The Stacked Deck of Motherhood

I have long believed that the whole game of pregnancy, childbirth and parenting holds at least one bad card for all women. For some, getting pregnant is the hard part. Other women have traumatic childbirth experiences that require years of recovery. And there are those for who pregnancy is a breeze, birth is nothing complicated, but parenting doesn’t come so easily. I have yet to meet even one woman who hasn’t struggled somewhere along the way.

When you struggle in the early stages—with getting pregnant, with staying pregnant, with a difficult pregnancy or a difficult childbirth or with breastfeeding or a difficult newborn—it’s hard not to see it as a sign of something. That you shouldn’t be a mom. That you’re a bad mom. That motherhood doesn’t come easy to you.

I’ve held my fair share of bad cards.

I have two kids, but have been pregnant four times. My first was at 19 and ended with an abortion. Even as an ardent pro-choice woman, that decision still colored me, felt like a failing.  I had thought of abortion as something fine for other people, but not something for me. Until I was there.

It wasn’t until many years later, when I wanted to be pregnant, that I realized how much meaning I had assigned my earlier experience. All of a sudden, it was a punishment well-deserved (so I harshly thought to myself) that I didn’t get pregnant the moment the intention popped into my head. In retrospect, it didn’t take long. But for those few months of “trying” (a euphemism if ever there was one), I was worried. Worried that I missed my chance, that I wouldn’t get a second one.

When my second conception ended in a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, that feeling deepened. I was being punished. I wasn’t meant to be a mother. There was something wrong with my body. That experience, complete with the loss of a third of my body’s blood, surgery and a complicated healing process, left me scarred. The scar on my body was deep and made it look like I’ve had a c-section.

The internal scars were more painful, and that awful feeling was deepened by the mystery about when or whether I would ever get pregnant again. The months between my second and third conceptions were sad. It was hard to be around anyone that reminded me of pregnancy or babies or moms.

The third time around, I was much luckier.

That pregnancy brought me my daughter. While pregnancy was fraught with things that felt worth complaining about at the time, it turned out that all of it was a “normal” part of the process. A happy pregnancy in retrospect, even if it felt awkward to live through.

My labor, though, wasn’t normal. It was a 4-day prodromal affair, a possibility I’d hardly paid attention to in my childbirth class. Kind of like the possibility of the ectopic pregnancy before it.

Again, I saw myself as someone who drew hard cards.

Motherhood had a way of easing me out of the feeling that I was being followed by a dark cloud, even as it had plenty of storms of its own.

But I finally felt lucky. I’d made it to motherhood. From early days, my daughter was easy—smart, beautiful, healthy, happier than I could even understand, a pure blessing. Being a mom was hard, but she was easy. Luck of the draw.

Then we gambled again. My second full-term pregnancy wasn’t nearly as cute as the first one. All those “normal” symptoms were even less fun that time around. But I made it through and wound up with a second birth that made me feel strong and capable and blessed. Another lucky card.

And then came nursing. With my second baby, I got mastitis five times before I gave up nursing. I also suffered some pretty terrible postpartum depression and anxiety. Quitting breastfeeding to return to the antidepressants I needed was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

When I was agonizing over the choice to stop nursing, I felt so judged. I’d nursed my first baby a few months beyond the one-year ideal. And I made it to nine months the second time around—farther than a lot of women can manage. I should have been happy, but it wasn’t my timetable. I was failing in my own mind, and again, my body was failing me. Failing to be able to do this womanly thing it was meant to do. I wasn’t strong enough to give my second child what I gave my first.

With all of that weighing down, I sent an email to our local parenting list-serv about my struggle to stop nursing. I live in a crunchy, hippy kind of town, where midwives and La Leche League rule the roost. I thought I would be attacked from all sides and encouraged to nurse through anything, no matter the cost to me. I secretly wanted to be told to keep nursing, so my contrarian self could somehow feel vindicated in quitting.

Instead, I got nothing but support. Dozens of emails encouraged me to do what was best for me, congratulated me for what I’d already done, sympathized with my struggle with mastitis, empathized with the guilt and the feelings of failure. Not one person told me to keep nursing through the pain—both physical and emotional. Not one woman said the slightest thing to make me feel bad about my body or what it was capable of doing. Not one.

I can’t explain how meaningful their camaraderie was to me.

Those early years of failed pregnancy, pregnancy and mothering of infants felt so fragile. I was so quick to think: Is there something wrong with me as a woman that I can’t do this pregnancy thing easily? Does the fact that I can’t keep nursing mean that I am less of a woman? Some kind of weaker mother?

Looking back now, I think: Those were my cards. That was the hand I was dealt.

Everyone holds different cards and no one has a perfect hand. Just because we can’t see that someone else has struggled—with fertility, with pregnancy, with depression, with nursing… with motherhood—doesn’t mean they’re winning some game we are losing. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It’s just not easy. At least, all of it isn’t easy. Not for anyone.

