Two ordinary postpartum stories
Gathering for our sons’ 21st birthdays recently, a friend and I reflected on our postpartum experiences so long ago, speaking candidly on the subject for the first time.
She told me about the guilt she still carries with her two decades later: that the “magic moment” with her newborn wasn’t magical at all. The baby she had yearned for, that she had gone through IVF treatments for, had brought none of that amazing joy she was supposed to feel. She had desperately wanted to bond with her new baby but simply couldn't. Instead, she felt sad and detached. To this day, she expresses gratitude for her husband who took over the bonding responsibilities on day one.
I, too, desperately wanted to become a mother and went through fertility treatment. And like her, I struggled in the postpartum period. Instead of jubilation, I felt defeated. After spending 10 weeks in bed to protect my pregnancy with twins, and gaining half my body weight in the process, I was physically and emotionally spent. My stamina was gone. In fact, a clinician mistook me for a smoker when testing my lungs hours after delivery.
An abrupt end to maternal care
I was ushered out of the hospital just two days following major surgery despite being barely able to walk from one side of my hospital room to the other. My care team did not advise me about hypertension even though I was diagnosed with preeclampsia during my pregnancy and carried 45 extra pounds post delivery. The oxycodone used to relieve my C-section pain left me covered in hives from head to toe. Nothing could be done, my doctor said, because I was breastfeeding. The focus was almost entirely on the babies, which seemed entirely appropriate at the time.
On day five or six of visiting the babies at the NICU, I sobbed uncontrollably upon departing, as if primal instinct was suddenly (and loudly) objecting to the unnatural separation of mother and child(ren). But the challenges began in earnest when the babies came home. Caring for two infants became a 24/7 job, leaving scant room for rest. I was sleep deprived, overwhelmed by the responsibility for two new lives, still in pain from the C-section, miserable from the incessant itch of hives, and so exhausted from breastfeeding that I felt nauseated all the time. There was very little joy and plenty of discomfort—and then, extreme anxiety.
Extreme, uncontrollable anxiety
Neither of us will forget the battles against our own minds in those early days and weeks of motherhood. My friend told me about her postpartum visions of a knife-wielding woman coming for her son. I told her about my eerily similar fear of knives and visions of my babies floating through the air away from me. One night I woke up screaming and grasping at the air above me as I tried to save them. The visions, anxiety and fear stayed with me during the days but remained hidden from family and friends. I didn’t know these experiences are common: it was a very lonely time.
She said she had learned that C-sections and infertility are risk factors for postpartum depression (PPD) and anxiety, something we both wished we’d known 21 years ago. First-time motherhood, lack of sleep, and caring for multiples (in my case) surely contributed as well. Looking back, it’s no wonder I could barely cope or that I was experiencing symptoms of postpartum PTSD. Harder to understand: the near complete absence of postpartum care for mothers. A single cursory check-up with my PCP six weeks following birth was woefully inadequate; I just couldn’t see it at the time.
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