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Published On: Sep 15, 2004 08:53 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Sep 15, 2004 08:53 PM
Three Metaphors for the Postpartum Experience
Because if I can't describe exactly how it feels,
I can tell you what it resembles...
1. Being postpartum is coming home from summer
camp. You've had all these experiences that no one at home understands, in
fact, you know you're profoundly changed, and yet you're still in all the same
roles you had before. By about your third day home your parents are rolling
their eyes at every new fascinating detail you want to share about your best
friend from camp or the amusing anecdotes about things your infinitely wise
counselor told you, and there is nothing that would be more blissful than a
phone call from somebody you went to camp with, who shared the experience, who
understands. I think this is why we love sharing our birth stories -- I would
have any of my children's birth stories told to me every night before bed if I
could. Unfortunately, we've been too busy taking care of the new baby to really
relive the birth, and it happened too quickly for photos or video or even for my
best friend to be there and help recount it.
2. Being postpartum is Christmas afternoon. All the presents are opened, and the anticipation is gone, and even if you have received everything you thought you wanted, there's still sadness -- what is there to look forward to now? All of the season of goodwill cheer and friendliness is dissipated, pronto, and there is no crowd of more miserable looking people than those out doing exchanges on December 26th. And yet this feels somehow small and ungrateful, so you walk around trying to look happy, and not feeling ok feeling how you really feel is worse than the feeling itself (yeah, untangle that one!)
3. Being postpartum, even after a fourth child, a homebirth, is leaving the hospital for the first time with your firstborn wondering whose bright idea it was to trust you with parenting this child. Your life is not the same life you had before and you still have to proceed with confidence, but one of the common threads of all of my postpartum experiences is a secret longing for a mentor, somebody with authority who can give me a firm introduction to this new life, give me approval and cheer me on and reassure me that it is all going to turn out fine, that I'm doing a great job. I find it embarrassing to admit, but I think this is the kind of care I need taken of me so that I can take care of everyone I have to take care of. But it feels so silly to explain or ask for, especially since I have more parenting experience right now than most of my friends, and am uncomfortably sensitive to the faintest air of the condescending or patronizing. It's not really a role a husband or best friend can take because they are more fundamentally equal relationships and offer an entirely different (and important) form of support, that of co-struggler, the person who you can laugh with or cry with or just puzzle things over with. But I know that this one is somehow key, because writing about this is what makes me tear up. I joke about joining AA in order to get a sponsor, and I am sure there are support groups I could join, but honestly, when I'm struggling with getting meals and laundry done, I'm not so up to forming new relationships. I guess in some ways writing in a journal is my attempt to provide myself with a voice of reason and encouragement,. Tthere is something sort of lonely about that.
Two weeks after Rainer's birth I realized I really prefer labor and birth to being postpartum. Maybe this is the universe being fair, because I have a pretty easy time being pregnant. But the challenges of birth are so much more physical and you know there will be an end to them, while the challenges of being postpartum are more mental and emotional and you start questioning whether you were ever really sane to begin with, you can't remember what normal feels like. But six weeks out, I am tired, I am frustrated that I cannot seem to get dinner on the table before 8 p.m., no matter what time I start preparing it (and I am not living on peanut butter and jelly or frozen pizzas, which I could prepare with one hand pretty easily) but I am not crying so much -- there are more good days in between the really hard days. And I am trying to figure out what made it turn. Looking in my morning journal there was a day when I acknowledged that postpartumness and birth were part of the same process, and even if the challenges were different I could use the tactics that got me through the one with the other, detaching a bit, breathing, trying just to get through the next wave of discomfort, making sure I had some good music on. And realizing that the process is not merely physical or physiological, but spiritual, too, because life is sacred and these challenges are how good things happen and help us in valuing the good things -- it ain't cheap.
Why lay out this terribly personal, vulnerable stuff? I had such a hard time being postpartum after Søren was born and never really talked about it, at least not until I had struggled through the worst of it. And I hoped understanding it better would help me through it this time, but it just didn't. I have educated myself on postpartum issues, taken a self-test and come up healthier than I normally am except for the spontaneous tears thing -- as someone who has had plenty of self-destructive impulses in the past, I am pretty comfortable saying that this is not what it is about. But Rainer is going to be our last child, and I've gotten through the hard part, and I don't have to understand it or come up with any more creative ways of staying sane. I just wanted to see the experience articulated because -- and I know that sleep-deprived, emotionally roller-coastered people are not always the most eloquent or articulate -- I haven't seen this "normal" experience elsewhere, and as somebody who reads way too many books, websites, and magazines, looking for answers and evidence I'm not alone, that meant this needed to be written. It's not about lacking confidence, or needing sleep, or even about feeling disconnected from my husband when he's trying to catch up at work on the two weeks he worked from home while dealing with his company's acquisition of another hotel company and the attendant conversion of the websites he is in charge of, though I suppose those things can and do play a part in it. Just as the divide between how I felt and how I thought I was supposed to feel only intensified the sadness, the acknowledgment that I've faced something so challenging for me and done pretty well is an important part of conquering the challenge.
