You Can Lose Yourself a Little When You Have a Child
When I first threw my son into kindergarten, it dawned on me: I’m someone’s mom. Of course, this should probably have been obvious by now, given that I carried the baby to full term (and later), gave birth to this baby, and spent the last few months caring for the baby. But there was something about walking down the sidewalk with a child car seat in one hand and a work bag in the other, which overwhelmed me a little. Who was I now?
On the one hand, I was the same person I have always been. I was still from Cleveland, I was still in college, I was still a writer. However, acknowledging these facts is different from communicating with the person I was before the baby was born. Now I felt less like a woman who moved across the country on her own at 22, as an emotional and physical extension of a tiny person who seemed to need me every second of every day.
When you become a parent, it’s incredibly commonplace. There is a thread on Reddit called Mothers Reddit; Have you ever worried about the loss of identity associated with having children? How did you overcome this? “It resonated with many women because yes, most of us worry about it, and yes, we are trying to rebuild our identity through work, our hobbies, time alone and time with friends.
But what helped me the most was that I just called it what it was, as Reddit user u / witcherybaught2Uby exactly does for us:
The first year or two of the baby whirlpool can ruin you. You are in survival mode. Once you get back to your beat, take the time to take care of yourself and listen to loud music in the car with f words along the way to do something alone. When your child (s) can go to school, especially full-time elementary school, you are living life, not surviving. Also, something happens at some point when you become fully confident in your parenting abilities and no longer compare or explain yourself to others.
Let me repeat the most important part here: a childish whirlwind can spoil you. It’s just true. How could it be otherwise? If you’ve given birth, your body seems more alien than ever before. You perform tasks you’ve never done before – washing bottles, folding your overalls, changing diapers – and do them with incredible repetitive frequency. You are deprived of sleep to the point of borderline torture. And you don’t have time for you , at least you don’t have time that is long or semi-regular.
You are lost in the woods of your new parents, and that’s okay. This is the phase. Season. You have a compass, you just can’t read it now. This is not who you are , this is where you are. Not yet forever.
Now, I must say that if anything else happens – postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety or physical trauma from labor and delivery that does not heal – you need help. These are not things that you just need to accept and deal with.
But everything else? Feeling like you’re going with the flow, wondering where you’ve gone, worried that it will always be this way are all normal feelings. Those will pass, even if you don’t want to. It will be tough for a while, and you have to scratch and scratch any self-care you can find. And then, eventually, you will come out on the other side, fully forming a 3D version of yourself again.
A whirlwind of children will spoil your mood. But just knowing and accepting this is half the battle.
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