I truly disliked my life after giving birth. Who can easily admit something like that in a time where it’s shown and talked about everywhere how great motherhood is, especially when bringing a new life into the world? I expected to be overjoyed, but instead I was met with dark thoughts, an over-amount of anger, and crying that seemed to never end. This writing is meant to be fully transparent to where I will be completely honest in everything I’ve felt, thought, and said during my postpartum recovery. This is not light-hearted and there may be times you might be confused. This was my life and the only person I ever shared my true thoughts was to a counselor I ended up seeing briefly. Please respect me and understand that I have healed to where I am in a much better place mentally.

I labored for ten hours and pushed for fifty minutes. My baby was born at nine pounds-five ounces and twenty inches long. When the doctor put my baby on my chest I was terrified, I asked “What do I do with him?” I didn’t know how to be a mom. My husband shed a few tears of joy when he saw our baby and I remember thinking “Why am I not crying happy tears? Why am I not happy?” Truth is, I was happy, I was just way more scared! My baby was purple with a giant cone head from being stuck in my pelvis for ten hours, he also had the cord around his neck as he came out that the doctor had to quickly swipe out of the way, thus being purple. I expected the heavens to open and light shine down on my baby when I saw him because it seemed like that’s what everyone’s experience was like, or close to it. That wasn’t my experience, I was legitimately scared of being a mom and when my baby came out all that fear rushed over me when I saw him. There was no feeling of bliss, just fear.

               Am I capable of being a mom? Will I be a good mom? What do I do? I had a nurse come over and show me how to breastfeed because I wasn’t quite sure on how to get him to latch, except she kept hurting me trying to help squeeze colostrum out for my baby to smell and taste. She kept squeezing and squeezing anytime I needed the help. It hurt so bad. When my baby latched on for the first time, it was uncomfortable. Actually, it hurt. Really bad. I had people tell me it sucks at first, but it will get better and it will all be worth it. I would keep telling myself that because I really wanted to breastfeed my baby since I had heard it was so amazing. It was so incredibly painful. I asked for help and got the help I needed. I even got shields, ointment, and a breastfeeding nurse — not the one that was milking me like a cow, but an actual breastfeeding nurse who knew how to aid me into trying different things to relieve the pain. It was a little stressful trying to figure it out. I felt discouraged because I couldn’t make the pain subside very much, even with shields. We made our way home and I continued to try to breastfeed my new baby boy, then I started getting no sleep at all.

The exhaustion was getting to me. I screamed a lot, I was so angry. I threw bottles across the kitchen because I wanted to bottle feed our baby after going through a week of clenching my teeth every time he latched on. My mom told me in a soft, kind voice, “He may not want to breastfeed anymore if you introduce a bottle.” She was trying to help, she knew it was hard for me and how much I wanted to breastfeed. I wasn’t getting a break. Sure, Ben could get up with me and help change his diaper but I still had to get up every single time just feed him. I started to have these thoughts of “I’m just a milk machine, this baby doesn’t even want me, he just wants my milk.” More thoughts came flooding in, “I don’t want to take care of him. This sucks. I hate this!” I felt disconnected, I just didn’t want to care for him because it was draining me completely. I didn’t have these amazing feelings moms were talking about. I wasn’t happy at all. There was no connection when he would latch on my breast, I just had tears in my eyes and anger rushing through me because of the pain. I dreaded breastfeeding but I wanted to breastfeed so bad because I wanted that amazing connection I had heard of. There were times he would hurt me so bad during breastfeeding I actually wanted to smack his face, it was kind of a “defense” thing because it just hurt. Of course, he’s a helpless baby and I never did that, I suffered through because I wanted it to get better. There was never a time I could smile through the restless nights, or sore, bleeding nipples, or the nights my husband and I would be fighting relentlessly and be able to think, “At least we have a healthy baby boy.” I screamed, I talked to my husband like he was an idiot and the scum of the earth, I also disrespected my mom who tried to help me with relieving the stress by taking my baby off my hands for a little bit. There was one night during the second week of postpartum when my baby just kept crying and I had to separate myself because I couldn’t take it anymore, I was going to lose it. My mom took him to calm him down while I went to lay down in bed. I could just hear him crying, and crying, and crying. All the sudden I had a vision go across my mind; it was of my newborn baby boy’s head rolling across the floor as if it was a baby doll’s head. There was no blood in my vision, there was no violence because I didn’t imagine anyone hurting him, but there was just a horrible image that swiped across my mind because of all the stress that was building up in my brain. I broke down crying. “I’m crazy. I’m a psychopath. Who would even have that kind of image of their own child they had created and brought into this world? Who in the hell even comes up with that? Why is my brain doing that?” I started spiraling into anxiety. “I’m a horrible mom. I need sleep. No one can know I even thought of that. I need to go to bed.” I couldn’t tell anybody about that, I thought I was going to go into the looney bin for creating an image like that. I didn’t want to be that mom on the news who couldn’t handle a newborn that went crazy and hurt their baby. I always wanted kids, that can’t be me. I didn’t want to hurt him though, I just needed a break.

