Human/Parents Interview: Charlotte and PPD/PPA
Human/Mother welcomes Substack author of Baby Brain!
Human/Parents is an interview series that explores and illuminates various mental health topics that some parents face while simultaneously performing the most important job on the planet: raising the next generation. Guests are Substack creatives who are also parents dealing with one or more of Human/Mother’s rotating monthly mental health topics.
This month’s topic is postpartum anxiety and depression.
So, pour yourself that third cup of coffee, snuggle in, get cozy, and get ready to meet our next guest:
!
Hi,
! Thank you so much for being here. Tell us a little about yourself and your Substack. How did you find writing, or, maybe, rather, how did writing find you? What led you to start Baby Brain, and what is your goal for your newsletter?Hi! Thank you so much for asking me to be involved in your excellent series, it’s an honour. I’m a 30 something semi*-SAHM living in the north of England with my husband and three small children. I honestly can’t tell you how long I’ve been writing, because I don’t have any memory of when it started - it just always seems to have been something I’ve done. I have a degree in journalism and have had many blogs over the years, but lost my creative spark a few years back. It came and went intermittently until I started Baby Brain, when the fire came back to life. I feel like all of the blogs that went before were leading up to this one, and I have no intention of letting Baby Brain go.
My goal for the space is to just keep going, keep writing, keep sharing, keep making people feel less alone as they embark on their mothering journey.
*I work part time, but like, really part time (approx. 4 hours a week, on average)
Let’s cut to the chase and get into your postpartum anxiety and depression experience. Tell us about the moment you realized you were struggling. Perhaps, you could provide us with some examples of what your PPD/PPA looked like when you were at your lowest.
OK, let’s go! I suffered with depression a bit before children were even a consideration, and had generalised anxiety for around 10 years before my first son was born, so knew the signs to look out for in terms of my mental health deteriorating. I had a blissful pregnancy, and have never felt more at peace or more positive than I did during that time, once the horrific morning sickness had passed. My son’s birth was quite physically traumatic, though, and I had feeding issues after he was born, which is where my PPD began. I was desperate to breastfeed and - although it turned out he had a severe tongue tie which had caused significant nipple trauma, making it impossible to feed without being in agony - I felt like a terrible mother for not being able to establish a ‘normal’ breastfeeding relationship with him. I expressed for a while but had a massive oversupply, and kept getting sick (mastitis etc) as the pump wasn’t effective enough at emptying the breasts, so after a while I switched him to formula, which made my feelings of worthlessness even more severe.
As well as hating myself for not being able to breastfeed, I really struggled with a lot of feelings from my own childhood coming to the surface. I grew up around abuse and lost a parent very young, so am not a stranger to childhood trauma. I suffered what a therapist once referred to as ‘emotional neglect,’ which has carried on into adulthood, and resulted in me spending a lot of time thinking ‘why did no-one ever love me as much as I already love this baby?’ after my son was born. I remember feeling really overwhelmed and crying a lot, thinking people would take my son away yet also thinking maybe he’d be better off without me. I took myself to the doctors when he was still tiny and asked for antidepressants. I took them for a few months and they did help, but I came off them when the edge had been taken off enough for me to feel like I could manage the problem without them. I started pulling myself out of the funk around 5 months into motherhood, at which point we went into lockdown for 2 years, which was… interesting.
As a reader of Baby Brain, I know that you have three small children. I’m curious if you experienced PPD/PPA with each individual child and if the experiences were the same or different? How so?
The above as outlined was all with my first. I didn’t have PPD with my second or third, though I do sometimes suffer bouts of depression and anxiety (anxiety being more common for me) that I feel are related to exhaustion and overwhelm - so not strictly PPD, but definitely motherhood related. I think I was lucky in that I was able to breastfeed my younger two children, which was very healing for me. I also faced a lot of my childhood demons between babies 1 & 2, which put those troubles to bed too, so to speak.
How did PPD/PPA affect your ability to mother and bond with your child after giving birth? Does it still have an effect on the relationship you have with your child(ren)? In what ways (if at all)?
I loved my son instantly, there was absolutely no denying that I would die and/or kill for him. But I didn’t understand why everyone kept telling me how lucky I was and referring to him as the best thing in the world. I remember being desperate for someone to take him away, just for a little bit, so I could be alone, which I didn’t really feel with the other two until they were much older. The bond wasn’t instant, and I kept wondering if I’d made a mistake. There was a moment a few weeks in though, when we were alone and I was playing with him, and he pulled a funny face that made me laugh out loud. I got this rush of love and suddenly everything fell into place, and I finally felt like I understood. I think that was when my maternal instincts really kicked in properly, and when my obsession with him began.
