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Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, postpartum depression

Postpartum: An Inventory

April 27, 2018
inventory

By Laura Dorwart

I have taken the postpartum depression inventory a total of five times: one time honestly, the other four times lying to varying degrees. (I had good intentions, I promise).

Louis-Victor Marce is often described as the first clinician to write openly about postpartum depression and other mental health conditions. His 1858 “Treatise on Insanity in Pregnant, Postpartum, and Lactating Women” has been widely cited as the “first” depiction of pregnancy-related mood disorders and anxiety before his monograph went largely untouched for 100 years (except, sometimes, to justify the involuntary confinement of recently pregnant women), prior to the reopening of a dialogue about postpartum depression in the 1950s when the field of psychiatry took hold in the United States. His wasn’t, of course, the actual first documented mention of postpartum mental health issues—a female physician, Trotula of Salerno, wrote in the 11th century that if the womb was too moist, the brain could become filled with water and cause women to cry involuntarily and excessively, perhaps referring to conditions leading to an excess of amniotic fluid—but it was the first extensive one in Western, conventionally documented, male-dominated medical history.

He seems like he was kind of a dick, but that appears to have been a requirement for early psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, especially 19th– and early 20th-century ones (many far worse than the most obvious Sigmund “Literally Everyone Wants to Fuck Me So Badly It Makes Them Neurotic” Freud). Besides, the fact that his writings about fairly inarguable realities—“hey, so, women undergo huge hormonal shifts during and after pregnancy and also quite possibly the most physically painful and exhausting experience possible right before their entire lives change permanently and maybe that can be traumatic?”—were used as excuses to get all Yellow Wallpaper on a host of middle-class women and to institutionalize lower-class ones can’t be blamed solely on him, really.

Regardless, Marce started the clinical dialogue that eventually led to the development of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, now used as the primary diagnostic tool in determining whether a woman has or is at risk of developing postpartum depression.

The test, which alternately starts with one of two fairly sinister statements (either “as you are pregnant or have recently had a baby, we would like to know how you are feeling” or “postpartum depression is the most common complication of childbearing”), requires you to respond as to whether a series of ten statements apply to you in the past seven days (always bolded) with one of five answers. The answers seem awkward and vague if you analyze them too carefully—“not as much as usual,” “about as much as before,” and such—but the test has been proven to be clinically significant for years. Women considered “at risk” of developing postpartum depression are given the screening regularly throughout pregnancy and usually twice postpartum, once after delivery and again after four weeks, when the risk of developing postpartum depression or psychosis lowers significantly. I am “at risk.”

I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things.

The day I went into labor, my husband Jason and I were in Whole Foods desperately buying castor oil; one of the midwives at UC San Diego had suggested it to induce labor naturally. She had a voice like a meditation track and disarmingly perfect cheekbones, so I was lulled into a false sense of trust before I saw the warning label on the castor oil—“not to be consumed.” A beleaguered Whole Foods employee told us frankly, “No, it’s safe to eat, you’ll just have the runs really bad.” “Sure you want to do this?” Jason frowned at the bottle. I wasn’t, but I was big as a house. Jason is a quadriplegic; his service dog had started to have to help both of us pick up our underwear because nobody in our household could bend over properly. I was ready.

Luckily, we didn’t need it. We went home and I promptly started contractions that sped up to every four minutes. Jason read children’s books aloud to me, part of his job description as my personal anxiety coach. My water broke, a pop and a hiss, right around midnight, while he was reading to me about Rosalie the fairy helping Jack Frost get a makeover that seemed at the time to be gesturing at gender-affirming surgery. He wanted long hair and he needed fairies to give it to him, but they wouldn’t, presumably because of fairy codes that I think represented health insurance issues.

Jason stuffed towels under me in the front seat and a heavy overnight pad into my underwear. I started shaking and I didn’t stop for the next 30 hours.

