Latest / Mom Gone Mild / Valentine's Day: Love After Baby

Transcript

Valentine's Day: Love After Baby · Mom Gone Mild

• 0:04
  Hi guys, it's me Lex, your host of Mom Gone Mild and welcome
• 0:11
  back. If you're new here, we basically
• 0:14
  talk about becoming a new mom. Not only that, the shift that
• 0:19
  happens when you kind of go into a new stage of life.
• 0:23
  So obviously my new stage is being a new mom, but you know,
• 0:27
  there's a lot of other stages you can be in the middle of, you
• 0:30
  know, buying your own home or just big changes in life, things
• 0:34
  like that. So we just talk about basically
• 0:38
  growing up, growing up together. Maybe you were once party girl
• 0:42
  like me. Now you have absolutely no idea
• 0:44
  what you're doing because you're a full time mom.
• 0:47
  But yeah, so this episode feels a little bit different because
• 0:51
  I'm in my husband's office. I know it's giving boy.
• 0:55
  Yeah, I know it's not really my vibe.
• 0:57
  So hopefully one day we get to buy a bigger house that I get to
• 1:00
  have my own office in. But this episode just feels way
• 1:04
  more intimate. Like it's so honest.
• 1:07
  It's so real. I feel like if I feel like this,
• 1:11
  there must be other people that feel like this.
• 1:13
  So I have, as you know, I talk about postpartum all the time.
• 1:19
  But the biggest thing right now is, of course, Valentine's Day.
• 1:23
  It's coming up. It's this weekend.
• 1:26
  So, you know, this obviously is going to be a different kind of
• 1:31
  Valentine's Day because usually me and my husband, we do
• 1:34
  something cute, we do something romantic.
• 1:36
  We sometimes go on a getaway. Yeah, that's not going to happen
• 1:40
  this year. So this year, of course, you
• 1:44
  know, we have Axel, our baby, and it's not going to be the
• 1:49
  candlelight dinners, the sweet surprises, the last minute
• 1:52
  getaways. Most days it already is just the
• 1:56
  three of us. So, you know, we're really close
• 2:01
  and that's beautiful. But sometimes it can be so
• 2:04
  frustrating sometimes because it is only the three of us.
• 2:09
  It gets so frustrating with me and my husband because we
• 2:11
  basically have no one else to talk to or no one else to get
• 2:15
  our frustrations out except ourselves.
• 2:17
  You know, like, so I get mad at him for little things.
• 2:20
  He gets upset with me for little things and sometimes I just feel
• 2:24
  like those little things actually start accumulating into
• 2:26
  like a bigger problem. I've noticed that, you know,
• 2:31
  like obviously I have the craziest hormones still, even
• 2:35
  though I am six months postpartum, that is still
• 2:38
  postpartum. I mean, I, my, your body doesn't
• 2:41
  really regulate I've read till like after a year or even longer
• 2:46
  to be honest, who knows? But that's a huge thing is my
• 2:52
  body image right now. Because since I am postpartum,
• 2:57
  this body just doesn't feel sexy.
• 3:00
  It doesn't feel like like in a way it doesn't feel worthy.
• 3:05
  It doesn't feel I don't have that self love that I used to
• 3:08
  have. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I
• 3:11
  used to, you know, really just care about my appearance, you
• 3:15
  know, do all the upkeep, do all that stuff.
• 3:19
  But now that I have acts, so I feel like my priorities kind of
• 3:22
  have changed. It's not that I don't want to be
• 3:26
  sexy. It's not that I don't want to be
• 3:27
  romantic, but it's just like, damn, I am tired.
• 3:33
  I mean, right now I'm still on maternity leave, so I have the
• 3:37
  baby full time. It's like I feel like I get no
• 3:42
  breaks. And then when I finally get a
• 3:43
  break, it's like Randy gets off work, he'll take a break.
• 3:47
  But it's like, I don't feel like being sexy at that time.
• 3:49
  The baby's still awake. I have to make dinner now.
• 3:52
  It's just like, just like a lot going on.
• 3:54
  It's it's very hard to bring in that feeling of like, I want to
• 3:58
  cuddle. I want to hold your hand because
• 4:01
  at the end of the day, I don't. I've literally been carrying a
• 4:03
  baby the entire day and I'm tired.
• 4:07
  And not only that, our baby is like freaking 90 or in the 99th
• 4:11
  percentile. So he's huge.
• 4:13
  I mean, he's heavy. My back hurts.
• 4:16
  The last thing I want to do is be sexy.
• 4:20
  And another thing is, believe me, pregnancy, having a baby, it
• 4:25
  was beautiful. I am obsessed with my son.
