The bottom of the steamy shower floor is where my reality became evident. I remember turning the shower handle as far left as possible. I remember craving the feeling of the hot water droplets as they pierced my skin. I slid down to the bottom of the shower floor. I looked over my very different and exhausted skin. My stomach, like my heart, had grown three sizes bigger. Like a rushing river carves out the earth below it, my stomach was stretched out with deep valleys like a canyon. I tried to cry but it was like the well of my emotional pit was dry. Just as I was closing my eyes to imagine a reality of nothingness, the door flung open and the piercing cry of my newborn baby filled the steamy room and immediately jolted me back to the present moment. My husband looked confused and aged as he kindly stated “maybe she is hungry” My breast began to leak and my body started to wake up to the fact that I was a mother and I was needed. For the very first time in my short life, I felt needed. It was terrifying. It was at that moment that I realized I had to stick around, there was no life without me. I was breathing, alive, and needed for the sake of my daughter. I felt a sense of dread and a sense of hope all in the same moment. I looked at my husband holding our screaming child and I uttered the most vulnerable thing I have ever said: “ I need help, I am not okay”.
The details after that moment are very much a blur. There were appointments, medication checks, and follow-ups. I noticed my husband started to do things around the house he had never done before. He took our colicky child on midnight drives. He made me coffee in the mornings and he made me smile daily. He held me close when the tears did come. When the tears poured out like a waterfall and wreaked havoc on my eyeliner in the middle of our daughter’s first birthday party. The first few years of my daughter’s life are a blur of beauty and chaos. I remember feeling like I wanted to peel my skin back when the baby started crying only five minutes after laying her down. I also remember staring incomplete all in wonder as she laughed out loud for the first time. Her hair sticking straight up in her trademark baby Mohawk fashion, the chuckle that erupted like a volcano from the pit of her belly. It was magical. ‘I did that,’ I thought to myself. ‘I made her’. In that moment the pain and trauma of the past were frozen and nothing but magic and joy filled the room like a thick perfume.
Never have I ever been so sure of anything in my life than my call to be a mother. I am so very grateful for that mustard seed ounce of courage I used to utter the truth of my anxiety and depression. I am needed. Now standing in the steam-filled room that was once reminiscent of my lowest moment in motherhood I hear the serenade of giggles and splashes. The screams of my newborn daughter are now just a distant memory that has been replaced with laughter and knock-knock jokes. Bubbles fly across the room as my two daughters create underwater adventures with mermaids and pirate ships. I could have missed this moment. I could have missed this moment and the 10,000 moments before and after. But I did not, thankfully, I did not. I am their mother, and I am needed.
Dear mama; Do not forget this. When your nipples are cracked, your abdomen swollen and your heart is wreaked, don’t forget how very much you are needed. You are built for these moments, it is written in your DNA. But don’t forget, please don’t forget, it is okay to need help.
