Apparently (definitely) after you give birth, all of the estrogen and progesterone that have been making you crazy throughout pregnancy, making you sob over tiny eggplants at the grocery store, these hormones abruptly PLUMMET, but then oxytocin, ie baby joy hormone, RAGES, which is why I now sob in the shower because Soap and I sob whenever I look at my son’s fingernails. Thankfully I feel, I think?, self aware enough to not let this insane push pull period of feelings and joy and pain calcify into postpartum depression, though I definitely understand why this time could make women dance into traffic or stare at their babies like they’re watermelons that they’ve never met. I think I can work through this time as long as I’m staying very on top of my feelings, letting them be what they are and acknowledging them. And so I leave you, for now, with an insane and only PARTIAL list of all of the reasons I’ve cried in the past week:
- because of the fat behind his knees
- because he’s hiccuping and do the hiccups hurt him and HE SHOULD NEVER FEEL PAIN
- because Wine
- because I looked at my Scar and didn’t see my own body
- Because of the tiny bruises on his hands where they tried to get his IV in, and how I also have trouble getting IVs put in
- because Morrison
- because am I doing it right?
- because I will never take a shower again without missing my Son
- Because my Disney princess feet are now DREAMWORKS SHREK FEET
- because my heart lives outside my Body now and I can’t undo it
- because Morrison, again, and my love for him
- because Morrison, holding Joe
- because if either of them died I would die
- because Joe has too many clothes and none of them fit
- because I left him just now to write this list
- because it’s dark out and that’s when he feels the smallest
- because I can’t protect him
- because I don’t know him well enough yet
- because of crust from tears in the corner of his eyes
- because I keep dropping things and I can’t bend to get them
- because every moment is gone before I live in it
- because he broke eye contact
- BECAUSE HIS NOSE