I don’t think it affected my ability to mother so much pre-bond, as I did love him and so did everything I knew I was supposed to do, but it did affect how I felt about mothering him. I didn’t enjoy it until I felt that bond kick in. I have always felt guilty about that, and always wonder if I’ve damaged him somehow, or if his attachment is strong enough to me. I really struggled with that especially after my second was born, as my relationship with him has always been so different, and I wondered if maybe it meant that I loved him more than his brother, which I beat myself up about. But then their sister was born, and I had a completely different relationship with her too - I learned through having a third that the experience is going to be different every time, no matter what happens, which helped to hit the reset button across the board.
Could you share with us some ways you’ve found to cope with the experience? How are you finding healing or help? Do you have any specific resources to share with our readers?
This is unorthodox but between children I retrained to become a baby massage teacher. My training led me down a child psychology rabbit hole, and I ended up learning/re-learning a huge amount about how certain experiences impact children. Doing this allowed me to reframe a lot of my own traits and thought patterns in terms of how I know they will have been formed, which has given me a greater understanding of myself overall, and allowed me to identify my thoughts and feelings a lot quicker, and therefore face them head on a lot quicker. So I suppose my advice, corny as it is, would be to pay attention to your inner child, and do any work that needs doing to heal them, even if just by allowing them to feel things you’ve spent your life trying to repress. Also, talk about it. Find a creative outlet. Seek professional help.
For new mothers who are struggling right now with PPD/PPA, what advice do you have for them? Did you adopt a mantra, meditation, or growth mindset that was helpful to you throughout your experiences with PPD/PPA?
As We’re Going On A Bear Hunt would say, “You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You’ve got to go through it.” PPD is awful but you just have to keep going and, eventually, there will be light again. In the meantime, give yourself grace, make time for yourself, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Also, you are still a good mother. This is not your fault.
Is there a question that I haven’t asked that you wish I would have? (And, pretty please, answer it! 🙂)
Not a question, but I do want to say for anyone worrying that it will destroy their memories of early motherhood, that I don’t really think about PPD anymore. I think about how little my son was and about how much I loved stroking his tiny feet and about how long I’d sit in his rocking chair helping him go to sleep. I think about silly games I played with him and about staring at him in the hospital as a newborn. The happy and beautiful memories haven’t been erased, and time has softened the more negative things I endured. So all is not lost. There is always something good to hold onto, no matter how dark times get. Everything is going to be fine.
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Such a beautiful and encouraging note to end on! Thank you so much for being so vulnerable and sharing a piece of your motherhood story with us,
! I appreciate your vulnerability and willingness to dive into such an important, not-talked-about-enough topic, and I highly recommend your Substack newsletter to any mama who is looking for a supportive community of mothers and needs a good laugh or a good cry. ❤️If you or someone you know is experiencing or has experienced postpartum depression or anxiety, please consider sharing this post, commenting, or tapping that heart below. Tell us your story, offer any advice or wisdom gained through your own personal experience, and/or let us know which details of Charlotte’s story you found relatable, helpful, or hopeful.
Wherever you are in your journey, know that you deserve peace, hope, and love.
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Thank you again for having me ❤️
I appreciate you sharing your story, Charlotte, and I hope plenty of fathers are aware of this. I've briefly shared my wife's troubles before, but just to recap, from a father's perspective. My now [ex-]wife struggled mightily with postpartum depression but she had no problems at all breastfeeding. In fact, she was so depressed that all she wanted to do was sleep and was happy to breastfeed/nap with our daughter. Otherwise, it was hard to get her to do much in the first year or so. We - me, her sister and mother - tried to help, I was the one reading the books and doing what I thought I could but she closed herself off and it was tough.
I did what I thought was right - I reassured her that it's okay to feel this way, that she wasn't a 'terrible mother', it's normal to feel down. I kept thinking of things from our daughter's point of view -for her sake, try to be more positive (as hard as that may be).
If I can be instructive for other parents, then what I made the mistake of was not being as affectionate to my wife as a husband. I wanted us to be a happy family instead of making time for us to be a couple. I spent as much time as I could with our daughter and once she reached the age of 2, I was spending more time with her, which has continued until now (she's 7). My ex- still laments the fact that she's a 'terrible mother' but our daughter is perfectly fine and loves her mummy very much. She appears not to be affected and even our subsequent divorce seems to be going down okay (we still co-habit, but that's because of life circumstances - a long story for another time).
I hope all that made some sort of sense.