There’s a whole wave of us right now, learning how to be mothers. We’re transforming the exact same way women have for centuries, but this time, it feels different. The world around mothers-to-be and mothers is changing rapidly and radically. Maternal mental health is increasingly becoming a core part of our transition. But why do we know so little about it?
“ When I was in middle school, I read a children's book that a relative had in their bookcase. Bluebeard. It begins with a beautiful, younger woman marrying a disgustingly rich, noble dude. Everyone knew he'd been married several times before but didn't know what happened to any of the wives, and apparently no one cared to find out.
One day, he tells his current wife he needs to go on a trip and hands her a huge set of keys to every room and amenity in the home... Bluebeard says that she should knock herself out and explore them all, except for a room at the very end of the corridor that the smallest key in the bunch unlocked.
Of course, who does that without only further tempting someone to see the room? So the woman uses the key to open the room, and she finds a dark room with blood all over the floor, and the bodies of all of Bluebeard's previous wives hanging on the wall in their wedding gowns. Yikes.
That's how I felt opening the door to pregnancy. A key that opens a small door, one that's been tucked away for decades, until you decide to get pregnant. Then you see what's behind.
What the actual f* is all this?”
— an excerpt from Waves: Good Mom, Crazy Pregnancy
No one warned me this could happen during pregnancy. So, I’m here to tell you, sister.
I had a crazy pregnancy. Not in a chocolate-craving-impatient-with-partner-rage way. Like, actually. Crazy in a way where even the best professionals couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Two and half years later, we identified a clinical name: Perinatal OCD.
Waves: Good Mom, Crazy Pregnancy is the book I so wish I found when I was pregnant.
It’s part memoir, part cultural argument about becoming a mother in modern day America, with the approachability of girlfriends having a late night conversation on a sofa, wine in hand. It’s not just anecdotal — I’ve done the research to share the actual clinical information that should have been handed to me at the first appointment.
It is also, in places, funny. I couldn’t help it. You can’t help but LOL at the darkness that’s been hiding for centuries.
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