The Second Six Months

I have had three babies and I have had postnatal depression three times. Most people I know will be surprised by this, some might even dispute it. It’s not something I hide or have hidden it’s just that my PND hasn’t looked like it does in the movies for the most part. It hasn’t even really resembled the descriptions in my text books. For a long time even I didn’t recognise what was going on or the pattern which has now emerged with the help of hindsight. Each time I have welcomed a new baby my mental health has ebbed and flowed along the same path. Each time there has been a point where, had I found myself in a Dr’s office being questioned and responding honestly about how I was feeling I would’ve, at the very least, been offered medication. This point for me was never in the newborn stage, for me the tough part has always been the second six months. The fact that it was never diagnosed or treated was part luck that I came out of it on my own each time and partly the fact that at my worst I don’t go out much or talk to anybody I don’t know well. I didn’t choose not to see a doctor, I didn’t refuse help, I simply could not see what was happening to me.

I didn’t see the little worries build to a point where they eclipsed my joy. I didn’t see the way my focus shifted to controlling and micro-managing our days. I didn’t see how my mood depended on how much of that control I could maintain. How the moment something slipped from the plan my day was lost and I was a failure. How a short or missed nap equated to an overtired baby and the end of the world, waking too early in the morning put us into an irreconcilable cycle that I could not break. I didn’t see the way any suggestion from my husband translated to an attack on my parenting ability, my mothering. How accepting help was also admitting failure. I didn’t see the way going out became too hard, being around people too daunting. How staying home began to feel safer but also suffocating. The work in the house growing and growing, becoming more impossible and at the same time more important. How none of it made sense and nobody understood, how it became hopeless and joyless and unbearably tough. It happened this way and I didn’t see it three times, with three different children under three different sets of circumstances.

The process, the path, the dysfunction and then the guilt and turmoil that goes along with it. The trying to cope better and be normal or the accepting that I’m not coping the way I should be. Both inferring that the way I was experiencing motherhood, the way I was feeling about life was not normal and not ok. Even the statement “it’s ok to not be ok” is making a judgement about what ‘ok’ is, what ‘normal’ is and declaring that you are not either of those things. These were the thoughts and ideas that slowly became “I’m doing this all wrong” and “they would all be better off without me”. The thoughts and ideas that took me to a place of understanding how someone could get in their car and drive away, disappear into the big wide world or worse, a river. What about “it’s ok to just be”? What about if the pain and dysfunction is all in the struggle, the fight, the trying to be a certain way? In trying to be the person I was before while also being someone completely new and totally different.

What about if wanting to be cocooned with your baby for the first few months and ignoring the rest of the world could be normal and ok? What about if it was necessary for your baby to survive and thrive? What about if feeling shocked and overwhelmed when the bubble bursts and the rest of the world suddenly comes back into focus is ok too? What if it’s normal to be confused about who you are now since this new member of your family and your heart has changed you? To struggle with the fact that the world kept turning outside of the bubble and is different to what you remember? What if it’s ok to miss things about you and your life that may be gone forever. To be frustrated at all of the (many) things you don’t know yet about your new life and the new you. What about if it’s ok to feel big feelings in a big way but then recognised that the big feelings of “I have no idea what I’m doing” and “I am losing control of all this” are simple facts, taking the size and scariness away from them. You feel like you have no idea what you’re doing because you’ve never been here or done this before, you will learn. You never had and don’t need to ever have complete control over all of this, just the ability to do the next thing that needs to be done at any given time.

What if we allowed ourselves the time and space to feel all of these things, without guilt or judgement, without trying to keep up or maintain our lives from before. I wonder what the rates of PND would be like then? What if we then took some more time, when we felt ready, not to bounce back but to slowly emerge from the cocoon, unfold our wings, stretch them out and study our new markings, learn what we look like now and grow familiar with it before taking flight? If I was to have another baby would I be better at it fourth time round? Would I do things differently to avoid the dark times? I don’t think so, I think I would do the opposite, accept them. I think I would be kinder to myself, feel the feelings and sit with them without judgement or guilt. The thing I would try to avoid would be the stories I make up in my head about what those feelings mean about me and my worth. I would not ask for or even demand time and space I would give it to myself.

The people around us during this time are so important but I think we have lost the real meaning of support. I don’t think it means that we need other people to pick up the slack and fill in the gaps of who we were and what we used to do. Cooking us the dinners we can’t manage, folding the washing that sits in the basket longer than usual is amazingly helpful but also another reminder of who we can’t be for the moment. I think we need them to just be there and hold space for us, let us be and feel and fall apart. Not be on watch and at the ready with doctors and medications conjured up to stop the feeling (though there is definitely a time and place for these things they should not be the first line in my opinion and are not required in every case) just there and ok with whatever we are feeling and however we are working through that. The people who are able to be there when we are wrapped up in the ugly cocoon, difficult to reach and hard to look at, when we are different to what they know, those are the people who get to see us at our beautiful best when we emerge from the cocoon.