Overcoming a long baby blues

A couple of months after the birth of my son I saw a flyer at the consultatiebureau (dutch child doctor) titled: "Are you not seeing the pink clouds with your new baby?".
By that time I saw the pink clouds but they had been grey for many weeks.

Before I had even been pregnant a lot of my friends thought I will be a great natural mother. Now I am, but after my son was born I didn't think so.
His entrance to our family came with a so many changes to my life that I felt miserable for many weeks. I recall that I cried night after night. That I would have no energy, that I was sleep deprived, that I didn't want to have any visitors, that I felt helpless at understanding my son's signals and that I didn't feel right in my new role.
I admired other mothers who were out and about with their baby six weeks after birth, shopping, looking fabulous. I was happy if I had a shower in the morning.
It took me two weeks to leave the house for the first time (for a short walk), five months before I went with my son grocery shopping; six months before I had the time and energy to cook for our family or take care of any other household duties.
Was it a long lasting baby blues or even postnatal depression?

Now in retrospective there are some factors that contributed to me feeling miserable after birth:

1) Heavy birth
As proud as I am to have given birth to a breech baby naturally without pain mediation, I have to admit it was a heavy birth for my body. It took all my energies and it took a long time to recover.
While I tried to rest as much as possible after the birth, I just didn't do enough resting. Luckily I had all the help I could need in my household but only a couple of weeks after his birth I started to sleep with him during the day. Also, I considered my diet to be healthy but some months after birth I found a different diet that was working much better for me as a HSP and gave me more energy for the day. All in all I feel only ten months after the birth my body had regained its full energy level.

2) Hormonal changes
During pregnancy I felt amazing. When my estrogen and progesterone hormone levels took a big drop after childbirth, I felt like the sun in my life just went down and a heavy grey sky appeared instead.

3) Lack of sleep
This was the one thing that hit me hardest after giving birth. As any other HSP I need a lot of sleep. I was used to 9-10 hours sleep at night. Now with breastfeeding my baby every two hours at night I was simply getting far too little sleep. Only after some weeks I made sleep my biggest priority and went early to bed and slept with my son during the day.

3) Lack of personal space
Out of a sudden there was this little bundle that needed me 24 hours. That was constantly crying for my attention. That needed to be close to me at all times. I struggled hard with this one. No more time just for me, to unwind, to centre myself. Very hard for HSPs. My son always wanted to be close. He would cry like murder whenever we put him down. He didn't want to be in his bed, his pram, on a mat. He had to be in our arms. Nonstop. He was crying a lot the first weeks. I think also due to me and him not finding our balance. As a HSP his cries touched me deeply. They felt like needles in my body. I could not let him cry. So he was sleeping on my body, we held him constantly, we carried him around in a carrier. He was with me 24/7. Even though I missed my previous freedom, I also felt I had to be close to him. It was a paradox. I missed my personal space but every time I would leave him my heart would cry out for him and I would miss him.

4) Lack of privacy
Looking back I feel after the birth was very little space for me to bond with my child. The first couple of days we had to stay in the hospital, in a shared room with another mother. When we came home a lady from the kraamzorg came for a week every day, then my mother stayed with us for a week and after that my mother-in-law stayed with us for three weeks. While all these people helped me greatly in the household and with my son, they also came with opinions and recommendations about baby care and intrusion in my privacy.
While some mothers wouldn't mind the additional people in the house and just be glad for the help, for me as a HSP, they represented an invasion in my privacy and I didn't feel comfortable in my own home.
There was no space for us to just be alone, to snuggle up in bed skin to skin, to rest during the day. There was no space for me to follow my instincts and develop my own parenting style with all these opinions in my own house.
When they all had gone, I finally had space and time to bond with my child and things went much better.

5) Too much information
When you have a child out of a sudden everyone around you feels like they own the right to give you advice on child upbringing. Not even your family: the neighbour, the doctor, your friends, countless books on the right baby care, google etc. I bought a lot of books on the topic, from attachment parenting to Gina Ford. Total extremes. I would google everything. Which parenting style should I follow? As a HSP I wanted to do it right, I had high expectations on me as a mother. I felt lost. Luckily in the end I trashed most of these books, stopped googling everything and followed my own instinct.

