I (24F) apologize in advance for how long this is going to be. I just have to get it all off my chest and feel like maybe even one person might be interested or care because I have no one to talk to about it.
For starting context, I was raised Mormon. I have loads of religious trauma, but the relevant matter is everything drilled into me about womanhood = motherhood. I was taught my whole life that being a mother was my divine right and responsibility. I was taught that I would be blessed and revered as long as I stayed home and had as many kids as I possibly could. I now have one kid (2yo) and I left the church a year ago. One of the main factors to my leaving was realizing that I was not made to be a mother. I hate it. I hate it so much. I love my son. If I didn't, I would just put him up for adoption because this actually sucks so much. I hate my life as a mom. I wish I'd never had a child and more than anything, I wish I'd known what I was signing up for.
By the time I was 10, I could take care of multiple children and babies at a time no problem. I was a nanny in early college. I knew what kids were like. I thought I liked them. There is simply nothing that could have prepared me for the reality of 24/7 responsibility of a kid. The sleep deprivation alone is killing me.
Another context point, I have some undiagnosed chronic medical problem that causes me excessive tiredness and cataplexy episodes where I lose muscle tone and fall over but don't lose consciousness. I can't make it through the day without a nap most of the time. It started two years before my son was born. We've been trying to get a narcolepsy diagnosis, but I don't fit the right criteria in sleep studies and now every symptom I have is written off as postpartum, conversion disorder caused by my diagnosed bipolar disorder, or faking it for attention. And honestly, it feels like there are so many things wrong with me I must be faking at least some of it right? Like how can one person be so fundamentally messed up both mentally and physically?
Anyway, I got engaged when I was 20 and a month before the wedding, I got a “prompting” from the God telling me I needed to get pregnant, that I was going to have a son and I needed to not wait. God even told me I needed to name him Peter lol. I now understand that this feeling was a mixture of societal guilt and pressure along with natural biological urges and a sprinkling of mental illness. I did not know that then. I truly believed that God had commanded me to get pregnant as soon as possible. If I didn't, I would be punished. We did end up waiting a few months to start trying anyway, so when it took us a full year of trying to get pregnant, I believed that I was infertile and that was God's curse on me for not obeying perfectly (like I said, lots of religious trauma).
We did finally get pregnant and I remember I had five days of joy. Then reality hit me like a truck. I was depressed through the entire pregnancy. I felt like my body had been hijacked. I felt helpless to stand by and watch while my body changed more and more every day and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I resented every woman in my life for never telling me the realities of being pregnant. It hurt. It sucked. I felt like it wasn't my choice. My husband was so kind and patient with me, but I was a miserable, exhausted blob for nine months.
— Story time of the birth and immediate postpartum journey, feel free to skip —
In the last week of my pregnancy, I got so depressed I ended up in the hospital on a psych watch. They decided to induce me that night and hooked me up to pitocin at 10pm. I was already so tired at that point and I was woken up every half hour for an interview or a medicine adjustment. At 4 am, there was not a single contraction to be found, so they said we'd take a break and start again in a few hours (no one bothered to tell me it could take 2-3 days to have a successful induction). At 8 am I signed an AMA and left because I was having a trauma response to feeling strapped down by the IV and the doctors trying to force me to get my water broken. Obviously my son wasn't ready to come and my mom instincts couldn't feel okay about forcing it.
My son didn't come until four days later. I was in labor for 18 hours and pushed for an hour, at the end of which we almost had to do a c-section. My son's vital dropped too low and it took a few minutes before they could get him breathing and stable. It was traumatic for me, but especially it was traumatic for him. He didn't get that initial skin to skin peace of holding me, he got a bunch of doctors poking and prodding at him. The next half hour was a shift change and there was only one nurse who came in to do all my post birth stuff. She hardly said two sentences to me the whole time. It went from 10 frenzied people in my room to one cold person in a matter of minutes. She didn't explain anything to me, she just manhandled my body, threatened me with a catheter, and got me to a new room. I was too scared to advocate for myself or ask any questions.
That first night was hell. I was exhausted and of course had a newborn to deal with. My husband wasn't much help (he tried, but he couldn't function at all without proper sleep). So it was night one, all three of us were up bawling every one to two hours, and I realized even though I had my body back, I was entering something worse and I still had no escape.
By the next afternoon, my son still hadn't figured out how to breastfeed. His blood sugar dropped dangerously and a nurse had to syringe feed him for a few feeds. I asked if it was possible he had a tongue tie and was given a scoff and an “absolutely not,” which I shouldn't have accepted, but I trusted the experienced nurse over my first time mom self.
Turns out he had a third degree tongue tie, a third degree lip tie, a recessed chin, a recessed tongue, a high- arched palate, and torticollis. We didn't find any of that out until after two excruciating months of trying to figure out what I was doing wrong with breastfeeding. Every time I tried, he would immediately start screaming and pushing away from me. I thought it was the birth trauma because his doctor confirmed no tongue tie. I demanded a second opinion finally and got everything fixed up. It was two months of doctors appointments and stress. We had to do stretches for him every four hours, even waking him up in the middle of the night or from naps. For eight weeks. We were practically torturing him every few hours to make sure his tongue wouldn't reattach.
During this time, my mom was helping us for a few hours a day. It was amazing and we wouldn't have survived without it, but it did not come for free. Every time she helped, I'd get passive aggressive comments about how it was hurting her or her lifestyle OR about how none of my siblings or anyone else she knows needed this kind of help. She helped but she wanted to make sure I felt guilty for needing help.
