I Love Being a Mother. I Hate Being Chronically Ill.

 

Motherhood, POTS, and the grief no one prepares you for.

I never thought motherhood would look like this. I knew it would be exhausting, overwhelming, loud, sticky, and chaotic. I knew there would be sleepless nights and long days and moments where I questioned myself. What I did not expect was that the hardest part would be my own body. I did not expect that loving my child would sometimes mean calculating whether my heart could handle standing up long enough to make her lunch. I did not expect that something as simple as going outside on a warm day would require strategy, hydration planning, compression, and an exit plan in case I start to black out.

Living with POTS is a ball buster. There’s no softer phrase for it. It is a condition that turns basic human function into endurance tests. Standing too long can feel like running a sprint. Showering can spike your heart rate high enough to make you sit down on the floor and wait for the room to stop spinning. Summer: the season children wait all year for, becomes something you brace yourself against instead of enjoying. The heat, the sun, the constant motion. These are the things kids crave. And these are the very things that can take me out.

So instead of chasing my daughter across the playground. I sit on a rolling walker and watch. I wait for my heart to regulate. I wait for the wave of dizziness to pass. I monitor myself, so I don’t pass out in front of her. There is a particular kind of heartbreak that comes with telling your child, “Mommy needs to sit down,” not because you’re tired in the normal way, but because your autonomic nervous system is malfunctioning. It is humbling in ways I was not prepared for.

I love being a mother. That has never been in question. What I hate is being chronically ill within motherhood. Those are two separate truths that live side by side. The love is deep and unwavering. The illness is relentless and intrusive. POTS has taken my physical freedom, my spontaneity, and the version of motherhood I once imagined. The one where I am always upright, always steady, always able to say yes without first assessing the risks.

It has also forced me to confront the reality of my career. Being a doula is sacred work. It requires presence, stamina, steadiness, and the ability to hold space for hours: sometimes days, during one of the most vulnerable and physically demanding moments of someone else’s life. I cannot ignore the truth that if I am worried about fainting, about my vision narrowing, about whether I can safely stand through a contraction cycle, then I am divided. And divided attention in birth work is not something I take lightly. People tell me I can still do it. They see my knowledge, my training, my heart. What they don’t feel is the presyncope creeping in when I’ve been upright too long. They don’t feel the blood pooling in my hands until they turn dark red and swell. They don’t feel the internal negotiation my body forces on me.

And that is why I am trying my best, and not say that I am perfect in any shape or form.