Before Amnesia Steals my Ugly Truth...

There is a global pandemic of amnesia and it is occurring everyday to millions of moms around the world.

I have joined a Moms and Babes class. It provides weekly sanity. Around 6 - 8 moms and their babes gather for an hour and a half to do baby exercises but really we are there to gaze at other glassy eyed moms and wonder if they have it worse than us. All of the moms in the class are on their second child. I am the lonely first time mom (it seems this status beguiles me wherever I go). All of them swap stories about food stuck on walls, projectile poop, the unbrushed teeth and unwashed hair of a mother of two. Another thing they all seem to have in common - they had all forgotten just how difficult a newborn can be. They must have, why else would they have opted to do it all again. (I do actually plan on doing this again, although there were desperate times when i thought NEVER AGAIN!)

Even now I can feel the memories of the early days slipping away. At almost 4 months we have settled into a beautiful routine. Chloe goes to bed at 6:30 and pretty much sleeps till 7am. This means we get to eat dinner together, talk, connect, watch an episode and get to bed early. Last night I had 9 hours uninterrupted sleep - whoop whoop! Now this all seems spectacularly below average to any childfree adult but to us new parents it is bliss. So now after a few weeks of this routine I can barely remember the truth of how bad it was in the beginning.

During the first 2 and a half months it pretty much was hell on earth. There were times that I handed our crying daughter to my husband and retreated to the laundry room where I put my robe over my head and just sat there in the dark softly crying, wishing the world would fall away. There were times when the thought of having to deal with her for the entire day on my own sent me into a dizzying state of denial, enough to keep my husband home for the day. I cried every day for 2 months. I cried because my instincts weren't just there like Ii had naively believed they would be. I cried because my baby cried and I had no idea why. I cried because I had no idea what I was doing. I cried because I was so so tired. I cried for my dead mother. I cried because I couldn't stop crying.

My husband and I did not eat a meal together for almost 3 months. We did not get more than 5 hours sleep a night. If I got 6 hours of sleep I thought it was a miracle. We barely slept in the same bed, one person on the couch either getting some sleep or sleeping sitting up with the baba in arms. I felt alone, I felt scared, I felt overwhelmed.

It took 6 weeks to recognise that the crying, the anxiety, the fear was not in the normal range. And after admitting this and getting onto a little drug called Eglonyl I calmed down. I started to feel my way through motherhood and not think my way through it.

I am proud and happy to say that at 3 ad a half months we feel like a real family. I am calm, happy and relaxed; happy to spend my days kissing chubby cheeks and eliciting smiles. My husband and I eat together, sleep together and even get date nights again. Chloe is happy.

It is easy to get into the trap of thinking - that wasn't so bad, it wasn't so hard...and forget. I remember vowing to make a video diary at 3am - i can see it now, crying into the camera begging for it to be over, wishing for another life. Because that was me for a time. Its painful to admit but its true. It was hard, by the hardest thing I have ever done. So instead of a video dairy I commit these painful truths to virtual paper as a reminder to myself and as an admission to the world that parenthood is not for sissies...its bloody hard make no mistake.

Do i regret any of it? No. The truth is my love for Chloe was forged through those sleepless nights, those nights and days of despair. Caring for her through that mental anguish is how my love for her grew into the tangible and solid thing that it is now.

So why do moms forget? perhaps it is because the joy eclipses the bad, perhaps it is because the brain is programmed to remember joy more than pain, perhaps because it was so difficult it is easier to forget, perhaps it is because in the greater scheme of things those first few months are just a blip on the radar of their lives, perhaps it is because we forgive ourselves those moments of madness and move on to love and cherish them beyond belief.

So yes there is a global pandemic out there, allowing families to expand one child at a time.

I. AM. A. MOM

Im back on the writing. Its been hard to put the proverbial pen to paper these past few months. I have tried a few times and there seems to be a blank, a struggle to verbalise the shit storm that has happened since i became a mom. Became a mom. I find myself referring to myself in the third person, "mommy is tired" "mommy needs you to sleep hunny" "mommy's gone nuts" just so that it sinks in. I. AM. A. MOM.

