Book Review: MOTHERING THROUGH THE DARKNESS Edited by Jessica Smock & Stephanie Sprenger
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Mothering Through the Darkness: Women Open Up About the Postpartum Experience Edited by Jessica Smock and Stephanie Sprenger |
| She Writes Press, 2015 $16.95 |
Postpartum depression is the most common pregnancy-related complication with at least 1 in 7 new mothers mired in its dark water for months or even years, if left untreated. At least 1 in 7. But the nature of the disorder, the way depression, as Nina Gaby describes it, is like “Vaseline over the camera lens—the view is distorted but the object hasn’t changed,” paired with a new mother’s fear of being stigmatized as a “bad mom” or worse, an “unfit mother,” keeps many women wading alone through the murk of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, OCD, and other postpartum disorders. They never report it. They never ask for or receive help. They suffer through feelings of inadequacy and guilt, an inability to connect with their newborn, severe panic attacks, obsessive worry, and even thoughts of harming themselves or their baby. But this is an illness, no less controllable or the fault of the person suffering, or less deserving of treatment than brain cancer. But it is the trait of mental trickery, this hormonal deceit that locks mothers into silence, that makes Mothering Through the Darkness: Women Open Up About the Postpartum Experience, a collection of 35 beautifully crafted, highly personal essays, necessary reading for anyone who plans to become a mother or is close to a woman who is considering motherhood.
This anthology opens with poet Maggie Smith’s essay, “Here Comes the Sun.” Smith artfully drops the reader into the obsessive, redundant thinking that ushers itself into Smith’s world as a new mother, turning her into a person who is overcome by the need to “find The Pattern.” While heightened protectiveness, awareness, and focus on a new baby is part of the biology of new motherhood, the reader is quickly made aware that the intensity with which Smith experiences these inclinations was anything but normal:
With my son I wrote everything down: every feeding, what time he started, what time he finished, when he burped, when he spit up, what the spit up looked like, when he peed, when he pooped, what the poop looked like, when he cried, what his cry sounded like, when he slept, what position he slept in, when he woke.
If I wrote everything down, I would see The Pattern. The Pattern That Would Make Him Happy. The Pattern That Would Make Him Sleep.
The Pattern That Would Fix Him.
The Pattern That Would Fix Me.
Postpartum disorders associated with new motherhood do not only affect the biological mother. As Jill Robbins describes in her essay, “A Different Side of the Baby Blues,” adoptive mothers can experience post-adoption depression and are even more at risk of having their depression symptoms misunderstood and ignored by those they reach out to. The partners of new mothers, as well as family and friends, also need to be made aware of the symptoms of pregnancy-related mental disorders because, as this collection makes clear, the afflicted new mom will more than likely not be willing or able to ask for help, believing the lies of the postpartum disorder which tells her the problem is her failing as a mother and it is untreatable.
Although each of these essays is as different as the women writing them, there are striking similarities between them. Most notably, the realization that outside help is not only needed but vital is slow and takes the suffering mother, even those who are health care professionals, months, even years, to seek help. The new mothers think the lack of joy and contentment is their fault. Quite a few of these authors write that in their darkest times a glance in the mirror yielded in an unrecognizable, disheveled, miserable person looking back. But sadly, it is the recurring thoughts that their family would be better off without them, the vivid picturing of fatal accidents involving themselves or their babies that forces them to break their silence, to do what they most fear and tell someone about what is torturing them. And all, after getting the help they need and deserve, only wish they had been able to ask for it sooner. In essay after essay, the reader is faced with how common it is for women to want to lie about having postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, OCD, perinatal depression, or any other overwhelming feelings besides joy at being pregnant or having brought a new child into the world. And in every essay in this collection, talking about what is happening in the new mother’s mind does not lead to her child(ren) being taken away as she fears, but to her getting into therapy, sometimes taking medication, but most importantly getting her life and sense of joy back.
In “Recognizing the Darkness,” Lea Grover writes:
We’re learning more about postpartum depression all the time. We’re learning how a flood of ante- and postpartum hormones can trigger latent bipolar disorders, anxiety, all manner of mental illnesses that we already has susceptibilities for. Like an infection in an old, not-quite-healed scar…
We like think that our brains are above the petty illnesses that plague the rest of our bodies, but it’s not true. Our brains are as susceptible to fatigue and disease as our bladders, our lungs, our livers.
More and more, these postpartum complications are becoming part of the broader conversation about motherhood. This anthology is proof of the need to shatter the stigmas and allow women the freedom to open up about their true, myriad experiences with motherhood.