In triage, they announced I’d need an IV. I was GBS-positive, which meant I could pass infection-causing bacteria along to my baby (a girl, presumably eight pounds according to the latest ultrasounds) if I didn’t get several doses of antibiotics. The first nurse was impossibly blonde-pretty, like a contestant on The Bachelor. I didn’t trust her; she lacked grit. I like my nurses slightly mean. She jammed around inside my veins for a while while making soft little “hmm” sounds for a while, usually right around my contractions. I tried to have polite contractions, smiling shakily at her whenever she made one of those high-pitched “hmms.” I have heard those before. that meant “I am never, ever getting this IV into you and I will have to call someone else.”

She did. And that one had to call another. “Your veins are tiny,” they said, one after another, always scoldingly as if I’d made them myself. When my arms failed, they tried one of my hands. “Is this what junkies go through?” I joked weakly (and problematically) through a contraction. No one laughed.

All told, I was not getting an IV put in for nearly four hours; near the end, during one particularly painful (and still unsuccessful) poke, I finally let out a scream that brought all the midwives on call in to look at me pityingly. When the three nurses finally left, muttering about calling anesthesiology, Jason (who had been squeezing my non-abused hand the whole time) decided to entertain me with an ironic sexist joke about how if the anesthesiologist was male, he could finally get something done around here. I laughed wryly and told him I hated him.

The anesthesiologist showed up four hours into my labor. He was, indeed, male. “You have great veins,” he said, sliding the needle in with aplomb, the slight slice tingly-pleasant like acupuncture. Jason and I looked at each other and grinned sideways. A punchline.

I have felt sad or miserable.

“This is Laura Dorwart, 28. She is six days postpartum and had a vaginal full term delivery of her first baby. She has a medical history of depression and chronic PTSD,” the nurse read, monotone, to her replacement, as my parents watched. My mother’s eyes flew open and her lips pursed in disapproval, I thought—or maybe it was all in my head. The nurse didn’t notice. I laid back in my gown and closed my eyes, feigning exhaustion.

Three days after our daughter was born, with Jason asleep on the table, I tried to make myself hate her, or to become so obsessed with her that she could transform into an object of sadism, masochism, something. I hadn’t felt any guilt when others picked her up or any resentment when she was handed back to me. I didn’t feel like a worthless mother. I looked into her eyes and snuggled her baby-skin. I weighed the burden of her. It was baby-sized. Not the weight of the world.

I began to realize on the fourth day postpartum that I was perhaps hoping for a crisis. Catastrophes wipe things away, don’t they? They start things new, they erase what was. They break and then you’re forced to rebuild.

Plus, I figured with my prior reactions to the mundane, a real catastrophe could do me some good. Some guy breaking up with me when I was 17 caused me to seriously consider dropping out of school. I seriously considered leaving town rather than going into work late once. I had five lemon vodka shots and threw up in a cab after a frat party in college and slept on the tile floor of my dorm room in despair. I still obsess over my breakup five years ago from a girl I knew for a total of eight months; in my mind, it’s sometimes reached Tristan and Isolde levels of tragedy.

Then there are the real crises: The day after I was raped by my then-girlfriend, I went in to work on time and copy edited a fifty-page curriculum booklet. I went to lunch and a meeting. I had chicken wings. I did not cry.

The night that my best friend died, I played a game on the computer that required me to digitally bob for apples. I felt like a sociopath for experiencing satisfaction at hearing the crisp sound bytes of capturing the pixelated apples one by one. Crisis, I remembered, does nothing for me.

Still, I tried to create one. I stared at my baby and attempted to muster some kind of resentment, some kind of foreboding warning sign of synapses misfiring in my brain and causing me to detach. No dice; sometimes I felt an overwhelming love, sometimes the lighter affection I feel for all babies, and on the negative end, nothing but mild annoyance in my most sleep deprived states.

I had wondered, alternatively, if I would feel grief and loss. Some women describe feeling empty after their babies are born, their wombs like voids aching for the return of togetherness, their tiny soulmates now skin-separate. Not me. I felt intact. I was intact. Heavy as I always ways, just thirty pounds lighter. Filled to the brim with the same longing as before, no different. It’s been four weeks. There was no crisis, no catastrophe. I did not break.

