This post was originally written by Debi.

I am going to try and write about something which is very difficult for me to do, as I am still in the midst of it and am not fully recovered yet. I feel it is very important to write about it as it is a subject that I think is not talked about nearly enough, and one which also brings much undeserved shame on the women who sufferer it. I’m sorry if the subject does not seem all that relevant to feminism, but I can assure you, as a feminist and a mother, that it is! This will probably be broken up over several posts, as it is hard for me to do and I can only see me being able to tackle it a bit at a time. The subject is post-natal depression.

There are many factors which I believe contributed to my suffering post-natal depression. We wanted children for a long time (a subject for another post sometime – is it somehow wrong for feminists to have such a strong maternal instinct?) – but had trouble conceiving. I had to have several procedures to see what was wrong, and eventually had a myomectomy, which is major surgery where fibroids are removed from the uterus. The seriousness of the operation, and the recovery time etc are roughly the same as for a hysterectomy. They removed several large fibroids (the biggest was 17 cm across!), leaving behind several more which are still there and will continue to grow whilst I am of reproductive age (for those who don’t know, a fibroid is a benign tumour that grows in or attached to the wall of the uterus). At this time we had been actively “trying for a baby” (I hate that phrase!) for 5 years. After the operation my consultant said the next stage would be to refer us to another department of the hospital for IVF treatment. (Again, another subject for another post – the maze that is IVF and reproductive technologies from a feminist perspective). It was 3 months after the operation, and 2 weeks before our appointment with the IVF clinic when I found out I was pregnant. I had the wonderful task of ringing the hospital and telling them we no longer needed the appointment; our consultant was delighted.

All my life I have wanted children, and all my life I have wanted the experience of having those children to be as natural as possible. I wanted a home birth, no drugs, the whole shebang. Because of my peculiar anatomy, and my previous surgery, the pregnancy counted as “high risk” and that was not to be. However, right up until the 38th week I was holding out for a home birth, as no-one could seem to make up their minds whether I could have one or not. Throughout the pregnancy I had appointments at the hospital at least once a month, and they seemed to be telling me something different every time. At 38 weeks, the (female) doctor did a rushed and painful internal exam and proclaimed abruptly, “I’m booking you in for a Cesarean next week.” I asked her why, and she seemed shocked at the question, and gave the impression she was far too busy and important to bother answering it. So, the Cesarean was booked, and I was devastated.

I think that this, coupled with the fact we had had to move house when I was 7 months pregnant, and we could not afford a removal van, so I (being the only driver in the relationship) had to drive the van back and forth for a week with all our worldly goods, resulting in exhaustion and stress, contributed to my actually being depressed before our son was even born. I don’t think I realised I was depressed at the time, though.

So, not only was I not to have a home birth, but I was not even going to experience going into labour, and, because they had spaces on the Wednesday and the Thursday of my 39th week, we were given the strange task of deciding when our son’s birthday would be, as they said it was up to us whether we went for the Wednesday or the Thursday! We went for the Thursday because, as it happens, every member of my immediate family has been born on a Thursday, so it seemed a shame to break the tradition.

I have read in various places that a common cause of post-natal depression is when the mother has unrealistic expectations of what motherhood will be like. I think I fall into that category, although at the time I was convinced I was being very realistic about what it would be like. I was bitterly disappointed (and still am) by the hospitalised/medicalised nature of the entire pregnancy and birth, and equally disappointed by the pregnancy itself. I did not enjoy being pregnant one bit, and feel I was sold a false idea of what pregnancy is like by the magazines and books I was reading. I hated it. Pregnancy for me was not the blissful mother earth awakening I had always dreamed it would be; it was painful and uncomfortable, I felt sick half the time, the other half I felt faint, I constantly needed to pee, I was always too hot, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t move properly and, far from being the natural non-medical experience I yearned for, I was summoned to the hospital virtually every other week, and ended up ‘giving birth’ there, flat on my back, and with no sensation at all from my shoulders down. I know it was a good thing I had a Cesarean, because my son would never had got out the normal way (his way was blocked by fibroids) and the procedure most certainly saved his life. Even having a Cesarean wasn’t straight-forward – what should have been a 40 to 45 minute procedure took 2 hours and 2 blood transfusions. But even knowing this, somehow psychologically I feel damaged by that operation. It’s hard to explain. My idea of giving birth had swung so far from the active home birth I had always envisioned, to being the exact opposite, I think actually I might have been in shock from it all.

And if I wasn’t in shock from that, I certainly was once I had a baby to look after! I did. not. know. what. the. hell. to. do. I worked it out, obviously, we all do, you have to, but nothing, and I mean nothing can prepare you for that first week. And I have also found it is impossible to adequately describe it to anyone who has not experienced it. We took to breastfeeding quite easily, but it soon deteriorated, I don’t know why, until day 8 when I finally gave up. I was devastated about that. I felt like the worst mother ever, like I had abandoned him to the wolves or something. He was more than happy with his bottle, but somehow that still didn’t make me feel any better. He frequently got a mouthful of blood instead of milk because my nipples were so cracked, so he probably much preferred the bottle! Sometimes when he was feeding it felt just as though someone was slicing into me with razor blades – and I would cry in pain all the way through every feed. That is why I gave it up. But then you have the guilt. Nobody tells you about the guilt of motherhood (or is it just the guilt of post-natal depression? I don’t know because I have yet to experience motherhood without the depression). Guilt about everything, every time he cries, every feed that’s 5 minutes late, every time people visit and you haven’t dusted, every damn thing turns into something to feel guilty about. And the books! Those bloody baby books. Do not read them, that’s my best advice. All mine had gone in the bin by the time my son was 6 months old, they were making me feel so inadequate, and, well, humiliated, because I wasn’t the Perfect Mother.

Another contributing factor: I had hoped my husband would be something like an ‘equal partner’ in this new child-raising job we both had, but no, it very quickly became apparent it was all down to me. My husband even had trouble giving our son a bottle, I’m not sure why, so he only ever did that twice because he said he found it too difficult (?) – so that left me everything on my own despite having a partner.

This post is getting a bit long now, so I’m going to break here, and come back with “Part 2″ a bit later, when I will attempt to wade straight into the post-natal depression part (as opposed to the “baby blues” whatever they are).