Archives for February 2011

It’s funny the way the brain works. Usually when I think back to some of my worst moments when Connor was small and I wasn’t coping I think, “Yeah, that was awful. It was so hard.”

But you know what? That doesn’t even begin to sum it up.

This blog is a little over a month old. Only that. I’ve shared a lot, even some of the moments that would seem as though they would fall into the “worst” category. But they don’t. The worst moments are much, much worse.

I’ve recently been re-introduced to Catherine Connors, aka Her Bad Mother. Catherine’s son, Jasper, is about a month older than my Connor. I was reading her blog quite regularly after Connor was born, and distinctly remember her posts from when Jasper was around six months old and didn’t tend to sleep much. But for reasons I no longer remember (but that probably have something to do with wanting to be a “good” mother and play with my son more instead of spending so much time reading various things online) I stopped reading her blog shortly after that. The irony in that? It was right after that when the sleep deprivation got to me. Right after that when I lost my mind.

So what’s the point of telling you this? Tonight I read a post of Catherine’s – a post called The Monster in the Closet. Go ahead. Read it. Even if you only read the quoted section and the paragraph after. It’s important.

It’s important because remove the specific details – night, bed, nursing – and that’s my story.

We’re heading into really honest territory here, people. What she has described (“I didn’t have an urge to drop the baby. I had an urge to throw him“) – what she admitted in that post that she didn’t admit in her original post about that night – that’s my story.

I’ll admit something else: I only just realized that – the extent to which that’s true for me as well. The implications of that being my experience. I’ve only just realized it right now. Tonight.

You’re probably wondering how that’s possible. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

I’ve read the books and the websites. I’ve heard the stories. One of the symptoms of acute postpartum depression is this same fleeting urge to do something like that. To hurt your baby. Except that I haven’t felt as though any of the other descriptions or stories I’ve read really reflect my experience. I interpret these stories as being about anxiety – worry that you might hurt your baby. And for me it wasn’t anxiety. It was that flash of anger – of rage – that Catherine describes. Except for me it happened more than once.

In those moments, I didn’t want to throw myself out the window. I wanted to throw him out the window. And I said this on several occasions. Voiced it aloud. I remember one day in particular that’s burned in my brain. I can’t remember what came before or what came after, but in that moment Connor was refusing to nap. He just cried and cried and cried. Nothing I did helped, and I couldn’t take it. I needed a break.

In that moment, I reached out to a friend. Crying. Sobbing. “I want to throw him out the window,” I said. I called her because I needed to talk to someone sane who could say, “I know. I understand how you feel.” I think she thought I was kidding. I think I thought I was kidding.

But I wasn’t.

We’ve referenced this conversation a few times since, she and I. Recently she’s admitted it worried her.

In writing this down, it doesn’t worry me, because I wouldn’t have thrown him out the window. I didn’t throw him out the window. Or anything of the sort.

It also doesn’t make me feel ashamed. Oh sure, I wonder what my mother is going to think when she reads this. I wonder if my husband knows I felt like this. That this – this horrible experience – is what my worst was actually like. But I’m not ashamed.

This surprises me, frankly – the fact that I’m not ashamed to admit this and to write about it here where the world can see. But the whole point of sharing my story – the bits and pieces of it, in whatever order they come – is to say this: my experience — and Catherine’s experience, and the experiences of countless other women — is way more common than you’d think. I didn’t realize this, even when it was happening to me. But I realize it now. And it has to be okay to say, “Yes, that was my experience.” And, “This is how I got through it.” And, “It’s okay, you’re not alone.”

In writing this down, what I do feel is overwhelmed. I think my brain needs to process this some more, and think about what it means. And in thinking about that I will no doubt unearth other stories from the recesses of my brain. And I’ll tell those stories too.

When I started writing this post, I looked up at the line at the top of my blog. “Finding the words to tell my story about being a mom and struggling with postpartum depression.” When I started writing this post, I had no words. Only tears. It’s overwhelming to think about this as having been my experience. And not to have realized it. It took me way longer than one night to ask for help.

But in writing this down, the words have come and the tears have gone away. For now.