Postpartum

Revelation, Brooke Shields Style - Pt.1

Originally posted on The Anvil Tree

Sometimes, I feel like I make these grand assertions on here, and
there’s only grand to me. Which is fine; it’s my blog. I write it for
my own (lame) memory’s sake, anyhow, so any assertion I wanna make is
one I should feel good about making right?

But here’s one that I really am taking very seriously. It’s not
about my hair, my weight, or even cleaning. Well, it’s sorta about
cleaning. Mainly, it’s about me.

See, I have lots of very strong, capable women around me. Most (if
not all) of these women have given birth at some point. And while
every woman has their very own birth story, there has been one thing
I’ve never heard anything about in my own circle, so I assumed it was
just an urban legend.

Then, as it all came crashing down around me this last week, I
realized that urban legends have to have some truth to them in order to
circulate. So maybe it’s NOT so mythical. Maybe real people DO get
Post-partum depression.

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By Marilyn | August 20th, 2008 | Category: Anxiety, Depression, Author- The Anvil Tree, Channel- Family, Editor- Marilyn SlackerMamma, Family, Health, Introspection, Self-Awareness, Mothers, Moms, Motherhood, Overcoming Adversity, Postpartum, Psychology, Psychiatry, Mental Health | 3 comments

Permanent Scars

Originally posted on Okay, Fine, Dammit

The minute Emma was born, I knew something was wrong. I’d swallowed a horse, fought its hellish bucking to the death, turned myself inside out, until I won. Until she slid breathlessly — literally — into the world. I listened for her bourning cry but it did not come, because she was not breathing.

I lie there, split apart at the seams and bleeding out, and watched
the scene as if from above. I bore witness while the midwives pumped
oxygen into someone else’s baby for eleven minutes before they called
9-1-1, before two ambulances delivered both of us to a nearby hospital.
It was all for naught anyway — by the time we got there, she was
breathing on her own as if nothing had ever happened.

When we left the hospital for home, Emma was perfect in every way
but one: she would not nurse. She could not suck. I knew the
powers-that-be wanted to remedy the situation with a feeding tube, to
rapidly ameliorate the problem and neatly close out our file, but she
was our second child and so I had faith in my body, and in my baby.
Somehow I held patience as she lost weight.

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