2011 - Talk Birth

1. http://www.birthingbetter.com/
2. http://www.facebook.com/#%21/pages/Sincerely-Yours-Photography/163051267048017
Birthing the Mother-Writer (or: Playing My Music, or: Postpartum Feelings, Part 1)
(2011-06-10 14:38)
A friend and colleague of mine [1]recently wrote some very touching and honest posts about her recent postpartum
experiences. It is amazing how powerful the written word can be at clarifying and explaining one’s
feelings.
I wrote the following article about my own postpartum feelings several years ago and have submitted to
various publications, but it has always been rejected. So, I decided to finally ”publish” it here. I plan to then
do a follow-up post about my postpartum experiences with my other children.
Birthing the Mother-Writer* (or: Playing My Music)
By Molly Remer
After my first son was born in 2003 I felt silenced. Stifled. Shut down. Squelched. Denied. Invisible.
Dissolved. Muted. I felt suffocated, chewed up and my bones spit out, erased, deconstructed, worthless,
and useless. (In hindsight, I see the PPD-ish glint behind these feelings, though some of these feelings also
featured in my pre-motherhood neuroses.) Postpartum was the most vivid and painful transition point of
my life.
I felt slapped in the face by postpartum. I was triumphant and empowered in birth, but diminished, insecure,
and wounded postpartum. I had a difficult physical recovery due to unusual labial tearing that was not
repaired. I hypothesize that perhaps this contributed to my difficult adjustment to early motherhood. I’ve
long tried to analyze the difficulty, concluding that it is not uncommon in the least, but wondering why/how
others survive without mentioning this pain. How is anyone doing this? I would wonder, concluding that I
must not be ”cut out for this” and that I was the only one feeling alone, stifled, shut down, and unheard.
As a consistently overachieving type, it was humbling as well as psychologically painful to not ”get an A” on
this new ”assignment,” my baby. Each time he cried, I felt it was evidence of failure, failure, failure. I would
see women and couples without children and think, ”it isn’t too late for you” and, ”if only you knew.” When
I would see women who were pregnant I would feel a sense of grief for them, ”Just wait. You have NO idea
what is coming.”
I felt a duality in motherhood for which I was completely unprepared. How is it possible to feel simultaneously
so captivated and yet also so captive, I would wonder. Bonded and also bound.
Maybe these feelings mean I’m egocentric, selfish, or immature (I certainly lectured and berated myself
about that!), but they were my reality at the time. The experience was so scarring to me that for about 18
months after my first baby was born I considered not having any more children; not because I couldn’t handle
pregnancy, birth, or even the mothering of a baby and toddler, but because I could not stand the idea of
experiencing postpartum again. I came to realize that my only regret about these days of early motherhood
was not in how I related to my baby, or in how I took care of him, or loved him, or appreciated him, or
marveled at him. My regret is that I was so very mean to myself the whole time I did those things—in
reality, I was actually fairly skillfully learning how to mother. I was responsive, nurturing, kind, and loving
and I took delight in my baby, but I was cruel to myself almost the entire time and failed to appreciate or
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