It took me five long years after my first son was born to feel ready to try for a second child. He was an amazing, but very challenging child, and was literally just beginning to sleep through the night at that point. I was exhausted and barely ready to add to our family.
I expected I had a little bit of wiggle room when it came to getting pregnant. After experiencing some fertility struggles with my older son — it took us 18 months to conceive him — I expected that it would take a long time to get pregnant a second time.
When we got pregnant after the first try, I was taken aback
Well, shocked was more like it. Yes, I wanted a baby. But I really just didn’t feel ready. The truth is, I was petrified.
I wasn’t sure I could love another child the way I loved my son. I wasn’t sure I could endure more years of sleep deprivation, and the potential that I’d have another intensely needful, high energy baby.
What’s more, I was sure there was going to be something wrong with him
I was convinced that there would be something medically wrong, or that he’d be born with a complicated disability. There was no reason for me to think this — it was just a nagging feeling I started having as soon as the two lines appeared on the pregnancy test.
Basically, I was terrified to have a second child, and the first few months of my second pregnancy were colored by this. Like many pregnant people, I was exhausted for those first few months. Exhausted and nauseous. I could barely eat, and I lost weight.
Between the physical symptoms, and my feeling of general terror and doom, I began to fall into a very dark place. At that point, I had never heard of prenatal depression. While I’d certainly heard of postpartum depression, I didn’t know that there was even such a thing as prenatal depression, and that so many people (about 7%, according to stats) experience it.
I wish I had known that prenatal depression was a thing because then I may not have beaten myself up over how I was feeling
For me, it wasn’t just that I felt depressed and anxious pretty constantly — it was that I thought I was a bad person for having the thoughts that I had. I thought somehow I was going to be a bad mother to this child, and that I would somehow not be able to form as close a connection to him as I did with my first child.
Thankfully, I was one of the lucky ones. I truly think that my depression was caused by changing hormones and the shock of getting pregnant before I thought I might. After the intense rollercoaster of the hormones from the first trimester receded, I began to feel a little more like myself. Although some of the anxious thoughts and feelings returned at the end of my pregnancy, nothing was as bad as the place I was in during the first trimester.
Somehow, I feel like my second child knew that I needed some extra TLC when he was born
He was born on a beautiful September morning, healthy and strong, with wide, searching eyes. He nursed easily and right away, and locked eyes with me as if to say, “I’m here, and everything is okay.”
I fell in love with him immediately, and all my fears about welcoming a second child into our family vanished right away. Still, I remember well how very painful those first few months were of his pregnancy. I can think back on those months and remember lying curled up in bed, feeling the darkness descending on me.
I am grateful my experience was short-lived, but I’m also very aware that pregnancies aren’t always full of sunshine and rainbows. If I ever hear of someone who is having a rough time, I assure them that this is not an uncommon phenomenon, there is nothing wrong with them, and most of all, if they are really struggling, they shouldn’t be afraid to reach out for help.
