One of my great curiosities in the pre-parenting days was around how new parents function with so little sleep. Sure, they look a bit tired, speak slower, and seem to have a hard time following conversation, but how do they actually feel?
I know now! Like a ghost or a zombie is the easy answer. But, I want to put it in terms most people would understand: it’s like you’re a permanent resident of that strange, liminal space between awake and asleep. This state I think is best illustrated by the late, great filmmaker Satoshi Kon in his short Ohayo (オハヨウ). It’s only 1 minute! Go watch it.
You are definitely conscious, moving, and making decisions, but there is a stop-and-start sensation to all of it. You have a hard time moving from one task to the next. Instead of the monkey mind most modern humans are used to, where thoughts come rapidly, sometimes disagreeing with each other, your thoughts don’t seem to have clear beginnings and ends; sometimes no meaning at all.
You go from “I need to order more wipes. Did I take my probiotic already? What time is that appointment?” to “I need to order. Did I take? Time.”
Everything feels fragmented and hard to grasp.
Here’s a smattering of symptoms I noticed:
sugar cravings, particularly in the morning to correct the lack of sleep
caffeine creates more anxiety but withdrawal is more intense than usual
poor decision-making (this is subjective but I’ve noticed this in myself)
physical accidents: dropping things, stubbing toes, losing keys, etc.
irritation with situations that seem low stakes in retrospect
insomnia when the opportunity to sleep arrives
body aches that don’t resolve with sleep
sudden bouts of overwhelm and crying
You might be thinking, “this sounds like postpartum anxiety and depression!” and you’d be right. I’m starting to understand PPA and PPD not as conditions that coincidentally happen during the early days of parenting but as byproducts of a (family) system that is expending more than it can replenish, and mothers are often at the center of that system.
Now that I’m thinking about early parenthood as a system instead of just a timeline, Donella Meadows’ writing on leverage points has been helpful: “These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.”1 What are the limits and leverage points in the postpartum family system? This is the question I'll be mulling over for a bit.
If we can map out our own support systems, we can rally resources and find opportunities to create wellness and ease when the stressors inevitably come. This is why doulas and midwives often recommend things like recovery freezer food or setting up a meal train; in essence, these are rapid boosts to a system that will run at a deficit for at least several months.
For now, I’ll leave paid subscribers with a comic contemplating the “newborn phase” of motherhood. If you’re not a paid subscriber, no worries, this will come out on IG in a week.
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