within the first few hours of giving birth I started having intense intrusive thoughts about being the right kind of mother/wife/woman I was also pretty addicted to scouring the internet for everything related to motherhood and parenting
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I think some amount of anxiety about this is common but in addition to the normal new mom stuff, I was struggling with a recurring sense of shame over how utterly female I felt
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even the pragmatic side of newborn care exacerbated this, since I was breastfeeding in the early days, exclusive breastfeeding is simply incompatible with the 50/50 childcare a modern woman is led to expect, even if the workload evens out later
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it turns out that a lot of my supposed relaxation re:gender over the last few years was actually just me figuring out a new way to be "one of the good ones" in my current social circle and when my testosterone and estrogen levels plummeted, all of the old shame rushed back
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I often simply did not ask for help from eigen even when he could have stepped in, out of the conviction that if I wasn't running myself ragged I was taking advantage of him every time I felt like I was flailing: shame
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and when I burnt out, there was my internal chorus of harpies screaming at me for not holding him to modern expectations ask husband for help? shame expect husband to help without asking? shame break down in front of husband? shame
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let husband step in with baby? shame etc etc much of the time, it wasn't this extreme it was exacerbated by life stress, sleep dep, having to talk to my Asshole Ex
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but even when I was mostly doing well, I was constantly on guard trying to make sure that I wasn't acting like any Type of Woman, Type of Mom, that I'd ever seen mocked or dismissed
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anyways I still feel weird about all of this, even if the shame is abating but the katamari is starting to collapse under its own weight, and I may have no choice but to let it
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idk why I wanted to write this thread processing exercise, maybe? a warning if you're the same kind of person as me? utter inability to stop tweeting about incendiary topics? who knows at any rate, I'm still gonna do this baby thing again
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