I spilled the beans. I couldn't talk fast enough. The words just spilled out. Then came the tears. She asked me if I felt relieved sharing how I felt. I told her that I had support outside of this visit, but there's a difference because here, I was hoping on receiving some direction on how to FIX things. I mean, that's why I'm paying some astronomical hourly rate, right?
She said that the things I'm experiencing are fairly common and recommended a weekly visit. I was fine with that. But, common?? Really?????
I wondered how women cope with this. We all know that postpartum depression exists, but nobody talks about it. Depression in this country is stigmatized along with every other mental illness. It's taboo. Throw that on top of the societal norm of childbirth being no big 'thang; career mobility prioritized over nesting in an area with abundant extended family for support, and of course, where those career opportunities exist in big cities, cost of living is high too often necessitating both parents to work.
That aside, at some point after while taking a break at work, I scribbled a pie chart on a sticky note depicting various roles. Some didn't even make it onto the pie chart, but the set of options included mother, wife, friend, sister, engineer, caretaker (house/errands/chef/bills, etc. It was clear that mother, engineer and caretaker edged out everything else, leaving tiny slivers that couldn't even be labeled, but worse yet, the category for me (or, "self") was nonexistent. Who am I these days anyway?
It's too early to tell what's going on, so it's not like I left the office with a wheelbarrow full of Prozac. She instructed me to get between 5 to 6 hours of sleep overnight between pumps; from end of one, to start of another. Working on that now, but the boobs have their own schedule at the moment.
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