May 22, 2024 • 26 mins
Stephanie Foo wrote What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma, and recently welcomed her first child.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
True to life. This is not the first thing that
I woke up, Just like every other thing that I
have been supposed to do since I have had this kid.
I am late coming to this, so yeah, I'm recording
this at ten thirty. So far today I have already
(00:25):
got up with the baby at six thirty, dropped off laundry,
moved the car, picked up a bunch of rice because
we were out of rice, made breakfast for the family,
put the baby, tried to get him to nap by himself. Failed,
(00:48):
put him down for a nap on my lap, changed
his diaper a few times, and yep, have him all
day today, but Thursdays and Fridays he's with a nanny.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
You know.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
We can do this. He's looking very calm and very
cute right now in this stroller. Yeah, that's it. This
(01:36):
is finally a show about a first time mom and
first time author. I'm Stephanie Fou. I am a journalist
and an author of a book called Oh Don't Touch That,
Let My Bones Know, and I am a new mom
of a almost six month old baby. My baby boy,
(02:03):
it's really fixated on this sausage looking microphone wants to
eat it.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
He is.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
His name is well, we call him baby E and
he is just about the cutest baby you'll ever see.
And I think that's objectively true. Even my friends who
don't have kids say that that's true, and so I
believe it. And then they send me pictures of other
(02:31):
babies that they think are ugly, so then I really
believe it. So yeah, he's the cutest ever. He's very social,
he likes people, he likes his baby Jim. He is
a very very large eater, and he yeah, he's very
large in general. He's almost twenty pounds, which is he's
(02:52):
very heavy, and he's been his whole life, very active
and strong. Even in the womb, he was nine pounds almost.
I think when he was born, I'm five to one.
(03:12):
It wasn't the easiest pregnancy. My first trimester, I was
very nauseous, my second trimester, I was very constipated. I
was hospitalized for being too constipated. And then my third
trimester I lost the ability to walk. So it was
hard and it was really scary too. I think that
was probably the hardest part, was just being scared about
(03:35):
becoming a mom, what that meant, what kind of mom
I would be, and if I would hate it, or
if what if I'm like an abusive nightmare mom, or
what if I don't love him?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
You know?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And then he came out and he's great, so cute.
So I wish I had known that when I was pregnant.
I wish I had known that he was gonna be
the best baby. I really didn't want to be a
mom ever. And then I married somebody who really wanted
(04:15):
to have kids, and then he went on a long
campaign to convince me to have kids, and then we
had kids. Before we have a kid, but yeah, I
didn't want kids because I think I have complex PTSD
and from a really abusive childhood, and there's a lot there.
(04:38):
I think part of it is I had to do
so much caretaking for my parents when I was a kid,
and I don't particularly or I didn't particularly enjoy doing caretaking. Therefore,
as an adult it was kind of triggering. And he
(05:00):
was basically taught at a young age because both my
parents abandoned me that you just fend for yourself, you
take good care of yourself, and you get yours and
don't trust anyone and that's it. And taking care of
a kid is pretty much the opposite of that, you
have to be totally selfless and you also have to Sorry,
he's just kicking you. I hope you don't mind that
(05:23):
you have to be totally selfless and you have to
also rely on other people. You have to rely on
a whole village. And that concept was really frightening to me.
And I also was really afraid of you know, all
I know of being a parent is how my parents
(05:43):
parented me, and so I was afraid that I was
just going to pass that down to him. So that's
why I was very hesitant for a very long time.
(06:05):
My mom, I think didn't like me very much. Maybe
I don't know. I think that she felt really trapped
being a stay at home mom. I think she felt unfulfilled.
I think maybe she was not parented very well. I
don't know, but she was pretty extremely physically and verbally abusive.
(06:32):
And she left when I was thirteen and I have
never seen her since. So you know that again, that's
the image I had of mothers of motherhood. And we
(06:52):
have this book actually called good Night Edgar that we
got for Christmas, and it's like the crow from never More,
Like gir Allan Poe and his mom is telling him
to do things, and he's like never more and never more.
And at the end he's like, oh, don't pull the
(07:12):
cat's hair.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
No, everybody, gentle, Okay, chaos, you want to look at
the worm?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Okay? What was I saying? I was talking about my
abusive mother. No, okay?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And at the end he's like, do you love me, mom?
