I love Adele. I may not always love her music the way some people do – absolutely nothing against her, however I can only take her tunes in short spurts before I feel like I should be drowning in my own melancholy sea of tears – but overall, I really appreciate her, and the rawness that she is as a performer, and her bluntness as a human being.

 

I recently read the Vanity Fair cover article featuring Adele, which you can also read yourself here, where she discussed her battle with Postpartum Depression.

Like Adele, and along with thousands of other moms, I also felt a certain amount of pressure, the kind of pressure that told you it was a necessity to match and live up to the acceptable behaviours of what society's expectations were. The very purpose of me being born was eventually to have children, at least that’s what I was made to believe. Never mind that I was a feminist, and that I was an empowered woman with a very promising career in a predominantly male concentrated industry at the time. Yes, I was allowed to have all of that, but as long as I also pushed out at least a tiny human or two all the while accomplishing all the above.

Do I regret having my 2 girls?

Would you judge me harshly if I say “yes"?

I can’t speak for others, but I can very much relate with what Adele went through. As someone who lives with chronic depression, and have been most of my life, I have become fairly in tune with my own daily struggles, but when postpartum was added on top of it, the struggles were extra tough. Even for a seasoned individual who recognized most of her own relapses, navigating through each postpartum day was tough enough for me to feel deep regret of the choice I made in having a child during that time.

I had no problems discussing my "normal regular chronic depression" with anyone. Yet ironically, these daily regrets brought on by PPD wasn’t something I wanted to openly talk about in the beginning, because society has an expectation of us. 

The amount of pressure we face as women in being acceptable to society is already immense; add a newborn, and rapid fluctuating hormones, it makes new moms just that much more vulnerable.

Yet, the part of our brain that feels the need to live up to “expectations” stays strong, so we hide it. We hide what we are feeling, we think there’s something wrong with us. According to the checklist of the perfect life, we’ve pretty much clicked off most of it, so what the fuck are we crying about it?

Being a new mom for me was the very definition of juxtaposition. There was so much love for my baby, but I hated the life that I was living in.

I don't regret having my 2 girls, but when you are drowning in PPD, you can definitely feel that way, every single damn day.

I’m encouraged to see that Adele, along with few other prominent celebrities that have opened up about their PPD, is bringing attention to this subject matter. It also highlights the fact that there is still a huge need to continue to educate the masses and bring awareness and conversations on PPD wherever, whenever. Her PPD journey is our PPD journey too.

Life With A Baby is the very resource that focuses on making this dialogue easy for everyone. There is no shame in how you feel as a new mother, because we are not perfect, and we shouldn’t be perfect.

Let’s continue to make the topic of PPD more widespread, and into a common subject matter, the type of topic that gets acknowledged just like you would when you tell someone that you cut yourself, and you need medical attention. In order to do that, we encourage and welcome everyone to open up and share their motherhood journey, no matter how tough or easy the path is.