. I was never told that I would cry every time I tried to nurse my baby and he would latch and unlatch ten times before he actually started to eat. Or that by the time I fed him and got him back to sleep an hour or more would pass. Nobody suggested that the nurses were full of shit and I shouldn't listen to them when they told me to wake him up every 2-3 hours to eat. I had to call my mom and ask her because I was about to end up in the loony bin. We tried to wake him up once at night to feed him and it went so poorly that I felt like a failure of a mother in my first week. Needless to say, we have not done so since. Yes, he did lose more weight than he should've and I blamed myself for that but have chosen to focus on the fact that he turned a corner and is gaining a healthy amount of weight at this point. I had NO idea that I would cry more than my newborn baby in the first couple of weeks. And that most of those crying spells would come out of nowhere and I'd have no idea why I was crying. I didn't expect to have such immense anxiety about being alone that I begged Matthew not to go to work and asked him several times a day when he was coming home. I did not anticipate ever feeling ant amount of resentment about every detail of my life now revolving around a tiny little human.
I continued therapy throughout my entire pregnancy working on new mom related things as well as other issues. I thought being proactive and working on potential feelings and anxieties and exploring the unknown and why I feared it was going to significantly minimize my cjancha of falling into post partum depression. I guess I was too hopeful. The baby blues came after what was the most intense adrenaline crash I've experienced. But they didn't, and haven't, ended.
I am not crying every day, I got through the fear or being alone, I quit trying to get out of my therapy aesssess, and I leave the house with Theo on my own terms. What hasn't changed is my anxiety about breastfeeding, feeling inadequate in my role as a wife, telling myself I'm not good at this mom stuff (even though I have so many people telling me otherwise) my social anxiety is as high as it's ever been, and I'm second guessing literally everything I do. I feel sad and disconnected from so much of reality. I'm facing a kind of isolation no one ever talked about or brought to light during the countless hours of advice I endured. And in all honesty, the isolation has been the worst out of everything I'm feeling and going through. Not only because it hit me like a ton of bricks, but because the only way to "fix" it is to get out of the house, change my environment, be social. And guess what, that's all easier said than done. It's taking a shower, putting on clean clothes, packing a diaper bag, loading the baby into the car, stressing about the assholes you may encounter if your baby starts wailing in public. It's putting on a brave face and conquering some of your biggest fears. And all of that is exhausting and honestly it's not always worth it.
I know it will get better. I'm working on it and I care so much about all of this that no matter how difficult or frustrating or exhausting it can be, it will only keep getting better.
So, I'll keep rocking my baby, neglecting chores to watch him sleep, and work on myself everyday.
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