And she's like forever more? And I was like, wow,
I probably will love him forever. And I was that
was like complete surprise to me and a complete foreign concept,
isn't that? And then I realized that that's like really
fucked up and said, but yeah, I still don't really
(08:04):
like any still don't really like anybody else's baby. Oh.
I mean they're okay, they're fine, but I like them
more than I used to. But I really like my own.
And I'm surprised by the fact that I think I'm
actually a pretty decent mom. I've never held a baby
(08:27):
before I had my own. And but you learn on
the job and once you're you know, feeding them like
sixteen times a day, twenty four to seven, ye like,
you get pretty you get the hang of it.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Ah, we.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Slogs, which slot do you want.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
So in twenty eighteen, I think I was diagnosed with
complex PTSD, and I had never heard of it before,
so I googled it and I found that it was
a pretty serious condition that is different than from classic
(09:37):
PTSD in that it occurs when the trauma happens over
and over and over again many times over the course
of years, and mine comes from extreme child abuse neglect.
And I was pretty floored with the diagnosis, and it
explained a lot of the troubling patterns that had occurred
(10:01):
throughout my life, and so I decided that I really
really wanted to heal from this. And I also learned
that there were no real firsthand accounts, no like memoirs
about living and trying to heal from complex PTSD, and
so I told myself that if I was able to
(10:24):
feel better and to heal, then I would try and
write that account. I also was turning thirty, and I
had realized that I had been sad for a very
very long time, and so I asked my therapist, like,
am I bipolar? What do you think is wrong with me?
(10:46):
And indeed that's when she told me that I have
complex PTSD. The diagnosis of complex PTSD helped me help
(11:09):
me to understand that my diagnosis helped explain a lot
of my mental health struggles, my struggles and relationships. It
helped me understand that my job, my workaholism, my relationships
(11:32):
with friends, with lovers were all influenced far more than
I had thought by my abusive childhood. I had thought like, well,
I grew up and I'm successful now and I have
you know, an ira, and it's all good. I'm healed.
But I was not. It was affecting me every day
(11:57):
far more than I had thought. I definitely feel envious
when I see friends who have maternal support. I think
the times that are hardest for me is when I
really don't know what to do, Like with sleep chaining.
He's always kind of been a bad sleeper, and so
(12:20):
sometimes there are times when I'm just like, do I
go in? Do I not go in? Do I pick
him up? Do I not pick him up? And I
get paralyzed. I'm just so overwhelmed and the sound of
him crying is so painful, and I get overstimulated, and
I'm just I don't know what to do, and I
just really wish somebody was here who was a mom
(12:41):
who would just tell me what to do like an
experienced mom, my mom. But so those are the moments
where it feels most, I feel the most longing. And
then sometimes hearing from friends who you know, we have
(13:02):
some friends who her mom is coming for three months
and going to live down the street in a sublet,
and so they're letting go over their nanny so that
the mom can just help out for three months. And yeah,
that's kind of a bummer for sure, But then again,
(13:31):
you hear some other stories too, about parents who are
more of a hindrance than a help and who make
incessant comments about your weight or that's not the way
I would do it, or why isn't the baby wearing
a hat or that kind of thing, And we don't have.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Any of that.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So and we do have familial support in terms of
Joey's siblings.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
He is now.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Snort, he's sleeping on me. He would not go onto
his mattress. So we're continuing the interview with him in
my lap. You know, I think I was alright with it,
and then it got annoying, and then it now is
just it's just a normal part of Honestly, I kind
(14:22):
of like it because it's like comforting to me because
I know he's going to go to sleep, so it's fine.
What was really surprising for one is that, like I've
even seen Joey or other family members get like irritated
(14:42):
at him and sort of like mad at him when
he's you know, refusing to go down or stop screaming
or whatever. But I've like never gotten mad at him before,
and that's been very surprising to me. I thought it
would be very hard to practice a lot of this
gentle parenting stuff that I like was watching on Instagram
(15:05):
for months in preparation. I was like all of the
ways that you have to talk to them in terms
of like affirming their feelings and if they're crying because
they're being changed, you don't say, like, stop crying, it's fine.
