HELP! – Soundly Sarah

Until now.

02/28/2021 No Comments

I’ve been managing. Despite being always at home while on mat leave, juggling an infant, and my daily adult in-person interaction since early November being limited to just D and my son’s educators during child care pickup (you’d be proud, Dr. Bonnie Henry, with how well I’ve listened), I’ve managed. Until now.

Then this week happened.

Something snapped, and I let the loneliness and isolation “grief” finally creep in through the cracks. Despair set in, acutely and deeply.

I give up, Covid. You win.

As a deeply introverted, shy, homebody (who married someone that is the same exact way), I am profoundly lucky and privileged it took me this long to get here. I admit to that fully.

Yet, here I am now missing things I have *never* missed before in my entire life. Super busy play cafes, shopping in packed malls, full to the brim drop-in programs, over flowing movie theatres, and grocery stores with isles that have so many people in them you can hardly move. All things I would have non-jokingly told you I was allergic to a year and a half ago.

And when I remember back to the slow and simple days of park get togethers, play dates, and meeting up with mom friends to chat while our kids were being kids — it physically hurts now.

This was not the postpartum experience that I thought it would be. This is not mat leave I wanted it to be. The summer ahead of us, the first with our completed family of four, it will likely not be the experience I wish for it to be (at the rate Canada is going with the vaccinations). I hate all of this.

Perhaps next week I’ll be able to start seeing again the other things to look forward to, the silver linings in our time outside, and the positives in the small joys to keep celebrating.

But, right now? I am in mourning.

There is so much more I wanted to do this time around while I was off work. I had plans. M’s an easy enough baby that it would have worked this time, too, unlike with O. Yet, when I pulled out her diaper bag the other day prior to leaving for her sixth month vaccinations, upon it was a layer of dust. I was at a loss.

There are no thought provoking words or inspirational wisdom to end this piece, and it feels weird without it. Yet, I’m not sorry for it, for all I want and need to say is this:

This really, really sucks.

[Featured], Mental Health, Motherhood, Postpartum, The magic (in the mess). ♡

I promise.

01/12/2021 No Comments

Dear me,⁣
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I’m sitting here on our phone looking back at pictures you took. It’s January, 2016. You have just recently become a mom for the first time, and are six weeks postpartum.⁣
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The majority of the pictures are of the babe your body created. You aren’t in many, and in those that you are, there is a purposeful effort on your behalf for the photo’s focus to be on anything else but you.⁣
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But, I look to you anyways. Your face. Your hair. Your eyes. The layers that tell a story. Faint smiles, tangled curls in sloppy buns, dark circles and sleepy squints, a breast milk stained cardigan on it’s sixth day of wear. The story of a woman trying. Trying and tired, trying and unsure, trying and afraid.⁣
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Ah, all that what would come in those months ahead. The countless hours of colic, the incredibly little, little sleep, the exasperation at the useless futility of everything you tried, the heart pounding anxiety at anything “gone wrong” that would envelope you in a bundle of trauma. The culmination of it all breaking you. Chasms laid wide, intrusive thoughts hungrily consuming the darkness now bare. An unspoken guilt that consumed you, perpetuating and furthering the cycle. Rinse, repeat, remorse and regret.⁣
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It will be okay, I whisper to you. Gently placing my finger on your shoulder on the screen, as if it could be a hug that transcends time and instils in you the hope you didn’t have. You WILL overcome. The colic goes away, eventually. He sleeps, eventually. You get help from doctors, finally. It starts to work. The pieces come together. You find what he needs. You find what you need. Together, you thrive.⁣
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You’re even crazy enough in five years to do it all over again, mental health reckonings and all. But, we figure it out that time sooner. ⁣She actually sleeps. She’s happier. She’s easier.⁣
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Right now, though.⁣
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It feels like you can’t breath.⁣
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I know. I hear you.⁣
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But, you will.⁣
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We will.⁣
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I promise.

Motherhood, The magic (in the mess). ♡

It could always be worse.

03/20/2020 No Comments

I am now working from home. My work is navigating us doing our jobs remotely for the first time ever, as I don’t think they ever thought it would get to this stage. It’s a bit of a mess, but I’m home.

D is also working from home. It’s an easier feat for him, thankfully.

We are additionally keeping O home with us until the shit storm that is covid19 blows over.

But, if you don’t do screen time with your kid, how the eff do you work from home with said kid and survive? Make a schedule, have activities set up that you don’t have to man — those parts I get. But he’s a preschooler who doesn’t always appeal to logic, and wants us to play with him and be present and we cant ’cause WORK EMAILS ^ 3894792374.

Additionally, if you have no office space whatsoever to accommodate working from home, and one of you is stuck on the couch (me /weep), how do the ergonomics of your body possibly survive?

It could always be worse (I could still be on the floor in ECE right now), but I did not fully think of these things. My back hurts. I’m worried about my kid.

Working from home lunches are superbly more tasty, however.

There is that.

Perhaps that alone will get me though…

Mental Health, Motherhood

The words.

07/22/2019 No Comments

I’m unexpectedly revisiting an old journal of thoughts that I opened as I couldn’t remember it’s purpose.

These are the words of postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression.

Attempting to get philosophical about how much I’ve grown or healed since these days is a bit too wax-poetic for the raw pain of what this experience was and sometimes continues to be for me.

But, I can now say, and truly believe, that my kid loves me. 💚⁣ ⁣

Mental Health, Motherhood, The magic (in the mess). ♡

A tender spot.

02/28/2017 No Comments

The interesting thing about those who suffer from post-partum anxiety (which I can probably just call anxiety at this point considering that I’m now 15 months PP) is this: one’s absolute lack of staying in the present. And by interesting, I mean freakin’ terrible.

My kid was super sick over the weekend. Like, all I want to do all day long is lay on your body please don’t move, OH GOD HOW DARE YOU MOVE, sick. He held our weekend hostage, but whateve, that’s parenting.

In the midst of it all I made an attempt to cheer him up a little bit. Everyone loves a little tickles, right?! So, he squirmed rapidly in my arms, leaned to the right and promptly bit the ever living crap out of me. It HURT. I’ve got a sweet bruise from it now that is painful to touch. It was a legit bite.

Of course, the second it happened, I was in immediate panic mode. For example, the thoughts that were racing through my head: omg, he’s gonna be one of those kids. He’s gonna be a biter. He’s not gonna have any friends. All the other kids around him are gonna be afraid of him. So, *calculates exact wording and plan of action in her head*, this is how we’re gonna approach it. When it happens at childcare, this is how we’re gonna manage it. When it comes up in parent teacher meetings, this is how we’re gonna address it. We’re gonna see him through this, we’re gonna help his manage his frustration in ways different but not harmful, and it’ll all be okay. We’ve got this, we’ve got this, we’ve got this…

Aaaaaand, in the span of 8 seconds, I was five years ahead of myself disaster planning and readying for the worst while somewhat maybe actually DESPERATELY hoping for the best.

With some gentle reminders from D, such as the fact that our child is really freakin’ sick (with a cold that I too now ferociously have), tired and not wanting any of our shit, I was able to snap back to the*now* and take a deep breath.

But I fail to comprehend how, as a parent, to live in that now. To stop and take note of exactly where I am. I wasn’t like this before I became a mom, and, now that I am, it’s hard. Really freakin’ hard. Even more so when you’ve got a FIERCE bruise on the precious flesh of your inner arm staring you right in the face.

So, I love you terribly, sweet boy, but next time? Try not to hit a spot that is so tender. Both physically and emotionally. 💚⁣ ⁣