a new kind of everything

The first two weeks of motherhood were magic. My mom, dad and sister traded off shifts, cooking me food, cleaning my house, holding her, changing her. And the drugs....the sweet sweet drugs, enable you to fall into the deepest sleep effortlessly. I would wake up after 30 minutes feeling as though I had been asleep for days.

It was probably around weeks 3-4 that reality began to set in. Honestly I'm glad I journaled a bit about it because its hard to remember what I felt like.

(I'm pretty positive God makes you forget the hard stuff...otherwise no one would have more than one kid.)

Without constant help I found myself getting frustrated with her very easily. This was always immediately followed by guilt and feeling like a failure. As a woman I think it's easy to feel like motherhood should come naturally and that it should be very fulfilling. Don't get me wrong...it IS fulfilling...but more in spurts more than a constant stream. I quickly realized that my love for her would not just appear overnight as i had expected, but that this was going to be gradual. As normal as I know that is, it made it harder watching my husband be head over heels for her immediately. He couldn't wait to spend time with her, and I couldn't wait to get away from her. I found myself building up of this resentment towards her. A big step for me was admitting that although I was not crying all the time...that didn't mean I wasn't dealing with PPD. It has many faces. Sneaky faces.

A huge issue for me was that I could not put words to what I was feeling. Therefore I didn't know how to talk to anybody about it. But that's just it....how do you put words to feelings that you've never had before? i was expecting to feel a new kind of love, but did not anticipate that almost everything i felt would be new as well.