You have to say, like, oh, I know it's cold
and it's uncomfortable. I'm sorry. I'm affirming your experience, you know.
(15:29):
I thought that would be like a constant thing on
my mind that I would have to force myself to
do all the time. But it really just came naturally.
I don't really even need to think about it. I
don't know why. Maybe it's biological I mean, I have
a lot of I have a lot of friends who
(15:50):
do not have great relationships with their parents, and so
I thought that was the default. And then I have
some friends friends who had great relationships with their parents,
and it's like, what, wait, that's possible. It's so messed
up to think that, to have this weird default assumption
(16:12):
in my head that families just hate each other, and
I'm having to untrain myself of that. Obviously, I definitely
feel anxiety. I mean, I definitely feel like, oh, this
is great now, But that's because he's a baby, you know.
(16:37):
I mean, wait till he's twelve and he's like, I
hate you, mom, You're the worst, or I mean he
doesn't even need to be twelve. Three year olds do
that all the time. But I have more faith in
myself to be able to handle that than I did.
A lot of parenting is just having to be very,
(16:57):
very present all the time. So that's what it is.
I'm also accepting that A couple of the best pieces
of advice people told me is that a everything changes.
So when there's a phase that you hate or whatever,
write it out because they change in like a week
or a month or whatever. It is, and another is
(17:20):
that I mean I remember hanging out with my friends
like five year old or something like that when I
was like twenty seven and just being like, I don't
know how I could ever do this. I don't know
how I could parents get like this. And she was like, well,
you don't start with a five year old. You get
a baby, and then you learn how to do a baby,
and it's like you get trained along the way basically
(17:42):
for every new stage. And I think that has that's true.
My CPTST makes me kind of still hard on myself,
but it's complicated, like I'll feel like the worst mom
(18:06):
for doing something or like letting him cry it out
or whatever. And then I'll go in in the morning
and I'm like, have I traumatized you? And the first
thing he does is he looks at me and he
just gives me this huge smile like a It's like, well,
you don't seem very traumatized. You know they need you,
(18:28):
And I think I know that the parental brain. I've
been reading this book What Their Brain, and it talks
about how like after I have a kid, you become
more hyper vigilant and the sound of babies cries you're
very hyper attentive to them, you know, like your brain
(18:49):
focuses its attention on your child to the detriment of
literally everything else in your life kind of. And I've
definitely felt that focusing and that absolute like inability to
do anything else when the baby is crying or think
about anything else. It's like a full body sensation. The
(19:11):
bad side of CPTSD is that I think it can
aggravate that hypervigilance and make you be like, oh my god,
my baby. Like in the beginning, I was always like,
he's not sleeping, he's not sleeping. He needs to sleep
like they say they need to sleep eighteen hours of
the day. He's only slept like eleven hours today. Oh
my god, is he gonna die? He's gonna die? And
then Joey it, I told be like, I don't think
(19:31):
he's gonna die from I think he just didn't sleep
well today. And I'd be like, but but but I
think he's gonna die. So like, that's the bad side
of CPTSD. They say that in parenting a child, that
gentle parenting, that being able to say like it's okay
to have your big feelings. That makes it easier to
apply that to yourself and for me to say it's okay, Stephanie,
(19:54):
for you to have your big feelings right now. And
I think sometimes I'm able to do that. I think
generally I'm pretty bad at it still, but I hope
that in time that I will get better at that,
because I do I also I really do want a
model not talking about myself in front of all the time.
You know, I miss my selfish self that like my
(20:19):
selfish self was able to in some ways build the
life that we have now because I was able to
work on myself and I was able to go to
therapy and have a great career and you know, learn
all these skills like cooking or French or whatever it
(20:39):
is that are useful in my life now. But when
you're caregiving, you that part of you sort of you
have to kill it and you have to at the
end of the day look at like the blank word
docum and just say it, this is fine. Because making
(21:04):
sure somebody that you love has a comfortable last year
of her life, or making sure this baby that you
love feel safe, and it's really hard to balance that
(21:26):
and taking a shower, and like Joey will sometimes be
like oh, you smell like sour milk. And I'm like,
oh God, well, yeah, of course, time to wake up,
time to wake up. Hello.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I have thought about how I'm going to talk to
him about my relationship in my family.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I don't know. I think, you know, for a long time,
it's going to be pretty simple. Just like you know,
Mommy's parents were not so nice to her, and that's
why we don't see them.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
But you are lucky.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Your parents love you very very very very very much.
