Somehow, my baby is six months already.
Six months.
Six months of parenting two and I’m not sure what to say. I read other posts about such milestones. They focus on the ups and downs of the baby and child bonding, of the conflicts of loving two littles, and of the exhaustion of doing it all twice. I feel all that intensely too. Yet it’s what they don’t talk about that throws me the most. The EVERYTHING else. I realise now I’d sort of expected life to stop (or at least slow a little) and allow me time to bond with my baby and adjust to our life of two. Only that’s not how reality works.
Sometimes I look at my younger self, at my life as it was, and wonder how I’ve drifted so far from all I was promised and supposed to achieve. My career in tatters. Friendships abandoned and strained. No significant other. A five year stint of on and off counselling, anti-depressants and professional support. Where did it all go so wrong? Is that how my story ends?
Just recently my counsellor started to discuss post-partum depression with me. I asked her if this is what she thought I had. Loath to give me a diagnosis without a more thorough assessment she avoided an answer. Is that why I’ve struggled I wonder? I look back to when I had my first son and the struggles I went through then. The depression and anxiety were linked to very concrete experiences. The stress of a psychotic husband, followed by the stress of trying to co-parent with a narcissist, combined with some hellish work stress saw me eventually collapse. I rebuilt myself, but the foundations were shaky and that man kept trying to undermine them. The following year saw a drawn out process of fertility treatment and struggling to get pregnant. It’s only really now that I’m appreciating how much that took out of me. I’m a determined woman and I focused on the end game. As long as nature would eventually work it’s magic, I could take all the emotional hits it required to get there. Yet of course the pregnancy was just the start and I’d plundered my limited reserves getting those two lines to appear. The next nine months growing a human were a huge struggle both emotionally and physically. Thinking all would be better once the baby arrived now appears like naivety of the first degree.
In reality the baby arrived in a blaze of thunder which set everything off on the wrong track. I could barely look at him. A common side-effect of the birth trauma my counsellor has diagnosed me with and another trauma for my brain to add to long list causing the PTSD to come back to the fore. At the same time I was – again – beseeched with work stresses. This time a horrendous redundancy process – emails penned and calls taken from my milk-soaked bed of post-partum agony is no way to spend the first weeks and months of maternity leave. Two weeks after the birth to end all births (from my vagina anyway), my mother suffered a heart attack. Although she recovered it shook me. The ex meanwhile, was still in and out trying to rattle me. Slowly things started to look better. I went out for an evening without any small people and felt like I could breathe. I celebrated my birthday with friends and family around me. Then the stresses of my son’s vision issues hit me. In amongst learning to love another child, I was learning that my existing one had been more than a handful because he couldn’t really see the world around him. The guilt and bitter-sweetness of our new reality has taken some getting used to for both of us. Then, of all the things I could never have imagined, I lost a man I loved. There are no words to describe that. Not a day has gone by where I don’t turn it over and over in my head. Like a piece of dirty play dough though, no matter how much I squidge it and remodel it, I cannot make it any more bearable to look at. The tears are less frequent and the shock is softer when it hits. It’s something I will learn to live with, like we all do when we lose a loved one, but I cant’ deny it hasn’t dulled all sense of happiness.
All this is before we even begin to look at the baby and how he’s been. There were the early days of long evenings cluster feeding whilst trying to get a manic four year old to bed. Together with the early days of him sleeping for three – blissfully long – hours both day and night, giving me a much needed chance to sleep. Occasionally there was a four hour stint or more; “he’s so much easier than his brother”, I’d coo. Then we went full pelt into a hideous four month sleep regression. I’d never experienced this with my eldest (you have to sleep to regress from it), yet I would have taken my elder ones constant feeding over this anytime. Experiencing your baby’s screams constantly raging in your ears, their incessant demands for rocking at all hours when you can barely pick up their 9kg, 10kg, 11kg* body, is another level of hell. The day times weren’t any better. Walking him in the pram and the screaming would continue unperturbed. His feeding borderline non-existent, paired with some projectile vomiting and we had a hospital admission looming over us – one which I was not willing to accept unless more than essential because how the hell does that work with two kids and one parent? Imagine being simultaneously concerned that your baby weighs too much and has lost weight – you sound like a madwoman, though both realities can co-exist. Through those anxious, exhausting and depressing times I hit some of my lowest moments as a parent and questioned how I would get through another second, let alone a day, a week, or anything longer.
