I Thought Painting My Toes Would Help: The Truth About Self-Care
By Holly Loftin
I’m not someone who fantasized about motherhood when I was growing up. I didn’t play with baby dolls or play house, and the thought of pregnancy and delivering a child made me want to be celibate for the rest of my life. I was terrified of all things related to raising another human. I had made up my mind at 5-years-old that motherhood wasn’t in the cards for me. It sounded so scary, and frankly, boring. I wanted to do something super successful with my life. I wanted to be an attorney or a doctor or a famous actress. I was going to grow old, alone, married to my high-powered career.
Fast forward 34 years, and I’m married, pregnant with my first child, and still terrified about all things related to motherhood, especially the pushing-a-baby-out-of-my-lady-parts portion. No joke, I read so many books about labor and deliver, and basically cornered anyone who had given birth to hear their experience. The joke was on me because delivering the baby was the easy part. Raising the child, and letting go of the person I had been for 35 years is what was hard.
Pre-motherhood, I had led a very carefree, self-serving life. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, with whomever I wanted. If I wanted to get a pedicure, I got a pedicure. If I wanted to go to dinner with friends, I went to dinner with friends. If my husband and I wanted to Jetset to Mexico, we planned a trip. We were financially stable, with nothing but free time on our hands.
I had time for the things that filled my cup, like long conversations over coffee with girlfriends, pedicures, shopping, and all the things that make women feel alive. I prided myself in being the friend and family member who always showed up, and would move mountains to present at all important functions in my loved ones lives. I was front and center in planning over-the-top birthdays, bridal showers, and family gatherings. I had the luxury of being all things to everyone, and it brought me great joy. Being dependable and loyal were the two things I valued most. And I was able to be all of those things -until my world was turned upside down.
The day we brought our firstborn home everything in my life changed. I was over-the-moon in love with my baby but I also didn’t recognize the person that I saw in the mirror. I no longer got to sleep on my schedule or eat when I wanted to. Forget any sort of self-care. I was in survival mode. Just taking a shower was a luxury, and needless to say, I felt like someone had dropped me in the ocean without a life raft. It suddenly became very clear that I had taken my pre-baby freedom for granted and I found myself struggling to navigate the new waters of motherhood, while maintaining a glimmer of the person that I was pre-motherhood and it was beyond hard. Hard isn’t even the appropriate word-it was debilitating. It was a very dark place that I found myself. I was thrilled about the new baby but I was mourning the life of freedom that I had before.
To me, that was the hardest part of becoming a mother: the loss of one’ s self.
I knew that she was still in there but I just couldn’t find her underneath all of the spit-up, sleep-deprivation and anxiety.
After about 3 months of suffering in silence, I can remember finally getting up the courage to call a trusted friend and asking her how she survived and enjoyed motherhood. She had two children already and seemed to be on top of her game.
She said “easy, I have hired help. It really does take a village.” “You need a reliable sitter and ASAP.”
BTW, everyone needs a friend like this. One who will talk you off a ledge and give you a swift kick in the butt.
She was right. Raising children was not supposed to be tackled by only one person. Of course, I had my husband, who is an amazing father, but he had a contract job, with no paid vacation, so he was back at work after just one week. And I was left to figure out care for a child all day on my own.
I got off the phone with my dear friend, got on Care.com, and searched for someone that I could trust with my newborn. To be clear, no one looked worthy, but I got out of my comfort zone, for the sake of my sanity, and left my baby with a stranger I found on the internet.
Ok, It sounds worse than it is.
I remember the first time I left the baby with the sitter like it was yesterday. I went to get my eyebrows threaded. We had a desperate fuzzy brow situation. Well, everything on my body was hairy but I decided to tackle the least painful first.
I must’ve checked on the baby 10 times during my thirty-minute eyebrow outing. I remember rushing home, frantic that something had gone wrong, but when I got there, everything was fine. More than fine. The baby was fed, had a clean diaper, and was smiling from ear to ear.
Self-care, I can totally do this.
Slowly after each time away from the baby things got easier.
After a few months I ended up going back to work, put the baby in a trusted daycare, and I was able to get my joy back. Of course, I missed my baby but the time away was crucial to my well being. I apparently was someone who needed to work.
As time passed, my husband and I got into our parenthood groove. We were able to travel again, and I was able to go to the mall once in a while. I was also able to show up for my loved ones again, and could actually have uninterrupted phone conservations. I even managed to plan some baby showers and a couple girls’ trips. I had settled into my role as a mother, and was loving it, until I got pregnant with my second child.
I don’t want to sugar coat: Bringing our second child home was like being hit by a Mack truck, going 90 mph.
IT WAS SO HARD.
Hard isn’t even the appropriate word-it was catastrophic. I thought one child had been hard but I had no freaking clue what hard was.
