For some women post partum depression hits immediately. Others, it creeps into their lives slowly. And some of us are just hit like a ton of bricks.
I should have been happy. I was finally home with my daughter. She had been released from the hospital and she was alive. She was strong.
Maybe it was finally allowing myself to start to digest everything we'd been through. My therapist certainly thinks I get to claim Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with regards to the whole thing. In the moment you only react. You don't process what you're going through. I had so many parents say to me "I could never handle that." The truth is that you handle the child you're given. No one would wish for a child to be deathly ill, or to be diagnosed with a disorder or a disease or given a label that indicates their life might be less than perfect. But if it happens, you deal.
So in the end, it really shouldn't be all that surprising that between my own predisposition towards depression and everything that happened coupled with the hormone hell that is life as a post partum woman that I just stopped functioning. Over the course of a few days it became harder to motivate myself to respond to her cries. I began to take care of her mechanically. On the outside I was doing everything you're supposed to...giving her a kiss, telling her I loved her, changing her diaper, pumping breastmilk, giving her bottles, ferrying her to doctor's appointments and so on....but inside I felt empty. I felt more and more disconnected from this little bundle of helpless and nonstop need.
I felt alone after Sexyhusband had gone to work.
I was lucky, though. I understood what was going on enough to ask for help. From family and from my therapist. My dosage of antidepressants was tweaked.
I was isolated, not just from my child and myself, but from Sexyhusband.
There was one brief shining moment of hope, when at 5 weeks post partum I just decided I was ready to have sex, 6 week rule be damned. But after that, it turned into a lot of handjobs, mostly out of guilt or because it was the easiest way for me to get to sleep, not because of desire.
When you have PPD, it's so easy to begin to hate yourself or to just not give a damn because you feel numb.
I am a member of several online communties and there are plenty of members who had babies within days or weeks of my birthing the LM who say they still haven't had sex 7-9 months later. Who have no interest. In some cases, who are so consumed by their child(ren) that their husband is an afterthought. I understand all of them. I had to make a conscious choice to make my marriage a priority and I was lucky enough to have a husband who due to his own demons of depression understood exactly what I was going through. Who could summon gratitude for a handjob. Who made an effort back. Not all of these women are as lucky in that regard.
But part of me wonders if they might also be suffering from PPD to some extent.
Becoming a mom, especially if it's your first child, especially if you hate failing (whatever that means in your book), especially if you don't want to parent by the norms of your socioeconomic status or current trends, is so overwhelming that it can blot out the sun. I am certainly struggling to stay abreast of politics, something that was a passion of mine before. Writing and cooking are things I fit in around everythign else, and often I don't.
Marriage and a sex life require work.
Life isn't a fairy tale where it all works out if you just manage to find the right person. Both partners in the marriage need to be committed.
Throw depression or a partner who isn't holding up their end of the bargain and you have the start of a tragedy in the making. It's not coincidence that at least 3 women in the community I am most involved in have confessed that they're considering divorce.
If you suffer PPD, know that there is support out there. Even if the only support you want is to read the words here on a sex blog that it can get better.
It can get better.
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