Finally! A Show About a Bestselling Author and New Mother

put the baby, tried to get him to nap by himself. Failed, 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.

large in general. He's almost twenty pounds, which is he's 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. 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 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?

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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 cat's hair.

And I'm surprised by the fact that I think I'm actually a pretty decent mom. I've never held a baby 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.

And I was pretty floored with the diagnosis, and it explained a lot of the troubling patterns that had occurred 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 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? And indeed that's when she told me that I have complex PTSD. The diagnosis of complex PTSD helped me help 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

What was really surprising for one is that, like I've even seen Joey or other family members get like irritated 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

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. 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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.

uninterested in their grandchild. But that's not surprising at all. 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.