Having a baby is such a crazy experience, it can sometimes pass you by in a blur. And other times the clock freezes and everything stands still.
These are the times when boredom, self-doubt and depression can set in. Sometimes all at once, creating a muddy outlook on life as a parent, rather than the beautiful rose-tinted view,
depicted on Instagram and Facebook.
Life with Dita started as follows. She wanted to do only two things, seemingly; latch onto my increasingly painful boobs or cry whole heartedly.
This phase lasted about three months. Three quite stressful months in which sleep was scarce, worry was prevalent and nipples were raw and cracked.
She refused to sleep by herself. She slept only in my arms and wailed loudly whenever I tried putting her down, especially at night.
Worrying about my husband being tired on the road, I also tried letting him sleep as much as possible because I have a mortal fear of something happening to him and being left to fend for
myself and baba all by my lonesome.
I know this might seem like a paranoid fear but a friend of mine lost her husband in a freak accident when their little boy was but ten days old and it struck terror into my heart,
knowing that something so tragic, unlikely and unfair could happen to someone so sweet and selfless.
This was a little bit of a challenge though, I was very tired and baby seemed to be in pain a lot of the time which freaked my out constantly and trying to somehow stifle her
cries in the wee hours of the morning to spare my husband made things almost impossible.
Obviously, I mostly failed but happily my husband sleeps like the dead and woke only to the most mournful of cries, sleepily suggesting things for me to try to calm her down which just
further exasperated me.
In the vein of: "Oh, feeding/burping/changing her, OHHHHH! I didn't think of that, thank you oh wise loved one, now go back to peaceful slumber".
I must say that during those first three insane months, my boobs took on a whole new role. Dummy, food, comfort, lullaby and tranquiliser all rolled into one. The only problem was it only
offered these lovely things to my little child and not to me. To me, every time she latched it felt like someone took a steak-knife to my nipples, slashing away maniacally until she finally
fell into a kind of rhythm and the pain subsided. My toes literally curled with agony every time I put her to the breast. But believe it or not, this pain was preferable to the
utter unpleasantness of a crying infant.
Running on fumes, hustling at midnight to change diapers and pat out burps, learning tummy rubs that help with gas, toe-curling breastfeeding and a niggling fear of my husband
thinking I'm a terrible mother, adrenaline was always slowly bubbling away just underneath the surface, keeping me going.
One morning I lay in bed, feeding my child and feeling the familiar stirrings of an oncoming panic-attack. Trying to smother the alarm that always accompanies the increased heart-rate and
blurry vision that marks these episodes, I tried to talk myself down and amazingly succeeded.
This really is nothing short of a miracle and I was limp with relief as it subsided.
The days and nights passed me by like I was on a merry-go-round, spinning and spinning, feed, burp, change, rock, feed, burp, change, argue with husband, rock.
And then suddenly one day these things didn't work any longer. Baby got bored.
This marked the beginning of dark times for me.
Dita wanted to be walked around the house and garden, always in the upright position, never sitting down or standing still. It was in the middle of summer and very hot so I found myself
wandering our garden in my hideous feeding bra and granny panty, trying not to get a glimpse of my flabby body in the hallway mirror as I passed it.
Saggy ass, floppy belly, black circles around the eyes, wrinkles everywhere, spots, oily hair.
I was the very picture of misery.
Every dog-turd I encountered on the lawn grated at my already flailing sense of serenity and frustration built up inside of me at not being able to just quickly pick it all up and throw it
away so we can walk around a droppings-free lawn.
To top it all off, three massive Hadedas frequented our yard and shat giant pools of disgustingness everywhere.
These excretions were too big to ignore and too small to pick up with the poop-scoop and I had to frantically talk myself down from hysteria every time I had to side step a Hadeda bomb.
They were also attracted to the dog-food on the patio and continued in their poop-shooting ways onto the wooden deck.
And I haven't even mentioned my psychologically scarred cat that literally defecates and urinates all over the house, including to my absolute horror, the bed.
Every morning I would wake, exhausted from not really sleeping, to cat poop at the foot of the bed, cat pee at the door to the nursery and bathroom, dog turds in the living room because
he has incontinence from his spinal stroke still and sleeps in the house, dog turds on the lawn and Hadeda kak on the patio.
Shit everywhere.
Not to mention diapers, which were really the least of my frustrations since I at least got to look at adorable little baby butt cheeks while changing those.
Time stopped altogether and I found myself frozen in a kind of baby-swaying, shit-dodging limbo. Every minute felt like an eternity.
I tried watching tv shows whilst walking up and down with the baby but nothing really kept my interest.
Everything was excruciatingly, mind-bogglingly boring and tedious.
I couldn't believe I still had to brush my teeth every day and finding the time and energy to do it properly was a challenge indeed.
The bed needed to be made every day and with my OCD tendencies this was no simple task. It had to be aired very vigourously to get all the cat hair and dust from the previous night
off the duvet, sheets and head pillows. This was a small workout for me since it took some thorough shaking of everything to get this out.
I also lugged the industrial strength fan to the other side of the room to help blow all the debris coming off the bed out of the open windows and into the garden where they
can't cause allergic rhinitis to anyone in my household.
Apart from brushing teeth and shaking out the bed, I felt that I should be the perfect housewife, since I was not bringing in any money or contributing to any of the finances in any way
so cooking and cleaning became an obsession.
These things were almost impossible, though.
Having a strong-willed baby that wants to be held all day everyday meant I had to do tasks when she was napping, which almost never happened, or so it felt anyway.
