My youngest child is one year old today, and I want to tell this story about birth, and the darkness that comes before.
At my 20 week prenatal clinic visit, the woman who checks blood pressure handed me a clipboard. It had a laminated sheet with The Mental Health Questions and I was to mark with the dry erase “X” if I’m “depressed” or “having difficulty doing things I normally do”, or if I cry? I used the half-dried out marker and X “yes” to most. As I do, I thought about the overgrown weed patch and the garden I haven’t even looked at for weeks. She glanced at the clipboard, erased the marks for the next pregnant woman and no one ever followed up.
At around the 32 week mark, things started to become more difficult; physically and emotionally. My hips and ligaments screamed in pain at every movement. And it was like a light switch- as if my ability to feel joy had been turned off. A test has revealed that I might have gestational diabetes (I didn’t) but the feelings of inadequacy and failure became stronger every day. At my job, a progressive feminist organization, things became very difficult. I had to prop my feet up under the desk to try and reduce swelling, but it didn’t work so if I sat too long my shoes wouldn’t fit anymore and I had to walk out in the hall barefoot. It all felt so humiliating, my enormous cumbersome body trying to get through the day with a head that was filled with fog. The tension between what I hoped for and my reality was growing as quickly as the baby within me. Even my office jade plant that needs hardly any care was looking pathetic.
I was increasingly sad and apprehensive about the birth- but it was coupled with other, more dreamlike nuances that were just out of reach to define. A growing sense of doom was around me- I couldn’t stop watching the news and my work in anti-violence had become especially heavy. There was an overwhelming urge to run away, prepare for something- but I had no energy to do anything at all. I wanted to burn everything down, daily. I waddled with my tree-trunk size legs over to the legislature to give testimony, attended meetings and stood for hours in front of trainees- and it all felt pointless. Who am I? What was I doing? Fear was creeping into my once fighting and fearless heart- it was getting darker. My children and husband tiptoed around me. The wave would come out of some unknown place and I would just yell and rage- and feel horrible after because there was almost no controlling it. I overreacted to a broken dish or a dog mess. My inner voices were screaming at me that things are not right. I was not alright. External me just kept plodding along: I went to work, came home, walked past the overgrown plant mess that used to be my joy.
My due date came and went. I was so scared of having a c-section because my mom almost bled out from one thirty years ago. I had read all the books and birthed two other children quite confidently with little intervention. But this baby was transverse, then breach, then transverse again. I was watching these videos on turning babies and doing partial headstands and flipping in the pool and getting taped-up at chiropractic visits. All these, I was assured, would work to turn my baby.
It did work. She did turn, and 8 days after my due date my water breaks at 5:30pm while I was lifting a basket of laundry in our carport. The water was green and it smelled bad. I was immediately terrified and I also had no contractions. This birth was not going to go well, all my senses had been telling me all was not well, and then it was there.
After 17 hours of labor, she still wasn’t coming out on her own. Weak contractions, low heart rate, I was exhausted. I felt like I had lied or misrepresented myself as a capable woman who could give birth. They hauled me into the operating room and removed our baby from me. It was all I had feared, and a bit more. Husband holding my hand, reassuring me, but I was floating all alone. She was quiet for 10 minutes post birth and I was helpless, strapped to a table crucifix style, vomiting from the medications and whispering prayers to a Universe I am not sure was listening.
She was strong and healthy and breastfeeds like a champ, but somehow I knew she would be; it’s me that is not ok. The second night I sat alone awake, stripped of all my strength and camouflage. Baby asleep on my chest, husband gone home to care for older kids. And the sobbing started coming in waves. At first deep sadness, then a wave of anger. This little girl, our Evelyn, was born to teach me, I knew this, but first I needed to rage. And the rage came.
I was angry at myself for my perceived failures, but also I was/am angry at our system- how my concerns about depression had been dismissed, how nothing is supportive of mothers; how we are being lied to at every turn about what motherhood will actually be like. I am dismayed at how feminist organizations talk a good talk until you need to breastfeed a baby on demand. I am most angry at how awful our world looks- climate change and violence is creating refugees, horrors taking place daily, and I had just brought another BABY into this dumpster fire. And I started this essay before a global pandemic, so, yeah.
Then she wiggles her tiny body around a bit, latches on, and there’s this little peace that falls around us.
We waded through the ugliness together, she and I.
I am not the same woman that I was a year ago, I have met the darkness in me. Our daughter was born 12 months ago, but I’m still birthing. A new version of me has emerged- one that is more in tune. She’s more radical, more clear, and more focused than ever on what actually matters, because she needs to be. My internal voices, once quiet because they were being drowned out by a cloud of rage and sadness are now singing a chorus of guidance to me once again. They are telling me to build what I love and to stop fighting what I hate; profoundly difficult guidance for a born fighter.
As I stumbled through the inevitable postpartum depression, I have returned to the simple basics of self care we are taught as anti-violence advocates: eat well, take breaks, try to sleep, drink water, turn off media. I left my unsupportive job because to stay would have been a fight, not building what I love. Instead, I strapped a baby to my chest and dug out another 90 square feet of garden space. I’ve gone back to permaculture ideals, signed up for a course and wrote “Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share” on my journal pages. My intuitive dreams have returned and I’ve found joy in growing food again and sweet loving moments with my children, my loving partner, and our rascal dogs. I’m writing; turning literal rage into something else entirely.
Most importantly, I will never again ignore or try to silence the knowing inside me when all is not well. The Universe was, in fact, listening, and now I am too.
GROW O'ahu 