Blissful Mamas

There are rough days, then there are rough days. Today was the latter.

I actually put my 3 month old daughter down in her bassinet, shut the bedroom door and went into another room to let her sob uncontrollably for 5 minutes. I never thought I would actually do that.

I had tried everything. Feeding, diaper change, walking around, playing with toys she likes, YouTube videos with a lot of color and sounds. I swaddled her and placed her in the bassinet and left. My already fragile mental health depended on it. So, I listened to her cry from the other room, getting progressively more hysterical. I didn’t move. I just put my head against my knees and sobbed along with her.

Everyone tells me that I am “a great mom”, “I‘m doing the right things”, “Doing the best you can”. I don’t believe a single word of it. They say it like it’s supposed to be reassuring, comforting. It’s not. It just drives home the fact that I can’t be what I am supposed to be for my own child.

No one sees us when it’s just my daughter and I. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t do anything bad to her. I do leave, though. I do yell and cry and beg her to stop. Sometimes we’re both hysterical and neither of us know how to do anything for the other.

Would they still say those things if they knew?

I know the title is what grabbed your attention, so let me explain.

I want to do it. I know that I never will do something like that because even though it would end for me, everyone I care about will have to deal with the hurt. I don’t want anyone asking themselves what they could’ve done or what signs they missed. That’s not fair to them, and I’m such a “people-pleaser” that I know I will keep living until “It’s my time”. I will keep pushing forward through everything that’s trying to make me quit. I have a daughter now. I do not want her growing up thinking that she was the reason.

It’s just a fantasy that I fall back on every now and again. It’s soothing to imagine the darkness. The nothingness of the end. There is no afterlife, that I believe. It just all comes to an abrupt, dark, halt. Silence. Peace.

Now I write this by her bassinet, on my side of the bed, watching and listening to her sleep. It passed. It always does. “It doesn’t last forever” my husband would say. He’s right but damn, in the midst of “the moment that won’t last forever”, it sure feels like it’s never going to get better.

Tomorrow is another day.
We adventure onward.

~ Kaycee