Episode 10- Failure to Thrive in The Pursuit of Perfection

In Episode 10 of The Place of Permission, Liz Chandler shares the often unspoken realities of early postpartum life, revealing how becoming a mother dismantled her need for control and perfection as she gained a new perspective on what it means to be someone’s child while caring for her own. 

Through stories of breastfeeding challenges, postpartum anxiety, intrusive thoughts, tongue tie releases, nervous system dysregulation, and the support that carried her through, Liz explores the profound grief and humility that accompany becoming someone entirely new.

Rather than offering a polished narrative of motherhood, this episode invites listeners into the messy, sacred work of surrender, where healing comes not through getting it right, but through learning to hold fear, trust, grief, and love all at once.

Whether you’re a parent or simply moving through a season where life refuses to follow your plans, this conversation offers permission to release perfection, embrace uncertainty, and discover the freedom that exists on the other side of control.

Thank you for spending this time with me, friend. Your presence here matters more than you know.

You can find more on social media at @withlizchandler and at withlizchandler.com for sessions, offerings, and ways to walk this work together.

Deep gratitude to my producer Dennis Hull for his wizardry in sound engineering, organizational magic, and steady emotional support and a massive thank you to my admin team at Do What You Love for helping bring this dream to life with patience, encouragement, and steadfast dedication.

And to my closest loved ones- thank you for believing in me, standing with me, and encouraging me to radiate fully and unapologetically as myself. This podcast is woven with your love.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the place of permission. I'm Liz, and I invite you to listen in as I share from the raw and authentic depths of my life. This is a space for those who've ever felt alone in their sensitivity, tangled in societal expectations, exhausted from giving too much, or lost in confusion. On this podcast, I explore the alchemy of these very places through storytelling, turning yearning into belonging, disconnection into collective healing, exhaustion into resolve, and confusion into imagination. In the pop podcast, we journeyed through a variety of topics ranging from grief and rage to sexual power and the expansiveness of love and joy, psychic insights, embodiment practices, conversations with the afterlife, and all the paradoxical happenings in between. My hope is that my stories and the voices I bring in serve as permission slips for you to embrace your own truth as the source of your power. Thank you for listening. And remember, all of you is welcome here, because all of me is too. Welcome back to episode 10. In the last episode, I talked about the birth of my daughter and how that experience of birth opened me up to my senses and to my understanding of psychism in a new way. It also opened up more access to the patterns of protection, of shame, of control, of fear that had prevented me from accessing my full power and my full awareness around sensation in my body, senses outside of my body. And it also opened up the door for exploring a lot of the wounding that had been there as it relates to being mother and being mothered. And so today I want to talk about my early postpartum experience and how having my daughter has really been the catalyst for untethering from control and fear around needing to be a perfect parent, and how so much of being a mom to my child is teaching me what it means to love and to confront and be honest about the parts of myself as mother and myself as somebody's child that have felt scared or overwhelmed or petulant, and to be able to provide space for it all. And I want to talk about the experiences that my daughter, her name is Ophelia, that she and I have had over the last almost seven years, beginning from the early postpartum period, that have been such a catalyst for my growth and for so much integration generationally about what it means to be in your power and to let go of the the expectation to be perfect and and to just be you without worrying if it's gonna offend somebody else. So, okay, we get home from the hospital, and I had mentioned in the last episode that there were some issues with feeding when we came home, and so I I think I want to start there. After we came home, my husband really only had like a day left until he had to go back to training. And you know, in those early days with a newborn, it's like a fever dream. Like you don't really know what time it is, you don't know when you're hungry, you know that you you have needs and that you have to um take care of yourself, but like time is so long and short and blended and this weird non-existent thing, like life is still going on, but also your life just shifted so fucking dramatically, and so it's funny to think about that he really didn't have that much time with us, but it did feel like he was able to have more than what we thought, and yet at the same time, it wasn't it didn't feel like it was enough either. Um so that first night that we were home all together, I went to go feed Ophelia, and she she had started to cry quite a bit. Um by the time that we were home, and I went to feed her, and by this point, from what I can remember, I was starting to feel pretty sore, which can be common after you have a baby, and you know, your nipples are not used to being latched on to be fed off of, but I was feeling this immense amount of pain when she would latch on, like she was chomping on my nipples, and I tell people who I've worked with because I I for the better