scuba diving
on economy of energy, the earth as a mother, and swimming through postpartum depression
As a postpartum person, you can waste a lot of time asking yourself continually, “do I have postpartum depression?”. You fill out screening questionnaire after screening questionnaire at the doctor’s office, thinking “we’re fine really, but…,” wondering “how do I answer this honestly without sounding all the alarms?”, thinking “who is this really helping?”. If you have to keep looping back to it even just in your own mind, if you can’t confidently say “no,” then unfortunately it seems that the answer is “yes.” At least, that’s been my experience. On every ppd questionnaire I’ve filled out so far, I’ve softened my experience, filtered it through my logical brain. “It’s not so bad.” “I’m overall doing fine.” “Look at us, we’re making it!” “My baby is thriving!” But truly the interior experience doesn’t reflect this softness. I feel like a storm-swept tree, trying to hang onto my leaves. I’m still growing! I’m still leafy! I’m so tired! Please make it stop! And the wondering about whether I have ppd is additional energy I don’t need to be spending. I’ve seen this to be a theme in my mental health, using energy pondering whether what I’m experiencing aligns with a diagnosis instead of accepting what’s going on and letting it be whatever it is, fall within whatever murky boundary medicine has created, using the designated language only to try to explain myself when asking for help, but letting it be more fluid within me than something with a name.
So I think I have postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. I’ll call what I’m feeling that, as thousands (millions?) of women before me have too. I’ve had depression and anxiety before in my life, this isn’t anything new, but now it’s “postpartum” — a different breed, different self, different combination of hormones swirling through me. Why waste time wondering? It is what it is, and it’s hard.
I felt pretty good for about the first two months, mental-heath-wise. Surprisingly! Everything was very hard, I wasn’t sleeping well, I was crying a lot, sure, but for the most part I felt “good.” I don’t really feel good anymore. It was a subtle shift. I might have not even noticed it. It’s not like things have gotten harder or easier, externally. Baby care is baby care, intense, relentless, consuming. My love for my baby, my bond to him, is growing exponentially each day. Truly, it keeps getting bigger and bigger. That has nothing to do with the depression. The depression is all me. It’s all about how I translate myself to my self. It’s all about my internal experience, the story, the plot, the throughline. Is my life something good or something bad? Is my life one that makes sense or have I lost the plot? Am I doing very well or doing terrible? Can I add this all up to a positive or a negative number?
It almost feels like a cliche to admit to postpartum depression and then to write about it, both. Is this too revealing? Overdone? Unnecessary? Of course it is. But, as usual, the urge to write is a balloon on a string, I can hold onto it or let it float away. To keep this little cloud of thought in my fist for a little while, to then hand it to you, feels like the smallest piece of power, and power is a good thing for me to feel right now. One of the lies of depression and anxiety both is powerlessness. It’s good for me to practice making something out of nothing. As I confessed to my new therapist on Friday, in our hour-long getting to know you zoom session, my baby babbling on the playmat beside me: writing is one of the best tools I have for managing my mental health. I didn’t know that until I said it out loud.
I don’t want to write profusely about this. I don’t want to linger here, or ask you to. I don’t want to overblow it, make it more than it is. But I do want to write something about it, use this tool, feel powerful, say what I see. Many would argue that we should talk about postpartum mental health more, be more forthright about the state of new parents’ minds. I honestly think that it’s likely that more than 1 in 3 mothers experience this, I think it’s a spectrum that likely everyone is on, from the “normal” baby blues (which aren’t nothing!) to severe postpartum anxiety/depression/psychosis. I’m taking my place on the array. I want to mark the space, make a little boundary. Send up a flag, “I am here!” There are no solutions or answers. I could start medication, I could not. I have a new therapist I already trust, referred to me by the kind therapist I saw for prenatal anxiety through my birth center. I know that the only way out is through. I know that this is common and very hard. I also know that I’m pretty good at navigating my way through mental health struggles, I’ve had to do it for my whole adulthood and I’m a very self-reliant person, one who likes to feel well-resourced, one who will fight for support. So this isn’t a call for help. It’s just a meditation on needing help. And a meditation on struggle. A meditation on how it feels when the thing you expected to come, comes. You see the dark clouds on the horizon, then the wind pushes them overhead.
I honestly think the switch was my breastmilk production regulating to supply and demand instead of being hormonally driven — this happens naturally a few months in. Whatever chemical shift happened there opened some back door in my mind, moths flying in toward the light. The days taking care of my baby began to feel extraordinarily long. When he would sleep, I’d struggle to do the things I need to do to take care of myself — drink water, eat food, read a book, sleep. I’d stare into space, I’d scroll on my phone, taking nothing in just doing it. I’m writing in the past tense, but this is ongoing.