She would take sporadic, five minute naps but mostly latched firmly to the breast rendering me incapable of doing anything except maybe play a soul-crushing game of Candy Crush on my phone
or scroll morbidly through my Facebook feed, wishing the ceiling fan would crash down onto my head causing momentary euphoria but somehow missing the baby.
My thoughts started becoming extremely dark very quickly. I envisioned horrible things happening to my baby and husband and myself. I even pictured myself doing hurtful things to them,
kind of like someone in a Stephen King book just suddenly snapping and tearing a love one's eyeball out.
This I found to be super alarming.
Was I losing my mind?
Was I perhaps a Dexter-like serial killer in the making?
Was I about to feature in Huisgenoot?
I started worrying about my mental well-being with gusto and tried talking to people about it without really letting on how bad it was getting.
I mean, at night when I closed my eyes, my sweet pink little tot far away in dreamland next to me, flashes of horrible events would play like a movie behind my eyelids.
To top it all off, the neighbours had thieves break into their house one day not too long ago and they tied up the poor wife that was home and took almost all their possessions.
This catapulted me into full-on crazy paranoia.
What if these evil people came into my house when I was home alone with my tiny daughter? Or what if husband were home with me and they shot him?
People are heinous creatures who do horrible things to good people.
And I was starting to think that I might not even be such a good person after all, what with all these violent thoughts running through my head all day and night.
I started losing all faith in the basic goodness of humanity.
I started believing everyone out there were somehow against me and actively coming for me.
Car accidents were rampant on the news and I worried myself sick about my husband, praying obsessively all day for his safe return from work, wondering how to best barter with God to
ensure the most favourable outcome.
Worst of all was the mind-blowing tininess of my child and the total trust in her little eyes when she looked at me.
You are Mother, they said.
You are the most important person in my life, they alluded.
You are totally in charge of what happens to my minuscule body and mind, they tittered.
How was I supposed to not go completely apeshit with this mountain of responsibility now crashing down squarely on my previously unburdened shoulders?
Not to mention the fact that she was growing very quickly (even though time stood still and nothing ever happened) and I was painfully aware of the fact that one day my little chubby-bum
was going to go out into the world and have life happen to her, where I would no longer be in full control of what happened to her.
Life didn't seem kind in the least anymore.
People were assholes, plotting against each other, living for revenge and money and selfishness.
Time was just something mercilessly driving us towards one tragedy or another.
Sooner or later someone close to us will die and we'll never recover from it.
At any point our own bodies could turn against us and pop a vital artery in our brains, killing us instantly without the chance to say goodbye or make amends or come to terms.
Every long day I hid in my house, not even going into the possibly brimming-with-burglars garden anymore, with my little girl in my arms, trying not to envision all the horribleness of it all.
Trying, trying and trying not to be crushed by the weight of all the wrongness and evil and ugly of the world, life and everything.
Where is God?
Does he even exist at all?
Thankfully, my good friend and fellow baby-mama invited me to go for breakfast at the gorgeous Irene Dairy Farm one morning and I valiantly fought through the blind panic to join her and
act like a normal person for once.
It was here she told me that she kept seeing herself accidentally reversing over her baby in the driveway and couldn't deal with anxious thoughts like this anymore so she went to the
doctor and got some antidepressants and was feeling much better.
This was God speaking directly to me.
Hello God, where have you been? But thanks, hey, message received loud and clear.
I felt a little bad about becoming that medicated person again.
I was kind of hoping to be a nice normal mommy now, a woman like all the other women, just going through life, maybe getting a bonsai tree in the process, doing dumb little things to
pass the time and chat to other chicks about.
But listen, when all meaning and joy drain out of your life you pretty much get to a point where taking one small blue pill every night doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore.
Two weeks after my nice new shrink (my beloved Polish Gypsey shrink had retired) gave me the small blue pill, I was taking my daily desperate walk around the neighbourhood,
Dita cooing away in her pram when suddenly shit seemed much more interesting than previously.
The house at the bottom of Stompdoring street seemed ominously abandoned. As I gazed at it wondering who used to live there and what happened to this mansion to make it seem so dilapidated
and forlorn, I imagined one of the curtains twitch and felt a little prickle as the hairs in the back of my neck stood up.
I should write a story about this house, I thought to myself dreamily.
This, my friend, is called inspiration.
I was struck dumb by the power of this realisation because I haven't felt the least bit inspired to even comb my hair in the mornings in at least a month, never mind writing.
I continued my little walk and found myself noticing how many cats were lounging around outside their houses. One of them even walked up to us and gave a friendly mew as it sniffed the pram.
Different dogs stared balefully from their courtyards at us as we passed, occasionally letting out varied woofs, yelps and barks. Some side-streets had teenagers playing soccer or
basketball in them. Families were braaiing in their gardens and driveways as we strolled past. A light breeze cooled the perspiration on my brow and suddenly everything was beautiful.
There were still good people out there. Normal, Joe publics, doing their thing, going to work, raising their families, eating their Simba chippies. Birds were chirping, the seasons were
changing, leaves were turning golden, brown and orange and drifting down to the streets in lazy S's.
My little child looked up at me from her pram and staring into her eyes I felt love and hope and anticipation rather than crippling fear.
"Let's go watch an episode of Rupaul's Drag Race and eat a marshmallow Easter egg, my sweetie", I murmur to her and she smiles at me as if she understood every word and thought I was
the silliest mommy on the planet.