• 4:28
  It's made me and my husband love each other more because now it's
• 4:33
  a different kind of love. But it it's hard to bounce back
• 4:38
  after pregnancy. I don't have that self kind of
• 4:45
  love that I used to have for myself.
• 4:48
  It's hard getting ready. It's hard to find that kind of
• 4:52
  time to be intimate with your husband.
• 4:55
  And just like I see a lot, I'm, I'm on like a few of those
• 5:00
  Facebook groups and it's just so sad because I see like a lot of
• 5:05
  them and they're like not happy or things happen, you know?
• 5:09
  And I totally get that because we're all human.
• 5:12
  In the first year, I feel like we are.
• 5:15
  So like, I'm still figuring things out.
• 5:18
  I'm in no way a perfect mom. I know that I when people give
• 5:23
  me advice, I try to take it, you know?
• 5:27
  It's just hard because I feel like I'm not me anymore, if that
• 5:33
  makes sense. I feel like I'm literally just
• 5:37
  Axel's mom and it is so hard. Like I said, if I'm feeling this
• 5:43
  way, it can't just be me. I hope.
• 5:48
  Obviously I have had people reach out and tell me that it's
• 5:52
  normal. And, you know, you get through
• 5:54
  it. And then finally you find like,
• 5:56
  you know, you're kind of like way back.
• 6:00
  Maybe you don't find it, like maybe you're not like going to
• 6:04
  be fully back to who you were, but maybe you'll transform into
• 6:08
  a better version of yourself, which is what I'm hoping for
• 6:11
  because I absolutely love being a mom.
• 6:14
  I love being a wife. But it literally feels like
• 6:18
  Mission Impossible to be both because you give so much to this
• 6:24
  one baby all day long. Especially with Axel, he's a
• 6:27
  little bit of a Velcro baby, so it's pretty hard.
• 6:32
  The only times I really have to myself are like if I go to get
• 6:34
  my nails done, get my hair done. And yeah, those are things to
• 6:39
  like maintain myself. But to be honest, I don't have
• 6:44
  fun getting like my gel X done or things like that.
• 6:47
  It's not relaxing to me. So these things are more just
• 6:51
  like to me to feel like at least like I'm a human and not like a
• 6:55
  freaking gremlin. Like that's how I felt like
• 6:59
  before I started going out and, you know, trying to like force
• 7:04
  myself to get my nails done, force myself to get my hair
• 7:07
  done. I just felt so gross.
• 7:08
  And if you we're pregnant and you bounce back and you are
• 7:15
  feeling good and I am so happy for you because honestly, I wish
• 7:20
  that that happened to me. But unfortunately I'm on the
• 7:23
  other side where it's like I just don't feel like myself.
• 7:27
  But you know, we're learning to love each love ourselves again
• 7:32
  and it's a journey. And you know, I'm on this whole
• 7:36
  new like thinking positive, no more negativity, of course, like
• 7:41
  it's not always going to be freaking positivity.
• 7:45
  You know, I get in my moods, I get in my feels.
• 7:48
  Like last week was awful. I mean, I cried, had a breakdown
• 7:52
  probably like four or five times.
• 7:56
  And I mean, honestly, it's it, it's normal.
• 8:00
  I mean, but then again, what is normal, right?
• 8:02
  It's just like, it's a, I don't know, I mean, that's how I feel
• 8:06
  and I'm just going to go with it because I feel like if I kind of
• 8:10
  think about it too much, it really gets to me.
• 8:14
  I start getting my anxiety back and all that good stuff.
• 8:17
  But yeah, so like I said, it's Valentine's Day coming up and I
• 8:24
  just want to kind of tell you guys how I'm feeling.
• 8:28
  Maybe someone resonates like with the way that I'm feeling.
• 8:31
  I just feel like me and my husband have, we have to work on
• 8:37
  it. Like there has been times where
• 8:39
  it's like I want to shut off. I just want to go to the room.
• 8:42
  I want to lay down. But it's like no, like I have to
• 8:44
  work at like, OK, I was a mom all day.
• 8:47
  Now I have to work on being a wife.
• 8:49
  Like I have to cook. I have to, you know, like
• 8:52
  communicate with them. Sometimes it's like I'm so
• 8:55
  tired. I don't want to do any of those
• 8:57
  things. Sometimes I feel unseen, at
• 9:01
  times I feel almost like a babysitter.
• 9:05
  It's just, I feel like I say this all the time but like my
• 9:11
  friends that are stay at home moms, like I kind of feel like
• 9:18
  now I'm going through the same thing.
