I’m officially six months postpartum.
The first three months after having my second son were hard. Really hard. During those dark times, I was constantly wishing I could close my eyes and fast forward to when he was six months old. That’s when I told myself that things would be better. When I would feel better.
And now I’m finally here, and I can certainly say I’m in a better spot than I was at three months. But, whew did having another human change everything.
Let me explain.
she’s dead
Recently, I was re-reading the one and only post I wrote about motherhood after Finn was born. In it, I concluded all the ways motherhood changed me and what I’d learned (at a whopping 7 months in) by saying:
My life has changed dramatically since Finn (part of that has to do with pandemic life – which is a completely different post) but I still feel like “me” most days, just a lot more busy and tired than I used to be. The same person that loves reading, travelling, long hikes and bike rides, is still very much alive in me. I just have to be a lot more intentional about building that time in.
Reading this now, at six months postpartum with my second, it’s difficult for me not to roll my eyes and judge my past-self. None of that is applicable to where I am now. Intentional time building for myself is not exactly on the table these days.
Do I even like reading, travelling, long hikes or bike rides anymore? I hardly do a single one of those activities, so who the eff knows! All I do now is pump, work, take care of my kids, clean up after my kids, make food, clean up food, grocery shop, put my kids to sleep, try to get my kids to stay asleep, wash 500 bottles a day, and laundry. So. Much. Laundry
And yes, it’s likely that the judgement I have for my former self is coming from a place of jealousy. Jealous that she was a mother and still somehow felt like herself, and even understood what that meant. She was still floating in the magic of new motherhood, and somehow able to find time and energy to go on a hike apparently?
Having a toddler and a baby has irrevocably changed everything. My former self has left the building. There is no semblance of her left, she’s vacated the premises. She’s either dead or off travelling the world alone somewhere like she always wanted, reading or whatever, because this was all too much for her. She couldn’t exist in the chaos, and I don’t blame her.
With her gone, I’m now both everything and nothing. A floating entity that exists for the sole purpose of keeping two humans alive by meeting their most basic needs each day.
And then I do it all over again, and again, and again. And one more time. And again after that
she’s breathing again
So now that my former life as I once knew it has been laid to rest and my new life has entered the picture, I have to learn how to exist here. All the things I used to love, they don’t currently matter. They have nothing to do with this new life.
That’s part of the reality I think I was just beginning to grapple with in the early months of postpartum round two. And it was all on top of a million different sicknesses and feeling like death and hormones and surgery recovery and winter blues and grieving the loss of my old family dynamic and trying to understand the new one.
So, before I could even think about hobbies and time for myself, I had to learn how to breathe again. As this new person.
I think it happened somewhere around the 4 1/2 month mark. I started to realize things were slowly getting better. I wasn’t stuck in a cloud of misery day in and day out. My thoughts were starting to clear, and I felt some hope and purpose again.
Around this time, we took our kids to visit my parents in Florida.
One afternoon we were driving back to my parents place after spending a few hours at the beach with the kids, Al and I looked at each other and began to dissect our experience.
“It just felt so good to see the ocean again.” I said to Al.
“I know. I felt so much lighter, more free. Like something I can’t explain.” he responded blissfully.
“Same…” I trailed off, and then, as I thought about it a bit more, asked “Do you think it was like…being…happy? Do you think we were feeling happiness?”
Yep, that was it. The feeling of happiness and joy was so foreign to us at that point, it took us a minute to identify it. We laugh about that moment now.
And now, a couple of months after remembering what happy feels like, I made it to six months.
It reminds me of that line in The Little Mermaid when the crab yells “She traded her voice to the sea witch and got legs!”
I guess that’s sort of what it feels like. Like Ariel, I changed one version of life for another, and here I am at six months breathing air instead of water.
she’s becoming something
I wasn’t wrong to want to skip to this part. Even though it’s still not easy, it’s nowhere near as impossible as it felt those first few months. The darkest thoughts and feelings have thankfully faded away and I feel like I can do it. I can do this. We can do this.
As I’ve said 500 times, and every parent on the planet knows, this is hard. It’s so hard that it’s changed my ability to endure life. It’s changed how I view life. How I view people and humanity. All of it.
I feel like I’ve been shaved down to a bare bones version of myself, only the essential unmovable part remains. There’s not room for much else.
And in this new life, I’ve been forced to develop completely new aspects of being.
Al and I are now people that will invite you over for dinner or ask you for your number after just meeting you because our kids sort of got along at the playground. Kids force the introvert right out of you.
Rather than dread the work week, I now look forward to the quiet peace of a Monday morning, because it’s dedicated time where I get sit quietly and sip my coffee, while happily using a fresh(ish), non-parenting part of my brain.
I cook now! The person who once stuck a piece of bread directly on a stove burner to hopefully make a piece of toast, now makes full meals for a family of four. And the meals are delicious and only sometimes burnt.
I’m not trying to make the case that these are good or bad changes. They’re just changes. I guess just part of the territory when you strike up this kind of deal with a sea witch.
she’s so tired though
And this is where I wrap it all up with no sort of organization because I’m too tired and my brain isn’t what it once was.
I’m in my becoming phase, but for me, it doesn’t feel as beautiful as what Michelle made it out to be (not yet at least). Mostly I’m just becoming tired.
I will say this though.
One thing that I’ve enjoyed (outside of my new baby who is a gd DREAM) is what I was referencing earlier: the part of this whole thing where you’re whittled down to your most essential self. All non-essentials must go.
Its been an unexpected, yet welcome upgrade to my wiring.
Doing my best to give two beginning-stage humans what they need and what they deserve in order to thrive in life is hard. It requires every square inch of my physical and emotional space.
In turn, it has forced a strong “I don’t care” attitude about anything else in my field of vision that isn’t important.
It feels so nice to shed those small daily worries and anxieties that plague us, as well as any type of social or emotional baggage that I’ve carried with me for years. There just simply isn’t space for it anymore. It falls away, because in order to parent, it has to.
Al and I sometimes talk about this feeling we have that things are so hard no matter what we do, and because of that, we no longer avoid doing things or trying things. If we stay at home with the kids, it’s hard. If we get on a plane and fly to Florida with the kids, it’s hard. If we take them out to eat, it’s hard, but if we eat at home, guess what? It’s. still. hard.
So we always end up deciding that we might as well just do the thing, whatever it is.
We’re trapped in the hard, yet somehow being in that place becomes oddly freeing. When everything it’s hard, it’s like suddenly nothing is hard?
You’re forced to accept and surrender everything and just be where you are.
And this is where I am. Six months postpartum. We made it.

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