I think that’s the heart of it for me, at least the way it feels right now. I can see myself taking very good care of my baby. Holding him gently, being patient through his struggles, giving him space, observing his play, being the ship that carries him through the dark waters. It’s myself I’ve forgotten how to take care of. I can’t remember what makes me feel good, what I can do for myself. I can’t string together a complete thought, can’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds. (A miracle that I’m writing, little helium balloon on a string, careful lest it pop!) I get to the end of the day, I put the baby to bed, I have a few hours that I could spend doing anything. What do I do? What do I want to do? Nothing, nothing, nothing. I feel blank and wrung out. Taking care of my baby feels like a purpose, or at least a string of necessary tasks. When he is gone, what am I?
It almost feels like a strange biological imperative, the erasure of the mother, even within herself. Taking care of the baby takes so very much energy that in moments alone you simply power down, reserve the energy for the next bout of care. Like breastfeeding is drying up all the nutrients usually left for me, all the water I drink being sucked away just as quickly. I’m a hallway, a place for my child to pass through, a red sea with walls of rushing water being held back. My self is being held back. My soul feels paused. When I care for my baby gently gently, it’s almost like I can hear my inner child shouting back — “I’m a baby too! Who is holding me?” I used to carry that inner child, treat her very gently, mother her day and night. Now she’s all alone, and frightened. We forget that we have to mother our small self too. For a while we simply can’t.
When I allow myself, I can honor my strength. I can see that I’m working and this work is hard. Look how far I’ve come! Look at the rolls of fat on my baby, that’s from milk my body made, energy I spent! Look, I took care of him for another day, he is happy and laughing and fine! Mothering is full of skills and I’m learning to master them. A whole new occupation. But at what cost? At great cost. The work of motherhood, physical and mental both, is costly. I am at home alone with a baby and a dog, neither of whom can fathom what’s going on inside of me. It’s my joy to give my baby all that I can. It’s my joy to be in his company, to be the first witness to his life, which is his own. But what is being given to me? It’s different than being alone, it’s lonelier somehow. Mothers in their homes with their children, little nonsense universes, like scuba diving, being underwater, everything is sopping wet and upside-down and wonderful, beautiful, sparkling, but the oxygen is running out and I can’t hear anything, only endless bubbles.
I could tell you about my particular stressors, the things triggering my anxiety which fuels my depression, but I don’t think the details are important. I have my sorrows, you have yours. The world is not safe, gentle, or kind. It’s true that there is so much to fear. The earth has been too neglected to be a gentle mother to us — she’s been left alone too long, too abused, she’s become too hot, too hostile, too riddled with chemicals and heavy metals and dangerous things. So much love, so much beauty, but darkness underneath. When I think about the earth, I can see that a neglected, overused, or abused mother is a terrifying thing. I don’t want the same fate for myself, for the garden of my body, for the atmosphere of my mind, for my soils and water and air. I need to be taken care of to take care of my child well.
The first few weeks picked me up and carried me in their intensity. The goal was survival. The novelty of this new life, the surreal feeling of looking at my baby and seeing him as the same one I carried while pregnant, the one who will be my child for so many years — all of this was like a raft underneath me. But now we are out of the fourth trimester. Past the newborn stage. Now the goal is integration. The goal is living. The goal is some sort of normalcy, continuation of whatever I was before, whoever I am. This is impossible. It feels impossible. I don’t know what my life is now or how it will unfold. I don’t know what my responsibility is to myself beyond taking care of my baby. It feels like I’ve spent all I had. A bankruptcy of self. There’s a sort of self-emptiness, a sort of humility of spirit, that really took me off guard. It’s not that I don’t expect that I’ll return somehow, maybe even soon, it’s that it feels terrible to lose oneself, and I don’t know who I’ll be when I come back. Someone different. Someone I don’t know yet. That’s frightening.
This not knowing myself anymore has been distilled into depression. I can’t remember what I like to do, how to access the part of myself that knows the best next thing. My fragmented time stalls out my decision-making. I feel caught in each setback like a net. It’s difficult for me to regulate my emotions on my own, stuck in a feedback loop when I begin to feel something well up in me. I haven’t slept more than four hours at once in three months, usually much less, and I’m sure that has something to do with it, the constant expectation that I’m about to be interrupted just as I’m beginning to begin to be restored, just as I’m settling into something edging on comfort. But isn’t that what motherhood is? Contorting one’s body into strange positions to breastfeed, waking up any time, never eating a warm meal, constant vigilance, constant readiness, the rocking and singing and walking and carrying and changing and attention, attention, attention, the lavish time slipping away, full days given over to care, all the cliches that seem to make motherhood what it is? The things that feel unsettling to me seem to be just part of the gig. That’s hard to swallow. Shouldn’t I just rise to the occasion? Shouldn’t this be simple?
