The day we brought our baby home from the hospital nearly 14 years ago, I felt like I was wading through water. The air itself was thick and viscous. Exhaustion had descended so that people’s voices seemed to travel through a tunnel to reach me. M and my mom were carrying my bags and the car seat, respectively. I was carrying my weak body and unsettled heart.

We had left our 18th floor apartment two days earlier in the maddest rush I had ever experienced, missing an emergency car delivery by a matter of minutes, gotten through the insanity, and come home with a healthy baby boy. And yet, rather than feeling tethered to a line of women through time immemorial who had managed the same feat, I felt oddly, increasingly isolated.

D was born in the middle of December in Montreal, where dusk falls at 4:25 p.m.

Mama, (my mama, even though apparently I was now a mama myself,) was with us for 8 weeks, tending to my every need so I could tend to the baby. She brought me bowls of chicken soup and buckwheat bread, lest my wheat sensitivity trigger his indigestion. Glass after glass of fenugreek and caraway tea, an old Egyptian concoction for increasing milk. Sliced pears and frozen mangoes and little pieces of broccoli to scoop up hummus. Mostly, I just wanted coffee with too much cream and sugar, and a croissant from the bakery in the underground metro tunnels five minutes away.

Despite Mama’s waiting on me hand and foot, I never emerged from our bedroom before 2 p.m., barely grasping at the remains of weak sunlight the winter sky had to offer.

Mama held the baby while I slept, and encouraged me to sleep when he did. But I couldn’t, despite my exhaustion. My body was both lacking and restless.

On the fifth morning after we came home, we ran out of apples and tomatoes. Before either M or Mama could argue, I blurted out, “I’ll get them.”

There was a small grocery store two blocks away where we made minimal purchases because it was so overpriced, but this was going to be my outing, high prices be damned. M and Mama looked at each other, looked at me, and nodded.

All day, I dreamed of this walk to the store, of how I would make my way down the street, alone. I would pace the aisles, taking my time, considering random sauces and marinades, rolling firm fruit around in my palms.

After D was fed and swaddled, I left him with my mom to burp and put on my winter coat and boots. It was the first time I’d walked out since I’d come home from the hospital as a mother. The store was bright and airy and I walked through it slowly, attempting to savour each moment. When I was done, I came home, put my shopping bag on the kitchen counter and went to sit on our bed, where I started to cry.

I couldn’t have explained to you what the tears were for, beyond the fact that I had expected my grocery run to be life-changing, and yet here I was, still swimming through the soup of my new existence. In hindsight, I think I was mourning the woman I had lost in gaining my motherhood.

Every day, I wept. Sometimes, it was because D wouldn’t burp, or because he would manage to extract his little hand from his swaddle and hit his tiny face with his tiny fist. Sometimes, it was for no reason at all. Sometimes it was because I didn’t want to cry, and the shame of the tears brought them on all the more. Mama sat with me, hugging me and telling me again and again, “you’re a wonderful mother, Noha. All of this is normal and all of this will pass.”

I am so grateful for her faith in me. For telling me I was doing a good job when I had no idea what I was doing. For not shaming me when I was ready to shame myself.

And then by some miracle, 6 weeks after they had flooded my system, the tears stopped. It was as though someone had found the source of the leak and plugged it. Winter still dragged on but the days grew ever-slowly longer. My little baby, who ate like a champion, became the love of my life. His smiles rejuvenated me, his burps delighted me, his little fingers and little toes were delicious and so, so kissable.

I am lucky that my postpartum blues didn’t morph into full blown depression. That my mother was there to tend to my every need. That my husband held my hand through it, despite being as lost as I was. I am lucky that the feelings inside me subsided into love and connection, and that my heart reset its sensitivity gauge.

But I remember that sense of being untethered when I see a soul in the throes of depression, even when everything on the outside looks and sounds and seems normal. What kindness can I hold for those souls? How can I pay it forward?

Let’s chat in the comments:

* Is there something you experienced that was supposed to be “all good” but wasn’t the storybook version?

* If you’re a parent, or have a parent in your life, have you seen someone struggle post partum?

* Do you think there’s enough honesty in the culture about how hard the first few months of parenting really are?

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