part of the last six, five or six years, I've worked with infants in the newborn phase who have had feeding issues, and I tell people a lot, I tell the parents, like, I don't remember what it feels like to birth a child, but I will never forget the pain of having a baby chomp on my nipple. And I remember she latched on, and I I had this feeling like I wanted to chuck her across the room because it hurt so bad. And I just like screamed, fuck. And my husband was like, What do you need? What do I do? And I I didn't know, like I was starting to feel all this pressure of like she needs to eat, but I don't think she's getting anything, and I don't know what I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And so he ended up, I think the next day he had to go back to training, and we had scheduled at some point to see the lactation consultant. This this is a little bit blurry for me because I don't remember if I had already just scheduled it or if my doula had recommended that we go, because what was happening was I would feed Ophelia, she would cry at my breast, and I mean, like, I would try to put my nipple in her mouth, and she would just scream on my breast, and then eventually she would pass out. And I was feeling really overwhelmed of like what's going on, like, why is she crying so much? And then she wasn't sleeping either. So in this time, I had my dad was staying for a little less than a week after the birth, I believe. And so he drove me to the lactation consultant. I went in, and you know, it's like a big room. Everybody is who's there is is breastfeeding their baby, and they were showing me different things that I could do, how I could help get her latched on, and I don't really remember I don't really remember how her latch felt there. I think it must have hurt because at this point I I had such tender, like cracked nipples that like in the shower they were like peeling off, which I did not even know that was that was a thing. And so I was able to get some support of like how could I care for my nipples outside of breastfeeding, and get some advice on how I could help support her. And the other thing, too, was they weighed her, and she really didn't get that much milk from me, or she didn't really take that much milk out of my breasts. And so that was kind of the beginning of what felt like a descent in her feeding journey, because when we got home, it was like the next the next several weeks, well, the next couple of weeks were really spent focused on when was she eating, how much was she eating, and then I had to supplement her as well. And you know, I I I spent a lot of time sitting with the frustration and this feeling of shame of not being able to what I was telling myself is that I couldn't feed my baby, like my breasts weren't making enough milk to feed her, and that was really devastating for me because we have one main job, which is to keep our baby alive after they're born, and I didn't feel like I could do that well because we went to the pediatrician uh for her first well visit, and when we went, they weighed her, of course, and she had lost enough weight that they marked her failure to thrive. And they have to do that. If if a baby has, you know, lost a significant amount of weight, or I shouldn't say it like that, but a specific amount of weight, a certain percentile of weight, then they they do mark them failure to thrive. And like I understand that now, but as a freshly postpartum mom who was not sleeping much, who was really feeling this sense of um being out of control with how to support my baby in in feeding, seeing that she was a failure to thrive, really made me feel like I was doing a terrible fucking job from the beginning. And so from there, we had been working with the hospital lactation, but from there I got a recommendation from Idula to see another lactation consultant who her name is also Elizabeth. And I remember she came to my house that morning and extremely friendly, very calm. She had brought over a scale with her, and I actually ended up renting this scale from her so that when I fed Ophelia, I could know exactly how much of my milk she had gotten her body. That way, when I went to supplement her, I would know exactly or about how much she might need to eat. Because that was a constant guessing game of okay, how much did you eat and how much are you gonna need now? And I don't want to waste milk. And something that I want to talk about here is I had such I had such luck. I had two friends who donated their milk to me. And I'll be honest, it was really challenging at first to accept the milk because I felt like I'd failed because I couldn't make milk. But my two friends were overproducers and they shared their milk with me, and I really had to put my ego aside and understand that what was more important was that my daughter was eating food, that she was getting the nourishment that she she needed. And what was really beautiful about it too was both of the different milk that I got, the different breast milk that I got from my friends, she responded to differently. So, like my one friend, um, her milk always made Ophelia poop really, really well. So if I ever had a day where Ophelia hadn't been pooping very well, I would give her this milk and she would have a great clear out and she'd be much more relaxed and much calmer. And yeah, so so we began this this journey with kind of half breastfeeding, half bottle feeding, and I was still experiencing within the first couple of weeks a lot of pain, and Ophelia was still very colicky, colicky-like, right? So I want to be clear here, something I've learned over the last six years is you know, what they used to diagnose is colic is oftentimes, you know, a result of something else that's happening. Could be tethered oral