Hello friends. It is my last week of maternity leave, and I’m feeling some sort of way about it. I say ‘some sort of way’ not only to date myself as a millennial, but also because I really can’t find the right words to describe what I’m feeling. The closest I’ve come is ‘a raging hurricane of anxiety, grief, anger, sadness, and relief.’
I’ve been coping primarily by taking large blocks of cheese out of the fridge and cutting a few slices, pretending that that is all I’ll eat, and then finishing the whole block. Which is to say, not well. I’ve felt waves of anxiety well up inside me and lift me off my feet, and I keep blaming the hormones (and maybe they are partly to blame), but I know it’s really because I’m about to go through another transition, and my subconscious is dragging its feet. And I think a big part of this is circumstantial (i.e. maternity leave, even a ‘generous’ 4.5 month leave in my case, is way too short). But another part is my ingrained resistance to change. In the span of a few months I’ve gone from pregnant person to new mom, to full time stay-at-home caregiver and now to working mom. These are big changes, and I shouldn’t discount them. I know this, and I still feel that familiar anxiety rising up in my chest.
So, in service of myself and anyone else that relates, here is a list in no particular order of some notes I’ve made to myself over the years, starting back from when I was just starting to TTC. It’s a collection of little bits of wisdom from therapy, friends, podcasts, books, and life experience to help me get through times like this.
Transitions are notorious for bringing up anxiety, and becoming a mother is a HUGE transition. Expect to feel anxious sometimes. You can’t be surprised by anxiety if you’re expecting it. And when you are expecting it, you can be more welcoming of it, like a house guest, and can remember that its stay is temporary.
When you feel anxious, you don’t need to resolve it right then by figuring out the cause and solution. Usually that makes me feel worse, because my anxiety is caused by unknowns and hypothetical situations to which there is no solution. What helps is to put a pin in it and check in with my body. I start with a deep breath and feel where I’m clenching my muscles. Usually it's my jaw, shoulders and stomach. I try to relax those muscles and do some variation of mindful breathing. Sometimes I use an app, like Calm, to pace my breathing or listen to a quick meditation. If I’m out somewhere in public, I just focus on the breath and, when I’m ready, take a quick look around to notice things outside of myself. The temperature. The breeze on my skin. Something pleasant to look at, like a tree or the way the light comes in through the window. And I try to find a body part that feels neutral, like my earlobe or the tip of my nose. This helps disrupt the anxious feeling a bit, and reminds me that just because I’m feeling anxious does not mean that I’m in danger.
The brain likes to make meaning of everything: clouds in the sky, cracks in the sidewalk, coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup. It will do the same thing for emotions, including anxiety. Emotions are just like the weather—random and out of our control. They can be influenced by anything from what we ate that day to a traumatic experience that happened years ago. They do not necessarily mean something is wrong or danger is imminent. Sometimes it is okay to say, ‘Today is just a rainy day” and leave it at that.
If anxiety is the stray cat scratching at the door in the middle of the night, shame is the lady who puts out heaping bowls of cat food, builds a little heated shelter, and invites all her flea ridden friends inside the house. Shame feeds anxiety, and it thinks it's doing a good thing, but it just makes the problem worse. I have found that I can’t control the feeling of anxiety, but I can control whether I feel shame. I don’t need to punish myself for what I feel. I don’t need to be embarrassed over what is such a normal part of being human. And I don’t need to believe the things anxiety tells me about my future: that it is dark, unpleasant, and full of suffering. That I won’t be able to handle it. That I ought to just give up now. My anxiety is not a fortune teller, a scientist, or a sage. I have no reason to believe anything it tells me.
You are not what you think. We think, on average, 6,000 thoughts per day. That’s a lot of content buzzing through the old noggin, and most of it is probably garbage. That includes intrusive thoughts, which, according to WebMD, are unwanted, uncomfortable thoughts or images that pop into your head. I’ve struggled with what I now recognize as intrusive thoughts for most of my life. This became a real challenge for me in early motherhood (and if I’m honest, even during pregnancy). Images of my baby getting hurt or, even worse, me hurting my baby would pop into my head, and they really disturbed me. I thought I was some kind of horrible monster for even thinking these things, but it turns out it's pretty common, especially for new mothers. Something that’s helped me cope is to imagine that these thoughts come from the ‘Emergency Preparedness’ office in my brain, which is really just a single stressed and overworked woman sitting at her desk in her windowless office running statistics on the probability of something bad happening at any given moment. She blasts out her results to the office before double checking anything, in the name of efficiency, and her outlook is largely pessimistic. When I get these ‘blasts’ I try to imagine this poor little office worker, dark circles under her eyes, hunched over her stack of files, on her seventh cup of coffee. I feel compassion for her. I then thank her for all her hard work and tell her that her services are not needed right now, and she can have the day off. Is it a little crazy? Perhaps. Does it work? Yeah, it really helps most of the time.
Sometimes anxiety is a symptom of unmet needs. And it is important to remember that it is okay to need things. To need support from family and friends. To need time to yourself. To need companionship. To need comfort, in whatever form that takes (food, music, TV, reading, etc.). You are not a burden because you have needs. You’re just a human being.
Tend to yourself as you would tend to your child. Be soft. Be gentle. Be loving. Be forgiving. Be kind.
This is such a beautiful take on postpartum mindfulness. Particularly after infertility and loss. I hope many other readers moving through matrescence will benefit.