I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
August 18, 2006
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When my baby was four months old, I took her to her first play group. It was as much for me as it was for her; I had spent the last six months pretty much in what felt like solitary confinement and desperately needed to interact with other women again. After a few weeks of getting to know the moms there, I tentatively made an admission.
“That bonding thing that everyone says you feel right after giving birth?” I said. “I didn’t feel it. I mean, I loved my baby of course, but she had, like no personality for the first few weeks, and I wondered why I didn’t feel closer to her.” I looked around for affirmation, but got only stares and silence.
“Well, I adored my baby from the moment I laid eyes on her!” the mom beside me said shortly, before changing the subject. I shut my mouth, chagrined, and decided that I must’ve been a freak of nature. And the pathetic thing was that these women didn’t even know the half of it.
I still remember the early weeks of Baby’s life. Breastfeeding was painful and exhausting, I hated my deflated post-partum body, and I was sick to death of the endless string of relatives staying with us to “help.” Late at night, I’d get up to change one of Baby’s explosive poopy diapers and as I held her tiny body in my arms, I’d think of how frail and vulnerable she was. Thoughts would come to my mind, completely unbidden, of just how easily she could crack her head open if I were to drop her on the hard bathroom floor.
The gory images of various forms of infant death, sometimes accidental, sometimes intentional, replayed over and over again in my brain during nearly every night changing like some kind of horror movie on continuous reel. I knew deep in my soul that I could never, ever hurt my baby and I didn’t really feel crazy, so why were these images nagging at me? Where were they even coming from? I wanted to tell my husband, but was afraid he would think I was a raving lunatic and a danger to our child. Instead, I kept them to myself. And eventually, as Baby got bigger and stronger, they went away and I forgot about them.
And then I read this post by Meghan at My Dog Harriet, describing the very same thing that had happened to me. And I read through the comments of dozens of women, many of whom I respect and admire, saying they’d had similar thoughts as well. As it turned out, I wasn’t a freak of nature and I was far from alone. I had had what seems to be a fairly common (though scary) symptom of post-partum depression and not even known it. Thank God I read Meghan’s post and can talk to my husband and my doctor about it if it happens again this time around.
It is really difficult for me to write about this even now, two years later. I think it’s pretty obvious that I love my Baby with all my heart and seriously don’t even know how I’d live my life without her in it. Yet I worry that people will read this and think I am a bad or unfit mother, or that I have mental issues. I worry that much of my audience will be filled with well-adjusted moms like the ones in my first playgroup, who will give me the written equivalent of the shocked stare of outrage.
But I couldn’t not write about it. Because if one reader out there sees herself in these words some day and is able to tell someone, then it’s worth every tear shed in the writing of this post and every negative or hurtful response it might provoke.
Thanks, Meghan, for your courage in writing about your post-partum experience, and for inspiring me to do the same.
This post originally appeared on DotMoms.
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