A Surprisingly Sane Blog

When I had kids I felt misled, cheated somehow.

The world of motherhood that I saw in the movies, that other moms portrayed at the school meetings, and that which was exemplified as the societal norm was grossly skewed from reality.

In the midst of the worst part of my postpartum depression, I was overwhelmed with anger by this.  Why the hell didn’t someone tell me how it really is?  Why are the cold, hard facts that plague motherhood brushed over and left for a new mom to discover all by her lonesome, miserable self?

I couldn’t figure it out.  I still haven’t figured it out.  But maybe I’m a step closer.  Here’s my theory:

As mothers, we are just expected to grin and bear it.  To have no ounce of selfishness or vanity or concern for themselves and their own well-being.  You’re not a woman or a human any longer- you’re just a mom, and your only job in life is to take care of everyone else.  Who the hell cares if you haven’t eaten anything since last night or slept more than six broken hours in the last 2 days?  Get over it.  That’s your role in life now.  As long as the kids are happy, you should be content.

I know there are mothers who believe this to be true, and pardon me if you happen to be one of them, but I’m just going to come out and say it: that mentality is dead wrong.

You wanna know how I know?  Because at my very worst earlier this year, I spent a good deal of a particularly bad evening huddled on the bathroom floor with a pocketknife at my wrist and the most blank feeling imaginable controlling me.  This is all while my husband pleaded with me and threatened to call the mental health crisis center to pick me up if I didn’t put that knife down.  I had completely stopped worrying about myself, and it nearly killed me.  I couldn’t feel a damn thing except for anger.  Why didn’t anyone ever tell me it was going to be like this?

It’s because motherhood in this day and age is vastly different from that of our ancestors.  Their concern was survival.  Finding their next meal.  Tending their home-grown food.  Keeping their children out of harm’s way because by God, if a grizzly bit a leg off, there wasn’t a set of skilled doctors ready to sew it back on at the local emergency room.  Parenting, like natural birth, was more instinctual.  The women of a particular clan were closer knit and dried a new mom’s tears when she screamed in pain while her newborn was chewing on her raw nipple.  There wasn’t the convenience of bottles and formula.  It was boob or nothing.  You want your baby to live?  Hand her off to one of the other nursing moms if you needed a break, then return the favor later.  The women took care of each other, and they worked together to survive.

Today, in this country, it’s just not the same.  Survival is no longer our goal.  We have been both blessed and cursed by modern technology, and somewhere along the progression of society, we have lost the support amongst one another that is necessary for moms to live a healthy life.

And that’s why I am so brutally honest about my own experiences.

After dealing with the shock of parenthood at the extent to which I endured, I cannot bear the thought of keeping what I learned inside.  No one deserves to feel as angry and misled as I did.  No woman should look at their stretch-marked, flabby postpartum belly in the mirror and sob over how horrible it looks because no one ever warned them that it would happen.  No mom should ever have to find out what the hell happens to their vagina after birth… they should know long in advance how their bodies are going to change.  All those things should be common knowledge, not a secret.

If we knew ahead of time, then realizing how beautiful motherhood really makes us wouldn’t be such a damn struggle.  If we were aware of all the shit and emotional turmoil and how exhaustion and postpartum hormones truly affect us, then we wouldn’t be as afraid to ask for help and support.

I fully intend on making sure every woman in my life knows this, which is why I’m not afraid to talk about the most embarrassing, intimate details of myself.  No one needs to end up on the floor with a sharp blade in their hands, completely unfeeling and lost, like I did.  And this is one way in which modern technology is a huge blessing.  My own story isn’t just limited to the men and women within a two-mile radius of me.

And in case you were wondering, yes, I am still working on my book about this.  I’m not going to stop until it’s done.  Even if it takes a year or two.

Current Mood: Cool

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 11:39 am and is filed under Confessions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.