What does that even mean?! Firstly its not a noun. Its a verb. It is something that is happening all the time, moving, growing, changing you from the inside, pulling everything apart and not really putting it back together again. Its kind of like spring cleaning; you throw everything out of the cupboards to get rid of crap and put it all back cleaner and neater than before. Except you get nostalgic about the items, pick at the things listlessly then agonise over whether you may need that in some nonexistant future. What started out as an attempt to clean up ends up with you sitting amidst a pile of junk and a much bigger mess than when you started. Right now, Im sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by peices of my old life, the old me, facing parts of myself that are so dusty i barely recognise them, wondering who i am and how to put it all back together again into a better cleaner version of me.

 I am coming to accept that this process will take some time. I am getting to know this "mother" that is me, trying to feel comfortable in this new place i belong. The most striking thing i have come to realise is that being a mom has amplified my insecurities, my weaknesses glare at me in the mirror demanding attention like a pulsing zit. There is no escaping it. You are challenged every minute of every day. You long to know it all, fix it all. You know you cant. You feel immense guilt for that. You tell yourself to be patient but you've gone through life being impatient, patience does not come naturally.

All the qualities i honed at the work place are suddenly rendered useless and actually hinder the mothering process. There is no controling this monkey, no manual, no order, no structure. She doesnt listen to reason, she is not logical. I have officially given up work. I couldn't bare the thought of someone else caring for her, bonding with her, getting all those precious memories.

I am now a full time stay at home mother. I had never really envisioned this for me. Whenever i fast forwarded to where i thought my lfie would end up i saw myself wearing heels running down the hallways of a corporation not wearing pj's baking peanut butter cookies (this is not a metaphor, this was literally what i was doing this morning!)

Since realising i was not to return to work i have gone into mourning; a feeling of sadness and loneliness coupled with restless nights. What am i mourning? Being a part of a team, being a part of the teams' successes and failures, essentially...being a cog in the wheel. I cant believe that would be something i miss but i do. Perhaps because it has been replaced by my ever annoying need to obssess over little munchkin's sleep patterns. How much she sleeps, how she sleeps, how i put her to sleep, where she sleeps. Its all pretty banal and frankly annoying as shit stuck on your shoe. At the end of the day she sleeps when and where she wants for as long as she deems necessary...and truthfully i should be bloody grateful she sleeps through the night giving us all blissful sleep. So let it go!

So now i am part of a two man team - me and the monkey every day battling to overcome my weaknesses, striving to build a world where this mother in me can grow and find shape, chasing the sleep goblins around every corner.

I. AM. A. MOM.

Graduation!

We had our last antenatal class last night - what a sigh of relief! I felt so excited watching the clock tick down to 9pm; I imagined the bell ringing and all of us running outside and throwing  nappies in the air to celebrate graduation from the class. It wasn't quite like that...go figure.

The hubby and I were talking afterwards about the merits and demerits of the antenatal classes. Now from my limited experience I understand that there was a great need for honest information that told you about the possible pitfalls of pregnancy, brith, breastfeeding and motherhood in general. I remember watching Oprah years ago and women were talking about how they felt fooled because everyone sold them this idyllic image of motherhood and when it didn't turn out like that they were crushed and felt like abnormal failures. Enter antenatal classes...which offer a much more realistic view of what could happen, what to watch out for, to ensure you don't feel alone when the tough gets going.

It was exactly for this reason I signed us up for the class, we had no idea what to expect. But after almost every single class (there were 6 in the course) I cried. I didn't walk out feeling bad or overwhelmed or anything negative really but somehow an hour or two later I was crying and feeling panicky. I was not scared about the actual birth but had huge anxiety about I was going to cope, how our relationship would survive, how we would afford everything etc. I certainly didn't have the rainbows and rose petals picture in my head that needed a dose of reality. I started to question where all this latent anxiety about being a new mom was coming from.

