AGAINST THE GRAIN OF MOTHERHOOD:
POST-PARTUM PSYCHOSIS AND THE NARRATIVE
WE DON’T WANT TO TELL
Worst Night
I stand by the crib. My son, just fifteen days old, sleeps inside. It’s three-something in the morning, and I alternate between pacing the room, sitting on the nearby rocking chair, and standing by the crib.
A small decorative pillow in my hands, I think about ending my son’s life. I’ve heard his voice—pleading inside my head, telling me to kill him.
I contemplate smothering him. But somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I realize that the voice isn’t real. So, I sit, rock crib-side, the rhythm calming me until morning, until my husband and older son rise, offer me a normal day.
Looking Back
Next week, the son I almost killed will turn twenty-nine. He’s a glass artist, living with his girlfriend and their two dogs. He’s a generous, kind human being. Every day, I’m grateful for his presence.
And although I rarely look back on that dark time, I will, today. Because at sixty-three, I’m taking stock: looking forward and back, allowing time to forget its boundaries.
First Son
My first son was born two weeks late. I had a twenty-six-hour labor, but he arrived big and healthy, the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. As he slipped through me, my husband and I—sweaty hands clenched together—cried. The midwife placed his warm bloody body against my skin, and the three of us became family with a love impossible to replicate.
Even though it took our son almost three years to sleep through the night, I never got depressed. Even though I was unprepared for parenthood, coupled with graduate school, I never doubted myself.
Second Son
Six years later, we decided to do it again—have another baby. I got pregnant soon but miscarried on Christmas Day, visiting my in-laws in Connecticut. I woke up and felt blood. When I called my doctor, she told me to raise my feet, sit still, but if I were miscarrying, there was nothing to do.
I mourned for the baby I lost, but after a short time became pregnant again. Then, when I was three months along, my husband finished his PhD and got a teaching job at a small college in North Carolina. I left my teaching job to complete a second graduate degree, a MFA, and focus on this baby. I felt ready to pause my academic career and turn my energies to school and parenting. My older son was seven.
The move from upstate New York to North Carolina was difficult: without an agent, we sold our house; I mourned the loss of good friends; my son didn’t want to leave his school or friends; my husband was apprehensive about his new job; I was apprehensive about leaving mine.
We arrived in North Carolina at our newly-rented home in July, with temperatures often above ninety. The baby was due in November. I had already gained forty-five pounds. By the time I gave birth, I’d gained sixty. We unpacked, bought new used furniture and appliances, enrolled our son in school, and settled into new routines. But in August, as the academic year started and I was alone days in the new house, I began to feel overwhelmed and isolated.
Weeping Over Futons
In October, two weeks before I went into labor—and five weeks before my due date—I found myself weeping over futons. My husband was with me at the furniture store. We’d looked but hadn’t bought. And before we pulled out of the parking lot, I put my head down on the steering wheel and wept.
“I’m not ready,” I told my husband.
“That’s okay,” he responded. “The baby’s not due for over a month. You have time.”
“You don’t understand,” I continued. “I can’t get ready.”
“Well, honey, the baby’s coming. You have no choice.”
“You don’t get it!” I screamed. “I can’t have this baby.”
Labor Comes Early
Two weeks later, we were cheering at our son’s soccer game. Caught up and running along the sidelines, I felt contractions.
When we returned home, I called my midwifery group, located in a birthing center in Siler City, NC, about an hour and a half away. Strangely, it was the same birthing center in which my older son was born. We’d been living near Greensboro, NC, at the time and had transferred mid-pregnancy to this very progressive birthing center. So, when we moved south again, we decided to deliver the second baby where we’d had such a positive experience with the first.
The midwife on-call told me to come immediately to the center, where she could examine me. I remember lying on the table, older son flipping through magazines in the waiting room, husband by my side. A woman was giving birth a few rooms down from us, and she groaning loudly, in pain.
The midwife reported that I was dilating, and that, yes, I was in labor, but in the early stages. Would I like to stay, she asked, rather that travel home, only to make the long trip again, possibly in the morning.
The laboring woman groaned as we talked. Then, I told the midwife, no, I’d rather spend the night at home. So, we left.
On the drive back, we stopped at Golden Corral, my son’s favorite restaurant, with its dessert bar and soft-serve ice cream machine. By now, my contractions were intense. But I was in denial, unready to give birth. Seeing my contractions, my husband asked if I’d like to return to the birthing center. I told him no. By force of will, I was determined to stop the contractions. But, of course, I couldn’t.
Stalled
At 11:30 p.m., we were on our way back to Siler City with our sleeping son belted in the back of the car. My contractions were now coming every five minutes.