Oh and so you don't have to worry about that.
But in time, I think, yeah, he's going to know
the full story. He's going to read my book eventually.
Probably you don't want to read what reading is hard
(22:46):
and lame and you're tired.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, those little eyes.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I mean, I don't think anyone has to have kids.
Like if I different life, I wouldn't have had kids,
and that would have been fine, you know. But I
think if you're not having kids because you're terrified of
being the parent that you were raised by, you are
not them, and you can be anyone. You can be
(23:17):
the parent that you want to be because you know
exactly what not to do. There's been some feelings of
bewilderment and sadness about my parents just not.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Understanding. You know.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
My mom used to say that, like, it's okay to
spank your kid when they're in diapers because it softens
the blow and it doesn't really hurt them. I was
like potty trained by the time I was like, you're
gonna have so she's like she's banking you, and she's
I was his age. It just doesn't I'm like, oh
my god. But I also have some appreciation for how
(24:02):
much work goes into parenting. I don't know, it's and
I definitely feel sad a sadness that they're so profoundly
uninterested in their grandchild. But that's not surprising at all.
(24:27):
I've been able to be proud of myself for certain things,
and that's nice. It's really validating to be able to
look at this giant, cute baby and be like, he's
me entirely out of my milk. Like what, that's such
a trip.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Okay, I'm about to voice bed. It's eight forty five,
and the reason why I've forgotten to record this every
single night up until that hour was usually right before
I go to bed. It's because, like I tiptoe in
and the baby's crying and I lie there and associate while.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Listening to him.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
But he's not crying tonight, and that's great because he's
mad chill baby. And I don't know how he got
so lucky to have such a chill baby with two
very anxious people, but we did. And yeah, I kept
him home for an extra couple hours this morning to
give him a bath and cuddle a little bit more,
(25:39):
and he was happy the whole time because he's our
chill ast baby. I need a giant boop. Wow. Anyways,
I'm tired. Good night
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Never I need to real
True to life. This is not the first thing that
I woke up, Just like every other thing that I
have been supposed to do since I have had this kid.
I am late coming to this, so yeah, I'm recording
this at ten thirty. So far today I have already
(00:25):
got up with the baby at six thirty, dropped off laundry,
moved the car, picked up a bunch of rice because
we were out of rice, made breakfast for the family,
put the baby, tried to get him to nap by himself. Failed,
(00:48):
put him down for a nap on my lap, changed
his diaper a few times, and yep, have him all
day today, but Thursdays and Fridays he's with a nanny.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
You know.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
We can do this. He's looking very calm and very
cute right now in this stroller. Yeah, that's it. This
(01:36):
is finally a show about a first time mom and
first time author. I'm Stephanie Fou. I am a journalist
and an author of a book called Oh Don't Touch That,
Let My Bones Know, and I am a new mom
of a almost six month old baby. My baby boy,
(02:03):
it's really fixated on this sausage looking microphone wants to
eat it.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
He is.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
His name is well, we call him baby E and
he is just about the cutest baby you'll ever see.
And I think that's objectively true. Even my friends who
don't have kids say that that's true, and so I
believe it. And then they send me pictures of other
(02:31):
babies that they think are ugly, so then I really
believe it. So yeah, he's the cutest ever. He's very social,
he likes people, he likes his baby Jim. He is
a very very large eater, and he yeah, he's very
large in general. He's almost twenty pounds, which is he's
(02:52):
very heavy, and he's been his whole life, very active
and strong. Even in the womb, he was nine pounds almost.
I think when he was born, I'm five to one.
(03:12):
It wasn't the easiest pregnancy. My first trimester, I was
very nauseous, my second trimester, I was very constipated. I
was hospitalized for being too constipated. And then my third
trimester I lost the ability to walk. So it was
hard and it was really scary too. I think that
was probably the hardest part, was just being scared about
(03:35):
becoming a mom, what that meant, what kind of mom
I would be, and if I would hate it, or
if what if I'm like an abusive nightmare mom, or
what if I don't love him?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
You know?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And then he came out and he's great, so cute.
