Mommy Meltdown

"You just want him to be perfect."

After Ben was born the doctors had some concerns because he had low blood sugar and a little bit of jaundice -- very minor things that they don't really worry about. When you are a new mom and you don't know what is going to happen and you just want him to be perfect and hold him, it gets overwhelming. The second day he was home I crawled up on my fianc‚ Matt's shoulder and just cried.

"I didn't event want to get out of bed."

You don't really think about the exhaustion until one day it just hits you. You are so preoccupied and not doing stuff for yourself anymore. The day I finally broke down I didn't even want to get out of bed because I was afraid that if I carried him anywhere I would drop him or pass out or something because I was so tired. I wasn't hungry, my body ached all over, I felt like I had the flu. I laid in bed and put my socks and robe on and cuddled up and tried to get some sleep, but after about an hour Ben woke up and was hungry again and needed changed again and was crying. I had been in bed all day, and I felt bad because I had him in bed all day. I just started crying hysterically and called my mom and said, "Mom I am not okay, I am doing really bad." She said, "Honey this is normal, this is all normal what you are feeling."

"She dubbed it Mommy Meltdown."

It was perfect terminology for it. You literally have no energy and are so tired for not doing for yourself. When the exhaustion hits, you realize, I am just a human and I can't do this anymore, I need to sleep, I need somebody to help me. My mom told me that I had to take care of myself too because I wasn't going to be the mom that I needed to be if I was so tired and not able to function, not able to get out of bed.

Having the Mommy Meltdown really put things in perspective for me. Just because you become a mom you don't become a super hero and you don't get magic powers. You can't deny that you are only capable of only doing so much. You have to have sleep or you will die, you have to have food or you will die, you have to have water or you will die. Sometimes as much as you may feel selfish at the time or like you are a bad mom because you are putting yourself first, you need to. You need to realize that you are human just as much as your child is a human, and your needs need to be met just as much as your child's needs need to be met.

"I had to modify my life and really get into a routine."

I heard someone say that you are on mommy time, and that is so true. You don't really know what day it is because your days go in two- or three-hour increments, depending on when your kid eats. You have to adjust to getting sleep in chunks instead of getting a full night's rest. Luckily my child allowed me to be able to get on a routine where I could sleep between his feedings at night, and then I get up around noon and eat something while he is asleep. From noon until eight or nine at night, I function like a normal person. We are working on getting on a schedule now where I am feeding him and pumping through the day and Matt feeds him in the evenings so that I can sleep, and then I feed him through the night.

"Being a mom is overwhelming, but it is a great thing, it is a great overwhelming."

I was just telling my sister that when you are pregnant you feel like "Oh my gosh, there is going to be this life, and I am going to be in charge of it, and I don't know if I can do it" up until the point when your child is born. When they brought Ben to me from the nursery I didn't want to put him down. You may have all these fears, but after they are here and you see them and they make little squeaks and cute faces, you don't want to stop looking at them, you don't want to put them down. That's probably the real reason mothers don't get sleep - we can't stop looking at our children!