It’s misleading, all of those people. You don’t really need them when you’re pregnant; when you’re pregnant, it’s still just you. When you really need them is when you’re not pregnant anymore—when “just you” becomes two. That’s just when miraculously and without warning, all those people disappear. Sure, they come to visit a few weeks after the baby is born. But now when they visit they’re not doting on you anymore; they’re doting on the beautiful baby in your lap. No one is asking if you need anything. No one has noticed that you haven’t showered in 3 days and asks if you need a break. For the first time, the answer to these questions is a resounding “YES!” but all of a sudden, no one is asking.

Post-Partum Depression

Everyone has heard of post-partum depression, or the post-partum “blues,” as doctors like to call relatively minor cases these days. According to the CDC, post-partum depression affects 10% of women, and is generally defined as serious depression following the birth of a baby and often requires treatment. Post-partum “blues” is a much milder version that might only last a few weeks. 80% of women experience the post-partum blues, which means that the majority of women go through some period of sadness, crying, fatigue, and worry after they give birth.

Before I had my son, I just thought post-partum involved feeling sad that you’re no longer pregnant. I was partially right: When I had the post-partum blues, I was indeed sad about not being pregnant anymore. But I wasn’t sad that I was no longer carrying an 8lb baby along with a 20lb placenta and whatever else was still attached to my torso. I was sad because all of a sudden I was home all alone, with no one to help me, and no one to say the words that I needed to hear so badly—that it would get easier.

For me, and I suspect that for many other women, being alone played a big role in the post-partum blues. Consistent with what I was feeling, studies have shown that the amount of social support you have—the number of people you have in your life that you can turn to for support—is related to whether you will experience depressed-like symptoms. Similarly, the quality of your marital relationship predicts whether you’re likely to experience post-partum depression. This is especially true for first-time mothers. Further, there is research showing that mothers expect to get help after having a baby, which might make being alone even harder to swallow.

The old saying about raising children is that “it takes a village.” But, we usually don’t get one, and the question is whether being alone might make the work of parenting very difficult on new moms. Some researchers and primatologists have suggested that the optimal way of raising children is with a surrounding system of caregivers that also provide children—and most importantly, mothers—with love and support. This type of system has been termed alloparenting, and refers to situations where individuals besides biological parents play a role in child rearing. Unfortunately, most of us don’t get to experience alloparenting. In fact, many new mothers stay home alone with their newborns, facing the transition to parenthood as a village of one.

So what should we do if we get the post-partum blues? We already know that having a support system helps decrease the risk of post-partum, so one thing that new moms can do is seek out local parenting groups or schedule visitors for the first few weeks post-birth to help alleviate the stress. New moms should also be aware of the symptoms of post-partum depression in case they do need professional help to get better. Between depression and the post-partum blues, 90% of new mothers go through one or the other. That means that none of us is really alone, and if we looked for it, help might not be so hard to find.

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Long ago, in a land far far away, lived a little girl who carried the weight of the world on her shoulders . . . Alright, that’s a bit overly dramatic. But long ago, before real life should have been real; when good hair days were comprised of a ponytail held in place by an elastic band on which were those hard, round marble looking things; when happiness was a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch – before all of that, I had a niggling sensation in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong with me. Before I even knew what it meant to “go crazy,” I had the very clear, very illuminated thought that one day I would not be like the other mommies I saw in the neighbourhood where I lived. Instead of handing out popsicles to the stray kids, I saw myself cloistered away; a sad mommy; the sound of joy grinding at my brain.

As I got older, this thought persisted. The clarity of it was frightening, and instead of replaying the visual of my sad face handing out melting popsicles to a brood of dirty-faced toddlers, my teenage self would push away the voice that said, “One day you’re going to go crazy,” and instead, I partied, starved myself, slept around, and accepted that this was normal adolescent behavior. After all, what did “going crazy” even mean? What did it look like? And was that really such a bad thing?

Life played out. The voice reminded me at the oddest of moments that my crazy was on a shelf to be taken out at a later date. I would be rocking my daughter, watching Oprah talking to other mothers who were admitting that motherhood made them feel alone and desperate (this was in the days before Postpartum Depression had a name), and I would hold my daughter close, sobbing into her soft, white-blond, fine hair. That little voice tried to whisper, but during those times when I was raging around the house, sobbing into the couch cushions so my little ones wouldn’t hear, the whisper sounded more like white noise, and my thoughts were whirring about; images of my life distorted like puzzle pieces dumped from the box.

Being diagnosed two years ago with Major Depressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Bipolar II – although a journey on which I wish the donkey was strong enough to carry me further up the mountain faster – is a relief. Finally, the voice is not being silenced by a gag stuffed inside of my mouth. I speak about being Bipolar not as much because I want to be a strong presence in the movement to race this purebred to the finish line, but more so because acknowledgement is powerful validation. I babble. I make no sense. I cower at reactions and consequences. But inevitably, I finally recognize the voice inside of my head as being my own, rather than that of a childhood imaginary demon.

There are demons in this war I wage against my mental illness. But now that I recognize the clarity and the purity of the voice, I understand that a lifetime of preparation was necessary to arm me with ammunition sturdy enough to deflect the arrows of the real demons who seek to take my crazy and use it as a weapon of mass destruction, rather than the empowerment it has been meant to serve.

Head to the Family Room

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Four years ago, if you had told me an attitude of gratitude could change my life, I would have laughed in your face. In fact, I am pretty sure I snorted some coffee while I read such advice on a postpartum depression (PPD) self help page online. How could I keep a Gratitude Journal, a daily record of three things I’m grateful for, when I hated my life and couldn’t stop thinking of ways to end it? The whole concept seemed a challenging, pointless waste of time, yet I knew I had to do something to get out of the dark pit of despair I had fallen into.

I wanted to live, I wanted to laugh again, and felt I was failing as a mother and wife, so after trying different modalities of depression treatment (acupuncture, Chinese herbs, light therapy, antidepressants) to no avail, I decided to give the old Gratitude Journal a try. “What a joke!” I thought to myself on my ill-fated first attempt. I sat there staring at the page for 20 minutes with no clue what to write. I couldn’t think of single thing I was thankful for other than my family and reckoned that was too cheesy to put down on paper.

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If you have never been depressed, you have no idea how hard it is to think positively. It took about a week before I could churn out three things I was thankful for without grimacing or having to concentrate. With a bedtime deadline for my journal, I had all day to think about what to write; perhaps the smell of apple blossoms, Baby cruising and giggling… Unknowingly, while doing homework in my mind, I was cultivating an attitude of gratitude.

As I became less negative, my friends started coming around again, I made more of an effort to get out and exercise, and found even more reasons to be thankful. My journal entries became longer, more descriptive, and just plain happier. One of my favorite reads: “I am thankful for irises and lilies blooming, gloriously warm and perfect for playing outside weather, and my clever kids’ cute made-up songs.” The Gratitude Journal was not the cure to PPD, but a step in the right direction, a step away from the ledge.

Since that time, I have not written in my Gratitude Journal consistently, but I do the exercise in my head daily and keep the journal on my nightstand. If I am ever feeling down, I take comfort in reading past entries; they remind me of what fills my bucket. Today, I am grateful that I did something productive even though I thought it was silly, that most of my friends stood by me when I was hard to be around, and most of all, for my husband and children’s unconditional love.

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