Part two: A Crack in the Door Filled with Light
/This is part two of my postpartum journey. You can read part one here.
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I heard one time, “Books find you when you need them.” I have certainly had this experience. The one where you’ve had a book on your shelf for months but then finally pick it up to read it one day and find that it’s exactly what you needed to read—the exact words your heart needed to hear and you’re wondering why you didn’t read it sooner. More than the books finding me, I believe it’s God prompting my heart to pick up that text or God moving in the heart of a person to share a book or article or podcast with me because he knows it’s what I need in that moment. I’ve been part of this experience and the receiver of it too many times to deny that it’s true.
And it’s exactly what happened to bring some light to my postpartum darkness.
I ended last time by telling you how I didn’t feel very connected to my own son — how I didn’t feel the lovey feelings I wanted to toward my own child. I wanted to. I wanted to so, so badly. But instead I was bombarded constantly with thoughts that I shouldn’t be a mom because I didn’t know what I was doing and that somehow this tiny life had upended my own. And let me tell you what, that’s a horrible thought to have when your dream of having a baby has finally come true. How could this sweet little one make me feel that way? And then even having these kinds of thoughts made me feel guilty and ungrateful so I certainly couldn’t tell anyone about them, right?
When Nixon was a few months old, my friend shared an Instagram story with me because it was all about postpartum, so she thought the information might be helpful. She didn’t know it would be the catalyst for my walk out of sadness, but we never really know those kinds of things, do we? The Instagram story she shared was from Dr. Cassidy Freitas. She’s a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and in the story she talked briefly about postpartum “scary thoughts.“ Before watching the story I had no idea that scary thoughts were even a postpartum thing, but after she explained them, I definitely knew I was having them and her insights caused me to follow her on Instagram and tune in to the things she was posting.
In December, Dr. Cassidy shared her own birth stories, and this podcast helped me make sense of how I was feeling regarding Nixon’s birth. As you know, I didn’t want to have a c-section, but that’s how he was born last August. C-section was difficult for me because I didn’t get to see Nixon’s birth (because of the curtain) and I also didn’t get to hold him for about fifteen minutes after he was born. That might not seem like much, but for someone who planned to labor and have immediate skin-to-skin and keep him attached to his cord for a moment, etc., this was nowhere near what I wanted or what I had planned. His cord was immediately clamped and cut. They showed him to me for just a brief second before taking him to the warmer to clean him off and check him over. And then, with just an hour in recovery together, Nixon was taken to the nursery, where he stayed for the next three hours under a warmer while they tried to help him stabilize his temperature. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I later felt like all that missed time together was the culprit for my feelings of non-connection. And even though I knew in my head that God was part of it all and it worked out just as he planned, I still blamed the circumstances of his birth for my feelings.
In her podcast Dr. Cassidy explained the reason she felt disappointed in her own c-section birth story is because it interfered with her idea of what it meant to be a good mom. We all just want to be a good mom, right? Isn’t that our goal? So we have these ideas of what it means to be a good mom before our baby is even born. We take care of our bodies, try to eat right, get enough rest, all for the health of our growing baby because we are already trying to be a good mom. As far as birth, my idea of a good mom was going in to labor naturally, letting my body do the work it was made to do, getting an epidural when I was ready, having Aaron cut baby’s umbilical cord, among other things. We make these birth plans because we think, “This is what a good mom would do. This is what I think will make for a meaningful birth. This is the right, healthy thing for my baby when it is born.” Because we’ve read all the books and we’ve listened to podcasts and taken classes and formed all these opinions of what it means to be a good mom. So when all of that was taken away from me, when he was born via surgery and whisked away, was I still a good mom? When he wasn’t gaining weight and we couldn’t seem to kick the jaundice and we had to go to the doctor so much, was I a good mom? Or did I start out, moment one, with a F on my mom report card?
It took me months to realize this, but, no. For one, there’s no report card. And for two, bonding with your child doesn’t happen solely in those first few seconds after they leave your body. It happens constantly, quietly, and over time for the rest of their lives. And while his birth was wildly different from my plans, I was a good mom because I did what I had to do to keep him safe. I did what I had to do to make sure he was healthy. Certainly, everything went according to God’s plan and I tried to comfort myself with that knowledge, but Dr. Cassidy finally gave me the words for the things I was feeling. And it gave me a little more freedom. I finally let myself off the hook for everything going differently than I planned. It felt like maybe there was finally a crack in the door of my darkness filled with a little light.
Our first day at home without Aaron at just over a week old. Headed to the doctor’s office for the fourth time.
The thing I battled the most in the early days were my own thoughts. We think we can’t control our thoughts —they just come in our head and if I’m thinking it, it must be true because where else would it come from? In a follow-up to that original Instagram story my friend shared with me, Dr. Cassidy wrote a blog post on scary thoughts. She said,
“… we want to begin to develop a new relationship with our thoughts. Just because you have a thought, does not make it true or realistic. Getting hooked by our thoughts and spiraling isn’t productive and can pull us out of being present with what actually matters most to us. Begin to look at thoughts as data or information that your mind is trying to share with you.”
She goes on to show you how to do that and it made me realize what I value and what my thoughts were trying to tell me. In addition to that post, I recently read Jennie Allen’s, Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts, and, wow, was it so good for my heart. I recommend this book to everyone. Her words echoed so much of what I had read in the blog post but helped me see it through the lens of the gospel. Through her book I learned that we do have control over our thoughts. Jennie writes that when a thought enters your mind and starts to take you down a shame spiral or a toxic spiral, you can stop yourself and say, “I have a choice to continue down this path.” You don’t have the follow the spiral of your toxic thoughts.
