Dear LCs,
I appreciate all that you do. Although I have only met four of you (in person, via phone and email) I have felt from all of you a level of care that I really needed.
As a first time mom and a mother with Postpartum Depression and Anxiety I have some unique concerns that I want to share with you. I realize that 'breast is best'. I want to do the very best thing for my son and I have fully embraced the message that that is breast feeding him for as long as possible.
I used to think I had a low tolerance for pain, that I was easily broken.
This was mostly because other people told me I did. And because I have a healthy fear of things that hurt. I knew that being a mother would hurt but I had no idea how much.
I thought that labor would be the worst of it. You see all the movies and TV shows. EVERY SINGLE woman you meet when you're pregnant has a labor horror story to tell you. I was terrified.
My birth plan screwed me.
Yeah - I said it.
Nothing, NOTHING has gone according to plan. We didn't plan on getting pregnant (good job, Depo!), we didn't plan on preeclampsia, we didn't plan on a c-section, incision pain, the inability to lift anything other than my baby, debilitating breast feeding pain or PPD/A.
Yet here I am. *deep breath* So...
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
-Ernest Hemingway*
It isn't a lack of sleep. I don't need to spend more time with friends. None of this is fixed because I act normal for a while.
It's time to stop hiding.
"Look how he reaches out to you" - at the pediatrician's office.
"He hears your voice and just stares!" - my mom at my house
"Oh he only has eyes for you!" - sales clerk at Barnes and Noble
I don't see it.
Sometimes everything is horrible.
Sometimes you are holding your 14 week old son who you love more than your own life and all you can see are unending nights of no sleep stretching out in front of you like the dashes on the highway and you hate his father for being able to sleep as long as he wants and you hate your life and you hate everything that isn't this tiny baby who WILL NOT SLEEP and nothing makes any sense and you just cry. You jiggle and you put the pacifier in his mouth, and he spits it out and starts to fuss and you put it back in and he spits it out and all of a sudden it is light in the room and you glance at the clock and two hours have gone by.