tissues or tongue ties in the mouth, could be um indigestion, which could also be coming from the tethered oral tissues, could be um that their body is really tight, that they have tension in, you know, what wherever in their body because of birth or because of the way that they're sleeping, could be because of the way that they're being swaddled, could be that they have a subluxation in their spine. So she was crying a lot. Like I would feed her, and even when I was supplementing her, I would feed her, and then she would still continue crying, and it was just this constant, like I didn't know how to support her. Um, my nervous system felt like it was on tilt all the time, and I had to be constantly moving too. And what I've learned about myself is I don't like to be moving all the time, I like to be still, I like to rest. And this is also something that Ophelia has shown me is that we can both be the way that we are and it be okay. So, whereas my kid, and she's still like this, she needs to be constantly moving. She has a lot of energy that wants to bop around, and I like to be in a pretty chill state, unless I'm doing ecstatic dance. Um, and as I've learned more within human design, it makes a lot of sense for us. I'm a projector and she's a generator. So our energy types are going to be different in general, but what she's giving me, given me the opportunity to explore is being able, is being okay with the fact that our energy needs are different. What was challenging when she was an infant, though, is she didn't obviously have the words to be able to tell me, and her nervous system needed to be able to resource off of mine. And the issue was that my nervous system was not regulated. I was very dysregulated after she was born because I felt alone. I felt this responsibility and pressure to do everything perfect. I remember my my in-laws had come like a week after my dad had left, and my in-laws actually, I think my dad was still there. He was. Um my dad was still there, and my in-laws came, and one morning they came into the kitchen, and I I just started crying. And this is this is really this is a really important memory for me because when they came into the kitchen and they saw me crying, they were like, what's going on? Do you feel like you're not doing a good job? And I just lost it. And I was like, Yeah, I don't. I don't know what I'm doing. And they just held me, like they both just hugged me, and you know, that compassion that I received from them in that moment was really important for me. Um, because again, as I talked about in the last episode, I had all this pressure that I was putting on myself to be such a perfect mom and to do everything, you know, quote unquote, differently than my mom did. And yet at the same time, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. So as I'm experiencing everything new and I've just gone through this massive transition, internally, I was shitting on myself for learning, for you know, making perceived mistakes in how I was um handling the amount of stress that I was experiencing and not knowing how to support Ophelia at the same time, which consequently is is what made me really good at what I was doing working with babies and their families and their parents, their siblings, because I experienced what it was like to be alone in that stress. Now, I wasn't always alone, I want to say that. I did have my best friend Hannah lived on the street next to me, and she came over and she would visit me, and she was one of the people that would would bring her milk. And I remember one night I was sitting on the couch, and I think she was getting ready to leave, actually, and I started feeding Ophelia, and Hannah, like I didn't realize that when you feed and that oxytocin starts to release, that you can feel it like super drugged. And I looked over at Hannah and I was like, What's happening right now? What is this? And she she told me, she's like, Yeah, this can happen. And I'm sharing this because I talked a lot last time about these pressures, right? Of becoming a mom and doing everything perfect. And and what was really impactful and important for me in the early postpartum period were these experiences that I had with friends, and in particular with Hannah, this has been a common experience for us of being able to learn and experience motherhood in a way that is spacious, in a way that is um connecting. And I've learned so much from her about, you know, little things about how to take care of a baby, how how to, these aren't little things, but like like little tips and tricks, I mean, about, you know, how do I put a baby in a baby carrier and positioning and um like car seat, car seat, uh I'm laughing because when she listens to this, she's gonna be probably like shake her head or you know, be like, yeah, because I asked her so many questions about car seats and how, like, you know, that what was the safest way to have my baby in the car seat, and and um so much of of that early experience, I'm really grateful for Hannah and that, not just for those little tips and tricks, but because she really provided a safe space for me to just be an emotional mess and to not have all my shit figured out. And um, where was I going with that story though? As she was leaving and the oxytocin that was flowing in, I remember she had said to me, because I was really starting to break down with breastfeeding, and she she said to me what nobody else was saying to me. She said, Liz, it's okay if you don't want to do this. And I started crying because there was a part of me that did not want to fucking do that. But I was breastfeeding because I knew that it was, you know, quote unquote best for my baby. And again, I wanted to do it differently than my mom, and my mom didn't breastfeed