The Poor Mom Revolution

Having a baby is an incredible, life-changing experience, and personally I found it to be one of the hardest times emotionally, physically and mentally. Your body is single-handedly creating life and all the necessary components to make sure you and the baby have exactly what you need. Your hormones are causing incredible amounts of changes within your body and with the birth of your beautiful baby they drop significantly causing severe changes to your entire system as you know it.

Newborns go to a ridiculous amount of doctor’s appointments to make sure they’re happy and healthy. Upon each visit throughout the first year, I as the mother had to fill out true or false and sliding scale questionnaires letting them know how I was feeling. They wanted to know if I was getting enough sleep, which of course is always a no. They wanted to know if I had a change or spike in my emotional state and cried often, which at the time my anxiety caused me to do that regardless. I feel like the majority of the mom test as I called it, didn’t really say much out of the ordinary. It’s like when you’re not sure if you have the common cold or the flu, but all the symptoms are kind of the same so you think it’s the less severe one and go on with your day. You could be feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, unhappy, and it could be simply that, or apparently it could be postpartum depression. Since I felt like the questions and symptoms weren’t out of the ordinary for someone who just had a baby, I didn’t feel the need to mark anything down on the paperwork.

March of Dimes mentions, one in seven women are diagnosed with postpartum depression and half of those women are being diagnosed with depression for the very first time. I am extremely curious on the percentage of women who don’t come forward or don’t know what it is that they have. I remember going to a therapist for the very first time after my second child was born. I was going through a lot of life changes and was feeling as she called it, situationally depressed. We just talked and I answered a couple questions about how I was feeling in the moment and when I first started feeling this way. Within that first year, we discussed the very strong possibility that I actually had postpartum depression with my first pregnancy.

I was educated a lot that year. Just like most diagnoses there’s a spectrum with a wide variety of levels. In my mind, similar to the movies, postpartum depression was the extreme scale of not connecting with your child and/or wanting to hurt them. I never once felt that. I had extreme emotional highs and lows, constant need to cry, exhaustion, anxiety, guilt, and most importantly loneliness. All of this in my head can be choked up to having a baby. Being one of the first of my friends to have one makes your friendships change and in turn you’re alone until you find your new pack. Exhaustion and the lack of sleep makes sense when you’re getting up to feed every 2 hours. I also felt like a walking zombie and a lack of sleep can cause you to have wild mood swings, at least in my mind it was the reason. Never once did I think that my entire first year was because I was severely depressed from having my little bundle of joy. I remember feeling the need to keep myself busy, otherwise I’m not sure how I would have gotten through the day. I babysat another child for the first almost 9 months, was completing my graduate work for my Master’s, attempting to train for a half marathon, joining mom clubs locally to meet other moms and not quite finding anyone that felt like me.

As you can tell, I’m not one that can physically or mentally sit back and listen to my body as I’m used to simply ignoring it and pushing through. Looking back now, I feel like an idiot. How can I not have known? Why would I have knowingly felt so crappy and not done anything about it? In my mind, I blame not being brutally honest on every questionnaire on doctors feeling like I was either overreacting or crazy. The only place I would have heard anything about this would have been from the movies which I’m realizing is not the best place to get my information from.

The lack of openness to talk about severe issues has definitely set us back so much. I remember when mental health was a complete taboo to talk about, and as much as it still kind of is, we’re definitely going in the right direction. I think women’s health in general has been put on the back burner and it’s scary that we don’t always have the information we need. Looking back I got a giant folder when I left the hospital that included all of the baby naming, birth certificate, hospital materials, directions on taking care of myself to heal, immunization cards, and potentially a pamphlet or flyer on postpartum?

I feel like working in labor and delivery similar to being a teacher and the aspect of. There’s so much information you need to share in such a short amount of time that some things aren’t remembered or don’t seem as important. When you’re in the classroom, you’re supposed to talk and teach about the four main subject areas. In addition to those regular standards that are legally binding, you need to teach the kids how to interact with each other. Socially, you need to deal with their mental health and mediating all the fights and bickering that goes on throughout the day. You are having teachable moments that pop up that you know are going to be vital later on. In the hospital you’re being taught how to feed your baby, to swaddle and comfort them, that skin to skin contact is the best, and things to watch out for until your first appointment. The main focus the moment that baby is born is on them. And I totally get that. No one has any idea what’s going on and this infant has been put in your possession and that’s it. It is a full on-the-job kind of training.

I just feel like there needs to be more emphasis on teaching us how to listen to our bodies and our mind at an earlier age, and maybe even starting in high school. Letting us know about our bodies and what is “normal” and when we see or feel certain changes, we reach out for help. Women’s health needs to be a greater focus and not an afterthought when we realize something isn’t right around that baby making time.