8 Ways Pregnancy, Postpartum, and Motherhood Changed Me

So I’m gonna start by saying I am writing this to process my own experience. It by no means that I regret having my daughter, or that I don’t believe that she is one of my greatest blessings in life.

It means that I’m gonna package who my daughter is to me and what she adds to my life and all my love for her in a box and put it aside while writing this article.

I’m gonna go against the socially acceptable thing to do and discuss my experiences without the over lay of guilt about “well at least you have your daughter out of it.”

I am also going to state while I mention other people I am focused on my experience through all of this, and I understand others can have the best intensions, but that all doesn't matter when sharing my thoughts, feelings and experiences.

In 2012-13 the first of many changes happened. I was a successful personal trainer and strength and conditioning coach. I had started an exercise therapy program for a local chiropractor in 2010 and it had done very well.

Before I got pregnant for the third time, I had had 2 miscarriages over the previous 2 years. The stress and anxiety around getting and staying pregnant was extremely high. Pregnancy consumed my life, I felt like a failure as a woman and a wife.

1. Getting Pregnant is easy.

For those dealing with fertility issues and/or miscarriages I am sending all my love your way.

After the second miscarriage I started going to acupuncture in addition to my reproductive endocrinologist. After much stress, heartache and pain I successfully got pregnant in October 2013 and was able to maintain the pregnancy. I was on my feet the majority of the day, I still was working out and did yoga 2/3 time a week.

I always thought I knew everything about pregnancy, postpartum and motherhood because of watching the world around me.

Being pregnant is the most personal and vulnerable process on public display with everyone thinking their comments on your personal life are welcome. I was determined to stay fit through the pregnancy and I did until at 34 weeks I started to have pain and contractions and decided the best move was to slow it way down and listen to my body.

I had planned as natural of a birth as I could with a hospital delivery (and actually had doctors and nurses laugh at me when I said that). We had my birth plan, we were ready.

About a week before my due date I started having contractions on and off so I took my leave from work to wait it out which started the second major change of learning very quickly I had zero control over the process of pregnancy and birth.

After 2 weeks of being home during the hot summer, miserably over due, and wanting to murder the next person who asked if the baby was here yet; I went into labor at 3am on 7/7/2014.

Now, I’m gonna try to keep on task here but I will say that when it comes to birthing babies most OBGYNs do not empower or even do what’s best for the individual woman, it’s about protocols and protection of themselves and the hospitals.

I am not saying individuals don't have good intentions, and some people can have great experiences.

At the hospital you are on a clock and have to progress in a timely manner or intervention will happen.

As in my case after laboring for 12 hours naturally, I wasn’t progressing past 7cm. Feeling backed into a corner, the devils drug aka Pitocin was administered, I knew I had to get the epidural that I didn’t want.

That epidural left me with pain in my back for almost 2 years and numbness in my left lower leg for almost a year.

I always had back issues my entire life so this was honestly not surprising, which was why I wanted to avoid a epidural in the first place.

2. Birth is very much traumatic.

I am going to focus here about the “normal” trauma that can happen with a lot of hospital births that is bulldozed over by society and most women as a whole.

I was helpless, unable to move much, spread eagle on a table for about 1.5 hours, while the on-call doctor, a man I had never met in the office, “delivered” my baby.

He stood between my legs helping to “stretch me” as the baby moved down the birth canal. Now tell me in what world is it “normal” for a complete stranger to touch your private parts, and stand between your legs while you are sunny side up, mostly naked and in the most vulnerable position of your life for an extended period of time?

I closed my eyes for my entire birth trying to shut out the world of strangers, pain, helplessness and desperately wanting for this baby to just be out so I could be done!

Don’t get me started about how the medical system was designed to disempower individuals and continually put people in positions of completely vulnerability going through life alternating medical procedures while it’s just the staff and doctors normal Tuesday. But I digress.

After the delivery, the feeling that everyone tells you are supposed to be there, all magical and wonderful were foreign to me.

I wanted to sleep and rest after 24 hours of birth and labor, I was over it. I was excited to be a mom and enjoyed looking at this new human who I was now responsible for.

But I was also very ready to get back to my “normal” body and life.

The next day reality hit, when I wanted to crawl under the table in embarrassment and shame as the doctor who had proceeded to spend the early morning seeing all of my most intimate details, came in to check on me.

I couldn’t make eye contact and I had honestly no recollection what he said or what I said back.

3. The expectation that everyone got to have a completely healthy baby.

There's this automatic expectation that you could take your new bundle home and live happily ever after.

Our baby was born with a tongue tie and wasn’t able to nurse properly and caused me excruciating pain.

Within the first hours after being born, the baby's tongue had to be clipped from the gums. We knew this was the best thing but there is nothing like the worry and fear when you see your baby in pain.

