Home Engineer: Of baby blues and other hues

You’d think after nine exhausting months, when the stork finally delivers that bundle of joy into your arms, one would immediately be filled with relief and joy.  Baby blues are feelings of sadness that mothers begin to encounter in the first few days after having a baby.

Baby blues

One would assume motherhood instantly confers on you an honorary doctorate in maturity, wisdom and happiness. But Mama Daktari actually begins to be subjected to a barrage of feelings, she has never experienced before. Suddenly, the biological clock which turns off at 9pm and restarts at about 5am stops working. Actually, it continuously works.

Lucky to catch a bathroom break

The word ‘sleep’ is ejected from your mental dictionary and zombie mode is activated. When you’re lucky enough to catch a bathroom break, you end up using the toilet roll for wiping tears more than anything else. The waterworks have neither a reason, nor a season. They flow endlessly.

The nine-month gluttonous monster inside you magically converts into an anorexic being. Your appetite metre starts to hit the minus scales. The term ‘mood swings’ gets redefined; so much that even a yawn from dearest hubby can leave him wounded and scarred by the sword that lieth in thy mouth. These emotions should gradually ease and your world should be back to normal within a few weeks.

Melancholy takes no U-turn

When that fails, and your melancholy takes no U-turn, it means you are on the edge of postpartum depression. This is the point at which many women experience their worst moments of motherhood. You start reliving the past, not just the nine months you carried the baby, but all the way to that (now dreadful) night of conception. You begin to despise why you went through with it, only for you to be thrust into this moment, months later.

A look into the mirror and you start to view your disheveled appearance as being similar to a gargoyle. Beauty oh beauty where art thou? You now feel that doctorate of motherhood does not deserve its recipient; otherwise, why would baby be constantly crying, never sleeping and being taken to the pediatrician more often than not?

Hopelessness persists

The wailing baby makes you start imagining you have the arm of a sportswoman, who can throw the longest yard. Scary and potentially criminal. You re-evaluate your nasty thoughts as you look into baby’s shining eyes but still the hopelessness persists.

It reaches a point where you want to be nowhere around the baby or anyone else for that matter. However, you finally realise sh*t has hit the fan, (yes, Cambridge dictionary actually recognises this phrase), when the knife in your kitchen becomes intimate with you by starting to get attracted to the curves of that gorgeous high-waist slit on your wrist (pun intended). That is the last straw. You need some help, mum!

''Emotional roller coaster''

Your bundle of joy was never meant to become your ride to the gates of depression. In spite your emotional roller coaster, letting your loved ones, friends and family lend you a helping hand is the first step to overcome this unfortunate degeneration of feelings. If all fails, professional help needs to be sought.

Either way, always remember the journey of motherhood is never a straight path lined along a bed of roses. It is a journey of twists and turns, ups and downs but ultimately it is one geared towards a better future. This one moment of overwhelmed jumbled emotions, need not be a cause for you to miss out on the multitudes of memorable ones awaiting you. After all, you haven’t even started to potty train that rug rat, wait till that happens!