Baby Town

The Radically Mundane, Psychedelic Realm of Postpartum

Carol Anne Lesser

May 4, 2023

How do you describe the postpartum experience? My friends and I have been calling it Baby Town and it really does feel like you’ve entered a different place, a different space and time; an alternate reality. It is at once overwhelming and boring, blissful and fucked up, psychedelic and mundane, magical and depressing; all while being raw, bloody, and primal. It’s easy to feel overstimulated and isolated while nearly never being truly alone. This time can be ecstatic and full of grief in the same moment, exhausting and all consuming. The complete miracle of creating and welcoming new life while mourning the death of your old self, before this tiny alien creature showed up and changed everything; the spring time of renewal, compost, blooming, and decay.

I’m currently about 8 weeks postpartum. My milk came in on day 2 and I woke up with rock hard giant freaky porn-star tits. I walked in to the bathroom, groggy eyed and bleary after a night of not sleeping. I looked in the mirror and saw that my boobs had doubled in size overnight (and they were size-able to begin with). Naturally I walked out to the hallway and flashed my husband yelling, “Look at these!” What I had forgotten from my first time around is how painful rock-hard milk-filled breasts are and this time I have a giant toddler. The chunky beefcake-bruiser of toddlers, who wanted to rub his enormous head on them all the time. It hurt so bad that I cried one day.

Luckily as a Birth Doula and student midwife, so I know a lot of tricks. I took hot showers and massaged those boobies until they released some of the milk. Postpartum is so messy (so is life!); somehow sensual and gross at the same time. It’s a time full of milk, blood, poop, pee, sweat, and spit-up; diaper changes, sleepless nights and blurry days, loneliness while being touched constantly.

The first few days the mother will experience a copious amount of blood loss, no matter how you do it. Whether the birth was vaginal or through the belly, there is a placenta that must be born and this leaves a plate-sized wound where it detaches from the uterus that bleeds for about a month. It starts out alarmingly heavy, for the first few days. Brilliantly the pregnant body plans for this by producing up to 50% more blood. A postpartum mom in town, who’s further along than me, passed on her adult diapers that can be opened up and used like massive menstrual pads. After the first week or so the bleeding is like a regular period followed by just spotting as the uterus involutes or goes back to its usual size of a regular potato and closes back up again. From a large watermelon to a regular old potato in just 30 or 40 days. Think about that, 10 months to grow watermelon sized and one month to go back. Miraculous! Let’s hear it for the uterus, the strongest muscle on earth!

My first week or so postpartum I felt high, sedated and floaty from the awesome cocktail of hormones that the birthing body creates when we don’t fuck with it and add other chemical interventions. Even with all the physical challenges I still felt like I was glowing and there are plenty of physical challenges the first week after having a baby (especially once the high wears off). Do you know what a perry bottle is? It’s like a squirty ketchup bottle only you fill it with warm water to clean out your vagina (Vagina, Vagina, Vagina!) every time you pee, to rinse off the blood, and so that your urethra doesn’t sting after all the pressure and intensity of labor. Sexy. We should all know about this stuff because it’s such a common part of the current birth experience and what it looks like to grow new life, to continue our species. It’s messy. It’s raw, uncontrollable, and beautiful.

I’ve read about how you’re supposed to stay in your room or in your house for 40 days after having a baby to keep warm and heal from the hard work of pregnancy and birth. One book said that there’s a traditional Chinese practice of the mom staying in her room with her baby while her mother-in-law brings her only broths for 40 days! It sounds wonderful and terrifying. I tried to stay inside for 40 days and lasted about 20 before I started to feel depressed and crazy so I began going out. I kept an eye on my bleeding to gauge if I was doing too much. If I started out hardly bleeding and then it increased after the outing, that was a sure sign that either the outing was too long or someone else should have carried the baby. I read some advice that said after pregnancy we shouldn’t focus on losing the baby weight but rather turning the excess fat into muscle. I love this. Don’t get thinner, get stronger!

