What mental health?

 Hey friends, I haven't posted on here for a while. Other things have really taken precedent. I am basically trying to manage too much, which I probably wouldn't be saying if I wasn't raising a little human at home 24/7. I am finding myself watching childless men and women on social media and being a little bit envious of their position. Yet I know that there are potentially childless men and women watching my platform wishing for children of their own. "The grass is always greener, right?" 

Basically I am finding that I need a platform to get out the real stuff. My social media is for advertising my business, for sharing my adventures with my family and basically glorifying an active lifestyle: and GLORIOUS it really is. But I feel like I need somewhere to talk about the real raw motherhood stuff that maybe I don't talk about much on there. I'm 16 months into my second postpartum journey and I am still struggling to see much improvement to my hormonal fluctuations so much so that it can cause really deep lows and incredibly intense highs throughout the month/month and a half/however long this cycle decides to be.

A few weeks ago my mental health was really suffering and so I started writing and this is what came out:

It was never going to be easy, having a second child. I thought I could do it better the second time round, almost like this was my second chance at motherhood but with a "better man" and so I would be a "better mother" and wouldn't struggle in the way that I am struggling now. But it happened anyway and I can only assume that since I am the common denominator here that the issue is with me and not with the daddy. What is it that's getting me to this place? This place of feeling sheer fury when the bathroom is occupied yet again and will be for at least the next 20 minutes and yet I have trained my body to go for no longer than 2-3 minutes because that's pretty much all the time I've got to lay a sh*t before being interrupted by some other small humans requirement for something or other. The place of resenting even my children just for needing me when one of them can't even wipe his own arse yet, let alone sit on an actual toilet to do his business. But it's not just that place of fury and resentment, it's also the place of no longer recognising myself, my likes and dislikes, my morals and ethics, my dreams and ambitions. As much as I work every day to understand my inner thoughts and feelings, I have truly been stuck in survival mode for too long. And I say that as my son empties a bucket of building blocks underneath my desk chair which will of course be my job to clean up.

I've even turned to other means for a break sometimes. Those means - asking my 6 year old daughter to make mummy proud and tidy up the mess that her little brother made in the front room. As if rewarding her, the female, for the mess that her brother, the male, made. I don't even know who I am anymore because this is exactly the kind of behaviour I advocate against. There are brief moments where I feel seen. Connecting with another mother and rolling our eyes over how our partners spend an unusual amount of time on the toilet. Some kind and gentle words about how beautiful my children are from an elderly person, clearly basking in the joy of young ones being in their presence once more and feeling a sense of nostalgia or even longing for their own memories to somehow come back to life, for time to turn back for just a second. A warm hug from a sibling reassuring me that I'm doing a good job. But most of the time I feel pretty lonely. It was never going to be easy, having a second child.

What is "back to normal"?

I read once that it takes up to 2 years for a woman's hormones to go "back to normal" after having a child. But what is normal? Is normal the way my hormones fluctuated whilst I was on the contraceptive pill for nearly 10 years as it was the norm to protect my body from pregnancy as a 16 year old girl. Of course, it was MY responsibility as the female that would be carrying the unwanted foetus *eye roll*. I look back at my teenage years and twenties and realise it's no wonder I struggled maintaining a healthy weight and suffered on and off with depression whilst I was taking the pill. The most "normal" I have felt (hormonally speaking) is when I came off any contraception and was trying for a second child. Disclaimer: I fell pregnant twice after my daughter and lost them both. Queue: more hormonal problems after suffering a partial molar pregnancy. I see these events now as historical milestones in the journey of my life and no longer mourn my miscarriages. I still remember how I felt when I was pregnant with them both though, that's something that has never gone away and I doubt ever will. Those babies left tiny imprints on my heart. 

