Why I Became a Stay-At-Home Mom: Postpartum Anxiety and Depression
I wanted a Vbac with every fiber of my being, but it just was not in the cards for me.
It’s taken a long time to accept I will never push a baby out of me.
Postpartum anxiety and depression hit me like a Jack in the Box. Every day after I had my daughter felt like I was cranking the handle just a little more and even though I knew it was coming, I still wasn’t prepared. When the jackal finally popped out it brought an ocean of stress and worry and tears.
Four days after my daughter was born and my first day back home, I stood in the shower and cried. My boobs, engorged and flashing a purple highway of veins, throbbed with pain. As the hot water made me let down, milk dripped from my cracked nipples down my swollen belly. My face, puffy from meds and 48 hours of crying, was covered in hormonal cold sores. My stomach, cut open and then sewed back together (for the second time), was so sore I couldn’t fully stand up straight. I cried so loud my husband came in to check on me. He brought me my hand pump so I could release my throbbing breasts. I sat down, allowing the water to fall down my face. When my breasts finally felt empty, I took the bottle and carefully poured the liquid gold down the drain. I didn’t even care to save it, which made me cry even more. What the hell is wrong with me?? Why is this so hard for me? Why can’t I feel better? Why did I have to endure a second C-section when I put everything in my being into a VBAC?
Looking at my new little girl, I knew she was perfect in every way. But I didn’t know her. If I had to choose between her and my other daughter, who I’d spent nearly every waking moment of the last two and a half years with, I would choose my older daughter. But why was I even worried about having to choose?
I was worried about SIDS. I was worried the physical pain would never go away. I was worried my body was literally and figuratively scarred. And I cried about it all.
Six-week later I walked into my postpartum appointment thrilled to get out of the house. It was the best I’d felt in weeks. I was out of the house alone and I was getting to talk to people other than my family for the first time in almost a year. Chatting with the nurse, I couldn’t hold in my excitement and was smizeing (you know, because of the mask) like my life depended on it. Maybe I was going to beat that jackal and keep him from jumping out of the box.
My doctor walked in and she asked how I was doing. “Sore, but feeling really good.”
“You ended up having another C-section, right?” she asked. (She wasn’t there for the delivery).
I nodded hesitantly, my smize hit the floor and I blinked away tears. The floodgates opened and for 45 minutes I cried to her, recounting how devastated I was when my daughter’s heart rate wouldn't stabilize, how defeated I felt when the on-call doctor told me “If you were my wife, I’d want you to have a C-section,” and how mad I was at myself for asking for the epidural the moment I got to the hospital.
My contractions had started around lunch, but I was hesitant to get excited since I had prodromal labor twice that week. By dinner I had to close my eyes and breathe through each one. I got in a candle-lit bath, listened to my VBAC affirmations and relaxed in the warm water as much as I could. Mitchell went to sleep early in case it was the real deal, and I continued to labor in the living room. The surges crept closer and closer together and when they were only a couple minutes apart I woke Mitchell up. It was time to go. I couldn’t even make it to the front door before I got down on my hands and knees to get through the contraction. They were about a minute apart and lasting about a minute. Maybe I’d get my dream delivery of accidentally giving birth at home or in the car.
No such luck.
“She’s a good 2.5,” the nurse announced in triage not even 10 seconds after another nurse had asked if I needed to push because of my response to the contractions. Apparently, I put on a good show.
A good two and a fucking half?! “My contractions are a minute apart!” I screamed.
“Sometimes, even when they’re close, they aren’t strong enough to dilate,” the nurse said. “Do you want an epidural?”
My husband, who was supposed to coach me through an unmedicated delivery since that was what I thought was my best chance at having a VBAC, just stared back at me as I labored through another contraction on my hands and knees on the bed.
“Yes, I want the epidural. I can’t do this anymore. I didn’t want one, but I can’t do this.” I caved.
(Mitchell says he asked me multiple times if I was sure, but I have no recollection of that.)
By midnight the epidural dripped into my back and I felt sweet relief. Looking over at Mitchell on the partner bed, I told him I would have never made it without the epidural. An hour later, like clockwork, (exactly like my first daughter’s delivery) my baby’s heart rate dropped and mine soared. The nurses flipped me back and forth and back and forth all over the bed. They pressed an oxygen mask to my face.
They were nicer about it than my first experience of getting flipped all over the bed and having an oxygen mask slammed in my face when I had Wavey. “This isn’t for you. It’s for your baby,” the nurse warned. She had an interesting bedside manner to say the least.
Once again, none of it worked.
“I don’t have a magic ball,” the on call doctor told me. “We don’t know why your baby’s heart rate won’t stabilize and it could be because you’ve ruptured.”
And then he said the one sentence that will haunt me for the rest of my life. “Because you have an epidural you can’t feel if your uterus has ruptured.”
“Because you have an epidural you can’t feel if your uterus has ruptured.”
Because of my epidural I couldn't tell if my baby and I were in danger. The epidural that I worked so hard to avoid, but begged for the moment it was available, was potentially the reason why I wouldn’t get my VBAC. Five months later, as I type this, it still stings.
Several nurses prepped me for surgery as I cried, relieved my baby would be here any minute and devastated that my body had failed me. Looking at the nurse closest to me I whispered to her through my weeps, “I wanted to push my baby out.”
She knelt down so we were eye to eye and held my hand. Maybe it was the drugs, but it felt like time stood still around me as she said “I know sweetie, I know.”
Twenty minutes later my doctor held up a perfect little girl with strong lungs. So happy she was here safe, I cried some more.
Six weeks later, sitting on the doctor’s office table, there were more tears. With the kindness, most compassionate words my doctor suggested therapy and anti-anxiety medication. I felt a huge relief wash over my entire body. There was something that could help me stop worrying so much. Until she also suggested four more weeks of maternity leave.
“But what will I tell my boss?” I asked, the anxiety over my waiting work looming over me. And she replied with the only three words that could have convinced me to take the extra time: “Nothing. I will.”
I hate to say it because it’s so cliche, but walking out of the doctor’s office that day, I felt lighter. Within two weeks the Zoloft would kick in and I was going to get to spend an extra four weeks with my daughter without worrying (mostly) about work. This was the first time I realized, even though I was working for a nonprofit with a mission committed to supporting families, if I was going to go back to work I needed more. More support. More money. More resources. More something. I thought I had the golden ticket to working motherhood—fully remote, part-time, flexible hours, a job I loved and awesome coworkers. If I couldn’t figure out how to manage working motherhood with all that, how in the hell were other moms doing it that didn’t take maternity leave, hated their job, and worked for asshole bosses that required 9-5 facetime in the office?
It didn’t matter how they did it, I decided. The system is broken and it wasn’t worth the fight for my family. The mountain mothers are expected to climb, especially working mothers, is just too high. So I left and I’m trying my hardest not to look back while my daughters are young. In the meantime, here I am doing my best to knock down the mountain so the only mountains my daughters have to climb if they decide to be working mothers are those with fresh air and beautiful views.
The Park helps new and expecting parents navigate parental leave so they can max out their job-protected and paid leave, return to work feeling supported, and thrive as a working parent. We answer all your questions and give you all the tips and tricks you need to advocate for yourself on TikTok and Instagram, 1:1 consulting calls, and through our CA Parental Leave Benefits Guide.
