After my first daughter was born I had a bad case of the “baby blues”, which is an awfully cute name for the ten days I spent living as an open wound, so emotional that even listening to music hurt. Then I felt anxious and overwhelmed, suddenly in charge of a person so perfect and fragile, burrowed deeper and spent a few months tormented by the same thoughts: Why aren’t you happier? You don’t deserve her.
Postnatal depression – or anxiety, or emotional turmoil – can be hard to recognise because, thrust into a new and unfamiliar role, we feel too keenly the weight of social expectations. Or at least that’s how I see it now: of course I was over-tired, of course I was terrified of something going wrong, of doing something wrong, of course I sometimes wished someone would relieve me – even for a few hours – from the endless breastfeeding, the hours I spent pacing up and down our flat humming nursery rhymes. Why couldn’t I recognise those feelings for what they were? Did I really think that on giving birth I should miraculously transform into an earth mother and bask forever in maternal bliss? Apparently I did.
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