The warmest of welcomes to you at a time in your life where you desperately need others to care about you, especially while you're feeling so down.
When I had both my babies, who are now 23 and 21 years old, I wish others had led me to wonder why I was so down. I wish someone had led me to make better sense of my emotions. It wasn't until years later that I was able to make sense of things. It can make such a difference to a mum when someone's prepared to sit and wonder with her while she's struggling to make sense of everything.
Sometimes it's not about any individual problem or challenge. It can be about how each individual problem or challenge adds up. Sleep deprivation alone may not be too challenging. Trying to work out how to manage a baby by yourself may not be too challenging, if it's the only challenge. Chemical shifts taking place within our body may be manageable if there aren't other factors going on. Our partner not stepping in to help more might not impact us if everything else is going well. There can be a long list of individual challenges for a mum. It's a very different story when we're facing sleep deprivation on top of trying to work out how to manage a baby on top of chemical shifts within our body on top of our partner and/or others not serving us in the ways we so desperately need them to. The weight of all those challenges combined can really bring us down. And if you add social expectations relating to how we should be able to cope with everything, it definitely doesn't help. It just adds more weight.
If I had my time over again, I'd be so much more demanding or expressive of my needs and far less of a people pleaser. I wouldn't have stayed so quiet when it came to what I so desperately needed. I'm wondering whether you'd consider writing a list of your needs right now, so that you're able to become more conscious of them. How do you need people to care more, in what ways? How much more sleep do you need in order to develop a little more energy? What would take some of the weight off, when it comes to tying to manage the weight of all the things you face?
With post natal depression, people can make the mistake of believing, imagining or assuming that it's all about 'hormonal issues'. It can be so much more than that, so much more.❤️