We were also told our new baby hadn’t pooped meconium in the first 12/18 hours of birth and the doctors were getting nervous.

They blamed me saying I might not be producing enough milk and they wanted to try formula. I was determined to 100% breastfeed and refused.

I asked what else I could do to prove I was producing enough. So I had to pump in front of 3 new strangers to prove I could feed my baby.

After much back and forth and threatening of more invasive actions on our baby, a nurse finally realized that a chart hadn’t been updated when a diaper had been changed during the hearing test.

Then we were finally released after 3 exhausting, excruciating, and stress filled days. Let me pause to say this, my daughter went home healthy and strong and growing without any societal described "disabilities".

If she had to have surgery or been diagnosed with some life altering disease I don't know what I would have done. You can't plan for the stress of having a baby who doesn't fit the societal expectations of "normal"

4. The expectations around postpartum recovery.

The fact no one warns you or can even describe the excruciating level of tired that makes your mind and body ache in ways I cant quite put into words.

I thought you could just get back to your life once the baby was out, like you go back to your life but just with a baby. But reality was like hitting a brick wall.

Those first few days I don't remember too much. I remember being excited to get my body back (or so I thought).

I felt like I had run a marathon (or what I imagined running marathon would feel like). I was exhausted and I just wanted to sleep.

But the baby cried a lot, we were still trying to figure out the whole nursing situation. No one tells you it takes a while and you have to learn together.

I would wake up to the baby crying, my husband would change a diaper while I limped to the bathroom to pee and use the squirt bottle of warm water to sooth my burning stitches, change my pad and limp to the bed room and sit up to nurse because that's what you were "supposed" to do.

"Lovingly nurse and rock the baby to sleep while you blissfully sung or hummed before you gently laid them back in their bassinet" or so the images in my mind told me.

After falling asleep sitting up and almost dropping the baby I quickly realized that if I laid down while nursing it was safer for both of us (our co-sleeping was done safely).

I can distinctly remember thinking I just wanted the baby to stop crying so I could just sleep.

I was so sore and exhausted.

But the baby was up every 2/3 hours like clockwork. I knew mentally I was supposed to like this baby that stopped me from sleeping.

But I just kept doing what I was "supposed" to, to make sure this baby was alive, and I secretly hoped it would get easier and I would eventually fall in love the way everyone talks about.

And thankfully a smile at 6 weeks seemed to be the sun through the clouds I needed to fall "in love".

I did too much, too soon. I wanted to get my body back for training, I wanted to prove that I could "snap back", keep the house clean and go back to how I was before the baby came.

But that's not what happened no matter how hard I tried to force it.

I would nurse the baby on the couch and the only way I could sit so my back didn't hurt was crisscross my legs underneath me, well unfortunately my hips felt like warm silly putty, sliding apart no matter what I did.

I could feel my stitches stretching and almost ripping as I sat. While I attempted to try to find a way to sit without pain on the bottom half of my body, my top half had burning, sore and painful nipples, while try to learn the placement and positioning that worked for the baby and myself.

5. You can plan exactly how postpartum is going to go.

I no longer had any control of anything.

I had 6 weeks of paid leave thanks to my very generous boss, but I had taken the 2 weeks off before the baby was born because I thought the baby would arrive earlier than what actually happened, plus I had been so uncomfortable it was hard for me to work.

So I only had 4 weeks of actual maternity leave once the baby arrived. Because I was in a household that depended on 2 incomes, I went back to work part time at 5 weeks post partum. I could barely function.

I was at a job that needed a fully functioning body, yet I couldn't get back off the floor if I happened to sit down. I ended up taking 2 more weeks of unpaid leave in hopes of healing.

But I needed to work.

My husband worked 2nd shift so he watched the baby in the morning. The baby unfortunately wouldn't take a bottle but was finger fed through a straw.

I was so tired that I was unaware of the timing of keeping up with laundry. Come to find out my clothes had stayed in the washer way too long to the point all my clothes smelled of wet dog.

Unfortunately, having 2 dogs at the time, and being dead on my feet, on top of feeling like I was smelly during postpartum no matter how much I showered, I was not fully aware how bad I smelled.

Before anyone told me directly, I found out there had been clients complaining that I was stinky.

I was ashamed, embarrassed and mortified.

Finally one of the other staff thankfully finally told me so I could attempt to fix the problem.

I felt like I was slowly drowning.

I kept attempting to get back to full time but we were having difficulties finding someone as a babysitter for the evenings.

On top of that I was unable to concentrate because I was worried the baby wouldn't take the bottle because daddy wasn't there.

I could hear crying in my mind (a marker of extreme postpartum by the way), and I was unable to focus on my sessions and lost my desire to even be at work.

6. My focus, priorities, desires and motivations completely changed postpartum.

After the baby's 2 month pediatric visit, fevers started on and off for about 3 weeks, then the baby developed eczema.

