The Grief of Becoming Mom
The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
If you check out the page gottoddlered on Insta, you’ll visually see moms (before and after) who have gotten the shit kicked out of them as new parents. I can relate. You see, I too used to be a fit, perky, and less bitter version of myself. But, alas, I am now just a shell of the woman I once was.
Some seasoned circus-master moms will snicker to pregnant mamas, “You should sleep now.” Then laugh, and laugh, and laugh some more. I myself, prefer not to be a savage mom, therefore I choose to only question, under-my-breath to my husband (while wrangling our screaming banshees) if that mama can even begin to fathom how upside-down her life is about to get. I stare at her and her partner, holding hands at a table at brunch enjoying eggs in peace, while I try and determine how quickly I can shovel my food into my mouth when it comes so I can manage the kids. Gosh, when is it going to be here? These kids won’t last forever. Maybe I’ll just break out YouTube Kids on my phone. Oh no, she’s climbing out of the highchair. It comes from a longing, really, of simpler times when I could pee without an audience, and I didn’t have to cross my legs when I sneezed.
Once the baby comes, even the easiest things will take work (see example of sneezing). This, in turn, brings on destructive thoughts about how you must just be weaker than those other moms: How do they make it look so easy? Why are my nipples bleeding, but there’s a light shining from behind that mama’s bouncy (yet firm) breasts, while she nurses in a fairy garden with Bambi frolicking in the background?
You are NOT weak. You are a creator of life. You have spent months looking at social media moms with their 5 kids in matching outfits all smiling succinctly for their holiday card. But don’t be confused by this farce. When becoming a mama you will lose your lioness self, for a time being. You will wonder how a tiny baby can change everything you thought you knew about life, and priorities, and boundaries — and then before you know it, those things change again. Those pictures might look real, but they are an idolized version of the chaos that ensued in order to get that one photo. It is not realistic. You are real. And you are living the only truth that should matter.
A change happens on your first kid’s birth day. And when it does, you’re going to grieve. You will live in a thick fog of denial, fueled by unrelenting exhaustion. You’ll tell yourself it’ll be easier in a month. But you should know, it won’t. It’s just going to be a different kind of hard. It’s going to be sobbing on the bathroom floor, make-it-stop, hormonal, exhausted, I’m not cut out for this, kind of grief. It’s going to be a stomach-churning from anxiety, and waves of depression kind of grief, and there is only one thing that can be done.
Accept it as your new reality.
You’ll want to surrender to the process of reaching acceptance. If you resist, you’ll end up like me at eighteen months postpartum with my first kid: Sprawled out on the couch with the flu, probably from my daughter licking a slide at the playground, feeling helpless, alone, and miserable. Mind you, by then she was fully recovered and pretending my stomach was a drum. It was at that moment it dawned on me- this is my new normal. Did I give myself grace? Nah. I just wanted to scream at the top of my lungs at my toddler: I hate being a mom. If you were less needy I wouldn’t feel like this!
I thought I had already grieved the life I knew before motherhood, before becoming a mama. Nope. And then I thought I’d grieved that woman when I was one month postpartum and my boobs refused to work, so I was triple-feeding (i.e. breastfeeding with the near-nothing milk I was making, then bottle feeding, then pumping to boost my supply). I remember sitting on my bed looking down at the flanges attached to my breasts as I watched my heavy tears plunk down onto the tubing. But I guess I was only mourning my dream of exclusively breastfeeding, so every time I drove to pick up donor milk from mama’s in my community who made more than enough frozen gold, my heart hurt.
And then I thought I grieved again at four months postpartum, holding my diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder, easily over-stimulated, reflux-y baby, who would only drink milk while I bounced on an exercise ball like a mad-woman at all hours of the day and night. If I would have eaten less sugar in pregnancy she wouldn’t be like this. Maybe it’s all the weed I smoked in my teens, oh, and in my twenties too.
And then again when she was eleven months old and running like a baby cheetah down the driveway, while I fumbled with bags overflowing with groceries. And then again, after getting through back-to-back flu-like illnesses WHILE HAVING A CHILD: Dry-heaving into a trash can while on the pot, wishing my life would just end already: Crying two days in because I’m helpless to my 103-degree fever and my kid is ready to play.
I don’t know how to go forward from here. I just want to leave-not die- just not be here anymore, I remember thinking.
I’m talking blue, wool packing blankets piled high in the closet of your soul kinda grief: Your body is no longer yours to do with it what you please. Your boobs have tiger stripes and hang like deflated balloons. Your stomach is softer, and if you were heavy before pregnancy your apron belly folds. Your vagina feels wide and foreign.
Then there is the grief about enjoying your quiet morning coffee and poo routine. There is the grief of how easy it used to be to go to brunch. The grief of taking your time to create a meal from scratch, and savoring each and every bite. The grief of not being able to skip dinner because you’re not hungry; you have to feed another human three meals a day, plus three snacks, for the next 18 years.
The grief of meeting up with girlfriends just because you want to catch up.
The grief of date nights (and paying more for the sitter than the actual date).
The grief of being out as late as you want and not having to take care of a human at the crack of the sun.
The grief of being able to be hungover, because that shit just isn’t worth it when you’ve got a kid to take care of.
There is grieving your sex drive that comes with hormones being out-of-wack, plus being clung to all day by a handsy little baby.
You’ll grieve the loss of silence, having time to yourself, or the space to cry alone.
Then there is the grief of never feeling rested: A perpetual state of exhaustion.
From morning to night there is laundry, maybe I can throw a load in while she’s in the swing, and tummy time, the floors are so dirty let me vacuum first, and library storytime, I want to instill a love of books but gosh it’s rainy outside, and dishes to be done, I’m out of clean silverware, and cooking, will I be a bad mom if I just order lunch to be delivered? Or maybe I just won’t eat. And it goes on and on.
It’s a mourning process. You are no longer the person you once were.
Now work on accepting it so you can move forward.
Depression is dwelling on what used to be. I know mamas, you used to be a much different, selfish person (me too). But now, now you have someone to idolize you. A baby that devours everything you say and do. They are looking at your face and they know you are their safe person. You are new to being a mama, but you have been waiting for this for a long time. Now that it’s here, it needs to be embraced.
Let go of the expectations that things won’t be totally different. You are bringing a new human into this world, so why would your world not completely change with theirs- they can’t do it alone. You can learn together: How to love each other, how to trust, how to talk to each other without saying anything at all, how to be there for one another. How to give each other space (although that takes many years), how to celebrate together, how to give real hugs.
What a gift you’ve been given.
Where are you in the process of grieving the life you had before you became a mama? Whether you’re in denial, or angry, or bargaining, or depressed, you can find your way to acceptance. Figure out where you are, and commit to getting to the final stage. And give yourself grace while you’re doing it, but also when you’re there. Because there will be times you slip back into those stages, and you’ll have to accept once again. You have a life depending on it. Ask for help if you need it. You deserve it, and so does your sweet little, stinky baby.
I know moms in each stage of this process. I also know that mamas who become the happiest and most content moms are the ones that consistently show themselves benevolence and acquiesce to their lives — packing the blue blankets back into the closet and sorting the laundry. They are also the ones that don’t compare themselves to the moms on social media OR the moms at the park, for that matter.
They find gratitude in the present.
They find joy in the mundane.
They find humor in the chaos.
This is not meant to be insensitive to those who have lost a child, or those who yearn for a child. I cannot compare becoming a mama to those pains. Grief has many origins.
