丨Author of this article: Distinct Health Editorial Department
That day, I happened to meet my colleague Fancy in the pantry, who just came back from maternity leave. I was surprised. At the age of 28, after half a year, her shoulder-length hair had turned thin and white. I asked her, “What’s wrong with your hair?”
She looked particularly haggard, “I feel like I’m getting sick.”
“Think about yourself, think about your baby”
Everyone thinks about the baby, but who thinks about me?
She said with a wry smile, “You know what? Before I gave birth, everyone told me,
“Just give birth, and we’ll take care of the rest.””
“Just give birth, and we’ll take care of the rest.” From a certain perspective, Fancy’s family did just that. During her pregnancy, her in-laws moved from far away to take care of her, doing their best to provide her with “good food and drink”, forcing large pieces of braised pork into her bowl, ““You have to eat for the baby’s sake.”“
After trying to communicate many times without success, and still being hard to refuse their kindness, she could only take a symbolic bite or two.
After giving birth, it became even more intense, “Drink some xx to help with milk production,” “The baby’s eczema is all because you ate xx,” “You’re still breastfeeding, you can’t eat xx…” These were the most frequent things she heard every day.
She said, “Do you know what? There were many moments when I felt like I was being dismembered,
My feelings, my thoughts, and I as a person are not important. What exists in this world is just a pair of breasts carrying my DNA.“.
It’s not just that. When Fancy’s daughter was born, she had a patch of Mongolian spots on her back. Her mother-in-law muttered about it more than once, “It’s all because you used to love drinking cold drinks and had a cold uterus. Look, the child was born with such a large patch.”
“Why don’t you empathize with them?”
Everyone empathizes with others, but who empathizes with me?
“Why don’t you let your husband talk to them?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Him?” Fancy suddenly laughed, drawing out the end of the word for a second or two, as if she had heard some funny joke.
Her husband always felt that he was the most difficult person to be, caught between his parents and his wife, “They also have good intentions. My parents didn’t raise me easily. Can’t you empathize with them a little?” This is what her husband said to Fancy after a fierce argument.
Fancy, who was already on the verge of collapse, felt a tightly drawn string in her brain snap at this moment, becoming almost hysterical, “Everyone wants me to empathize with this and that, but who will empathize with me?”
However, the collapsing emotions were not caught during the fall, but were brutally smashed to the cold ground, accompanied by a sentence, “I think you have really changed, like a madwoman who will explode at any time and place. I am often afraid of you and dare not talk to you, do you know that?”
Fancy felt that something shattered at the moment of contact with the ground, like her internal organs.
“After that, he often came home late on the excuse of working overtime. After giving birth to our daughter, we slept in separate rooms. Sometimes when he came home late from working overtime, he would come to the room to see us, mainly to see our daughter, and would kiss her little face. There was little communication between us, and physical contact almost disappeared after the baby was born.
He seems to be just the father of my child and has nothing to do with me.“.
She said, “I can’t sleep well night after night. The baby needs to be fed at night, and I have hardly ever had a full night’s sleep.”
I asked, “Why don’t you wake your husband up to help?”
“He can’t help anyway. Feeding the baby still has to be done by me. Besides, in addition to feeding, I don’t know if it’s because of the umbilical cord connection, the baby is more familiar with me and more dependent on me. Plus, he has to work during the day, so I simply don’t call him.”
“Is the baby okay?”
Is the only one who needs to be cared about the baby?
“Not only my husband, but even my own parents, I feel they have changed.”
One day, Fancy took her baby out and accidentally fell down the stairs. She instinctively protected the baby in her arms. The baby was fine, just scared and cried for a long time, while Fancy broke a tooth and had to rush to the hospital for treatment. When she called her parents in the evening to talk about it, their reaction was, “Is the baby okay?”
She said, “The baby is fine.”
She thought her parents would ask next, “And you?” But she didn’t get it.
There was some surprise and some loss, “Of course, I love my baby too, and I don’t want anything to happen to her, but…”
Her tone changed here, and the previously calm statement suddenly choked briefly, and I realized that it was the grievance she couldn’t speak out, “But you know what? My parents used to love me very much.”
At that moment, she completely understood,
From the moment you have a child, the identity of “child” is stripped, which means you can no longer be a child.
“I know they don’t love me less, it’s just that the focus of their love has subtly shifted. I went from being a sapling in need of care and protection to an overnight tree that can only shelter others from the wind and rain,
She is my child, and of course, I love her, but this does not eliminate my sadness and loss, even jealousy, what a tangled and complex emotion.“.
Who are you as a wife, who are you as a daughter, and even who you are yourself,
the loss of identity and the dissipation of self seem to often start when you are given the identity of a mother.
“She was born from me, but it seems that she was born to compete with me,
Her birth is competing with me for my parents, my husband, and even myself.” She said, “I was surprised to find that I love her and I hate her, these two can coexist at the same time.”
“You are a mother”
I am a mother, so what?