The next morning it was nagging me. The anxiety, the helplessness. “I’m crazy.” I felt like I could trust my mom. I decided to confide in her what I had saw the night before and she says to me, “Honey, I think you might have some Postpartum Depression.” My mom had PPD with her oldest daughter. She knew the signs, she lived it, but I was in denial. I didn’t want it. I can’t have it. Not with a newborn. I have to take care of this life that was just born a few weeks ago. Although in actuality, I was crying every single day at almost every hour of the day. I was not happy at all. I was screaming at anyone who tried to help because they couldn’t do anything right when I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do. I was crying because I was so overwhelmed and my nipples were getting torn at by a baby who doesn’t even smile at me, but instead cries for me constantly. I felt like I never made this boy happy any other time when, in fact, he was happy as long as he was fed and had a clean diaper. When I decided to bottle feed, he had lactose sensitivity, so his crying became worse. He screamed more. I felt like my decision to bottle feed was a mistake. I just wanted a break. I cried more. I’m a horrible mom, if I had just stuck through breastfeeding this wouldn’t be a problem. It hurt so bad.

I checked out. I wanted to be emotionless. I wanted to get away from my baby to where I never have to hear that cry again. If I heard him cry one more time I was going to lose it. Breastfeeding was making me miserable, bottle feeding didn’t make it that much better. “Breast is best.” It stung. I wanted it so bad, that happiness and the bond between mother and child when breastfeeding. When I told WIC I wanted to formula feed after two weeks of breastfeeding, the woman turned to my husband and asked him if he was okay with that. Why? I don’t know. I guess he had a say since he would actually be able to help feed our baby now and give my mental stability a break. “Breast is best.” I was losing my sanity. I was red-faced with tears in my eyes in the WIC office telling them I wanted to formula feed because it was so painful that I would cry every single time. I was not happy breastfeeding, I would clench my teeth every single time he latched. I was angry. I was miserable. “Breast is best.” In the back of my head I kept nagging myself, “What about the days before formula? Your baby wouldn’t even survive because you can’t handle breastfeeding. Some mom you are.” I cried. They put my baby on formula and we left. “Breast is best.” We found a formula that worked with my baby’s stomach digestion, he was happier. Thank God, now I don’t have to be the only one to feed him. I’m done taking care of him. “Breast is best.”

It was my mom’s last week, I had yet to reach out for help for my constant crying, yelling, and anger. She kept telling me to talk to someone, even to at least reach out to a counselor to talk about the hard days. I told her I wanted help but I didn’t think it was PPD, I was still in denial. When I went in for my six week checkup I brought up how I had been feeling with the constant crying. The doctor told me it was normal for my hormones to be out of whack because of delivering the placenta. However, if I had thoughts of hurting myself or my baby that I should talk to someone. I never had thoughts of hurting my baby, or at least not the kind I thought they meant. I didn’t think slapping my baby out of pain would categorize in that, I was thinking more on the thoughts of shaking him or killing him is where I should definitely tell someone. My mom was still skeptical, she was really worried about leaving me to deal with my emotions and fighting with my husband. She encouraged me again to reach out to a counselor, I continued to be in denial. My mom and step dad returned back home.

There were a lot of times, more than there should have been, where I wanted to leave my house and never come back. I even thought of getting a hotel and trying to plan if I could survive on my own. I would go through different scenarios to see if I would be able to live by myself until I was on my feet again. Ben didn’t need me, my baby didn’t need me, I’m just toxic and angry all the time. I imagined leaving my home that I helped decorate for our family to grow in because I felt like I didn’t deserve to be a wife, a mom, or a person. There were days I would drive and I would imagine running into the headlights coming my way. I thought about the other people in the cars and knew that wouldn’t be fair for them in something I would do so selfishly. I never actually wanted to die though. Death scares me too much to ever make that kind of choice. I just wanted an escape. There were days I imagined hurting myself because I couldn’t handle my emptions any longer. How come? What does hurting yourself ever do except leave you hurting physically on top of hurting mentally? This is where I was supposed to tell someone, right? But I had been to counseling so many times. Saying you want to do these things and actually making plans to do them are two totally different things. You can reel yourself back when you are just having the thoughts and I could do this because I knew the exercises of how to get myself out of those thoughts pretty quickly. That doesn’t mean it stopped me from having them, I was still having them more than I needed to. I just knew how to divert my mind through grounding, breathing, and counting/meditation because I had years of counseling for my anxiety. I knew it was starting to get bad by the time my baby was a little over two months old, so I called to see a counselor.

