Stage One: 'The 7 Stages of Motherhood'
Sept. 13, 2004 -- In The 7 Stages of Motherhood, Ann Pleshette Murphy, a mother of two, explains what parents should expect, and how they can deal with it, as their journey through parenthood begins.
Read excerpts from Murphy's new book and go to www.annpleshettemurphy.com for more information on parenting.
Stage 1 Altered States: Pregnancy, Birth, and the Fourth Trimester
And for more on The 7 Stages of Motherhood, go to www.annpleshettemurphy.com
Summary of Stage 1
Most of us become mothers in our minds the minute that second pink line blooms in the plastic window or the call to the doctor's office confirms the news. We breathe a little differently, see a different reflection in the mirror long before our contours actually change. We may go about the mundane business of our lives, but we're already acutely aware that nothing will ever be the same, that our own personal history – and that of our baby-to-be -- is about to change in ways that are thrilling and terrifying. In many ways, your fantasies about the future are as important as the little cluster of cells floating inside you. Pregnancy is a three-in-one deal: There's the physical baby you're carrying, the imagined one in your dreams, and your picture of yourself as a mother. They're all important, all part of what makes pregnancy the seminal journey of any woman's life.
Few of us take the time to indulge in these fantasies or to give voice to them, especially if they tip precariously toward the dark side. But carving out the emotional and psychological space to plan for your new life and, more important, for your new sense of yourself, is critical. There are plenty of evolutionary explanations as to why we carry our babies for nine long months, but I'm convinced that those last few weeks, when our bodily changes (and quite a few functions) seem totally out of control, are an apt metaphor for motherhood. "If you think you look and feel completely different now," Mother Naturelaughs, "then just wait ... " Read more
Stage 1 Summary, continued
As we hurtle toward childbirth, thoughts and feelings about losing our sense of ourselves, of facing an unknowable future, are easily overwhelmed by fears and excitement about labor and delivery. Whether you need anesthesia to get your teeth cleaned or you laugh off root canal, the prospect of pushing a fully formed, melon-sized head out of your vagina makes skydiving sound like a spa treatment. Bear in mind that childbirth is not a competitive sport. Stoicism does not make the mom. Whatever helps you wrest some control over the pain, fatigue, and fear, is what works.
Giving birth is transformative and transitional, a culmination and a beginning; it brings a sense of oneness and of separateness, cataclysmic upheaval and intense focus. Whether you're positioned in such a way as to witness your baby's final slide into life or prone on an operating table with a curtain separating you from your cesarean incision, the sight of your fully formed newborn unfolding like a flower before your eyes will be one you never, ever forget. If you're adopting, the moment when you're handed your baby and can cradle her between hand and heart for the very first time is likely to stir up rich and complicated feelings. You may fall in love immediately or you may feel oddly detached, disappointed, or simply relieved. Whether or not you "bond" with your baby in the delivery room says absolutely nothing about your relative "goodness" as a mother. But your reaction to childbirth and to the intense emotions you experience provides important clues to your hot buttons and hidden talents. Recognizing that you tend to shut down emotionally when you're anxious or that losing control makes you see red or that exhaustion goes hand in hand with panic gives you a chance to work on those weak spots as your child grows.
The first few days after you bring your baby home tend to be slightly surreal. There's a sense of blurred boundaries, of feeling as though you've been turned inside out. I definitely recall the odd feeling of being separate yet powerfully connected to Maddie. Every day, usually when no one could hear me, I would whisper, "I can't believe you're here" or "Are those really your toes?" because the miraculous sense of her otherness blew me away.
For many moms, euphoria, relief, a feeling of being on an energy high make the initial postpartum period far better than they had anticipated. Kathleen, who gave birth to her son on a beautiful California Christmas day, ascribed her "intense euphoria" to feeling cleansed of the hormones that had made her nauseated for nine months.
"I never felt better in my life than I did that day and in the weeks that followed." Unfortunately, bone-numbing exhaustion, painful episiotomy sutures, sore nipples, hemorrhoids, unexplained weepiness, ravenous hunger can easily overwhelm even the most blissed-out new mom. In fact, a couple of weeks after giving birth, you're likely to feel betrayed – by your body, your doctor, the articles and books you read, and by every mother who somehow neglected to mention how tough the first few weeks can be. I recall a kind of psychological fragility, if not sheer terror, at the prospect of caring for my tiny, helpless baby. When Maddie screamed and flailed her arms, every muscle in my body tensed as I tried to calm her, which I then worried would exacerbate her fretfulness.
