It brings me so much joy to know I can make some of you smile with my motherhood disaster stories. I promise that I laugh every single day in spite of the craziness that is two kids one year apart.
But I've also been given a teeny tiny platform and an even smaller soapbox to climb on occasionally and speak my truth from. I'm grateful for that opportunity because as scary as honesty may be, I want to share the not funny stuff. From NBC and onward, I learned that living openly had the power to touch more lives than slapping a smile on my face and answering "I'm doing great!" whenever people ask how I'm surviving.
The truth is, as every parenting/mothering/toddlering/newborning blog will tell you, this time is not easy. It is really hard and lonely. It's squats and lunges for your character.
People say unsolicited things to mothers with complete abandon and total disregard for how they might make a very fragile person feel. I'm guilty of this, too, but I watch myself like a hawk now.
"You're finally going to get to be a REAL mom. You had it easy the first time."
It hurts my feelings when people say this, but I do get what they mean. I cannot compare the beautiful pain of adoption to the pain of childbirth and recovery. But I will say this: count yourself blessed if you brought your baby home from the hospital and you didn't do it with the burden of guilt that you'd just put someone you love dearly through immense physical and emotional pain. That part isn't easier. It is real motherhood.
"Oh, I feel so tired for you! But they'll sleep again someday!"
Sure, I will be tired, but I survived it once, didn't I? Two big bad newborns, 4 Month Sleep Regressions, and every other regression after that in the span of one year couldn't possibly break me. Amelia slept through the night at 6 months old, when I was 3 months pregnant, so I had the second half of the year to catch up, right? Someday came, and she slept!
Except pregnancy hit me hard, and restless leg syndrome couldn't be cured, even with taking 3x the recommended amount of magnesium. I spent my third trimester thrashing in a bathtub filled with epsom salts every night.
And my newborn was a great sleeper from two weeks old. She slept ten hours almost every night! Up until three months ago, and I've been up every hour and a half since, minus a few days where I just couldn't move, so she screamed and I cried, both because I felt I was a bad mom, and because I really, truly could not will my arms to push me out of bed for the eighth time in an hour.
I've always been able to push through exhaustion. And I have been dutifully doing just that. My husband needs a breakfast casserole for a work event tomorrow, and someone specifically requested mine? I'm far too flattered to not stay up late making it and then wake up early to warm it. The dog needs a root canal in a couple weeks? That's me, brushing her teeth and forcefeeding her antibiotics at 2am when I'm already up to nurse the baby.
But my brain is starting to perform what I can only describe as selective autopilot. It remembers how to do the laundry but forgets how to check pockets (hence how my phone ended up getting put through an entire wash cycle). It recalls the reflexes required to bake three loaves of my grandma's banana bread, but forgets baking soda and doesn't turn the oven on.
I need the other part of the autopilot. I need someone to read the manual to my brain over my shoulder. But I'm home alone whenever I'm not working, which is a lot. And my husband is getting his MBA and working full time.
"Ask for help! Accept help when people offer!"
I don't like asking for help. And as it turns out, people rarely offer anyway. My friends have jobs and lives and families and struggles of their own. I'm trying to be my own support and still listen and care for my friends and family, and I can't keep up. I feel like I'm failing everyone.
I just don't see any scenario where me asking others for help doesn't end in them resenting me or feeling like I'm a burden. So I choose not to ask.
"You'll need a community of people for when it gets hard."
Then there's the friend I tried my hardest to keep happy. Getting sitters, planning girls nights, sitting and chatting for hours about boys and jobs and all the things I can't relate to anymore when it was all I could do not to glue my own eyelids open. Even this friend, once as close as a sister, walked away from me. Without a word, without telling me what was wrong, and in spite of my best efforts to NOT change and not become THAT mom. It broke my heart. It still breaks my heart. I am angry at her. I am disappointed in her. I miss her and I'm sad.
"It goes by so fast."
It does. But not fast enough, sometimes. I feel you, moms. You can post all the cute pictures and funny stories in the world and still feel so stinkin lonely. You can love the feeling of your babies sitting in your lap and still end the day so completely over-touched. Last night, I curled up in a ball on the floor because the dogs wouldn't stop jumping on the bed and I just couldn't take the jostling of constant activity a second longer.
I'll give you the very permission I finally gave myself twelve hours ago, after eighteen months of this. The ONE thing no one told me to do: Freak out.
Feel angry at everyone that is currently not capable of showing you the kindness and grace you need.
Let yourself mourn the cost of going out being double what it used to and therefore extremely difficult to enjoy.
Feel sorry for yourself, because no one else is going to and that kind of sucks, right?
I feel you, moms that want so badly to be cool and casual and determined to not join the mommyblogging culture and just live your life with your babies while still remembering how to adult. That takes more effort than I'm capable of, and it took me a year and a half to realize that.
I am not a cool mom. It is too hard to come across as effortless and breezy. I don't care if I look like a spaz anymore. I am a spaz and I always have been.
I don't have post partum depression, but I do have regular depression. Who wouldn't on such little sleep and so little real human interaction? And that's okay. I will be okay. Please don't start worrying. I'm proud to share this part of it, because to quote Demi Lovato in Camp Rock, this is real. This is me. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I'm going to kiss Joe Jonas on the mouth.
This is the not funny stuff. I hope a mom or a human is reading this and knowing they are not alone. You deserve a hug.
