(I wrote this when my daughter was 15 months old. She is now 3 years old. I think it’s crucial to interrupt the narratives about pregnancy and motherhood. Pregnancy is not only mystical and beautiful and mysterious. Yes, it can be those things. But it’s also a medical condition. And new motherhood is not euphoria and purposeful and empowering. Yes, it can be those things. But it’s also an incredibly difficult, affecting, and sometimes traumatizing transition. Until we speak about that side of it freely and often, women will not receive the care they need.)
One time, I wrote a story in graduate school that involved a mother abandoning her baby. Her husband was abusive, and she wanted out of the marriage and the motherhood. The baby shows up thirty years later on her doorstep. You know, drama or lack thereof ensues.
Like most things I wrote in graduate school, it was underdeveloped and too reliant on subtlety and reader inference. Those are fair critiques.
My professor’s critique, however, was that a woman would have to be pathological to leave her child. His children were grown, and he was a man, so he didn’t understand hormones or remember new parenthood. I didn’t, either. I was still young, unmarried, and not a mother at all. The failings of the story were mine. However, at the time, I didn’t believe a mother had to be pathological to want to abandon her child. And now I know I’m right.
I was not the new mother that I always imagined I’d be. Chill, easy-going, overwhelmed but happy to be. Euphoric with hormones and new baby bliss.
Nope. I was angry. So angry. Maybe even pathological.
Part of it was most definitely my birth experience. I had a doctor who was gung-ho for a C-section, impersonal and questionably skilled labor and delivery nurses, flippant doctors who made jokes over my torn body, an overeager anesthesiologist who gave me so much medicine that my lips were numb and the next day my bladder was still frozen. I spent my time in the hospital, not enamored of my baby, steeped in joy and awe, but filled with rage, disbelief, exhaustion, a feeling that I was trapped in a loony bin or a jail. I associated new motherhood with the walls of my hospital room, confining and dull and isolating.
Part of it was the natural hormonal changes that flood your body after giving birth, adjusting to the sudden lack of baby inside and the milk coming in. And hormones, as has been proven over and over again, can definitely make a person all sorts of crazy, sad, angry.
And then part of it, perhaps, were the expectations put upon a mother, and the expectations I had for myself. I read way too many birth stories before giving birth, and so many of them ended with gratitude and awe and euphoria at the new life bestowed upon the family, and too many of them excluded the details of the pain, the way your body becomes a stranger, the anxiety and regret and confusion. I thought I would have a baby and bond immediately with the newborn and go home and bask in the light of her tiny, helpless body. Instead, I got home and my dog immediately jumped onto my newly scarred stomach. All I needed was rest and recovery, but none of that was to be had (newsflash: C-sections are major fucking surgeries). The joy of my parents–new grandparents–made me even angrier. Why did they get to be happy and I had to be so sad and overwhelmed? My husband’s happiness and nervousness annoyed me. You didn’t have to go through what I just did. You have no right to have any feelings other than what I am feeling.
In other words, I felt profoundly alone.
In this article, The Case for Motherhood, “Laura” is a new mother who experiences severe postpartum depression, who utters the forbidden thought that she doesn’t want her baby. As the author writes, “It seems like the last feminine taboo, stronger than crack babies or neglect: a mother hating her newborn child.”
Laura feels tricked, by her family and society. Ultimately, her depression wins, and she commits suicide.
Though I never had thoughts that severe, I understand all of the sentiments behind Laura’s depression. I felt the regret and suffocating enormity of what I had taken on. And more than that, I felt like everything I was feeling was wrong. I wasn’t feeling what I should be feeling, I wasn’t the mother I should be, I wasn’t acting the way I thought new mothers should act. My heart aches for Laura, the expectations put upon her, and the way her hormones or body reacted to having the baby, the way she couldn’t control the physical effects of giving birth. Maybe if someone had just said, “It’s okay not to want your baby. It’s okay to feel that way” she would have realized she wasn’t totally crazy or alone.
My daughter is now 3 years old. It took me a year to recover and bond with her, and now I feel complete joy whenever I am around her. Am I always happy? Nope. Is it still really, really hard for me to spend all my time doing for another human being? Yup. But do I feel the joy and the love that I always wanted and expected to feel. Yes.
I don’t regret or feel ashamed of any of the feelings I had for the first year. Having a baby may be a natural thing, but motherhood is not always a natural state of being. The weight of being responsible for another human being cannot be exaggerated. It is enormous and profound and sometimes too much. And it doesn’t end after three months; you just become more accustomed to carrying that weight.
I wish Laura had the time and space she needed to heal. Maybe she was never going to recover from her depression. Maybe she would have been a terrible mother. Maybe my professor was right. Maybe you have to be pathological to want to abandon your baby. But maybe your circumstances do make you temporarily pathological. Maybe the wrong timing, the wrong partner, the wrong income, the wrong family, the wrong doctor, the wrong medication…maybe all of this can make you into someone different.
But I don’t think my professor was right. I think a woman’s feelings towards her baby can be as complicated as any other person’s. A mother is not automatically a mother. A mother needs time and the right supports in place to become a mother. Some countries, such as Germany, provide an at home nurse visit once a week for new mothers until she is comfortable, or on call midwives for emergencies or questions. I was handed a packet of papers when I left the hospital. Why don’t we have midwives as standards in hospitals? Why don’t we have postpartum care as a necessary requirement in all hospitals? (These are rhetorical questions, of course. Maternal care has never been a priority in our country.) Why don’t we start treating new motherhood not as a mystical, magical time but as a time when women need the most care, the most attention, and the most support?
Margo Padron-Murillo says
Brought tears to my eyes. All of your points are things I and some of my friends felt. A baby being thrust upon you, even when you’re obviously expecting it, does not automatically make anyone a great mother; that comes with time. And this things babies do to our bodies! The undeniable confusion of “I’m okay with how I look- I am woman,” to “I feel like crap, stop looking at me,” is beyond depressing.
Thank you for your words of encouragement.
Suzanne Jameson says
Wow! Wonderful essay, Mary. I remember that story and yes, the professor was wrong, way wrong. Thank you for writing this and sharing it with us.