Midnight MOMalogue Blog - vol. 2 | Reflecting on the Early Days

It’s 3:15 am. I’m sitting in the dark again nursing Nolan. 

My mind is all over the place. 

I think back to the early days of being a new mom.  It is hard to remember coming home from the hospital, looking at my son and feeling absolutely nothing. 

As someone who is usually excellent at articulating feelings, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel a thing. I would look at my son and it’s like I was numb. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t overjoyed. I wasn’t angry. I was just an emotionless body holding a tiny human. 

Then there were the middle of the night feeds, just like I am doing now, but they were filled with panic, anger, and overwhelm. I would be nursing Nolan and just start crying hysterically. I didn’t even know why I was crying but I literally could not control it. Then I would get angry with myself for not being able to snap out of it. I would be saying screaming my affirmations while sobbing. My husband would come out and take Nolan out of my arms while I worked through the hysteria. 

After talking with my nurse practitioner, my doctor, and my therapist, I realized that it wasn’t just the baby blues. I had intense postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. Talk about a winning combination... (joking, obviously).

But now, here I am at now 3:36 a.m. able to sit peacefully in the dark feeling connected to and totally in love with my son. 

So whether you are going through something similar now or have in the past… or you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, just know this….

Hard times strike. Uncertainty can feel overwhelming. But as pastor Shawn Johnson from Red Rocks Church said, “ You are not crazy. You are not alone. And this will end. “