My Matrescence
Part 1
This post is Part 1 of a two-part newsletter to mark Perinatal Mental Health Week.
TW for mentions of suicide ideation , pregnancy loss, PPD, PPA.
Before (Pregnancy)
Perinatal refers to the time before, during and after birth. I was reflecting on this yesterday, and it took me back to my pregnancy. I realise now that I was struggling with my mental health during my entire pregnancy, but I honestly had no idea that I was grappling with depression and anxiety.
This sounds like a weird thing to say, but I spent most of my pregnancy in a weird dissociative state and now when I look back, I actually can’t even believe that at one point in my life I was pregnant. Part of it was trauma I carried from losing my previous pregnancy. I was in a constant state of anxiety that I was going to lose my baby again. The other part was I had a high-risk pregnancy and I made the decision to have a c-section.
My great-grandmother died in childbirth and my mother almost died in childbirth. I chose to have a c-section because it was the safest choice for me but the judgment I received for doing so, created a lot of unhappiness within myself and I suspect it was part of the reason why I ended up having severe postpartum depression.
I remember two moments when someone had openly expressed their disapproval that I had chosen a c-section. The first was a friend telling me that she was “so sorry for me” when I mentioned it, and then made sure that she told our other friend sitting with us that she doesn’t believe in elective c-sections and its not good for the baby.
She said that as if I wasn’t even in with them and I feel like pregnancy for many people feels like you are no longer a person; you are an incubator. People will talk about you, or about your baby, as if you are not an entity of your own.
The second was when I did a mental health first aid course (ha!). The instructor was pregnant too and told us all about how amazing her first birth was since it was at home, and how she didn’t need a doctor or a hospital. When she spoke to me about my pregnancy, and I mentioned I was having a c-section…..all of the warmth and sense of camaraderie in her voice dropped and she just went “Oh. Well, I guess at least you get to pick your birth date”.
I also had to stop taking my ADHD medication and I had just stated a new job. I had to balance this with also having gestational diabetes and having to remember to constantly check my BGLs, inject myself with insulin and count every carb. Like most messaging around pregnancy, again you were no longer a person but an incubator and if you didn’t watch your carbs and your blood sugar was too high, you would end up having a big baby and be the cause of their lifetime of health issues.
It is somewhat ironic now thinking about this because I spent my whole pregnancy being made to feel anxious about how my gestational diabetes would create a “big” and unhealthy baby, but then once I gave birth as my son’s weight was always in the lower percentiles, I got made to feel like a failure for him not being a 99 percentile baby.
I look back on this time and I wish I had started getting help. I wish I had taken up my OB and psychiatrist’s suggestions of starting the SSRI that would eventually take me out of the darkness of my PPD. I was someone who worked in medical research and whose life was changed by psychiatric medication in the form of my ADHD meds, but I also carried so much unnecessary stigma around SSRIs that it ended up costing me not only my mental health, but I feel like I lost almost two years of my life to the fog of perinatal depression and anxiety. And these should have been two of the happiest years of my life.
There are many what ifs, but I also need to give the past version of myself some grace. She was scared. She was being judged. She was carrying generational trauma of the women in her family who had birthed before her (my mother cried with relief when I told her that I was having an elective c-section and I realised at that point, she was still carrying her own birth trauma over 30 years later).
But I also don’t want to gloss over how hard pregnancy is. Even a low-risk, non eventful pregnancy comes with a physical and mental toll that can take anywhere from 18 months to 10 years to recover from. And in 2024, we are still feeling this push to only view pregnancy as being something beautiful and joyful….which I have no doubt it can be for many people. However, by not acknowledging the difficulties and just how fucking awful it can be at times, we are risking isolating people who are already vulnerable and being spoken for and over.
After (Postpartum)
If I had to pick one word to describe my first year of motherhood, it would be loneliness. It felt like I went from being surrounded by people and constantly on the go, to being alone with my baby for 8 hours a day…..sometimes longer when my partner had to work nights.
The loneliness stemmed from both my postpartum anxiety, but also the difficulties in finding fellow companions to navigate this journey together. My PPA made me so fearful of taking my baby out as I was so worried about him getting sick…..the thought of him getting sick because of a choice I made would make me spiral and constantly beat myself up for being a bad mother.
And it became a vicious cycle; I would refuse to leave my apartment or go very far, or even have visitors over and as a result, my mental health continued to deteriorate.
I also just really wanted to see people and connect with them. I didn't feel that urge to hibernate in my newborn bubble, and I found myself wishing people would reach out even though I know they thought they were protecting and helping me.
I yearned for mum friends with babies the same age as mine, as my more established mum friends were wonderful but it is difficult to revisit that early stage of Matrescence or be able to step back into those shoes when you have learned that everything will somehow work out.
I couldn't take my ADHD meds, and I was too exhausted to mask which made it hard for me to connect with my mums' group. I had the very weird and surreal experience of having the group queen bee deciding I was on the out, for a reason I will never understand, and proceeded to basically dehumanise me by ignoring me when we were in group settings/refusing to engage and when I tried to make conversation by complimenting something, she would ensure she would stress how expensive it was to me.
I left the group realising this pursuit of connection was actually making me feel worse (but thankfully, I was able to stay in touch with a couple of other mums). I spent more time than I should have wondering what I did wrong and it kind of did feel like all the work I had done to accept my neurodivergent brain. Instead I started feeling like I was back at school again and I was the weird girl who was too desperate to make friends.
The saviour of my sanity came in the form of coffee. I set myself a goal of going to buy myself a coffee every day so I would get fresh air, exercise, adult human interaction and a small pleasure that I was able to bring over with me from my old life. This helped me gain confidence in taking my baby out, and emerge from my self-imposed exile from the world.
Eventually, I did make the mum friends I needed and wanted. When I returned to work, I was able to have the interaction and stimulation I missed. I found out that isolation and loneliness is very common amongst new mothers/primary carers.
These days I try my hardest to ask new mums if they want me to occasionally send a funny meme or just say hello. I try my hardest to hold space for people who are at the start of the journey. I remind myself that these struggles may be in the rearview mirror for me but they are front and centre for newer parents.