How Do I Feel? That's A Loaded Question

Why don't we take the mental health needs of pregnant and postpartum people seriously?

I would love to meet whatever ad executive type coined the phrase "baby blues," and I would like to throw that person into the sea.

Did we need diminutive little slang to describe feeling like shit after giving birth? Why is "sudden mental darkness combined with a feeling of being totally alone, plus physical pain" branded in a cutesy way when it happens to mothers? And why is something so widespread still so ignored or downplayed on such a large scale?

While most mothers experience a postpartum dip in mental health, not everybody who gives birth experiences symptoms that fit the clinical definition of postpartum depression (PPD), postpartum anxiety (PPA), or postpartum psychosis; those are serious mental health crises that require professional intervention. But everybody faces a physical recovery of some kind, and everybody endures the hormone crash that goes along with having just given birth. It isn't cute or fun! It sucks!

When I told my OB-GYN about some psychological symptoms I was having early in my second trimester, she recommended I start talking to a therapist to prepare for the postpartum period. " She told me I needed to get out in front of it before it became a problem. Postpartum mental health symptoms do not mess around, she said.

I started looking for a therapist the day my doctor told me to. It didn't take me a day, or even a week to find a therapist who was local and could eventually see me in person. It took me more than two months to find anybody who had an expertise compatible with my needs who could take me on as a new patient. And this was in Los Angeles-- a therapist's El Dorado! (I was so desperate in the interim that I started going to acupuncture, despite being terrified of needles. But that's a whole different story.)

Most of the local mental health professionals I reached out to didn't reply to my emails or calls. None of those who did respond took my insurance, which, despite being some of the better private health insurance available, is still absolute dogshit when it comes to covering mental health. And the few that were able to take me on had sporadic availability. If I had less time and money to devote to my own mental health, my postpartum "baby blues" coping plan would have been to text my sister and cry.

Therapy has been helpful for me. But therapy doesn't really "fix" issues as much as prepare me to better handle them when they arise, sort of like how building a state-of-the-art levy doesn't prevent hurricanes but it can prevent hurricane-related property damage.

All this is to say that the answer to the question "How do you feel?" is a fraught one in the days and weeks immediately postpartum. I suspect many who ask it don't actually want the real answer.

How do I feel? Complicated.

This period of time is beautiful in many ways. I get to witness my brand new baby discovering the fact that she has the ability to put her hands in her mouth. I get to watch my husband bond with her, a tiny person who somehow looks exactly like him despite his biologically hands-off role in her gestation (my body received instructions and was like, "Got it. One tiny female Josh, coming up"). I get to watch my cat and dog treat her like a loud new family member that scares them a little bit.

In other ways, this magical time fucking sucks. There are ups, but the terribles are truly terrible. I feel like I have gone through puberty over the course of a week, and rather than growing into an adult body, my body's edges are dissolving. I am food. I am extra skin. I am leaking. I am lumpy. I am blood. I am unseen internal bruising. I am built like a beanbag chair version of the body I had a year ago. My abs are fucked up. I used to love my own physicality, and I am suddenly too afflicted to walk up a hill.

I had an uncomplicated delivery, and Juniper and I were able to go home together the evening after the day she was born. I also have time off from work and the love and support of family, friends, a doula, and well-wishing strangers who have reached out over social media to send nice messages. Friends have sent us takeout food in the days since we came home. My parents are in town. I've got support up to my eyeballs. What I am experiencing is a best case scenario.

In the days since I've come home from the hospital with a new baby, I've never felt more "off"-- physically or emotionally-- in my entire life. I feel like I went through a horrible breakup that was completely my fault, and then got fired from a dream job. I blame these feelings for aforementioned hormone crash experienced around 3-4 days postpartum, during which I turned into something resembling a hell-witch.

Have you ever cried while peeing? Because after giving birth vaginally, piss is lava. The recovery nurse gifted me a pair of "padsicles," large pad-shaped ice packs designed to calm the raging taints of women who just gave birth. Some of these postpartum products have cute branding on them. "Your vagina will thank you!" is emblazoned across the box that once contained what's known as a "peri bottle," which is something that you fill with water and spray on your undercarriage while attempting to achieve basic bodily functions. So far, my vagina has not thanked me.

(These are some of the less gross things that happen to the human body after giving birth. If you have questions about the grossest things, ask your mother.)

I know why this is happening. This is "normal." This is temporary. It that doesn't mean it's easy.

Birth is a significant physical undertaking on the part of the person giving birth, but after birth, much of the focus is on the baby and the effort and trauma the baby's mother has undergone gets forgotten like a bronze medalist. I get it. Babies are cute, even though newborns don't do very much beyond need things, and it's not very fun to engage a hormonally depressed person in conversation about how it still hurts to walk. But even new mothers who are "okay" are usually less okay in birth's immediate aftermath than they were before their babies came into the world.

It wouldn't be accurate for me to say that "nobody warned me" about how hard the postpartum phase is, but it is true that postpartum health is not considered nearly enough, especially among people who have not given birth, who may feel like skipping over the mother entirely to focus on seeing the baby, holding the baby, asking about the baby. As a result, the only people who seem to understand how fucked up it is that so much of the post-birth hullabaloo focuses on shuffling people in and out to see the new baby rather than tending to a person who just underwent a major-- and often traumatic-- medical event are people who very recently became mothers themselves, or who were attentive partners to new mothers. It's all a little depressing.

I was warned, but I was not prepared. Time to spend an hour staring at my baby's face so I don't yell at the next person who talks to me.

Original illustration by Amanda Penley / Website