What You Might Forget About New Motherhood (and how to get help before you do)
I really enjoyed this essay at Atlantic by Jody Peltason, a mother recalling her firstbornâs early weeks. The essay is based on her own journal entry titled, âBefore I Forget.â In it, she recounted how awful, frightened and generally lousy she felt soon after her childâs birth, and how irritated she was by a strangerâs remark that she must be âOn Cloud Nine.â Now three years later, and the memories have faded; the recollection still hurts, but, oddly, she wouldnât remember the details of those awful first weeks but for her own journal.
The truth is, of the 1000+ new mothers Iâve worked with in the past decade, I have yet to meet a single one who seems to me to be on Cloud Nine. Some of them are happier than others; none of them is constantly ecstatic.Not in the first six months, certainly, certainly not in the first six weeks. Itâs not what new moms are like, though many of them seem to think thereâs something wrong with them for not being blissful. Â
I think partly this is because of what birth is like for almost everyone (even when it goes well, I have yet to meet anyone who described a hospital birth as âgentleâ; can you imagine how those early weeks might change if new mothers routinely said, âeveryone I encountered while I was doing all that work of labor went out of their way to make me feel personally cared for -- they were kind and patient, took the time to do whatever made me feel like the rock star I am for having given birthâ; can you imagine how different the world might be if women were taught to feel not âthe only important thing is my babyâs outcome,â but, instead, that they were entitled to dignity and respect and pampering, gentle care in the hospital? That they were taught to see that being treated gently on day 1 makes a difference in her confidence and mood on day 2, 3 and so on?).Â
I also think that partly moms donât seem to be on Cloud Nine because theyâre often sent home alone with no one to take care of them during the next several months (in other parts of the world, there are cultural rituals around the care of new mothers; they are attended to so they can do the work of reinventing themselves, caring for helpless newborns, and recovering from birth. Our cultureâs complete absence of any rituals is harsh by comparison). Â
But mostly I feel like new moms arenât on Cloud Nine because itâs just not like that at first â itâs chaotic, itâs a transition, your baby is a stranger and very needy, in some ways youâre a stranger to yourself and very needy, your body feels different. Even with the best of help, no one loves being a beginner.Â
With my own firstborn, I remember some happiness, but mostly what I remember was that I felt drugged by him â drugged as in, dopey, in that I felt this compulsion to touch and respond to him even though it wasnât, yet, recognizable as âlove,â and also drugged as in âsort of sedated,â which may have been the sleep deprivation making it hard for me to think clearly, and also drugged as in âon downersâ: I remember at least one day where I sobbed in bleary exhaustion because I couldnât find the top of the water bottle, and at least one night where I cried and cried, because the un-shareability of breastfeeding was just too much. I recall my daughterâs newborn period as much more straightforwardly happy, though when I hone in on it, I can also remember that that Pretenders song, âItâs a Thin Line Between Love and Hateâ was literally a soundtrack in my head for the entire first month. And that there was that one afternoon when I declared, in irritation, that I was going to wean her TODAY, RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE. And that other time where my computer crashed and I knocked over a water glass onto some papers and my baby had been screaming herself purple all morning, and I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried and cried.
But my kids are past the newborn stage, so when I work with new moms as a teacher or lactation consultant, Iâm one of the list of people Peltason says âdonât get itâ:Â
no one we talk toânot our mothers, not our friends with toddlers, not our pediatricians or lactation consultantsâis able to re-inhabit her own experience fully enough to really understand how we feel.
Thatâs true. And Iâm sure that there are mothers, friends, pediatricians and lactation consultants who seriously lack empathy and make it all worse. I know some of them! But I hope that even without being able to re-inhabit our own experiences, good helpers can help shepherd new moms through this stuff. I encourage new moms to reach out to their own mothers, childbirth educators, kind IBCLCs, friends, and other new mothers and to keep looking till they find someone who actually helps.