I can’t say I’m not disappointed.

The thought of harming myself has occurred to me.

Never check yes on this one.

Never let them see you sweat.

I have been so unhappy that I have had trouble sleeping.

I checked my medical records after all was said and done. For me, nothing I didn’t already know: For Ruth, her medical conditions: a CPAM—congenital pulmonary airway malformation—that we’d known about since the beginning. A benign cyst hiding in her lung. Meconium. And: “Child of depressed mother.” Born of a sad woman: A preexisting condition. A diagnosis in and of itself.

It stuns me, hits me hard in the chest, a clenched fist like a heart attack—just a slower squeeze. I show Jason, and he doesn’t get it, not really. “What are they afraid of?” he asks, though he knows. Postpartum depression makes everybody angry, even Tom Cruise, who took up quality potential Scientology-pushing time to rant about Brooke Shields’ baby blues.

Some people baptize their babies. I’m an atheist on my best days (on my worst, I assume God is a menace), but it turns out, even nonbelievers want to cleanse their offspring of original sin: Our new pediatrician asks us to forward our hospital medical records, and I opt out. She’s going to be nothing like me, no stains on her record, no sorrow-as-birthright. She’s going to be free.

Laura Dorwart is a Ph.D. candidate at UCSD with an MFA in creative nonfiction from Antioch University. Her work has appeared in Catapult, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, VICE, BuzzFeed Reader, Lady/Liberty/Lit, The Eunoia Review, Blanket Sea Magazine, and others. 

Donate to the Aleksander Fund today. Click the photo read about Julia, who lost her baby, and what the fund is.

 

Join Jen at her On Being Human workshop in upcoming cities such as NYC, Ojai, Tampa, Ft Worth and more by clicking here.

 

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

Modern Motherhood: A Sisterhood of Enemies

April 24, 2018
picture

By Callie Boller

Last week I was at the pool for my boys’ swim lessons. My husband was picking up the babe from daycare so I was enjoying the quiet time, giving the boys an occasional wave and thumbs up, but mostly just zoning out. After three kids, I’ve stopped feeling guilty about ME time, and instead, try to soak up the moment. No screaming, no fighting, no whining. Amazing how 10 minutes of alone time can restore your sanity and feel like a weekend getaway to a five star resort.

Suddenly, from the other side of the pool I heard a little girl start to cry. She was sitting on the steps, surrounded by the others in her lesson – and she just started losing it. I watched as her mom (who was carrying a very small newborn) walked over to the girl and quietly whispered something into her ear. The girl started screaming louder, and I painfully watched as her mom desperately tried to calm her. It was your typical toddler meltdown, we’ve all been there. Long story short, it quickly escalated and the next thing you know the mom was trying to pick up the slippery, wet, screaming toddler – while holding her other baby – and trying not to lose her shit.

I immediately looked at the other parents that sat around her, and noticed that they were all staring in disbelief. Judging. Shaming. Some even whispering to one another. My heart broke for this fellow momma – not because I thought she was a bad mother or that her child was misbehaved. But because in a time of need, in a place we’ve ALL been, not a single person went to her rescue. I knew I had to help her. I got up from my spot on the other side of the pool, and I wish I could tell you that I swooped in and saved the day, but another mom beat me to it (bless her heart). My heart felt proud and inspired as I watched this stranger gently tap the mom on the shoulder, give her the “I’ve been there” smile, and offer to hold the baby so she could hog tie her now hysterical daughter.

As I reflect back on this, my eyes fill with tears as I think about how lonely and overwhelming motherhood often is. Having and raising little humans is something no one should face alone, we weren’t meant to – motherhood is the ultimate universal connection. We are a tribe. A sisterhood. A family. If anyone should know and understand the magic and messes that accompany raising children it’s a fellow momma. We have an unbelievably unique opportunity to support and lean on one another, but instead, we are too busy measuring one another up and tearing one another down.

