Birth Story Part 2

You can read Part 1 here

Finally around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday I felt the urge to push. They are not joking when they say that you will know when it’s time to push. You pretty much can’t stop yourself. I pushed for a little over an hour. Her heart rate dropped a little bit so they put the oxygen mask on me, which I hated. Dr. Dillon tried to use the vacuum to help her out but she had too much hair it wouldn’t stick. Finally, at 8:01 a.m. on October 3rd she came out and they placed her on my chest. I wanted to enjoy the moment, I really wanted to. I had seen those moments on TV, I had imagined it a thousand times. But she wasn’t crying and I couldn’t enjoy the moment. I wanted them to take her from me. I wanted them to take her, make sure she was ok and then give her back. Finally I said “is she ok?” and they took her to check her out. I kept asking, I’m not sure if they weren’t answering me, or if I just didn’t hear them. After a few minutes of what seemed like an eternity they gave her back to me, and she was ok.

The rest of my stay in the hospital was kind of a blur. I was very happy with the hospital and the accommodations. I LOVED my doctor. She is the best Doctor I have ever had. And the nurses who took care of Jayden and me were amazing. But it has taken me 7 months to write this because when I think back on that time with Jayden, I feel cheated. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t slept in over 40 hours, maybe it was that I was feeling like a stranger watching this day happen, maybe it was that I looked at Jayden, and knew she was mine, but she didn’t fee like mine. I knew that I wasn’t feeling the way I was supposed to feel. I looked at my daughters face and I knew she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen, but I still didn’t feel like she was really my baby. I nursed her and cried, I never imagined how much it would hurt. I felt like a failure. This did not feel right, it did not feel like a bonding experience with her. It felt like pain, just pain. They said it would get better, which by the way it never did.

Until I left on Monday, it was a blur of drifting in and out of sleep. Trying to nurse my baby, watching HGTV on the hospital TV, and lots of pain from my delivery. When the nurse came in to give me my discharge instructions, she explained what I needed to do to care for myself. But she couldn’t give me a book of instructions on how to care for this little baby that depended on me. I was so scared. And it hit me, I have no idea what I’m doing, I’ve never even held a newborn before. Then she said it, “when you get home you might start feeling sad, like you are doing things wrong, and even like you are a bad mom. It’s ok, it’s normal, it’s called “Baby Blues.” When I get home? What if I already feel like that? What if I already feel sad and I haven’t been a mom for longer than a day and a half. I clung to the part of the sentence that said it was normal. And we took our daughter home.

As we got settled in there was no doubt that I was experiencing “Baby Blues.” It was devastating. I cried every single day, and usually around the time it started to get dark. I cried every time I nursed Jayden, and every time she woke up in the middle of the night. I knew she was waking up to eat and I knew it was going to hurt. A few weeks passed and those feelings started to subside. But I was feeling another kind of sad now. I was still crying every day. And I was feeling very overwhelmed and sad. I knew I loved my baby, but I just didn’t feel like myself. When Jayden was around 3 months old, I was on the phone with Jeremy, crying again. He said to me with a desperate tone, “Baby, what’s wrong?” I knew he didn’t mean what’s wrong right now, he meant what is always wrong. He knew something wasn’t right, and for the first time I realized too that something wasn’t right. I went on the internet and looked up Postpartum Depression. I saw a list of symptoms, I read them, and I burst into tears. I have this, this is me. Instead of being relieved that I now know what’s wrong, I was just sad. I was disappointed in myself, I felt worse than ever.

I made an appointment with my awesome doctor, she was compassionate and understanding. She assured me that is was a hormonal imbalance, and it was NOT my fault. I felt relief. I needed to hear that. After a few weeks of my medication I started to feel like myself again. It was amazing. And now I feel wonderful. I am off the medication, and I am feeling like a new person. I am happier than I have ever been because I have this amazing daughter whom I love with literally ALL of my heart. When I look at her now, sometimes I cry, but they are tears of happiness. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world. I just love her so much. And now every night when I lay down to go to sleep, I can’t stop smiling, because my daughter is in her crib, happy and healthy, and I made her. Through it all when I look at her, I know I am a good mom. And my daughter is amazing.