me. So I was putting all this pressure on myself to breastfeed my baby so that I could create a better life and situation for my child. Like, talk about fucking projecting onto my kid, right? Let me give you this, and therefore it's gonna be a better life. And that's also something that. Ophelia has really, really given me a lot of experience about is like giving her something differently than what I had, and seeing her be human and have her opinions or her experiences with it in a way that I am either not expecting or I didn't expect her to receive it in that way, which has often triggered me because then I get into the state of like, why can't you accept this or why can't you do this? Which again is a projection onto my kid. Um, and I think that happens a lot. I think that when we have kids, there's this hope that things are going to be different than it was for us and our relationship with our parents, and then we realize that our parents were doing the best that they could, right? So it's it's so intermingled. There's there's the hurt of the little kid inside of us, and there's the realization of the adults that we are and the becoming that is happening in that moment, and the the humility in all of that. There's there's understanding, humility, and there's pain. It's all it's all present, and what the process has been for me is welcoming it all and being able to hold all of it. And in the beginning, after she was born, it was really hard to hold all of that, right? Because it also meant that parts of my ego had to die, not only with the breastfeeding, but with in realizing that fuck, this is hard. This is really hard to be a parent. So we had seen this lactation consultant, and she had recommended after doing an oral evaluation on Ophelia to see, you know, how was she latching? What was her tongue mobility like? Could she move her tongue? Could she suck in milk? How much milk was she taking? Um she had suggested that we see a dentist who um specialized in tongue tie releases. And the other thing, too, that I want to say here was that in combination with the tethered oral tissues or tongue ties, she had also, the lactation consultant had also suggested that it was possible that I could have something called insufficient glandular tissue. I didn't get that confirmed, and she wasn't diagnosing me with it, but I have a history of PCOS, which is not called PCOS anymore as of yesterday. Um, but I in this moment I can't remember what they've reframed it to or rephrased it to. I think P P M O S. I'll have to look. Anyway, um, and with that, essentially what it's saying is that there is not enough tissue in the breast that would make breast milk. So one of the things, and this goes back to what I had talked about in the last episode of feeling having the story of I'm not going to be able to have a baby, right? That I had been told that by doctors, that it might not be a possibility for me. That had been a story in my family, a question of, you know, would that even be possible? And I had a baby, and then I had this, you know, issue with breastfeeding. And she had suggested this insufficient glandular tissue, and it kind of brought up that same story of, you know, this is connected to not being able to um be a woman, really, is the is the um when it's boiled down, that's what the story was saying that I wasn't connected to femininity, wasn't connected to womanhood. And what I understand now about myself, especially with the PCOS, and I'll talk more about this in another episode, but I my breast tissue did not really fully develop the way that it should. When you look in my family, everyone else in my family has breasts that are like pretty good size. I am the only one in my family that does not have uh even remotely large breasts. And what I understand now is that with hormonal issues that can happen in PCOS, it can cause the breast tissue to not fully develop. And when I was pregnant with Ophelia, my breasts really did not change size. Not saying that they have to, but but it is common that they do. And so when she said this, it was it brought up that story, but it was also really reaffirming for me of like, okay, there's something else going on here. Um, you know, there's multiple things going on here. It gave me a little, a little bit of relief in that way. And so um, she had suggested that we go see this dentist and who does these releases, and I really didn't know much about tongue tie releases. I knew from a limited perspective of like, you know, what tongue ties do in terms of preventing feeding. And I had asked when we were seeing the lactation specialist at the hospital if she had a tongue tie, they had told me no. I later learned that in the hospital their hands are more tied in diagnostics because they don't have the certifications to be able to diagnose something like a tongue tie. So we went to get her tongue tie released, and in the office there was a woman, her name was Katrina, I won't forget her name because she was very kind to me. And the day of the release, I had a fever, like I was very um, very under-resourced. I was tired, I hadn't eaten well. I think I mentioned in the last episode that like I was eating cookies off of a cookie platter for days. And and at the same time, I did have friends making me food, so I just wasn't getting the proper care that I should have been in the early postpartum period. And so eventually my body was like, and we're done, you know, we're done with this. And I got sick, and it happened to be the day that we went to go do the Tung Tai release. So when we got there, I was kind of out of it, and that day was gonna be pretty booked anyway. And again, this goes back to that like idea of control. Like, I had this idea of like we're gonna do this and this and