A dear friend sent me this video recently, and it made me bawl.
I didn't even know I had all those tears inside of me or all those feelings, either.
All those nameless, ugly-feeling beasts.
Which I guess really aren't all that ugly, but instead, they're just real.
And when you're trying to exist in this cookie-cutter realm of motherhood where everything glows softly and birds chirp in the background like you're supposed to, these feelings don't exactly comply.
The disconnect between how you think motherhood should be and what it's actually like is the root of all shame.
Nobody told me how much I'd miss my toddler.
How for the next 12 hours after giving birth, she was all I could think about.
Her warm breath, her chubby hands, her familiar hugs.
Not the beautiful, perfect baby right next to me.
Oh how I loved her so too, that wildfire kind of love you know, but at the same time, my grief about losing how things were with my oldest baby was all-encompassing.
And after a really awful night at the birth centre, where I cried endless buckets and dripped with more sweat than I ever knew possible, I came home.
To my toddler.
To my husband.
To the people I needed the most while I learned how to be so overwhelmingly needed all over again by our new human.
I haven't written about my second birth on here or actually talked about it all that much, because I carry a lot of shame around it.
The fear I had going into it has now manifested into heavy stones, rolling around in the pit of my stomach.
Sinking me when I thought I'd be elated once again, this time around.
And I need to work through that. Maybe one day when no one is crying for me and the to-do list is clear and I've gotten enough sleep.
Maybe then.
Postpartum just keeps going on and on. Beyond the first six weeks or three months or whatever.
It's a big mess of harrowing impatience towards your toddler, resentment about your own unmet needs, stuff everywhere all over your house, and pain, so much pain.
It's also sniffing your newborn's hands one bajillion times, seeing your two babies giggling and forming a bond, cuddling, so much cuddling, and feeling more in love than you ever knew possible.
It's also loneliness, isolation, desperation, and guilt.
(Don’t get me started on the guilt.)
It's sometimes being a parent that you don't want to be because you literally just can't do it all anymore.
It's then doing it over and over again, every single day.
It's spending every day and every night in a cycle of feeding, changing, washing, cleaning, and mopping up tears.
It’s relentless. Both the beautiful and the ugly.
I love my children endlessly, with every fiber of my being.
And I can't wait for my house to stay clean, one day.
I could watch my toddler hugging my baby over and over again, 24/7.
And I can still feel the stitches, the early pain of breastfeeding, and the initial sheer chaos of having two very small people dependent on me, like it was yesterday.
Because it was, really.
I guess what I'm just trying to say is that the postpartum period is so many things.
It's highs and lows like you've never known them before.
You are broken down and rebuilt in every possible way.
And then you get up each morning, shiny new pieces and crumbling cement taped together haphazardly, and you keep on doing it.
You keep on loving.
And it's both the best and the hardest thing.
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