Everyone prepares you for pregnancy. They prepare you for the birth. And they very willing prepare you and help you with the care of your newborn child/ren. But no one prepares you for this: the loneliness you feel postpartum.
I don't mean you're alone. Family is around you, friends are a call/text away. Some of us are even lucky enough to have a mom tribe to share with, rant or vent to. Heck, you have a small human that's literally attached to you all the time! And yet you feel lonely.
You're alone with your thoughts while feeding her in the middle of the night. You're alone when you're walking around with her trying to get that burp to happen. You're alone when she poops for the third time just as you change her nappy. There maybe a nanny who helps, your mother or mother-in-law, your sister or aunt even who stays up with you at night. For the lucky some, an involved husband too or an older child. But in your head you still feel lonely.
Because no one will truly understand what it is that's you're going through. The c-sec scar that hurts, the episiotomy that burns or just the fact that your body is aching all over. The pain of sitting up for hours, the need to want to stretch but you can't because baby is on you, the urge to pee that you're controlling because she's crying and wants to be held, that umpteenth time at 3:30 am you've offered to nurse because you can't figure out why she's crying and you don't want your older child to wake up. The sore nipples that make you want to scream. The continuous intrusive thoughts that have you doubting yourself as a mother, even though it isn't the first time. The mom guilt of not being there enough for your other child. That professional guilt for taking time off work. That wife guilt for snapping at your husband for no reason. The crazy hormones that won't stop the tears. The anxiety that makes you want to google every sneeze and hiccup. And to top it all, the polite nodding to all the advice you get from anyone who comes to see the baby.
You may talk about it with your husband, mother, sister or friend and they'll all say, it's a phase, it'll pass. You know that too but you sit with it and mull over it.
In the dead of the night, the loneliest of hours, you look down at your baby and you realise you aren't lonely afterall. You have eachother. You gaze into her face, taking in every tiny feature, committing it to memory because you know it'll change in a few days or weeks. You watch her as she heartily suckles on your breast while she holds your finger in her teeny hand. It hits you that all this while, you've been feeling lonely but here's a little human, to whom, YOU are the whole world. She neither knows or wants anyone but you. When you are everything to another, loneliness is all but forgotten and you revel in the joy of being a mother once again.
All it takes is a little shift in perspective isn't it?
Comments
Post a Comment