I’m a New Mom, and I Need Help
On learning how to ask for it, even when I don’t want to
Four weeks ago, I gave birth to my third baby. I was expecting the roller coaster of emotions, the exhaustion, the hormonal betrayal. By now, I know the early months are just kind of awful, even as they are peppered with moments of bliss and sleep. But I wasn’t prepared for how “okay” I feel for the most part. Sure, my baby wakes up whenever she pleases, and my older boys sleep peacefully all night and then wake up with more energy than the sun and come blasting into my room, shrieking and asking for bagels and hollering that I need to get up, now, but I’ve been taking it in stride, savoring the few hours of sleep I do get, even enjoying the nighttime wake-ups when it’s just me and that tiny little girl in a quiet room.
But over the past few days, I’ve been wondering if this is me in survival mode, if my brain is shutting off those parts that register how hard all this is, how impossible, and is instead forcing me to just keep going. Because sometimes it feels like the curtain is about to fall and expose the crazy lady back there working the controls and weeping between cackles.
Why do I think that? Well. Yesterday I started feeling a little sick. Like I miiiiiiight have diarrhea. No biggie! I had eaten like 12 handfuls of trail mix, plus a slice of birthday cake at a child’s party, plus extra gooey mac and cheese, plus, I don’t know, whatever other random thing I shoveled in between blinks, because I’m nursing and tired and that means eating is a free-for-all. I had only myself to blame. But then, thankfully, nothing happened. I went to bed feeling relieved. My daughter woke up two hours later, and I nursed her in the rocker, scrolling through Twitter before OH GOD CODE BROWN MAYDAY MAYDAY. I found myself nursing her while I sat on the toilet, my bowels emptying in a shameful gush, because I couldn’t figure out how to put her down without causing her to wail, thus waking up my whole family.
You think that’s the worst of it, but it isn’t. Because then I was back in the rocker, nursing her on the other side, when I realized I might throw up. Reader, I kept nursing her and held up her diaper pail to my face and vomited thrice into it. Then I finished nursing her, put her to bed, and went into the bathroom…
