The Aftermath Part II

Beyond the physical issues, emotions were running high.  This happens to new moms anyway, but I had a little extra drama to go along with it.

The day after my C section, I received an email from a close family member, whom I'll call Jane.  Basically, the email said that she and her husband were upset about the way they "were treated" by my husband when they had come to see me on the day of the delivery.  It said a lot of other things that I've already forgotten because I chose to.  It was mean.  It was rude.  It was insensitive. It was way out of line.  She has actually become notorious for sending such nastygrams to many people, so I guess I shouldn't consider myself special.  It was the fact that she sent it to me the DAY AFTER I became a mom for the first time.  When I was in the hospital, recovering from a long, emotionally and physically taxing labor and from a C section after that, adjusting to being a new parent, feeling the rush of hormones and emotions that follow delivery, in pain, not sleeping, and feeling vulnerable.  It was the most vulnerable I have ever been.  She kicked me when I was down.

She has a kid herself.  She should know what it is like.  She was too busy thinking about dumping her anger on someone else to think about it.  Or worse, she thought about it but chose not to care.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that she didn't just send it to me.  She cc'ed all of my immediate family on it, effectively announcing to everyone what she thought of my husband (and me, by proxy).  Nobody else responded to the email, and that had me wondering if they were all thinking the same thing (but perhaps had the class not to say anything at the moment, unlike Jane herself).  I worried that I had hurt the rest of my family.  But, otherwise, all I could think when I read it was that Jane was a bitch.  A selfish, egocentric bitch.  I did feel bad about my family having to stay in the waiting room instead of being welcomed into the room while I was laboring, but this is not a rare occurrence.  Couples decide to keep family out of the room until the baby is born all the time.  Plus, I would argue that many (maybe the majority of?) people who go to the hospital awaiting the birth of a family member do not expect to be in the delivery room during the labor and pushing.  What, are you going to come in and stare at "the business end" of things?  Or just watch in horror as I struggle?  I don't know.  Some people choose to invite their entire families into the room for the labor and delivery.  To us, it was logical for it to be just me and my husband.  To me, it makes sense to wait to be invited into the room after the baby is born.  To be fair, I also have no idea exactly what conversations were exchanged between her and my husband in the waiting room.  I was a little busy.  Maybe he was short with her.  Maybe he's not the best communicator, especially when under stress.  But she could have had a little understanding.  And if you're showing up to be supportive, you should be that.

It's worth mentioning that she had chosen to come when Everett informed her I was in labor.  I didn't request her presence.  It is a 2.5-hour drive.  So I thought it was nice that she wanted to come and certainly didn't tell her otherwise, as I wanted her to feel welcome to be part of things (to the degree to which we were comfortable with others' involvement).  When they had called asking about things and said they were coming, we also asked them to come that afternoon, not right away, since I had just started pushing.  We did that intentionally, thinking they wouldn't have to sit in the waiting room when they arrived that way.  How were we to know the timing wouldn't work out like we thought it would? Sorry, I didn't know I would be pushing for 5 hours.  I genuinely (and reasonably) thought the baby would be out by the time you arrived, so you wouldn't have to wait.  My bad.  So inconvenient for you.

If someone close to me has an issue with me, I definitely want to talk to them about it so we can sort it out.  The manner in which the message was delivered, however, and, more importantly, the timing of it, were absurd.  I felt no sympathy for her.  I felt some guilt, but that was because I felt guilt over a lot of things in my state of "baby blues."  But I mostly felt angry.  What I wanted to tell her was that she had a big chip on her shoulder and that she shouldn't take things so personally because not everything is about her.  I wanted to say that she was a selfish, self-centered asshole.  I wanted to tell her that I was shocked that she would burden me with all her negativity during this very sensitive time in my life.  I wanted to tell her to f- off and never talk to me again.  Ever the diplomat, and too worn down to fight any battles anyway, I instead apologized for any hurt feelings and tried to explain our decision to keep everyone else out of the delivery room. This was met with a brief, seemingly dismissive response that demonstrated a total lack of understanding and a clear lack of acceptance of my apology.  Something like "I've already moved and given you the information I felt you needed to know."  After that, Everett called her personally to apologize, and she seemed accepting of that and even left me a message telling me she really admired and respected my husband for taking the time to apologize personally to her. 

So I thought it was over, which was a bit of a relief, but it still left a very bad taste in my mouth.  Rather than feeling love and support from my family, I felt isolated from them. (It later turned out the rest were just staying out of it).  I felt blamed for something that I didn't think was really my fault.  I felt betrayed by her.  I felt defensive of my husband who had only been trying to do what we had planned and what we had agreed was best to protect ourselves.  I felt disappointed in the rest of my family for their silence and feared they were angry with me too.  It gave me this horrible sick feeling in my stomach.  I felt heartsick, like I had lost something very dear.  I was sad and cried a lot those first few weeks, and, most of the time, it was when I was thinking about her and the things she had said and done and thinking about how I wanted to talk to someone but feeling like I couldn't call my family.

