Open Letter to New Moms
It Won't Always Feel Like This, I Promise
Nothing is worse than a know-it-all mom telling you what to do, so I won’t. But please take this to heart: It gets so much better after the first couple of months, I promise.
You love your baby. You think it is cute, even if it still looks sort of like a honey baked ham. (This also gets better.) Maybe your boobs are sore. Maybe your bathing suit area has suffered unspeakable hardships. (These two things get only somewhat better, but let’s not dwell on that.) But I’m going to guess you’ve had a fleeting thought or two that has made you feel like a rotten person. Like, for instance, saying out loud to a five-week-old, “what the fuck is your problem, go to sleep, you demented crotch goblin.”
Exhaustion does things to people. There’s a reason sleep deprivation is a torture technique.
My oldest hit a growth spurt at around four weeks old, and I was nursing around the clock. My nipples were bleeding, my C-scar was still tender, and I had been awake for about 36 hours, broken up with a few cat naps. I should mention that the baby would only breastfeed on one side at a time, so I spent weeks with one watermelon-sized boob and one lemon-sized, and they would trade every four hours.
During this stretch, when the baby wasn’t screaming to eat, he could only be soothed by being bounced in the baby snuggly close to my chest while I held a hair dryer for white noise. He would fall asleep, and I would keep bouncing.
My husband came home to his once bright-eyed bride, now a zombie with sea witch hair and uneven boobs, doing squats while attached to a fitfully sleeping infant.
“Oh, boy. Bad day?”
It was time to tell him, but how to broach the subject?
I waited until he had taken the baby for a bouncing shift, and our son was officially dozing.
Now or never.
“Listen,” I said. “We tried. This was a mistake. We’re just not cut out for this. We have failed, and it’s time to admit it. Let’s put an ad on Craigslist. He’s so cute, someone will be happy to have him.”
My husband started to laugh, and I watched it dawn on him that I was not joking. Sea witches don’t fuck around.
He opened his mouth to respond, and I saw his eyes flit down to the circles of blood appearing in the center of my nursing tank, then back up to the black circles under my eyes, a postpartum Benicio del Toro.
I could tell he was choosing his words carefully.
“OK,” he said, like he was negotiating with a terrorist about to pull the pin out of a grenade. “Let’s give it a day before we write the ad. Let’s have some dinner, and see how the night goes.”
This seemed reasonable. I agreed to delay posting our newborn son on a public marketplace for 24 more hours.
I went to bed. The baby woke up a half hour later, and the cluster feeding started again. We had used up all the pumped breast milk, and I couldn’t pump more because he ate constantly. I got about two hours of sleep, not enough to combat the punch drunkenness.
When he left for work the next day, the baby and I were both crying.
I called my friend Anne, whose son is a year older than mine.
“I can’t keep up with him. All he does is eat. I don’t even have time to pump.” I was still crying.
“How long have you been up?”
“Four years, I think? How do people do this?”
“They supplement when they need to! Get some formula during this growth spurt and go to bed. Your production will fall anyway if you’re exhausted. Have you eaten?”
I couldn’t remember. Maybe?
“Wait, I can do that? Give him a bottle? It won’t ruin everything? What about nipple confusion?”
“Yes! If he’s nursing fine, and he’s this hungry, it will be ok. Just use a low flow nipple. Get some sleep, this isn’t good for either of you.”
I stopped crying. This conversation was a revelation. Exhaustion had decimated my own problem solving abilities, but I also genuinely thought I had no other options. I assumed that if I was going to nurse, if I was going to be a good mother, then I just had to power through any and all miseries. (See: Irish Catholic, Midwesterner for further reading.)
My friend had given me not only a solution, but permission. I had been so worried I was going to fail–actually, that I was already failing–and one wrong move was going to blow this kid’s whole life just one month out of the gate.
My parents arrived at 7:45 a.m., having been called in as reinforcements by my husband, acting casual like this was a perfectly normal time to spontaneously visit.
I saw how rough I looked reflected in their expressions. (It’s a great feeling, realizing the extent to which you look like hot garbage as someone’s eyes widen and they go ‘heyyyyyyyyy you.’ Then all three of us were complicit as we pretended that I didn’t smell like curdled milk, sweat and scalp, and that the fur mats in my hair were purposeful, and that I’d always had one F cup and one B cup and all of God’s children are beautiful, right? In their own way?)
My dad took the baby, and I pointed my mom toward the little formula bottles the hospital had given us. I showered, and slept for four hours, which is when my watermelon boob was so full it awakened me by shooting milk all over the adjacent pillow. I was a little less tired, and a little less gross. I felt like a new woman.
The baby’s eating normalized after a couple of days, and he continued to both nurse and take bottles with no problem.
He’s now in high school and though we’re occasionally tempted to list him for sale for other reasons, at this point we’re pretty committed to seeing it through.
I tell you all this to remind you that days like these are inevitable with an infant, and they can feel dark, boring and endless. (A 24-hour day feels a lot longer when you’re awake for 20 hours of it.) Babies are adorable brain stems–darling, sure, but not intellectually stimulating. It’s completely normal not to cherish every moment. Things are happening to your mind and body that have never happened before, all while you have to keep a helpless tiny human alive. On paper, this empirically sucks. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging it.
But motherhood is shrouded in so much performative cheeriness–and judgment for not being a serene Mother Earth, giver of life–that you can feel like an aberration when you have fleeting thoughts of taking to the rails like a train hobo.
A lot of this isn’t even personal, it’s systemic. Humans aren’t supposed to raise babies in isolation. We evolved with extended clans and villages where your neighbor or relative took the baby so you could sleep, took your toddler when you were nursing the baby, brought you food while you recuperated. The way we do it is wrong, and it often feels terrible, and that’s not your fault.
You are entitled to be honest about the tougher moments, and that doesn’t take away from the true magic of those sweet coos, the snuggles and the sleepy smiles. Those are still the best. But two things can be true: I love cute baby/cute baby is eroding my will to live.
When you have those moments where you think, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be, I’m no good at this, today is really hard–it’s OK. It will pass. You are a good mom, and your baby loves you. And, as a bonus, they won’t remember any of this in detail, just the general feeling of being safe, cared for and loved.
So go shower. Sleep when you can. The crotch goblin will be walking before you know it.
Tips for the first four months:
Find the thing that makes you feel like a person and prioritize it. For me, it was sleep. For others, it may be showering. When that baby goes down for a nap, do your one thing before you turn to the dishes, the laundry, the catastrophe in the baby’s wake. You have an infant, the house will never be clean anyway. Surrender.
Have a trusted friend/family member you confide in not only because venting is helpful but to have an outside perspective (not your partner) on whether what you’re feeling is standard exhaustion or more serious postpartum depression. Your doctor will likely screen you, but it helps to have someone who knew you in the before times keeping an eye on it, too. (There is absolutely no shame in postpartum depression, which can feel like a black hole. There are medications and therapies to help.)
I had some babies who I nursed, and some who I couldn’t. I have zero interest in getting into a breast vs bottle battle, but I will say that I did not find nursing intuitive. Early nursing in particular can be so frustrating. I was shocked when I was told that I had to turn my boob into a burger and cram it into the baby’s mouth. How could my life have come to a moment where I was analyzing whether my boob was adequately burger? Feed your particular baby the way that works whether that’s breast, bottle or a combination.
Look at your kid while they are sleeping. I still do this. It helps you remember that you love them after a long, hard day.