CN: MENTAL HEALTH DISCUSSIONS
So far in this series, I've looked at the parenthood journey before labour and obviously including delivery. There is a reason for that. The pre-partum period, for us, has taken up about 35-40% of our parenting journey since Ava is still relatively young. Therefore, I felt it made sense to devote that much of the series to it.
Those episodes are done now. From here on, I'll look at the post-partum period and all the intense experiences and emotions it has brought. The episodes that lie ahead will deal with some pretty heavy topics. I will be talking more deeply about addiction for a start. And then, I want to focus on issues like sickness, pain, guilt, and existentialism. So, it's going to be...a lot at times.
I thought I’d start today with what I initially thought would be a light topic to ease us in. In this episode, I will speak about tedium and the inevitable bouts of boredom we must endure when raising a small child. Now, I appreciate that this might seem trivial and selfish because...well... it's absolutely both of those things. However, it’s not ONLY those things. Tedium is a significant part of raising a baby. Yet, it's a topic we are discouraged from being open about.
But the truth is that I get bored parenting. I really do. And if you have spent any time with children, whether they are your own or somebody else’s, I can only assume that you have gotten incredibly bored at some point too. That's the nature of spending hours dealing with a brain so early in its development. I will also assume that if you’re anything like me, you’ve also felt ashamed about being bored and had intense pangs of feeling ungrateful for the tedium.
Like everything about raising kids, I usually feel like I can't even feel bored correctly.
Looking back, the first few weeks we had Ava were a complete blur. The memories I have of that time are weirdly specific and sporadic. I remember being in the birthing unit and watching the Cable Guy in-between feeding bouts. In these moments, I reflected on the year 1996 and if my 11-year-old self would have imagined where I would be in 24 years. I remember coming home and my family being there to help us for the first few days. I recall almost burning myself multiple times getting things out of the sanitiser immediately after they had finished - because I hadn't organised myself to prepare them in advance. I remember trying to keep Ava's tiny little room warm with a heater and accidentally turning it into a sauna more than anything mimicking the womb she had just emerged from.
I remember her little eyes barely able to open; being so scared to dress her with that tiny, fragile little body; rocking her while feeding her and being overwhelmed in this beautiful way about how this tiny little creature now existed and how she could function and develop off these small little amounts of milk powder like it was some sorcery. It was all so profound and extraordinary. Every little action and development struck me as equally absurd and divine.
When you bring your kid home, you can’t be bored. It’s not possible. There’s too much to do, and even though it’s stressful and exhausting, it’s also exciting. Nothing matches the white knuckle panic you endure the first time you get their arm stuck in their onesie and think you're about to rip it from the socket getting them dressed. But also, nothing matches the euphoria when they first grab your finger or look at you while you feed them. Nothing can match the sense of achievement you feel when you get them to burp for that first time, knowing that they will be feeling so much better and that you're really doing it and doing it correctly.
I knew that these first moments were exceptional and that I had to make the absolute most of them, even with the nerves and terror. It reminded me of being on a spectacular holiday where you have a wonderful experience, and you sit there and think, 'I could live with this feeling forever'. I would constantly scold myself when I wasn't making the absolute most out of every second because I knew that this was the only time in my life I would ever do all these things for the first time, and each moment had to be treasured.
It didn't take me long to start doing my nighttime feeds a little bit differently. At first, I was content to sit in a rocking chair with my daughter and watch and listen to her in fascination. However, within a few days, I soon began ensuring I had my iPad set up within sight, with a decent run of cartoons qued up to help make the whole thing go better. Burping, likewise, lost its allure rapidly. It soon became a frustrating and tedious rigmarole instead of a delightful competition with myself. Rather than being excited that she would soon be feeling better, creeping dread and frustration started to set in when she wouldn't burp. I knew we would pay for it instead of necessarily being all that concerned about how she would feel. Eventually, I got comfortable with changing her, as well. Taking one onesie off and replacing it with another became less like I was a bomb defuser in The Hurt Locker and more like I was working the assembly line in Modern Times – but with more washing and baby poop.
Every developmental leap or milestone has been like this. The developments are all so impressive at first because (and I know this analogy is probably a bit overcooked) babies are like little scientists making thousands of discoveries every single day. As babies learn what their extremities do and how their senses interact with their surroundings, they make the elements present in their environments clash so that they can measure the impacts. And because their understanding of their abilities is itself another series of experiments, this leads to them repeating their experiments over and over as they begin to develop new levels of comprehension and new levels of sensory engagement.
It’s fascinatingly surreal to watch and witness. I remember feeling like I could visualise all the new neural pathways forged through Ava's brain as she did something as trivial as picking up a spoon and dropping it, only to pick it up and drop it another 11 times again. There is no time in the human journey when the development is so rapid and visually clear to spectators. And that is a beautiful thing to bear witness to.
