Things didn’t get any immediately easier for Dr. O’C after Baby Z was born. On this weeks episode, bringing home baby…

So, I am a parent – a mum.  I spend the first couple days at home wondering when I will be relieved of my babysitting duties.  But apart from that it is happy family.  Timmins, our Siberian Husky is behaving himself.  Z sleeps 4-5 hours at a time and I start to think that the next 4 months of maternity leave are going to be a piece of cake.  I am already planning my days of leisure.

Apart from the pain I am in, which the drugs are keeping under control, life is good.  Then the jaundice that has been causing Z to sleep so much wears off and the 2 hourly feeds 24/7 start and pretty rapidly sleep deprivation hits.  Now I know why it is such an effective form of torture.  I have always loved to sleep.  I love being in bed.  I get panicky if I know I am going to get less than 8 hours sleep.  Unfortunately it will be another 9 months before Z graces me with a full nights sleep.  That, my friends, is a very long time.

Apart from the sleep deprivation, which leaves me exhausted, I am in a lot of pain and can barely move. A simple shopping expedition to the local Mothercare makes me realize that my body is going to take more than a couple of days to recover.  Getting into and out of a car takes my breath away. I walk like I have just spent a year on a horse.  I wasn’t prepared for the pain.  I mean I knew that I wasn’t about to hop straight back on a bike after giving birth, but I never thought that a simple thing like getting your baby out of a cot would inflict pain.   The combination of constant pain and sleep deprivation make me realize that the whole motherhood thing isn’t that much fun. I feel no real attachment to Z.  I feed him, dress him, change his nappies, hold him, but he doesn’t feel like mine.  All I keep thinking is “What the hell have I done?  What was I thinking? I am not cut out for this motherhood thing.”  Now don’t get me wrong, I love kids.  I have two nephews, whom I adore. I just don’t know if I want to be a mum.  I haven’t felt this gushing ‘oh I love my baby soooo much’ rush of emotions that I think I should be feeling.Because I have chosen to breastfeed, the exhaustion is never relieved.  Z takes close to an hour to get back to sleep when I feed him in the middle of the night.  Chris offers to get up with him, but he has gone back to work and is teaching to earn extra money. Honestly I feel trapped in my situation and I know I am.  When Z wakes up 3-4 times a night for a feed, I find myself crying.  I remember one night crying so violently that I wake Chris up.  I just keep saying to him ‘I can’t do this’.  He tries to comfort me, but I think that he is disappointed in me.  What I am too afraid to vocalize is that I don’t want to do this.  I want my old life back.  What new mum thinks and says this stuff?

Looking back now, I don’t think it was as straight-forward as post-natal depression.  I wasn’t ready to be a mum.  I didn’t want to give up the life I had which was easy and uncomplicated.  Where I didn’t have to think of anyone but myself.  I also realize now (although it has always been glaringly obvious to most people around me) that I am a control freak.  I like to do things well.  I thought I was adaptable and easy going.  Z quickly taught me that I was not adaptable and although I have spent my life as a scientist performing new experiments, I actually would rather do experiments that I know will work, that I have done before.  A health visitor points out that some people like to learn through trying and others like to be shown what to do and then do it.  I disappointingly fell solidly into the last category.   Z doesn’t do the same thing day after day.  I think he is in a routine, only for it to the next day.  I feel a bit paralysed, unable to make plans for fear that Z won’t fit into them.  I am only capable of focusing on what is going wrong, of what I am doing wrong.  Z isn’t an easy baby.  He has a severe case of colic.  He cries for hours every night and some mornings.  Piercing, loud, hysterical crying.  The doctors and health visitors reassure me that nothing is wrong and that hours upon hours of crying can’t physically hurt him.  Mentally though, they take their toll on me.  Chris tries to relieve some of my exhaustion by feeding Z formula from a bottle.  A bottle he promptly rejects and continues to reject for months. We have no family in Oxford, no reprieve.  I become afraid to leave the house to meet up with people for fear that he will be a screaming nightmare.  It takes a while to work out, but when I eliminate dairy from my diet things start to improve.   

Chris, fearful that I am at serious risk of sliding into a depression, goes to great lengths to force me out of the house.  He emails my antenatal group on my behalf arranging meet ups.  He insists I visit him at work during the week.  He searches the internet for things for me to do.  I resisted initially.  I didn’t want to meet up with a bunch of people and just talk about sore tits, baby shit and vomiting.  I have a PhD dammit, I am a career women.  I have nothing else in common with them apart from having the same hippy lady tell us all about birthing.  In the end though, they were saviours.  Sure we talked about tits, shit and vomit, but so what, for the next couple of months (I thought at the time) that would be my life.  I slowly, very slowly, learn that Z is adaptable. 

I take him grocery shopping, and instead of him screaming his way around the supermarket he is fascinated until the rows and rows of tinned goods sent him to sleep.  We take him to our favorite Asian restaurant and he falls asleep in his pram staring out the window.  I think I had become afraid of Z.  Afraid of his tolerance for sitting in a pram, afraid to test him out, to see if he would actually be happy sitting and staring out a window.  I became afraid to let him whinge or cry.  When tested he passes with flying colours.      

What Dr. O’C is too humble to say is that she does as well.

———-

This week’s accompanying track is the Mates of State’s cover of Phantom Planet’s ”O.C.” theme. I first heard this on “This American Life” and found this version over at Agnes‘ site. I’ve no idea where she found it, but The Mates of State’s new record “Re-arrange Us” is available from Mates of State - Re-Arrange Us.

 
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