The Love my Brain Denied me. POST PARTEM SUCKS. (Part 1)
They tell you it will be instant. That the moment your baby slides into the world, something cosmic shifts inside you. A switch flips, a bond locks into place, and you become mother. They tell you this with such certainty, such collective confidence, that you never think to question it. You just wait, belly round and full of expectations, for the magic to happen to you too.
My pregnancy was textbook. I hit every milestone on cue, swallowed my prenatals like a good girl, never missed a checkup. My son's birth was the stuff of birth-plan dreams: healthy, huge, perfect. I remember that final push, the release, the sudden lightness. And then...there he was. A real, whole person lying at the foot of the birthing bed with his back to me, tiny and screaming and utterly here.
"Oh my god," I thought. Not the romantic, breathless oh my god of movies. This was the vertigo of realization: I had a real person in there this whole time. The weight of that hit me like a physical blow. I looked up at my partner, his eyes swimming with tears, and watched him mouth "thank you" before dissolving into grateful sobs over his first ( and only ) son. He felt it. That thing everyone promised.
I waited for mine to arrive.
During my pregnancy, I'd gathered with other expecting mothers and the newly initiated. We'd meet at restaurants where my basketball belly barely cleared the booth seats, where the veterans sat draped in nursing covers, juggling chaos I couldn't yet understand. I watched them unravel diaper bags the size of carry-ons, shake toys at fussing infants, negotiate with waitresses for decaf. I watched strangers interrupt their meals to coo at babies, watched socks get lost and car seats become battlegrounds.
It overwhelmed me. The stuff, the noise, the constant performance of motherhood. They were already scheduling "playdates" for creatures who couldn't yet play.Announcing them with the seriousness of state dinners. Mommy-and-me swimming lessons. Organized activities for every age bracket. They'd look at their babies with such devotional love and say things like, "I can't stand to be away from her for an hour" or "There's nowhere I'd rather be than with my baby."
I wanted that. God, I wanted that. I assumed it would come standard, like the hospital gift bag with the bulb syringe and the tiny knit cap.
When my son arrived, I performed all the right motions. I fed him when he cried, changed him, held him, bathed and burped and dressed him. He was beautiful. Content. An angel, everyone said. And I felt...nothing. Not the nothing of absence, but the nothing of a radio tuned to static. No negative feelings, no resentment, no regret. Just a flatline where I expected a symphony.
My partner had his instant connection. He felt what I couldn't, and I resented him for it with a shame that still burns to remember. I knew I should feel something. The more I reached for it, the more obvious its absence became. When Friday nights came and I could secure a babysitter, I took them. Not because I had anywhere to go.Often I didn't. But because staying home felt like missing something, even if that something was just the possibility of feeling alive again.
I was twenty-something in a small town where weekends meant bars and buzz and watching the sun come up before catching a few hours of sleep. Motherhood was supposed to rewrite all that, wasn't it? The love was supposed to make the sacrifice feel sacred. Instead, I felt dead inside, performing devotion I didn't feel for an audience of one who couldn't yet judge me.
My partner worked out of town two weeks, sometimes three out of every month. It was just me and the baby most of the time for the 2 AM feedings, the endless cycle of need and response. I had options. I could have packed the diaper bag, braved the social anxiety that now roared through my veins, joined the mommy groups and swim classes. Instead I shrank. I visited my grandmother some mornings, drinking coffee in her kitchen, and those hours were genuine refuge. I miss her terribly now. But even in her presence, I felt hollow. A vessel pouring out what I didn't have.
The breaking point came quietly. I told my doctor: I cry constantly. I don't eat. I only want to sleep. He diagnosed postpartum depression efficiently, almost casually, and wrote me a prescription for Prozac. I didn't know then that this would be the first domino in a decades-long cascade of medication trials, misdiagnoses, the eventual discovery of mood disorders that explained so much. I didn't know that Prozac would feel like a chemical stranger in my brain, or that I'd leave bottles untouched in cabinets, or that I'd choose faster fixes. Alcohol and harder substances vs. waiting a month for a pill to maybe work.
What I knew was guilt. The specific, corrosive guilt of being a "shit mom" who couldn't manufacture the love that came naturally to everyone else. I numbed what I could and white-knuckled what I couldn't.
I never dealt with it properly, that first descent. I survived it, mostly. My son survived me, somehow, and grew into a person despite my early fumbling. But seven years later,to the very day,I gave birth to my youngest son. And everything I hadn't processed came roaring back, demanding reckoning.
But that's Part 2.
For now, I'll say this to any new mother waiting for her magic to arrive: Sometimes it doesn't come on schedule. Sometimes it comes in weeks, or months, or in the quiet moment years later when you finally recognize what you were building all along. Sometimes you need help finding it.Real help, not just a prescription and a pamphlet. And sometimes, despite everything, you keep going anyway. Not because you feel like a good mother, but because showing up is the work, and the work matters even when the feeling doesn't.
The love that didn't come immediately? It was there. It was in every bottle prepared, every cry answered, every night survived. It just looked like duty for a while. And duty, stubborn and relentless, was enough to get us here. I would die for either one of my sons and I love them more than words could ever begin to explain. I know I would have said the same thing back then, only it would have been for different reasons than now. Dont give up. Theres help out there for anyone who has or is still going through this kind of experience. You aren't alone. Youre doing the best you can. I love you. ❤️
Love Dally xo
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