Prenatal depression—one of many perinatal and postpartum mood and anxiety disorders that are extremely common—affects as many as one in seven women according to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
For Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re honored to share a story from one Maven member, Richelle Clayton, about her silent struggle with prenatal depression during her pregnancy.
Now a busy mom to a healthy 18-month-old boy, Richelle has kindly shared her courageous story with us—opening up about her isolating and often overwhelming pain—to help other women understand that there is no shame in struggling with mental health during or after pregnancy, and that you are not alone. The support she received on Maven and her experiences during and after her pregnancy inspired Richelle to become a certified childbirth educator and begin training as a full-spectrum doula to help as many other women as possible to feel less alone. Connect with Richelle at frompregnanttoparent.com or on Instagram at @frompregnanttoparent.
I battled with prenatal depression and I am not alone
By Richelle Clayton, a Maven member
Being pregnant was not my favorite experience in the world. I mostly hated it. Admitting that has always come with some amount of guilt, but it’s true. I was twenty-nine years old, happily married, and financially stable having a “normal” and “healthy” pregnancy. There was no reason to be anything other than a glowing and excited soon-to-be mom. Except that I wasn’t. Instead, I was silently suffering from prenatal depression. For the better part of those nine months, I was stuck in a vicious cycle of dread, guilt, and shame instead of the joy I thought I was supposed to be feeling. It was isolating.
It started with my first ultrasound when we couldn’t find a heartbeat. I was terrified by the possibility that I had “willed” this pregnancy away. That’s not a thing, but it didn’t make the fear and guilt any less real. As it turns out, we had the date of conception wrong. However, those feelings didn’t go away after we discovered the truth a few weeks and blood tests later.
Eventually, those initial mixed emotions turned into an overwhelming sense of dread. It wasn’t there every moment or even every day. It would come and go at varying intensities. I mostly kept my struggles to myself as I continued searching for joy, trying to come to terms with my new identity, and battling the fear that it could all go terribly wrong at any moment. I waited until I was solidly in my second trimester before even telling some of the closest people in my life that I was pregnant. When I started showing, I knew it was time to reluctantly let in more support.
As our baby started kicking, I tried desperately to connect with this little miracle and appreciate the “magical” things my body was doing. I took bump pictures and hosted a gender reveal party that I was certain would help me fake the excitement and turn it into something real. It didn’t. I nested…and nested…and nested…and nested leaning into what I could control in the hope that the more I filled our home with signs of our new reality, the more it would start to feel “right.”
As I grappled with the undeniable, overwhelming amount of change that was happening and still to come, there were times when it just made sense to start over. I’d sit alone in our office searching for a fresh start hundreds or even thousands of miles away thinking, “It will be you and me against the world, baby.” In the Lifetime movie playing out in my head, I’d reinvent my identity in a wonderful, supportive community that would rally around us. We’d somehow be okay.
Other days, I’d sit there googling what my options were when it came to adoption. After all, it wasn’t supposed to be this hard. It wasn’t supposed to be this scary. There are so many women out there struggling to get pregnant who would scoff at me for being anything less than thrilled, right? What was wrong with me that I didn’t feel attached to this baby growing inside me? What if I never loved this baby the way it deserved? Clearly, I wasn’t the right person for the job. Perhaps the best thing I could do for this baby was give it away.
On my worst days, I’d hold my breath for as long as I could wondering if it’d just be easier if that next breath just didn’t come.
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