Can You Ask How I Am Too?

I wrote this in the first few weeks postpartum. I never knew how to bring it up with family.

I wrote about it and left it at that.

Until someone on Instagram messaged, asking if I had ever written something about feeling so redundant in those early days with family who visited. About how no one could listen or focus on you long enough or wouldn’t really hear you, and the frustration around it!

I was like... what?! Someone else felt like that too?!

I resonated completely, but I never reconciled this feeling because it felt wrong to even be thinking of myself at that time (I know... wtf).

While you want nothing more than your baby to be loved and cared for by everyone around, you can’t explain the slight loneliness at the fade into the background.

And yet, you sort of expected it, but your emotional needs are greater now too, so you want to say something, but you don’t 🤦🏼‍♀️

I thought it sounded petty so I never said anything. I’ve realised now it wasn’t.

And as someone here messaged,

“even if it sounds petty, it’s still real”.