I went to a “New Mom” counselor and, just like any other counselor, they normalize your feelings. I wasn’t a bad person or mother in having normal human responses to stress. However, no one thought I had PPD. “It’s normal to feel out of it for the first few months, especially as a new mom. If it lasts longer than four months then we would say you have PPD.” Um, okay. I guess I don’t have PPD. I just have to deal with my emotions like I’ve been taught before with my anxiety, right? Except there was still one thing, I continued crying every single day. I couldn’t take it. My exercises weren’t working in keeping the stress down. My counseling wasn’t working because she was picking me apart like the pith on an orange. We couldn’t even get to the stuff I wanted to talk about most of the time because she has to know history before I can start spewing off what the hell is wrong with me. There is only an hour once a week, or every other week, I would get with her and half of that time was spent talking about other people than myself. I called my doctor to put me on medication, I needed something to normalize me again. Please can I have the Celexa that has helped me out previously with my anxiety? I hate my life, I’m not happy!

Finally, I started taking the pills. It would take two weeks for it to get into my system and make changes. Just two more weeks to deal with this then I will be normal again. I was still unhappy, still stressed, but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Aside from the fact that it was actually making me more anxious. This had never happened before with Celexa. I always had good reactions to it, but now I’m way more panicked than I was before. One night I was freaking out over a shadow in our bedroom that I got so mad at my husband for not understanding why I was so scared. He couldn’t see anything that I was talking about and I got so frustrated at him. I asked to sleep with our bedside lamp on because I was too scared. He said he was fine with it and we slept through the night with our dim yellow light lighting up the whole room. I felt like an idiot. What adult has to sleep with a lamp on because they’re scared of a dumb shadow? Another night my husband was trying to tell me how much he cared for me but I went into a panic attack and pushed him away. I was freaking out over nothing, it wasn’t anything he was doing or saying. Everything was just causing me to panic and be on edge, which in turn caused more stress. My husband pointed out to me about two weeks later that he thought the medication was making my anxiety worse, I believed him. I threw the pills away and went cold turkey. I didn’t want to be on edge when taking care of my baby because the point of the pills was to balance me out so I could actually care for my baby.

When I returned to work, I was so relieved to finally be away from my baby. I had a coworker ask me if I missed him, I laughed and said I did. I didn’t, I escaped. On my lunch I called my baby’s caretakers to make sure he was doing alright. I still cared about him, I just wanted the break. For the next few months there would be days I would walk into work totally fine, but had a fight with my husband before I left because I would be upset at the way he fathered. Or, also a few mornings where I’ve parked my car crying because I had a horrible previous night. But I had my escape. I had coworkers who relieved the stress and made my environment fun. I laughed hard for the first time in a while, I could be silly for whatever stupid reason and not worry about a thing. Although, I was still self-conscious, I didn’t feel like I was as good at my job as I thought. This trickled into my school life when I returned back as a culinary student. My baby was now about four months old. I missed a term because I had to deliver during that time and now I was behind everyone else. I always felt like an idiot because I didn’t understand references made from third term. I cried a few times over stupid things at school because of my own self-deprecation, feeling like I was a weak link within my team because I wasn’t on track with everyone else anymore. I cried because my partners and I couldn’t figure out if a pot was supposed to have a lid on it or not for this one recipe we were cooking in class. I was starting to tell myself I wasn’t a great person again, but now it was affecting my passion and school relationships. It was so silly of me the stupid things I cried over at school. I would have to tell my partners when they looked at me worryingly, “It’s the hormones… It’s just the hormones, I’m fine!” I hated crying in front of others, but one of my partners was a father of four, so he gets it, right? He nodded to me and responded, “I understand.” Thank God. I had ruined my home life by attacking my self-worth and now I was ruining outside environments because I was attacking myself there too. I’m an idiot and an emotional roller coaster, why am I like this? Where was my confidence?

