Life on Mute: The Silent Soundtrack of Postpartum Depression
By Anne-Marie Thompson
I watched all eight seasons of Dexter on mute, with the captions on. Surrounded by throw pillows to support the fifteen-pound baby sleeping in my arms, I sat in a dark room and watched America’s Favorite Serial Killer go about his methodical, bloody business.
For three months, I held my newborn son for every nap — four times a day, for sixty to ninety minutes each time. And for three months, I read my way through “Crime TV Shows” and “Dark TV Thrillers” on Netflix. Starting around 9:00am every morning, I’d slide the study’s squeaky pocket door closed behind us, turn off the light, and rock the crying baby to sleep. Then, I’d sit on the couch and cue up the TV for my first session of silent watching.
As I closed the study door and muted the television, I also turned inward, into the silence of postpartum depression. Inside that dark, lonely room, I could only hear myself.
The baby won’t nap if I don’t hold him.
The baby wouldn’t nap in his crib for more than 15 minutes. When he didn’t nap well, he ate poorly and fussed. When he was fussy and overtired at the end of the day, he would sleep even worse at night.
I have to hold my baby for his naps.
Of course, I didn’t have to do this at all, and some part of me knew better: The baby was sleeping terribly at night, even when he was getting lots of long naps in my arms. But I clung to my imperative, and to my baby, like I clung to so many self-imposed rules during those early postpartum months.
The baby can only stay awake for 90 minutes.
His naps should last at least an hour.
He has to eat every three hours.
I have to breastfeed for the first year.
My rules and rituals gave me some sense of control when everything — especially my mental health — was a mess. Holding a baby for that many hours a day was unhealthy, bordering on ridiculous. But I couldn’t stop. Because, I told myself, that was the only way. The alternative was utter chaos.
A show like Dexter relies on the audience’s ability to suspend disbelief — not only do we accept that someone who works in a crime lab could methodically stalk and murder human beings and never get caught, but we find ourselves swept up, even rooting for this sociopathic serial killer.
But the baby is too much.
In season four, Dexter and his wife have a newborn. Dexter gets up in the middle of the night and instantly pacifies his crying infant with a magically prepared bottle. Rita, the baby’s mother, is immaculately dressed and made-up in every scene. No undereye circles. No crying. No burp cloths and dirty onesies strewn across couches and tables. No breast pump supplies on the counter or old bottles in the sink. Rita and Dexter don’t bicker. No one is anxious.
Watching television for all those hours, I was struck by the number of depictions of new parenthood — even within the gritty, fantastical series like Dexter that I kept choosing — most of which were similarly oversimplified. Babies cry, new parents are sleep -deprived, and each day ends with everybody smiling as they crawl into bed.
Not only had I built many of my expectations about babies around fictions like these, I’d also built my expectations about the postpartum period on clichés and generic narratives. I’d heard the clichés so often that I hadn’t ever heard the truths behind them.
Once I was a new mother, experiencing the real, messy difficulties of those first few months, I felt completely unprepared and lost. The baby wasn’t sleeping. He had reflux, spitting -up over 50 times a day. He cried constantly. I cried constantly. My hormones were all over the place. Breastfeeding was physically and emotionally exhausting.
So I did what any good Millenial would do: I Googled every cough, every cry, every difficulty and potential affliction. And, of course, everyone had different analyses, conflicting advice. Because, of course, there is no definitive answer. All babies and mothers are different.
Another thing I hadn’t anticipated: how anxious this lack -of -control would make me. On the one hand, I knew nothing about the realities of parenthood, and on the other hand, the Iinternet told me more than I ever needed to know. But rather than reaching out to other real voices — real people — for help, I shut them out. I clutched my baby to my chest and cocooned the two of us inside the safety of silence. No questions, no anxiety, no noise at all.
Recovery from postpartum depression is a difficult and slow process. For me, it began with letting go, both metaphorically and literally, and listening. I started trusting, and hearing, others — not the myriad, manic voices of a Google search, but a few people whose opinions and advice I respected. We hired a sleep consultant, and I started seeing a postpartum therapist. These were not easy decisions or actions: the expense of the sleep consultant was nearly prohibitive, and the inertia I felt leaving the house for my weekly therapy appointments was tremendous. But the act of hiring those two professionals helped me start letting go of the control I’d clung to but never really had — to accept the unpreparedness, the not-knowing, the feeling of helplessness that comes with being a parent.
At my first appointment, the postpartum therapist told me to stop breastfeeding, an experience neither I nor my son seemed to particularly enjoy, but one I’d felt I needed to continue. But why? the therapist asked. Why was I continuing if it wasn’t an enjoyable, bonding experience? The baby would be fine on formula. And I wouldn’t be adding to my anxiety: no more strategizing about feedings and pumping sessions; no more worrying about latching issues or whether my son had eaten enough; no more breastfeeding hormones.
Unsurprisingly, the sleep consultant told me to put my son down for his naps. She also told us that the baby should be sleeping in his own room instead of in the room with us. She gave us many helpful guidelines and suggestions, but more than that, she gave me permission to let go.
I stopped breastfeeding my son. He did fine with formula. I started putting him down for his naps. He slept. We all did, eventually. I started doing things by myself, for myself, again. This is not to say that everything was suddenly great, simply because I got help and followed professional advice. There were many days when I still felt anxious: —about my body taking too long to heal; about leaving the house; about my son not hitting a particular milestone, or about his crying, or the color of his poop. On those days, I recited a cliché to myself, one I’d heard many times but only now heard completely: I went through the motions. I did the things I knew I needed to do even though they made me anxious, even though I felt too tired or sad or scared to do them. I laced up my shoes and went for a run, even though my body felt like Jell-Oo and my brain felt like a helium balloon. I went to a coffee shop and “read” for an hour, even though that translated to “looked at the pictures in People magazine.” I played the piano. I called my friends. I kept putting the baby down for his naps. Gradually, the bigness and heaviness of every choice started to become smaller and lighter.
And gradually, the terrible anxiety dissipated.
When I finally unmuted the television, I was shocked. The voices and soundtrack in my head had been so different. That’s what Rita’s voice sounds like? There’s synthesized orchestral music playing during the murder scenes? I almost muted everything again; I preferred my imagined, idealized show. But eventually the imperfect voices and schmaltzy music grew on me. I’d missed the noise—flawed and grating as it sometimes was. I turned it up.
Anne-Marie Thompson is the author of Audiation, winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. A pianist-turned-writer, she has taught music, writing, and literature at Johns Hopkins University, Westminster College, and the Syracuse Downtown Writers Center. Originally from southeast Texas, she now lives in Syracuse with her husband and son.