this, and when we got there to get the release done, I was sitting in the chair, and the way that they did it, and most places that do the releases will do it this way. They have the parents sit in one place, and then they take the baby to the um another room where they can actually do the release itself. And when they took Ophelia, I was I was really feverish, so I'm like shivering in this chair, and and Katrina comes over to me and she's like, Are you okay? Are you doing okay? And she was really kind and she brought me some water, and then she was telling me that they were gonna do the release, and you know, the baby's gonna be in there, and it won't be that long of a procedure, and that she'll be right back. And so they they took her in and they did the release, and I could hear her crying, and that was that was really challenging because um, and it's something that I often have recommended to parents that when they go to get the release done, that if they have headphones, that they take headphones, or that they step outside so that they can't hear their baby crying, because it's not that the babies are unsafe, especially with um like I didn't feel unsafe in there. The provider knew what they were doing, and the providers that I've recommended here know what they're doing and they are safe, and there's something that happens in the nervous system when our babies are crying, right? We are programmed to pick up on that cry and and respond, and so I felt really shaky, I felt unsteady, and um, and it didn't last long in terms of the release, it didn't last long. Like they brought her back to me pretty quickly thereafter. Now, I don't remember what they told me to do after that, um, in terms of, I don't remember if they gave me homework to do for stretches, and I'm saying that because now I have a totally different perspective as a practitioner who's worked with several babies that have gone through the tongue type process and like the support that we give families to make sure that the process goes smoother and that healing inside the mouth is much easier. Um, but I don't remember, I don't remember what they they told me to do because I was pretty out of it, and so she had a release, and we went to go pretty soon after that to get her body work done. And I think I mentioned before that my doula Molly was a craniosacral therapist as well, and we had some time in between the the release and going to see Molly that um I think I went and got like McDonald's or something like that, and Ophelia fell asleep in the car, and it was really peaceful and very lonely because I remember feeling like absolute garbage, like my body physically was hurting, I was shivering, I was feverish. I'm eating this McDonald's, which I know wasn't gonna make me feel any better, but it's all that I had, and she fell asleep in the car, and I'm sitting outside of Molly's. I ended up getting there like an hour early because I got the time wrong, and I'm sitting there and I'm so tired, and all I want to do is sleep, but I feel like I can't because I have to be awake so that my baby in the backseat is safe. Because I also I talked about this a couple episodes ago, I was also experiencing a lot of intrusive thoughts at this time, so it was like a dumpster fire of a day of a lot of stress, but we went in for her craniocral session. I'm sitting there, and same thing, I'm feeling so tired, and it's very relaxing in there. Molly had a really beautiful setup, it's very calming, and Ophelia was receiving work. And what by the time we got in there, I should mention this, this is important, because by the time we got in there, we had been to so many different places. I we went somewhere else that day. We might have done lactation actually after the release, um, or I mean before the release. Um, but we had gone to multiple places, and so we ran out of diapers, and I ran out of change of clothes because she'd already had like a blowout during the day. So by the time we got to Molly's, she blew out again, and I had nothing. I had no diapers, I had no clothes for her. Q, you know, internal shame monologue happening on repeat, and I just looked at her and I said, What do I do? And she looked at me and she said, You know what? We're gonna make it work. And she did, like, you know, we cleaned up as best as we could, and she did the body work on Ophelia, and I watched Ophelia's body. It was like her body was taking a sigh for the first time, unwinding. She had some, you know, crying a little bit, but then she fell asleep. And eventually I get back in the car, like we're our session is done. I get back in the car, and we're driving home, and I can see, you know, the little mirror in the backseat, so I could see her. And she she was like, her head was all knocked to the side, her eyes were closed. And of course, I'm experiencing all these intrusive thoughts, and and my intrusive thoughts were a lot of thoughts about like different ways that my child would be dead, and so I pulled the car over because I thought she was dead in the backseat. Turns out she was resting and sleeping for the first time in her life, like deeply sleeping. And while I had that panic because of the thoughts that came in, I also had so much peace flood into my body, being able to see my daughter feel calm in herself. And it's interesting as I'm sitting here now saying that out loud, that has been a theme in her entire life, is supporting supporting peace in her body. But it's also been something that I've been opening up to more in my body is allowing peace to be present in my body. And it's interesting thinking about the different ways that we mirror each other in that way, right? And so, anyway, she hits the release, she has this body work, and breastfeeding started to feel better. There