A letter to my new mother self
Christmas day - a few months after my first baby was born. From the outside it probably appeared like I knew what I was doing, but the truth was - I had no idea.
A little background
This is the first in what I hope to be a long series of new mum stories, letters, experiences, and advice. The idea of collecting various new mum stories was inspired by ‘The Motherhood’, which is a collection of letters by a selection of Australian mothers written to their new mum selves.
Early motherhood is that time during those first few weeks and months where you have just been thrust into the deep end and haven’t yet learn how to swim. Arguably this is an extremely tough parenting period (perhaps one of the toughest?), and I would caution to assume that almost every single new mother struggles during this time in one way or another (or, in multiple ways).
Hopefully these stories will make other new-mothers feel less alone in their experiences, and help them see that this time period, while incredibly difficult, is survivable.
I’m kicking off this story series with my own letter, written to my new-mum self.
Here goes….
Dear new-mum Simone,
You’re going to find this really hard - harder than you could have imagined.
And you’re going to feel bad - for longer than you would have thought reasonable.
You thought finishing your PhD was hard - those few nights you spent staying up ‘till 3am finalising your dissertation - at least you could sleep afterwards. There is no ‘afterwards’ here: it’s on the go from the very first minute. What were you thinking? You somehow thought the birth would be the final destination - that thing that would release you from pregnancy and your anxieties, and allow you to share with Matt the heavy responsibility of maintaining this little baby’s life.
Well, it both does and doesn't work that way. Sure, he will be there at the hospital with you every chance he can. He will stay as late as he can. He will bring you home cooked bolognese so that you don't have to bear the cold cuts and stale bread that the German hospital calls dinner. He will lie next to you on the hospital bed, coaxing and coaching you on breastfeeding, instructing you to perhaps try this or that position so that you can feed this little creature you birthed, get his blood sugar up, and not have the threat of him being taken away from you to the NICU to be pumped full of glucose.
But he won't be able to be there in the middle of that first night when you are up at 3 am, officially not having slept in over twenty-four hours and you are weeping into your new baby's tiny head.
You have just returned from a glucose test for this wee little 2.64kg newborn sack of life. You should be happy; this was the last of these tests - the nurses have deemed his levels to be stable, now you no longer have to go through the torture of taking him to the nurse's station every three hours, and watching his tiny little foot get pricked and blood extracted.
The problem is, now he won't stop crying (actually, it sounds more like shrieking) and you don't know how to make him stop. You stand outside the door of your room, not wanting to enter with your screaming offspring for fear of waking the other mum and baby who co-inhabit the room with you. They seem so peaceful; her baby never crying. Yes, this will be the first of many times you will doubt yourself as a mother by comparing your situation to that of a complete stranger. What you don't know is that her baby is a bit older - not just twenty four hours into the world like yours - which means that her milk has come in and she has been able to somewhat satisfy the food requirements of her baby.
You stand outside shhh-ing and rocking, just like you've seen in the movies - because you've never had, nor even seen, this experience in real life before. The only new mother you ever knew well liked to keep all that stuff quiet and hidden away - you never saw her feeding or putting her babies to sleep.
The rocking a shhh-ing seems to be working though so, with renewed confidence, you enter the room and make your way back to your bed. You decide that it's time for him to go to sleep, so attempt placing him in his cot, but the minute you release him from your grip, he cries again with renewed vigour. You lean over to pick him up and realise just how sore you are. You have stitches 'down there' but have no idea about the state of things because you've barely had a few moments alone to investigate. You rock him and shh him again in the dim light, but in here it doesn't seem to have the same effect as before.
That's when you feel the first burst of rage - a rage you've never experienced before, and didn't know you had in you. Your cheeks flush and your arms start to feel a bit shaky. You are angry…At him? At your baby? You suddenly have the urge to shout, ‘just go to sleep!’
You immediately feel ashamed: a little voice in your head says, 'Isn't this what you always wanted?'
You start to weep again, but then you remember - you remember that you're supposed to feed him. Duh! With all the testing and trying to get him to sleep, you realise - to your surprise - that three hours has passed. Could that really be? You felt like it was only minutes ago that you last fed him. But he is in fact, overdue for another feeding. You contemplate this: all you really want to do is sleep, without a screaming baby next to you. But then something in your mind says that maybe this will lead to sleep: a feed, a nappy change, sleep - for both of you.
You lie back, trying to achieve a comfortable position in the firm hospital bed with its sad flat and almost non-existent pillow. You're gripping your son at the same time, attempting to support his head in the crook of your left arm while pressing your right hand into the bed so that you can scooch yourself up a little. You are not yet adept at this - making yourself comfortable and doing things with your hands full - but you will learn quickly. You will also become highly skilled in the art of eating while nursing. The first time you accidentally drop a dollop of yoghurt on your baby's head, you will be shocked and upset by your clumsiness, but you will eventually learn to get over it. After all, you need to eat too in order to nourish your baby, and there just isn't a whole lot of time between feeds, nappy changes, and toilet breaks.
He feeds surprisingly well and eventually falls asleep, mouth still gaping open. You gently manoeuvre yourself in order to gently place him in his cot. He readjusts himself slightly but he continues sleeping as you lift your hands from his tiny bundled body. You lie down gently and observe him in the dim light. It is close to 5 am and the summer morning light is already beginning to filter through the curtains.
You try to sleep but your mind is racing; it feels so full that you feel like your head might explode. This is one of the surprising ironies of motherhood that you didn’t see coming: as soon as you get the opportunity to sleep, sleep will suddenly elude you.
Your tummy grumbles - that is the word you'll use for stomach for the foreseeable future - so you sit up and rip open one of the muesli bars you have lying on the bedside table. As you chew you think: 'So this is parenthood?' You're not sure exactly what to make of everything you've experienced and felt in these last almost thirty hours. It feels different to what you expected, harder and messier in a way that you know you could never have prepared for.
There will be many many more nights like this afterwards. And they won't just be limited to the first few months. This boy seems to only want mama - in the early days he'll refuse a bottle, so he can only be fed by you - and that's all he wants; to be fed. In the later days, when he can talk, he'll use that voice to demand exactly what he wants: 'Mummy do it!' He'll cry when Matt tries to get involved. You will feel that weight of responsibility, that you felt all through pregnancy, for a long time yet.
But, you will learn to enjoy this responsibility.
Not completely, no, I think that would be too much to ask.
But you will start to see it differently.
You will learn that it is nice to feel needed and wanted and irreplaceable - these are some other feelings that come along with responsibility. This feeling of being needed will give you confidence in your mothering skills. It will make you feel so grateful for the opportunity to be a mother, to be that one person that can make everything right to someone else, to your child.
You didn't know if you could be that person at first - you always wanted to be someone’s everything, but you didn't know if you had it in you.
But you do.
Call for submissions!
Would you like to have your own motherhood story published on Life Inspiration File? It could take any form: new mother letter, poetry, advice article, or anything else you can think of. Contact me here and let’s chat!
If you enjoyed this, you might also be interested in:
Career pivot in-progress: From lab bench to writer - my SciMom journey
On muses and writing - How my son reunited me with my creative self
For all things pregnancy and early motherhood (in a logical order and in the one place), then head to Motherhood Together
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