Postpartum Mental Health: The Unspoken Burden
and new motherhood are two of the most challenging experiences a woman can endure. While babies are lovely and heartwarming, the postpartum period can also be incredibly difficult, isolating, lonely, and misunderstood. After the birth of both of my children, I was consumed with guilt and self-loathing. I felt like a complete failure. I sobbed when my babies were born, but they were not tears of joy; they were tears of grief like I had never known. I felt like I could never be good enough to deserve these babies. I thought I was going to be a terrible mom. I thought that my children would be better off without me and that if I died, their lives would be better. I seriously contemplated suicide on numerous occasions, and I struggled to climb out of the hole that depression had dug for me. Only years later did I finally realize that it was depression that made me feel like a failure, and that my feelings were not facts. I lost my children’s infant years to the vice grip of postpartum depression. I suffered in silence due to fear and shame, two things no mother should have to endure alone. Childbirth
66 | THE MOTHERLODE
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