It was around this time a year go that I took a pregnancy test, convinced it would come up negative. It didn’t. I peed on 4 more sticks. Same little lines staring me in the face: positive.
Shit. Shit. SHITSHITSHIT.
My husband and I were not trying to conceive. Only a few days before the pregnancy test, we had discussed waiting another year before trying for baby #2. I needed time to figure a lot of things out.
Right before my son turned one I was diagnosed with postpartum depression (PPD). I felt vindicated by the diagnosis; if anything, it proved that I had not become a bitter, ungrateful and angry woman overnight. My family doctor prescribed anti-depressants, a first for me. But I figured I was getting treatment and on my way to being myself again, after a year of feeling incredibly lonely and lost. Things were looking up; but then a couple of months later I started feeling irritable and volatile again.
One morning on my commute to work I simply started sobbing and I could not stop. It was an overwhelming outpour of sadness, anger and fear that I could not control. For the first time I realized I just couldn’t do this alone anymore; I started seeing a psychologist the following week. The meds were helping to take the edge off, sure, but there was a lot more going on. Post-partum depression poked at dormant issues that lay unresolved and forgotten.
I never thought I would battle depression. I never thought I would be on anti-depressants. I never thought I would need to see a therapist. I never thought it any of it would happen to me. I was just only starting to wrap my head around all of these “firsts”, and then BAM, 5 pee sticks threw my world upside down again.
Truth is, I was devastated. I didn’t want to be pregnant; I wasn’t ready for round two. I wanted, I needed time for me. To reassess my career goals after maternity leave. To address issues that post-partum depression so mercilessly shoved back in my face after motherhood had swept them under a rug. I needed time to get used to the new normal: being a mother, a wife and a career-oriented woman, hell just being a woman again, and all of this while living an ocean away from my immediate family.
I felt I had earned the right to be selfish for a while after a rough first year of motherhood. Having a little embryo growing inside me felt anathema to all of that. I started worrying about what kind of mother I would be. Would I harbour resentment toward my children, especially #2? How could I be pregnant and on medication? And battling depression? It was all so heavy and sudden.
I considered having an abortion, an unthinkable proposition that made me nauseous. But there it was. This violent option that started looking like the answer to my fears. I was so terrified of who I became with PPD, I didn’t want to go through it again. I was still working on getting past it, and the statistics on recurring postpartum depression are disheartening: recent studies have found that women who suffered from PPD are 27 to 46 times more at risk for a recurrence in subsequent pregnancies, compared to women who have never experienced it. It was almost a certainty I’d be dealing with it again.
I was wracked with guilt. I believed I was a terrible mother for thinking I had the right to be selfish, the right to put myself first. I felt even worse when I thought about the abortion, but I was also stubbornly attached to the process of figuring out my shit. I was tired of putting myself on hold. I had only stopped breastfeeding my son 4 months earlier and now I had to share my body all over again? This maelstrom of thoughts, calculations and budding resentment consumed me.
Then one day, the words of a wise friend came to me out of nowhere: never let fear decide for you. She had said this to me over a decade ago but it felt more relevant than ever.
All that was left was fear. Fear of a self-destructive depression. Fear that I would not be a good mom. Fear that I was bound to repeat the same mistakes. Fear that the medication would harm the baby. Fear of losing my sense of direction, again. Fear that I would never get my career going. Fear everywhere I looked. And then it hit me. The first step to getting back to my centre, to who I was before, was to tell fear to go fuck itself.
Since when had I turned into a scared and hesitant person? I needed therapy and medication, but I wasn’t so devoid of self-awareness to realize that fear looked terrible on me. I had always carried myself with a healthy dose of “fuck it, let’s see what happens”. I had lost that fearlessness with PPD. This was as good a time as any for a comeback.
Things started to get clearer. PPD makes you see shit that isn’t there, or rather, it blinds you to the good that is there. It makes you question everything, because you can’t tell what is important or not anymore, and you unlearn to trust your instincts. For someone like me, that has a disastrous effect on self-esteem and critical thinking. Similarly, PPD was preventing me from seeing that I was most definitely not alone, not this time. My first round with post-partum depression had been devastatingly lonely, but it didn’t have to be that way again. I was talking to a professional; my closest friends were well aware of the signs by now; and my gem of a husband had learned as much as I had from this ordeal, if not more. I had a whole anti-PPD squad with me.
“It takes a village” rings truer to me every day, but not for its traditional meaning about the effort it takes to raise a child. Raising a mother is just as important, if not more so. And I am proud of myself for accepting that I needed the squad around me to help me up and out of the mud pit.
It all starts with me. I created this village because I finally spoke out, I reached out and broke my silence. And now, 12 months later, whenever I look at my little girl’s face, it reminds me that I made the right choice for me. That there really was no other choice, for me. I am so happy I chose her and me, together. Sure, our lives are in a constant state of chaos these days, and the Husband and I wonder how the hell we are going to survive parenthood with a toddler and a baby without permanent brain damage. But we’re also at the happiest point of our lives, no bullshit.
That’s the ultimate unexpected outcome: as tired (nay, exhausted), frustrated and overwhelmed as I am every day, I am also the happiest and most centred I have ever been. So what if I’m still on medication? And I still have a few issues to pick away at. I’ve learned to live with all of this, though, because this clusterfuck is temporary.
My family and my village are not.
Thank you for sharing such heartfelt words. I love you and everything that you are!