Joan

Age at interview: 29

Joan is a 29-year-old woman living in a suburban area outside a large city with her husband and son who was 18 months old at the time of interview. She has dealt with mental health issues throughout her life including emotional dysregulation, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and borderline personality tendencies. While Joan is now in a stable, happy marriage, she had previously been in an abusive relationship. Prior to becoming pregnant, she was receiving counseling to address emotional dysregulation and to help her get to a place of emotional stability in anticipation of starting a family sometime in the future.

In the event, Joan’s pregnancy was unplanned and came less than a year into her new relationship. She felt ambivalent about the pregnancy because she was still at an early stage of rebuilding her own mental health and emotional well-being. Throughout her pregnancy Joan experienced extreme anger and felt a profound loss of identity. Having spent years in an abusive relationship she had never developed a secure sense of self, and this was now made worse by the social expectation of selflessness associated with new motherhood. Joan did not share the news of her pregnancy widely because she worried that others would judge her or doubt her ability to parent because she could not present herself as an elated mother-to-be.

Although Joan had her husband and counselor for support, she felt profoundly isolated. She also found it difficult to recount her mental health history repeatedly to different care providers throughout her pregnancy. At times, providers would address her husband rather than Joan directly, even though she was sitting in front of them. Once the baby arrived Joan was happy but confused. Although she loved her son, she did not feel the immediate strong bond she knew she was expected to feel. The focus of attention on the baby made her feel even more invisible than before and the demands of breastfeeding left her feeling socially isolated. She felt that she was definitely not having the blissful experience portrayed in popular media.

About three and a half months postpartum, Joan began to experience extreme anxiety which she now feels was paranoia. She worried that strangers at the park or the mall would steal her son. Sleep deprivation also gave rise to the feeling that she heard people talking in the background when she was trying to fall asleep. While Joan eventually told her husband and her family doctor what she was experiencing, it took her a long time to do so because it was painful to admit that she was having this problem. She did not want her son to be raised by a mother experiencing mental illness and feared the impacts on his emotional development. However, she eventually decided that she needed to acknowledge her situation in the interests of her child’s well-being. After a number of long and distressing delays, Joan was finally able to access dedicated perinatal mental health support.

Joan emphasized the difficulties faced by women whose experience of pregnancy and motherhood does not match the stereotypical ideals and feels that care providers need to consider the mental health and well-being of mothers alongside that of their babies. She worries about the possible long-term impacts of her emotional state on her child. While her son’s primary emotional attachment is to his father, he is thriving and the bond between mother and child is growing stronger every day.

 

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