Give and take

At 12:47 one morning, my daughter came into the world. She was perfect, healthy, and too beautiful for words. As I held her against my skin for the first time, I truly felt as if I had been given the greatest gift. I was so exhausted from labor and delivery, and the nursing staff told me to rest, to get as much sleep as I could before leaving the hospital. But I couldn’t sleep – I was so excited to be a mother that I sat in the hospital bed waiting for my baby to wake up so I could look at her, talk to her, and tell her that she was mine.

Eight days went by, and then everything began to change.

I wasn’t even nervous the day I took her home. I thought, “I’ve got this! I’ve read all the books, taken all the classes, joined all the mother’s groups on Facebook. I’m prepared for anything!” Eight days went by, and they were blissful. I fed my daughter, changed her, and watched her sleep. I worked on her baby book while she slept, putting together pages and pages of the future milestones she would reach. I posted a plethora of pictures, making sure the world knew how truly happy I was to be a mother. Eight days went by, and then everything began to change.

When she was two weeks old, my daughter was diagnosed with colic and acid reflux. She began crying and screaming inconsolably all day and night, and I was unable to comfort her for even a minute. The books, the lasses, and the groups had all failed me. Nothing prepared me for this part of being a new mother. Nothing prepared me for the significant changes my body and mind would experience, and nothing taught me how to handle a baby who was constantly discontented and in pain.

As my daughter’s next three weeks of life went by, I slowly began noticing changes in myself. I no longer felt joy when she would wake. I no longer felt fulfillment as I nursed her. I began to see things, objects moving and swirling in front of my eyes. I knew something wasn’t right. “This isn’t what being a new mother is supposed to feel like,” I thought. It was the moment that I sat in the rocking chair, holding my new baby, crying and screaming with her, that I knew I needed help.

This feeling of inadequacy turned into hate.

I described to my doctor what I had been experiencing. She was immediately concerned and sent me to a mental health clinic where I was deemed sleep deprived and sent home. The only prescription I was given was to get rest. If the proper questions were asked, and my desperation appraised, I believe the following eight months would not have happened the way they did.

For those months, my daughter screamed in my arms as I tried to comfort her. I began to cringe at the sound of her cries, and dread the moments of the day that she was awake. She was clearly in pain, and I thought I was clearly a failure for not being able to help her. I questioned my adequacy as a mother, and felt completely hopeless. This feeling of inadequacy turned into hate.

I hated myself, and hated the illness that plagued my daughter. I hated that when I held her, she still screamed. I hated that as soon as I would lay down, she would be up and crying yet again. It wasn’t her fault, and in the back of my mind I knew that. But that hate for myself began to turn into hate for my daughter, and that scared me, and made me hate myself more. “What kind of mother feels anything but love and endearment for their child?”

When I started having suicidal thoughts, I had my mom drive me to the emergency room, where I was deemed unstable enough to be admitted to the mental health unit.

Postpartum depression is real.

After one week of medication, counseling, group therapy, and rest, I was sent home to be with my daughter. I came home feeling like a different and better person. I could hold my daughter and feel nothing but joy, cope when she cried, and breathe through the moments that I previously couldn’t handle.

Postpartum depression stole that from me for the first eight months of my daughter’s life. And though I can now be the mother that she needed me to be, I still feel the sting of lost time. I will get better, and postpartum depression will no longer plague me or my relationship with my daughter. But I will always miss the special moments I could have had with her as a newborn, and miss the feelings of delight I should have felt had I been treated properly at the onset of my symptoms.

Postpartum depression is real. It affects mothers, partners, and children in unfortunate ways that could be treated through education about the illness, and medication and therapy for the mother.

It is a darkness that is unfair for mothers to experience after the most exciting event in their lives. It is an unending gray cloud that surrounds a mother when she should see nothing but the light in her new baby’s face.

Postpartum depression may not be preventable, but it is treatable, and beatable.