was much less pain, and my milk production did not increase, not for lack of trying, because we did try to implement triple pumping or triple pumping, god, that sounds terrible, triple feeding, which is essentially where you feed your baby and then you pump after your baby feeds, and then you feed them whatever you've pumped. And the thought process is to one increase supply and two um be able to give you know baby a full fuller feed. And that did not increase my supply. And so at this point, I started to get to the point where I was really more accepting of where we were at in our journey, and I had the donor milk, I had my milk, and eventually I started supplementing with formula, which again took me a while to get to because I had all these ideas of, well, I have to feed her breast milk, because if I don't feed her breast milk, then it's not going to be as good for her gut and it's not going to help her brain develop. Like I had all these judgments based off of what I one had been consuming in you know social media and from other people about what is the best way to raise a baby. Which again gives me this perspective of I bet you our parents were receiving information as well. For example, thinking about a baby even being asleep in the bassinet, right? Like when I was a baby, that was when back is best was coming up, of having babies on their their, or sorry, no, um, that's not when back is best was coming up. That was when babies could would be okay to lay on their stomach and with all the things in the crib, and um later is when back is best came. And so by the time Ophelia was born, that was still the recommendation that back is best, and it's very different than what it was when my parents had me, right? So, like you couldn't even, if you put something in a crib like cradle um or whatever they're called, the bumpers, that would be like sacrilege because of the the safety issues that they've figured out and learned. So, my point with this is that it was a good perspective for me to realize, like, again, our parents, they did the best they could. They didn't know what the fuck they were doing either. So, um, yeah, so this is this is uh funny because I really didn't plan to spend so long talking about our feeding journey, but it was a really pivotal moment for me in the beginning of learning to let go of control and let go of expectation of how I thought things were going to go. And at the same time, having humility for what our experience was and gaining confidence in myself because there's so much information about, you know, you take tongue tie releases in general, there's so much information about what can be done surrounding a tongue tie release. Do we release, do we not release? Do we get body work? Do we not get body work? Do we supplement with breast milk or formula? Or do we go to the chiropractor? Do we not go to the chiropractor? There's a lot of information that parents are are overwhelmed with. That um they had said, you know, I wondered if you'd be able to do that. And how for me, that was such a that was a comment that made me feel so small, and I'd already been saying those lines in my head, right? But it gave me the opportunity to see, like, do I really want a comment like this to have power over me? And if I don't, then why the fuck am I saying it to myself? Right? Like it that wasn't a new comment. I just heard it from somebody else's mouth instead of my own brain. So at this time, as I mentioned, I was experiencing a lot of intrusive thoughts, and I very quickly reached out. Um actually, this was still while my dad was here, so I'm backing up a little bit timeline-wise. This is still about a week into Ophelia being born, and I remember feeling scared because I was having all of these thoughts of what if I were to hurt my baby? And I had images of way different ways that my baby would be hurt. And by me. Not that I wanted to do that, but that I was terrified that for some reason I would be so out of my mind that that's what I would do to my baby, and and again, this gave me a really good perspective of one when people do things to their baby, and I want to be clear, I am not saying this is acceptable, but I do understand getting to a point of being so flooded and so overwhelmed that you feel out of your mind, and the people that don't have the support to help them get resourced, regulated, I understand why things like that happen. It's not okay, but I understand because there were several moments where I was at the point of so much crying from Ophelia, and I had all these intrusive, intrusive thoughts that I felt out of control. And, you know, there were several times that like I would just she would cry and cry, and I'd scream back, and I'd be like, What do you need? What do you want from me? What am I supposed to do? I also had a lot of empathy for when people would leave their children in cars. And not remember that they left them there. Again, it's not okay. And I understand the disassociation that happens when you're so severely stressed. So it gave me good perspective. Um it gave me good perspective for what people might be going through in the process of being a parent, and in particular early parenting. And so I remember the day that I I just I'd had enough. Like I was I was feeling like out of my mind. And I went to my dad and I said, I think I need help. And I was really terrified to tell him this. And in fact, that same feeling I had when I told my mom that I wanted to move in with my dad, like at knowing this was the same feeling of like, all right, Liz, you need help. These thoughts are not okay. They are not so like they're not supporting you, they're not helping you. They're that you're not sleeping because of them. And so I went and I said, I need help. And I reached