When I was preparing to have my first baby, I read books on pregnancy and being a mom.  Nowhere did I find anything that recognized the difficulty of having a baby who needed a lot of medical visits and procedures for a complex birth defect.  Oh, maybe it mentioned something general about birth defects and other complications, but like maybe one page.  Ten pages were dedicated to getting your nursery set up properly.  Nothing I read ever gave proper notice or warning of the variety of postpartum mood disorders out there either.

Depression Is The Elephant In The Living Room

I know new moms don’t want to be scared when their pregnancy journey is half-started.  Nobody wants to hear about depression.  Nobody wants to read about depression.  It’s too, well, depressing.  A light perfunctory mention is about all saw, I’m sure.  This was ten years ago, long before most of these wonderful postpartum depression blogs or books were around.  Of the top fifty books or audio recordings on Amazon about postpartum depression, only five had been written or recorded at the time I was going through it.  No wonder nobody said anything to me.

My symptoms didn’t quite fit the classic profile of depression all the time.  I was in more of an agitated on-guard state of despair and survival.  I didn’t do a whole lot of crying.  It was mostly feelings and thoughts whirling inside like an F4 tornado.  But when I had my PMDD, the mood swings were pretty strong.  I was flying around with tons of energy, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  When it did, I sometimes spent hours crying on the couch when my husband was at work and the girls were napping.

And let me tell you, I saw NOTHING in any book about all that.

Had A Needy Infant But No Guide Through The Stress and Depression

I had a child with a significant birth defect – cleft palate and lip.  Not life threatening, but requiring frequent trips to a doctor’s office three hours away and three surgeries before she turned one.  What sort of guide did I have there?  Well, there was some information about the actual surgeries, other parents who’d been through the practical recovery and feeding issues.  Where were the reports of moms living in a fog, wearing their old college t-shirts and not putting on makeup most of the time?

Did all these people live within 15 minutes of their doctors?  Was I just an oddball because I had to change my life so much so early with grueling drives in the grey cold winter each week for seven weeks straight?   Who do I even ask about this stuff?  Is it even worth asking about?  How bad would it look for a mental health counselor to admit that she was sinking into a deep hole right before everyone’s eyes?

There’s a phrase I just read on Therese Borchard’s letter to new mom’s on Postpartum Progress.  It was “They all must know better than me,” meaning the book authors, grandmas, moms, friends, etc.  That hit home right away.  I just knew I was messing up the system, and if I just did more or did better or kept giving from the empty well, it would all even out.  Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

So Many Great Resources About Postpartum Depression

Thankfully, many wonderful postpartum books and blogs have begun in the time since my first daughter was born.  I didn’t discover them until I’d already begun recovering.  To talk about it makes it seem like I gave birth in the dark ages or something, but it was just 1999!

Instead of not wanting to read or hear about depression, I hope more new moms read about it and hear about it.  I hope pregnancy books start putting whole chapters about it, unavoidable and real.  No, not to scare people into assuming the worst.  Nobody likes being scared needlessly.  Then again, one out of eight women with postpartum mood disorders don’t like feeling completely alone and misunderstood, either.

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Anonymous (May 11, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 11 May 2009