Renee's Story
I love my life, it’s pretty perfect. I have a healthy, beautiful boy and a loving husband, I have even lost all my baby weight. But postpartum depression paints a different story: it says you are nothing more than a body covered in stretch marks, with a vagina that doesn’t work the same. Your husband loves you but can’t possibly be attracted to you when he comes home and you are still wearing the same clothes from last night, smelling like sour milk and spit up. Your hair is falling out, you have bald spots everywhere…it’s harder to laugh at his jokes that he makes just to see you smile. You feel like you are not a good enough wife. You want a break but whenever you get one you just want to hold your baby again because that’s all you know how to do now, is be a mother. You put on a happy face for everyone then when you finally get a shower alone, you silently cry.
These are the thoughts that enter my head when depression hits. I don’t think these things every minute or even everyday. It strikes at a time I least expect it. It comes when I am trying to find an outfit for date night, when my husband says the slightest thing wrong about my body, when the dishes pile up, when my sister playfully calls be boring because I am a mom now. I guess you could say it gets triggered somehow. I never wanted to hurt myself or my baby but some days I just wanted to crawl in a hole and hide out from the rest of the world with only my baby in my arms. I began to panic when I felt as if my son was the only person I could connect with anymore. I felt guilty for loving my son more than my husband and never enjoying our time spent together because I was so worried about him.
Every day gets better, I have learned to find the light in everything and to only believe the truth, not to give in to the lies. This will pass, I am enough for my family, my body is a work of art, my husband loves and appreciates me, and I am a wonderful mother. God will pull me through the valley always and it’s in him I find joy. That’s how I will beat PPD.
