Mary Cassatt - Woman with Baby

I remember attending a play group after my son was born. All of us were toting infants — a roomful of brand-new spanking moms. Although we didn’t know each other then as well as we would in the months to come, someone bravely ended the talk of nap schedules and bottle-feeding when she said, “I’ve been consumed with my mortality lately.”

You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief. “So I’m not the only crazy one!” It seems that we had all begun seeing the world a little differently since the birth of our babes. And not in the way we might have expected. Every woman hears when she’s expecting that “having kids changes you.” Well, no one provided any of the critical details.

Some of the initial morbidity that many of us experienced as new mothers could be attributed to the postpartum hormonal highjacking of our brains. But I know that in my case, anyway, the lenses through which I saw the world became increasingly clouded with fear even as those early days of motherhood faded into the background. What if something horrible happens to my beautiful child? And better yet, what if something happens to me that prevents me from being able to enjoy this magnificent time of life? 

Of course, the media doesn’t help. As a baby shower gift, a friend of mine – with all of the best intentions – gave me a subscription to one of the popular parenting magazines. After a few months, I stopped reading them. They made me a certifiable nervous wreck. One terrifying statistic and horror story after another left me completely paralyzed by fear. 

I’ve given a lot of thought and read a number of books trying to understand what happens to our minds after we have children. It makes sense from a “survival of the fittest” standpoint. As mothers, we must protect our offspring – which means that we also must keep ourselves out of harm’s way. After all, we’re the only ones who are truly capable of safeguarding our little treasures. 

But I think that in addition to our biological makeup is the human mind’s tendency to think, “If something really great is happening right now, then it’s probably about to end. I better get ready.” At least this was the case for me. I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Getting control of my mind has been the singular greatest challenge I’ve faced since giving birth. It far surpasses midnight feedings or grocery-store tantrums. My method for attack in any life crisis has always been research, research, and more research. So I’ve done a lot of reading – from books by psychologists and physicians to spiritual teachers and even mediums. I’ve read them all. 

For my birthday a couple of years ago, a friend of mine gave me the book, Inner Peace for Busy People by Joan Borysenko. In it, Borysenko explains the connection between the mind and body and provides some great anecdotes and practical steps to achieving peace of mind. I would say that her books have been the most helpful in my quest to gain control over my negative thinking — by practicing gratitude, trying not to “catastroph-ize” (or imagine the worst possible outcome to a situation), and by exploring my faith … just to name a few.

Actually, my quest to find mental “balance” is what led me down the road to this blog. Because it’s not just a mind thing — it’s a whole-self thing. I know that I’m not alone in my need to create a stronger “core” self, where every media-induced panic-alarm doesn’t send me into near cardiac-arrest.

But within the global play-group of mothers with a million tasks on their plates, we are often left without a forum for raising our hands and saying, “Hey – am I crazy or …?”

Six months after my son was born, I decided to leave the job that I’d held for almost six years to stay home and focus entirely on this new little man in my life. I remember about a week after I became officially unemployed, my mother sent a huge box of silk flowers as a housewarming gift. We had moved recently, and she thought that a few vases of flowers would warm up the place. It took me almost two weeks to make those floral arrangements.

I kept doing and undoing them until my husband finally said, “Aren’t you a creative person? You’re overthinking this.” He was right. The problem with my arrangements was that I was approaching the process in a very linear way .. the designs were perfectly symmetrical. I took my husband’s advice, relaxed a little, and let my creative juices flow. It felt great — and the arrangements looked more natural too.

Most women I know were in the work world for a decade or more before having their first child, and most of us reported to our desks until the day the baby arrived. We have had plenty of time to refine our job-place personalities  — whether we realize it or not.

When I decided to stay home with my son, I took the “me”  who had been successful at work and tried to relocate her … only this time my office was the entirety of my house.  I took this new domain and set of responsibilities very seriously. I was going to be the super Director of the Child and Home now. My baby boy was always thoroughly entertained, the house was spotless (whenever anyone came to visit), and I was always busying myself with something productive while my son napped. But I couldn’t for the life of me arrange a vase of flowers. 

It took awhile, but I finally came to understand that the “office-me” didn’t really fit in at home. Over the years in the career-world, I had changed to fit my job. Now that I was a mother, I didn’t need to play that role any longer — I had a new one. And this one involved getting back in touch with the more creative, less-linear me.

Whether or not new moms stay home or go back to work, motherhood changes us. And I think that this metamorphosis causes as much mental confusion as it does physical. It’s as if our brains and our lives have been simultaneously rewired. Letting ourselves think about and approach things differently than we did before kids is probably an important step to really enjoying this time in life. Parenthood begins that mental transformation for us — and we can either fight it or embrace it. 

For me, I finally just selected a few of my favorite silk buds, put them haphazardly in a vase, and had a nice laugh at myself.