My House Was On Fire and I Didn't Know

I was about 6 weeks postpartum trying to unsuccessfully soothe my new baby one evening when I heard a loud and urgent knock at my front door. I paused since I lived at the end of a cul-de-sac and not many people just happened by. My husband was at work so I really wasn’t sure who this could be knocking on my front door.

I looked through the peephole and recognized my next-door standing there. I opened the door to 1) her telling me that my back patio was on fire and did I know, and to 2) a large fire truck right outside my house. The firefighters were simultaneously trying to put out the fire both at the back of my house and in the woods to the side of my house.

I panicked and called my husband to come home after I went to the back door and saw the now-melted siding of the partition that separated our condo’s patio from our neighbor’s. I was exhausted and overwhelmed by the whole thing and immediately starting crying along with my baby (yes, he was still crying throughout all of this which made everything feel even more stressful).

Eventually my husband came home and the firefighters successfully extinguished both fires. Thank goodness my neighbor had seen the flames fairly soon after the fires had started (both apparently by set by a teenage arsonist in our neighborhood). Everything was Ok and everyone was safe in the end..BUT…How could I not have known that my house was on fire?!

I can’t help but thing of what an analogy this was to exactly what I was going through in those first few month’s of baby’s life. I was existing on such little sleep while trying to exclusively breastfeed my baby. My husband was teaching at a high school during the day and working at Best Buy in the evenings to help supplement what I wasn’t getting paid while on maternity leave. I didn’t have any family closer that 3 hours away and I was the first of my friends to have a baby.

All of this made for a lot of long, lonely days where I was alone with my baby for about 14 hours a day. I couldn’t put him down for a nap as he would only sleep for about 10 minutes at a time. He was fussy most of the time because he was overtired (same, baby, same). I didn’t know this then but looking back he probably also had silent reflux so putting him down to sleep only excerbated that.

Basically, my own postpartum journey was metaphorically on fire and I had no idea. No one was there to knock on the door and tell my that everything I was going through wasn’t normal and what I could do to fix things. No one was there to say hey, everytime you breastfeed your baby in an effot to soothe him, you’re actually making his reflux worse and he is getting more upset. No one was there to tell me that newborns should be sleeping 14-17 hours a day. No one told me that I most likely had developed postpartum anxiety and that I could get help and feel better. Much like I thought everything going outside was normal until my neighbor knocked on the door, I didn’t realize his babyhood wasn’t normal until I became a doula over a decade later.

I needed support but I didn’t realize it. I also didn’t know to seek it out. We aren’ t meant to do life alone and that is even more true for those weeks and months after our baby is born. Find your people who can knock on your door and tell you that maybe things aren’t normal and find ways to help you find your new normal.

If you can’t find those people, or if it just seems too hard or overhelming, consider hiring a postpartum doula. They can be a confidant, helper, and that person who supports you in getting the help that you need. It’s not hard to extinguish those flames when you have someone helping you get ahead of the fires starting in the first place.