Depression.
Not a great friend at any time, but an especially brutal companion during the early years of motherhood.
It’s sheer insanity sometimes, a return to middle school in the middle of our lives. Every day I line up to pick my kids up from school, and 90% of the moms there are driving the same make and model minivan that I am. Most are even the same color.
One by one the vans sprout the same magnets for dance schools, swim teams, and elementary schools, until you could stalk a family just by looking at their bumper.
It took me by surprise when the babies were born, this realization that evidently there was one right way to do this parenting thing. Or at least, that’s how it seemed from my haze of pain and postpartum depression. When we ventured out with the twins, my every nerve was twitching, waiting for them to cry or spew at an inopportune time.
Through my veil of postpartum depression (and through no fault of their own), my friends intimidated me. They didn’t just have it together, they had it all monogrammed. No plain burp cloths or onesies for their progeny; my friends’ babies were decked out in smocked bishop dresses or monogrammed john-johns at all times, usually accessorized with monogrammed pacifier clips.
I was aiming low. All I wanted was to look normal at a glance. My plan for projecting new mother normalcy involved a drug cocktail of antidepressants and Xanax, ridiculously expensive concealer, and Spanx. And if I could avoid leaking breast milk through my dress during church, all the better.
Both twins had severe reflux and threw up like they were paid to do it. One morning Anne went through NINE onesies before lunch.
They ended up in whatever was clean, and we went through upwards of three dozen burp cloths a day, and they were plain cloth diapers. No monograms, no ribbons.
My friends were constantly taking their babies to professional photographers. Infant shoots, three month shoots, then six months, nine months, a year. My kids wouldn’t stop puking long enough to stay in a clean outfit.
Comparing myself and my children to my friends and their children was probably the most toxic thing I could have done for my postpartum depression. When every fiber of your being screams that you’re not good enough, the last thing you need is to add more voices to that chorus and to give them more ammunition. Yet five and a half years in, I still struggle to stop trying to measure up.
Depression affects far more people than most of us would think. Many are lucky enough to have a fleeting or single encounter with the disease, and these are often the stories we hear, of brave survivors who fought their way out from under thunderclouds to stand, triumphant, in the sunshine.
And then there are the rest of us.
The rest of us, for whom depression is not a one time gig. Those of us who fight our way out from under the raincloud, glimpse blue sky long enough to feel that most teasingly painful of emotions: hope. When we stand triumphant to proclaim depression’s defeat, we lift our faces to more rain, and as it runs like tears down our cheeks as we realize that our forecasts might be partly cloudy in perpetuity.
One episode of major depression raises the risk of another. Two further increases that risk. And by the time you’ve hit three, it’s practically guaranteed that depression will be a constant in your life.
When I say constant, I don’t mean constantly depressed. Depression is like quicksand, a hidden trap sprung without notice. Once you’ve been caught several times you learn to recognize it sooner, and if you’re smart enough to get help, you learn how to help yourself out of the quagmire.
You also learn that partly cloudy means partly sunny.
To all of you out there struggling, know this: you are good enough. You don’t need to keep up with the mommies. Do your best, and it is enough. Be gentle with yourself, and take comfort in the knowledge that there are a lot of us out there who know what it’s like.
You might not spot us in public because we’ve learned to smile. But we’re there.
