Category Archives for postpartum

pale birthday

pale birthday

i have a cold and feel like i should be spending the whole day in bed napping. but my life is not as important as yours anymore and i can’t even grab a kleenex to wipe my dripping nose as i try to breastfeed in bed, nor can i get up to catch wanda’s prolific hairballs. leanne got up to sleep upstairs last night because she couldn’t sleep for lucy and for me coughing. i am in fear that you will catch a cold and not be able to breathe. can’t take a weekend away to sonoma or do things i used to do but what are those?

you are crying in the playgym and i have to try to find a way to divert but i am too exhausted to carry, hold you.

and i hadn’t even realized it is your month birthday – one month old, today.

crying and feeding, crying and feeding. sleep.

so tired

you are crying after having fed for two or three hours and then fussed.
you were on my chest now leanne is feeding you your second bottle in two hours and i had three breasts in about two hours.

i sing toora loora loora but not loud enough over your cries; i remember my grandpa’s deep breath singing the same but at least it could calm me or so i remember.

unfit

unfit

doing the laundry while lucy sleeps upstairs unattended, i start to strike bargains in my head before i forget that i cannot do so. let me swap the job of mother for the laundry! but i am the only person in the world who can fulfill the role of biological mother for lucy. there is no turning in the job title. though i am lucky i have leanne who is also a mother – most people only have one – and would be aghast to think that lucy would someday know that i had considered myself unworthy enough to turn in the job title.

i’m terrified that i feel this way that i’m somehow unfit or unwanting to be a good mother – terrified that it is true and that lucy will know. when i think she looks at me and cries or i can’t comfort her as well as others, and dr swan says ‘that’s because she feels safe with you’ – i buy the line to make me feel better but later feel silly because it was just a line she probably uses often.

i want lucy to grow up with more self-esteem and i see that in my mind’s eye, yet i also thought she’d be a calm baby so i obviously don’t know. i want her to be confident in the world and am scared i won’t be around to see it.

lucy falls asleep only with formula.