We arenât able to be the new mom with you, but perhaps we can recognize your experience and try to be of comfort or of service while you go through it, just like you canât literally understand what your baby is going through when he cries, but you can be helpful and supportive and gentle while he goes through it, and that will be good for him.Â
Still, Ms. Peltason writes, itâs lonely when no one else really inhabits the new mom place with you. Â
At some point, I think, it begins to sink in and feel ânormalâ that youâre the babyâs mother. You are, of course, always going to be literally alone with it, but as you grow into it as a role, the bad part of âlonelinessâ abates some. It takes a while, though, and itâs not made any easier by the fact that youâre tired and recovering and learning and, often, for a while, stuck at home, doing stuff that most of our country deems ânot doing anything.â (i.e., keeping a completely helpless creature who canât even move his own head alive with your very bodily fluids). It is lonely work, in the sense that you are truly alone in the role. No one else, no matter how sensitive, can inhabit this with you, that's what's hard about it.  That's why you need to be pampered and attended. Itâs not something that can be fixed, itâs something you come to terms with. And thatâs work.Â
I loathe strangers who talk to new moms idiotically, telling them to âsavor every moment,â or that âit goes by in a flashâ or that they ought to be on cloud nine. I loathe them for the pain they cause my students and clients.I think we all know, in our ânormalâ lives, that random comments by strangers in the drug store are worth precisely zero, but in those early weeks, new moms are so extraordinarily suggestible â I wish the world would shut up around them or commit to be extra-gentle with them. But they wonât â random people at the drug store will continue to say random things, and in time, I think, moms find they can ignore it.Â
Till then, though, what helps make it a little more bearable? Food, fresh air, qualified helpers for specific concerns, the presence of gentle people who love you and make you feel OK â the basics of being cared for.
Do these things make the first several weeks and months easy? Do they remove all of that self-doubt? Do they allow you to feel you have total control and confidence, relaxed about your babyâs unpredictability? Do they ease spousal tensions, make you never weepy and confused, erase all your problems and leave you fully rested and understand your role completely? No. Nothing can do that. Â
But the right kind of help can help support you while you grow into being the mother youâre turning into. It wonât take all the pain away, but it will help you live with it. Because the truth is, the first months are bumpy for almost everyone. Peltason is exactly right that itâs not something you can master. You just get through it, hopefully with gentle people around you that you can lean on. Â
(And when you are through it? You still, as a mother, have periods of self-doubt, incomplete control, occasional weeping and confusion and problems, and so on. But you find that youâre much, much better at handling it than you were at first.)Â
Like Peltason, I weary of the way we talk about the early months in a harsh dichotomy of âpostpartum depressionâ versus âsheer joy all the time.â The normal postnatal period is trying for almost everyone. Sometimes, (often, I daresay), the tools that help folks who are tipping into Depression are also useful for everyone else as well; often a good facilitated new momsâ group is all that sheâll need. No one benefits from imagining that ânormalâ and âhealthyâ is the same as âeasyâ and âhappy all the time.â No one is happy all the time and few important things are easy. Itâs a ridiculous standard. Â
Itâs easy, as she notes, for helpers to encourage moms to tune into their âMotherâs Instinctsâ to figure out what to do during this time, but all too often, Iâve noticed, new moms are certain they have no instincts! Like Peltason, many of the new moms I meet worry their âMotherâs Instinctsâ are lousy, untrustable, or absent, because they donât feel like a mother yet.Â
I say, it takes a while to feel like a mother, period. But you are, literally, a mother. So if your gut tells you that you should drink tea and watch The Wonder Years, as Peltasonâs did, thatâs your Motherâs Instinct. And itâs probably exactly what you need to do.Â
What does drinking tea and watching The Wonder Years have to do with developing as a mother? How can it help answer your questions about parenting philosophy and whether to keep breastfeeding or buy a different brand of diapers or return to work or whatever? I donât know.  But if itâs what you feel like doing and youâre the mother, thatâs your instinct. Go for it. See where it takes you.Â
You know what will happen? An hour will go by. Youâll have an hourâs more experience, an hour where you did something that just felt right. In time, those hours accumulate and youâll have gotten through the early stuff. Youâll know your baby more, and yourself more. Youâll be one step further from being that vulnerable new mom, at the steepest part of the learning curve, and one step closer to being the person who forgets herself in Duane Reade and inadvertently reminisces aloud about how wonderful it all was.
