Apr 6
Postpartum Depression Stole My Early Days As A New Mom & Nearly Took My Life
The unabashed truth from a postpartum mom.
I think it started sometime even before this photo was taken. The anxiety I know started when I found out he was breech and would be born via a planned c-section in a middle of a snowstorm. But, then it really kicked when they told me the umbilical cord had been wrapped twice around his neck when they pulled him from my womb.
Nobody spoke the words that we all thought, but I thought them over and over in my head, “he could’ve died.”
Then I puked on the operating table. Some of my friends that’d given birth vaginally had shit on the bed while giving birth, this was my version of that. The anesthesiologist held a urine basin next to my face as I retched violently into it. During this time, my doctor put my insides back inside (where they belonged). To top it off, my one support system, my husband, followed his new son down the hospital hallway, leaving me alone. He did so because that had always been the plan, for him to follow him and not worry about me.
An hour or so later, I finally got to hold my new baby.
As they placed him in my shaky arms, with an uncontrollable quivering from all of the meds and maybe a little bit of shock, I looked at my son for the first time, and though I knew I loved him I had a hard time showing it the way I wanted to.
Hospital Room Baby Blues
By the time they got us set up in a room, the pain hit me like a MAC truck. My husband needed to hunt a nurse down to give me something to ease it even just a little bit. I watched as my mother-in-law held my son and though I was grateful to have her there, I felt deep in my heart that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. It was not how I had pictured those first few moments with my long-awaited baby.
In the days following, I pulled myself out of that hospital bed, with a pillow held tightly to my c-section incision. It felt like without it, my insides might come spilling out. My husband pushed the bassinet as the three of us took our first walks as a family together, down the hospital corridor. The nurses told me if I was to have any chance of getting out of the hospital, that I had to show the doctor I could get out of bed and walk.
Home Not So Sweet
As we went home the crying intensified, both from the baby and from me.
The baby cried for hours on end for no apparent reason. Elderly family members thought it was colic. I cried in the kitchen because I didn’t know how to ease his pain, but also didn’t know why I was so terribly sad during what should have been the happiest time of my life.
It wasn’t much later later, that the thoughts of suicide started to invade my mind.
The thoughts came swiftly and they seemed totally normal at the time. My mind hatched ideas of running away in the middle of the night and starting a new life in some town nobody knew my name or face. Then I’d find myself imagining different ways I’d do it, would it be with pills, in the claw foot bathtub upstairs or maybe I’d just run my car into a telephone pole when it was just me in the car? I look back now and realize how lucky I was to not want to harm my son the way I wanted to harm myself, and in reality, I came very close to self-harm many days in a row.
I’d look at him for the longest time when he slept in his swing or on my chest in the middle of the night. Those were the peaceful moments between the crying and the exhaustion when I could almost feel my real self trying to crawl out of the massive hole I’d fallen into. I felt like I was yelling at the top of my lungs deep in that hole, but nobody could hear me. And at the top of it was that sweet little boy I knew needed me to get out so he could meet his real mother.
Marriage Woes and Getting Help
Postpartum doesn’t just affect the mother, oftentimes, the dad or partner is affected just as much. The fighting between two new parents is perhaps the most tragic.
He knew something was wrong, but this was the first time he’d walked this path, too, and he was fighting his own demons that he couldn’t talk about at the time.
It took two months for me to get help with my postpartum depression and anxiety.
Two months.
Postpartum had tossed a plastic bag over my head — I was fighting to breathe and break free from it even before I gave birth to my son.
Postpartum made me feel like I didn’t truly love that new little person I’d waited my whole life for, and that brought feelings of shame like I’d never known.
Postpartum made me feel like a less than adequate mother, wife, friend, and daughter. It stole away any joy I could have experienced in those early days with my son.
Postpartum nearly took my life. I think it might have had I waited any longer or if I hadn’t had the people in my life speak up about the importance of getting help.
Postpartum is like a thief in the night, it comes up fast behind you, grabs hold and for as much as you try to fight it off, sometimes you can’t before it’s all over. Then you are down in the abyss, and there’s no way to climb out without some sort of lifeline.
So new mama, take that lifeline.
Please, for the love of all things holy and sacred, grab onto that rope and pull yourself out of that hole with everything you’ve got! It’ll be the hardest fight you’ll ever be in, but my God, you and that sweet little baby you dreamed of, longed for, and finally got need you more than you know. So does everyone else that calls you theirs.
Postpartum would grab a hold of me one more time before I was done, but thankfully not as bad because I knew what to look for. Just know that you are not alone! You never really were, despite what PPD told you. Help is always there, you just have to ask for it!
© Britt LeBoeuf, 2022. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer: Any statements made here were from when I suffered from Postpartum Depression nearly 9 years ago. I in no way have any self-harm intentions or intentions of hurting anyone at this time. I share this story so that other new mamas or not new mamas going through this, feel less alone.
