“A friend of mine who is pregnant asked me, ‘How is it possible that moms get depression? Isn’t motherhood joyous?’ And I spat my wine out in her face and laughed. Let me spell it out for you, my dear friend, I said with a gleam in my eye.
The first time you feel depression is when you remember you said during pregnancy, ‘Oh my mother/mother-in-law/sister/cat/will watch the baby while I rest/recover/get my nails done, or I’ll take up a hobby with all the time I’ll have when the baby sleeps’ – only to realize when that baby comes out, your baby doesn’t want to be anywhere but ON YOU and that no one, NO ONE, can look after this baby properly except you. They will do it all wrong. Even watching someone else hold your baby incorrectly makes your eye twitch… So, you’d rather do it all yourself. That makes you feel alone, tired and gives you greasy hair… which results into…
‘Looks depression’ where you realize your hair is so greasy that even if you took your hair tie out, it’ll still stay in a mom bun perfectly. You realize hey, your feet really look like hobbit feet. You wonder, what does a hairdresser’s chair feel like again? How many leggings can one own? Who am I? Which leads into…
‘The forever depression’ when it hits you that you may never actually get sleep again. That ‘teething’ isn’t a myth… that your child is an butthead because they just wanna cry in your face every day and follow you into the toilet. Then you feel guilty because you just love them so bloody much… so you cry for thinking you wanted a holiday…and you’ve got at least another 30 years of this? Speaking of 30 years, you start to wonder if your relationship will actually last, which brings us into…
The point of depression when you and your greasy hair have the first real fight with your partner. It’s either out of him not helping you, or him not knowing how to do your child’s routine properly. (Who the heck hangs a diaper like that?) He thinks you’ve turned into an angry rabid chihuahua, and you’ve become so angry about everything that you need to relax. You say, ‘Relax? Relax? You have no F’in idea what it’s like buddy…’ and then you realize holy crap, we aren’t that same cool, loved up, easy going couple we once were. Instead we are two co-pilots who can’t speak the same English trying to drive a plane… and your co-pilot is annoying right now. It makes you miss sipping cocktails together or warm hot chocolates which makes you have…
Seasonal depression, when you realize summer is no longer cocktails and Sunday sessions… It’s SUNSCREEN! And sun safety and hats and finding a place that’s entertaining when it’s 400 degrees outside, and when it’s minus 400 degrees, it’s not about hot chocolates, it’s about a cold, the flu and whatever else – which kid had it? And who do we have to avoid? And indoor ‘activities’… hurrah for painting… after the 100th time of telling your kid to stop painting the table, or eating the paint, it’s not the funnest of activities.
Speaking of ‘activities,’ there’s no more of that with your partner, because well, you’re too tired at night that you’re asleep at 7 p.m. and the thought of your partner touching you makes you angry, and the kids wake up at the crack of dawn so who has time in the morning? It ain’t happening. I call it lack of intimacy depression.
Now if none of that happened to you and you didn’t get depression about any of the above or say, ‘I didn’t experience any of this, our child was perfect,’ then I’m jealous of you, I applaud you and you deserve a perfect parent medal… but let me say this to you, I’m not the weirdo, you are.
But my dear friend, this is why I joke (or don’t) about drinking wine. Cheers to the joys of motherhood.”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Laura Mazza of Mum on the Run, where it originally appeared. Submit your story here, and subscribe to our best love stories here.
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