Speaking to the momma’s out there…it’s time for small-group therapy right now.
I have a need to shed some light on a common issue and to normalize how I’m feeling right now.
Post-partum hormones.
If you know, you know. And just reading that probably made you exhale and think back to those first few weeks you brought your little nugget home from the hospital.
It doesn’t hit you that first day…or even the second…it comes swirling in around week two, when the newness has worn off. When the glamor of having a tiny new baby has lost its luster for family and friends. When the days and nights are confused. When the house is still messy and/or dirty, the laundry is still undone, your hair is on day 8, and the day’s outfit is still pajamas…from two nights ago. That’s when you snap to it and think, “I know what’s happening here.”
Not gonna lie…I started this post and then forgot it. Left it in the depths of my drafts. Like a lot of things, honestly. After having a baby, so many things go on the back burner. So many things.
You think it’d be hard to go back to that mental space. I mean, my baby is almost 5 years old now. You would think that I would’ve moved into a different stage, a new phase. You would think that I’ve probably left that really draining, life-changing, transformative place. It was a long time ago.
I haven’t. I haven’t left that mental and emotional space. I’m creeping out of it…slowly like a sloth.
Looking way back to when my first round of children were small, I don’t think I felt like myself until they turned four or five. I think I lived in a constant fog of schedules and diapers and training and appointments and caring for little people for so many years that I didn’t realize I wasn’t loosening that skin of newborn motherhood but fitting it to me. Tightly.
Now that I’ve had another kid, almost ten years later than my last…and now that he’s almost 5…I feel the same way. Why haven’t those post-partum hormones gone away? Or leveled out?
I look at my older kids and think–how did the time go by so fast? Where was I? What was I doing? I obviously wasn’t soaking up every single second of their little lives and stamping it onto my brain so I’d never forget. What happened?! They walked out of the room with chubby faces and little hands, and they came back in with stubble on their chin, actual cheekbones, and bass in their voice. I look at them–or up at that them–and I don’t even know what to say. How did I miss it?
I was so locked into the raising and training. I missed the change. I missed the shift. It seems like the flip of a card. One day, little; the next day, grown. I mean, they’ll be off to college or whatever in a year! Then they’ll be bringing home fiancés and babies!
Ok, reign it in. It’s fast but not that fast. But those hormones never level out. I don’t think so, anyway. I’m not a doctor or a nurse, nor do I have ANY background in biology (or any science, for that matter). I just don’t feel like they leave. It seems like you get pregnant, have the baby, and the universe bestows a crazy mix of hormones for your body to claim as its new normal. A new baseline. Good luck, the universe says!
That fog doesn’t lift. Those emotions don’t settle. The super emotions don’t tame. Nothing goes back to the way it was before. It’s just the baby, you, and these post-partum hormones. Your hormones grow as the baby grows…because why not?!
The baby gets bigger, the worries get bigger, the hormones get bigger. That makes sense, right?! Totally.
I’m only partly joking. Partly.
Part 1: Those hormones are no joke. I was medicated after my second baby. I probably should have been medicated after this last baby. Those hormones are no joke.
Part 2: They were my new normal. Even after taking medication for a year after my second baby, I still had to figure it out once I got off the medication. The hormones were still there, even though the medicine wasn’t. I had to figure out a balance in my own body and mind.
That fog hasn’t left yet. That unnecessary crying is still there. That worry that causes me to do Jerry Springer-type stuff still exists. AND, it’s gotten bigger as my kids have gotten bigger.
So, maybe we aren’t calling them the right thing. Maybe they aren’t post-partum hormones…maybe they’re mom-mones.
Mom-mones, the chemical messengers made by endocrine glands that travel through the bloodstream to signal organs and tissues to overreact to, overstress about, overemotionalize, and overthink anything connected to offspring. Husbands, friends, and coworkers are a casualty we can’t control.
You’re not alone. There are a lot of us. Grab your membership card. It’s a Moms Club.
A Happy HodgePodge 