I never dealt with PPD

This was the first time I held my son.  Holden.  My beautiful, well tempered, happy baby boy.  His birth came fast and quick.  It didn't seem real.  My vbac?  less than an hour of active labor.  The pain of labor is still fresh in my mind.  I still remember looking out my bathroom window.  Noticing the green grass, clothes line, and leaves blowing in the gentle summer breeze. He came so fast.  I wasn't expecting such raw emotions to flow through my veins.  Lindsay, my doula, was wonderful but I think the activity may have been fast even to her newly doula'd hands.  I held him in the picture above.  I don't remember it.  I know I am looking at him, you can see it in the picture.  But I don't remember it.  I remember shaking.  I remember being wrapped up into this chair thing and the EMT's dragging me down the stairs and putting me in the car.  I remember being put in the car and a seat belt being put  on me. I remember holding my baby. I remember being told congratulations.  But my baby, my actual babies face?  I don't remember looking.  Surely I must have though.  Right?  What mother wouldn't look at the miracle she had been waiting so long to meet?

When we got to the birthing center, Holden was checked over.  I was checked over.  My placenta looked great.  I needed stitches.  I remember someone handing him back to me but I was shaking so bad I asked for someone else to hold him.  My midwife was suprised.  Shocked even? I think I was still trying to gather in everything.  And then?  Then I took a bath.  A beautiful, wonderful, relaxing bath.  I stayed in there for a very long time.  I was still in pain, my stomach was squishy but I still couldn't believe I had a baby.  A nurse made me hold him. I'm glad she did.  Feeling him lay on me felt so right.   I do remember being afraid I would fall asleep but I never did.  After my bath, I climbed back into bed and held my son.

The 17 months following that were off and on it seemed.  I did not feel close to him. Other times I felt like we were making a connection but it didn't quite seem real.  Heck, nothing in my life felt real.  There were times where I would lay on the couch for days, moving through life like a robot because I just couldn't cope.  The guilt of not doing the same things with him that I did with his brother was overwhelming.  Dividing time between two kids, making sure the oldest didn't feel left out, making sure my husband still got his time with me, and trying to be a good wife and mother became to much.  I felt myself slipping back and forth between battling depression and being happy.  Between lashing out at loved ones and being a sloth on the couch.   I never dealt with PPD.  I never deal with being an inadequate wife and mother.  I never dealt with me.

 Today, my son gets closer and closer to being 18 months.  I realize how much of a little boy he is becoming.  No longer a baby.  He has changed so much.  His hair has changed, his face has changed, he's more mobile, active, vocal....He's one amazing little guy I'll tell ya that!  But one thing that has always made me feel guilty.  Because of my PPD I have always felt distant.  I don't feel like I held him enough.  I don't feel like he is close to me like my oldest.  I honestly feel like those first few crucial months of me not being there for him, has ruined my relationship with him.  It breaks my freaking heart.  Why was I like that?  Why didn't I get help?  He has never been a cuddler, sleeps through the night, and quit nursing just before a year.  If I held him more would he want me to snuggle with?  Would he want me to hold him in the night?  Would he have nursed longer?  

PPD can strike any mother.  1 in 10 women suffer from it.  I think mine was relatively low and it has been my own stubborn will that has helped me deal with it.  I should also say, I had an amazing support system.   My kids are wonderful.  My husband was always helpful, especially during the night or days when I just couldn't get up.  I wasn't thrown into motherhood to thrive alone.  I don't know why it happened to me, I only know that it did. I know that I HAD to get over it.  It was no way to live. It wasn't living.  It put a strain on my marriage and my relationship with my kids.  I could not let it win. It hasn't been easy

It has been a long journey. I can remember not knowing what to do with him.   Almost like he was a first baby.  Despite having another son who was just 2 years older.  I felt, and sometimes still do, feel so distant from him.  The guilt that I have messed up eats away at me.  More so now.  I pray that I can repair any damage I did.  I know some people reading this will think "he's just a baby he will be fine."  I know he will be fine. At least I hope he will.  I hope he knows that he is loved.  Always.  He will always be my baby.  The love I have for him will last forever.  It is because of him, I kept going.  Though he is tiny, he is my strength.  I hope I make him proud to have me as his mom one day.