Postpartum - Missing the Old Us

After the brief new-mother interlude of feeling like a star, you realise through the labour of childbirth that you have been teleported into full adulthood. But, somehow, your partner’s transformation is going to be more gradual — and on some unexplainable level, you resent him for that.

You didn’t marry your husband for him to be the breadwinner and head of the household. You married him because he was your best friend, and you wanted to spend the rest of your life with your best friend. But somehow now, as he subconsciously applies the new aftershave scent ‘Master’, your relationship seems irreconcilably feudal.

So where has that friendship vanished? It’s as if it has completely evaporated. He seems to have become some defensive and evasive saboteur. You have lost so much, but it feels appalling to allow yourself to grieve for your old life, so you’re left aching with a grief that you’ve not yet come to terms with.

You’ve lost the confident, vibrant, competent, self-reliant, multi-dimensional, independent you.

You’ve lost the slim (well, slimmer!) body you felt good being inside of, the body you may have sweated hours and hours to achieve, and in under one year it has become the worst body you’ve ever had in your entire life. You know that has impacted on your sexual identity, and you’re utterly fed up with hearing how pelvic-floor exercises are such a damn cure-all.

You’ve lost your financial worth and status in the hierarchy of ‘success’ — and now you miss all those old ego-reinforcing corporate experiences that you hadn’t thought you necessitated.

You’ve lost all privacy and personal freedom, and time to just do what you want to do at that moment, be it breakfast in bed, a soak in a bath, a flick through the newspaper with a perfect coffee, trying on a skirt in a shop, having a long chat on the phone, popping quickly into the dairy, or watching your favourite TV programme without fear of interruption. In fact, you have lost almost all control over every second of your life and you’re never alone, yet you used to have full control over your entire day. You’ve lost the right to eat a leisurely dinner, stay up late, to come and go as you please, to daydream, or even to have a flippin’ weekend off work. 

You’ve lost all rights to please yourself, forever. You thought motherhood would be fun, interlaced with precious moments of tranquil peace — but you sure ain’t having that much fun, and there’s almost no peace. So you often find yourself envying your partner’s free and independent lifestyle — resenting his game of golf or touch rugby or squash on a Wednesday night, or his work’s Friday afternoon Happy Hour drinks that he continues to enjoy.

You’ve become aware, too, that you’ve somehow lost your position of being a little girl; you’ve moved up a generation. You’re forever a woman now — and a boring one at that. You’re even feeling shame at your resentment towards your tiny screamer, for taking your time away from enjoying the company of your partner, alone.

You’ve lost your inner sense of control. Your raw emotions are undiluted, and you can’t push the stop button on your mind’s video of the haunting birth. Frankly, you feel as if you have lost your whole identity in one massive, annihilating explosion. It’s been blown into a million insignificant

fragments. You had your identity right up until arriving at the delivery suite — you were that appealingly pregnant lady with that nice hairstyle and those fashionable clothes doing that interesting career. And now too, probably worst of all, you may feel as if you have lost your

best friend. He finds refuge in his work then he comes home, gives you a peck on the cheek, lavishes attention on your baby (which you so love to see) but gives you, the person, almost no attention, or at least never the right attention. He rarely seems to think to do anything more around the house than that which you’ve asked him to do, and he hardly ever caringly asks how he can be of help to you. In fact, he never seems to ask enough about how you’re coping. You know he doesn’t really want to talk deeply with you to hear about how depressed you feel — and you feel too pitiful to tell him even if he did ask.

You miss the two of you being together in your old coupleness. You know that he’s taken on the head of the household role, maybe he thinks his job now is to just bring home the cash, and take out the trash — because clearly it is your job to be the childcarer — you’re so much more ‘natural’ at it than him, of course (not).

You know, too, in your heart, that professionally your goals, dreams and aspirations will always be of lesser importance now. All that university education and dedicated overtime without pay — was it all for nothing?

You’re so bloody lonely and alienated, you feel such anger and despair, you feel dowdy on the outside and heinous on the inside. 

You’ve lost the old you, and you detest the new you.

Everyone tells you how in love you will become with your own children, and you are utterly committed to your baby: you know now you would die for your child. But you’re lost inside some cavernous emotional darkness. Deep inside, you are withering from a slow, painful, aching agony.

My dear sweet friend, you’re not alone.

What can you do about it? Nothing . . . And everything . . .

And the first thing to do is to come to terms with accepting the predicament.

You have lost the old you, and you are now feeling paralysed by the new you. And, only you can work through and get past your sense of personal loss. 

How do you do that? One day at a time, one step at a time.