The Emoti Con

Written 14 February, 2014

When I was pregnant there was a lot that I was prepared to be overwhelmed by. I expected to be ridiculously tired, to a point that is comparable to torture tactics. I was prepared to find leaving the house impossible due to sheer amount of “stuff”. I was ready to give up my staunch independence and take help whenever I could get it, from whoever offered.
I was even somewhat prepared for the dreaded three day blues. It was a good thing I was, too. By day three the adrenaline had worn off, milk still hadn’t come in, Alice was fighting the billy blanket with all her strength and I was painfully overtired. So I cried. My family and the midwives smiled in that loving, infuriating way, Alice was taken to neonates and I slept for a glorious hour and a half. I woke, feeling like I’d just ridden in on a unicorn, and my silly naïve brain believed that the blues were over.

Wrong.
 
I have had Alice for four months, one week and three days and the single biggest thing I wasn’t prepared for was the emotions. I’ve not experienced it before and no body talked about it. The three day blues are made to sound like you feel like your world is falling out from under your feet, but by day five everything is back on track and, unless suffering from post natal stress or depression, everything is on the up and you quickly get back to our old self. I call this the emoti con.
 
I was not prepared to cry so much.  Period. Some times there’s a reason, often there’s not, and I can’t blame it on the three days blues four months down the track. With a three day old baby, people understand. But four months later, when you’re crying because you realise that you haven’t washed your favourite babywrap just as the machine has finished, it’s a little harder for others to be sympathetic. I have cried when my partner leaves, I’ve cried when he gets home. I’ve cried because Alice is crying. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried because I’ve burnt dinner. I cry because I’m crying and feel silly about it.
 
I was not expecting to feel such huge anxiety when I leave Alice with someone for the first time, either. I’ve had to leave her twice for longer that three hours, both times with her grandparents. But the anxiety I felt was so consuming, the sadness of having to leave her so huge, that the day before the event I was a zombie and I got no sleep that night (I cried then, too!). I described this feeling to my partner as handing him over to a terrorist group, blindfolded and handcuffed with a loaded gun, telling them he’s a spy and trusting them not to shoot. Ridiculous, irrational, completely overwhelming.

I guess the emotion that goes along with this is I was so ridiculously excited to get back to Alice that I felt physically ill.
 
And then there is the guilt. Every mother I’ve ever spoken to has this. It might be about the pregnancy, or birth, or about medical intervention. Mine is breastfeeding. And is rears it’s painful head whenever I’m struggling.
 
There are often times I think that there is something wrong with me. I apologise often for my emotions, especially to my partner. I often wonder if my anxiety is a window to something more. Surely, if it was normal, people would talk about these intense emotions that hit after the three day blues, at a time when support wanes and other people have moved on with their lives.
When I think that something is amiss, I have to remind myself that these intense emotions go both ways.
 
I wish I could tell you about the joy Alice brings me from just blinking her eyes, waving her arm, or looking at her toes with Aristotle wisdom. I probably don’t need to tell you, you probably know with your own little people.
And I have never, ever experienced such overwhelming love. Her dad comes close, but I think the love for Alice is intensified with a protective instinct I didn’t know I had.
 
I think people don’t talk about the irrational crying, anxiety and guilt after the usual blues because it pales in comparison to the joy and love that is incomparable to anything experienced before. Why talk about moments of sadness when the many more moments of unrestrained, overwhelming bliss are all the more powerful?
I’m fully aware that I now reinforce the emoti con when people ask how I am finding motherhood – “I love it, everything is awesome”. I could tell them about the crying, the anxiety, the guilt, but I don’t even give that a second thought. I tell them about the joy, the love, and the protective instinct. In the end I know it doesn’t matter – the emotions of a mother are not something to be prepared for, and not to be learned from someone else. The intense emotion I feel is all part of having my heart live outside of my body, something I couldn’t have even imagined before Alice was born.