It’s nice to slip into moments of ease and pleasure. I’m trying to notice them, relish them, let them be purely good. Walking in the park’s 55 degree afternoons, under trees, a long looping road. Pushing my baby in the stroller. Listening to a podcast. That feels good. I hold it. I plan it into my days. “I’ll go for a walk this afternoon,” I think, as the day of the same cycle of baby tasks, the same fight for attention, for joy, for focus, for seeing what’s right in front of me stretches ahead. That helps. I think, “I’ll take a shower tonight” or “I’ll make that frozen thing for dinner and it will be simple.” Little plans, tiny goals, achievements of the smallest sort. I’ll eat lunch. I’ll drink a glass of water. I’ll do ten minutes of work. I’ll do morning pages. I’ll eat some cookies with my coffee. If I can spin these things away from pure necessity and back toward care, toward pleasure, that could help. Here, a small way to be good to myself. And also allowing myself the moments of freefall. Thinking about nothing. Conserving energy. Maybe instead of scary that can be good too. Not sure how to spin that yet, because it doesn’t feel good. But is that just what this season is — economy of movement, emptiness and fullness in turn, save all the energy for the baby? Supply and demand? The oxytocin doing little else but making me very sleepy, almost in a trance. Fragmented sleep, fragmented thought, swirling in a cycle of repetitive tasks, peppered with the bright joy of a baby laughing, smiling, becoming himself? Is it right that I spend my few spare moments alone just powered down, like something with an “off” switch? Maybe, for now, it is? I’m not sure. I can’t tell on my own.
It’s a whole other essay, but I think some of the depression is linked to the pressure I put on myself to be very good to my kid. To care for him perfectly, to attend to him with attention that is more than attention, love that is more than love. To respond excellently and quickly every time, with the right attitude, with enough softness, enough spaciousness, strong arms to lift and carry him wherever he needs to be taken. He is heavy and growing heavier. What I want for myself and for him is impossible. I think sometimes it would do me (and him, honestly) well to allow myself to be a mediocre mother, even just for a little while. But I’m finding that this is really uneven ground for me, my apparently very high expectations of how I ought to care of him, how it should look, and how it should feel.
I need to remember that I will be an imperfect partner to my child. I need to allow myself to do less, to be weak, to only be exactly who I am, even as a parent. I will never leave him, I will always love him, constantly, but sometimes I will have bad days that he will be a part of. That’s hard to reconcile, but it’s true. I’m learning about how to let my attachment to him be as secure as the one I’m trying to allow him to have with me. To repair when things feel torn. To keep coming back, to simply be accessible to him, however I am. We are a dyad after all — that’s what my lactation consultant called us. As two intertwined, interconnected, co-dependent, especially while breastfeeding, we are only healthy if both of us are doing well. It is in Thomas’ best interest for me to take care of myself as well as I take care of him. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I’m committed to working on it. I used to only need to take care of myself. It’s a long time we will be together, him and me. This is only the very start. We have years to go. His life is starting, but mine must continue too. It’s a joyful thing to have one’s self intercepted by welcoming a child, but it can’t stop there. New lives for both of us, both need to be given space to grow.
So anyway, I am experiencing postpartum depression. I am very aware that it could be much more severe than it is and could have started much earlier. I am very aware that I have so much access to support. I am very aware that I have a baby who is healthy, eating and sleeping mostly normally. So much goodness, so much difficulty. Both can be true. It doesn’t feel like a confession or admission to say it out loud — it feels like clarity, like process, like part of the plot that I feel I’ve lost. There is life after these months, after this year. But this day, this month, this place is real too. Like I said, I’m making a little boundary, putting up a flag. The line between “I have postpartum depression” and “I don’t have postpartum depression” is thin and imaginary. This is where I am today — scuba diving, underwater. I will surface, but when? My life is in this water now. New depths, new dangers, new energy needed to swim.
Lots of people have told me over and over about new motherhood, “it gets better!” I hear that. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing to say, but I will admit that I’m sick of hearing it. I’m glad that it gets better, but it isn’t better yet. Some things have gotten better, and new hard or scary things have swung into the space they left. This is difficult! My entire life has changed! How my days go by! The way time moves! What I do! Three and a half months of motherhood and everything I’ve ever known is being rearranged. I’m allowing myself to say it’s terrifying. To explain that I feel lost. To keep having hope for the future. I don’t know if it will get better, but I think the best thing I can do is keep letting myself, my baby, and my world change in whatever ways they will. To be more tender, more honest, more full of grief and more full of joy, allowing each day to only be exactly what it is. My capacity isn’t very big, but it’s expanding. Growth is painful, scary. Probably time to put my flippers on and see what newness I can find at the bottom of the sea. Probably time to rest awhile, floating on my back.
One good thing — I’m not alone in this. I really do suspect it’s a spectrum that all new mothers fall onto to some degree. A life change this massive isn’t gentle, simple, or light to carry, especially given that no one really talks about it that way when you’re pregnant, and that little soul-care specifically is offered to postpartum people unless they seek it or make it on their own. But no, I’m not alone. Millions of women have become mothers, have integrated it, carried it, loved it, hated it. Millions of women have raised wonderful children and have found ways to be good to their own selves. Millions of women have suffered from depression that is directly related to their identity as mothers. It’s a little city down here under the ocean. I’m allowing myself to imagine that our upside-down underwater world can be as big as we need it to be, little by little learning to live here too.