“It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to support that child’s parent[s].”
Ann Douglas
Ann, you get me, girl.
Becoming a Mama for the first time was an easy transition for me. I changed a lot about our lifestyle to accommodate our new addition, which I think worked well for us as it lowered our expectations. I really accepted that life was going to look very different. Of course there were hard times, but I felt pretty prepared to navigate them.
Fast forward 2 years and it was a totally different story. As we got closer to welcoming our second daughter, I started to feel uneasy and experienced a lot of anxiety.
I did what I could to ease my anxiety, in hopes of having the seamless transition I heard most second time Mamas talk about – the idea that going from 1 to 2 children was much easier than going from 0 to 1 child. If that was the case, I would be just fine because going from 0 to 1 went really well for me.
So I got prepared. I researched. I cleared our schedules. We made frozen meals. I did all the things I needed to do before baby Julianna was born. All I had to do when she arrived was rest and enjoy time with my sweet family, snuggle my newborn and play with my toddler. How hard could that be?
Well, hard.
Even though I thought I had prepared myself for what life would be like with a newborn and a toddler, I realize now that there was so much I was missing in my preparation. I was so focused on trying to gain control by preparing all of these physical things (because let’s face it, being out of control feels so much worse for an anxious person) that I forgot to focus on what I would need. I forgot about what kind of emotional support I would need to navigate this huge adjustment.
Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of aspects of my preparation that totally paid off…like those frozen meals – wow!
But the reality is that I was living in an overwhelmed state day in and day out. I was feeling overwhelmed with the changes to my routine/schedule; overwhelmed by the guilt of not spending as much quality time with Brooklyn (my first born); overwhelmed by how much my newborn, Julianna, needed me; overwhelmed by having almost no one-on-one time with my partner, Kris; and overwhelmed with how much there was to do around the house. And this is just scratching the surface.
And of course my overwhelm invited anxiety to the party and so I ended up feeling anxious all the time.
My brain was filled with anxious thoughts and because I was sleep deprived, emotionally unstable and physically weak, it was like my anxiety was taking advantage and kicking me while I was down.
Here’s a little taste of what I was thinking on a daily basis:
- “Brooklyn and I will never be as close as we once were.”
- “Julianna isn’t getting enough of my authentic love because I’m just going through the motions to take care of her basic needs. There is not enough of me to spread around.”
- “Kris and I are growing apart, romantically.”
- “Does the laundry ever end? Seriously…does it?”
- “How can we make a meal and use the least amount of dishes possible so clean up is faster and I can go rest?”
- “How can I possibly take care of myself when I’m feeling depleted? Like what the heck is self care?!? I’m not going to enjoy a bath or hot shower right now because Julianna needs me – there’s no time to just be present so how the heck does self care work??”
- “I am not enjoying this…there I said it!”
As I did more thinking about what was going on and how I was feeling I started to understand that overwhelm, guilt, restlessness and shame were all fueling my anxiety and essentially disabling my ability to experience joy at this point in Mamahood.
So want to know what I did that helped the most?
We’ll get into this next time…stay tuned.
Take care for now,
Ashley