When I thought back to all the shows and movies I have seen over the past few years I saw a montage of fighting couples, a tired and crying mom, covered in milk vomit, unwashed and unhappy. Their friends look at them with pity as their lives stop to revolve around a baby, no longer able to have fun, laugh, be with friends or be a normal human being.

People I meet relish in telling me how tired I will be, how I will never have time to myself, my relationship will suffer, nothing will ever be the same, prepare to never leave the house - the list of things I have to look forward to go on and on.

When did motherhood become so negative? Sure, I know these things will happen, there will be huge adjustments and I also understand that I wont undertstand how huge these will be and how they will affect me until it actually happens. I get it. Trust me. I have panicked about it, cried about it and imagined the worst. Why people think that is helpful, I have no idea.

What happened to Congratulations! Having children is a blessing, there is so much joy and love you have to look forward to...? The barrage of negativity that has come my way from experts, colleagues and practically every person I meet (besides my wonderful friends who think this is going to be wonderful and they really do see unicorns and rainbows!) is overwhelming. Hence the massive relief upon graduating from the class - no more talk about how hard it is all going to be!

I now have 2 months to imagine the best, the wonderful., the laughter, the joy. I have the knowledge sitting in the back of my head but honestly it is time for some bloody unicorns and rainbows!

Taking the Pressure Off

Its been a tumultuous two or three weeks, hence the silence on the blog. In fact, its been an all round  blackout. When times of mental strain are upon me I tend to crawl into my hole, reply sparsely to smses and avoid human contact where possible.

Its amazing what our minds can do to us. My mind was filled with lists of things we needed to get, of the things we just wouldn't be able to survive without, the list of bills we would need to cover on one salary, the pros and cons of either staying home or going back to work.

STOP!

My brain literally exploded. It came running out of my eyes, my mouth and my nose. My body shook, my heart hammered. I felt sick. There was just absolutely no way we could do this.

My husband held me close to him. I didn't understand how he was not feeling like this, not feeling the crushing weight of the responsibilities to come, the unknown. The fact that he didn't feel this way made me feel like I should stress and worry enough for two people. Gosh, I really got myself into a spiral that was entirely unhelpful and distracting me from all the good in our lives.

I am happy to say that moment of panic has passed. I have let go of a lot of what I thought we "needed". The truth is we don't NEED those things, all baba is going to need is a warm spot between mama and papa and the goodness that will eventually leak, spurt and dribble from my boobs. The rest...well it will come.

I went into Exclusive Books the other day to look for the Baby Sense book (which I just had to get, apparently). I opened it to a random page and saw a column saying something like "hold object 27cm from baby's face..." I immediately closed it and put it down. I don't need any more instruction manuals, lists of things to do and don't do. When did loving and taking care of your baby become so complicated?!


I just want to feel and stop thinking, feel the joy and excitement, and let the wonderment take me over when the baby comes, let my instincts and love be the forerunner of how I care for our baby, not a list or a book.

That being said I did get one book: How not to F*&% them up! It speaks about how embracing your own style of parenting is the best thing you can do for your child. Now this I find useful so I am reading it slowly and in between my own fun books that are about dragons and magic and have nothing to do with poop, stimulation, sleeping cycles etc.

I now know that my approach is not like others and I am okay with that. I brush off the looks of judgement, worry, horror on people's faces when I answer a question about how we are approaching the arrival of our little one. In fact, I would prefer not to talk about how we will parent or what decision we will make about childcare. I end up having to politely smile and nod, and hopefully tune out, as people start giving me their opinions, which sound a lot more like facts if you ask me.

We are going to do this our way; you may judge, snicker behind my back as much as you like, think that we are nuts but at the end of the day every single is person is different and parenting comes down to finding what works for you, what makes you feel happy and mostly guilt-free as well as ensuring the needs of your child are met enabling you to tune in to your baby and give it as much love as you can. You are not wrong on how you choose to approach parenthood and neither am I.

And all of this is before I have even mentioned I am plan to give birth at home...then the eyebrows really rise....

<chuckle chuckle>