When Motherhood Is the Opposite of What You Expect

When I got home from the hospital with the baby, everything looked the same, but nothing was the same. It was like walking into a movie set version of my apartment, frozen in time from a whole other reality: coconut water in the fridge from the dehydration headaches I’d get while I was still pregnant, a to-do list on my desk, my closet filled with heels I couldn’t ever imagine wearing again.

The whole ride downtown, I’d kept my eyes on the baby’s tiny car seat, staring catatonically at him as he slept. In his face I saw nothing to love, but I stared anyway, as if a sudden burst of maternal obsession might wash over me. I hoped that this staring contest might tuck us both neatly into a private microcosm of adoration and care, but I felt like a scraped-out shell.

He seemed foreign to me, almost as if he were a doll, some strange inanimate object meant only for looking at. And when I looked, I felt nothing, as if I was blank inside. All I could think of was what I would do if someone tried to enforce mandatory snuggle time—“skin on skin,” they called it.

This feeling was contrary to what so many friends had described. “Your heart literally explodes,” said my best friend, Augusta, “and you can, like, feel the love hormones surge through your body, and you just know that this is your best friend for life, almost like a new limb on your body that you could never be apart from.” She’d said this in the dressing room at the lingerie boutique on University Place where I’d worked in college, her hands filled with fancy nursing bras she wanted me to try on. I’d been looking forward to that moment of connection, holding out hope through 19 hours of labor that meeting my son would be the fireworks display of exquisite emotion that she had described.

I hoped that I’d look at his tiny mouth, that he’d have my husband’s beautiful lips, which I loved so much, and I’d place Guy to my breast, compelled by adoration to feed him the best milk a creature can provide for a newborn, the free and nutrient-dense ambrosia that I’d secrete proudly. Staring into his dark, searching eyes, which would look so much like mine, I would relax profoundly when they looked back at me, knowing I was the ultimate nurturer.

I remembered being 5 or 6 and watching my mom breastfeed my little brother while Murphy Brown played on the TV. She’d told me as an adult that it was her favorite part of early motherhood. It was the only thing I knew for sure I could do, she explained. But now, the thought of doing so made me panic, the expectation of having to share my body. I bristled at the idea that the whole world would consider me good only if I complied with a feeding system that seemed both invasive and time-consuming. I just wanted to beg everyone: Please. Please. Leave me alone.

***

“I think it’s time for me to go back to work,” I told Augusta on FaceTime, three weeks after Guy was born.

“Okayyyy,” Augusta said a little skeptically. I could see she was at her weekend house in Connecticut; a picture window behind her revealing the last of the fall leaves in an expanse of meadow. Her tone was familiar and annoying, and while it embarrassed me that I still couldn’t get my shit together to be an acceptable mother, my brain felt too dead to respond to her attitude. Over the past couple of weeks, I would try to make grocery lists and start to cry. I’d shake my head, as if that would set things right in there, but I remained discombobulated, as if I’d had a tiny stroke. When I tried to journal, I’d wince, write a half sentence, forget my train of thought, and end up paralyzed, unable to finish a paragraph. I wasn’t sure my aphasia had been noticeable to anyone else, but Augusta’s hesitant response made me wonder if everyone could tell I felt lobotomized. And while I resented Tom for going back to work the first week we were home, abandoning me to the abject monotony of Babyland, I was also jealous. I would have loved to run away like that, run back to my old schedule and my old life. But my old life was unreachable.

No one had told me how lonely this new existence would be or how angry I would be that such disparity was still happening in the 21st century, when women supposedly—supposedly—had a semblance of parity with men. Why did his life return to normal, while mine couldn’t? I thought of the character Jane in Penelope Mortimer’s 1958 novel Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting: “What happened to her during the six hours of labor nobody ever knew. Something snapped or something fell into place or her brain, under pressure, tossed about like the colored pieces in a kaleidoscope, settling in an entirely different pattern.” Was I Jane? When the knitting needle hook that the doctor used to break my water felt like it was pulling out my insides, had my brain dripped out with the remnants?