Now if you'll excuse me, nap time is over and my oldest daughter learned how to spit into her hand yesterday so I have to run in there before her sheets become a mucusy mess.
But I've also been given a teeny tiny platform and an even smaller soapbox to climb on occasionally and speak my truth from. I'm grateful for that opportunity because as scary as honesty may be, I want to share the not funny stuff. From NBC and onward, I learned that living openly had the power to touch more lives than slapping a smile on my face and answering "I'm doing great!" whenever people ask how I'm surviving.
The truth is, as every parenting/mothering/toddlering/newborning blog will tell you, this time is not easy. It is really hard and lonely. It's squats and lunges for your character.
People say unsolicited things to mothers with complete abandon and total disregard for how they might make a very fragile person feel. I'm guilty of this, too, but I watch myself like a hawk now.
"You're finally going to get to be a REAL mom. You had it easy the first time."
It hurts my feelings when people say this, but I do get what they mean. I cannot compare the beautiful pain of adoption to the pain of childbirth and recovery. But I will say this: count yourself blessed if you brought your baby home from the hospital and you didn't do it with the burden of guilt that you'd just put someone you love dearly through immense physical and emotional pain. That part isn't easier. It is real motherhood.
"Oh, I feel so tired for you! But they'll sleep again someday!"
Sure, I will be tired, but I survived it once, didn't I? Two big bad newborns, 4 Month Sleep Regressions, and every other regression after that in the span of one year couldn't possibly break me. Amelia slept through the night at 6 months old, when I was 3 months pregnant, so I had the second half of the year to catch up, right? Someday came, and she slept!
Except pregnancy hit me hard, and restless leg syndrome couldn't be cured, even with taking 3x the recommended amount of magnesium. I spent my third trimester thrashing in a bathtub filled with epsom salts every night.
And my newborn was a great sleeper from two weeks old. She slept ten hours almost every night! Up until three months ago, and I've been up every hour and a half since, minus a few days where I just couldn't move, so she screamed and I cried, both because I felt I was a bad mom, and because I really, truly could not will my arms to push me out of bed for the eighth time in an hour.
I've always been able to push through exhaustion. And I have been dutifully doing just that. My husband needs a breakfast casserole for a work event tomorrow, and someone specifically requested mine? I'm far too flattered to not stay up late making it and then wake up early to warm it. The dog needs a root canal in a couple weeks? That's me, brushing her teeth and forcefeeding her antibiotics at 2am when I'm already up to nurse the baby.
But my brain is starting to perform what I can only describe as selective autopilot. It remembers how to do the laundry but forgets how to check pockets (hence how my phone ended up getting put through an entire wash cycle). It recalls the reflexes required to bake three loaves of my grandma's banana bread, but forgets baking soda and doesn't turn the oven on.
I need the other part of the autopilot. I need someone to read the manual to my brain over my shoulder. But I'm home alone whenever I'm not working, which is a lot. And my husband is getting his MBA and working full time.
"Ask for help! Accept help when people offer!"
I don't like asking for help. And as it turns out, people rarely offer anyway. My friends have jobs and lives and families and struggles of their own. I'm trying to be my own support and still listen and care for my friends and family, and I can't keep up. I feel like I'm failing everyone.
I just don't see any scenario where me asking others for help doesn't end in them resenting me or feeling like I'm a burden. So I choose not to ask.
"You'll need a community of people for when it gets hard."
Then there's the friend I tried my hardest to keep happy. Getting sitters, planning girls nights, sitting and chatting for hours about boys and jobs and all the things I can't relate to anymore when it was all I could do not to glue my own eyelids open. Even this friend, once as close as a sister, walked away from me. Without a word, without telling me what was wrong, and in spite of my best efforts to NOT change and not become THAT mom. It broke my heart. It still breaks my heart. I am angry at her. I am disappointed in her. I miss her and I'm sad.
"It goes by so fast."
It does. But not fast enough, sometimes. I feel you, moms. You can post all the cute pictures and funny stories in the world and still feel so stinkin lonely. You can love the feeling of your babies sitting in your lap and still end the day so completely over-touched. Last night, I curled up in a ball on the floor because the dogs wouldn't stop jumping on the bed and I just couldn't take the jostling of constant activity a second longer.
I'll give you the very permission I finally gave myself twelve hours ago, after eighteen months of this. The ONE thing no one told me to do: Freak out.
Feel angry at everyone that is currently not capable of showing you the kindness and grace you need.
Let yourself mourn the cost of going out being double what it used to and therefore extremely difficult to enjoy.
Feel sorry for yourself, because no one else is going to and that kind of sucks, right?
I feel you, moms that want so badly to be cool and casual and determined to not join the mommyblogging culture and just live your life with your babies while still remembering how to adult. That takes more effort than I'm capable of, and it took me a year and a half to realize that.
I am not a cool mom. It is too hard to come across as effortless and breezy. I don't care if I look like a spaz anymore. I am a spaz and I always have been.
I don't have post partum depression, but I do have regular depression. Who wouldn't on such little sleep and so little real human interaction? And that's okay. I will be okay. Please don't start worrying. I'm proud to share this part of it, because to quote Demi Lovato in Camp Rock, this is real. This is me. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I'm going to kiss Joe Jonas on the mouth.
This is the not funny stuff. I hope a mom or a human is reading this and knowing they are not alone. You deserve a hug.
Now if you'll excuse me, nap time is over and my oldest daughter learned how to spit into her hand yesterday so I have to run in there before her sheets become a mucusy mess.
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