I was recently talking to a woman who just had her second child. As I am still struggling with managing one, I was amazed at how calm, cool and collected she seemed with two little ones to take care of. Even more so, she looked happy!! (Not that 2 children aren’t a blessing, I just think I would have looked a lot more overwhelmed). I told her this, commenting that she really looked great. Her comment back-’Its called anti-depressants‘. Ah ha.
One thing that my girlfriends mentioned to me before I had Connor was that baby blues are very real. I believed them (they had not been wrong so far) and expected be a little weepy. So when I had Connor, took him home, and proceeded to have a full mental breakdown, I was shocked. I couldn’t eat, for one. Everything I put in my mouth tasted like saw dust. And the crying, my Lord did I cry a lot. Sometimes I would cry because I was happy, sometimes sad, sometimes lack of sleep, sometime for no reason at all. My husband would just look over at my on the couch and I would be a ball of blubbering mess.
I just wasn’t prepared for the hormonal non-sense called the baby blues. They drill into your head the understanding of ‘postpartum depression’ – like if you feel like you are going to drown your child you have it. But they don’t tell you that for the first time in your life there is a very good chance you are going to experience some feelings of mild (or major) depression. Combined with the fact that it comes at a time when society says you should be gloriously happy makes it even harder to talk about and accept as a normal part of the transition from woman and mommy. It is mostly hormonal, you just grew and expelled another human being from your body. After that I’d say the body is allowed to have a little unbalance for awhile. And it’s normal! I guess that is what I wish I had known. Sad? normal. Crying? Normal? Ready to pull your hair out in utter frustration? Normal. Think your husband is really from another planet and wonder how fast you can get him back there? Normal, normal, normal, normal. Wonder what they hell you have just done to your life? Yup. That’s normal too. At least normal was for me, whatever that means.