• 9:20
  I didn't know what you guys were going through and if it's
• 9:23
  anything like this, I'm really sorry because this freaking
• 9:25
  sucks. Like little things just start to
• 9:29
  feel like they're so big when you're tired and suddenly the
• 9:34
  dishes, who did the dishes, who was who did like the last diaper
• 9:40
  change? Like who did everything last is
• 9:43
  like so important. But the love is still there.
• 9:47
  You just are exhausted. I mean, it's tiring.
• 9:52
  I mean, you know, you're not used to doing this, but I feel
• 9:56
  like this is another part that like nobody talks about.
• 9:59
  Or if they do, maybe I wasn't listening, sorry.
• 10:02
  But because love after baby is just such a process.
• 10:12
  Well, I find it as a process. I love my husband, don't get me
• 10:15
  wrong, but you know, you just kind of have to choose each
• 10:19
  other again. It's like you have to think, OK,
• 10:24
  I'm going to make an effort to do stuff with my husband, watch
• 10:28
  a movie, even though like sometimes I'm not going to lie,
• 10:32
  like just us hanging out, like doom scrolling and just having
• 10:37
  some show or movie in the background with just like pure
• 10:40
  silence, not even talking. Sometimes that just feels like
• 10:43
  really like intimate for us. But you know, like now we're
• 10:48
  starting to, I feel like now I'm starting to get really
• 10:52
  comfortable with having babysitters.
• 10:54
  Or like my mom says, she's not a babysitter, she's a Nana.
• 10:58
  So, you know, Nana, sorry, but yeah, so she doesn't like being
• 11:04
  called babysitter. So.
• 11:06
  But I'm much more comfortable with allowing him to just kind
• 11:10
  of be away from us. And he also needs to learn
• 11:13
  independence too. So I know that I was very like
• 11:17
  on top of him, overwhelmed, things like that.
• 11:20
  But I'm starting to like realize that, you know, it's OK for him
• 11:25
  to be without us. Like it's OK for me to be
• 11:29
  without him because even when we're out, I don't know if you
• 11:32
  guys do this, but or did this if you had a baby already in their
• 11:35
  grown up. But all we do when we're
• 11:39
  together is like talk about the baby or we literally sit there
• 11:43
  at dinner and we're looking at pictures of the baby.
• 11:45
  Like we just saw this baby. We've been hanging out with him
• 11:49
  for like weeks with no break and we're still talking about him.
• 11:53
  It's just so funny. I mean, I love Axel.
• 11:55
  He's so cute. But sometimes, you know, you
• 11:57
  just have to prioritize your husband because I have learned
• 12:02
  one thing. So one thing is that one day
• 12:09
  Axel, as much as he loves me, is going to find someone that he
• 12:13
  loves and he's going to move out or he's going to go to college.
• 12:16
  I'm not going to be following him to college or doing anything
• 12:19
  like that unless he asks me to. Then yeah, we're moving, Randy.
• 12:22
  But no, but in all seriousness, like one day he'll start his own
• 12:27
  life and then it'll again just be me and Randy.
• 12:30
  So I don't want to lose that intimacy.
• 12:33
  I don't want to lose that love that we have for each other.
• 12:37
  But it is work. It's not like it just happens.
• 12:42
  I mean, if it just happens for you guys, that's awesome.
• 12:44
  And hey, tell me your secret because it's work sometimes for
• 12:49
  me, it's work to be like asking like, how was your day or just
• 12:55
  like conversating sometimes because all I want to do is
• 12:57
  sleep, you know? So it's kind of like redefining
• 13:05
  a new love. I feel like now we're growing
• 13:08
  together. And I'm just so happy that me
• 13:11
  and Randy are like kind of aligned with how we think and
• 13:17
  like how we're raising Axel. So that's like a huge thing I
• 13:20
  now am like when he's a good dad, like that makes me fall in
• 13:24
  love with him even more. Like when he's like, babe, go
• 13:28
  take a shower. Like take your time.
• 13:31
  Like that makes me love him more.
• 13:34
  It's just like when he recognizes that I'm having a
• 13:36
  hard day and he acknowledges it and he maybe he can't do
• 13:42
  anything about it because sometimes I just have bad days.
• 13:45
  But at least he tries. He he'll try to do something,
• 13:49
  you know, like, we'll wake up and like, I'll go get Starbucks.
• 13:52
  We'll have coffee together, you know, we'll sneak like a little
• 13:56
  dessert together. But you know, we're going to
• 13:59
  start attempting more date nights.
• 14:01
  We did kind of find like some cool babysitters, so that's
• 14:05
  going to be nice, just like having some US time.
