Hi Sadmama93
I wish I was there sitting right beside you having a chat about how depressing early motherhood can be when it's not all straight forward. My heart goes out to you so much as you struggle with your thoughts and feelings.
While I had both my babies within a period of long term depression, early motherhood led things to become so much worse. As I looked around at other women's experiences in comparison, I could not help but think how 'broken' I was and how much of a useless mother I was. Btw, my baby girl's now 23 years old and my baby boy's 20. It took a number of years to actually make sense of the fact that I was never 'broken' or useless, instead I was feeling what added up to be incredibly depressing at those times. The following is a list of some of the depressing factors that I can relate to
- Not being able to breastfeed (both my babies). If breastfeeding helps create a sense of bonding, the lack of this type of bonding can feel depressing. What can also be depressing involves being told to 'try harder', leading to the belief 'I'm not trying hard enough'. Add to that the old mantra of 'Breast is best', which then creates the depressing thought of 'I'm not doing what's best for my baby'. I'm here to tell you right now that breast is NOT best. What's best is a mum who's not being led to feel depressed and a baby whose nutritional needs are being met through a good quality formula. The bonus with bottle feeding is our partner can do a bottle feed which can then give us 6 straight hours of sleep, instead of us experiencing constantly broken sleep
- One of the main reasons I only had 2 kids was because the sleep deprivation messed with me horribly. Trying to breast feed then getting on the breast pump and then spending time trying to get a crying (apparently starving) baby to sleep is basically a form of torture. A depressing level of sleep deprivation is depressing
- People offering well meaning 'advice' that is actually depressing advice can also mess with us something shocking. With that 'advice' about 'Breast is best' and 'You just need to try harder', add to that something like 'All mother's experience sleep deprivation, that's a part of having a newborn'. This 'advice' is ignorant and dismissive, coming from people who are ignoring the severe degree of sleep deprivation. And when you look around at all the happy mums (of newborns) telling you what a beautiful experience the whole things is, it can kind of fill you with a sense of hatred and resentment which leads to the thought of what a horrible person you are for feeling so much hatred and resentment
- Seriously hating or resenting your own baby can also be depressing and can also feel like a form of torture. The truth is it makes complete sense as to why we'd resent them. Here's this little person causing us a brutal sense of sleep deprivation, challenging us constantly, indirectly leading us to feel like a complete failure and the list goes on. If an adult tortured us in the way our baby does we'd seriously resent them too. We'd struggle to live with such an adult
- While chemical imbalances or deficiencies play a part in postpartum depression, from my own experience I'd say they play a small part. It's all the other stuff that adds up to become incredibly depressing. I can smile now at such a thought but I can remember seriously thinking how 'stupid' I felt for being 'a stupid female with female hormonal imbalances' because that's what I was led to belief postpartum depression was all about, hormonal imbalances
I could go on with the other depressing factors involved in early motherhood but I won't. I just wanted you to get a sense of why early motherhood can feel so depressing. If you factor in the trauma you experienced in childbirth, which perhaps has simply been brushed over (as opposed to being seriously addressed), you have to be able to say 'My god, I'm an absolute legend given the fact that I'm still functioning at this point'. You know all those happy smiling women who just love the whole experience...they love it because there's little to hate about it.
With your jaw, arms and head hurting, sounds like there could be serious tension issues. Jaw clenching, whether we're conscious of it or not, can lead to headaches. ❤️
