Mothering with a Migraine

Mothering with a Migraine

You want to know what a migraine is like?

It’s like when Zeus birthed his daughter Athena, the most powerful woman in the kosmos, right smack out of his head and dressed in her full regalia- shield, spear, pointy helmet and all. His head just cracked wide open and Athena popped out a grown up woman like, “TURN DOWN FOR WHAT?!”

(If you’ve never had a migraine, that is about as close as I can get to illustrating one for you. Or you can fill your mouth with candy, have someone hang you upside down at a child’s birthday party and let people beat your face with sticks until all the candy falls out, either way.)

A migraine feels like blood should be dripping out of your ears and eyes at the same time, as if you’re trapped in one of those horrible Saw or Hostel movies.

It feels like you’re hot and cold and nauseous and the pulse of your entire body is going to burst through your face.

You hate light. You hate smell. You hate having your eyes open. You hate the temperature. You hate the capacity to feel. You hate abstract, intangible things. You can swear someone is driving a nail into the base of your skull or perhaps the top of your head or inside your ear. Your eyeball may actually fall out of your face, you’re never really sure that it won’t. And God help the person who closes a door too loudly or even whispers in your direction.

I am angry that I have migraines and angrier at myself for not seeking treatment for thirty years. They are the most annoying, frustrating things in my life. They never fail to lure me into a trap of self-loathing because of all the self-pity they bring about as I’m laying in bed for 3 to 7 days, alternately crying, cursing everything in sight, and pleading with the powers-that-be that I will promise anything if only this curse will leave my body (much like how I behaved when I first got my period in 7th grade).

Until this year, I’d never before sought real, medical treatment and I’d never really reached out for help from friends. I just figured migraines were something I’d have to live with no matter what, much like enormous man hands and the self-induced asthma I get from chewing gum. I always thought there were folks with much greater afflictions than mine who seemed to handle life with much more grace and dignity and courage, so I should’ve been able to handle headaches.

And then I had children. And I found I couldn’t stay in bed all day trying to cope by myself because there were other people depending on me to stay safe and alive.  Other people who needed me to be able to stand up and cook and change diapers and play and drive and not throw up on them while giving them a bath. And I stopped and thought about it and realized I was losing an average of two months of a normal, functioning life each year due to headaches. I think I knew it was always bad, but I didn’t want to do the math or I would get even more upset that I had waited so long to seek help. I always thought I could at least passably manage my headaches, even though “passably” meant “not at all” and with a stubborn insistence upon using the same ineffective treatments time and again and never asking for help. Sure, I missed weddings and trips and special school, work and life events due to them and lived in dread of every change in barometric pressure or allergy season or hormone shift, but I figured it wasn’t Lupus or MS or cancer like some friends had, and it was just something a person popped Excedrine, threw up, stayed in bed for a bunch of days and dealt with each month.

Thankfully, I finally realized there would always be folks with much greater (and lesser) afflictions than mine and that no matter what kind of pain anyone suffers from, nobody should ever feel like their helplessness threshold is worth any more or less than anyone else’s. Everyone is worthy and valuable and deserves the right to ask for assistance without feeling guilt. That statement probably sounds really heavy, but I’ve always carried around an enormously irrational fear of inconveniencing other people. I don’t know why. But if you’re like me and for whatever reason feel like you can’t (or won’t) ask for help in most situations, just know there shouldn’t be any guilt in reaching out for support when you need it. Yes, there are a thousand other more serious afflictions that other folks deal with while raising a family, but migraines suck, and anything that keeps you a tightly wound ball of pain stuck in bed for a week gives you a pass to ask for help. It’s not like you got a paper cut and now you can’t drive carpool or make the mac and cheese.

Maintaining your health and sanity to be a productive parent, much like a managing a migraine or chronic pain condition, relies upon asking for help. Do not be a martyr. If you are a parent, with or without migraines or other health hindrances, and you are not asking for help in some fashion, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your family. You can be 1,000 percent happier if you ask for support from time to time, and when parents are functioning on all cylinders, it benefits the entire family. It seriously takes a village, and I realize that now. Generally, I hate asking for help. I don’t like receiving help. I like the energy I get from problem solving. I’m a loud-mouthed introvert who’d rather be alone and handle my troubles in private.

Migraines have helped me see not only my pain but my parenting in a whole new perspective.

If you’re burned out by 4pm each day and feel like you’re going to light your hair on fire and run all the way to Mexico, learn to call a friend for playdates and suffer together.

If you are crying as you bend over to tie your child’s shoe and are vomiting in the car on the drive to preschool, learn to call a friend or family member to do after school pick-up and perhaps hose your floor mats.

If you need tips or assistance with any sort of caregiving as a parent, then reach out to friends, neighbors, family, healthcare providers, your Tumblr pals that love vampires and cat videos, whatever. And do the same if you’ve got migraines. You’ll probably find more folks jumping in to help than you can handle. And that’s a good thing.

Because nobody should have to suffer chronic pain… I mean parenting….I mean chronic pain… I MEAN MIGRAINES alone.

Ashley
Ashley is a back-up dancer for circa 1989 Janet Jackson in her dreams and a mother of two preschoolers in her waking life. An Alamo City native, she spent her college and post-college years in TN, CA and AZ (all lovely states completely incompetent in the fine art of breakfast tacos). After crying everyday in radio sales, working next to a sheep pen at a rural telecom, being totally confused in agriculture, and completely giving up and drawing cartoons of co-workers at an online university, she finally found her calling in grant writing for a non profit arts organization. And then her husband (who, no joke, watches college football for a living) was like, “Hey! We can move to San Antonio to be closer to your family if you want to!” And then Ashley was like, “Hey! That’s good timing because remember all that drinking I was doing last week because I thought I had really bad PMS and wanted to power through it? Well, that PMS is a baby!” So they moved to S.A. and Ashley found a job with a rural non profit, but when she tried to go back to work after the baby, living on no sleep with a newborn and a traveling husband unable to share in the workload, she quickly learned she was about five seconds away from a mental breakdown. Cut to today where she is a full time mom, loving the freedom to run all over the city each day with her kids, despite a 98% decrease in her ability to pee alone/do less than 19 loads of laundry each week. She chronicles her most embarrassing childhood moments and photos at This is Me at 13-ish (http://meat13.tumblr.com), in hopes that she never forgets that as difficult as it is to be a parent, it is just as much of a struggle to be a kid.