Emma Jane Unsworth - After the Storm: Postnatal Depression and the Utter Weirdness of New Motherhood

After the Storm

FICTION BY EMMA JANE UNSWORTH

Hungry, the Stars and Everything

Animals

Adults

Postnatal Depression and the Utter Weirdness of New Motherhood

EMMA JANE

UNSWORTH

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

29 Cloth Fair

London EC1A 7JQ

www.profilebooks.com

Published in association with Wellcome Collection

183 Euston Road

London NW1 2BE

www.wellcomecollection.org

Part of the Wellcome Collection Life Lines series: todays finest storytellers on health and being human.

Copyright Emma Jane Unsworth, 2021

Some extracts from this book were originally published as essays in other places:

Guardian Weekend, Red, The Pool, Trauma (Dodo Press).

The Uses of Sorrow from Thirst by Mary Oliver, published by Beacon Press, Boston. Copyright 2004 by Mary Oliver, used herewith by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency, Inc.

While every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders of reproduced material, the author and publisher would be grateful for information where they have been unable to contact them, and would be glad to make amendments in further editions.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781788166546

eISBN 9781782837695

In snowfall, I haunted Motherhoods cemeteries,

the sweet fallen beneath my feet

Our Lady of the Birth Trauma, Our Lady of Psychosis.

I wanted to speak to them, tell them I understood,

but the words came out scrambled, so I knelt instead

and prayed in the chapel of Motherhood, prayed

for that whole wild fucking queendom,

its sorrow, its unbearable skinless beauty,

and all the souls that were in it. I prayed and prayed

until my voice was a nightcry,

sunlight pixellating my face like a kaleidoscope.

from The Republic of Motherhood, Liz Berry

For Ian and LF

and for wild queens, everywhere

It is the worst of times and the worst of times. Brighton, May 2017. I am bone-tired, shoving a buggy through jostling crowds. Early summer sun beats down from a blue sky. People are eating ice creams and sitting in deck chairs, enjoying the years first blast of warmth. But this is no ordinary Sunday on the seafront. Either side of me, two lines of polished parked cars all Minis stretch for ever into the distance. There are Minis in every possible colour and style. Some are themed like cartoon characters or sporting heroes. Some have eyelashes. Some have stickers on the bonnet and furry seats inside. Hundreds of people walk no, amble in between, admiring the cars. The flow of the crowd is one-way. I am trapped. On I trudge, trying not to run over any feet/children/dogs, trying not to make eye contact with the smiling faces, the shiny, happy people basking in the Mini Love.

I had set out from my flat not knowing where I was going, just needing to walk, to get out, to put one foot in front of the other, to do something that felt vaguely autonomous. These walks are the only choice I have left. I slammed the door, cursed the never-arriving lift (No. 1 Bane of My Life), crossed the road, crossed the perilous cycle path, cursed at a cyclist (Bane No. 2), and turned left along the front. I stomped along the promenade past the i360 viewing tower, past the seafood shacks and the smokehouse, the ice-cream stalls, past the pier, lit up and heaving, past the crazy golf and the aquarium. Brighton is a place where people come for holidays, for hen-dos and high-jinks. Its a place of merriment and celebration. I am a dark cloud over it. My partner, Ian, actually said that to me this morning. Its like living with a dark cloud. He has said kind things, too. He mostly says kind things. He is a man at the end of his rope.

I know that I have not been easy to live with for a while now. My mind has been steadily darkening since December, a month or so after the baby was born. I have accumulated layer upon layer of bad feeling; of negativity, rage and doom. I am swollen with it, waiting to explode. I think you have postnatal depression, Ian says regularly. I think you should go and talk to someone. A therapist. Your GP.

He is a GP two days a week. He is a graphic novelist and writer the rest of the time. Even though I got him to check all of my moles the first time we were in bed together (apparently this happens to doctors a lot), I am refusing to accept his diagnosis on this one. I dont feel depressed. I feel fucking furious. To make matters worse, in my hazy state of mind I have inadvertently stumbled into the midst of the London to Brighton Mini Run, an annual get-together for Mini owners. The smell of petrol hangs in the air. People have dolled up for the occasion. They smoke rollies and cheers tinnies. There is a distinct festival vibe. A cruel pastiche of my former life. I used to go to festivals. I was last woman standing at many of them, greeting the dawn with a can of lager and a wide grin. Now I can hardly stand up straight.

I am running on adrenaline. Or rather, the fumes of adrenaline. I havent had more than four hours of sleep in a row for seven months. I am jumpy and twitchy, like a person on high alert. I want to shout and scream and lie down and curl into a ball and have someone anyone just take the baby for a few hours and give me time to regroup my thoughts. I feel like I am on the edge of a psychotic fit; some uncontrollable outburst. Ian has told me he is worried I am almost psychotic more than once. But I have no options. I feel like I should just be getting on with this. Surely not everyone can find it this hard, or humans just wouldnt do it, would they? So here I am, almost psychotic, surrounded by jolly Mods and Minis my least favourite car.

Ian and I have a Mini. It is an old pigeon-coloured thing with one functioning door. The electrics are bust so the windows dont open. Pieces of the upholstery and dashboard keep falling off. Ian and I argue every time we try and get into (or out of) it. The passenger door has been broken for two years but it will cost more to get it fixed than the car is worth. Getting a baby in and out is a gymnastic feat. I often end up literally on my arse in the street, baby held aloft, bags scattered. Travelling 300 miles to see Ians or my relatives, in Manchester and Wales respectively, is a logistical nightmare. Ian refuses to get rid of the Mini (hes had it ten years), and I see this as him digging his heels in as some kind of eternal bachelor, in denial about his new responsibilities. The Mini convention is like something sent from my subconscious to mock me. And I cant get out. Its like a bad dream. (I remember those, from the days when I used to sleep.) People must be wondering why Im charging ahead with such a thunderous look on my face. My phone vibrates in my pocket. I have it on silent so as not to wake the baby in the precious moments that he sleeps. I miss calls, but then people are calling less. My whole life has become one of shutting down, switching off, of retreating into darkness.