It was made worse less than a week later when she sent me another nasty email accusing me of posting something negative about her (and the rest of my family) on Facebook.  This was full of even more insults.  She said something about how she thought we had resolved the issue and felt like she "got played" when she heard about this Facebook posting.  I didn't even read her whole email.  I read the first 2 sentences and realized what it was, so I decided not to continue.  I had no idea what she was talking about, for one.  I later discovered it was regarding some vague status update I'd posted about how I'd found that other people were trying to compare their birth experiences to mine without really knowing what I went through.  I can't see how this could have had anything to do with my family, since I had exactly zero conversations with any of them about my birth experience.  Secondly, I was pretty much outraged that she continued to bombard me with her paranoid bullshit while I was still recovering and trying to adjust to my new life.

I called her immediately.  This time I was not so nice about it.  I gave her a piece of my mind and told her she was borderline delusional for thinking anything I posted on Facebook was about her.  Again, does she think everything in the world is about her?   She confessed that her husband and her brother-in-law had seen my vague status update and told her it was about her and the rest of my family, and she believed them.  She even admitted she didn't even look at it herself!  She had just taken their word for it AND told my other family members about it, basically trying to convince them that I had turned against them and was bad-mouthing them online.  I advised her to look at it herself so she would realize there was no way she could construe that to be about her or anyone in our family.  I had no idea why her brother-in-law was meddling in our business either, but that was another point entirely.  And what kind of man is your husband anyway?  A high-school girl?  What grown man goes on Facebook, reads status updates and gets angry because he thinks they are about him?  Further, what kind of man tries to stir up more drama between family members?  She apologized for misinterpreting and blowing things out of proportion.  She did seem very sorry. I told her it was fine but said she should just call me and ASK me what was going on if she was concerned about something, instead of making assumptions about things and writing these mean emails. 

Things were smoothed over.  I'm great at smoothing things over.  Throughout all of this, I never called her names.  I never called her out for being the very opposite of supportive to me when I needed support the most.  I did my best to take the high road.  I could not truly forgive her, however.  I don't have the time or energy to continue thinking about it all the time, but I will never forget what she did in those days after our first baby was born.  Though I don't remember the exact words she wrote or said, I will never forget the way she made me feel.  She managed to further poison an event in our lives that was already very difficult and painful.  She managed to bring more anger and sadness into a time in our lives that was supposed to be joyful.  Maybe it was jealousy or insecurity.  I'll never know.  She acts like it never happened and tries to continue our relationship as usual, but I know it has changed our relationship forever.  I don't easily write people off, especially family.  I try to be understanding of what other people are going through and to forgive when people make mistakes.  Yet, there are things you can do or say to others that you can never take back.  I lost all respect for her, and I don't think she'll be able to earn it back, especially after all the things she has said and done to other family members since then.  As I said earlier, she has gone on to make accusations toward other family members and create a lot of other drama that has nothing to do with me (Thank God), with no shortage of nasty emails that have been shared with many parties. Interestingly, her husband is intimately involved in these conflicts as well.  I think it really says something about both of them.  All I can say is that I'm glad I have good, supportive people in my life, and it's a shame I can't count on her to be one of them. Further, I never received any kind of apology from her husband, or any acknowledgement of his role in the whole thing, and, truthfully, I'd be happiest if I never had to see him again.  I think I never really saw his true colors until this.

She may read this someday, but I actually hope she doesn't.  I'm certainly not going to make her aware of this blog or make it easy for her to come across it.  I didn't write these words to hurt her.  I wrote them to try to heal myself.  That's why I never said them to her (and never will).  But I had to say them, somewhere and somehow.  And this is the most cathartic way for me to say them.  Maybe I should wait until the day after she has her next baby and send her an email telling her what I really think of her and her husband.  No, wait, I wouldn't do that.  I'm better than that.  I realize that now I really am bad-mouthing her online.  Oh, the irony.  But all I'm doing is telling the truth.

So that's just one thing I was dealing with in the first week after becoming a mom, as though there isn't enough "normal" stuff to deal with in the first weeks after bringing home your newborn.  My family member's words and behavior, unfortunately, had a great impact and really stand out in my memory of this time period. I think it was actually the single most difficult part of this period of my life, when all my energy should have been focused on my baby and my new family.  I hope the impact she had will change with time.  I hope to forget all of that. It's not worth remembering.  The only thing worth remembering from the experience is that I shouldn't trust her or turn to her for support in the future.  I admit I should have learned that years ago, knowing what I know about Jane, but it took something this upsetting to open my eyes.

Everything else was sort of a blur. A blur of falling asleep and waking up, changing diapers, wiping up spit-up, feeding (and cringing at the pain from that), pumping, crying, eating, and hurting. But also loving.  A lot of loving.  I do remember all the tender moments holding my beautiful baby and feeling her warm little body against me as she nursed.  I remember watching her face and marveling at all the facial expressions she made, holding her tiny fingers and thinking about how cute they were, seeing her stretch and make little sound in her sleep, kissing her head and smelling her sweet baby smell. 

So much happiness.  Mixed with hurt, anger, guilt, sadness and disappointment.  It's no wonder I felt so emotionally drained and unstable.  It didn't get better either.  At 6 weeks, I decided I needed help.  I really thought I was outside the range of the "baby blues" phenomenon, but I still felt depressed.  I desperately needed to talk about everything that had happened in a space where I felt safe.  I needed someone to listen with empathy and not judge, to validate my feelings without trying to give advice.  Though it made me feel ashamed and the last thing I wanted to do was admit it was real by seeking help, I knew I had to get better, for the sake of my daughter.  I sought out a therapist.  It was a great decision.

That's enough for today.