So I wish I had known that when I was pregnant.
I wish I had known that he was gonna be
the best baby. I really didn't want to be a
mom ever. And then I married somebody who really wanted
(04:15):
to have kids, and then he went on a long
campaign to convince me to have kids, and then we
had kids. Before we have a kid, but yeah, I
didn't want kids because I think I have complex PTSD
and from a really abusive childhood, and there's a lot there.
(04:38):
I think part of it is I had to do
so much caretaking for my parents when I was a kid,
and I don't particularly or I didn't particularly enjoy doing caretaking. Therefore,
as an adult it was kind of triggering. And he
(05:00):
was basically taught at a young age because both my
parents abandoned me that you just fend for yourself, you
take good care of yourself, and you get yours and
don't trust anyone and that's it. And taking care of
a kid is pretty much the opposite of that, you
have to be totally selfless and you also have to Sorry,
he's just kicking you. I hope you don't mind that
(05:23):
you have to be totally selfless and you have to
also rely on other people. You have to rely on
a whole village. And that concept was really frightening to me.
And I also was really afraid of you know, all
I know of being a parent is how my parents
(05:43):
parented me, and so I was afraid that I was
just going to pass that down to him. So that's
why I was very hesitant for a very long time.
(06:05):
My mom, I think didn't like me very much. Maybe
I don't know. I think that she felt really trapped
being a stay at home mom. I think she felt unfulfilled.
I think maybe she was not parented very well. I
don't know, but she was pretty extremely physically and verbally abusive.
(06:32):
And she left when I was thirteen and I have
never seen her since. So you know that again, that's
the image I had of mothers of motherhood. And we
(06:52):
have this book actually called good Night Edgar that we
got for Christmas, and it's like the crow from never More,
Like gir Allan Poe and his mom is telling him
to do things, and he's like never more and never more.
And at the end he's like, oh, don't pull the
(07:12):
cat's hair.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
No, everybody, gentle, Okay, chaos, you want to look at
the worm?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Okay? What was I saying? I was talking about my
abusive mother. No, okay?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And at the end he's like, do you love me, mom?
And she's like forever more? And I was like, wow,
I probably will love him forever. And I was that
was like complete surprise to me and a complete foreign concept,
isn't that? And then I realized that that's like really
fucked up and said, but yeah, I still don't really
(08:04):
like any still don't really like anybody else's baby. Oh.
I mean they're okay, they're fine, but I like them
more than I used to. But I really like my own.
And I'm surprised by the fact that I think I'm
actually a pretty decent mom. I've never held a baby
(08:27):
before I had my own. And but you learn on
the job and once you're you know, feeding them like
sixteen times a day, twenty four to seven, ye like,
you get pretty you get the hang of it.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Ah, we.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Slogs, which slot do you want.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
So in twenty eighteen, I think I was diagnosed with
complex PTSD, and I had never heard of it before,
so I googled it and I found that it was
a pretty serious condition that is different than from classic
(09:37):
PTSD in that it occurs when the trauma happens over
and over and over again many times over the course
of years, and mine comes from extreme child abuse neglect.
And I was pretty floored with the diagnosis, and it
explained a lot of the troubling patterns that had occurred
(10:01):
throughout my life, and so I decided that I really
really wanted to heal from this. And I also learned
that there were no real firsthand accounts, no like memoirs
about living and trying to heal from complex PTSD, and
so I told myself that if I was able to
(10:24):
feel better and to heal, then I would try and
write that account. I also was turning thirty, and I
had realized that I had been sad for a very
very long time, and so I asked my therapist, like,
am I bipolar? What do you think is wrong with me?
(10:46):
And indeed that's when she told me that I have
complex PTSD. The diagnosis of complex PTSD helped me help
(11:09):
me to understand that my diagnosis helped explain a lot
of my mental health struggles, my struggles and relationships. It
helped me understand that my job, my workaholism, my relationships
(11:32):
with friends, with lovers were all influenced far more than
I had thought by my abusive childhood. I had thought like, well,
I grew up and I'm successful now and I have
you know, an ira, and it's all good. I'm healed.
