Oh The Irony

When I was first pregnant, my big fear was post partum depression. When it came time to pre-register at the hospital, I filled out special forms requesting to speak with a social worker in a proactive manner about that very thing. And I even called up the health nurses one teary day and took a test to see if I needed help, and I'm meeting with a health nurse every so often in my home just in case. The crazy thing is that despite all these horrid complications from my childbirth injuries, and despite occasional dark clouds that I have to fight through, I actually don't have any resemblance of a full blown case of post partum depression.

Do I have emotions that are hard? Yes. Do I wonder if there will ever be light at the end of the tunnel in the realm of my broken body? Heck yeah. Do I have to fight through feeling like it would be easier to not have to keep breathing? Yes, sometimes. But am I depressed in the clinical sense? Actually, surprisingly, not really. I've been there and done that, and what I'm going through in my heart and mind isn't what I've gone through before. This is manageable with just a bit of sunshine, a listening husband, and a dose of chocolate. Sitz baths aren't overrated either. I'm quite shocked to be writing all of this. After all, my picture is probably next to the definition of "melancholy" in the dictionary. And yet, though I do have teary and sad moments that threaten to overwhelm me, I don't have that constant sense of sadness I once had years ago.

So I found it kind of funny that when I gathered my courage to ask my maternity doctor yesterday if she had any knowledge of the phone call I got from the midwife, she said that the midwife was thinking of calling me again. Apparently, the midwife is very concerned that I might be struggling from post partum depression.

What the midwife is really saying is this: "I feel like an idiot for not calling in help sooner, and I feel guilty that I've caused the life-altering injury of a new mother. But I'm too chicken to admit it, so I'm going to call into question her mental health just in case she squeals on me."

I took the high road and didn't tattle on her to the doc. My only goal was to make sure my relationship with my maternity doc is good. After all, I did promise her a climbing trip this summer, and I mean to make good on that promise. We're good. That's all that matters to me.

Meanwhile, the midwife (if she has a conscience at all, and I think she does) is going to find herself feeling like a character in an Edgar Allen Poe story. I just hope she finds the courage to be honest before her guilt eats her alive and makes her totally crazy.

And meanwhile, my primary goal outside of mothering the most adorable boy is to get well. Once I'm well, I may think about "squealing" in order to protect other women. But that's really not my first priority. I'm just a girl who has a broken body that needs to get fixed so she can take her son climbing as soon as he graduates to big boy underwear and has the walking and running thing down solid. And I WILL get well. My mind and heart are "more well" than I realized, so I've got hope that my body will follow too. And if any more dark times come, I'll trust in the One who loves me most to keep me going and help me to stand and fight.

In the meantime, I've got a whole lot of living to do. Conflict resolution is so valuable, believe me. It makes a way for a girl to get around to all that living.