“There the nurse was, taking this baby’s head and shoving it into my boob to start breastfeeding. ‘She’s your baby!’ I would tell myself, ‘just bond with her.’ I’ve made a huge mistake here.”
‘I didn’t love my daughter at first sight. I look at that picture and cringe. I just wanted to be left alone. I felt so heartless.’
‘As soon as we took our baby home, I didn’t feel right. I started having graphic thoughts – throwing or shaking him would cross my mind. I’d imagine myself smothering him with a pillow.’
“I was scared to care for him in fear of acting on one of these thoughts. But I also had a hard time letting go of him for even 10 minutes to give myself a break.”
‘I slept next to my husband for 4 nights harboring the biggest secret I have ever kept in my life. My heart was racing.’
“I don’t remember the rest of the words he spoke, I just remember the look on his face. Just like our wedding day.”
‘I had a message from a friend who is expecting her first baby, asking how things are going with our newborn. I almost wrote back a quick, ‘It’s wonderful!’ Then I didn’t.’
“When we took the childbirth prep class, I scoffed to my husband when the nurse said maternity leave is a necessity, not a luxury, because new moms spend at least 8 hours a day nursing their baby. ‘Yeah right,’ I said.”
‘Our 14.5 ounce baby girl, with less than a 20% chance of survival, lived. She made it. She survived.’
“She had translucent skin and you could see every bone in her body. I couldn’t believe a child the size of a can of Coke was living.”
‘You seem like you’re having a really hard time with this.’ Tears poured down my face as I said, ‘I am. I’m so sad and I don’t know WHY.’
“Postpartum depression is a hard thing for women to talk about. I thought to myself, ‘Shame on you for feeling sad. You have this beautiful, healthy baby boy – you have nothing to be sad about.’”
‘My liver was shutting down. I could no longer carry my pregnancy without serious risk to us both. Everything came crashing down. I had done everything right!’
“Before I could process I had given birth to you, you were placed on my chest and I started crying. The crying that your soul has been fulfilled.”
‘8 months before this picture was taken, at the recommendation of my gynecologist, I went off Zoloft for the first time in a decade.’
“‘It’s better if you just get off of it,’ he said to me, without ever asking if I thought that would be the right choice for my personal situation. Wanting to start off on the right foot as a mother, I was obedient and followed his instructions without question. What I didn’t know, however, was there were other options.”
‘Remember to tell them about the love’: Pregnant 19-year-old on what she wishes she was told
“Tell them about the love. The overwhelming, wholehearted, helpless, deep, endless, limitless, incredible love.”
This photo shows why moms need to let themselves ‘completely heal’ after giving birth
“22cm or 8.6 inches. That is the exact diameter of a paper plate, AKA the fine china in our house. It is also the average diameter of a placenta.”
