The substantial, often shocking, difference between the myth and reality of motherhood makes for a trying first several months post partum. Doctors are fond of "explaining" difficulty in "adjusting" to motherhood as hormonal imbalance. The author of the article below (taken from Women, USA) describes her experience with post partum depression, relating it to her unrealistic, romantic notions of motherhood

by Mary Jane

Before I gave birth to twins in December 1963 I had thought of myself as a competent person, together, under control. In the eighth month of pregnancy I was still doing graduate work and I passed my language exams for the Ph.D., having taught myself to read German during the middle months of my pregnancy.

The birth itself seemed uncomplicated. I was in labour only four hours, experienced very little pain, had two healthy but small twin girls, and was awake during the experience. I can recall, however, two disturbing details. The presence of my father, a surgeon, in the delivery room was rather spooky, since our relationship had always been characterized by emotional restraint and privacy. Another problem was my fearthat mychild (it turned out unexpectedly to be children) might be deformed. I was born with a deformity of the right hand, and I had a fear throughout my pregnancy that my baby would suffer a similar fate. Gratefully, both twin daughters were absolutely normal,
although one weighed less than five pounds.

After the birth I was exhilarated. I was a MOTHER, the most creative creature on earth, with not one but two daughters. (I had of course imagined that I would have a son.) Never would I go back to my books, my studies. Who needed that ? I was a mother! This elation continued for ten days, despite several unpleasant situations — being awakened every night in the hospital by a loudspeaker that droned, "MOTHERS, PREPARE FOR YOUR BABIES"; having my mother-in-law and my sister-inlaw at the apartment during the first week I was home; having no heat in the apartment the first night Ellen was home. (Julia, the smaller twin, had to stay in the hospital until she weighed the appropriate five pounds.) I was elated all right. I wouldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I would cry or laugh hysterically at the slightest provocation. I started having mystical experiences in which I became the Virgin Mary, Bill (my husband) was St. Joseph, and my smaller daughter was the new Saviour. (I now recognize the
strong feminist content of these fantasies.)

On December 10, 1963, on the morning we were to go to the hospital to pick up the second child, I stood in the kitchen trying desperately to measure out Similac powder, and thinking it was poison. I looked at the clock: 8 a.m. The last thing I remember is that my body flew into the clock. I also vaguely recall kicking nurses, cursing at my father, despising my mother (and the mother in me), and being put in a straitjacket. I was then locked up in a mental institution for two months, where I was given both
shock therapy (which permanently damaged my memory) and insulin therapy (which provoked violent hallucinations, most of them related to my Catholic girihood.)

If I had been in any way prepared, either for twins or for the possibility of a post-partum episode, this excruciating experience might have been prevented or at least minimized. But my gynecologist had never talked with me about role conflict or fear of motherhood. And there was no women's movement to speak of in 1963, so it really never dawned on me that I might be in for a very bad trip.

The adult female population is expected to provide care for cliildren, old people, sick people and men. Caught in this situation, the new mother exhausts herself caring for her baby, her children, her husband and her home and caring less and less for herself. So who mothers mothers ? Increasingly the answer seems to be the drug company IIHoffman La] Roche Ltd. Of the ten million tranquilisers and anti-depressants taken in Britain every day 7 million are swallowed by women." (Vivienne Welburn.
Postnatal Depression, p.179).

Postnatal Depression Vivienne Welburn Fontana Paperbacks, 1980.

Drawing on interviews with many mothers — and on her own experience — the author investigates this little-researched subject, contrasting the expectations of motherhood with the realities. She examines stress produced by medical and social attitudes both during birth and afterwards. She explores in detail the social, psychological and physical causes of postnatal depression and describes the available treatment. "The prime purpose of this book is to try and ensure that the suffering of depressed mothers is not solitary and is not seen to be unique".

Depression after Childbirth Katharina Dalton Oxford University Press U.K., 1980.

A brief bibliography listed in the Nottingham Women's Health Day Report (Nottingham, England, 1981), comments that this book is "very clear and factual but doesn't seriously explore any alternative to t h e hormonal theory. Attempts to categorise postnatal depression too much — doesn't allow for overlap with general depression. But contains a vivid and very moving account of puerperal psychosis

"The Baby Blues" Ann Oakley New Society April 1979 U.K.

Also listed in the Nottingham Report (see above), with the comments " outlines hormonal and psychoanalytic attitudes to postnatal depression and dismisses them in favour of a sociological explanation — that of the women's environment."