MOM-MARES
When you bring a life into the world and that life completely consumes your heart, it’s overwhelming. That love you feel for them is cosmic; it’s beyond comprehension or anything that can be put into words. Along with that euphoria, comes the awareness that it’s your job to protect them. Often those two things mixed together (along with raging hormones, exhaustion, and the general delirium that comes with being a new parent) and the result is some form of postpartum anxiety. Now, I am not one to joke about the depths of what the postpartum anxiety experience can be like. I know very well how dark, and scary, and consuming it can be. I want to share that side of it at some point, but there are also layers to this onions that you have to laugh at. And after all, isn’t that parenting in a nutshell? Having a nervous breakdown one minute and then laughing about it the next? So let’s have a little fun with this one…
My first experience came shortly after Lou was born. I was (and still am) understandably terrified of SIDS, so Chris and I were very responsible when it came to safe sleep. We never co-slept with Lou, she was always swaddled and safely next to us in her bassinet. Nevertheless a few weeks into being new parents, we woke up one morning and Chris told me about how in the middle of the night he’d jumped up out of bed in a panic because he had thought he’d fallen asleep with Lou. It turned out that warm ball of love he felt smothered under the covers was just our dog Joey. I just laughed at him, how embarrassing right? The very next night… out of no where I wake up with an audible gasp and start panic-digging through the bedsheets only to lift Joey up by her hind legs. Class, we call this karma. It made no sense! I never slept with Lou and in fact often fell asleep staring at her adoringly while she was dozing safely swaddled less than a foot away. It’s bad enough we have to fear all of these actual risks, now my exhaustion is playing tricks on my mind and waking me up with the impossible? But just as I laughed at Chris the night before, he woke up to my story and returned the favour by laughing at me. The only way to survive it all is to laugh at yourself, and the baby-in-the-bed fear was the tip of the iceberg.
Every mother I’ve ever spoken to about this has told me their own ridiculous mom-mare; a humorously impossible nightmare about your baby that, if real, would be terrifying but the absurdity makes it laughable. They always seem to cross our minds shortly after bringing baby home, and when we’re in a state of being both not awake enough to listen to reason and not asleep enough to react the absurd details.
Mine happened about two weeks in, when I was just about asleep. Our bedroom in our first house never had a door, and one night I lay there convinced a tiger had walked passed our doorway. I remember thinking “I hope Joey doesn’t bark” and may have even whispered shhhhh so that she wouldn’t alert the tiger to our presence. My sister had imagined a burglar was going to break into her house and come running into her bedroom with the sole purpose of throwing her baby out the window.
It’s hysterical what we do to ourselves. Throwing a baby out a window for no reason? A fucking tiger? Like I said before, if real, that’s terrifying… but it’s not even close to a realistic fear and as new parents we have enough of those to actually worry about. The love we have for our babies just pours out in the most ridiculous and overwhelming ways and the only thing that made me laugh about it, was saying it out loud. I could barely get the words out as I told Chris because I was laughing so hard. I think there were actual tears shed and maybe even pants peed when my sister and I swapped stories. And every single one I’ve been told after, has been equally outlandish and equally funny.
Being a parent is a lot of things and absolutely not all of them are easy or even enjoyable, but most of the time if you can bring yourself to share it… it becomes funny. Like I said, the only way to survive it all is to laugh at yourself once in a while. So do yourself a favour, call your mom friend and ask her about her mom-mare. It may just be the laugh you needed today!