This isn’t a completely depressing update though; we are emerging the other side. I’m back where I was a few months ago – when the first glimmer of a happy life emerged, just before my friend’s death. The bond between me and my boy is developing, slowly but surely. Just as the ties between my eldest and I loosen, though don’t weaken. The baby’s increased interaction emboldens even the most fledgling of bonds. The feeling of his toothless gums clamping down on my hand is surprisingly calming. His smile as I approach him reminds me I’m his everything, and now that’s not so overwhelming. His open-mouthed grin as I bend towards him for a kiss makes my heart melt. His sleep is still not as good as his early days – he wakes every hour or two and generally won’t sleep unless cuddled – but the screaming is back to normal baby levels. Life is exhausting, but manageable. It’s not so much about him having changed, it’s about accepting that this is my reality. An acceptance that isn’t demanded but arrives silently and pleasingly, like a letter on the doormat from a long lost friend. I remember reaching a similar point with my first. I can’t remember now if it was before or after the six month mark (which also marked my entrance into single motherhood). I can, however, remember thinking it doesn’t matter what I achieve today. Maternity leave is there for the baby. Anything beyond us both being fed and sleeping was a bonus. It was liberating to reach that point. I stopped wishing for the baby to sleep through, it wasn’t going to happen. Instead I accepted the hand I’d been dealt, did what I needed to, to get through, and tried to enjoy moments where I could. This isn’t some secret recipe for constant happiness, things were still tough, but it did allow moments of happiness to shine through.
This time round there are a few more must do’s in there – well, a lot more – like my eldest getting to school and doing (at least occasional) homework, my numerous appointments with a variety of professionals, the ongoing saga with work and the need to keep the house in decent shape now I’m doing Air B n B to help pay the mortgage. Yet this acceptance is key. I have resigned myself to sleepless nights for the foreseeable and as long as I can scrape my way through the day, what does it matter? I can survive and dare I say it, I might just manage more than that.
Crucially, the bond between my eldest and I has become more secure, allowing my baby space to start to carve out his own place. The reason for this? His glasses. They have ushered in an upside that I could never have imagined. He’s calmer, less in my face. He allows more space between us; playing upstairs alone which was previously a big no-no. Ultimately his life is easier and therefore we can have a nicer time together, and a nicer time apart, than we have ever managed before and it’s making life as a threesome easier and more enjoyable too.
I’d hoped, privately, that this baby wouldn’t be my last. That somehow I’d manage a third before my womb gave up altogether. I’m coming to terms now with the idea that this is not sensible if it’s through birthing them myself (I’ve still not ruled out adoption). Unless of course mister perfect promises to massage my feet every night, then anything is possible. Accepting this is a big deal for me. It’s a sign that I’m learning my limits and – crucially – accepting my life as it’s turned out. It might not be what I’d imagined but I’m starting to enjoy our family as we are. It’s taken time to get here and more emotional strength than I knew was possible, but I think I can finally say I’m coming up for air again. This time, rather than crawling out of the hole claw by claw, it feels like I’m rising on the backs of my boys. For someone who has struggled to look into the eyes of her newborn placing such an emphasis on him is slightly scary, but also restorative. In the last couple of weeks we have had some genuine family time where all three of us have smiled and laughed together. It’s an image which was constantly in my mind when I took the decision to have another child solo, and finally it’s coming true.
I don’t like to accept defeat, and whilst I may not have won in life the way I’d hoped, I think I’ve neared my personal best and I might just be able to enjoy this life as it is, and that’s no mean feat.
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*His incessant growing is starting to slow down now, but at last weigh in he was edging close to the 13kg mark.