out to my doula. I told her I was experiencing intrusive thoughts. I told my dad I was experiencing intrusive thoughts. And I really had a lot of shame about this because I thought I was the only person that experienced this. Turns out I'm not. This is a thing. This is an experience that happens when the mind is so overwhelmed. And it happens a lot in the postpartum period because we go through this massive transition, and then our body, our entirety, is designed to take care of this baby. And so we have this response to survival, right? Of making sure that we are vigilant so that our babies can survive. But we'll, if we have an overload of stress, it can turn into um feeling, you know, like imagining scenarios that are way worse than could actually be in the present and be happening. And so I ended up working with a therapist for a while, and it was helpful just to be able to name. We did a little bit of EMDR, which I do find interesting looking back that she tried to do EMDR on me at one week postpartum. And part of what we were working through was I had a lot of stress around my husband not being there for the birth. Um, I felt really sad about it. And part of what we were trying to reprocess was that, and imagining him in the room with me. And yeah, we didn't we didn't end up doing that for too much, and I'm not really sure why, but we didn't end up doing that too much. It just became more of like talk therapy, which was which was supportive and which was helpful. Um, and it was really helpful too because my my grandmother and my grandfather would come and watch Ophelia once my dad was gone, once my in-laws were gone, so that I could go do this therapy. And that's such a strange feeling in the early postpartum period, like when you leave your baby for the first time. It's it's like, how did I ever not have a baby with me? And then you feel, at least I did, I felt this sense of urgency to get back to her at first. But it ended up being the support that I needed, and in conjunction with that, I have had my six-week follow-up and explained to my doctor that I was experiencing these intrusive thoughts, that I was experiencing a high level of anxiety, and they recommended that I start an SSRI to support the looping thoughts, and I was nervous about it because I really didn't want to take medication, and at the same time, I was at a point where I felt I could not control, right? This theme of being out of control and being in fear was coming up majorly, and so they prescribed me sertraline and I took the medication, and within 24 hours my thoughts were quiet. And so you will never see me or hear me telling somebody that they should not take pharmaceutical drugs, especially if they are experiencing situations where they don't have the resources, resourcing, or tools to help support them. I did not have the same toolkit that I have now, or the same awareness of my body that I have now. So that little pill was a lifesaver for me and for my daughter because it helped quiet my thoughts enough that I could feel peace in my body enough that my daughter could then start to resource off of me and feel more regulated as well. And what those first two months, three months really showed me was that my entire expectation of how I thought birth, the early postpartum period, feeding, becoming a mom was going to be was entirely different than what I expected. And I had to go through this process not only of grieving myself before I was a mom, but grieving who I thought I would be as a mom, and then re-grieving the child parts of me that didn't get the connection with my mom that I wanted, that also were fighting with the parts of me as an adult who were still angry about it. There was a lot of grief that I was experiencing in that transition around not having control, and I equated not having control to not being safe, and so it gave me a good opportunity to be able to surrender more into what was the reality, and that has continued over the last six years to deepen and deepen and deepen this practice of surrendering, and how I hold in that space both fear, trust, and these parts of me that want to control, while at the same time these parts of me that feel more free and are freer than I ever have, and the grief that comes along with letting go of the patterns that once protected, like being in control and learning how to trust that it's okay to be in the discomfort of uncertainty or be in the discomfort of learning and human design on a line three. A lot of what I learn is going to be so important for me developing as a human, and I think that's true for everyone, and this is also part of the reason that I talk about in this podcast my experiences because I have learned a lot, and what control has tried to stop me from doing is being in the learning process, which is fucking messy. It's messy, and mistakes are going to be made. They have to be made, especially as a line three, they have to be made in order to fully learn what works and what doesn't work. And I'm gonna talk more in the next episode about the different ways that I have continued to surrender in motherhood, but it's from a perspective of really like not going quietly into that good night. You know, it's I have I have been clawing my way into surrender, and my child has been such a huge catalyst for the need for that, and that's that was evident from the beginning in not being able to plan and expect and know everything that was gonna be happening with her. And yeah, so I hope that I hope that this episode gives you permission to to think about what areas of your life have you sat with, you know, the humility of what you you thought was going to be and wasn't, and the courage that it takes to be able to surrender into the reality of life. Thanks for listening.