Beyond Baby Blues

I suffered from Postpartum Depression after Sofia's birth.

This is something I have only recently felt ok enough to admit to the masses. It took me a long time to admit it to myself, then to Andrea, then to my closest friends and then, now, to you, the world at large.

Postpartum Depression, popularly referred to as PPD, is a bitch. It goes beyond that first-time mom, totally normal feeling of "Holy shit, I'm really *in* this now." PPD makes it hard to breathe, because you feel suffocated, suddenly, by your own life. It is obviously different for everyone but, in my case, it made me resent everyone and everything - myself included. Or, maybe I should say, myself especially. 


I feel like I need to be careful writing this, because Sofia might someday read it and feel, somehow, that it was her fault I had this problem. And so, before I go any further, let me stress to her and to other moms and to all of you out there that PPD is first and foremost a hormonal imbalance. In fact, most moms who figure out they have it cure it with anti-depressants. I did not. Not because I am against them - quite the opposite - but because shrinks are pretty hard to come by here in Italy, where PPD is still a taboo topic. I just never felt strong enough to ask for help or figure out how to get it. And so I battled through it alone - with poor old Andrea at my side, never knowing what words out of his mouth might make me bite his head off (pretty much all of them...feeling backed into a corner, I frequently lashed out).

PPD brought me to depths I'd never been before. I remember once, in the very early days, my mother-in-law saying conversationally "Now that you have one of your own, can you believe those women who kill their own children?" And my heart sunk. Actually, it went and right broke in half, my poor heart, because my answer was too shameful, too horrible for any mother to actually think, and so I kept it to myself: "Yes. Yes, I can." Sofia was never at risk, mind you; luckily, I never felt that sting of violence other PPD moms might. But, suddenly, I *understood* them in a way I never thought I would and never would have wanted to. Which was such a dark realization, and so difficult to really allow myself to feel. Because I did love my daughter. I did. But, in the beginning, I loved her from afar. While someone else was holding her, if she was asleep, or in my dreams, on those rare nights I was able to rest my weary mind.

Me in the beginning, enduring.

 I'm not sure I can pinpoint the exact moment I felt my PPD had passed and I was in the clear. I am absolutely certain it lasted Sofia's first 6 months, pretty positive it went on well past her first birthday. But it's all a blur now. Maybe it stopped when we finally got to sleeping through the night (that sounds about right, actually, but that was at 2 years...). Somehow I'd gotten through it without medication. Somehow, I found myself willing and able to leave the house alone with her and do all sorts of Mommy-daughter things that filled me with joy, not anxiety.

Anyway. That's all history now; history I'd just as soon not dwell on.  But I decided to write this post because there are a lot of new (or 2nd-time) moms in my life right now, and I just read an article that made me think of them, and made me think of that dark and by-now-hazy time in my early parenting days. (This link here: http://www.postpartumprogress.com/the-symptoms-of-postpartum-depression-anxiety-in-plain-mama-english.) It may seem cliche', but it's true, and from my heart: if I can save just one other mom from silently enduring the guilt of Postpartum Depression, it might have made it all worth it to have survived it myself.