This Is What Postpartum Depression and Anxiety Really Feels Like

By Lesley Neadel

Photo: Getty Images

I am at my desk with 10 minutes until a transition meeting leading up to my maternity leave. The phone rings. “The results of your blood test came back. Why don’t you come in tonight for an induction?” I remember little of the meeting that followed, and guarantee that nothing I imparted resembled anything close to “wisdom.”

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I am giving one last push to deliver my baby. Rebecca is born beautiful and perfect, and the pregnancy complication I had has not caused any major problems. Doctors soon tell me she has low blood sugar and needs formula. I agree and she is whisked away, which instantly feels wrong. I am flooded with the sense that I am a horrible mother, one hour in.

I am in a deep, endless fog and can’t find the way out. For the next few weeks. I weep at the slightest instigation, or sometimes with none at all. Rebecca’s crying sends me into a tailspin and I cry with her every time, which is often. She is colicky, has reflux and seems miserable too. We make quite a pair. My mind is blank and I am unable to summon a song to hum or any other ways to soothe her, like rocking her or taking her for a walk. I am terrified to be alone with her. When she does nap I wait to hear her next cry, surrounded by a thick web of dread and anxiety. I am paralyzed by fear. I go through the motions of caring for her, but feel nothing.

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I am a shell of my former self, without a brain, and without a heart.

I am in the nursery with tears in my eyes when my husband gently tells me he thinks this may be beyond the “baby blues,” and that I should call my OB-GYN about getting help. I do. I leave incoherent voicemails on answering machines and talk to three psychiatrists —the third somehow comprehends what I’m saying.

I am in a plush chair at the psychiatrist’s office, clutching balled up tissues as I cry through our entire hour together. I reveal that I have been a mother for three weeks, and that they have been the worst of my life. I am ashamed at my feelings, horrified by my thoughts and too damn tired to care about the baby. She understands immediately and diagnoses me with severe postpartum depression and anxiety. Medication is prescribed, talk therapy appointments are made, and I wade through the thick sludge of the next six weeks as I wait for it to all take effect. The days tick by as family, friends and baby nurses attempt to raise my spirits and help with Rebecca. I cry less, but feel numb. It is torture every time I see someone act how I wish I could with my baby.

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Then…

I am rocking with my two-month-old daughter, who is a different baby. The right combination of formula and reflux medication has soothed her. I hum a lullaby and smile for the first time I can remember. I am becoming a different mother too.

I am holding Rebecca in our kitchen singing softly and swaying when without thinking I whisper “I love you” into her ear and burst into tears. I realize I mean it. She is almost three months old.

I am on medication for two years, and am the mother I always knew I would be. Playful. Confident. Fun. Creative. Even more so because of my appreciation at the ability to be this way. My trauma has no lasting impact on our relationship or her—she is the smartest, funniest, spunkiest girl I know. I tell her constantly that I love her.

I am ready to try again—to go through whatever life has in store as we give Rebecca a sibling. My husband agrees to one more—but that’s it. This journey has not just profoundly affected me, but him as well. We are terrified of what is to come, but get pregnant and bring another daughter into the world, completing our family. There are days that are dark, but none like before. Bouts of crying have me on edge, nervous that I will fall again into the abyss of postpartum depression, but I always know that I don’t feel like I did last time. I battle some postpartum anxiety, and turn to different medication for help, which it does. I emerge as myself again, the mother I am meant to be, with my girls.

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