The first few months where hell. Literal hell.

I arrived home on a Thursday and we had Jay’s parents in shortly after that for Soleil’s Brit Bat.  They were wonderful and did not interfere with my attempting to breast feed and visits with the Lactation Consultant. They tried to help when she cried. She would cry every day for hours. We went out for dinner once and when Jay and I returned, Soleil had spent the entire time crying. It was so hard.

The 1 week mark of being home was punctuated with the news that my boss, the one I loved and worked hard to move to his team, was leaving. He would be gone by the time I got back from maternity leave.  I had arranged to be on maternity leave (I only got 6 weeks) for 15 weeks. The last 11 were work at home weeks. I went to 20 hours of work a week, at home. I mostly did things at nights and listened into meetings about software projects I was working on at the time.

Soleil quickly fell into a pattern. Wake at 6, eat, play. Sleep. Wake eat play sleep. wake eat play SCREAM between 4-7 pm, eat sleep and then a bunch of eating and sleeping over night. I would stand in a dark closet, shutting out all stimulation to calm her. She clawed at me as if to say "make it stop" but I had no idea what was bothering her. Sometimes it was better to put her down on the floor and let her scream while I cried. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.

After 2 weeks, I was encouraged to give up breast-feeding. I was already resenting the time of trying to get her to eat. Even with bottles we had to put the bottle in her mouth and then get some liquid in her before she would acknowledge that it was there and try to eat.  I was guilted by perfect strangers for giving her formula. My light of life was getting darker by the day. I was getting very little sleep and then not much done during the day. And just at 4, when I was ready to get coffee or something to get me going again, she would start the scream.

Once, I remember having the idea of just tossing her out the window. I was immediately horrified that I would even think that. How could I? I had spent so long trying to have a child and I was thinking this?

I was furious with myself and the world. No one told me that motherhood would be like this. They LIED and told me that I would see her and be bonded for life. I didn’t even like this screaming monster. How could I bond with her? Oh, yes, I loved her (and I still do!) but the first month left me emotionally drained and unsure if I would ever be able to like this child. I often had thoughts of driving my car into a tree. But usually, Soleil was with me and I couldn’t do that to her.
Soleil at 1 month.