We’ve had the incredible honour of getting to share Kim Crossman’s pregnancy journey here at Capsule through her column, Pretty Pregnant. Well, Kim is no longer Pretty Pregnant – exactly one month ago she welcomed her precious first baby: a darling little girl. And, one month ago, Kim – staying true to her Type A personality – handed in a story just a day after giving birth, sharing all the twists and turns of her birth (that went completely differently to the way she expected) and, sharing a first look at her gorgeous little girl: Coco Joan. If you haven’t read her first piece, head here to read it now! Two weeks later, she sent in another update of the incredibly wild ride that is postpartum (you can catch up on that here!)
Now, Kim has reached the one month mark, and while she has never felt more in love or happier, she’s also deep in the throes of postpartum… which can be one heck of a wild ride, to say the least. She feels so much gratitude, particularly after having such a difficult road to becoming a mother, but, she hopes that in sharing the lows of postpartum, it might just help others feel less alone and more able to give themselves grace.
Here, Kim shares what’s been going on for her, as always, telling her story so generously, in a very real, raw and vulnerable way.
Where is my mum mojo?
I have started and stopped this week’s blog what feels like 50 times because I haven’t quite had the words until today to start… and I am worried that I am coming across “too negative” when in reality I feel like I have never felt more in love or happier. Yet, I do have a bit of an undercurrent that feels at odds with that.
I am a smart girl and I have done a lot of therapy – enough to know that right now a lot of my thoughts can’t be trusted. I haven’t slept more than three or four hours at a time in a month, so I am aware that everything I am experiencing, good and or bad, is heightened. I have moments of energy and clarity and moments of feeling like I have come out of the spin cycle in the washing machine. So what’s really been going on these past few weeks?
Firstly, I have a one month old baby. How is that even possible? How is she more perfect every day? How do I feel like time has evaporated and also that I can’t really remember life before Coco with much clarity either.
Today marked one month of motherhood and the day the wheels fell off.
I am living two lives. The life I wanted to live in my head. The empowered mother, the one who feels like she is in tune with her intuition, who knows what her baby needs and when she needs it, and the one who does not have all of her shit together but enough of it to not feel overwhelmed all the time. And then the life that I am actually living, the reality. I have never felt more insecure, more lacking of intuition, and, as a type A overachiever, although logically I understand that part of the “welcome to motherhood” experience is the realisation that you will never nail anything, the surrender required is much harder to embrace when you have a strong relationship with validation and achievement.
The confusion of the duality is hard. I have had so many amazing moments, amazing days and amazing experiences where I feel like I am nailing it, yet my brain will not allow me to recognise them when I am having moments of doubt. I know that two things can be true at the same time. I can be a great mum and also have a bad few hours where I feel overwhelmed. But with exhaustion comes catastrophising, and something about the one month milestone and an inability to settle her last night – for what felt like an eternity – spun me and broke me.
I called on mum and my sister today to help. It is like I need a few hours to catch up: to clean, to sleep, to just get some of my ducks in a row so I can start again. Asking for help is not part of my verbiage at the best of times, and even less so when I am feeling like I am borderline breaking. But I know I am not the first mother to feel this way, and I guess I feel that in sharing I can somehow find more grace for myself and so can anyone reading this.
Mothering is easy and beautiful. Dealing with my own brain and expectations of self is where I am dropping the ball. A ball that seems so easy for onlookers to suggest I “don’t worry” about. But when you have high expectations of yourself, it is challenging to just cut ties with your former self and surrender. I just wish I felt more empowered. I felt so aligned when I was pregnant. I felt like a goddess. Now I feel like a squeezed toothpaste tube with not a lot left in me. I need to reset in every sense of the word. I will. I also know this is a day, a moment and a season. But this is honest to how I am feeling today and on this milestone.
I am so open to hearing anyone else’s experience or anything that helped them, within the boundaries of breastfeeding and sleep windows, to catch up or feel a bit more on top of it. My sister said someone once told her “crying is not dying” and that is something I might keep in my back pocket when Coco is choosing to stretch her vocal cords. It feels very “C’s get degrees” energy, which I do not usually subscribe to, but it rhymes so it might be helpful.
I have also been battling intrusive thoughts. My very clever and wonderful brain has the ability to create very visual, horrific situations or scenarios that are terrifying. Again, I can hear “welcome to motherhood”, but wow, I was not expecting my creativity to manifest in such a troubling way. I am big on positive thoughts, positive vibes and energy, and I feel like my own brain has chosen a far more fear based approach to motherhood. I would love to have more delightful premonitions. I feel like one of the characters from Charmed who could see horrible things that would happen in the future.
I am going to get some hypnotherapy, I think, and work to shift my mind from fear to love. I am sure a nap or two would help regulate me as well. If sleeping is not really an option, how else can one reset?
I do wonder if having experienced loss before means your early days of motherhood are clouded with disbelief and fear. A baby is something you wanted so badly, and perhaps part of you is trying to protect yourself by assuming it could all be taken away. Are we more fearful as parents if we know the pain of loss, or if our journeys have been coloured with trauma? And how do we graduate that? It is not nice or fun or particularly helpful, I would think.
And then there is Coco Joan. Let me tell you about my amazing daughter. Firstly, and I am sure like all mothers I think this, she is somehow endowed with magic and duty from other realms to bring joy and peace and delight to the planet. This is confirmed by the absolute joy people feel and the visible drop of their shoulders when they hold her. She is magic. I am sure of it. That is part of the reason I cry so much. I have been completely cracked open and exposed like never before. I totally understand the idea that my heart now lives entirely outside my body. I am sure all the mums here relate. She is awake more, she is so soft, she is like glue that has already brought together so many people and continues to create opportunities and experiences with strangers that I would not have had before. Magic.
I also want to acknowledge the whole it takes a village thing, because yes it one hundred percent does. I have the best and biggest village, and what I find fascinating is that even with that support my brain is still very capable of creating a false reality. I also want to caveat that I am writing this sleep deprived and largely unedited, because hormones are such an interesting thing.
I also thought it might be funny to share some of the things I have written in my Notes app over the past few weeks as a different way of offering a little insight into where my head has been at. Things like ‘can you swim with stitches’, ‘how do you wean off stool softeners’, ‘when can you use nappy balm’, ‘are you allowed to shower with a newborn’, ‘is it normal for babies eyes to go in different directions sometimes’, ‘how do you know if you have prolapse’, ‘can you bust open your internal stitches when you poop’, and ‘do babies twitch’. The list goes on.
Next week I will be sharing our nursery reveal too. Not to sound too much like a content creator, but so many of you were so helpful and generous in sharing your recommendations on all things baby related, what you needed and what you did or did not use, that I did want to highlight a few of the things we invested in as my own little list of recommendations. If you have any milk supply suggestions, please send them through. I will add them to the list if I find them helpful in the next blog.
As always, any help or tips or tricks or insight would be so appreciated. I would love to get my mojo back and feel like a superhero again. Or maybe I am a superhero, I just look different to how I thought I would. And alas, welcome to motherhood.
Much love
x