6) Breastfeeding problems
Already during pregnancy I had set my mind on the fact that I wanted to breastfeed. Basta. Well after birth I found out that it isn't so easy. I encountered numerous problems, had horrible injuries on my nipples and was in pain for weeks. I remember especially the nights when I woke up just feeling in pain. I was fearing the next time that my son wanted to breastfeed. There were times when I had horrible feelings towards him because his feeding brought me pain. Now I feel so ashamed thinking back of my emotions in those moments. Nonetheless, being very stubborn,  I just didn't want to give up. I had set my mind on breastfeeding. Luckily I got amazing help from La Leche League. After ten weeks the problems were gone and breastfeeding became the easiest and most convenient thing on earth.

Roughly after three months the sky started to change, the clouds turned pink. They even turned extremely bright pink filled with love for my son and my new role as a mother. These days I sometimes think I am the happiest mother on earth. I even decided to not return to work just so that I can spend my time with my son. 

What got me out of my postnatal misery?

A) A supportive husband 

My husband was an incredible support during those months. Not only did he do everything in our household after he came from work from cooking to doing the washing, he also listened to me crying every night and had words of support. When I felt pain breastfeeding but didn't want to give up he told me "Don't worry about the future. Just think of tomorrow. If you can do it one more day, you can carry one." Somehow this advice helped me a lot. 

B) Going outside and gentle exercise 

For many weeks I hardly went out with my child. He was crying so much, that I feared the looks of the neighbors. It was stupid really, as once I took him into the baby carrier and started walking outside he would calm down. When I discovered that, we both started to go for walks in the nature. It did us both good. I also did a mother and baby yoga course which gave me a lot of good energy. 

C) Meeting like minded mothers 

With that I don't mean other mothers who were depressed, no other mothers who followed a similar parenting style and just had similar experiences with breastfeeding, sleeping issues or finding their place.

D) Following my instinct 

My baby wanted to be carried around, he wanted to breastfeed often, he wanted to sleep with me and I let him. We were one unit. After the initial difficulties with this close contact I let it be and I experienced a love and joy I have never felt before. I read that breastfeeding and close contact to your baby releases endorphins and oxytocin which makes you happy and calm. It was true, I went from low to a high. From baby blues to baby heaven. 

E) Time

After all I needed time to get comfortable in my new role as a mother. Time to get to know my baby. Time to adjust to the change. Time to find our rhythm. HSPs have a harder time with change and need longer to adjust. So it was. Time heals everything. 

Looking back it was a hard couple of months but I found my place as a mother. Today I am surrounded by smiling pink clouds. 

If you had a similar experience I would love to hear your comments and what helped you to overcome the baby blues.

Giving birth as a highly sensitive person

Giving birth is seen as a life changing event. For me the life changer came when the baby was there and the life as I knew it turned upside down. Nonetheless encountering the beauty and force of mother nature under birth has left me as a different woman.

This is my own birth story. For every woman birth is a tumultuous event but I believe for a highly sensitive person it's even more profound. I hope other highly sensitive mothers can relate to the feelings I experienced and we can share this special moment together.

My ideal birth would have been at home in water. All possible in the Netherlands. I wanted to be in a familiar surrounding, a calm and beautiful place that gives me good energy. And I wanted for my baby to have a smooth transition into this world, to be welcomed into a gentle environment. A water birth seemed to be the best choice. The fact that my baby was still in breech position by 37 weeks shattered my dreams and I faced my worst nightmares. Hospital birth and possible c-section. Luckily I was given the opportunity to try a natural breech birth. Because of the stress I felt dealing with a hospital birth, in a sterile, cold environment, with people that believe machines more than human instinct, I hired a doula (Pascale Bonnet). A birth experienced woman assisting me during labor. Best decision ever.

When my first contractions came I wouldn't believe labor was starting as it was still 5 days to my predicted due date. Though, I had dreamed the night before that my son was born. My HSP instinct already knew better than my mind. It was the start of a 30 hour journey. Even though I had to go to the hospital eventually I had made up my mind that I wanted to stay home as long as possible. This worked very well for me. In the next hours the contractions started to come regularly but I could face them in the calmness of my home. My doula Pascale came and she would assist with massage and showed me a very effective breathing technique to face the pain. It was actually more moaning or humming like breathing. I was making a lot of sounds. I had a bath at home, I ate regularly (very important for HSPs) and just passed the time being comfortable. Pascale also did craniosacral therapy and other massage, which me and the baby responded to very well. At some point I longed for nature and we went for a walk in the forest. I was so happy I was not constrained in a hospital room. Getting fresh air and seeing nature gave me new energy.

