Everyone says so. They offer advice like, “The first few weeks are a blur,” and, “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” and, “It gets better.”
What no one tells you is that sometimes you end up sitting on the bathroom floor at three in the afternoon because the baby has cried for twenty minutes, your breasts ache, your stitches burn, and you cannot remember whether you brushed your teeth that morning or the previous day.
No one explains that postpartum depression does not always feel like sadness. Sometimes it feels like static or rage. Like being trapped inside a body that no longer belongs to you while everyone insists you should feel grateful.
That was the hardest part.
I loved my son so much that it frightened me.
I loved him with a desperate intensity that made me check his chest while he slept because I could barely believe something so tiny and perfect had been handed to two exhausted adults and sent home with them.
But I was drowning too.
