I heard it mentioned on a recent stream that Stef was looking for comments from women about postpartum depression. I’ve been hopscotching around on all the latest videos, so I might be very late to this party, but I did want to put in my two cents about what I think postpartum depression is. I’ve heard Stef theorize before that after a woman has a baby she reexperiences what it was like to be neglected and abused as an infant, and that is what triggers the symptoms of postpartum depression. But I have another perspective based on my own experiences. To be clear, I was never officially diagnosed by a therapist as having postpartum depression, but my infant’s pediatrician recommended that I see a counselor after the first few baby health checks, and years later after my second child when I did seek counseling, the therapist said that she believed I had had postpartum depression based on my description of my experience. So for me, I think postpartum depression is the despair a woman feels when she has an infant and no family
or community support. There is a terror at being responsible for that little life, and being entirely unable in those early months to take care of yourself let alone that little baby. And it’s not something that money can fix. It’s not something that modern conveniences can fix. It’s the sense that they’re supposed to be somebody standing next to you. There are supposed to be sisters, aunties, and your own mother there telling you everything‘s going to be fine- that they can hold the baby while you go to the bathroom- that they’ll fix you a little something to eat, fetch you a glass of water, even just hold the baby for a moment so you can rest. A husband is very important of course, but it’s that sisterhood that gets women through the fourth trimester, where you feel completely depleted, exhausted and unprepared for meeting the needs of a newborn. When there’s no one there, you feel the panic and the despair and it bubbles up in the form of tears and terror. As the baby thrives, and as the woman recovers from childbirth, that terror and grief subsides, and that’s why I think postpartum depression often resolves itself. But that’s just my perspective because these were the thoughts running through my head as I sat in a dark room holding my first baby and weeping every day.