By Christina Baquero Dudley
In a review of the facts surrounding my entry into motherhood, all of the signs for depression are waving furiously at me. I look at that 25 year old woman and want to hold her tightly, ask her to tweak this here, turn this there. Ask for more time off, give up the breastfeeding on day one, lose the expectations. But she lives inside of me, and has brought me here. So the facts remain.
My first child was not an easy baby. He wasn’t a difficult baby either, and could generally be soothed by my husband or another family member. I had him on a Friday and my husband returned to work the very next Tuesday. He was a very poor sleeper and had terrible gas. His first 4+ hour stretch of sleep occurred around 8 months old. By then I had been back to work for 6 months, a blur of existence that I don’t even recall today.
In the early days my son and I did not bond. I would often look at him, just the two of us at 3 in the morning and resent how he cried. I sometimes wondered what it would be like if I never had a child at all. Late night feedings and the looming end of my maternity leave would create panic. I couldn’t sleep when the baby slept like all the books said. I hated holding him. Every time I finally settled him down to nap I immediately wished he would sleep forever. When he awoke, I hated the sound of his cry. A cold chill would race up my spine and raise the hairs on the back of my neck. I’d become stiff and resentful, counting down the minutes until he would sleep again.
Compounding the issue of my growing resentment for his existence, was the increasing disdain I had for my breasts. I felt completely tethered to this child and never once looked into his eyes while feeding. I never experienced a connection with him while breastfeeding. Dealing with overproduction issues, a condition that a modern woman should never complain about, meant that I was constantly wet, engorged, or filling up. Physical comfort was rarely available. And it was all because of this being I so desperately wanted but unexpectedly despised.
If I sound like a terrible mother, I assure you that I believed I was one too. The moment these “dirty” thoughts entered my mind I immediately snatched them back up and turned them inward. Everyone seemed to love my son, especially my husband. He had no problem soothing him and even made it a point to tell me so. It didn’t take long before I realized there wasn’t something wrong with this baby, but there was certainly something wrong with me.
I was a bad mother. A bad person – no, a horrible person. I was undeserving, unworthy, ungrateful, unloving. At my 6 week check up with my OBGYN, I worked up the courage to explain to him that breastfeeding was not going well, I was not okay mentally, and I would like a permanent form of birth control so that I would never have this experience again. He didn’t say much. He just looked at me as tears rolled down my face, scribbled some words on a prescription pad, and called in the nurse. He said that she could talk to me about what I was going through. In the two minutes it took for her to enter the exam room, I sucked every tear back into my body. When she approached, she put a gentle hand on my shoulder, and rather than asking her for help I asked if I could have the piece of paper he left. She handed it to me, I glanced down, making out the word Zoloft. I shoved it into my diaper bag and darted out of the room, never telling her what I told him.
In fact. it would be 2 years before I told another person about what I was feeling.
This pain.
This hurt.
This postpartum experience.
Christina Baquero Dudley is a writer of poems and narrative essays exploring the American feminist perspective as the daughter of an immigrant. She earned her BA in Psychology from UT Austin and has worked in public mental health organizations serving adults with severe and persistent mental illness. These experiences inform her writing and her heart. Christina is a contributor to A Room of Our Own Foundation and has been published in Matilda Butler’s award winning anthology TALES OF OUR LIVES – Fork in the Road. She is currently working on her first book, a poetry collection exploring her heritage, femininity, and personal awakening.
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