I get frustrated when my son cries at night, even though I know it’s all part of his development. He’s most likely teething and in pain, but the sound of his cry triggers more anxiety than it does nurturing. That’s hard for me. My husband will say, “we have to remember that he’s a baby and that’s how he communicates.” Of course I know that. But that doesn’t change the fact that my head starts throbbing and my emotions become overwhelmed when it happens.
I say, “I didn’t sign up for this.” I signed up to be a mom to a baby, and I know what it takes to care for a child. But I didn’t sign up to be a mom with postpartum depression trying to heal from her own trauma and ptsd all at once. I didn’t sign up to be the mom that needed to time nursing and pumping sessions with medications to make sure I got the least amount of medications in it. I didn’t sign up to be the mom who needed her husband to lock up her medications because she wanted to take all of them at once when things became too much to handle.
I wish I could be like every mom I know right now, happily watering plants and rocking the whole “working mom” thing and making fucking bento box lunches for everyone in the family. But I’m gonna settle for the “trying to keep it together while faking like we’re doing okay” kind of mom right now, and that’s just gonna have to be good enough.