But I was not. It was affecting me every day
(11:57):
far more than I had thought. I definitely feel envious
when I see friends who have maternal support. I think
the times that are hardest for me is when I
really don't know what to do, Like with sleep chaining.
He's always kind of been a bad sleeper, and so
(12:20):
sometimes there are times when I'm just like, do I
go in? Do I not go in? Do I pick
him up? Do I not pick him up? And I
get paralyzed. I'm just so overwhelmed and the sound of
him crying is so painful, and I get overstimulated, and
I'm just I don't know what to do, and I
just really wish somebody was here who was a mom
(12:41):
who would just tell me what to do like an
experienced mom, my mom. But so those are the moments
where it feels most, I feel the most longing. And
then sometimes hearing from friends who you know, we have
(13:02):
some friends who her mom is coming for three months
and going to live down the street in a sublet,
and so they're letting go over their nanny so that
the mom can just help out for three months. And yeah,
that's kind of a bummer for sure, But then again,
(13:31):
you hear some other stories too, about parents who are
more of a hindrance than a help and who make
incessant comments about your weight or that's not the way
I would do it, or why isn't the baby wearing
a hat or that kind of thing, And we don't have.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Any of that.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So and we do have familial support in terms of
Joey's siblings.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
He is now.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Snort, he's sleeping on me. He would not go onto
his mattress. So we're continuing the interview with him in
my lap. You know, I think I was alright with it,
and then it got annoying, and then it now is
just it's just a normal part of Honestly, I kind
(14:22):
of like it because it's like comforting to me because
I know he's going to go to sleep, so it's fine.
What was really surprising for one is that, like I've
even seen Joey or other family members get like irritated
(14:42):
at him and sort of like mad at him when
he's you know, refusing to go down or stop screaming
or whatever. But I've like never gotten mad at him before,
and that's been very surprising to me. I thought it
would be very hard to practice a lot of this
gentle parenting stuff that I like was watching on Instagram
(15:05):
for months in preparation. I was like all of the
ways that you have to talk to them in terms
of like affirming their feelings and if they're crying because
they're being changed, you don't say, like, stop crying, it's fine.
You have to say, like, oh, I know it's cold
and it's uncomfortable. I'm sorry. I'm affirming your experience, you know.
(15:29):
I thought that would be like a constant thing on
my mind that I would have to force myself to
do all the time. But it really just came naturally.
I don't really even need to think about it. I
don't know why. Maybe it's biological I mean, I have
a lot of I have a lot of friends who
(15:50):
do not have great relationships with their parents, and so
I thought that was the default. And then I have
some friends friends who had great relationships with their parents,
and it's like, what, wait, that's possible. It's so messed
up to think that, to have this weird default assumption
(16:12):
in my head that families just hate each other, and
I'm having to untrain myself of that. Obviously, I definitely
feel anxiety. I mean, I definitely feel like, oh, this
is great now, But that's because he's a baby, you know.
(16:37):
I mean, wait till he's twelve and he's like, I
hate you, mom, You're the worst, or I mean he
doesn't even need to be twelve. Three year olds do
that all the time. But I have more faith in
myself to be able to handle that than I did.
A lot of parenting is just having to be very,
(16:57):
very present all the time. So that's what it is.
I'm also accepting that A couple of the best pieces
of advice people told me is that a everything changes.
So when there's a phase that you hate or whatever,
write it out because they change in like a week
or a month or whatever. It is, and another is
(17:20):
that I mean I remember hanging out with my friends
like five year old or something like that when I
was like twenty seven and just being like, I don't
know how I could ever do this. I don't know
how I could parents get like this. And she was like, well,
you don't start with a five year old. You get
a baby, and then you learn how to do a baby,
and it's like you get trained along the way basically
(17:42):
for every new stage. And I think that has that's true.
