PREGNANCY

The women in the new mothers’ circle eyed me warily. I’d sat silently and politely listening, as they discussed their C-section scars, cracked nipples and night-time feedings, and now apparently it was my turn. I had suffered insomnia, jet lag and a radical life change, but I didn’t feel I had a right to complain; after all, I’d been re- minded more times than I could count, “You’re lucky, you did it the easy way.”

A thin, sparrow-like woman asked with a big grin: “Why did you adopt?” before adding with a sweet smile, “Infertility problems, I guess?”

Of course, my reasons for adopting were none of their business, yet I felt the need to explain. I mumbled something about health problems, and then I was on my feet, fumbling to put my daughter into the Snugli and get the heck out of there. Trudging home through the snow to my gloomy little house, I reprimanded myself: Stay indoors, don’t go near biological mothers. What were you thinking?

As an adoptive mother, I sometimes seemed to have little in common with other new moms. My baby was ten months old, not a few weeks. And I had different issues — insensitive comments, for example, or worries about a shortened parental leave, which at that time was 17 weeks instead of the six months maternity leave for biological mothers. There was only one thing that I was certain I shared with some biological mothers: I was extremely depressed.

From the heights of euphoria two months earlier, when my daughter was placed in my arms in the Bestride Hotel in Hunan, China, I had slid into despair. Despite a few attempts to get out and socialize, I mostly lay on the couch watching bad pay-per-view movies, ordering Swiss Chalet, occasionally shaking a rattle in front of my daughter’s face and praying my husband would come home to rescue me.

“The cows, let’s go see the cows,” he said one afternoon, before hanging up the phone to rush home. That’s the day I remember as the lowest point of my depression. It was the middle of winter. The sky was grey, like the unwashed blankets piling up in the laundry basket. He thought a visit to the Ottawa Experimental Farm would cheer me up, so within an hour of my pleading phone call, he was pushing the two of us around the heated barn, from Jersey to Holstein.

Far from feeling better, I ached for the poor cows, trapped in pens with nowhere to go, nothing to do. “This is so bleak,” I moaned. At a restaurant later, I wept and could only choke down half a veggie burger.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. My lovely daughter, Cleo, was deeply content, had a sharp sense of humour even as an infant and pretty much slept through the night. I knew how blessed we were yet, some days I could manage little more than popping in a Teletubbies video. Or I’d get a head of steam to make organic baby food, then leave the ingredients on the counter all day as I slumped in front of the TV.

Isolation just added to my despair. To mention my depression to my extended family, or the biological moms at a playgroup, seemed like heresy. I tried it a few times and got remarks like: “Don’t be silly, you had it easy, you didn’t have to give birth or breastfeed.” Besides, women get depressed after birth because of their hormones. Don’t they?

Originally published in Today's Parent, March 2003