New year, baby

2015 was not the best year ever. Just after New Year, my Facebook feed was filled with people who I’ve met this year, new parents letting us all know that this has been the most challenging but rewarding year ever. The best year, evah. From my perspective, I’m just not sure that’s a fair thing to say.

I’ve never been that great with words (which, actually is a silly thing for a blogger to say). What I mean is, I’ve never been great at translating how I feel into what I say. Like, I don’t have the words to express how much I love E sometimes — like my heart is going to burst out of my chest, but not in a creepy messy way. I feel that way about sunsets and the Baby Papa (and, er, kittens), too. But I don’t know how you’re supposed to express those feelings, so I just say ‘love’.

This was particularly funny/frustrating in talking therapy, which is what E and I did for post-natal depression (really, I did the talking, she mostly just lay there and ate and pooped).

Question: how do you feel?

Answer: uh, yeah, fine.

We really covered a lot of ground there…

I have this recurring dream, where no matter what I do, no one responds to me. I am usually with people I care about, but something happens and no one reacts. I scream and rage and try to fight and nothing happens. It’s frustrating, lonely, infuriating, suffocating. It feels like most of my memories of childhood, and it haunts me. But it’s only a dream, and when I wake up it fades away.

Sometimes I find being a new mother feels like those dreams. Sometimes it feels like whatever is going on, I just need to shut up and get on with it. I feel small and stupid, necessary and simultaneously unimportant. I sometimes feel like I’m screaming in my head. Occasionally it boils over.

I sometimes feel like the shell of a person, only required for my uterus, my breasts, my cooking and cleaning and cuddles. I have to give all of these, while the things I’ve built up in my life are at a standstill, or worse, disappearing. My sport has halted, along with my only pressure valve. I have limited access to the environment and food scenes I was so involved in. The business I helped build looks to be dying off. And my brain is occupied with nothing but day-to-day baby logistics. Sometimes, the BP (that’s Baby Papa). And sometimes, blogging.

I’ve always hated the word ‘priority’. It’s overly simplistic and doesn’t take into account context. Like, I’m not un-prioritising things or people I love. But I have to make a decision at every turn: do I sleep or do sport? Beyond that, if I need sleep that badly, could I do myself an injury if I play sport, and what would that mean for tomorrow? Do I make plans to visit people? If I visit friends now, will I exhaust myself, will E freak out at new people? Will I even get to talk to them (and if not, what’s the point?)?

Even those are simplistic examples. The reality is so much more complex, like one of those crazy Mandelbrot Fractal images. It regularly feels like I’m deciding between three or four things, and whichever one I choose, the one that always gets put on the back burner is the thing I might have chosen pre-baby. That’s what re-prioritising looks like — un-choosing the things that you used to focus on. It’s bad that I’m letting it happen to myself. But you know what’s worse? People letting it happen to you. Not having people check in, not having people encourage you to return to something. It’s probably a mixture of giving you time and space and not wanting to invade privacy, plus maybe a dash of not noticing. But you know what it’s not? Motivating.

Maybe feeling like I can’t express myself well, feeling like I’m not particularly good with words (remember that bit, at the beginning?), that’s what really trips me up. I feel trapped, like in that dream (remember that, too?) and it’s hard to tell people. And if I did, I wouldn’t be able to find big or meaningful enough words for it, so it wouldn’t be taken seriously.

I want to look to the future, but I am rooted in right now. Things are changing around me and I feel disconnected. I’m not sure how to focus on here, and think about then.

Positively, E is increasingly fun to be around, even with sleep a little thin on the ground right now (not right now, obvs, or I wouldn’t be writing). She’s funny, gregarious, full of beans. But, of course, that takes time and energy, too.

So tell me, folks with kids. Balancing the present with the future — what’s your take?