My CPTST makes me kind of still hard on myself,
but it's complicated, like I'll feel like the worst mom
(18:06):
for doing something or like letting him cry it out
or whatever. And then I'll go in in the morning
and I'm like, have I traumatized you? And the first
thing he does is he looks at me and he
just gives me this huge smile like a It's like, well,
you don't seem very traumatized. You know they need you,
(18:28):
And I think I know that the parental brain. I've
been reading this book What Their Brain, and it talks
about how like after I have a kid, you become
more hyper vigilant and the sound of babies cries you're
very hyper attentive to them, you know, like your brain
(18:49):
focuses its attention on your child to the detriment of
literally everything else in your life kind of. And I've
definitely felt that focusing and that absolute like inability to
do anything else when the baby is crying or think
about anything else. It's like a full body sensation. The
(19:11):
bad side of CPTSD is that I think it can
aggravate that hypervigilance and make you be like, oh my god,
my baby. Like in the beginning, I was always like,
he's not sleeping, he's not sleeping. He needs to sleep
like they say they need to sleep eighteen hours of
the day. He's only slept like eleven hours today. Oh
my god, is he gonna die? He's gonna die? And
then Joey it, I told be like, I don't think
(19:31):
he's gonna die from I think he just didn't sleep
well today. And I'd be like, but but but I
think he's gonna die. So like, that's the bad side
of CPTSD. They say that in parenting a child, that
gentle parenting, that being able to say like it's okay
to have your big feelings. That makes it easier to
apply that to yourself and for me to say it's okay, Stephanie,
(19:54):
for you to have your big feelings right now. And
I think sometimes I'm able to do that. I think
generally I'm pretty bad at it still, but I hope
that in time that I will get better at that,
because I do I also I really do want a
model not talking about myself in front of all the time.
You know, I miss my selfish self that like my
(20:19):
selfish self was able to in some ways build the
life that we have now because I was able to
work on myself and I was able to go to
therapy and have a great career and you know, learn
all these skills like cooking or French or whatever it
(20:39):
is that are useful in my life now. But when
you're caregiving, you that part of you sort of you
have to kill it and you have to at the
end of the day look at like the blank word
docum and just say it, this is fine. Because making
(21:04):
sure somebody that you love has a comfortable last year
of her life, or making sure this baby that you
love feel safe, and it's really hard to balance that
(21:26):
and taking a shower, and like Joey will sometimes be
like oh, you smell like sour milk. And I'm like,
oh God, well, yeah, of course, time to wake up,
time to wake up. Hello.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I have thought about how I'm going to talk to
him about my relationship in my family.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I don't know. I think, you know, for a long time,
it's going to be pretty simple. Just like you know,
Mommy's parents were not so nice to her, and that's
why we don't see them.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
But you are lucky.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Your parents love you very very very very very much.
Oh and so you don't have to worry about that.
But in time, I think, yeah, he's going to know
the full story. He's going to read my book eventually.
Probably you don't want to read what reading is hard
(22:46):
and lame and you're tired.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, those little eyes.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I mean, I don't think anyone has to have kids.
Like if I different life, I wouldn't have had kids,
and that would have been fine, you know. But I
think if you're not having kids because you're terrified of
being the parent that you were raised by, you are
not them, and you can be anyone. You can be
(23:17):
the parent that you want to be because you know
exactly what not to do. There's been some feelings of
bewilderment and sadness about my parents just not.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Understanding. You know.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
My mom used to say that, like, it's okay to
spank your kid when they're in diapers because it softens
the blow and it doesn't really hurt them. I was
like potty trained by the time I was like, you're
gonna have so she's like she's banking you, and she's
I was his age. It just doesn't I'm like, oh
my god. But I also have some appreciation for how
(24:02):
much work goes into parenting. I don't know, it's and
I definitely feel sad a sadness that they're so profoundly
uninterested in their grandchild. But that's not surprising at all.
(24:27):
I've been able to be proud of myself for certain things,
and that's nice. It's really validating to be able to
look at this giant, cute baby and be like, he's
me entirely out of my milk. Like what, that's such
a trip.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Okay, I'm about to voice bed. It's eight forty five,
and the reason why I've forgotten to record this every
single night up until that hour was usually right before
I go to bed. It's because, like I tiptoe in
and the baby's crying and I lie there and associate while.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Listening to him.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
But he's not crying tonight, and that's great because he's
mad chill baby. And I don't know how he got
so lucky to have such a chill baby with two
very anxious people, but we did. And yeah, I kept
him home for an extra couple hours this morning to
give him a bath and cuddle a little bit more,
(25:39):
and he was happy the whole time because he's our
chill ast baby. I need a giant boop. Wow. Anyways,
I'm tired. Good night
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Never I need to real
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