Learning your limits can be challenging. When I was a little girl, our church used to have a pitch in luncheon once a month and I would always get so excited to taste all the different dishes. I’d pile my plate high and my mother would ask, “are you you sure your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach Hillary?” As a kid who thought very literally, I was always very confused by this phrase, sometimes even trying to measure to make sure my mom was wrong about the size of my eyes vs stomach. I was also the kid who got angry at my mom for popping open a diet coke while driving because you aren’t supposed to drink and drive–such a literal rule follower too! Lately, the idea of my eyes being larger than my stomach has come up repeatedly in my life lately, partly because as I’m becoming notorious for doing, I’d recently bit off way more than I could ever possibly chew and digest.
I see my clients do this all the time btw! Sometimes they don’t know their own limits and set their expectations so high that they are unrealistic.
Here are the 3 pressure relievers that I want to share with you, if you’re someone who likes to push yourself beyond your own limits sometimes too…
- There is a line between pain and suffering, and no matter how much you might want an unmedicated birth, sometimes the labor and delivery cards you are dealt do not make that the best choice for you. Know your limit. Have a boundary for yourself. It’s ok to push that boundary, but please know that when you are crying between contractions in expectation of the next one and shivering from exhaustion, as your doula, I’m probably going to recommend a medication pain relief tool that might be helpful.
- If you are team VBAC or nothing, then please please please prepare yourself for the sometimes uphill battle that you might need to fight in order to achieve this, whether it is how to advocate for yourself or how to physically & emotionally navigate labor and delivery, you really shouldn’t just expect to head to the hospital and for it all to be a breeze. Yes, 75% of people who attempt a VBAC will be successful, but please please please don’t beat yourself up if a repeat surgical birth is what happens. Knowing your own limits and capacity when it comes to advocacy is also really important for this specific situation.
- Exclusive Pumping is not for the faint of heart or undetermined! I see so many parents think that they will just exclusively pump their milk to feed their baby without ever actually learning about how to make that happen or the challenges that can arise with attempting to do that. There is at least one great Facebook Group for Exclusive Pumping that I like to recommend for those parents. The thing I also like to remind parents is that ANY human milk is good for your baby! Pushing the limits of your own time and sanity is postpartum life generally, so make sure you know where your boundary is when it comes to how you’re feeding your baby. So many people think of only using human milk or formula, but truthfully, combination feeding is OK, especially in a country where soooo many people have zero guaranteed leave from work and are stressed to the max.
Don’t be fooled by silly social media posts from influencers who are overproducers or selling some kind of online course to magically guarantee a completely pain free birth or over-production of milk! Normalize normal limits and stay flexible with yourself and your expectations if you can. Keep learning. I know, it isn’t always the easiest, and having rigid ideals is something I struggle with too, but where your ideals meet the real life experience–that’s where the good empathetic stuff lies. Keep being kind to yourself too.