“Are you all right?” Augusta asked, dragging my thoughts back to my phone screen. She cocked her head to the side, her usually perfectly coiffed blonde hair in a messy topknot.

“Auggie, what’s wrong with me?” I asked, a little pathetically. I was afraid of her answer. I thought of all the books I’d ordered about the “fourth trimester” and postpartum depression. Over the last few weeks I’d stolen moments to skim and skim, searching for any description I could relate to—but I didn’t see myself represented in what I was reading. And so I deduced that what I was experiencing was just… motherhood. And I was clearly a bad fit for it.

“I make myself go into Guy’s room to hold him every hour or so, and I do the evening feed. I’m trying, but it’s just...” I choked on my own words, moving my hands in small circles, as if to show her there were no words I could pull from the air in front of me. The postpartum depression I’d read about was not comparable to the strange rage and discomfort and confusion I was feeling, and I didn’t know how to explain that to her. I told myself I was simply having nightmares, triggered by disappointment and stress. Was that even worth explaining?

“You know,” Augusta said slowly, this usually applies to the father, but my grandmamma says they start to realize what the kid means to them the first time it gets sick. Knock wood that Guy doesn’t get sick anytime soon, but when he does, you’ll see how you feel. You’ll get it then.” She was so gentle and understanding. Most people would think I needed electroshock therapy. “It’s like any other relationship, Honey. Love at first sight is rare.”

I wondered if she was right. I knew I didn’t have any real reason to complain—and was ashamed that I even wanted to. But when I looked at my baby, I felt dead inside, and when I looked at my husband, I felt too alive, burning with rage, even when he was being kind and thoughtful, even when he was trying his hardest for me. When I looked at myself, I didn’t recognize what I saw: I knew that all the pain I was feeling was my own fault. I was a wretched mother, a terrible wife, a shitty friend. I wished I could just end it all. I wished I could walk off onto a cloud and float away, without anyone realizing I was gone.

***

Seven months later, I was sitting at my kitchen table, drinking tea, wondering what it would feel like to step off the adjoining Juliet balcony. Would it hurt? I wondered, staring at the late summer sun dappling the 19th-century tenement buildings below me. Then suddenly, it hit me—how abnormal this train of thought was. Therapy alone wasn’t enough. I deserved a chance at something more.

Medication had been prescribed to me, but before that moment I had declined to take it. Until I finally did, I had no idea how much this simple act would change my life.

Sometimes we look to partners or parents or spiritual practices to save us. But I knew I had to save myself. And that meant not only taking the pills I had been prescribed but working to heal. I had to keep going to therapy. I had to recognize when my mind was playing tricks on me. I had to work at being a good parent and patient.

Within days of starting that prescription, something changed. I felt the clouds begin to lift. And soon enough, I started to feel that I could manage this. That I could consider my emotions—my rage, my fog, my impatience, and my grief—in ways where they were no longer debilitating. That the scars—and there were scars—would heal.

I recognized that I would never return to my former self—what mother can?—but I could, possibly, become a more fully realized version of my new self. And I did. I found joy in slow walks with my son. I had fun chatting over morning coffee with my husband. Little things that had once seemed impossible no longer were.

Early motherhood wasn’t what I had thought it would be. Would it have been easier if I’d known more, if people had been honest about some of the pain I might experience? That’s hard to say. But what I know with certainty is that while motherhood isn’t always an easy fit, it is a grand lesson about humanity’s indomitable spirit. “How can you bring more kids into this broken world?” a friend recently asked me when I was pregnant with my second child. “Having more children is the greatest way to fix what’s torn and shattered.” I said. Today, I love my children more fully and expansively than I ever could have imagined, and I feel deeply certain of my role as their mother.

Sarah Hoover is the author of the book The Motherload: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood.

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