At 38, my second pregnancy was plagued with morning sickness so severe my kidneys and liver were showing signs of damage from dehydration. I was in and out of the hospital for IVs and I couldn’t work or play with my son.
The physical relief when my son was born was instant; he was healthy and perfect, and I was blissfully happy and complete. A week later I recognized the “baby blues” feeling from the aftermath of my first son, and I knew it was just hormones and it would pass in a couple of days.
Except it didn’t pass. The blues gave way to wild swings between white-hot rage and incredible sadness. A month after the birth, my wonderful and kind mom was preparing to fly home after coming to help with the baby and I screamed at her. She looked me in the eye and said “I don’t understand what’s wrong, you have everything: a healthy baby, a supportive husband, a home. Why are you always so angry?” And it was that moment that I knew something was very wrong and I needed help.
In the four years between the births of my two children, cuts to public health services meant support was only available to at-risk mothers. As a financially-secure woman with a husband and a home and no previous issues, I didn’t qualify. I called the local public health unit and they did an assessment over the phone and while I scored as needing help, I wasn’t a danger to myself or my kids, so the best they could offer was a group session on Monday afternoons, but I couldn’t bring my older son and I had no one to watch him. My doctor said that with the terrible pregnancy I experienced it was normal to have some depression afterwards. That resonated with me and I thought that my feelings of rage and intense sadness would pass soon, I just needed to be patient.
I recognized that I was just a shell of my usual self. I was going through the motions of my life. I got dressed, I put on makeup, I went to playgroups, and I tried hard to feel normal but everything overwhelmed me. I slept a lot. I cried a lot. I called public health a few more times over the next several months and got the same response: I wasn’t a danger to myself or my kids so I could go to group therapy sessions. In hindsight, I could have solved the problem by paying for therapy and a babysitter, but at the time I felt too overwhelmed and worthless to comprehend a solution. When I talked to people about feeling tired or overwhelmed it was normalized: of course I am tired, I have two young kids, of course I feel overwhelmed, we all feel overwhelmed. I stopped calling. I stopped talking about it.
I returned to work when my youngest son was a year old, and I wondered what it would be like to drive my car into oncoming traffic. I fantasized about driving off a bridge. I used to look at the knife while making lunches and wonder how hard I would have to cut to slit my wrists. I had been feeling so terrible for so long that these thoughts didn’t even register as wrong. Of course I feel like dying, I have two busy kids. I’m just tired. It’s normal.
A few weeks later, I was at a wedding and my friends and I were lamenting the working mom life. “Don’t you hate it when you are in such a rush to get to work and realize you forgot to brush your teeth. Forgot to put on deodorant. Forgot your lunch.”
We were all laughing, until I said “Don’t you hate it when you’re on your way to work and you want to drive into oncoming traffic?”
The laughter stopped. My friends recognized that I needed real help, and they called me every day until I made an appointment with my doctor. They talked me through what I needed to say to be heard, and fifteen months after my second baby was born, I finally got help. It was through getting help that these thoughts of death finally went away.