Fall Term lasts from September until December. Eighty percent of my time during that term was spent me being in my own head about how I’m not a good cook/culinary student anymore. I wasn’t crying as much, but I still cried over things I shouldn’t have. When November came around, my baby turned six months old. He was starting to be a little person and laughing, actually laughing. One night I cried to my husband telling him I didn’t think I liked being a mom. It had been on my mind for a week because it was so hard for me, part of me even thought, “I don’t want to be a mom.” I never wanted my baby to know I ever thought that because I did love him, I just wasn’t enjoying being a mom. I never told anyone that’s how I felt, I just said I didn’t like “mom-ing.” I was being drained in having to be a mom because sometimes I still didn’t always know what to do. I was continuing to have days where I wanted to run away. The next morning I went to feed my baby banana puree and we just started laughing really hard at each other because of the way he was eating. I felt really bad about the night before for what I had said because now we were laughing with each other and making a great memory for me. Being a mom isn’t all bad. December rolled around and my baby was now seven months old. My job laid me off for having too many employees, school is out for the holidays, and now I’m stuck at home with my baby for the next month. There is no escape.

It was hard the first week. I didn’t know what he wanted or how to take care of him sometimes because I had escaped so much with school/work that I didn’t know his routine. I felt like I was about to be back to the newborn days since he would be upset and I wouldn’t know what he was upset for. My husband came home to a frustrated wife almost every night because by the end of the day I was drained. After over a week, I started to get a routine down with my baby and things started to let up from there. We were both fairly happy and enjoyed each other’s company through the day. I started to enjoy being a mom and spending time with my baby, we were bonding way more because I had more than two days out of the week of seeing him. Except, this started to turn into a frustrating thing for my husband and I. Since I started making a routine and knowing what my baby’s cries were meaning, my husband wouldn’t always know what they meant so I would grow really frustrated at him for not being able to figure it out. He should know, he’s his dad! We bickered a few times and got into a pretty bad fight over New Years week because I just wanted him to know how to take care of our baby without me having to tell him everything. I wanted a break which meant, “don’t come to me for anything.” That didn’t always happen because sometimes my husband would really need help.

After spending a month with my baby, my emotions and self-deprecation really let up. I had branched out with my job in creativity before I was laid off, I was learning and doing better in school, and I was becoming the mom I wanted to be. There are days now that I think to myself how I would love to breastfeed if only I could try it again. My headspace is so much better that even if it hurt, I could push through it more. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen. I tell a lot of people I started to bottle feed because it would be hard to pump at work since it’s a kitchen job. We are always on the go, and when it’s busy I can’t just dip out to go pump. This is true and was definitely another factor I put into my decision, but I could’ve made it work somehow if I really pushed through. However, my mental health wasn’t there to positively push me along. I can’t put myself down for how I felt after my baby was born. I still continued to try to be a good mom through it because I still cared for him even when I just wanted to run away. There were efforts I put in to try to relieve the unhappiness by going on walks. Although, behind the pictures posted, I was still bickering and upset with my husband maybe five minutes before we took a photo. It’s easy to post happy parts on social media, I didn’t want anyone to know I wasn’t all that happy being a mom because it seemed like everyone else has great experiences after birth. Bonding, happy their baby was finally in the world, getting along with their household, etcetera.

It wasn’t all bad for me. There were times I didn’t cry as much and enjoyed my son more than the day before. I always loved my son, he was the reason I never ran away or hurt myself. I couldn’t imagine being a parent who just leaves their children behind and then their kid is asking “Why wasn’t I good enough for them?” I wanted to be present, I wanted to be better. It just took a while to get there. I’m happy my husband stuck through the treatment he got when I was unhappy for months on end. I really thought a lot that he’d throw in the towel and be done with me because no one deserves that. However, my unhappiness wasn’t from an outside source, it was because I was having battels within myself. I don’t think I had Postpartum Depression to the extent people talk about, but I wasn’t happy and definitely had some depression. I understand being a new parent is hard, but my emotions and thoughts were in a really dark place for a good amount of time. I always wanted my baby to be fine and healthy, I just really didn’t want to take care of anyone, not even myself. Should I have reached out more to other moms? Probably. I reached out to one or two, but I couldn’t ever be as honest with them at the time as I am now while I write this. I envy the moms who have had happiness with their newborn even when they’ve been stressed or sleep-deprived. I want more kids, but I am scared to go through the same thoughts and feelings with the newborn stage that I did with my son. I hated my emotions and mental health during that time. Would I even be able to handle another newborn? I can’t get in my head about it too much, otherwise I will be upsetting myself over something that may not even happen.

I don’t put myself down for how I felt or thought during my postpartum recovery. A lot of my emotions were uncontrollable. I may have been able to control how I responded to things, but how I thought and felt was hard to keep under control. I was out of control. I’m happy my baby is healthy and happy. I love seeing him grow into a little person and smile at me when I walk into a room. I wish I was happier in my postpartum, but I’m glad to be happy now.