The Ugly Part of Becoming a Mom

Take a look into any pregnancy book and you will be bombarded with hundreds of pages of things you should do once you find out you’re pregnant. Eat this, don’t eat that. Advice on how to bathe, dress and sleep train this new life you will be bringing into the world in a few short months. There are literally thousands of books about being pregnant. But when I searched for books about emotional health during pregnancy, you know how many I found? Two.

Two books about keeping tabs on your emotional health during pregnancy, and even these weren’t focused on the mother. Both of these publications were centered on how the mothers emotional state can affect the baby. Marketed as self care books, but really just warnings about how you can damage your child if, heaven forbid, your mental state doesn’t bounce right back from the enormous challenge that is childbirth.

Looking back on my teenage years and early 20’s, I think depression and anxiety were always there. They both just flew under the radar enough, for no serious red flags to pop up. I fought with my parents, but what teenager didn’t? I had friends, but didn’t go out a lot. I think my anger at my parents just got filtered out as “typical” teenage behavior.

But on the inside, I sort of always felt different. I always felt a little off. I felt like I was looking in from the outside in my relationships. I felt like an outsider in my own life. I made it through high school, graduated college and got married, but still the lost feeling always haunted me in the pit of my stomach.

Fast forward to 2008, and I’m pregnant with my first child. I struggled to get pregnant, so it was a welcome surprise. Although I was ecstatic to bring a child into the world, I was not happy being pregnant. Years later my mother would tell me I was awful. I never noticed because I never felt any different from before.

My son was born in September of 2009 and his birth was rough. I was induced at 41.5 weeks eventually resulting in an emergency c-section. I am fairly certain Pitocin is the devil and you should avoid being induced at all costs! But a healthy baby born was born weighing 6 pounds 6 ounces.

In the days and weeks after my son was born, I felt sort of in a fog. Like my body was there, but my brain just couldn’t grasp what was happening. See, no one tells you that you may not feel an immediate bond with your baby. That’s the ugly part of becoming a mom, and no one wants to see that.

I gave myself awhile because after all, everyone has the baby blues, I reasoned. Everyone feels like this way 1 week after having a baby. Then 1 week turned into 3, then 3 weeks turned into a month. Then a month turned into 2.

I had days where I almost couldn’t function. Then I’d have a day where I was so high strung I couldn’t sit down. I would obsess if my son would eat or sleep 1 minute longer than the day before. Then the next I could only manage to feed him and clothe him and not much else.

Thankfully my son had a 2 month checkup with his doctor in November. I took a Postpartum screening. His doctor pulled me aside and said” you scored within the warning range, you might want to see someone.”

These words hit me like a ton of bricks. What did he mean, see someone. Everyone feels like this don’t they? I was embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn’t do this. Being a mom was supposed to be the most natural thing in the world, why couldn’t I just power through it.

The day I sat in my doctors office and cried for 30 minutes about, I don’t even remember what, was a low point. I still have nightmares about telling my doctor that I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be a mom, I couldn’t do it. Up until this point, I had never been told anything about mental health ever. The only thing I had ever even known about mental illness was probably played by a character on TV who was portrayed as “crazy” for a laugh.

In the months following I would be diagnosed with Postpartum depression and anxiety. I learned that sometimes an event, such as pregnancy, causes chaos inside your body. I think hiding what I felt exhausted me for so many years, the influx of emotions just couldn’t hold anymore. The damn broke and my emotional state with it.

I also learned that mental illness can be hereditary. After being diagnosed, my dad and my brother both confided in my they had also been struggling with depression for a number of years. Old relatives had also shown signs of mental illness.

I began seeing my doctor for regular visits was put on a low dose of medication. It felt better to know that there was a reason that I felt like I couldn’t cope. But that feeling lasted only a short time. Disclaimers for depression medications warn that sometimes things get worse before they get better.

I will spare you the details of the lowest day of my life, but I’m sure you can use your imagination. Days of fog turned into despair and sleepless nights. But then something amazing happened. I didn’t notice it all once, but gradually. I started to feel like I could be a mom, and a wife. I stopped stressing about things that didn’t matter. I felt like me, only better.

I stayed on the medication for years, even through my second pregnancy in an effort to combat PPD the second time. My 2nd child was born healthy and happy, and I weather that pregnancy better. I eventually weaned myself off, because I felt like I didn’t need it anymore. I had a great support system to help me through all this, but what if I didn’t?

I don’t fault her for this, but my mother never told me anything about postpartum depression. She was probably never told about it either. I don’t recall reading anything about it. I don’t remember my doctor mentioning it before having been diagnosed.

Why is mental health not given a front row seat in the healthcare system? Why are things like PPD swept under the rug? I was fortunate enough to get help, but I had to navigate it all by myself. I had to suffer for 2 months without any treatment, because I didn’t know what I had was treatable.

Even now, in 2018, 9 years after my son was born, thousands are still struggling to be heard. People go un-diagnosed and un-medicated because mental illness is still considered controversial. If it doesn’t show up on a routine test, then it can’t be real.

If it’s not real, then it can’t be treated. So thousands live everyday with the realization that they have been abandoned by western medicine. They are swept under the rug because it’s easier that way.

I thought I had armed myself with all the best knowledge before giving birth, but one thing was missing. My mental health. Because after all, having postpartum depression is an ugly part of becoming a mom. And who really wants to talk about the ugly parts?