Now I’m out and about, operating at about half-capacity. It’s refreshing and tiring because I’m still not sleeping. Although my body has healed and I’m growing stronger, I’m now 2-months sleep deprived and it adds up. My nervous system is also flaring up as my sleep deprivation gets deeper and my quick trigger response to the sounds of the baby fires off. I’m so tuned in to that dang baby. Every coo whimper or cry sets me off. My back straightens and my jaw clenches before I can think. I’m trying to stay relaxed, do all the yoga, meditation, and nervous system regulating practices. Still my body tenses with the constant needs coming my way 24 hours, day and night. My baby has gained nearly 4 pounds in 2 months exclusively eating from my body. Yeah! That’s right, I’m exhausted and proud because what looks like laying around all the time is actually the damn hard and important work of offering complete sustenance to another human being.

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My experience of postpartum this round compared with my first birth is like night and day. It was so fucking hard the first time. I felt like a feral animal, naked, alone and bleeding, surviving with my baby. I didn’t know how hard it would be and I didn’t call in the right kind of support or nearly enough of it. This time I have my parents helping a ton, my husband took 2 weeks off and is working from home, we had a community meal train, and a program where 10 of my girlfriends committed to days of the week to make me laugh. Yes! I would totally recommend this. If you’re going towards Baby Town or you know someone who is, have a committee to bring food, a crew to help with the baby, and a team to bring daily laughter for the first 6 weeks postpartum at least. If that won’t prevent postpartum depression, I don’t know what will! Not to belittle postpartum depression, sometimes you need more than jokes. But for a lot of us a joke a day, a funny story, or a silly video is enough to brighten our mood and keep us feeling held by community. Some friends sent me a song to dance to, brought fancy coffee drinks, and rubbed my back. Anything to increase joy and pleasure in the new mother who is going through one hell of a time.

I read this story describing birth as the descent into the mysterious underworld and the postpartum experience as the climb out. In this story there are 2 sisters: the goddess of light and the goddess of darkness. The sister of light feels the need to explore the darkness as she doesn’t feel complete and wants to know the great mystery. She tells some wise old women she’s going down to the underworld and to come get her if she’s not back in a few days. As she descends the gatekeeper takes one of her belongings to let her pass through each gate and once she gets all the way down she’s been stripped completely naked. All her power totems, her defenses, and identity that she thought she’d need to protect herself are gone; just like giving birth. Then her body is hung from a hook and the wise ones descend to bring her anew back into the light. This is where community comes in to be our life-line.

We’ve got to change the storyline about having a baby being this death-defying experience needing lots of medical intervention and then once you survive this challenge it’s easy. There’s just a BABY on the other side! And this baby will bring you (especially the mom) nothing but bliss and ecstacy. If you have a hard time, there surely must be something wrong with you personally because birth is the hard part, Baby Town should be easy peasy…. This story sets us up to not ask for help or prepare for the immense all-comsuming challenges of taking care of a tiny person. It is a recipe for disaster: depression, anxiety, and isolation. Even with all of our visitors, after 2 months of mostly staying home, I get a natural high from dropping off my older son at preschool, just from being around other people.

The experience with a new baby can feel isolating because it’s hard to get out for a while with a tiny useless creature who is constantly pooping himself and then falling asleep while sucking my nipples. Glamorous. Some say that the hardest part of the postpartum period isn’t the bleeding or sleep deprivation but the isolation that can be so deep and so cold. Like you’ve gone through the enormous rite of passage of birth, leaping through the fire, and then you’re left alone to survive, drowning in an ocean of diapers and laundry, with hormones raging, and a hunger so deep you crave an IV filled with butter so you can sleep while you feed the baby and nutrients are pumped into your body. It’s a wild time, one we are not meant to do alone.

We must support each other and we must practice vulnerability to accept the support, the love, laughter, food, and companionship that is so essential after having a baby. Really this kind of community is essential all the time, but this postpartum time is such a unique liminal in-between worlds experience. An experience where we are literally opened up and need to rest, repair, and grow strength for the long grueling journey of parenting ahead.

Ok the baby needs my boobs, no more time to write.

See you next time!

Carol

Please leave a comment and let me know how this piece landed with you or give me a suggestsion for what to write next. Let’s grow this community here and support each other! Feel free to ask questions or share your own stories or ideas for the postpartum period.