To the exhausted mom…
Hi beautiful friends! How are you, really, today?
My husband and I joke (although it wasn't at all funny) that I was mad at him the entire first year of my son's life. It's true. I remember around New Year's, my resolution was to not be so ornery. In retrospect, I was mad at my husband because I was really struggling. I didn't feel like he could understand the toll of breastfeeding and bedsharing that my body was experiencing, or the toll on my heart and my mind about leaving my baby to go back to work and trying to pump and still getting my job done, on top of figuring out how to start solids and how to get enough breastfeeds in to keep up my supply and even what kind of shoes to buy my son when he started walking. It was all the little things in the mental load of my mind. I was resentful. I was jealous when my husband would lay on the couch and read. I had nap rage. I dreaded the long, wakeful nights while he slept. I felt so alone, even though he was there day in and day out.
I'm pretty sure I had postpartum anxiety. I’ve lived with anxiety my whole life, so I wasn’t really able to distinguish the difference between what life, let alone postpartum, without anxiety felt like. If you need a perinatal mental health practicioner, you can find one here if you need one. So, I just wanted to acknowledge the massive difficulty of inviting a child into your life, and the incredible toll it can seem to take on your mind and body. And if you are really trying to be a responsive parent, it can feel impossible at times.
I want to be honest that I'm not discounting the true effects of fragmented sleep. But I did want to share some strategies for coping that really helped me with a VERY wakeful baby.
Paying attention to thoughts
Following a night of poor sleep, it's likely to think “I'm going to be soooo exhausted tomorrow.” Who hasn't had this thought right? But it's actually quite unhelpful. This thought can turn the dial up on your anxiety and increase activation of your sympathetic nervous system (which is opposite of REST) . This can make it harder to fall back to sleep after you do wake up in the night. The belief that not enough sleep will wreck your day and your capacity to function, actually worsens the subjective feelings of tiredness throughout the following day (Possums 2016).
So maybe you could reframe those thoughts of “I'm so tired I can't cope” to “I'm going to move as slowly as possible today” or “My body needs extra care today." or even “I'm going to do only what is essential today.” One thing that helped me a lot when I was laying with my son in the night was the mantra “I'm not sleeping, but I'm resting.”
Using mindfulness as a way to TRUST your body
Sometimes we get so caught up in the “I'm so tired” narrative that it's the thought of being so tired that is actually causing us distress. So I remember thinking, I'm going to get rid of the clock in my room. I'm not going to look at it every time my baby wakes up. I'm going to judge my tiredness on how I feel.
I can't tell you quite how powerful this was. I started to just tune into my body more. It would definitely tell me on days that I needed more rest, but you know what, some days I was actually okay. I knew if it was a rough night without having the added stress of knowing how many times my baby woke up. If I took the knowing out of how many times I woke up in the night, and just focused on TRUSTING that my body would tell me what I needed the next day, maybe I would feel differently. And for me, I really did.
Choosing something particularly restful that you can do with your baby.
The truth is, we have to get scrappy about our rest because we can't always lay on the couch for an hour or go take a nap. Sometimes we have to think of rest as something grounding, something connecting. It doesn't always have to mean lack of activity. Going for walks about saved my life in the first year with my son. Yes, walking took energy, but there was something about the movement, the fresh air, the sunshine, that literally healed my soul somedays.
I also remember making an effort to just lay down with my son on the floor many times in the day. We would go outside and lay on a blanket under the trees too. I called it our mindfulness time. It was an absolute dream for him because all he needed was a ceiling fan to set his soul on fire or some leaves flapping in the breeze, and it was particularly relaxing for me to be with him in this simple way. I really looked forward to this time and it's one of my fondest memories of having a baby.
So that's all today friends. I hope this is helpful in some way, and I would love to hear how you're coping. I'll leave you with this beautiful quote:
To the perfectionist mom feeling like a failure today: you are more amazing than you think. It is not perfection that makes you lovable. It is not your ability to perform or keep up that determines your worth. And all the times you have yelled or panicked or prioritized appearance over relationship— they do not diminish the truth that you are also a wonderful mom. Imperfect and beautiful. If you could only see yourself through the eyes of these people who love and need you most, you would understand. They don't judge you for your flaws or need you to be perfect. They are ready to forgive and offer you the same grace you pour out for them when they fall. They see what you don't see: You are amazing.
-Krista O'Reilly Davi-Digui