This Might Hurt a Little: Am I ever going to feel like a functional person again?
Yes! No! Maybe!
Welcome to my advice column, This Might Hurt a Little which is a regular recurring guest in the Pretend it’s a Newsletter universe. All questions are reader submitted and answered to the best of my ability. My qualifications for this are as follows:
In a ceremony hosted by my friends I was awarded the Pick Me Up Mom, I’m Scared! Award for Strength and Stability and presented with a spray painted gold phone to mark the victory.
I am a Sagittarius with a heavy Capricorn presence in my birth chart.
I care a great deal.
In short: I have opinions, and I am happy to share them.
I promise to be enthusiastic, inquisitive, and even keeled in my responses but, fair warning: This might hurt a little.
Today’s question is from a new mom who is in the thick of being a new mom.
Chelsea,
Am I ever going to feel like a functional person again? (I became a mom in December)
First of all I want to say a huge congratulations to you. We should pull out the fancy dishes (that you use all the time because use your nice things!) and get a cake from a bakery you love to celebrate. Maybe we should get some fancy drinks, a nice orange wine or we should top big glasses of Dr. Pepper with whipped cream. Motherhood is the reason any of us are here today and you’ve stepped into that role and that is a HUGE deal.
That huge deal, that big step, is precisely the reason your world has been upended, changed, and completely altered– which you know. I don’t have any practical advice, mom to mom, because I’m not a mother. I hope you have lots of friends who are and I hope you can lean on them while you’re in the process of re-assembling your world around this new role.
What I do have is some words to offer you, from one human to a new mom who I imagine is doing her absolute best.
I hope you have a community of people ready to support you. I urge you to lean on those people and ask them for things. Now is the time. Tell them how you’re feeling. The big scary things you might be feeling, tell them. If things feel like they may never be the same again, tell them. Tell them what’s not functioning and see if they can help you make those things function more smoothly. Show them your full-to-the-brim plate and see if there’s anything they can help you remove from it.
I know that babies change daily at this stage, and I hope that in the weeks since you submitted this question things have improved in some ways too. I hope that you’re prioritizing yourself as much as you can (which is a tall order, I know) and I hope that mentally you’re letting go of the things that just can’t take priority right now like a pristinely clean house or keeping up with laundry or beautiful home cooked meals 3 times a day, 7 days a week!
Pre-baby I’m sure you saw things online and thought “WHO HAS THE TIME?” and now you really know that no one has the time. There isn’t enough time and your priorities have shifted. Embrace that. I hope you can release yourself of the burden of the wild expectations that we put on ourselves as women, to keep everything just so and to make everything fit in tidy little boxes of time or space or effort.
The reality is this: some days you’re going to have to heat up a frozen pizza, do 5 dishes, and bag the trash and leave it outside of your door and that’s a perfect effort. 10/10– no notes.
From what I understand, through the experience of friends and from being raised by a mother who tried her best every day of her life, motherhood is an act in patience, understanding, and grace to cover a multitude of fuckups. The baby is going to ruin your favorite sweater at some point if they haven’t already. They’ll grow up and use their crayons on your walls. They’ll flush things they’re not supposed to and you’ll have to write a check to a plumber. They’ll get a little older and make bigger mistakes. And you’ll look at them the way you do now, with a beaming smile and all the love in your heart. Try and give yourself some of that patience, understanding, and grace. You absolutely deserve it.
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