After my son was born, everyone told me to write it all down.

October 2, 2015 8:36 AM

"I'm trying to think of when my birth story begins, and even though this isn't fair to my son and isn't part of his story, I know it has something to do with when my sadness begins." Part of the Exposing the Silence project.
posted by divined by radio (3 comments total)

My feelings about birth are tied up in my mother's experiences. She had to be resuscitated twice while in labor with my brother. She was 18 years old. She had preeclampsia. She developed a variety of health conditions including depression after giving birth, and the ones she had just got worse. Both of us were unplanned, and after I was born my parents decided to go the permanent route for birth control.

I do not plan to have children.
posted by domo at 10:27 AM on October 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

This was powerful, thank you for linking.

While not at all the point of the piece or the project, I found that reading this right on the heels of Alana Massey's "you're right, I'm not going to eat that" has me in deep introspection and body horror around all that it means to be born with and live in a female body.
posted by sazerac at 2:15 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

My daughter's birth wasn't traumatic, but having an infant sure was. Now that I'm over a decade past the post-partum depression, I wonder why no one in my life seemed to notice. Did I hide it that well? It wasn't ever a thing I could talk about, because I was just a kid who didn't want people to think I was a Bad Mother.

There's a picture of me in the hospital bed, looking miserable, because they didn't give me the baby. She was born, and my mom and the midwife took her to be cleaned. Then they handed the baby to my husband. In the picture, he's standing a few feet from the bed, gazing at her, and that part is lovely, while I'm scowling and thinking, "I just did all the work, give me my baby!" At this point, I still didn't know what she looked like.
posted by Ruki at 5:05 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]