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What I Wish I Would Have Known About Postpartum Depression
“You want to give him back. You want your old life back.”
“He’s like a parasite, right?”
“I wanted to jump off a bridge after Owen was born.”
Is this what someone normally says to a new mother holding her days-old baby? No, probably not. But these are things my friends said to me right after my son was born. You know what, though? I wasn’t even mad about it. These friends were finally speaking my language.
When the daily parade of visitors began, I would be sitting deep in my couch, wearing my crusty, floor-length zip-up robe. The robe that made me feel so unattractive and sad, perfectly matching how I felt inside. My husband would be at work and Maury would be blaring in the background (He IS the father!).
My friends could see that this baby was not something that I was prepared for. They could see the crazy desperation in my eyes. That I didn’t realize how hard it would be. That he had only been alive eight days — how was I supposed to keep him alive for eighteen years, let alone eight more days?
I wanted to sleep. I wanted to eat. I wanted to NOT be hooked up to breast pumps that didn’t work (or maybe it was me that wasn’t working?). I wanted to know why he was crying. I wanted to stop googling everything. I wanted…
