This blog post was originally posted in April 2021.
As I sit and write this post, I am 13.5 months postpartum. My son is a happy, active little boy. He loves to play outside, pet dogs, and snuggle with his stuffed bear. He is also fiery, strong-willed, and high-needs, all of which have contributed to this mama’s struggle with emotional regulation.
The past 13.5 months (and I would beg to include the 9 months before that) have been wrought with lots of tears, frustration, and sadness. My pregnancy was lonely. I had quit my job to focus on battling the anxiety and depression left behind after too many life changes had left me scarred when I found out that I was expecting. I felt a lot of judgement from people around me and was surprised when no one in my life really seemed as excited as I expected them to be. I felt like people were wondering, “can she handle this if she can barely handle her life now?” Even family members who I thought would be here for me, were nowhere to be found – this was glaringly one of the catalysts of my maternal depression journey.
Going 9 months feeling lonely and with no support while growing a human being is emotionally taxing. Then tack on 2 extra weeks of waiting for this baby to be born to add on more fear, more doubt, more frustration. I had spent months psyching myself up for what I felt to be the scariest event of my life – helping this little baby enter the world. I read all the books, I watched the videos, I practiced the hypnobirthing. I worked so incredibly hard to mentally prepare myself. I wanted to prove to myself that I was strong, I was capable. By the time I was scheduling my induction at 41.5 weeks pregnant, I knew to expect the “worst case” in my birth plan – a c section, something I desperately wanted to avoid because of my history of anxiety and because of my fear of letting myself down.
However, despite knowing the odds for my delivery, after 29 hours in labor, it was still jarring to be given no other option but to be wheeled back into the cold, sterile operating room to be cut open. I remember going from my friendly labor and delivery team to the unfamiliar faces of the OR team who kept asking why I was in pain as I powered through my active labor with a failed epidural while 9.5 cm dilated. I remember lying on the table looking up at the shiny silver of the light above me and seeing the operation reflected back. And then the medicine came through the IV in my arm and all I remember is searing, fiery pain shooting down my veins, my body shaking uncontrollably through the pain as I pleaded with the nurse anesthetist to make the pain stop. Meanwhile my son is being pulled out of my body, my husband in a state of worried shock telling me hesitatingly that he’s a boy.
Instantly I was disappointed. I had waited 9 months for this moment. 9 months to hear my husband tell me, “it’s a boy” as the nurses place him lovingly on my chest. Instead I am telling my husband that I’m going to be sick as someone scrambles to find a stainless steel bin for me to throw up in. Minutes later the nurse anesthetist knocks me out and I wake up in recovery, loopy and confused, but finally able to hold my son for a few minutes before they take him away again.
That first day I held my son for maybe 30 minutes in total before the nurse practitioner took him to spend the rest of his stay in the NICU to monitor his low blood sugar. I felt so much guilt for failing him, and later I felt so much guilt for not staying in the NICU with him. There was something in me that was so exhausted, so emotionally stretched to the limit that I just shut down. I couldn’t do anything to help him in the NICU, but I also couldn’t do anything to help myself. I abandoned him, but to me he was a stranger in that moment. There was something in my brain preventing me from connecting the dots that the person who grew inside of me for 9 months was here and was taken away from me. And when we finally returned home, he continued to be a stranger to me for months. Who was this child? Why did I feel this way? Where were his parents and why did they leave him with me?
The traumatic crying and the colic that followed is a story for another day, but through that journey my postpartum depression and anxiety grew. There were many days I didn’t want to live anymore. Days I wanted to hurt myself, days I wanted to take N and leave him at the fire station down the street. It was never about him, there was something in me that couldn’t adjust to this new life. This new life with this stranger who I abandoned in the hospital, who wouldn’t stop crying, who I have to protect and keep safe with no help from a ‘village’ during a global pandemic. The fight or flight feeling of anxiety rippled up every time he cried – there are still nights where the idea of him waking crying still sends me into a panic.
For me, I am lucky. I have experienced depression before. I know that it will not last forever for me. However, I mourn the lost experiences that I could have had without this burden. I mourn for my son who didn’t have a mom for the first month of his life. I mourn for my husband who has bore the weight of my mood disorders along with his. And I mourn for all the other moms (and dads!) who experience exactly the same. You are not alone. You are not a terrible parent. You are surviving.
I don’t know how we survived the past 13.5 months. I don’t know how I survived. Especially with the minimal support and care provided to me during this time. We hear often that “raising a child takes a village”. We never hear about the village needed to heal a mother. In the United States we are told that we must deliver our children naturally, feed them organic meals only, juggle work but also stay at home to raise our children and never ever complain or ask for help. We are given one opportunity to be seen by medical professionals after this life-altering journey 6 weeks after the birth. For me, this appointment took place over the phone. On this call I admitted to feeling depressed and was advised to “get some sunshine” with my colicky baby who wouldn’t let me go anywhere – during a pandemic also. Our children’s pediatricians leave comments in their notes about the mother’s wellbeing but they don’t act on getting that mother the support and help they need. In my own personal situation, I have called our local women’s mood disorder clinic 3 times and 3 times have failed to be given an appointment.
We wonder how tragedies happen and it’s because we do not support women and we especially do not support mothers. There is no village for mothers anymore. We drop off food for a week and then we never check back in. We ask how long baby is sleeping but we don’t offer to hold baby while mom sleeps. We tell a new mom that she is young and naive but we don’t offer guidance or encouragement. 10 to 20 percent of new moms will experience severe depression, and this depression can last for 3 years following the birth. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how healthy you are, how rich you are – postpartum depression can affect anyone.
I cannot say that I’ve overcome my postpartum depression – it’s still there haunting me from the shadows of my mind just waiting to spring out when the barriers are down. My husband and I have to choose to work on it everyday. But here we are, our little family of three, continuing to make the most out of the time we have, even if some of those moments are more mentally challenging than we feel we can bear. I like to think that some day we will get through this and past this and be truly grateful for the challenges we have endured. Here’s to all the challenges you have endured too, reader.