Journal of a Sad Mom

Plenty of people say that having a baby is a blessing. Some people say that it gives them purpose. As a young married woman, I felt that having a baby was part of marriage and having a family. After three months trying to conceive, my husband and I succeeded.

In hindsight, the timing was completely wrong. Or maybe I should have stayed in touch with more people. Or maybe I should have waited to get my license first. Or maybe I shouldn't have gotten pregnant. I don't know. Having my first child was surrounded by tons of negative life experiences.

First, I dropped out of college, which was unrelated and still sucked. Part of it was that I didn't really have a purpose. Going to college was supposed to help develop that purpose. In high school, I had been fairly good at math and writing. Math had a higher earning potential, so I went with that for my college major. Who ever managed not to live in a trailer chasing fairy tale dreams of writing anyway? I wanted my work to contribute something and be meaningful. However, I didn't want to accrue debt without a sure way to pay it back, so after my scholarship lapsed from a clerical error, I quit.

The next bad experience that took place was my brother in law's crazy drug phase. He didn't know what to do with his life because his mom moved. His sister moved and got married. His brother was busy with me. His childhood home was now my future family home with friends from high school. So he partied and seriously couldn't stand me. A few times, he came to the house and trashed it, got high, and picked violent fights. My friends didn't feel safe, for obvious reasons. At this point, I was already pregnant and married.

Then, my sister and mom had a falling out over a laptop my mom bought me then gave to my sister after I moved out. My mom bit my sister and punched her a few times over it. Then she tried to lie to me and say my sister attacked her. That same night, my mom fought with her new boyfriend and threatened to take all of her sleeping pills to kill herself because no one would miss her. Except, she was pulling a guilt trip. She pulled guilt trips all the time as a way to hurt people when I was a kid. This one was worse. My sister went no contact for a few years after that.

Basically, the stage was set for a difficult and lonely first childbearing. The day of my scheduled induction, my friends were packing their stuff and moving out. This meant it was only a matter of time before we couldn't afford to live there anymore. I went to the hospital. We told my mom and in laws. This being my mom's first grandchild, she was eager. She waited with me for days as I waited for the induction to work. When it finally took, the pain was incomprehensible. My mom tried to comfort me and pat my hair. I needed her to not touch me. Eventually, I fell asleep from the epidural and the pain drip. From then, it was only five hours until my first child was born.

My first baby was small and sweet. I had been eagerly looking forward to her. I dreamt of all the things I would teach her. I would give her the love I didn't know. She was so quiet and peaceful. I wanted everyone to see her. My dad came to see her briefly.

I breastfed out of both an interest in her having the best health and because it was the most cost effective for our small income. However, I have strange nipples apparently, so my baby had a hard time latching at first. This led to me having a serious case of mastitis one week after giving birth. The beauty of this time, though, was how much support my mother in law offered us. She babysat and helped my husband while I was sick.

Eventually, I needed to refill on birth control after the baby was a few months old. I should have just walked down the street with the baby to the pharmacy and gotten the refill myself. Except for some reason, I decided to wait for my husband to drive me there. He never did, so I ended up pregnant again by the time my first was seven months old.

This is where I begin to really feel rotten. If you haven't noticed already, my life already fell apart around me. I am just here trying to stand up and be okay while taking care of my baby. Now I am pregnant with another baby. Nothing is going how I hoped it would. Nothing. I took two weeks worth of birth control pills at once thinking it would cause me to have a miscarriage. It didn't. My husband didn't really know I was pregnant for a while because I didn't want to accept it and kept hoping that something like too much cinnamon would end it. Stupid and horrible, I know. At this point, we were living with his grandparents in one room in Mississippi because we couldn't afford the apartment anymore.

Eventually, five months into the pregnancy, I went to the doctor and got confirmation. There were a lot fewer appointments to attend because of how late it was in the pregnancy. It was another girl. I tried to hold off on telling people this time. I told fewer people and didn't really take bump pictures either.

I was dreading giving birth and having to quit my job to stay home with two babies. My income was the only income by the time I gave birth, so I was really focused on trying to find ways to generate income while my husband looked for a good paying job. I took odd cleaning jobs and a gardening job despite the doctor's orders of not lifting anything heavier than the baby for two months.

By the time the baby was three months old, my husband had found work. Life was looking up. We were going to save and find our own place, which we did the following Spring.

I ended up pregnant again a year after my husband wouldn't bring me to get my shot or give it to me himself. I probably could have gotten a ride from someone else. Even though we were in our own place this time, I prayed it would be a miscarriage. I didn't do anything actively trying to miscarry, but my heart wasn't in it to have another baby. I already had two kids and was pretty rotten at being their mom. I didn't want to add another baby, but it was going to happen anyway.

During this last pregnancy, I was anemic. So on top of feeling rotten inside, I was not providing enough vitamins for my baby. When she was born, she had the worst bloating ever. She vomited her first feeding while the nurse was bathing her. She didn't poop or even fart the whole first day and a half. She was vomiting brown and green goo. The nurses kept telling me that she had just swallowed some after birth and to wait. She hadn't eaten. Finally, someone took me seriously about the baby not being healthy.

We spent two weeks waiting to find out what was wrong with her from the NICU doctors. It was Hirschsprung's. She couldn't nurse. I couldn't stay the night with her because I had to go home to care for the other kids. The whole time, my mind is foggy. One time, my husband and I were going home from a visit and I almost got out on the wrong floor because I couldn't remember how the elevator worked. I didn't want anyone to think I was depressed because they would treat me differently, like I was dangerous or something.

So all of that was on my mind today as I slashed at dead trees and thorny vines with my machete at dusk in the gloomy damp air. I felt as rotten as the tree. These three babies are precious. They have so much love in their hearts and so much energy. I just felt destructive, like I can't make anything grow. I feel like I am incapable of nurturing anything sometimes.