Letting go of the expectation that life will soon get back to normal is absolutely critical during this postpartum period. There's nothing "normal" about days that merge into night, a body that balloons and sags in bizarre and sometimes painful ways, and a heart that pumps equal amounts of passion and panic. Take the pressure off yourself and plan nothing, other than ample time to sleep, eat, feed your baby, and lie in bed with your partner beside you and your little miracle between you. If you manage to take a shower or to change out of your spit-up encrusted nightgown, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back. Then get back into bed.
Reducing your expectations about how your first few weeks postpartum should go can help minimize the stress and reduce the learning curve associated with breastfeeding. Unfortunately, most of us assume that the natural flow of milk goes hand in hand with an instinctive understanding of how to get that milk into the baby's mouth, so when breastfeeding doesn't go smoothly at first – and it often does not -- a cascade of feelings follows: frustration, disappointment, guilt. Yes, nursing is one of the great milestones of motherhood, and a convenient, cost-free, and deeply satisfying experience. But whether you wind up breastfeeding with a vengeance for years, or switch to a bottle after a few weeks, your baby will thrive. And you'll do no one any favors by treating this first challenge as a test of your mettle as a mom.
What's most important during the postpartum period is that you have support – lots of it – from people who can be truly helpful. Unfortunately, most of us associate asking for help with weakness or incompetence or both. This is especially true when it comes to motherhood. Admitting you can't go it alone, that you're overwhelmed or unsure of yourself or unhappy in your new role just doesn't fly. It may be the norm, but it's not normal.
For many new moms, the logical person to turn to for help is one's spouse, but there's the rub. He's not only more of a rookie than you are, but he's exponentially and perhaps genetically less likely to admit he doesn't know what he's doing. (Why does it take 10,000 sperm to fertilize 1 egg? Because none of them will stop to ask fordirections!) Discovering that your spouse isn't necessarily the diaper champ you had envisioned or that he somehow manages to sleep through midnight howls that would wake the dead or that he's fleeing to the office at the crack of dawn or that he's so in love with the baby he never puts her down or that he just isn't the person you had imagined can make the loneliness of the first few weeks home even more desolate. Whatever you do, keep in mind that it takes a very longtime to negotiate the shift from partners to parents. The fact isyou're never going to walk totally parallel paths; during the first few weeks postpartum, your husband will struggle with a new self-image and with a desire to help you that is undermined by a relative lack of experience and a concomitant feeling of inadequacy.
Steve and I definitely fell into what I call the Expert and the Dumb Apprentice Trap. I remember one weekend morning when I decided to take a bath – a treat I had been denied for several weeks. I was about to step into the steaming tub, when Steve shouted from the other room, "She seems to have a rash on her butt. Do we have any of that diaper cream?" I knew he would never find it, so I put my robe back on, joined him in an evaluation of the rash, a search for the cream, and a lengthy debate about exactly how much to apply. By the time the diaper was in place, my bath was cold.
This same dance played out countless times: He would defer to me or I would take over or he wouldn't jump to rescue fast enough, so I would just do it myself. Notice how much of this traditional dynamic was a function of my impatience, presumed superiority, or tendency to second-guess. I may have resented the fact that I was doing more of the caretaking, but I was also enabling us to slip into our Dad-the-breadwinner, Mom-the-caregiver roles.
The key for most couples is to face up to your fantasies and disappointments, to discuss your expectations, fears, and anger. If you're feeling disappointed, hurt, resentful, angry at your spouse, don't expect him to read your mind. Tell him what you're feeling and what you need.
As the infamous six (sex?)-week check-up approaches, your husband is likely to be eagerly awaiting the verdict from your obstetrician that it's perfectly safe to "resume normal intercourse." When my doctor shared this cheerful news, I burst out laughing. Only some long-repressed S & M fantasy could have rekindled my sex drive at that particular juncture. Most moms share the feeling that six weeks is way too soon to resume anything involving a penis. A recent study in the Journal of Sex Research found that by 12 weeks postpartum, 84 percent of couples had rekindled their sex lives. Still, the researchers point out, fatigue, adjustment to your new role, physical changes, and breastfeeding can depress your sexual desire for several months. Or your need to reconnect with their pre-baby self may accelerate your desire for sex. When you're wrapped up in your baby's needs all day long, you may ache to be wrapped up in your husband's arms, to feel cared for and desirable.
