There are ups and downs. It’s a rollercoaster. There are tough days and there are great days. It’s the hardest, most rewarding, most wonderful time of your life. Enjoy every minute. You’ll have no idea what you’re doing most of the time. You will cry, hormones are raging, baby blues and postpartum depression are real.
These are the things people told me when I was pregnant, preparing for new motherhood. They told me this. They warned me. They prepared me. Some had been through it and spoke from experience and others repeated the platitudes heard a thousand times.
So I should have been more prepared. I knew it would be like this. And yet, I have felt so blindsided by these turbulent series of emotions I’m going through in this “fourth trimester.” I feel like I’ve been hit out of nowhere with all this raw, crushing emotion and I don’t know where it came from. And I feel annoyed with myself that I let myself get so crushed by it. I knew it was coming, didn’t I? Shouldn’t I be able to just roll with this, shrug it off? Shouldn’t I be able to recognize this for what it is? Shouldn’t I be able to accept that this is hard and just move on?
But the actual experience of this rollercoaster is so different than I ever could have imagined. You’re in the ocean and you know the waves are coming. You might even be able to see them, but not always. But obviously, it’s the ocean and the ocean has waves. And yet, when the waves come, they still knock you off your feet. You’re still tossed under the water, flailing and churning. And when you come up to breathe after the wave has passed, you’re sputtering and reeling and wondering how that little swell had that much force to take you out.
But you’re still standing. You’re still in the ocean, riding the waves. You might be on top now and then, coasting, floating, breathing. But there is always another wave on the horizon.
Contractions during labor are often described as these waves, and I had that mental image in my head as I made it through birth. I could do that, and I can do this.
I made it through a week of a huge wave. I was far underwater, upside-down and scraping the sand. I couldn’t see ahead of me, I couldn’t see the future, I couldn’t see a way out of this. I felt like I was drowning.
But today I feel like I’m coming up for air. Today, I feel hopeful. Today I can see between the waves and I’m reminded that there are other things, besides the waves, to live for and experience.
It’s so hard right now to see beyond these waves. Most of us are in some form of shelter-in-place. Workplaces are closed, schools are closed, restaurants are closed and activities are cancelled. This whole pandemic feels like one big tsunami, dragging us under, and every battle we face each day are currents and shells and seaweed and sandbars, knocking us around just a little more, as if we the wave wasn’t already enough.
But I have to remember that this is just a wave. The skies will clear, the sea will calm. There will be good things happening again soon. We will see people, we will gather, we will live our lives. We will survive these waves.