My Motherhood Shame

I’ve been thinking about you for days. Wanting to post but feeling none of my drafts were the ones to be posted this week. I had plans of sharing some poetry but it just didn’t feel right. For some reason I feel today I need to get much more personal and I’m really not  sure what direction this will go.

There is so much shame surrounding motherhood mental health, not just postpartum mental health illnesses. I think so many mothers don’t share their thoughts or feelings because they believe they are the only ones to think and feel them. I know I did.

I always wanted to be a mother. I wanted to go to college teach at a deaf school for a few years and then settle down to raise a large family, I mean large. I thought I would love motherhood with all my heart even though it wouldn’t be easy and would be exhausting. I came from a large family I wasn’t completely naive to what motherhood would taste like.

Life doesn’t seem to go as planned, but even so it’s good to make plans and have dreams. I became a mother much younger than planed. Even so the transition seemed to be smooth. I didn’t struggle as I thought I would with becoming a mom. I did have problems breastfeeding, postpartum depression, and a hard recovery but the actual “moming” part was exactly as I expected. I even felt guilty some days that I was the one home raising our son because it seemed like my husband got the rotten end of the deal. That was until our second son came along 20 months later.

I was so angry after his birth. I blew up at the kids at the smallest things. I was convinced my oldest son was going to die so I never left the house except for walks. I didn’t know it at the time but my postpartum anxiety was through the roof.

Our second son was only 6 months old when I thought I had the flu. Five days into the flu I decided to take a pregnancy test to rule it out. I was in bit of a shock when I found out I was pregnant and couldn’t even wait to tell my husband so I sent him a text on the spot.

All of my pregnancies came with some severe complications. Pregnancy to say the least is not something I like going through. When I was 8 months pregnant I  laid in bed screaming from some very large kidney stones that had developed due to the pregnancy. My 5 lb baby kicked non stop at them which made the agony so much worse. To ease my pain my husband helped me into the bath. He left to get me something and I looked at the water and thought slipping into this and never coming back would be so nice right now. I seriously considered it for a moment until I realized I’d be ending another life, not just my own. I couldn’t do that. So I sat and cried in pain.

The depression didn’t let up the rest of the pregnancy. I honestly wasn’t sure if I had postpartum depression or prenatal depression. Either way it was a dark time in my life. Our third son was welcomed into the world at 37 weeks. Our oldest was still 2 years old and our second was just 15 months. My hands were full and for a moment so was my heart. At five days old I ended up in the ER with my nursing newborn because I was in so much pain. We weren’t sure if I had a blood clot or an infection. After a few tests were ran we discovered some of my placenta hadn’t detached and I had developed an infection.

Three kids under the age of three was a lot to juggle. After not successfully nursing my first two kids past three months I was determined to make it work. So every hour night and day you’d find me nursing the baby. Didn’t matter if I was pushing a shopping cart through the store, making peanut butter sandwiches or reading a book to the kids.

To leave the house it took two hours of prep work. I nursed, started getting everyone dressed, a snack and diapers changed. Then I’d have to nurse again, pack the diaper bag and schedule ten minutes to load the kids up in the car. It was exhausting yet I tried to find a way to make it work.

It was at this point I started to wonder why anyone even likes to be a mother. I hated it. I dreaded every morning and looked forward to bedtime. I’m not sure why as I then was up every hour to nurse. Just to repeat the next day. I was very depressed but didn’t tell anyone.

Everyone told me I was super woman but I felt far from it, I didn’t even like my kids. Taking care of them was a chore and I’d  become extremely jealous of my husband being able to work. I would become angry every time he spoke of lunches served at work, or talking to other adults during the day. I hated that I was in a  prison.

When my son was 9 months old I began to learn how to take care of myself again and slowly I felt like I started to find myself. By the time he was a year I had lost all my baby weight from my first three pregnancies and was feeling so much better about myself. I wasn’t hating motherhood though I longed to work outside the house or go back to school. I wanted so badly to impact the world in a way that would matter. In a way that went beyond my four walls.

It was when my youngest was 18 months old that I discovered I was pregnant with the son who brought me here, to writing these blogs and breaking the silence. I broke inside finding out I was pregnant. It crushed me. I wanted so badly for God to take it back. I even went has far as to think if I miscarried that would be okay. I had had three previously so it wasn’t out of the question. I felt so guilty for thinking that.

I had postpartum psychosis after him (you can read more about that in previous blogs).  It was after him that I began to wish I had never become a mother. I felt lied to by society and the medical field. Motherhood was nothing like what I was told it would be and nobody sat down and told me how many risk factors I had for postpartum mental health problems. If I’d been educated all of those things would have been taken into consideration before bringing biological kids into this world.

I wondered if any other mothers felt as I did but I didn’t dare ask because what if they didn’t?  That would make me look like an awful mother. What if I told them I didn’t want to be a mom, that God could take them back, that if I could go back in time I’d do it differently. How could I share that? Surely I’m the only one who doesn’t like my kids or motherhood.

What I’ve learned about breaking the silence, being courages enough to speak my truth through the shame is I’m not the only one who feels like this at times. Even though I had these thoughts, and sometimes still question why I’m a mother, it doesn’t make me a bad mom. I love my children fiercely, they are why I’m still standing. My determination to be a good mom for them even while I was fighting so many demons.

I’m not sure why I felt the need to ramble through this other than to break the silence for myself. Maybe to help a mother who has had these intrusive thoughts as well or someone who is struggling with the guilt. Perhaps to help break through the shame we feel when we don’t love motherhood or it doesn’t come easily to us. No matter the reason thanks for sticking it out with me.