Motherhood is a stacked deck. We’re dealt the hand we’re dealt. I think it helps to think that every woman around has had at least one bad card, something she would discard is she could. And we all have our best card, too. Something to hold on to, to build a hand around.

The best part is—we get to discard what doesn’t serve us well. And we get new cards all the time.

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Formula vs. Antidepressants : How Hard Will It Get Before I Stop Nursing?

“I’m not such a bad mom to have,” I think to myself as I cuddle with my three-year-old daughter in her bed while my husband sings to her, “You Are My Sunshine.” She nuzzles my head, her curly hair falling into my face. But today was another bad day, so even this happy thought makes me begin to cry quietly, my face hidden against her fleece pajama-covered belly so she doesn’t notice.

For about two hours today, I didn’t speak to my daughter. I didn’t even notice until the clock said 6 pm and I looked down at where she was on the floor, playing and talking quietly to herself, having long given up on getting me to play along with her favorite activity: feeding me lines. “Mommy, you say, ‘That’s a beautiful outfit, Angelina Ballerina,” or “Mommy, say, ‘Don’t cry, Angelina.”

A simple request and an easy way to keep her happy, but today, I can’t play. The trigger this time was naptime. Instead of sleeping, she wouldn’t stop talking, so I didn’t get a break from the constant noise of her sweet but incessant three-year-old voice. Then her baby brother was fussy, she threw something at him, the dirty diapers were endless, I hadn’t had a break in days…

On and on until I was so far down that the best I could do was to numb myself. I could be angry or I could cry or I could just shut down. To talk would be to fall apart. I didn’t want to cry, I didn’t want to yell at her, so I just didn’t speak.

But how much better is that, really? To have a silent mother? To be three and feel alone and ignored? Instead of a stay-at-home mom, I began to feel like a bad babysitter, just keeping the kids alive until the real parent gets home.

I have struggled with mild depression and generalized anxiety for years, if not most of my life. Like many people with mild depression, there are periodic episodes when things get much worse. Antidepressants have helped immensely for the last five years, but I stopped taking medication while pregnant with and nursing both of my children. During both pregnancies, I felt happy and managed well without my medication—maybe the hormonal changes helped, maybe I was just really happy to be pregnant, I don’t know.

With my first baby, nursing was also protective. Until she began to wean herself around one year, I felt fine without the drugs. As she nursed less, I did less well, until I stopped nursing at 15 months and went back on my medication. By most measures, quite nursing success.

With my son, it’s a different story. Nursing doesn’t have an anti-depressant effect. He’s just four months old and it’s been a long four months. Maybe the hormones are different, maybe it’s something else, but I’m struggling so much more this time.

When I would nurse my daughter, I remember feeling a deep calm wash over me. I was happy, like what I was doing was the best thing in the world and I could just focus on nurturing this beautiful baby. When I nurse my son, I just wish he would hurry. I feel like I have other things to do and his needs are getting in the way. My daughter needs me. I need time to myself. In the beginning, he felt like a tiny little stranger who was keeping me away from my beautiful child. As I developed a bond with my son and a deep love for every little thing about him, this has faded some. I no longer want to cry every time I nurse. Just sometimes.

This is what the early days of a second baby look like: sloppy nursing. 

I have come to hate nursing… until I think about not nursing. I gave my daughter over a year of the best nutrition, the best nurturing, the best of everything I could. How could I give my son some fraction of that? What if I stop and he gets sick more often than my daughter? Has more allergies? Isn’t as smart? I practice my new mantra: Formula isn’t poison. Formula isn’t poison.  

And then there’s the financial aspect of it… I know I would want to buy the best, most expensive organic formula available and estimates I’ve read put the cost of formula-feeding at as much as $4,000 a year. So, even if I make it to six months, we’d have to spend about $2,000 on not-nursing. Just think of all of the things I could buy with that much money, things to make me feel just a little happier. Like up to 200 hours of babysitting help. Twenty-five deep-tissue massages. Eighty pedicures. Maybe those would keep me sane enough to keep nursing?

My son’s pediatrician won’t advocate continued nursing while I’m taking an antidepressant, but she won’t tell me to stop nursing either. What she does unequivocally advocate is that I get back on my medication if I’m not doing well. It’s not good for children to have a depressed mother. As for nursing, it’s up to me. Take the risk of exposing him to medication or switch to formula.

But how well do I need to be? How depressed can I be without being a bad mother? Is one bad day a week too much? Two? What if the other days are fine or even good? How much longer can I make it? What bad thing needs to happen before I know I can’t wait any longer?

According to Thomas Hale’s Medications and Mothers' Milk, the best medication for me does go into the breast milk. One six-month-old breastfed baby whose mother took it seems to have had a seizure. Chances are slim that would happen to my baby, but slim enough? Maybe I should try one of the anti-depressants that’s cleared for breastfeeding, even if it’s not the best one for me. Maybe that would get us to six months with fewer bad days.