So, when I would sit in Nixon’s room at night and start to think, “What if he dies?” I would say to myself, “I have a choice,” and let my heart and mind know that I get to choose what I dwell on. I don’t have to dwell on those horrible thoughts. I can instead dwell on what is good and right and true. I started to repeat phrases to myself like, “God is good and does good and wants good for me.” I reminded myself that He is for me. He is for Nixon. And instead of toxic thoughts, I can choose to be grateful. Gratitude interrupts anxiety. So instead of rehearsing my anxieties, I rehearsed all the things I was grateful for that day and it was like I could feel the unease drain through my feet and out of my tense body. Nixon and I could both relax.
(I want to take a moment and address something: I am not trying to say that you can think or pray yourself out of mental illness. There are chemical imbalances and things that cause much more serious anxiety and depression than what I am addressing here and for that, I fully advocate meeting with your doctor and deciding what is best for you. Medicine is a common grace and, as a friend reminded me after I posted part one, your feelings of anxiety and depression are not a lack of faith. THEY ARE NOT A LACK OF FAITH. I wish someone would have told me that years ago when I dealt with regular panic attacks, so I’m telling you. It is okay to seek help.)
Finally, a couple of days after that blog post from Dr. Cassidy, she released a podcast she recorded with Cara Dumaplin from Taking Cara Babies. I have followed Cara since before Nixon was born as I tried to prepare for his birth so I was excited to see what they both had to share. It was at the end of this podcast that what Cara shared made me cry as I stood at my kitchen counter. In talking about scary thoughts and gratitude and being careful of the words we use with ourselves, she said,
“I’m going to say something aloud that maybe parents are like… feel guilty for saying aloud. ‘My life changed since I had this baby. Maybe I’m not meant to be a mom.’ Wow, that’s authentic right there. That feeling. But let’s follow it up with truth. So, where’s truth? So, my life has changed. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mom. Okay, there’s an authentic thought. But here’s the truth. But I am a mom. And I was given this baby for a reason. And there’s no better mama on the planet for this baby than me. And say those words out loud. Here’s what I’m feeling and here’s truth and gratitude.”
And it was in that instant that the door was kicked open for me and light flooded in. I feel like it was such a precious gift from God that she addressed the EXACT thought that stole the most joy from me. I always wanted to be a mom, so why was I feeling like I shouldn’t be now? I’m crying again just remembering the moment. I AM a mom. I’m Nixon’s mom. And no one else can do it better than I can — no matter how dumb I feel some days. No matter how incompetent or embarrassed I am by what I don’t know. No matter how many thoughts try to intrude. I was chosen for him. I’m his mom and I can do this well because I have been given him as a gift. I knew this before he was born so I don’t know why/how I forgot it once he was born. But hearing her say that helped me feel free in a way I hadn’t felt since before Nixon was born. It was like the light flipped on and I could start to speak truth to the lies that had camped out in my heart for the last several months. Hearing that someone else might be thinking some of these things —that I wasn’t alone!—changed so much for me.
So truth started to fill my heart and allowed me to open the door and step out of the darkness. It wasn’t immediate. I don’t want to act like it was this lightbulb moment and I was “fixed” but it was through hearing truth, talking to my husband about my feelings (and finding we were feeling some similar things!), journaling it out and praying to God that helped me break the chains little by little. The other part was that Nixon got a little older so he was sleeping a little better, which meant I was getting more sleep. It’s scientific fact that sleep deprivation causes your brain to operate at an impaired level. So essentially new moms are just walking around impaired while caring for a newborn and acting like we’re just fine. Ha! We have to stop that. I certainly wasn’t fine. We have to sleep however we can get it —have someone come over and watch that baby so you can sleep. You don’t have to use their nap time to do the dishes or the laundry. Those things can wait. Rest is holy.
I loved Nixon from the moment I knew he was growing inside me at just four tiny, sweet weeks. But scary thoughts, postpartum anxiety and sleep deprivation after he was born caused my feelings to be as wild and untethered as loose kite in the wind. So loving him was love in action before it was ever a feeling. And isn’t that the way with love anyway? We talk about it in marriage –how it’s not always going to be a feeling. It’s not always going to feel the same as it did when you were first dating. It’s a choice to love. And when you act, when you make that choice, the feelings will follow. And, for me, they have. Gosh, I love this boy so much. He is growing and changing every day and getting so much more fun all the time. He is so sweet —loves to smile and laugh. He has the same buoyant spirit as his dad. He is so stinking precious. I know what it’s like to feel in love with him now in a way that I didn’t those first several months of his life.
My eight month old smiley boy.
So the book, the podcast, the blog — they all found me when I desperately needed them. And it was the words of others that helped free me. I knew I was capable of this deep connection I feel with Nixon now. I knew I just had to break through the heavy storm cloud I was facing and I would finally feel the love I had been showing him through action for the last several months. So I’m thankful for the help that came at just the right time. For the words of others that set me free. For the way God brought them to me. Don’t hesitate to share something that might speak to someone else’s heart. You never know if it’s just exactly what they need to hear!
And who knows, maybe it’s these words – my words – that are setting you free. In her book, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott wrote,
“Toni Morrison said, “The function of freedom is to free someone else,” and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else.”
So here I am trying to free you. I hope it helps you see some light.