Sometimes what you need more than anything is to be held, pampered, told you're amazing, seduced -- not with champagne and roses --but with genuine empathy and support. The husband who prepares dinner, cleans up the living room, plays with the baby while mom enjoys a long soak in the tub, and then offers to rub her back is much more likely to get laid than the guy who uses guilt, guile, or whining to initiate sex.
I'm not certain if it was exactly at that point – but somewhere around Maddie's second month on the planet, I reached a stage where I was definitely more in synch with her. Perhaps my postpartum hormonal balance (or imbalance) had normalized. I could not only respond more confidently to her needs, I could anticipate them. Maddie's cries no longer threw me into a frenzy; I could actually distinguish between hunger and boredom and frustration and do my best to help.
Still, our days together were hardly "predictable." Occasionally, I would manage to shower, dress, and get Maddie out the door for a walk, but more often, our days were loose and formless, coming togethergradually as a series of unplanned activities. What I did from dawnto dusk could no longer be measured by the usual metrics: clock, Filofax, lists of "to-dos." I had entered a different dimension, a zone where waves of emotion, not discrete blocks of time, traced the progress of my days.
Without clear goals, with little structure to our days, we can easily find the first few months with an infant suffocating and disorienting. But, of course, there are countless "goals" that are reached, even exceeded, when we care for our newborns; we just don't perceive them that way. When you respond to your baby's cries and manage to soothe him, you've accomplished a major "task"; when you tune into your infant – by lying next to her or molding your body to hers – you're "achieving," even if those achievements are difficult to articulate or to quantify. And, of course, when you do manage to dress your baby and yourself, to go out for a walk or a drive, to call on a relative or go to a doctor's appointment, you've pulled off a three-ring circus of amazing feats. Just don't try explaining that to your colleague at the office or to childless friends. Even your spouse, if he's back at work, is likely to be so grounded in his reliable and predictable routine, that, compared to the gravity-free soup you're floating in, he can seem to occupy a different planet.
There's no question that one of the most important supports during the first few months of your baby's life is other new mothers. You don't need a network, just a couple of women who can provide advice, comfort, and a little perspective on your new life. Your colleagues at work, even those who have children, are guaranteed to hold up the wrong mirror – the one you used before your baby was born. Only another mom or someone who remembers keenly how abnormal the initial months feel, has the sense and the sensitivity to say, "Hey, you're never going to get back to normal. You'll just find your footing and begin to find yourself again."
What you may discover is that the new you belongs at home, not at the job you thought you loved. Or you may realize that being home fulltime with a baby isn't what you're cut out to do 24/7. Whether you transition back to work or stay home fulltime, your decision will require much soul-searching and engender everything from ambivalence to high anxiety. Even if you think it's about your baby and what's best for him or her, believe me, it's not that simple. As your fourth trimester comes to an end, and you emerge from the cocoon of fatigue and confusion that often characterize this early "altered state," you'll experience a dramatic shift not only in your relationship to your baby, but in all your relationships, most importantly, yourrelationship to yourself.
Stage 2 Finding Your Footing, Finding Yourself: Months Four Through Twelve
Summary of Stage 2
Unlike the first three months, which one mom described as a time of "total caregiving with no return," the four-to-twelve-month period is often the "falling head over heels in love" phase. Looking at photos of Maddie when she was five, six, or eight months old (of which there are several trunkfuls), I'm reminded how her body had a kind of delicious ripeness, like a spanking new pillow, creamy and cool and soft. After her bath, I would put my terry-wrapped beauty on the bed and lie next to her for hours, admiring the formation of her ears or the perfection of her tiny wrinkled toes or the soft sound of her burbling voice.
We had made the transition from a stage when Maddie's relentless neediness elicited a kind of primal pull to soothe, feed, and hold her to a phase choreographed around a much more reciprocal dance. Coming into her room in the morning, I experienced the helpless bliss of watching a frown of frustration melt into a gummy smile. At the sound of my voice, joy animated every fiber of her body; no matter how rough the previous night had been, no matter how wasted I felt when I dragged myself out of bed, her beaming face washed away the fatigue. As my three-month maternity leave galloped to an end, I experienced moments of sheer panic. I had missed the daily challenges, mental stimulation, and rewards of my job, but the image of handing Maddie over to Ana, the Filipino woman we had hired to care for her, sucked the energy out of me.
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