Story #87 - Nay, Montréal QC (CANADA) - Cesarean Section Birth, Perinatal Mood Disorders, Mental Health Care
I was brought up in what some might call a typical Asian family. My parents came to Quebec from a Thai refugee camp in the 70s, to flee the Khmer Rouge Regime. My mother had younger brothers, and when the army started to recruit heavily in Thailand, her parents wanted to get them out of the country.
I live in Montreal now, but I used to travel a lot for work. I'm a literature teacher, and the contract I got before my first kid was born was in Baie-Comeau, eight and a half hours away from the city. I went through my pregnancy with her away from my partner and came back at 36 weeks to deliver. She's 18 months old, now.
I had mild baby-blues with her that went away after four or five weeks. I was incredibly focused on her, to the point where I felt I was nothing else but a dairy cow, feeding her day and night. My days became blurry; I'd stay in pajamas all day and wouldn't eat. I felt so empty.
Eventually, I got tired of this existence and began to get out of the house. I started to see other people and do some activities, but life still felt incredibly lonely. Despite having visitors once in a while, my day to day with her was isolating. For someone who always had had 1000 projects, it was a big adjustment.
It's strange because before you have children, people always tell you how "wonderful" and fulfilling it is, but the reality when your baby arrives can be much different.
When our daughter was five months old, we bought the creamery next door. My partner and I had to run it, and because we were always so busy, we had to put our daughter in daycare. Three months after, my milk started to go down, and I thought it was just because I was exhausted, but it turned out I was pregnant again.
That pregnancy challenged the opportunity I had to go back to teach in Baie-Comeau when the school year resumed. To raise a child long-distance is complicated and requires logistical gymnastics for which I wasn't prepared.
Instead, I stayed in Montreal, had my son, and I'm now going through my second maternity leave. I truly appreciate the one-year off our country offers, but it's difficult to relive all the pains and challenges without being able to recuperate between both pregnancies. My mood is deteriorating rapidly. Plus, when I became pregnant, my daughter wasn't walking yet and needed to be entertained. She required constant attention, and, as I got bigger, it became painful to care for her.
My first was born via c-section and it was decided that my son would also be delivered this way. I knew the pain, and for months I anticipated the aftermath: the physical discomfort, the gas, caring for two kids, etc. And let's be honest, going from one kid to two is so difficult: you go from finally sleeping 12 hours to going back to only 2 hours, and then still have to get up early in the morning to tend to the older child. I also had the brilliant idea to enroll in a very selective master of education. I was able to get in, but then the pandemic hit.
My son turned ten weeks old today. Lately, I've realized that I'm not doing so well. During the baby blues phase, I'd cry all the time, but I thought it would go away, just like it did with my daughter. It's not. Some days are better than others, but generally speaking, my mood isn't stable. I'm losing patience and I get irritated easily. I have an ambiguous relationship with my baby. I'm not sure how I feel about him and it disturbs me.
My parents live in the apartment below us. It helps tremendously to have a break once in a while and to have the flexibility to leave the house and get air.
But the thing is... I can't really talk to them about how I feel—not to them and not to anyone. I try to open up to my older sister, but she doesn't have any kids. She's kind and asks how I'm feeling, but I know it's hard to truly understand what a new mother is going through when you haven't experienced it yourself.
As for my parents, I love them, but they have their own trauma. Going through what they went through forged their personality, and I accept them for who they are, but I was never close to them. My mom and I had a lot of confrontations growing up, and I don't feel comfortable around her. Same for my dad. He was absent most of my childhood. Now he's here, but as with my mom, I don't entrust him with my life.
It's hard to find someone who really gets what it feels like to spend your days crying. In my case, what helps is to write. I'm good with words, so I find solace in them.
Right now, daycare hasn't reopened yet. Coralie is home while she's not usually. With just the baby to deal with, I might have been able to manage, but now... it's impossible. The pandemic destroyed any resemblance of normalcy.
My partner is home with us, but he's not super comfortable with tiny babies. He himself has a thousand projects, and I don't always feel like we're his priorities. Because his attention is all over the place, someone has to take care of the household. I told him about it and about the fact that I'm not coping well, but I don't think he's sensitive to this. I can't remember the last time he asked me how I was doing.
When I saw the article [about Faces of Postpartum] in La Presse, I felt compelled to write to you. We don't talk about the postpartum period enough. We don't talk about it, point. Before having kids, I'd heard about the "baby blues" that goes away after a certain period of time, but not really about postpartum depression.
I think this is what I'm going through. I probably need to see a therapist, but now is a terrible time to find one. It feels insurmountable. To be honest, I'm also not very good at talking about my emotions.
Generally speaking, I have the feeling that telling others that I'm having a hard time is to admit that I've failed. It feels weak.
I know it's wrong but I can't help it. It's crazy that we think of motherhood as a performance. With the pandemic, it's even worse. I made the mistake of joining many moms Facebook groups, and boy I simply can't anymore. Everyone is always comparing and confronting their beliefs. I feel terrible after reading the posts. Same with some groups about breastfeeding. I'm nursing myself, but not exclusively. I also give my son a pacifier and a bottle: I'm the ultimate sacrilege.
I feel like I should be able to cope with all this, especially when I compare my life to my parents'. In Asian cultures, there's a huge pressure to perform and do more. It wasn't enough to have 98% in a test. Why not 100%? I grew up in this atmosphere and, in a way, it shaped me.
I "broke up" with my family when I was 18. We had just gone on a trip to Cambodia, and I came back one week before they did because I kept fighting with my mother. Before they landed in Montreal, I had packed all my things and moved out of the house.
I believe this break was necessary to extract myself from the ideas of performance, success, and failure. It's ok not to know what you want to do for the rest of your life and study literature instead of medicine. It truly is ok. But I was also brought up in this ideology; it's my inheritance, and it stained every aspect of my life.
Even though I'm older now and my mom helps a lot, we quickly fall back into a confrontational dynamic. She thinks I should do things a certain way. Now, I mostly remain passive. It requires too much time and energy otherwise. Some times, I see that she's making an effort to pay attention to what I'm doing. It's more obvious now, with the second kid. She's starting to realize that I might not always do what she's telling me to do.
I believe my mother has many unresolved issues with her own family. I also think that we are the victims of our traumas. I learned recently that she actually had gone through the Pol Pot Regime. I'd always thought she had fled before they came to Thailand, but it's not the case. She experienced famine and saw people die. It helps to understand why she is the way she is now.
I believe in resilience and compassion, but I also don't want to reproduce the same maternal figure I grew up with. Our generation has the opportunity to break the cycles of pain, and I often ask myself what kind of model I want to be for my children. What culture do I want them to grow in? On the one hand, I'd like to be the mom who always read books to them and have them listen to fine music. But sometimes, I just want to crash on the couch and not move for hours. Some of my family members who also have little kids have long lists of protocols to follow when we go there. I can't do that. It's too exhausting.
So I have no one else that I know with young children. I'm all alone.
My partner has his friends, and I'm not even sure he's aware that he's a father some days. He seems to be floating above our family. I told him about the concept of "mental load" the other day, and he laughed. Many partners don't truly understand what it means to have to think about caring for others before yourself.
I'm surprised I reached out to you to talk about it. After all, I don't talk about this situation to the people who are the closest to me.
But at the same time, I feel that you could understand because you went through it. Deep down, I hope that if someone else out there is in the same situation, I want her to know that she’s not alone. Because I sure know that I need to hear that.