A few other bloggers who also recently had babies have written about some of the struggles of motherhood. Linda wrote about how with a million and two things on the To-Do list you can't seem to get one thing done even when you have hours laying before you but babies need to get fed and then changed and somehow nothing gets done and you start feel like you are running on a treadmill at six miles per hour and can't jump off. Sarah is wondering if her feelings are postpartum depression. And that is the post that got me thinking and writing about myself.
I think it is absolutely great that there is such increased awareness and decreased stigma about postpartum depression. I think, however, the increased awareness is due to some higher profile cases we hear about; women committed to a psych ward for a few days to get a handle on medication and of course those horror stories like Andrea Yates who killed her children one by one, but in her case she was suffering from the extreme and rare condition of postpartum psychosis. Everyone knows now that if their wife, sister, mother, girlfriend acts crazy and talks about killing her children then she must have PPD. What about the massive numbers of new mothers who are just a little, oh, blue, and can't seem to shake that heavy feeling, or the increasing obsessive-compulsiveness?
I have been depressed
before, once during the winter a few months before I got pregnant with
Noah, so just a little over a year ago. I took medication and had never
been so content, so happy, so NOT at all OCD. It was great. Then I got
pregnant three months later and went off it immediately. I am not depressed right now, I think. But there are some dark days. There are flashes of anxiety and a lot of aloneness. I know where the doctors are and I know there are medications and group therapy but they are not proven safe for breastfeeding or anywhere near my home. So I go on. For now.
Then, Noah was born and my life had purpose. It was like being hired for my dream job with an annual salary of five million dollars. I came home from the hospital and my C-Section scar hurt like a motherfucker and my inlaws were here and I never slept again, the end. Or so it seemed.
But actually, it got easier and more routine but only after getting so so hard. I got over the 2-3 weeks of "normal" baby blues when your "adjusting" hormones leave you peeing and sweating out gallons of excess fluid. I am not going to lie or sugar coat this: it was rough.Lots of yelling at Marc and lots of crying at anything and everything. It did get better. I actually felt my mood levels getting better by the end of that first month. Blah blah blah some time passed and Noah slept through the night solidly for about five weeks and then he stopped sleeping at around 17 weeks old and then he returned to better sleeping patterns at around 20 weeks old, WHICH WAS LAST WEEK.
Being a mom, a stay at home mom, is something that I have always wanted. I also think I am a good mother. I love Noah so much that it makes me dizzy. I choke when I think about what he will face in our unfair and cruel world. When I hold him at night before he goes to sleep I think about the women he will love one day and the things he will choose for his life and I can actually feel pain and joy for him. I spend hours staring at his soft supple skin, I rub my fingers up and down his round rosy cheeks and I bury my face in his neck and inhale so deeply that I hope to burn his milky baby-smell into my brain. Some nights after I put him to sleep I actually miss him and I wish he was right here with me smiling and cooing - even though I am staring at him on the video monitor. I miss his physical presence; his body weight on my chest, drooling on my neck.
Each day with Noah is pure joy. Our days are painfully similar and routine but vastly different too. Motherhood is lonely. I only know a few other mothers who have babies Noah's age. Contrary to the way I represent myself on this here blog, I am a nice person who does not say FUCK in regular conversation unless you give me large quantities of red wine or gin. But these mothers have not returned my emails and several of them have gone back to work and I find myself hoping that my mother will stop by for fifteen minutes to say hello and drop off a wholesale-size bin of cat litter just so that I can say something other than did you make a poopie? a stinky stinky poopie?.
I love every minute with Noah. Each day he comes alive even more. He makes sounds and babbles at me and laughs and coos and cackles when I sing the Blue Bird song and blow on his tummy. He looks deep into my eyes when we nurse and I cannot stop staring at him because when I look into his eyes I am looking into my own and it absolutely boggles my mind. I am proud of course of how I have taught him to linger in bed and cuddle and nap until ten o'clock each morning. If nothing else, I am thrilled to have passed on my beautiful eyes and my ability to excel at utter laziness.
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