Progress Report: One Year in Momland
Here's what I've crushed and screwed up on.
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My baby turns 12 months today! It’s thrilling and, of course, a little sad. As you all know, this time is fleeting and I worry that one day I’ll wake up and she’ll be a 13 year- old making fun of me on some Chinese Psy Op social media platform. Anyways, here’s my pilgrim’s progress:
Things I Absolutely Crushed
Embracing My Naked Ape Era
I was really nervous about this helpless little mammal exploding my life like a mushroom cloud and obliterating my personality. I feared I would become some mushy blob woman who swung between being tediously sentimental and resentful of loving something so much that was so helpless. That didn’t happen! I’m still me! And somehow even MORE me than I’ve ever been. I’ve become MORE creative, MORE inspired, and MORE connected to the absolutely molten fucking core of who I am because of the little meatball I gave birth to.
I Haven’t Been Mad AT My Baby …Yet
I’ve been frustrated, despairing, cranky, baffled, anxious about the things my baby has inflicted on me in the last year. Like she’s recently taken to letting me know she’s done nursing by giving my nipple a quick bite and when I jump and look down she --with a demonic level of mischief-- whispers “Da-da” and then begins to cackle. I AIN’T MAD!!! I’ve never blamed her for anything, never felt resentment, she’s somehow transformed me into a Zen monk. My husband will ask, “doesn’t that hurt?” To which I straight up said: “We don’t get mad at the sun for burning so bright.” WHAAAAT? What does that even mean?!?! I don’t know but I’m pretty sure I could levitate in the lotus position if I tried.
Lactating Without Apology!!!!!
One year, exclusively, on demand, anytime, anywhere, with no plans to wean anytime soon. This is largely because I lucked out and got a great lactation consultant through my insurance plan who was a fire-breathing EVANGELIST about breastfeeding and utterly inspired me to push through any challenges. Never in a million years would I imagine that the PRIMARY marker of my identity would be “breastfeeding mom” but here we are! Welcome to my nipples!!
Biggest Stumble Steps
Worshiping at the Altar of Snoo
Anyone who listened to me during my pregnancy had to endure my obnoxiously cocksure solution to a newborn’s sleep cycle: a Snoo rental. I was like, “HAHAH, suckers, we’re gonna put that baby in a robot crib and I’m gonna sleep while my AI nanny puts my infant in a $1,500 slumber.” Not only that, they had to listen to me RAIL against…co-sleeping!! Co-sleeping? That was 1970s commune shit. So risky! What about your husband? What about OUR DOG??? My extremely arrogant ass would rat on other parents to my friends,” Can you BELIEVE they let their FIVE YEAR old still sleep in their bed??”
For whatever reason, something about giving up my bed was like the downed Saddam Hussein statue, the symbol of regime change, the start of an endless infant occupation.
Cut to the first night home from the hospital, I put my pink, wrinkly, helpless infant in that space-age Pottery Barn luxury gadget and after three minutes I burst into tears and put her in bed with me and banished ‘that overpriced toaster’ to the garage from which it only emerged 6 months later to be shipped back.
(Some people love the Snoo! That’s fine. I found it made breastfeeding on demand much harder and made it impossible to know hunger cues).
Sadly, I spent the first month staying up every night, all night, researching co-sleeping before I allowed myself to actually sleep next to my baby. Had I bothered to read a single fucking word by James McKenna, or about the benefits of co-sleeping, or LITERALLY anything at all I would have saved myself a lot of suffering.
I Decorated a Nursery???
Why did I make my husband repaint a room that we never spend any time in? Why did I drag us to Ikea at 8 months pregnant and then proceed to throw a tantrum when he tried to talk me out of “up-cycling” a dresser?
Letting People Visit too Soon
3 weeks post C-section wasn’t enough time for me to recover. Everyone was lovely and helpful. But I resented every moment I had to share my baby. I had finally come out of the fog of disembowelment, and I was in the middle of a silent dialogue with my baby, learning her cues, relishing her smells, learning how our bodies would sleep and feed with each other. It soothed my nervous system to be near her. Something strange and primal in me stirred when other people held her. I couldn’t stand the sight of it so I’d hide in the bedroom while she would be whisked away to the living room to be coo’d over. I remember just sobbing in my bed. I don’t know what this was, the hormones, the sleeplessness, being dropped into a lonely postpartum planet without instruction but I was really miserable. Three weeks later, on the next visit I was delighted. So, wait six weeks, ladies, that’s my advice!
Best Advice I got:
My pal Tess said to me, “Just be flexible” and told me about her babies who were so different from each other that she had to figure out what was right for each and that it could vary wildly. This piece of advice allowed me to gently give up all my preconceived notions I had before birth and look at what was happening right in front of me. In other words, I stop listening to ‘experts’ and started listening to meeeeeee.
Something I’m Trying to Forgive Myself For
As a 38-year-old-first-time-mom, I opted to go the path of least resistance. Despite knowing that the cascade of medical interventions that accompany a typical hospital birth have more to do with risk mitigation than optimum health outcomes, I decided not to try to fight City Hall. I did every ultrasound, took every recommended test, and willingly submitted to a sterilized world of obstetrics.
At 35 weeks my baby was stubbornly not flipping out of her frank breech position. I was scheduled for a C-section. Two days before I was supposed to go in, my baby drop kicked my bag and was presenting as a footling breech. 90 mins later I was pinned to an operating table, flayed open, and staring at a blinking newborn I didn’t recognize as being from my own bone and blood. It breaks my heart to think about how dazed and terrified I was. I didn’t feel joy until hours later.
One year on, my body has still not recovered. I have constant pain in my back, hips, and where I had my incision, on top of a bunch of other maladies I won’t bore you with. I don’t know if there would have been a different outcome. But I regret not even trying for one.
My EXTREMELY Expert and Enlightened Advice to a New Mom:
Find other moms who share your values (and start a newsletter together??). You don’t need to condemn the ones that don’t, they may even be some of your closest friends! But be proactive and find moms who practice what you want to practice. During pregnancy, the dividing line between medical intervention or full on placenta swinging free birth is a distinction that only lasts 9 months. This next parenting bit lasts so much longer and when you find other moms who can nourish you on that journey, cling to them.
Ok one more baby pic 🥺
I love this.
- your pal Tess
I have been thinking of you! I also have felt extremely MORE me, the most me-est ever, post-birth. Love you and love this.