This year has been too real to stop at “I love you to the moon and back,” so here’s a postpartum depression love letter in photos to my feisty, old-soul daughter on her first birthday.
Her birthday is a celebration that we’ve done it, we’ve made it, we’re here. Soon the toughest times won’t sting like they do now, and the beautiful photos I’ve taken over the year will remain bright and tender.
These photos, here, I’ll keep just for me.
Baby Woww’s rating on the Cute-ometer is rapidly plummeting.
Usually I think he’s cute about 90% of the time. K-Pants thinks he’s cute about 7% of the time. The rest of the time he thinks Baby Woww is annoying, distracting, or here.
But—and I remember this from K-Pants’s infanthood—there are a few dark moments when the baby goes from he’s-totally-adorable to why-won’t-he-just-go-away. I mean just for an hour, so I can take a nap. Please God, let me take a nap.
These are the moments that make me understand where the terms cry it out and self-soothing came from…
A normally sane mom decides she absolutely must have a shower. The baby won’t have it. No shower! Pick me up! Now! Do it now! Do it! And the mom feels her grease-hardened hair and jumps in the shower anyway.
The baby is furious. Fine! I will cry so hard my body will shake and my lip will quiver and I will turn red.
This is where my husband would say, “Just let him cry if you’re having a frustrating moment.” And I agree with my husband—I can’t pick the baby up every single time he needs it. Occasionally I have to get something done. But ignoring the crying is like leaving a piece of glass in your eye.
Still, I am a firm believer in showers and parental sanity. I mean, if you pick up that baby all day long and totally neglect your own care, you’re going to do something crazy. In fact, it makes me wonder how there aren’t more new mothers doing psycho s*&t out there. I guess enough of us jump in the shower.
Posted in Mommyhood, Parenting
Tagged baby crying, mom burn-out, new baby, newborn, shower, Sleep deprivation
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