For Ava, there has been no better example of this explosion of neural pathways than transitioning to solid foods. We started adding solids to Ava's diet at four months old. That transition became an ongoing epiphany she is still experiencing today at 16 months old. Every new type of food, no matter how plain or pedestrian, creates a big bang event that makes a universe of neural connections, all blasting into existence at once. If we throw in some new types of cutlery in a new kind of high chair, in a new environment, suddenly there’s so much excitement, it’s like she’s not just a scientist running a blood test. It's more like she's turning on the Large Hadron Collider.
However, there's an excellent reason why when film studios create a prestigious Oscar-bait movie about a scientific breakthrough starring Benedict Cumberpatch, the filmmakers don't show the protagonist's journey in real-time. They wisely compress decades of trial and error into a 100-minute long three-act structure and cast actors who are considerably more attractive and charming than the real-life versions of the people they are playing.
And they do this because the scientific process is immeasurably tedious for anyone not involved in it. It’s repetitive. It’s painstaking. It often leads to frustrating dead ends. It’s the perfect embodiment of what life is like in a completely sterile, rigid, and structured manifestation.
Unfortunately, as a parent, you don’t have the power to streamline your own little Alan Turing’s development of their enigma machine. You have to bear witness to the ceaseless and relent’ ceaseless and relentless repetition. And you also have to bear witness to these ongoing trials without having the ability to get your kid to cheat, despite having already done those experiments yourself.
As I write and record this episode, I am 36 years old. I have had many experiences, ranging from the sublime to the sub-human. And the truth is that for 36-year-old me, plain porridge isn't particularly exciting to me in the same way it was to Ava when she first tried solids. My excitement and my thrill came from the discovery of seeing her enjoy solids and seeing how her brain reacted to this entirely new experience. But that's kind of where the excitement ended.
Ava might be on a culinary journey the likes of which our feeble adult brains could never comprehend. But that excitement didn’t last for me, and feeding rapidly became a chore. The excitement of seeing Ava successfully and safely devour solids devolved into a messy grind. Mealtime is, by and large, a chore, and it's tedious. At feeding time, I sometimes find myself negotiating with her like I am Woodrow Wilson, and she's Georges Clemenceau, and we are having dinner in the Palace of Versailles at the end of the First World War. And we’re also having these negotiations while trying to limit the inevitable fallout of mess to only a 5-metre radius.
It’s not just tedious, obviously. It’s also miraculous, awe-inspiring, emotional, and fantastic fun at times. I still love watching her reaction when we give her something ridiculous that we probably shouldn't be giving her, but we know she will love it. And I still think it's hilarious when we are with her grandparents, having dessert, and she knows instantly to go to her poppa to get some of his ice creams. That doesn't stop getting cute to watch.
But...the tedium we experience is genuine because even the most magnificent experiences become tedious after a while. There is a reason you hear rock stars complain about their lives when from our perspectives, all we see is them playing to 80,000 adoring fans while travelling around the world on their private planes, staying in the most excellent hotels, drinking more wine than the entire nation of Chile produces in a year. Everything becomes a job eventually.
All this complaining and moaning doesn't even consider the trivial and petty stuff thrown your way when you're as pompous as I am. I remember reading an interview with Brad Bird, director of iconic kids’ animated films like the Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and both Incredibles movies. He was speaking about how his experiences as a stay-at-home father helped shape elements of the second Incredibles movie, and the following quote connects with me to this day:
‘I had a bachelor's notion of what having children would be like. I thought I'm going to start them out on silent films, and so they'll think they're cool, and they won't know that they're really old. And then I'm going to do this. And then I'm going to do that. And it'll be fun. They're little blobs that have no individuality until they have started to have life experience. Basically, everything I was thinking was wrong.’
No matter how much you tell yourself that you won't live vicariously through your children, you do kind of hope that they'll like the same things that you want. Then, somebody will introduce them to the Wiggles or Nursery Rhymes. Suddenly you'll see that no matter how elegant and ageless and timeless you think the writing in Simpsons season 5 episodes are, they're not as exciting to a one-year-old as the Wiggles and their god damned propellor song are.
There is no good reason you should ever expect to be entertained by the same things as your infant child – and vice versa. But it's still a bit of a shock to the system when you get worn down by a grizzly baby and find yourself in a spot where the only thing you can think to do is to give in and put on a collection of Wiggles songs, even though you know that you’re going to want to bang your head against the wall while they play.
But here’s the rub. When I started to find parenting tedious, I didn’t just feel bored. That would be far too simple. Instead, I always ended up facing a tag-team duo of feelings. I felt bored and like a petty, selfish, pathetic failure.
