Failure to thrive.
By Megan Thompson · 11 months postpartum
Failure to thrive. You hear this terminology used when a new baby isn’t growing at the average rate – “to indicate insufficient weight gain or inappropriate weight loss”. I feel like this terminology is better suited to me, a new mother.
My son is born one rainy October Friday in an unmedicated and uncomplicated labor. I feel a simultaneous strength and calm as I give the final push in a lunge position, bringing him into our world. My husband is there to catch him, and it’s like everything unfolds in slow motion. I see his face and I know him so well – the one who has kicked and somersaulted and hiccuped inside me. He is real.
The first days after he is born are filled with the inability to sleep, trying to process the intense and amazing experience of birth, adjusting to the new restrictions of my postpartum body, and becoming acquainted with a whole new being who has lived inside that body for the last nine months. One being has become two and a part of me is now living outside of myself.
What is left within? The weight I shed in labor doesn’t feel like a weight off, a relief – it feels like an empty pit.
Failure to thrive.
“Just know that around day three, when your milk comes in, can be a particularly emotional day,” my midwife says. “It hits everyone a little differently, but it can be helpful to know it’s coming.”
It hits me like a wave, tossed against the reef and tumbling into the darkness, clawing toward the light and gulping for air. It’s the most intense bout of anxiety I have ever experienced.
“What’s wrong?” my husband asks after finding me crumpled on the bathroom floor in a ball of tears and hormones for the fifth time in as many days. I peer up at him through my blinding emotions, unable to speak. It seems that when my heart cracked open to let in a flood of love for our little guy, it also released a great deal of unprocessed fear and anxiety I had been holding onto. Now it was swirling within me, making itself comfortable in my emptiness.
My midwife suggested I remain upstairs in our house for a couple weeks to give my body an opportunity to heal – no venturing downstairs. And it’s as though my being were also trapped upstairs, in my mind, in the doing, in the controlling, unable to retreat to the comfort of my heart, to just allowing, to just being. When was the last time I had lived from my heart?
As the days go on, I realize I try to process my fear and anxiety one of two ways – I ride the spiral of it down into the emptiness, or I distract myself with whatever I can get my hands on to try to fill the void. Netflix (this seems like a good time to rewatch Parenthood – didn’t I just become a parent?), internet searches (is it too early to start sleep training?), social media (what’s the rest of the world up to?). I try filling the void with people and expectations, too. Unfortunately, none of my coping mechanisms are working for me anymore. I can’t seem to regain control.
“Did you just have a baby? Wow – you look fantastic. I did not lose weight like that with my kids,” a stranger comments to me at the grocery store. “Breastfeeding and anxiety,” I respond with a forced smile. I’ve caught her off-guard, but she looks at me with a bit of pity and concern. Isn’t that what I’d wanted – to feel my victimhood is justified?
It’s true, I’ve lost a lot of weight, and fast. Too much weight – my pre-pregnancy clothes are loose. I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment, I hadn’t wanted to lose that much weight. I had liked my pregnancy weight – it had made me feel full and happy. This new body just made me feel more empty.
Failure to thrive.
I tell myself I just need to make it through this day, this week, this month.
The months stretch on. Questions bombard my every waking moment. Who am I? Why is this so hard? What’s wrong with me? How do I fix it? They whisper to me at those otherwise peaceful moments in the middle of the night when I can hear soft dog snores near the foot of the bed and breathy baby sighs near my chest. Hadn’t I read they were peaceful, those late night feedings when all else is quiet?
You know that saying, “No matter where you go, there you are?” Well that sums things up pretty well. I want to run far, far away, but the thing I really want to get away from is myself. Have I ever really liked myself? Now that the career, body positivity, make-up and hair, clothing and, most importantly, the control, has been stripped away, I realize, it’s doubtful that I ever truly have.
So I do the only thing I know to do – I do allllll the things. I read the books, I see the therapist, I make appointments with my doctor, I seek out a hypnotherapist, I meditate, I meet up with other moms, I make smoothies, I get massages, I YouTube mommy and me workouts, I make meal plans, I do my hair. Do, do, do. Control, control, control.
I get more frustrated – it’s been 6 months. Isn’t it supposed to be getting easier? Aren’t all these changes I’m implementing supposed to help?
From the outside, I have it all – all the things I’m supposed to be happy with. A wonderful husband, a beautiful baby, a cuddly dog, a loving and supportive extended family – even the house with the white picket fence in a gorgeous neighborhood. But all I can see is how far I still have to go to be the person I want to be, the mom I want to be.
And the questions continue, rushing through the cracks within, making them painfully obvious. What’s wrong with me? How did I get so broken? Why can’t I just be happy?
I watch my grasping at control affect those around me – my son increasingly showing me his independence, my husband pushing me away. This only makes the self-loathing more palpable, more deserved. Of course they would push back. I don’t even want to be around me!
I struggle to remember that I matter and am important, just as important as my little guy and all the things that need to be done for him. When I finally do have “me” time, it’s almost like I don’t know what to do with it. How does one start to rediscover, or perhaps truly discover for the first time, who they really are?
Late one night as I am lying in bed and quieting my mind, I feel a warm sensation in my stomach that just says, “write.” It doesn’t say what to write, or even that it has to be good, it just keeps saying, “write.” I fall asleep enveloped in warmth.
“Where are you going?” I ask. “Anywhere but here,” my husband says as he brushes past me with our son. I have just had one of my dark moments. One where my emotions welled up and streamed from my eyeballs, then exploded from my mouth.
I again find myself at the crossroads of self-pity and self-love and I get into the car, not knowing where I’m going, but knowing I need to change the cycle. I need to stop choosing self-pity and self-loathing.
I find myself near the water, overlooking the Puget Sound. Storm clouds are blowing across the sky and I can’t help but feel like they are a reflection of the turmoil within. I find a bench and sit, knowing it’s time. I pull out my journal and start to write. I ask all the questions that have filled my head for the last year, and I actually get some answers.
In the days that follow, I use writing to start to reconnect with my deepest self. The one that feels calm and warm. The one unaffected by baby screams, thrown food, piles of laundry, and the never-ending list of to-do’s. The one who lovingly accepts when a temper is lost, a to-do list is forgotten, a nap schedule goes awry. The one who rises up and starts to fill that brokenness when I say to myself, “I love you and I am listening”, tears of release flowing down my cheeks. The one that just is – period.
The light continues to creep in when I begin to loosen my death grip on control.
When I start to practice yoga and meditation because it feels good in the moment, not because it will make everything better. When I sit down and have a heart to heart with my husband and get really vulnerable. When I look at the trees on walks with my son and dog – like, really look at them. When I turn my face up to the sunlight and get still. When I reflect on how far I’ve come over the past eleven months. When I forgive myself and offer grace.
I don’t know what that knowing and calming voice will say tonight or the next night, but I know I’m listening and continuing to travel back to my true self – someone I can truly say I love. She’s always there, I just have to reach for her. It’s the journey, right?
