Story #75 - Wise Words - Postpartum Pandemic Stories - Chelsea, Ohio (USA) - On Motherhood and Social Media, Rawness, Freedom, "Bouncing Back" & Handling Dual Emotions
Once in a while, social media's algorithms do their job, and you stumble on inspiring people whose presence hit home: Chelsea is one of them. I started following her personal page @chels.keeps.it.real a year ago. I realized she was also the founder of Postpartum Together, a virtual space for "preparing for and processing postpartum and motherhood," and for which she offers postpartum coaching services and writes about sex, self-care, mental health, and everything in between.
I reached out to her because she'd been very vocal about mothering and postpartum in the age of social media. I wanted to know what it meant to her to be visible in the public eye as a new mom, with all the judgment that it implies, and also the sense of community it brings.
I had a personal Instagram page before I founded Postpartum Together. It was right after I had my first baby—a son, who's now three and a half years old. On it, I mostly talked about losing the baby weight and posted picture-perfect images of myself and my kid.
It was a pristine tale of my life, when behind the scenes, I was full of insecurities.
The issues were that I never addressed the changes that had happened in me. You don't just become a mother overnight. It's a process, and there's a lot of transitions following the birth of your child.
Somehow, we focus so much on the birth plans—which are cool and a necessity—while we forget to plan our postpartum period. If you really think about it, birth only last hours, when you'll be postpartum for many months, if not years. This time of our lives deserves to be well-taken care of.
With my son, all I knew about being postpartum was what I found on Pinterest: I'd do arts and crafts and worked hard to "get my body back." I took pictures of myself babywearing my infant (smiling, of course), but I don't think I gave myself the right to be two things at once: I loved becoming a mother, but I also had my identity crushed. My relationship was also shit for a while. Instead of focusing on how I felt inside, I pushed all that energy towards taking cute pictures of my kid so I could prove that things were better than they were. It was not malicious; I was just trying to cope with what I had expected, versus the reality of my new postpartum life.
(Family photo)
Speaking of expectations, I think it's important to address them: many women, including myself, spend a lot of time preparing for their baby's arrival. We focus on the birth itself, the things to buy, and can even be aware of the aftermath to a certain degree. But what I found to be the hardest was the expected timeline on how long postpartum lasts. We are told it's going to be a couple of weeks—after all, we have a 6-week postnatal check with our OB, and then we never see him again!—when in reality, it's much more complicated than that.
After I had my son, I expected to be postpartum for a few weeks, and then resume my life as I knew it; to start having sex and to exercise the way I used to. When that didn't happen, and I still felt like everything was in transition, it was very confusing.
I didn't want to bring it up to anyone because it would have meant I was failing as a mom.
It took me until I got pregnant and learned that my daughter had a heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot to dive into my feeling. I was twenty weeks pregnant when I received the diagnosis, and I allowed myself to stay in bed for days. My grandma was also in the hospital during that time, and she passed when I was twenty-two weeks. It was the first time in my life that I let grieve flood me and that I didn't try to cover it up with a feel-good mantra.
After that, it was a very freeing time. That episode broke down a lot of walls that had and gave me the ability to connect with people more realistically.
So I made the switch: from pristine and unhappy, I became raw and free.
I needed to allow myself to be messy publicly. I had made my life public after my son's birth, and I owed it to myself to do the same--but truthfully this time--with my daughter.
January Harshe, from Birth without fear, was a huge inspiration. She helped me enjoy motherhood while being authentically present to the world.
I've always been the most optimistic, "cup's always full" kind of person. It comes from a "suck it up buttercup!" matriarch, which formed me in a lot of good ways but was also damaging because no one can talk about rainbows all the time. I began to see the world as a raw human experience. I spoke to my mom about it, and it wasn't until last year that she told me she'd been on meds to treat postpartum depression. I have a history of mental illness, but I didn't know about it!
(Family photo)
I'm thinking a lot about people who are postpartum during COVID. It reminds me of the time after we brought our daughter's home; we knew she'd need surgery five months after she was born, and she couldn't afford to fall sick. We didn't have any people over, just our parents.
The hardest part for us during that time was to have a toddler. Because once you’re bringing baby home, you can't get out anymore. On top of it, there's the learning period, the endless adjustments, and you can't do any playdate or having help from the outside world. It's just you and your mess, so you need to be able to say things without feeling judged.
What I tell the women who are registering for the workshop is this: COVID is an extra barrier. You are not going to have all this support you had expected, and everyone's circumstances will show up differently. At the same time, I also emphasize that having to stay home means less going out and more rest. This virus reduces the peer pressure of having people over and hosting them a couple of days postpartum. You also don't have to deal with divergent opinions on your parenting skills, which is huge.
Despite the grieve, there's a definite silver lining to it. I fear that these women won't have the space to experience the grieving process and will carry over with this. We have to give them the time, space, and permission to grieve. We feel guilt, the hospital can be traumatizing, we're lost, and it's an overall shitty time to have a baby. Things are being taken away from you, and although people will tell you that we are "lucky" (to have a healthy baby, to stay home, etc.), it's essential to have the opportunity to grieve and be thankful. Not just one or the other.
This is a vulnerable and magnificent time in our life. Don’t let other people rain on your parade.
Chelsea's Wise Words:
Get yourself a postpartum plan: talk about rest, sharing the mental load, and the different identity changes. Read about it, work them through.
Have contact numbers on hand (therapist, doctors, virtual resources, friends to call). You might not need them, but having them prepared is everything.
Try to have a conversation with your significant other about things that will change (sex, sleep, chores) and your expectations. Preemptively having these talks make it better, so you don't just want to yell, "I hate you" when you're both sleep-deprived.