Thoughts on parenting and post partum

As the title suggests, what you will find here are some observations on parenting. I do not now, nor have I ever claimed to be a parenting expert. I have one child, with whom I have 3 years and change in this game. So stick with me. The second bit I am sure I am an expert. Or at least a survivor. So it’s from that perspective I will offer some thoughts.

Disclaimer:
These are shark -infested water. And the sharks may turn out to be dear friends or even family members. Say what you think about parenting, and if what you think is outside the accepted theories of the sub-culture (read: James Dobson, the Super Nanny, your pastor any given Sunday, etc.,) you risk the alienating hush of your friends at lunch. You’ll hear “Bless your heart!” A polite Southern way of saying ‘Wow, you’ve really gone off the deep end’ or ‘You’ve become so liberal’/ (the very worst of all possible fates) and the like.

So here are my radical, not- so- radical reflections on parenting.


Kid's are not stereo's, and there are no instruction manuals:

Do you remember in the hospital with your first child when the nurse (doctor, midwife, whatever) said "They all come out with their own little personalities”. Maybe you were too euphoric, depressed or exhausted to pay attention, but the comment stuck with you. This may have been their way of explaining why your baby was fussy, sleepy, goofy, or whatever he or she was upon initial descent to earth. But it was true. Your baby did things other babies didn't. Her knowing eyes, her projectile, er…, well you know- whatever it was, you recognized that it was true. She was unique.

Then the moment they released you from the hospital and the care of professionals, you set about looking for just the right instruction manual to make her exactly like your best friend’s baby. You know the baby; the one who slept through the night at two weeks old, took naturally to breast feeding and never had colic. The one whose "behavior" - a word which should never be used when talking about a child under 1, possibly 2 years old- was just perfect for her parents schedules, egos and needs. They could beam with pride when their child napped without a fight, ate all her strained peas or didn't puke at the dinner table, because this of course was "proof" that they were doing something right.


Ok, back to you and me. Let's retrace our steps. First we got into the attachment parenting thing, because it just seemed nicer. Digging through the stack of baby books at 1 in the morning, the picture on the cover of the “attachment” book seemed to sooth our fried nerves. “No cry method” sounded great to us who’d been up for three days and couldn’t quit crying ourselves.

Or maybe we tried the cry-it-out method first. Babywise. Because that's what our Christian friends swore by (wait aren't we not supposed to swear?) and their kid slept like 10 hours straight the first night home from the hospital. And besides, the book warned, if we didn’t follow their method our kids would grow up to be self-centered social deviants. All because we caved and gave them a bottle at 3am.

Whichever way we gravitated, we read and re-read the "instructions." We surfed baby blogs late into the night. But our little guy wasn't following the “instructions,” was he?

Mine didn’t. Not only did none of the many, many books help, but they were the cherry on top of my self pity Sundae. "See, I am not cut out for this." "Why can't I do this right?" "Why isn't my baby like all the other babies in this book?" I was determined that I would get it right, and my Christian baby books and prayer groups, Mom's groups and websites would be enough to guide me through. And granted, if my self -pity had been just the baby blues, the standard two to four weeks of weepiness, they may have.

But it wasn't, it didn't, and here we are. And the only reason I can imagine that God let me go through what I did, is simply so I can share it with you.

Here’s how it came down.

My brother’s band was in town to play at a huge arena when my daughter was about 5 months old. I had planned the outing for weeks. Though my nerves were fried from five months of anxiety and sleeplessness, I was determined to go to the gig, even get up on stage and sing backing vocals on a handful of songs. My adrenaline was in overdrive. I did my best to recapture some of my pre-pregnancy confidence. After a great night I returned home to Matt and Sydney asleep on the couch. She wasn't in her crib, it was midnight. The slight deviation from our schedule sent me into an anxious downward spiral of guilt and panic. I barely slept a wink. Maybe 30-40 minutes. The whole house was snoring and I was staring at the ceiling, punishing myself for having had a night out. Trouble is I had no idea that my sadness- about my body, my perceived daily failures at home, my fizzling career and creativity- was due - at least in some significant part to the hormones that were still raging through me. It had a name, and my brother named it. “You have post partum depression,” he said, a little frazzled by my sudden explosion of tears as he readied himself to leave town the next morning. “There’s medication for it. It’s not a big deal. Just talk to someone.” What I had feared, what I refused to utter, what seemed to be lurking just around each corner had finally come into the light.

That declaration by my brother in the kitchen of our rented house started me on the road back to wellness. In that moment, I had clarity. I had a to-do list. Talk to somebody. Get help. Put one foot in front of the other. I could handle that. Wandering around the desert of woe had just about done me in.


I’m a little bit disappointed that it took my rock star brother, who is not exactly an expert on women’s issues, to tell me to get help. I had prayer partners. Sisters in Christ. Family members who knew what I was going through but couldn’t, or wouldn’t name it. Maybe they were as terrified of this unknown monster as I was. Maybe the name alone, “post partum depression” conjured horrifying images of deranged women and defenseless babies. Maybe they did tell me to get help but I wouldn’t listen.

I was so certain that God's healing for me would come through prayer, bible study and white knuckle discipline. For some reason I perceived my depression and anxiety as my own fault. Something I could "kick" if I just worked harder at it.

But this is not how God works. He wants us to trust deeper, not work harder. He taught me something huge about himself through all this. First, that He and He alone determines how healing will come. He knows me. And He loves me. And wouldn't you know, His way of healing me was utterly simple. It could have come months earlier if during one of my many pleading prayer times I had stopped to listen. I would have had more crazy-free time to enjoy my baby girl if I'd had my antenna up a bit higher.

These days I am the post partum police. Whenever a good friend has a baby I give her a week or two before sitting her down, making eye contact (this is nearly impossible to do with the mother of a two week old) and ask how she’s doing. Not how the baby is doing, not how her mother-in-law, husband, best friend, boss or sister is doing. How she is doing. And I try to get a straight answer. Most of the time, my friends are doing fine. Even better than fine. Which reminds me of the statistics that insist that almost all women get about two weeks of blues, but very few get the full blown crazies like I did. And even fewer will experience the kind that lands their story on the evening news. Devastating as those stories are they are very, very rare.

But once in a while, when talking to my friend, I will hear the nervous quiver in her voice. The obsession with feeding schedules, sleep schedules or bowel movements. I will hear hopelessness in her voice. And that’s my cue.

If I know you well, I’ll just tell you flat out- there is a medication and counseling that can re-teach you how to be you. You shouldn’t suffer like this. It’s easily treatable. I will remind you, as my husband so kindly reminded me, that all healing comes from the hand of God. If I don’t know you well, I will try to get to know you better. But I will try, if you let me, to help.