Not that there’s any medication that can make easy the overwhelming job of being the mother of an infant and a preschooler. All moms—stay-at-home, working, depressed, perfectly healthy—have bad days. My daughter will still talk nonstop, refuse naps, throw toys. My son will still cry, have three dirty diapers in a row, wake up at night. But I need a longer fuse. I need to be less depressed if I can be. For me and for them.

I want to nurse as long as I can. I do my best to balance my needs with what’s best for my son. For now, I’ll do all I can to be as happy as I can without medication—exercise, sleep, get more help with childcare, take breaks, use all the cheating parenting short cuts to happy days that I’ve learned in three years of motherhood.

And still the day will come when I will call my psychiatrist with an urgent plea, “Today is the last day I can be without medication. Actually, it was yesterday, but I just realized it today.”

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Dads Can Wake Up at Night, Too

As someone who suffered serious postpartum depression, brought on or made worse by a frequent waking baby, I'm very sympathetic to mothers who decide to let their babies cry-it-out. The sleep deprivation was so extreme for me that it became a question of having to be hospitalized or getting some sleep. I think nearly everyone would agree which option would be better for baby, let alone mother.

Since becoming a mom—who has opinions on these these things before then?—I have done everything I could to find a gentle way through newborn sleep patterns, nighttime nursing, sleep regressions and every other incarnation of baby-hood that requires nighttime parenting. But when I’m sobbing on my kitchen floor out of sheer exhaustion, it’s no longer a “No Cry Sleep Solution.”

BUT, and this is a big one, I think something is being left out of this discussion: Where's daddy?

We live in a super-mommy society, and some of this we bring on ourselves--I know I do. But why--apart from a single parent situation- is it a question of cry-it-out so mommy can sleep at night or the mother being up all night with baby?

We need to wake up our husbands! So why don’t we?

Like many instances of gender inequality, we think our answers are particular to us, to our husbands. Why does mom stay at home when dad goes to work? Well, he just happens to make more money. Why doesn’t he clean up the kitchen without being asked? He just doesn’t care as much about those things as I do. Why doesn’t he do the grocery shopping? He doesn’t do it the way I want it done. Odd how many women have uttered those exact sentences. Must just be coincidence.

So, here are my particulars: My husband had just been through a so-called minor surgery when our second baby was going through his worst sleep phase (waking six times a night!). I was trying to be a loving wife take and care of my husband by letting him sleep. After two weeks, I was in pieces.

By the time our son was seven months old and had been waking up every two hours for almost three months, I was so weak from exhaustion that I worried I couldn’t keep my baby, and his three year old sister, safe. He was a heavy baby, the same weight at six months as his sister was at a year, and I could no longer pick him up without fear of dropping him. That’s pretty tired.

My husband is wonderful, as feminist as any good man, and, of course, he stepped up when I crashed. His takeover of our nighttime parenting duties was sudden and complete. I took my daughter and headed to the basement to sleep through the night. I cried, took some pills, swallowed my mommy guilt and closed my eyes. After just a few days, my husband was asking how I could have done this for months when he felt awful already. I don’t know how, but I know I shouldn’t have. I should have woken him up sooner.

Why do so many moms feel like our husbands can't handle it? We're all shortchanged when we underestimate our partners.

Stay-at-home moms may be the biggest offender of not expecting their husbands to help at night. Just because a mom is at home with the baby does not mean that the baby’s daddy gets a free pass. He does not need his sleep anymore than you do. We seem to think that he needs be fresh and alert when he heads off to work in the morning, as if we don’t need reserves to get through our day. Ask any woman who has both been at-home with kids and worked outside the home--which job is it easier to sleepwalk through?

Once the baby has passed the real infant stage, which most people agree is somewhere after 6 months, and doesn't need to eat at night, breastfeeding moms need to hand over the keys to the baby's room.

And there's an additional benefit to letting mamas sleep--even beyond a happier wife and mother. Many babies will stop waking as much if dad takes mom's place as nighttime parent. It's like they wake up and say, "Oh, you again. Never mind. See you in the morning." My son went from being up six times a night to “only” three in a week, just because my husband handled it. My daughter went from waking twice a night to sleeping through, just because it wasn’t me.

Not that the transition will be easy, but there is no easy way out. Cry-it-out doesn’t always work quickly and sometimes must be repeated several times. The first year is so hard and not sleeping is a big part of it. Of course, dad waking up at night doesn't solve everything. But it can lead to a refreshing shift in household dynamics.

None of the many different “sleep experts” will tell you this, but there is only one real tried-and-true way to get your offspring to sleep alone through the night… and it works every time: the baby gets older. It will happen. It’s just a matter of figuring out how everyone, including mom, can make it through to the other side.