Week 93
A few years after 9/11, I heard a program on NPR about how women who were breastfeeding new babies during and after the time of the terrorist attacks went through a delayed mourning process. That the combination of having a new baby and nursing released something in their brain that wouldn’t allow them to fully digest the horrors of that day.
They didn’t feel sad, overwhelmed or angry during that September, instead they were hit with those emotions months later. As a result they felt alone and confused. Everyone else had been processing for quite some time.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I don’t remember feeling extraordinarily sad or overwhelmed during Olive’s first four months. Yes, it was a hard adjustment and of course there were tears. It’s true that I distinctly remember being resentful of all the hours I spent in her glider. But, looking back the emotions all feel soft and rounded.
Olive cried. A lot. More than the average newborn. I realize that now. At the time, no one would say, yes, you have a difficult baby. When you ask a doctor if your baby is crying more than average or spitting up more than an infant that age should, they will tell you it is all relative.
I remember sitting in the office of Olive’s gastroenterologist and asking him shyly but desperately if all newborns cried this much. “Well, all babies are different. It’ll get better when she’s three months old.”
I felt foolish for asking and foolish for thinking my experience as a new mother was any harder than anyone else’s so I went home and sucked it up believing that I wasn’t handling things well. My child didn’t cry anymore than anyone else’s, I just didn’t handle it as well as everyone else.
But she did cry more. I’ve been around enough babies and am friends with enough moms to know that I belong in a special club. The club where you don’t really enjoy the newborn months because you’re sleep deprived and ache from holding your baby for hour and hours and hours. The club where you don’t get to lose the baby weight because who can think about food or eating well when you have a new baby who is angry and sad all the time. The club where it takes you just a bit longer to bond with your child because it feels like the she hates you.
My friends are having their second children. I’m excited for them, abstractly. I like holding their newborns. I love shopping for shower gifts. But something happens when their babies spit up, just a little. Or when they cry and won’t stop, even if only for a short time. When they talk about how their babies won’t sleep or have to be held all the time…
Some people can sit around and reminisce about their child’s newborn days. The way they sniffed their baby’s head or watched them sleep peacefully. They will talk about how their baby looked up at them sweetly while nursing or how they felted bonded to them right away.
Meanwhile, I feel like I should be quarantined from anyone who is extremely pregnant or newly postpartum. I find myself saying things that you shouldn’t say to a new mom. I find myself feeling itchy and desperate and achy all over again as I listen to them talk about the newborn days. I find myself walking away from my friends thinking what the hell is wrong with me, why can’t I just be happy for them?!
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about why I’m like this. And I try to put myself back in those early days and it feels so incongruous to the present or even to my memories of that time. I think that part of me refused to process my feelings when Olive was a newborn and now she’s so wonderful, so far beyond any expectations I could have ever had of her that it seems impossible that those months could have been so hard.
So it seems ironic that it took us until Olive was almost two to stop giving her a nighttime bottle. She, I believe, has been done with it for quite some time, but it was harder for us. We liked that she curled up with us in the glider and read book after book while she downed her milk. We liked the cuddles, the smell of her washed hair.
We liked reclaiming some of the sweet moments of babyhood that we didn’t enjoy when she was, in fact, still a baby.
Week 93
A few years after 9/11, I heard a program on NPR about how women who were breastfeeding new babies during and after the time of the terrorist attacks went through a delayed mourning process. That the combination of having a new baby and nursing released something in their brain that wouldn’t allow them to fully digest the horrors of that day.
They didn’t feel sad, overwhelmed or angry during that September, instead they were hit with those emotions months later. As a result they felt alone and confused. Everyone else had been processing for quite some time.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I don’t remember feeling extraordinarily sad or overwhelmed during Olive’s first four months. Yes, it was a hard adjustment and of course there were tears. It’s true that I distinctly remember being resentful of all the hours I spent in her glider. But, looking back the emotions all feel soft and rounded.
Olive cried. A lot. More than the average newborn. I realize that now. At the time, no one would say, yes, you have a difficult baby. When you ask a doctor if your baby is crying more than average or spitting up more than an infant that age should, they will tell you it is all relative.
I remember sitting in the office of Olive’s gastroenterologist and asking him shyly but desperately if all newborns cried this much. “Well, all babies are different. It’ll get better when she’s three months old.”
I felt foolish for asking and foolish for thinking my experience as a new mother was any harder than anyone else’s so I went home and sucked it up believing that I wasn’t handling things well. My child didn’t cry anymore than anyone else’s, I just didn’t handle it as well as everyone else.
But she did cry more. I’ve been around enough babies and am friends with enough moms to know that I belong in a special club. The club where you don’t really enjoy the newborn months because you’re sleep deprived and ache from holding your baby for hour and hours and hours. The club where you don’t get to lose the baby weight because who can think about food or eating well when you have a new baby who is angry and sad all the time. The club where it takes you just a bit longer to bond with your child because it feels like the she hates you.
My friends are having their second children. I’m excited for them, abstractly. I like holding their newborns. I love shopping for shower gifts. But something happens when their babies spit up, just a little. Or when they cry and won’t stop, even if only for a short time. When they talk about how their babies won’t sleep or have to be held all the time…
Some people can sit around and reminisce about their child’s newborn days. The way they sniffed their baby’s head or watched them sleep peacefully. They will talk about how their baby looked up at them sweetly while nursing or how they felted bonded to them right away.
Meanwhile, I feel like I should be quarantined from anyone who is extremely pregnant or newly postpartum. I find myself saying things that you shouldn’t say to a new mom. I find myself feeling itchy and desperate and achy all over again as I listen to them talk about the newborn days. I find myself walking away from my friends thinking what the hell is wrong with me, why can’t I just be happy for them?!
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about why I’m like this. And I try to put myself back in those early days and it feels so incongruous to the present or even to my memories of that time. I think that part of me refused to process my feelings when Olive was a newborn and now she’s so wonderful, so far beyond any expectations I could have ever had of her that it seems impossible that those months could have been so hard.
So it seems ironic that it took us until Olive was almost two to stop giving her a nighttime bottle. She, I believe, has been done with it for quite some time, but it was harder for us. We liked that she curled up with us in the glider and read book after book while she downed her milk. We liked the cuddles, the smell of her washed hair.
We liked reclaiming some of the sweet moments of babyhood that we didn’t enjoy when she was, in fact, still a baby.