Why I Openly Discuss My Postpartum Anxiety and Depression
Becoming a mother is a life-changing experience. It’s a changing of identity — one that requires you to drop who you are for a time so that you can focus all your energy on keeping your baby — or, in my case, babies — alive.
Motherhood is being asked to do it all while simultaneously, we receive messages that tell us that if we are not doing it all, including taking care of ourselves, that we are failing. It’s a tall order.
But I thought I was completely prepared for motherhood.
I’d read as much as I could before the birth of our twins. I made sure I mentally prepared for possible NICU time for my babies, as is common with twin births (we were lucky that they came home with us from the hospital and avoided NICU time). I read up about postpartum depression before their birth, and I remember thinking, Of course I won’t get postpartum depression. I spent three years trying to have a baby. I am so grateful for them. There is no way this will happen to me.
Spoiler alert: It happened to me.
Once we’d arrived home from the hospital as a new family, the lack of sleep mixed with the recovery of my unplanned c-section got to me quickly. I was so tired yet so anxious about falling asleep while holding one of my babies, that I hardly slept at all. I was…
