It Sucked and Then I Cried

by Heather Armstrong

About this time last year, when I had a happy new baby and an unhappy toddler and was totally losing my shit, after I had finally said the words “postpartum depression” out loud and started taking Zoloft, my little sister sent me this.

I had heard of dooce, of course, but I had never read her blog.  Erin suggested that I might find her posts about ppd comforting, and she was right.  Finally, someone was talking right to me about how hard it was, and how awful it was to feel so awful when you also felt so lucky.  I admired Heather’s honesty, and her humor didn’t hurt either.  On those days when everyone was crying, I stole a moment at the laptop, and I felt better.

This is the post I think of all the time.  Erin sent it to me to make sure I saw it, but I had already sobbed my way through it more than once.  It gets so much better.  I clung to that promise, and you know what?  It has gotten so much better.  And it keeps getting so much better.

So many people supported me when I was struggling with postpartum depression.  So many people hugged me and held my hands and told me it was okay to take antidepressants and nurse at the same time.  So many people told me it would get better.  I’m grateful to every single one of them: my husband, my mom, my sister, my cousins, my friends, my doctor, and yes, Heather Armstrong.

I became a regular reader, though I couldn’t bring myself to go back and read all of the posts from Heather’s depression and hospitalization.  It was just too hard.

But I did want to know the story, so I was eager to read her book.  I was hoping for the extended version of posts like this, for the backstory and the outcome.  I was hoping for humor, of course, but for the painful truth behind that humor too.

I was disappointed.

Nearly half the book was pre-baby I’m-eating-Doritos-and-nesting-and-why-are-maternity-clothes-so-ugly, and nearly half of what was left was she’s-so-cute-but-why-does-she-scream-so-much-and-oh-my-god-the-poop.  Though she did write about her depression, medication, and hospitalization, it felt like Heather couldn’t bear to look at her experience straight on.  I wanted to hear that I wasn’t the only one who had stood in the dark in the middle of the night, terrified of spinning out of control, and who had lived to tell the tale.  I wanted more of this.

It Sucked and Then I Cried is, perhaps more than anything, an example of why it’s so hard to turn a blog into a book.  Adding a narrative structure destroyed the immediacy of the posts, yet stringing posts together made for repetitive metaphors and lack of perspective.  Longtime readers feel like they’ve read everything already; newer readers like me feel like they’re missing something.

Heather is expecting her second child next month.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for her, hoping that her postpartum experience is happier and that the transition is smooth.  I’ll be reading.