I had every one of the following symptoms of post-partum depression including sadness, hopelessness, low self-esteem, guilt, sleep disturbances, eating disturbances, inability to be comforted, exhaustion, emptiness, inability to enjoy things one previously enjoyed, social withdrawal, no energy, becoming easily frustrated, increased anxiety and panic attacks, feeling of inadequate in taking care of Tyler, and spells of anger towards others. It even went to the extreme that I desperately didn't want to take care of Tyler at all and frequently had thoughts of hurting him.

I hated being a mother. I never wanted to be a mother

Ever since I was a young adult I never wanted to have children. And I mean NEVER. I hated children. Whenever there were children around, my whole body would tense up and I would feel this intense feeling of irritation and anger. I referred to children as objects.

Common thoughts that would run through my mind when children were around included, “Get it away from me” or, “Could that parent possibly shut that annoying little creature up already?” When I found out that I was pregnant, I remember thinking, “Oh, shit. What am I going to do now?” I remember a nauseous, tense feeling in my stomach at the horror of what was going to happen next if I kept this baby. I hated children.
You may be thinking many things to yourself right now. How could a woman think this way? Don't all women want to raise a family? If not, why would this woman keep her baby if she had so much animosity at the thought of having a child?

The main reason is I loved Matthew with all my heart and knew giving up this baby would be the end of us. I couldn't bear the thought of not having him in my life. Also, I knew we would marry eventually and convinced myself that we would inevitably produce spawn. Therefore, giving up this baby for adoption or having an abortion would be regretted later on in life when we were ready to have children and may cause serious problems in our marriage.

So after careful consideration, Matthew and I decided to keep this baby. This started a whole whirlwind of events over the next seven months - planning a shot-gun wedding in three months, moving into a house, preparing the babies room, and adopting a kitty. I was so involved with the amount of things I was doing during this time that it took until the last two months of pregnancy for me to really feel the effects of depression starting to take over again. Two months before my son was born I decided to take early maternity leave because I was so big and found it too exhausting working. This left me lots of time to finish my pregnancy journal and stress about the impending arrival of my first child.

Many thoughts raced through my head at this time. What is it going to be like to be a mother? Am I really ready for this? What if I can't handle it? What if I'm a terrible mother? I began to establish safety nets in case I couldn't handle impending motherhood such as enlisting my mother-in-law to move in for the first two weeks to help with the baby and creating a support network of family and friends that I could call to talk with and come over to visit. These safeguards helped ease a bit of the anxiety, but not that much.

By my due date I was a nervous wreck, filled with anxiety at the thought of becoming a mother. To top it all off, I was over a week late and in a lot of pain from the room this little creature was taking up inside me. I was having a hard time eating, sleeping and breathing.

A week and a half past my due date I had had enough and induced my labor by taking spoonfuls of caster oil and pushing every pressure point I knew on my body to get labor going. For the first six hours of labor, I tried using the shower at the hospital and laughing gas to ease the insufferable pain. The shower worked for about an hour and the laughing gas made me sick to my stomach.

back next