Needless to say, I was wired constantly. Depressed, anxious, furious, exhausted, wracked with guilt, having completely lost myself and all joy in life. My doctor said I needed to be getting at least one stretch of 4 uninterrupted hours of sleep every night. Yeah, right. I could barely get two between pumping, wake windows, and my anxiety that told me I wouldn't be able to sleep long enough anyway, so why even try? Learning that sleep deprivation is literally a torture method was very validating for me because I truly felt like I was losing my mind in misery and suffering.
—- End of Story time —-
I was able to breastfeed my son finally at the four month mark, but it only lasted for two months before my milk supply vanished. Like almost overnight, just gone, even though I hadn't changed anything in my pumping routine or diet. It was so sudden and was paired with a new symptom - I call it extreme hormone flood. It still exists to this day and I have no clue what it actually is or why it happens. If I get over tired, like staying awake for more than 6 hours at a time (sometimes less), I get insanely emotional. I can go from mostly stable to screaming-crying feeling like the world is ending and I'm done existing in a matter of seconds if I just miss the mark of taking a nap on time. Then I take a nap and wake up feeling totally fine like it didn't happen. It happens almost daily, which is problematic for many reasons, but mostly because it has stopped any chance of me getting a job and my husband being home with our son, which I feel would be so much better for my mental health.
Trying to figure it out, I was tested for a thyroid problem and had an MRI for a pituitary tumor. No thyroid issue, but it turns out I do have a pituitary microadenoma which is…benign and ineffective. So basically, a coincidence, according to the doctor. Still working on answers, but that started 18 months ago now, and we're not any closer to understanding. Most recent visit with a sleep specialist, I described a symptom and her response was “yeah, I can make myself do that sometimes too”. So yeah, I've mostly given up hope of even finding an answer.
All this background brings us to now. I'm two years deep and I thought at some point, I'd adjust. I'd stop mourning my life before motherhood. I'd stop wishing I could go back and change it. I'd start appreciating my son more. He's adorable sometimes, but an absolute punk sometimes too. One of the hardest things has been his lack of speech. He communicates okay with signs and pointing, but he only says Mama and Dada. We've been working with an early intervention speech therapist for a few months now with no improvements. He doesn't even make animal sounds or imitate us. He babbles every once in a while, but most of the time we only hear his voice when he's crying and screaming. It's so isolating and disheartening. I do feel connected to him emotionally, but it's hard when I feel like there's a gap in our ability to understand each other.
He doesn't sleep through the night yet. Even as I'm writing this, I'm up with him. For a long time, he was satisfied just taking a bottle and cuddles then going back to sleep, but now he demands a show and how are we meant to reinforce boundaries at 2 am when he will literally scream for 2+ hours when told no. So then we get stuck watching Miss Rachel in the middle of the night and hating ourselves for giving in when we just need sleep.
I've been so lucky that my husband has had a remote job up until he was laid off a couple months ago. He just started a new job in person yesterday, and that is the trigger for this post. It only took one day of being alone with my son for me to slip right back into the helpless depression of postpartum. I can't live like this. But I have no other options. It really doesn't help that three weeks ago, my son head butt me so hard I got a concussion. I'm still having symptoms that have increased my fatigue even more and made me sensitive to light and sound (kind of the corner stones of having a toddler) and completely removed my ability to multitask.
We can't afford to hire a nanny or even a babysitter in the evenings and have very little family support. I can't even talk about all this with anyone in my life. I have one girl friend who isn't a Mormon. She's amazing, but she's not a mom, so she can't understand this. Every other woman I know is a member of the church and when I complain about any part of motherhood or try to express how much I hate it, all I get is “it's hard sometimes, but so so worth it” or I'm told to just have another so they can entertain each other. Like no, I'm distraught and wanting to stop existing with just one. If I try to press on explaining how I feel, they literally short out. They stop responding or continue telling me how amazing and worth it it will be eventually.
And on top of it all, of course, is the guilt. The mom guilt for not being enough, not doing enough, not wanting him enough. He's amazing and I love him, but I cannot engage with him sometimes. I can't get myself to enjoy playing with him. I get frustrated that I have to yield to his desires and needs instead of mine. I'm so selfish and I don't get to be anymore. I wish I'd known I would be giving up so much of myself to have a kid. I wish someone had told me I would have to sacrifice my own life to give him anything close to the life he deserves. And I'm still falling short. Meanwhile, my sister has three kids and both my brothers have six kids. (Granted, my brotherd are messing those kids up so bad but that's also church stuff. Traumatizing the new generation and whatnot.)
I feel guilty for locking my husband down into being a father, which he dislikes very much also. I feel like I've drained him of his chance to live and be happy and free because I imagined God was talking to me. We didn't name our son Peter, by the way. At least I managed to do that for myself.
I just feel so trapped and useless and hopeless. I hate being a mom, but I've already done it. There's no going back. It was bearable when my husband was home, but I can already tell hell is going to burn hotter now that he's working away. I will adjust some. I won't suddenly find joy in motherhood though. It's so painful when I was told so often growing up that this is what I was made for. I failed in my one purpose on this earth. I want to be more. I want to have my own life and career and be more than the cookie cutter mold of a Mormon wife and mom that was sold to me. I'm grateful I was able to wake up and leave the church, but I have no community outside of it. I was isolated from the world my whole life, taught that it was wicked and dangerous. I wasn't allowed to have social media accounts. This will be my first post on anything ever. I don't even comment on anything. I'm slowly unlearning all that indoctrination, but when I take away my church identity and who I was before my son, I'm now left with a depressed husk of a woman who never really got to be a girl or experience life and now has to be a mom.
I applaud and appreciate you if you got to the end. Mostly just a rant, but I will take advice if anyone has some. I am in therapy and I do have a supportive friend group that I see once a week. I'm just not sure how I'll survive without my husband during the days, especially when I need 1-3 naps to get myself through the day and my son doesn't always take his own nap. I'd love any tips on how to make mom life more bearable. Thanks!