so, i've been wanting to write this for a while. benson is almost 3 months already so i guess just over 2 months now. i think we, as women are especially hard on ourselves, and each other. maybe it's just me but i always feel so much pressure to be perfect. i compare myself to almost every other woman i see. am i as pretty as her, am i as fat as her or is she fatter than me, are her clothes cuter than mine, is she a better mom than me, she gets to volunteer in her kids' class and her hair is curled and she's thin... blah blah blah. i've judged myself a lot, not given myself permission to forgive myself and continue to compare myself to all of you. this is has gotten even worse over the last year, even more so since having benson.
after leaving benson's dad almost a year ago and finding out i was pregnant two weeks later i about fell apart. i went into our marriage knowing i wasn't in love, almost like a business deal, i knew together we'd be able to provide for our girls better than we could apart, i could be a mom to his daughter, he could be a dad to my girls etc, we wanted the same things out of life long term (or so he said). so even though this wasn't the ideal, perfect situation or reason to be getting married i was completely fine with it. imagine my surprise when it didn't work out exactly like i had planned. my world came crashing in on me the night he was arrested for domestic violence. i couldn't believe i was dealing with this a second time and that i had given up my house and a good job and uprooted the girls all for nothing. i was so embarrassed to know that i was going to be twice divorced, realizing at 29 years old that i was going to be single for the rest of my life (i don't think 3rd time's the charm applies to marriage). what would everyone at church think? what would the people who had tried to warn me about him think? what would my girls think, would they be ok? this definitely made me a worse mom than all of you. i couldn't let that keep me in that relationship though, however hard things were going to be for me and the girls it would be better than staying.
we left, stayed in a hotel for a week before we could move into our temporary home. we went from our own 3 bedroom house with a huge yard, to the beautiful 5 bedroom house with a huge yard to a little 2 bedroom condo. it was hard but we were grateful to have somewhere to live. the week of Christmas i found out i was pregnant. i was literally devastated. i am ashamed to admit that i spent the first 3 months praying for a miscarriage. it wasn't fair to me, it wasn't fair to my girls and most importantly it wasn't fair to that little baby to be brought into this world with only me as a parent. when i went to my first appointment and saw the little bean on the ultrasound i sobbed, it was official. there was no pretending anymore that i was just getting fatter. i was gonna have a baby. by that point benson's dad had already told me that he didn't want anything to do with our baby. i had to start preparing myself to do it alone. prepping myself to be a working, single mom to 4 kids, one of whom was a newborn! i was scared out of my mind.
i had some support, i had friends who were (continue to be) amazing, but the people that i needed to support me the most didn't. at least not in the way i would've liked. it was an extremely difficult and lonely time, probably the longest 9 months of my life. i had a lot of complications with this pregnancy and in fact 3 weeks before i was due i started to wonder if i would be able to do it alone, maybe i should give this baby up for adoption. i didn't feel connected to him at all, even the delivery was the hardest out of all of my 4 deliveries.
i expected his birth to be some kind of amazing, beautiful moment where i finally connected with this baby i had been carrying for 9 months. i didn't even cry, i felt like i was having an out of body experience almost. then i felt guilty for not crying when he was born. i looked at him across the delivery room and i liked him, he was so cute but he could've been anyone's baby. i remember thinking how odd that felt and for being so disappointed in myself for not feeling that connection. i was counting on the fact that i would feel that once he was born.when i nursed him right after they cleaned him up i still didn't feel anything, it was totally surreal.
they took us to the postpartum room and wheeled his little bassinet to the far side of the bed, i laid down with my back to him. i remember having to make myself turn over and look at him and still not feeling that maternal connection. i was devastated. i don't know if was because i had been up so long and i was exhausted or what but i just didn't feel it. i did finally make that connection with him a few hours after he was born. it was great but almost as soon as i made that connection something in my brain switched, i knew i would be getting visitors soon. i was so worried about how i looked, how fat i was (yes i had just given birth 4 hours prior) i wanted to get into some regular clothes, shower get some makeup on, so i did. i was humiliated every time someone came to visit. all i could think about was how they must be judging me.
when it was time to go home i felt amazing, i was so excited to have 6 weeks to spend with my little guy, the girls were all in school so i would just get to snuggle him all day. i couldn't wait to start running again, i hadn't felt so good physically since before i got pregnant. i cancelled some of the meals that were scheduled to be brought in because i was feeling so great. 10 days postpartum i bought a treadmill and went for my first jog. it wasn't fast or very long but it felt amazing! i would lose weight and be back in shape and ready to run my first 5k by the time i had to go back to work. people wouldn't be able to judge me. i was gonna have my $hit together.
14 days postpartum things changed. there were many days that i didn't get dressed, i couldn't get dressed. i would take the girls to school and come home and lay on the couch and hope that he would sleep for long periods of time. it was literally ALL i could do to feed him. i don't remember a lot of those days. i was completely uninterested in him. then i started having the panic attacks, i would wake up in the night heart racing, sweating, short of breath, or there were several times benson and i would be driving down the road and because i couldn't see him in the back seat or hear him i would start to think something was wrong, i would start hyperventilating and i would literally have to pull my car over to check on him. we stopped going places most of the time unless i had to. i started imaging all these horrible scenarios of things that would happen to him when i went back to work, i was certain he was gonna end up harmed in some way if i wasn't there to take care of him. i was a mess, i had completely fallen apart. i couldn't work out and i didn't want to associate with anyone most days. there were days people would knock on the door and i wouldn't/couldn't get up to answer the door.
this was supposed to be the happiest time in my life, i had just brought this beautiful, sweet boy into this world and i should be so happy. instead almost every single task felt huge and overwhelming. i couldn't handle most normal daily activities, but even worse than that i was humiliated that i was feeling this way. i didn't want to tell anyone because i didn't want them to know that i wasn't perfect.
i suffered through it mostly alone for weeks and when it got to be almost time to go back to work i realized that it wasn't getting better. i went to my dr and he validated everything i was feeling, put me on some medication and told me i wasn't a horrible person.
it's been terribly difficult for me to admit that i needed help, that i couldn't handle it all on my own. i wanted to write it down, i don't know how many people will read this but if even one person reads it and she feels like she's not alone then great!
i'm trying to be less judgemental of others but more importantly of myself. it's ok to have days where things aren't pretty, where the house isn't clean and my hair isn't perfect. it's ok that i didn't feel that immediate connection with benson. it's ok that it's taken me longer than i want to be able to run my first post-baby 5k or that i'm only 5 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight. it's even ok that i made the mistake of marrying benson's dad, it was a mistake but the consequence was beautiful.
