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.