So here I am again, 14 months postpartum after a successful pregnancy and birth to rainbow baby Ralph and wondering who the fuck I am, what the fuck do I like and why are there copious amounts of pent up rage and resentment building up in my body. It could be the lack of sleep. It could be bearing the mental load. It could be being the default parent. It could be the additional requirements that come with being a step mum and taking on other children whom I now love and care about to my very core. Potentially it's my lack of "village". I have mum friends, sure. But let's put it this way, my son is 14 months old and has never spent more than a few hours away from me. And though it has been my choice to be a working mum that also stays at home with her children, I find it really, really, fucking hard. My mental health, what mental health? I consider myself mentally unhealthy, even as a woman who really puts a lot of focus on my body being healthy. I walk, I run, I go to the gym, I eat a varied diet. But what about the health of my mental state that feels like it's hanging on by one of the fraying threads on the bottom of my high waisted mom jeans that vow to hold in the loose skin that hangs from my belly. Ready to break at any minute.

I don't want to feel like this. I am envious of women who see to be so at peace in motherhood. The ones that rarely snap at their children, whose toes don't curl when they are nursing their babies, who will find time to make organic blueberry pancakes for breakfast along with a glass of fresh milk straight from the udder of the family cow. OK, that last one is a bit extreme but you get the picture I am painting, don't you? So why am I writing this? I guess if I can get down on paper and into the world the challenges of my own motherhood journey then maybe a mother will read this and feel seen. She will be able to turn to my experiences and feel comfort in knowing that the way she is feeling has been felt by another woman of this world, of this generation. Because I will tell you now, us millennial mums do not have it easy. But don't tell the boomers because they will come for you with a threat to remove you from their will, do not risk it, mummies. It's not worth it. 

I haven't had a prolonged state of "normal" since becoming an adult in my lifetime. I tell myself at a humble 31 years of age that I have already lived many lives in my lifetime and I am grateful for the lessons learned, the experiences enjoyed and endured. So there's potential here that once of the reasons for not understanding who I am and falling into what I can only call an identity crisis is because I don't want to fall back into who I was in any of my previous lives. In fact, I want to build a new version of myself. Which I utterly and completely give myself permission to do, by the way, I believe as humans that we should grow and evolve over time. Our experiences shape us into who we are as we move through life. But I am having a really hard time doing that. I feel myself walking on eggshells around my partner through fear that I will do something that will enrage him. For a bit of context, my partner is one of the most easy-going humans that ever existed and he does not easily get enraged. My ex-husband on the other hand - rage. And a lot of it. So what I am doing is allowing behaviour from a previous version of myself to creep into my current life situation which is completely backwards and even just writing it down now sounds ridiculous! I will iterate here that even writing this down is helping my mental clarity and helping me to understand the version of myself that I do want to become. I want to create a new normal.

A new normal

I will put in the work to heal from past traumas and have previously spent time going to therapy (and could probably do with re-visiting this soon) but I feel like it's not something that can be done overnight and since becoming a mum for the second time this healing journey I speak of I have certainly regressed. Like the 4 month sleep regression from hell, my own behaviours and ways of thinking have definitely taken a few steps back to a time that I was not in a good place. Why is that? It feels like I am reliving an experience I have had in a previous life, one when it went tits up and ended in divorce. Was that only 4 years ago? Yikes. This is not the road I want to go down. I do not want to be sitting in bed at night wondering if I can afford to support both of my children and bear the judgement of other people who learn that my children have different daddies and that I am no longer associated with either of them. Not only do I want to avoid that judgement, but I also know deep down that my partner and the father of my son is a magnificent human being and accredit to our family. Why am I losing my shit every time he misses bin day? Is it perhaps because I want to share the household and mental load? Probably. But am I so much of a perfectionist that I know that no one will be able to organise and manage the household as efficiently as I can? Most definitely.

So basically I need to work on creating a version of myself that can delegate. I'm not expecting miracles, but if I start by just talking more about my mental load and writing to-do lists that are for everyone to view and tick off, then surely this will aid in my endeavours of becoming less of a perfectionist and enjoy my motherhood journey in a more positive light. 

***

Intense stuff right? I actually re-read this whilst copying and pasting it into this blog and burst into tears because a lot of the things I wrote 2 months ago I realise I am still feeling now. I am a coach who teaches her clients that they are worth the time and energy to allocate time to themselves and to work on themselves, yet I can't seem to do the same for myself? It makes me feel like a fraud.

Anyway, I feel a lot lighter by putting this out in the world. So if you're reading this and feeling similar in some ways, just know you're not the only one.

Love Amber, xo