2. Being postpartum is Christmas afternoon. All the presents are opened, and the anticipation is gone, and even if you have received everything you thought you wanted, there's still sadness -- what is there to look forward to now? All of the season of goodwill cheer and friendliness is dissipated, pronto, and there is no crowd of more miserable looking people than those out doing exchanges on December 26th. And yet this feels somehow small and ungrateful, so you walk around trying to look happy, and not feeling ok feeling how you really feel is worse than the feeling itself (yeah, untangle that one!)
3. Being postpartum, even after a fourth child, a homebirth, is leaving the hospital for the first time with your firstborn wondering whose bright idea it was to trust you with parenting this child. Your life is not the same life you had before and you still have to proceed with confidence, but one of the common threads of all of my postpartum experiences is a secret longing for a mentor, somebody with authority who can give me a firm introduction to this new life, give me approval and cheer me on and reassure me that it is all going to turn out fine, that I'm doing a great job. I find it embarrassing to admit, but I think this is the kind of care I need taken of me so that I can take care of everyone I have to take care of. But it feels so silly to explain or ask for, especially since I have more parenting experience right now than most of my friends, and am uncomfortably sensitive to the faintest air of the condescending or patronizing. It's not really a role a husband or best friend can take because they are more fundamentally equal relationships and offer an entirely different (and important) form of support, that of co-struggler, the person who you can laugh with or cry with or just puzzle things over with. But I know that this one is somehow key, because writing about this is what makes me tear up. I joke about joining AA in order to get a sponsor, and I am sure there are support groups I could join, but honestly, when I'm struggling with getting meals and laundry done, I'm not so up to forming new relationships. I guess in some ways writing in a journal is my attempt to provide myself with a voice of reason and encouragement,. Tthere is something sort of lonely about that.
Two weeks after Rainer's birth I realized I really prefer labor and birth to being postpartum. Maybe this is the universe being fair, because I have a pretty easy time being pregnant. But the challenges of birth are so much more physical and you know there will be an end to them, while the challenges of being postpartum are more mental and emotional and you start questioning whether you were ever really sane to begin with, you can't remember what normal feels like. But six weeks out, I am tired, I am frustrated that I cannot seem to get dinner on the table before 8 p.m., no matter what time I start preparing it (and I am not living on peanut butter and jelly or frozen pizzas, which I could prepare with one hand pretty easily) but I am not crying so much -- there are more good days in between the really hard days. And I am trying to figure out what made it turn. Looking in my morning journal there was a day when I acknowledged that postpartumness and birth were part of the same process, and even if the challenges were different I could use the tactics that got me through the one with the other, detaching a bit, breathing, trying just to get through the next wave of discomfort, making sure I had some good music on. And realizing that the process is not merely physical or physiological, but spiritual, too, because life is sacred and these challenges are how good things happen and help us in valuing the good things -- it ain't cheap.
Why lay out this terribly personal, vulnerable stuff? I had such a hard time being postpartum after Søren was born and never really talked about it, at least not until I had struggled through the worst of it. And I hoped understanding it better would help me through it this time, but it just didn't. I have educated myself on postpartum issues, taken a self-test and come up healthier than I normally am except for the spontaneous tears thing -- as someone who has had plenty of self-destructive impulses in the past, I am pretty comfortable saying that this is not what it is about. But Rainer is going to be our last child, and I've gotten through the hard part, and I don't have to understand it or come up with any more creative ways of staying sane. I just wanted to see the experience articulated because -- and I know that sleep-deprived, emotionally roller-coastered people are not always the most eloquent or articulate -- I haven't seen this "normal" experience elsewhere, and as somebody who reads way too many books, websites, and magazines, looking for answers and evidence I'm not alone, that meant this needed to be written. It's not about lacking confidence, or needing sleep, or even about feeling disconnected from my husband when he's trying to catch up at work on the two weeks he worked from home while dealing with his company's acquisition of another hotel company and the attendant conversion of the websites he is in charge of, though I suppose those things can and do play a part in it. Just as the divide between how I felt and how I thought I was supposed to feel only intensified the sadness, the acknowledgment that I've faced something so challenging for me and done pretty well is an important part of conquering the challenge.
Posted: Sun - August 29, 2004 at 12:21 PM