Disagreements with in-laws, her husband’s escape, and raising a child almost became Fancy’s own business. She occasionally urged her husband to help with something, which would then start a new round of anger, and her husband could always accurately ignite the fuse of each explosive.
“Honey, I took the clothes out of the washing machine, should I hang them up?”
“Honey, should I wash the baby’s bib?”
“Honey, I put the dishes in the kitchen, should I put them in the dishwasher?”
……
Sometimes Fancy couldn’t stand it and snidely replied, “Don’t wash, don’t hang, don’t care, you go play games, wait for it to mildew and stink in the humid south!”
Then the husband also felt helpless and wronged, “Why can’t you just talk nicely?”
Then there was another cold war.
There are some popular internet jokes, such as “When there is no danger, the father is the biggest danger”, “This is what a mother is” and so on, which Fancy hates. Careless and inconsistent fathers, and mothers who are extremely reliable in everything, seem to have become some kind of unwritten stereotype,
The so-called strength of motherhood is an invisible siege of female self, leaving women no way to escape.
She does not like to be overly praised, as if motherhood is a natural duty and motherhood is a natural instinct. From the moment she becomes a mother, she should become a good mother. “This is nothing more than a kind of ‘motherhood punishment’, so being a mother is destined to burn herself without regret, just to match a great sentence?”
In fact, although Fancy hates the pressure and responsibilities imposed on her by the outside world, she is still strict with herself. Even though she read a lot of popular science about parenting before giving birth, she was still in a panic when she actually became a mother, “How can she be so small? Just after she was born, I had to sigh her breath every night, for fear that she would stop breathing. You might think I’m sick. I also sleep cautiously every night, for fear that I would roll over in my sleep and press her to suffocate her.”
That nerve is tight, and she discovered a terrible fact,
She always blames her husband, her elders, and even her child, but in fact, she has not let go of herself.
“On the one hand, she nags that motherhood is not a natural instinct, and on the other hand, she is anxious and worried that she is not doing well enough.”
I took another look at Fancy’s thin layer of white hair and suddenly understood their origin, “I can’t eat well, I can’t sleep well, I’m always irritable, I’m always in a low mood, I’m either losing my temper or crying every day, and I’m not interested in anything. My family members are all afraid of me. I don’t know how long this situation will last, and whether my white hair can turn black again. Do you think I’m sick?”
Seeing is the beginning of healing
Before the concept of “postpartum depression” was popularized, many women’s postpartum depression was labeled as melodramatic. Even now that the concept is widely known, the plight of women has not been fundamentally improved and relieved.
The birth of a newborn brings a series of drastic changes,
New mothers who have just given birth are often in a state of physical and mental weakness. In this state, they also need to adapt to their new identity and take care of the newborn, coupled with drastic hormonal changes, making them sensitive and fragile, needing attention, help, understanding, and support.
However, the reality is often the opposite. In a very short time, women feel
“Self” is deprived, the attention around them is all shifted to the child, various family conflicts, feelings are ignored, not understood and supported, and even they themselves are worried about not being able to take care of the child well. A series of problems follow one after another, causing tremendous mental pressure for new mothers.
However, seeing is the beginning of healing.
When postpartum depression is finally known by more people, what we need to do is to understand postpartum depression scientifically, involve family members, and help postpartum women through this difficult period from multiple dimensions such as medicine and family.
In fact, most new mothers will experience “postpartum blues” after childbirth, which usually includes
emotional fluctuations, crying, anxiety, and sleep difficulties. Postpartum blues usually start within 2 to 3 days after childbirth and may last up to two weeks.
However,
some new mothers will experience a more severe and persistent depression, known as postpartum depression, with an incidence rate of 10%. Sometimes, this condition is also called
perinatal depression, because it
can start during pregnancy and continue after childbirth. In very rare cases,
a severe mood disorder called postpartum psychosis may also occur after childbirth.
Postpartum depression is not a sign of character flaws or weakness. We need to
view and understand it scientifically, and actively seek help when needed.
If you also suspect that you have postpartum depression, you can refer to
Postpartum Depression Risk Self-Assessment Questionnaire
for a preliminary judgment. If necessary, please seek medical treatment in time to help manage symptoms and bond with your baby.
Psychologists often say to every visitor, “Before being any role, be yourself first”,
Distinct Health Video Psychological Counseling provides psychological support for many postpartum women. In a neutral, non-judgmental counseling environment,
being seen, being cared for, and being supported is the biggest feeling they feedback in psychological counseling. At the same time, the video method provides convenience for every partner who is not convenient to go out, anytime, anywhere, start healing.
Dear friend, you are not fighting alone, please let family members, doctors, and psychologists join hands with you to get through the difficulties~
| Review Expert
Hu Yun
Distinct Health Obstetrician and Gynecologist
Ph.D. from Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University
| Content Team
Medical Editor/Dada
Disclaimer: The purpose of the article is to provide general health information. Please consult a doctor for personal medical issues. Please contact medicine@distinctclinic.com for article reprinting.
