It is nearing the 2 year mark since I started getting better. I have been off all medication for about a year and a half. Today, I am very comfortable with my 3 children, my husband, my job, my life, myself. I feel like I know what I'm doing (as much as any mother ever does), I feel comfortable with my parenting. I can't help but wonder, though, if those 11 months have completely discredited me as a mother. Do I have the right to feel comfortable? Do I have the right to act like I know how to take care of my children or to feel like I do it well?
The whole experience was so awful. There was nothing positive about it. No one ever came to me offering support. No one suggested that I was a good mother going through a bad time. No one acknowledged that I had a legitimate problem. I did spend a lot of time trying to run away, but the truth is that I spent more time staying than I actually did running. I spent every day and at least 5 nights out of the week at home. So much focus was put on the time away that even I forget that I was ever home or ever took care of my children for that year. I have a hard time, even today remembering the good. There was good, though. It was the first year of my daughter's life. How could it have all been bad?
I have been a mother for 7 years. Now that we are expecting baby number 4, I don't feel like I can say that I'm not worried. I don't feel as though it's ok for me to say "I know what I'm doing, I've done this before". I feel like I should be acting like a first time mother. I feel like a total fraud.
No way does PPD discredit you as a mother. You did what you needed to do to get through that time w/o harming yourself or your children, didn't you? Even in the midst of your depression you were able to do the right things. I hope that you are spared that trouble when your baby is born, but I also hope you reach out if you need to. I suppose you are much more aware of what to look for and that more women go through this than any of us know.
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