• 14:08
  But I think that it'll really solidify and just strengthen our
• 14:13
  relationship because I have noticed that sometimes people
• 14:19
  just prioritize the child. And as much as I love Axel, I'm
• 14:24
  not going to do that because in the end, Axel is going to be a
• 14:30
  grown up one day and he's gonna like, do his own thing.
• 14:34
  And I'm not going to be around for all that.
• 14:36
  But I've chose to love Randy and I have, you know, I just love
• 14:43
  him and I want that relationship to grow as well.
• 14:46
  And for Axel to, you know, see a relationship that flourishes and
• 14:52
  doesn't, you know, break up. You know, as you guys know, me
• 14:56
  and my husband, we both come from divorce parents, which to
• 15:00
  be honest, I think it worked out because we have the best step
• 15:04
  parents on both sides. So, you know, it worked out, but
• 15:08
  it would have been nice to see my mom and dad together.
• 15:11
  But you know, I never really saw them together.
• 15:13
  So it's not like it affected me that much, but it definitely
• 15:16
  would have been maybe a different kind of growing up if
• 15:20
  I saw that. So I really want to instill that
• 15:23
  kind of, you know, mentality into Axel as much as I can, you
• 15:29
  know, teach them about respecting women.
• 15:32
  It's just, well, that can be its own story because I feel like if
• 15:36
  you're raising a boy, you better show them how to respect a
• 15:39
  woman. And don't be like, please, I'm
• 15:43
  begging you, don't raise these guys to be F boys.
• 15:46
  Because in my generation, like, when I was younger, dude, all
• 15:50
  these guys were terrible. But like I said, that's another
• 15:53
  episode. This is all about Valentine's
• 15:56
  Day. So yeah, just, you know, we are
• 15:59
  choosing to love each other through the tough times, the
• 16:04
  tiredness, the feeling of overwhelm.
• 16:07
  I know that sometimes I can be a little brat, but yeah, choosing
• 16:14
  each other is what I'm going to be doing on this Valentine's
• 16:19
  Day. Also, I do want to say that
• 16:24
  happy not just Valentine's Day, but happy Valentine's Day to all
• 16:29
  my girlies, everyone. You know, if you're my friend,
• 16:33
  happy Valentine's Day. If you're not and you're
• 16:35
  listening and you don't personally know me.
• 16:39
  Thank you so much for listening to me because sometimes I think
• 16:42
  like who the hell even cares except like 5 of my closest
• 16:45
  friends. I love you guys so much.
• 16:48
  They're my biggest supporters and my husband of course.
• 16:51
  But I just want to say that in the spirit of love, I have loved
• 16:58
  doing this podcast. I've only done 9 episodes.
• 17:00
  So if you're not caught up, please go back to all nine
• 17:03
  because those are like fun and we tell like drunk stories.
• 17:07
  I bring my friends on and it has been so amazing the love and
• 17:12
  feedback that I hear from you guys.
• 17:15
  Here you go my hormones. I'm about to start crying, but
• 17:18
  it just means so much to me because coming from being so low
• 17:24
  after having Axel, this just means everything to me.
• 17:29
  And yeah, so this Valentine's Day feels different, but it's
• 17:35
  also a learning point, a turning point.
• 17:38
  And yeah, so I won't get any more emotional because that's
• 17:43
  freaking embarrassing. But if you relate to this, I
• 17:47
  want you to know that you are not alone.
• 17:49
  You're never alone. A lot of my episodes talk about
• 17:53
  postpartum, so if you want to go ahead and watch those, reach out
• 17:57
  to me in my DMS. I'm always available.
• 18:00
  I feel like if you can relate to me or if you can give me, you
• 18:06
  know, advice, go for it because I am no expert here.
• 18:11
  We're all learning on this together.
• 18:14
  I'm just some new mom who feels like at times I'm failing, but
• 18:19
  at times I'm also thriving. So it is just a balance that
• 18:24
  we're doing. And I feel like today was more
• 18:28
  of a therapy session for me to vent to you guys.
• 18:31
  So thank you so much if you're still listening.
• 18:34
  Also please reach out to me on DM or whatever if you guys
• 18:39
  relate or if you have advice. My name on TikTok is mom gone
• 18:44
  mild under score podcast. Same as Instagram.
• 18:48
  So mom gone mild under score podcast.
• 18:51
  If you like this video, please subscribe, comment, like share.
• 18:57
  But it has been so amazing talking to you guys and like
• 19:02
  always, same time. Safe place.
• 19:04
  Next week, happy Valentine's Day.