Unfortunately, I feel like the new moms take the hardest hit, especially during those first few weeks postpartum. For some reason, we’ve created this ridiculous expectation that moms have to have their shit together – you know: shower daily, keep a clean house, and get their body back – all with a grateful smile on their face. Let’s be real…those first few weeks are painfully hard. Adjusting to life with a newborn, adult diapers, crotchsicle ice packs, running on little sleep, breastfeeding difficulties, recovering from BIRTHING A HUMAN BEING – the list goes on. For whatever reason, nobody talks about how DAMN HARD it is. Instead, we all just continue to post the perfect pictures and reinforce the unattainable expectations for the next generations of moms to come.

So I beg you – let’s start talking about the ugly…the shit we pretend doesn’t exist on social media. Instead of posting pictures of our super advanced children, playing nicely, while eating their all organic homemade meals…what if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and post about the tantrums, the messes, and the bag of MSG packed cheese puffs I just gave my five year old to get him to shut the hell up for two minutes so I could finish grocery shopping. Instead of shaming one another, why not support and lift one another up?

Do me a favor, next time you are about to delete that unflattering picture that shows your mom belly covered in stretch marks, or your messy house at the end of the day, post it on social media instead. Next time you see a fellow mom with a tantruming child at Target, give her a smile and let her know you’ve been there too. Talk to other mommas about the hard stuff – the days that test your patience and break your spirit, the time your child went through that nasty biting phase at preschool, or the time your 3 year old said FUCK at the dinner party. Compassion and humility go a long way. Let’s build confidence in one another by being real about what motherhood really looks like.

I will be the first to admit that my life is not perfect. Far from it actually. I’m not always a good mom or wife. I lose my temper and yell too much at my kids. Sometimes I’m so tired at the end of the day that I cruise Pinterest instead of reading my boys bedtime stories. I turn into a total raging BITCH and take everything out on my husband when I’m lacking sleep or stressed. But that’s just it. We all have our faults. There are things we fail at daily. Every single one of us has skeletons in our closets, and ultimately, these imperfections are what make us human, and most importantly – relatable. Let’s start talking about it. Let’s give ourselves and other mommas a break. Let’s stop pretending that our shit doesn’t stink – we all have baggage, let’s own it…hell, let’s celebrate it even!

Callie Boller is a wife, mom of three, and the ringleader of a traveling circus show. She swears too much, runs to stay sane, and loves hard on her little tribe (even though they leave trail of complete destruction everywhere they go).  She writes about motherhood. Writing provides Callie a space to process all the crazy that goes along with raising three children; but she also hopes to use it as a reminder not to take this motherhood gig too seriously! She can be found on Facebook, and has a blog. She is also on instagram as: mylittletravelingcircus.

 

Donate to the Aleksander Fund today. Click the photo read about Julia, who lost her baby, and what the fund is.

 

Join Jen at her On Being Human workshop in upcoming cities such as NYC, Ojai, Tampa, Ft Worth and more by clicking here.

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood

You Can’t Quit Motherhood: On Privilege, Motherhood, and Effort

April 16, 2018
effort

By Laura Leffler

In bed one winter morning, when I was so pregnant with the twins that I spent hours each day icing my fat feet, propped high on pillows, I floated around personality traits as if they were names. I think the girl should be creative, I told my fiancé. She’ll carry a sketchbook wherever she goes. And the boy will be a bookish type with round glasses. They’d both be terrible at math and sports. I was laughing at myself, enjoying the ridiculousness of it, knowing that these little people growing inside me would be who they were no matter that I planned for them.

But my fiancé grew serious. “You know,” he said, “I want them to be scrappy.”

I recoiled – I could actually feel my lips twisting into a sneer. I scanned through the list of things I wanted my children to be: happy, healthy, and kind, of course, but also, more secretively, bookish, artistic, beautiful, popular. Scrappy made me think of a shaggy little dog. Scrappy made me think of the pugilistic kids I knew back home, kids who showed up uninvited to parties, straggly kids, kids who tried too hard. Scrappy was not on my list. Continue Reading…

Pregnancy, Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood

My Pregnancy Journey: A Leap of Faith

April 11, 2018
fertility

By Dana Mich

I glanced down at the two pink lines gazing up at me from their glossy plastic eyelets. I set the First Response test on my bathroom sink and bit my lip as I ran the tap. It felt too good to be true.

