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Lindsey M. Henke | The Motherhood Therapist
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The Psychology of Pregnancy After Loss
What I Want You to Know about Pregnancy After Loss
Let Me Be Your Story Listener
The other night, after the children were asleep, I
It’s normal to want to compare our motherhood st
For those in the back: There are no stages of gri
“Congrats on your pregnancy!” is all we need t
Do you talk to your baby? Feel like you get messa
Pregnancy after loss is often misunderstood. You
Birth trauma, you could call it that. My first dau
![The other night, after the children were asleep, I shut the bathroom door and leaned my back against its solid wood after a long day that seemed like a year of parenting.
There had been meltdowns and screaming matches and not just between siblings. There had been whining and crying and not just by the children. There were toys strewn across the living room, first grade homework assignments piled high on the dining room table, and pieces of artwork plastered on windows with sticky preschooler’s handprints, smearing our view to the outside.
Looking forward to a break from the crazy of parenting a four- and six-year-old, I retreated to the only spa I had access to, my tub. I pulled back the shower curtain to run a bath and reached to turn on the faucet when, to my annoyance, I saw my four-year-old son’s lego Avengers littering the basin of the bath. Stomping my foot, I let out a deep and angry growl, similar to how a toddler might throw a tantrum, mine was just the mom version. I held back tears of frustration at having to do one more parenting task of picking up another pile of toys before I could get to my only enjoyable adult-only activity for the day.
Bending to my knees, I reached over the tub’s edge to save Captain America and his shield from his almost fate of being flushed down the drain, and I shook off Spider Man and Iron Man who were still sopping wet as their lego dents held standing water from the afternoon soak they took with my son earlier that day. I placed them on the edge of the tub to dry, ran my steaming bath, and finally stepped over the Avengers standing guard on the bath’s railing and into the bubbly lavender smelling water. My body sank beneath the suds, and I closed my eyes. I wished I could drift away to a place and time where life was easier as I was tired of being everyone's everything.
Moms don’t get rest. We're told to enjoy the little things while our littles are little. But we are exhausted by the needs that come with tiny humans. Moms don’t get a break. We’re told this will be the best time in your life, but time seems like a strange illusion, almost a cruel magic trick, when parenting young children. [Continued in comments]](https://lindseymhenke.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)