I had zero time to myself. When the baby was sleeping and I had an actual moment to breathe, my second child needed something. Between feeding, rocking and changing my newborn’s diapers, my other child had needs too. He needed help with his homework, dinner prepared, a bath, a bedtime story and a lunch made for school the next day. He had school functions that I needed to attend and extracurricular activities most days of the week. I would load my newborn up to drop him at school, tend to her all day, load my newborn back up to pick up my firstborn at school, then drive him to his various activities. By the time I got home, I literally wanted to fall over. I had always been very present in my child’s classroom but now I had a baby who needed me too and I was trying to work around two schedules.
Adjusting to life with two kids was completely different than adjusting to one. The fog was not lifting like before and there was no end in sight. I didn’t have a job to distract me as much and forget about picking up the phone to talk with a friend. I was in the damn trenches 24/7. Everyday I suited up for war. I was slowly losing my identity as a person.
Was motherhood supposed to be this isolating?
I often wondered if I had made a mistake having more than one child. I know you aren’t supposed to say that but it was the truth. I clearly wasn’t cut out for multiple children. And my second born was hard. She is hard. Everyday is a test in my patience and my sanity.
I remember getting that same overwhelming feeling that I had with my first and wondering how I was going to do it all.
I felt smothered and terrified. Going back to work then wasn’t an option because we couldn’t pay for two children in school so I would have to adjust to being a SAHM mom.
Adjust I did not. In fact, I was a freaking mess. I felt overwhelmed, under-appreciated and so damn tired. I called a sitter we already trusted and asked scheduled her to watch both of my children so I could get a break. I actually called on the sitter more times than I’d like to admit. I needed an escape. I went shopping, got pedicures and did anything and everything that I thought would fill my cup. And it did. Until I got back home to a whining 5-year-old and a screaming baby. Then I needed a break again. It was a vicious cycle: I would escape then come back to the same anxiety and smothering feeling. Looking back, at that time, motherhood was a prison for me. I can remember just crying all the time and wondering if I would ever find the joy in motherhood again.
I heard all these moms on social media talk about self-care and I just couldn’t wrap my head around how these things were working for other moms but did nothing to relieve the stress for me this time around.
What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I happy with my children? I literally had the most perfect life but i was crumbling inside. I felt guilty and selfish. Like why would God give me these gifts that I obviously didn’t appreciate. Things were dark. I was failing in all departments: as a wife, mother, friend etc.
It wasn’t one moment but a series of events that made me reevaluate my life and who I wanted to be as a mom. That’s when I realized self-care for me, self-care was going to look very different as a mom of two. It was going to be a total transformation of how I was living me life. I couldn’t just tread water anymore. I couldn’t keep trying to escape my children. I had to scale back my life so I could be the best version of myself for my children. I had realized I was so irritable and unhappy in motherhood because I was simply trying to do too much in every aspect of my life.
Something had to give.
That’s when I had to really reevaluate my life to realize that self-care for me was more in the moments of my day to day life than it was about escaping my children to be alone.
It was about restructuring my thinking and re-evaluating the sort of friend, daughter, mom at the school I could actually be. It was about really taking a hard look in the mirror and asking how much of myself that I could actually give. A lot of it involved learning to say the word no. It was about realizing my daily limitations and not allowing myself to get to reach my breaking point.
For me, self-care was much bigger than a break from children. Don’t get me wrong, I needed those too.
It came in saying no to everything that didn’t involve my family. It came from realizing I couldn’t be everyone’s go-to friend. It came from realizing I had to scale back on my contract work
It came from realizing I could not escape my stressful day everyday with a glass of wine. I had to be better. I had to be on my game.
It came from realizing that although exercise may not ever get me up my pre-baby body, I needed to do it for my sanity, even if it was a walk for ten minutes a day.
It came from realizing my diet actually affected my mood. It came from realizing that some relationships I had with people were sucking me dry. My self-care didn’t come from a weekly pedicure but more from a time total revamped of my life. And it was a slow process. It was me basically making a checklist of what was important in my life and following it. It took a lot of trial and error. I would plan a lunch with a girlfriend and then realize on that day, at outing was just too much. It was ignoring a lot of calls and texts because I just needed to focus on my family. It was telling extended family that it actually wasn’t a good time for them to visit because I just couldn’t handle the stress of entertaining. It was protecting my sanity and what mattered most: being there for my children.
And slowly, the fog lifted. There is hope, I promise.
The moral of this entire story is please don’t let anyone tell you what form of self-care will be best for you. It’s not a one-size-fits-all; sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error and looks different at different junctures of your life. And if you need to lock yourself in a closet with chocolate for 24 hours while your husband handles the kids, do it. You cannot put a price on sanity.
Follow along with Holly’s motherhood journey on her blog and on her Instagram account @fromthebottomofmypurse.