Deep down, I know that these moments won't last. I know many parents out there have suffered tremendous, indescribable, incomprehensible, earth-shattering loss - and they would rightly murder me where I stand to get that tedium back. I know that regardless of the avenue Ava's life takes, it is impossible that there is any future outcome where I won't be looking back wistfully at this time, wishing I had appreciated it more. I know that tomorrow is not guaranteed to me or anyone. If something were to happen tomorrow, I would regret taking these moments for granted, as if they were endless and forever. When Ava has been sick, all I've wanted is a return to the tedium and banality of our routines.
So, yea. I felt like a failure and a selfish, petulant brat, alongside feeling bored.
But it gets much weirder than that.
Since Ava was born, I have had several incidents that I refer to as mental collapses. It's basically what the name implies – I break down and lose my ability to function as a parent even slightly adequately. When this has happened, Gemma has offered to take Ava and stay with her parents just up the road so that I can take some time to recover. Other times, my Mum had come down to lend a hand (before the Auckland borders closed, obviously). But regardless of how the situation has evolved specifically, I have been given a break.
It’s not as dramatic as it sounds. When these collapses have happened, I haven’t had the strength to deal with the monotony of parenthood because I haven't had enough energy to do much more than the absolute minimum my brain and body required to keep ticking over.
Usually, all I need is sleep and a chance to catch my breath. When Gems offers these breaks, it’s her doing her best to help me. It doesn’t come from conflict or anything between Gemma and me. She handles mental hurdles differently than I do. In the short term, she is better at facing a crisis up front.
Now at the risk of completely derailing this podcast, I want to address something. If you think that sounds like she has to take the brunt of the work, then I don't blame you because it's true. And believe me, I felt it more than you could ever feel it. In fact, the initial collapses were compounded by the guilt and shame I felt when she offered to go away for a night or two. I felt like I could barely call myself a father when I was so overwhelmed by even the banalest aspects of parenting that my family would excise themselves from me.
But those feelings didn’t help–they only exacerbate the situation. They just meant that Gemma had to develop the patience of a saint to endure my apologies and the constant hunt for reassurance. And even when Gemma would assure me it was okay, I still felt the crushing weight of failure on my shoulders because I couldn’t believe her. It was a cyclical hellscape of emotional warfare between different parts of my brain.
I’ve worked with a psychologist over the past year to accept that having these moments is okay. I understand that sometimes we will inevitably pick up the slack for each other in our relationship. Gems has picked up more than me in terms of mental capacity during this first year, but I’ve picked it up in other places. She still has done more overall – that’s just the reality of the situation. But I’m finally in a place where I am optimistic and confident that in the future, I will be able to pick up the slack in other ways again. I’m more comfortable believing that when one of these events inevitably happens again, Gemma will be okay, she doesn’t resent me, and we’re trying our best.
Sorry if that came off as defensive. I did think it was worth going over in a bit more depth. Anyhow...
We had one of these moments not that long ago. And it’s funny - I noticed with this particular period of recovery I wasn't getting better; I was getting agitated and panicked. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't get comfortable. None of my usual go-to distractions worked to get me settled. On the second night, I was alone, grasping the sheets tightly as if I was about to fall off the bed inexplicably. And it was only then, as I desperately tried to figure out why I was so anxious even though I had this precious time to rest, that it dawned on me what was wrong.
I was missing my wife and baby. And it wasn't just having them next to me that I missed. I missed having the nightly rituals. I missed having them breathe the same air as me. I missed the whole package, including the boredom or routine. For the first time, my isolation wasn’t helping me recover. It was only making things worse. As frustrating as it usually was, the tedium felt essential in those moments, as if it was water, food, or air.
That's the kind of head-breaking experience you can expect to endure with a child that nobody tells you about beforehand. Never in my life before Ava did I ever have the experience of a total mental collapse that somehow made me miss tedium that would have in part contributed to the collapse, even though that same mental collapse meant that I didn't have the mental capacity to deal with the very same tedium I was missing at that time.
I've spent half an hour trying to shape that paragraph, and I still don't understand it. Like, what did I even say? What do you even do with that?
How can anyone feel good about themselves or feel confident in their parenting skills when they can't even be bored correctly? Boredom and tedium shouldn't be that complicated. You should get bored, find something to do and/or have asleep, and then it passes. It shouldn't require this kind of introspection and all these complex emotions. It should be straightforward.
But, like everything else in parenting, even these simple feelings can become so god damned hurtful and complicated when you're enduring mental health struggles and feeling submerged in the ocean of parenthood. The ironic part is that I don’t even know if these feelings are slightly relatable to anyone out there or if you've experienced anything like that. I'm hoping there are others, but I also have this sinking fear that all my pontifications about tedium might not be relatable to you at all... and in fact, you might have already turned off this show in frustration or...you know...boredom.