Can we take a break from cute babies, drool worthy food, gym selfies, perfectly decorated homes, the trendiest “it” item, duck lips etc to talk about something S U P E R important to me, maybe even you or someone that you love?
Postpartum. Maybe you have been there. Maybe someone close to you has. We don’t talk about it. Sure, in passing we joke about how we look like a raccoon. Queue jokes about the bags under our eyes. How the midnight hour looks a lot different than it did in our twenties. #allthecoffee and wine memes are life to us. BUT. Can we, just for a minute strip all that down and put it to the side? Can we go to our postpartum journey, whether you’re there right now, just got out of it, it’s ahead in the distance or it’s been so long you’re like, “posta huh?”
Can we talk about the weird things we obsess on? The delusional conversations where someone has to repeat the same thing 10x because we just can’t focus. The unexplained anger. Anger towards some of the closest people to us. The resentment and bitterness. The tears. Don’t even get me started about the tears . . . or do. Because we SHOULD be talking about the tears.
The mesh underwear is lovely and all and it’s cute to joke about it but what happens AFTER the mesh panties? That’s what I want to talk about, because we don’t talk about it enough. Why don’t we talk about how some nights you stay up all night and can’t sleep? Sometimes you find yourself doing something that resembles a hyena – where you find yourself crying and laughing at the same time? I was just talking with a fellow mama who said she didn’t even know it was possible to cry and laugh at the same time. But it is. Let’s talk about how sometimes you don’t shower, eat or do anything that resembles normal self care. Does this sound familiar? Did you know it’s possible to want something so so bad and still be incredibly sad after you have it? To feel so isolated. Lonely. To feel like you’ve lost all control. To feel worthless. Is this striking a chord at all?
Then there’s the anxiety. I had heard of PPD (post-partum-depression) but I hadn’t heard of PPA (post-partum-anxiety). Or maybe I had heard of it? Maybe some sweet mama I knew had it but I just wasn’t looking or paying enough attention to see it. If there was such a mama, I’m here to say I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t see what you were going through. I now understand. After I had my second daughter Nora I had postpartum anxiety, bad. Like “almost pulled over on the side of the freeway, called my husband to leave work and save us because I couldn’t drive my babies to a play date” bad. Like heard things that made me swear someone was trying to break into my house, every.single.night.bad. Thinking they were coming to kill us all bad. Fully understanding the phrase “paralyzed with fear” bad. Be SO angry and resentful, and while it felt justified somewhere in the back of my head I knew it wasn’t rational at all. After suffering daily for 2+ years with it I started trying to find resolve. Sometimes I hid it well. Some people had no idea, still have no idea. Others I couldn’t hide it from. One time a girlfriend was at my house in the evening when my husband was out of town and we lost power. I lost it. There was no hiding it then. We still talk about it and honestly, even then I’m not sure she could understand the full feeling. How that night I had 911 on my phone dialed, ready to call just in case.
I could tell you so many stories of how debilitating having PPA was. How it affected me every single day, for years. I could feel it happening and I knew that it wasn’t normal, but somewhere in my brain I rationalized it. After over a year of living with this I had an “enough” moment. A moment where I knew it wasn’t fair to my husband, my kids and mostly myself to live like this. I placed a call in to see someone. PPA changed me. It changed friendships. It changed my work presence. It changed my marriage. Recently my husband and I were talking about how it was after Nora was born. We talked about how reactive I was, to everything. Including his breathing. That’s right. One time I lost it on him, so angry, because of how he was breathing. Y’all, this is not normal. This is not necessary. This is not how it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t have to feel so crushing.
I’m happy to say I’ve worked my way out of that part of my life and after everything we went through prior to getting pregnant with cricket I made sure to have a very real and honest discussion with my midwife about how I was feeling. How I felt like the health system fails mamas with their ridiculous questionnaires full of “are you tired” type of questions. Am I tired? Why yes I am. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept in months. That’s a fact. That also doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong. It doesn’t mean something is either. We need to do more. No one should have to feel like they just need to suffer through.
I started writing this in my head well before we had our little cricket girl, because I remember promising to myself that I wouldn’t go through it again without seeking help sooner. I figured the first step to that was writing about it. Then I thought about how many people would read this and think differently of me. Maybe they’d think, “that explains a lot . . .” I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment. There were some serious rough moments that happened in those years. Then I thought of myself 3 years ago, in the t h i c k of it. I thought of how much I needed someone who really understood. Someone who got it because they’d been there. So, putting aside how exposed this felt I decided to write about it. I am here to talk about it. Let’s talk about the tears. Lets talk about those ridiculous, but completely real fears. Let’s talk about how hard it is to force ourselves out of the house when we just want to stay home. Lets talk about how we drift apart from those we love and feel like we are looking in on and old life we don’t belong to anymore. Lets talk about postpartum.
