“Maybe you shouldn’t have had kids,” Mom said on another one of those endless mornings after Hope was born, standing at my sink in her red capri pants and white Talbots short-sleeve button-down. I tried to make things easier by hiding my troubles from her and sometimes even myself, but this time I was too weak to pretend. She rarely complained, but I thought I detected the toll this sacrifice took in the way she seemed happiest not with us, but at church or petting the dog or watching PBS. Mom had steadfastly cared for my dad, my brother, and me since her early twenties. “I’m worried about you,” Mom said sharply one morning after she’d placed Hope in a bouncy chair festooned with teddy bears. I, meanwhile, sat around a lot in my nursing gown and robe, crying or about to cry. Mom was doing her part - changing Hope’s diapers and dressing her in gingham and florals with frilly socks and matching soft leather shoes. My mother flew from Kansas City to my home in Los Angeles to help for three weeks, a period in which we both imagined I’d be getting better at this mothering gig, not worse. My husband, Rich, returned to his long lawyer hours and two-hour daily commute a few days after Hope was born. Eventually I could name it - postpartum depression - and begin to recover, but for a while it just felt like all the good parts of me had slipped away the day I gave birth. Yet because my lead-up to motherhood had been nearly picture-perfect - a happy marriage, a wanted pregnancy, a birth so smooth my OB had said I should have a whole football team of kids - it took me several weeks to understand that while Hope was healthy, I was not. Instead of love or joy, I felt panicked, worried we were already nursing failures two minutes in. Looking back eight years later, I can see that something was wrong just moments after my daughter, Hope, was placed, pink and new, on my chest.
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