It was the day of my thirtieth birthday, and Mother’s Day. May fourteenth, twenty-seventeen. The previous evening’s cake and candles, and that morning’s sunlit family brunch—gilded with yogurt parfaits and a medley of quiches—hovered in my peripheral view. If anything, those two little tick-marks should have been the cherry on top of an already serendipitous twenty-four hours in my life. But this was my third positive test in nine months with no baby or expectant bump to show for it. Instead of rejoicing on that first day of the decade I’d slated to be my parenting years, I pleaded to the universe: “Please just let me have this baby. I swear, I’ll be so careful.” Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Mental Health, No Bullshit Motherhood

But, What If…?: Confessions of an Anxious Mother

April 4, 2018
anxious

By Catherine Jones

I suffer from anxiety, which is debilitating at times.  I have suffered for as long as I can remember, both mentally and physically.  And while I’ve tried many methods that help to alleviate my symptoms, I know my anxiety will never completely go away.  It only got much worse after my child was born.  I had a lot of time during my maternity leave to come up with some truly unreasonable, completely invalid fears.  One of my biggest issues with anxiety is that I know I’m being silly, but I can’t help it.  I know there’s no reason to be afraid to ask for help finding an item at the grocery store and there’s definitely no reason to contemplate all the awful things that may happen to my child.  I hope some anxious mothers out there can relate, or at least be relieved that they’re not nearly as imaginative (cuckoo) as me.

When my son was first born, he hardly slept, or if he did it was for maybe an hour at a time.  He was always hungry and wanted to be nursed for hours and then be nursed again after a short catnap.  He never seemed particularly tired, but I was getting loopy from a lack of sleep.  When he did manage to sleep at night for a few hours at a time, I kept getting up to check on him, straining my eyes in the darkness to make sure his little chest was still rising and falling.  When he switched to formula and actually started to sleep through the night, I was terrified.  Why was he sleeping so much?  Was something wrong?  Infants are supposed to sleep for most of the day, but not my baby!  I slept on a cot in his room for months. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood

Unbasic Bitch

March 28, 2018
imperfect

By Sarah Huffer

Fitting in is the most miserable decision of my life.

I’m clumsy and mostly awkward. Weirdly happy and bright. Somewhere in life, I decided I needed to blend. Like ya’ll blend eyeshadow. I smudged my personality until I became one watered down fragment of a soul without any defining characteristics.

I agreed with the crowd. I contoured my face(I still suck at this). I worshipped fall. I pinned Pinterest projects. Should I buy a salt rock lamp or eat kale? I was powerless to Target.

Even more, I highlighted the best parts of my life to portray my life. In reality, I couldn’t keep up with the dishes. I burn bread. My kids were feeding their healthy desserts to the dogs. My youngest daughter is, literally, pissed off all the time. She only smiles when you are hurting yourself. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Grief, No Bullshit Motherhood

The Thing About Grief Is…

March 21, 2018
grief

By Stacey Shannon

The thing about grief is:

I can’t trust myself.

No matter how I rail against this part of my life/year/self, that is the bottom line.   It is part of me.  And though I may disregard it for 11 out 12 months of the year, it’s always there.  It WILL come  at me like Shane Stant came at Nancy Kerrigan with a club. When it arrives, it does what it always does.  It hobbles my knees and runs away as I fall to the ground, asking “Why, why?”.

No, I’m tired of asking why.  I’ll never really know.  Moving on, next question:

When?  Nope, done asking when.  When will it be over?  The answer to that one is always the same and it is this: never.