After almost 24 hours of contractions I decided it was time to inform the hospital that I was in labor. As guessed they wanted me to come and check my progress. On the way to the hospital and also in  the hospital I wore sunglasses to block out light. Being very sensitive to bright light this helped me a lot to stay in the "zone of birthing". When they checked me in the hospital I had already dilated to 7 cm. Great progress. I didn't like the atmosphere of the room I was given and my doula Pascale did a great job to make it more comfortable. She used essential oils and we blocked out all bright light and only had a small christmas light. Now the monitoring started. Me and the baby got connected to a monitor. I asked for a long cable to still be able to be upright. I was taking most contractions standing, doing circular hip movements I learned during pregnancy yoga. Standing on the ground helped me to feel in control and connected to the earth energies.
My progress started to slow down a bit, something I had expected given that I didn't feel too comfortable in my environment. As the doctors wanted to speed up the delivery they connected me to artificial oxytocin. I was against this but couldn't win against the doctor's view. The artificial oxytocin made the next hours absolute hell. The contractions were now coming so strong without any break. If it was up to me I would never want to have artificial oxytocin again. It took so much of my energy. When I was at my lowest point during these hours and wanted to die (honestly) I took the mother earth figure that I had made during my pregnancy and prayed to mother earth to give me energy. She did. My son was born not long after that.
Nonetheless there was still one and a half hours of pushing. I also think it took so long because they didn't allow me to push on all fours. Something that my body was telling me to do. I had to be in stirrups. The most unnatural position for giving birth. I just wish doctors would trust the instinct of mothers instead of trusting their devices.
Even though I hoped until the last moment that my son would turn, he did not. He came out bum first. Like a little muscle with his legs along his body. The pushing was very hard and the doctor even had to use their hands to get him out. I remember screaming at the doctor "Don't touch my baby" as I felt it wasn't right.

When I wrote my birth pan I had made up my mind to not have any pain medication. I didn't want my baby to be effected by it and also I did not want to be under drugs which influence I can't predict. Now I didn't know how this would work out. I guess as many HSPs I am very sensitive to pain. A visit to the dentist even just for dental cleaning is a torture. Still, I wanted to try. I wanted to see if my body can do it.
It could. During all those long hours, I didn't ask for pain medication. I experienced pain that I can't even describe. I wanted to die. I thought I reached a point of no energy and still I found somewhere inside the strength to carry on. Having endured a breech birth without pain medication makes me very proud. It gave me self-confidence. It showed me that mother nature designed us perfectly and no matter which difficulties we face in life we can overcome them.

The moment my son was born was incredible. I remember very vividly how my husband said "He's out". After all these hours of pain and anticipation, he was finally here. Born bum first. I couldn't wait to hold him.
He was briefly placed on my belly and my husband cut the cord but he was already taken away from us. He was very little (born with 2600g) and the birth was very stressful for him, he had a fairly low Apgar score and they took him into an incubator. I yelled at the doctor "Don't take my baby away". I was like a tiger roaring. My animalistic mother instinct was born. We soon found out that he's healthy and just needed a little help with breathing. He would be out of the incubator in no time. It still took 5 hours though until I could hold my son again. In that moment the joy of haven given birth vaginally to my healthy breech baby was overtaking everything but later I felt sadness that I couldn't bond straight away with my child.


Remembering our special birth story still makes me very emotional. A little sad on on hand that we didn't have the home birth I so longed for but also very proud and happy that we had the best birth under the conditions we faced. Highly sensitive or not, giving birth connects women to mother nature. It brings up our deepest fears and strengths. It gives our life a new meaning.



My top tips for HSPs giving birth:
- familiar surroundings
- creating a cozy atmosphere in an unfamiliar surrounding
- blocking out bright lights and noise
- walking in nature
- preparing mentally and physically with yoga, meditation and Pilates
- eating regularly and healthy
- warm water (bath, shower etc.)
- massages and gentle touch to release pain
- limiting the people attending birth especially unfamiliar people
- making a birth plan and having someone else there who can enforce your wishes with the medical staff
- considering hiring a doula for mental and physical support
- believing your instincts