Out from the Depths of the Newborn Trenches
Three tired but joyful months of repeatedly asking myself, "Am I doing this right?"
In just a few days, my husband and I will have an infant.
Our daughter is rolling out of the newborn stage off her tummy and onto her back and has suddenly transformed from a tiny, crying squish into a long, smiling baby with a blossoming personality and spiky hair over three inches long.
The newborn phase has been a whirlwind. While I’ve tried to embrace every little moment as much as possible, every little moment has been a swinging pendulum of chaos and cuteness. Caring for a newborn is a different kind of tired — one that makes you forget you need sleep because you’re so wrapped up in what needs to be done immediately while simultaneously feeling like you’re running on fumes and if you don’t get sleep soon you’ll turn into a fantastical creature from Middle-earth.
I am constantly asking myself, “Am I doing this right?”
Every week has been radically different for both me and my daughter. And within every week, every day has been a feast of pandemonium, marked by a Google search history that looks like, “baby made strange squeaking noise while sleeping,” “baby coughed while drinking milk,” and “is it normal for baby’s neck in the carseat to look like the Bent Neck Lady?”
One day she’s crying from 11AM until 4PM. The next day she’s napping without fuss in her bassinet and accepting every binky with glee. One moment she’s smiling on my knees and the next she’s exploding through her diaper and onto the only clean sweatpants I could find. Nothing is mundane, everything is new.
Shortly after one month postpartum, I started to accept that my new normal is, well, anything but normal. That everyone who has ever had children has also ventured through this frenzied rite of passage. That every mother who has ever given birth has jumped into the newborn trenches and resurfaced with wild, soaking wet hair, gasping for breath and swimming toward the shore.
We’re all just covered in baby puke, holding our babies until our arms give out, and feeling grateful for every short stretch of sleep we are given while also waking manically to press our hands to our babies’ stomachs to feel them breathe.
We’re all looking ourselves in the mirror and searching for our own reflections, trying to be gentler with ourselves.
I’ve felt myself becoming softer, rinsed from the saltwater. I’m more patient. I’m less reactive. I’m simmering more than exploding because I’m overstimulated and I cannot have my own energy contribute to the combustion.
I’m also feeling less guilty for expressing how hard this all is.
In my first few weeks postpartum, I thought often about all the women who came before me. About all the women who had premature births or traumatic births or a slew of complications. I thought about all the women who have ever given birth since the dawn of time in every wonderful or horrifying circumstance.
I first felt ashamed for thinking I was having a hard time, knowing that someone else has had it worse. That everyone who has ever walked the Earth has had a mother experience what I already have, in some way.
I had a complication-free birth. I have a loving, helpful husband and a safe home. I have a healthy baby. I felt like because I had these things that I wasn’t allowed to feel tired or overwhelmed or dysmorphic. Until I remembered that we can’t live our lives constantly preparing for the worst, or comparing our challenges to each other in a weird competition of Trauma Olympics as if we all live the same lives.
After a particularly unruly day marked by a series of sitcom-worthy events, I was exasperated enough to be slapped by the realization that we all face our own hardships in varying degrees in different eras of our lives. That I can be both grateful, and exhausted, at the same time. That I can take a deep breath and a moment to recenter.
That this can be hard even though it could be harder — but it isn’t harder. It is what it is right now. That right now is how it should be.
That later it might indeed be harder and that earlier in my life I may have been dealt a different set of hardships I’ve overcome. That getting pregnant and being pregnant were already somewhat tumultuous experiences. But this is not before and this is not the future. This is right now, and right now I am allowed to just be. I am allowed to breakdown. I am allowed to have good days, easy days.
I am allowed to feel worthy of the good things that happen to me. And at the same time, I am allowed to find motherhood, among all of its miracles, challenging and tiring and brutal despite the best of circumstances.
I want to be the best I can be for my daughter. But best doesn’t mean perfect. Best doesn’t mean easy and carefree and without adversity. Best is simply my most present self — swatting at creeping anxiety and intrusive thoughts when I have a free hand. Settling into the bubble I have carefully blown around my little life. I am no longer feeling afraid that something will come to pop it, and so instead I fill it with sparkly, iridescent lightness and float on.
Xo,
Violet Carol
More words from Violet Carol can be found on Instagram.
Other Mother Love Letters posts can be read here.
Mother Love Letters is a newsletter for intimate words on the messy and magical shared experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. If this post resonated with you, please feel free to “like” it, share it with a friend, or leave a comment to connect.
Violet, I find such healing in your words. I struggled a lot when my son was small, something about the way you articulate your experience, it speaks to the younger mother in me who was so anxious with a newborn, then infant. Thank you for writing. Also, the Unspoken Words series opens tomorrow…no pressure at all, but I would love to share your words.