How?  That’s a good one. Let’s unpack that. (Don’t you hate when people say that?  It’s so douchey. “I know you are feeling rotten right now, let’s unpack that’!  How about, NO?)   How best to navigate these two weeks every winter, every fucking winter, 18 winters and counting.  How?  I’m not going to answer that.  Because when I do answer that question, I  immediately discount my own answer. Simply because: I can’t trust it. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Divorce, No Bullshit Motherhood

Where the Love Is

February 16, 2018
love

By Danielle Scruton

Her voice was muddled by dreamsleep, but I heard the words nonetheless: “This is where the love is…”. She had that look of peace about her. The one that melts me every time. The one that helps me feel less like a mother who can never get it right and more like a hand of love: helping her, guiding her. Her face lit softly by the nightlight, she looked years younger than ten. She would lose this babyface soon and while- as a mother- I was far from ready, as a woman I smiled within at what the tween and teenage years would bring.

It’s a bit unusual, her situation. Her father and I are divorcing and she has two other men in her life. It’s not something I give much thought to, but it is different I suppose. She will never have a stepmother, though it is very likely she will have two stepfathers. My bond with my daughter is as unshakable as any other mother-daughter relationship, but it’s possible she needs me even more because of where the chips have fallen. I could be wrong. In any case, I feel the importance of my influence in every exchange we have.

And her slumber-filled words meant more because the day had been hard. It was like that sometimes and more so with her than with my son. She had spent a weekend with her father. Her emotions loomed around her and came at me with defiant words. Tons of attitude. She was annoyed and yet wanted me close, only to push me away again moments later. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, #metoo, No Bullshit Motherhood

Dear Little Baby Girl Child Nestled In My Arms

February 5, 2018
maybe

By Kimberly Valzania

Dear Little Baby Girl Child Nestled in my Arms,

I see you looking up at me, with big brown eyes. I see you smiling. Happy to be clean, cradled, and loved. Safe, innocent, with your tiny, feminist fist already flailing and pumping.

A girl baby without a story. No stories at all to tell, just yet.

An empty canvas of a life, just waiting for paint.

Maybe by the time you are older, old enough to do all the things you will surely dream of doing, all of this sexual predator stuff will be a thing of the past. Maybe you will grow up in a world where people do not behave this way. Where men, especially, do not prowl and prey. Where some men do not look for a way to pounce first, and then deny or downplay.

Maybe you will not know how it feels to be bullied by a boy, or passed over for a boy. Maybe, for example, you will raise your hand to answer a math question in class, and you will be called on by your teacher. Maybe your teacher will champion your worth, your potential, your intellect…at the very same time you recognize it in yourself.

If something happens, maybe you will be believed the first time you tell your story. Maybe your words will be all the proof they need. Maybe your voice will not ever be muffled, or bought. Maybe your body will not be consumed, or judged, or hurt, or caught. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

There’s No Such Thing as a Perfect Parent

February 2, 2018
perfect

By Sally Lehman

My Mom taught me how to fold sheets and iron pillow cases and measure flour with the dipping method, and how to pinch the edges of a pie crust to make it bake pretty, and how to hammer a nail and hang a picture and paint a wall, how to swaddle a baby and change a diaper and repress bad memories because we don’t talk about those kinds of things, and how to not cry or I’ll give you something to cry about young lady, and how to bite the webby part of my hand instead of screaming because when things are just too much and I can’t stand to live with it all anymore, no one else should find out.  She taught me to be ashamed for thinking sad thoughts and how to avoid people I dislike and how to hold a grudge for years, and how to sew and crochet and work if I have pneumonia because the phone company doesn’t give a shit that I have pneumonia.  Mom taught me how to drink a gin and tonic and how to make a decent cup of coffee, the kind that will rip a stomach apart after three cups, and how to order a glass of wine at a restaurant when I was only sixteen.  And how to pretend I was asleep when a crazy drunk person woke me up at 3 in the morning to say they are sorry for every single little thing they might have ever done ever.

My Dad taught me to shut the fuck up already.

My Mom also taught me to hold my head up, chin out, no matter how out of place and lonely I am, and how to look a person right smack in the eye when I talk to them. She taught me to look just the right way to the make children do what I tell them to do, and that I should be ashamed for taking antidepressants every day because it made her a failure as a parent. Continue Reading…