After I was admitted, the midwife came to check me. Yes, I was in active labor, but progress was slow, and I was left to labor, while my husband and son were encouraged to sleep. I labored all night and well into the next day.
Then, by early afternoon, my labor stalled at five centimeters, right before transition. And the baby was going into fetal distress, collapsing his cord, creating an erratic heartbeat. The midwife believed that with my long labor now stalled and the baby’s ongoing fetal distress, a C-section was necessary. A surgical team assembled. It was a football Sunday, the first day after setting the clocks back for fall.
My older son had been with us, watching me, helping me. Our plan had been, however, for my best friend to fly up from her home in Key West a week before my due date. But we’d called her that morning, and now she was enroute to North Carolina, where she’d rent a car and drive to the hospital. She’d been tasked with care-taking our son, but with my early labor, he’d been mostly on his own.
In fact, after the birth, a nurse confessed that at one point our son had fled the birthing room, visibly upset.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked.
“I’m afraid,” my son had responded.
“Of what?”
“That my mom will die.”
“She won’t die,” the nurse had promised.
“Then I want to go back in.”
And so, my older son watched—and helped me birth—his baby brother.
Almost C-Sectioned
Surgical team assembled, I was prepped for surgery. But as the doctors lifted me onto the surgical table, my midwife noticed that I was in transition and insisted that I be transferred back to the birthing bed so that I could deliver vaginally.
Soon, I had the urge to push. And push I did, though again I made no progress. Then, after about an hour, I felt done in. “Take the baby by C-section,” I commanded.
But my older son spoke up. “I see the baby’s head, Mom,” he announced. And with that, I went back to work. Twenty minutes later, I delivered.
The baby was blue and not moving. The midwife grabbed my oxygen mask and put it over the baby’s face. He breathed and turned pink.
After all the cleanup, after an Apgar test, and a final good bill of health, my husband told me that he would take our older son out to dinner to celebrate and that I should bond with our new baby and choose between the two names we’d selected.
Holding my baby, I chose the name that honored my deceased grandfather and a middle-name that honored my husband’s brother.
When my best friend arrived from Key West—wearing a tee-shirt that read “Give Peas a Chance”—she found me snuggling with my newly born, newly-named infant son, just hours old.
Post-Partum Troubles
Which brings me back to my post-partum psychosis. My friend stayed with me for ten days. She helped get my older son off to school, helped him with trick-or-treating for Halloween, cleaned house, made dinner, and offered me her loving support. My husband was freed to get back to his classes, come home to bond with the baby and spend quality time with me. My recovery was off to a smooth start.
But when my friend left and my husband had to take on the chores, I began to hear voices—or more accurately, I heard one voice, the voice of my infant son. It whispered to me when I held a kitchen knife to chop vegetables. It told me to kill him—that he needed obedience. That something was terribly wrong. Couldn’t I help him?
I managed to quiet the voice, to tell myself that a baby couldn’t telepathically communicate. But, on some level, the voice was real and confirmed much of what I’d experienced: the baby didn’t want to live.
After all, he’d resisted his own birth by stalling labor—the first sign. He’d not responded to my active pushing—another sign. Then, he’d turned blue, refused to breathe and needed oxygen—again, all signs that he didn’t want to live.
After that horrible night of sitting by his crib, pillow in my hands, I mentioned the incident to my friend, now back home in Key West.
“I’m having murderous thoughts about my baby,” I told her, casually inserting this sentence into the stream of our conversation, too ashamed to clearly admit my thoughts.
But she stopped me.
“What’s going on?” she asked, and I told her about my baby speaking to me, asking me to end his life.
“This is post-partum psychosis,” she said decisively. “Your baby isn’t talking to you and doesn’t want to die.”
Her direct honest words pulled me from my psychosis as if she’d popped open a locked door and pulled me from darkness into daylight. It was magic—more powerful than I’ve ever experienced before or since.
We discussed counseling, but I never went. At least, not for a few years. But when I did go, I discussed the incident with my therapist, who confirmed the diagnosis: post-partum psychosis.
The good news, she went on to explain, was that this psychotic episode made me no more likely to have another. And I never have.
Against the Grain
Over the years, I’ve remembered—and gratefully, at times, forgotten—this dark and frightening moment in my life. And as difficult as it is write about, it is perhaps as difficult to read. For it goes against the grain of motherhood and challenges the narratives that mothers are expected to tell.
But at sixty-three, I’m not inclined to modify my narratives to better suit the dictates of cultural expectations. In fact, the older I get the more inclined toward truth I become. So, I write this story to take stock, get real—for myself, for everyone—but especially for those women who’ve undergone similar experiences or for those who might face them yet.