The baby would itch and scratch to the point of bleeding. My anxiety went through the roof. I had no idea what was causing it, how to help it and what I could do about it.

It was from head to toe and the only thing that seemed to help was to be held, constantly.

So after mutual agreement with my boss I stepped down as the manager and became an hourly trainer, still working part time.

My career which had been my life for 10 years was no longer where I wanted to be, and I was unable to be present mentally, and be the person I was pre-baby. I felt lost, overwhelmed, anxious and always exhausted.

7. Things can change in an instant when it comes to your children.

I was nursing the baby one night at about 6 months old, when all of a sudden the sharp pain that had been there pre-cutting of the lip tie in the hospital was back.

I realized there was a lip and posterior tongue tie that had to be cut. We traveled to Albany, New York to have the upper lip and posterior Tongue Tie lasered.

Once the numbness and pain meds wore off it was like torture, there was nothing either of us could do, frozen breastmilk was the only way to get any food in the baby as gently sucking on frozen pieces of crushed breastmilk was the only way to get any comfort.

Recovery was slow and we had to relearn to nurse like an infant, both of us.

At that point, I was completely checked out at work and my boss and myself made a mutual decision for me to leave, even as the decision was one that I knew would have resulted in my termination if I had disagreed.

I was filled with shame, anxiety and the the guilt of not being able to "handle" work and taking care of the baby.

I thought I was supposed to be able to handle a full time job and a baby, and I felt like a failure because I wasn't able to manage both. In the year after the baby was born we went from two full time incomes to one.

I felt responsible and like it was my fault.

I felt guilty yet couldn't bring myself to figuring out how to get another job and having to go through leaving the baby because the way my anxiety was, I had an extremely difficult time leaving for more than an hour at any one time.

8. Becoming a mother had completely broken me open.

I couldn't have seen coming was the totality of total change that my life had become something I didn't recognize.

Becoming a mother had completely broken me open and demolished everything about who I thought I was and what my plan for my life was.

Here I was a 31 year old woman, who had always been both feet in deep in her career couldn't handle even going to work.

We never planned for me to be home. I never thought I wanted to be home.

I had a baby and all of a sudden everything I thought and had planned on, even who I was, crumbled around me.

I felt like a complete failure.

I buried the shame as feelings of ineptitude welled up deep inside me all while I pretended like I chose it.

Because what else could I do?

Admit to myself how full of shame, resentment, anger, pain, and embarrassment as I watched the life I thought I was going to have as a mother slip through my fingers like sand and I could do nothing to stop it.

I will also acknowledge the constant looming financial stress that paralyzed me even more.

Looking back the only reason my marriage survived was because we both channeled all our energy and hopes of being saved from the life we were now suddenly living came in the form of a network marketing company which we believed would be our way out.

The personal development gained through that was literally the only thing that kept us going.

For that time in our lives there was no greater blessing, yet at the same time it allowed me to bury all my shame, guilt and fear deeply in my mind and body.

Most of my memories of that first year after having the baby was pain, exhaustion, anxiety, panic, fear, and mind numbing stress.

I didn't even know how to ask for help even if I wanted to.

I have always learned to handle things on my own and if I couldn't handle them I would bury them deep inside me.

Yes I survived, but you can survive and later thrive or stay in the survival mode for the rest of your life.

Sometime the fear, shame, guilt, and trauma CAN cripple you.

Looking back almost 9 years later, the last 3 I have been in therapy.

I have been unlearning the habits that got me here and unpacking a deep dug hole full of shame, embarrassment, and trauma.

I am sharing this because I need to see it, say it and let it go. To own it.

And also be real with other women that we go through sometimes really hard things and you are not alone.

It happened, all of it. I have been finally able to forgive myself and the baby for the changes that happened.

To not rationalize it or even make it make sense, but to make peace with what was and where I am now. There's a book called The Body Keeps The Score, it basically says no matter how much you try to ignore, or pretend things didn't happen, that until everything that happened to you has been fully processed by your body, mind and emotions that it is still living inside you and impacting you.

Writing this is my third step in setting myself free.

My first step was educating myself on shame and trauma, and then talking about it with my therapist and facing it.

For anyone out there struggling with a baby or small child, you are not alone. Find a therapist that works for you, or maybe join a new moms group online or in person.

If you are worried about harming yourself or your child please talk to your doctor, your partner or a friend for help.

Please don't ignore what is harming you, its ok to be overwhelmed it is a huge life transition.

And I am doing my best to choose love, to love myself, and accept myself for all I have been through and all that has happened.

Because life is messy and beautiful and only when we allow the dark in does it give definition to the light.

Michelle

#Pregnancy #Postpartum #Motherhood #Mom #Firsttimemom #shame #trauma #lifechanges