What triggered my PPD, that is.
When Bjørn was a baby, he was very sick. He had Silent Acid Reflux that was incredibly painful for him and took us months to diagnose. My life was completely consumed with doing whatever I could to ease his pain, which mostly meant nursing him 24/7. He needed the comfort of sipping and swallowing warm mama’s-milk to soothe his burning throat.
My focus on him isolated me even more in my own little world than I had already been… in a new town, with no family and very few friends around. This isolation set me on the edge of a cliff, waiting for someone to save me, or for something to push me over the edge.
When Haakon was born, I was pushed.
His birth was beautiful, empowering and awe-inspiring. But we quickly realized that he had a birth defect. He was born with an Asymmetrical Gluteal Cleft (basically lop-sided butt-cheeks) and at that point had a space in his lower spine that needed further investigation and a large skin tag on one butt cheek.
We later found out that the space in his spine is no longer there and an MRI revealed a perfect, healthy, normal spine. There is nothing wrong with Haakon beyond the superficial asymmetry of his butt. We’re ok with that. And he will be too. He’s healthy and at this point there is no reason to believe there will ever be further concern over his birth defect.
But… there it sits.
Those words… “birth defect”. My son was born with a birth defect.
What does that mean? What did I do wrong as his mother? It must be my fault, right? I am the one who carried him in my womb for 9 months… there is no one else to blame but me, right?
Now as I am healing, those thoughts are fading… but they are never completely gone. Some part of me will always believe that this was my fault. That if I had just taken better care of him, of myself, that he wouldn’t have to live with this reminder of how I failed him.
I know that this is not the only reason I now struggle with postpartum depression. There are many factors involved, and I am starting to see them come to light in my innermost secrets… but it is the biggest thing. The straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back as ‘they’ say.
Or maybe this new revelation, or belief, or whatever you want to call it, is just my way of holding on to a small glimmer of hope that I won’t have to go through this again with my next child. That maybe, if we have a healthy baby with a normal birth and no complications or illnesses, I will be able to enjoy new-mama-hood and experience what it’s like to be ‘that’ mom… the one I’ve always dreamed I could be.