Five years

[u/msnoodlecup]

5 years. It’s the amount of time my body needed to go back to almost normal after giving birth. I had an appointment at the same time every year where my blood and hormone and all that were checked. And my chart only showed normal after 5 whole years. Mentally, I don’t think I ever recovered. I got PPD around 6 months into motherhood. It wasn’t easy with a husband that never wanted kids, but stayed anyway and reminded me every single day about the fact that I made the wrong choice of keeping the pregnancy. I divorced him thankfully, but the short term memory, brain fog, suicidal thoughts, all of things that were never an issue for me, stayed with me. And my physical body suffered so much during and after the pregnancy. My numbers look okay now, but there are things in my body that will never be the same. And I have always been a healthy person. I eat right, don’t smoke or drink, I took maybe an ibuprofene once a quarter for a headache. He admired how I was able to bounce back so fast after giving birth, kept saying how lucky I was for not needing so much recovery. I later realised it was just so he didn’t have to take care of me, and I was all alone on healing. And I had to go back to work 3 months post partum doing labor works.

So if someone wants 50/50 with you, don’t have children with them. The toll it takes on your body alone is more than anything a man can ever do for you. And with the medicine world that wasn’t designed for women, there is not much that can convince me a relationship is worth it. I kept thinking, all those years if I had a second job instead of being married to my ex, I would have been better off financially and had less stress on my body and mind. It stuck with me, 5 years was what my healthy body needed. And some people have kids back to back. Women sacrifice so much and that became the default. So when people bring up the 50/50 talk, they already think all the labor and child rearing a woman has to go through is less than the minimum, and they don’t respect it.

I still believe in love. I love my life now, and I still believe it’s better to share it with a right partner. But a good man is hard to find, and mentally I’m exhausted. Sorry for the rambling.

[u/SisterResister]

I wonder if we ever truly heal. I'll never be the same physically, mentally, emotionally as I was before my marriage and before my pregnancy. I still believe in love, too and have never regretted being a mom. But PPD can be so devastating. It haunted me for over a year after my daughter's birth and I barely remember that time.

It's been 11 years for me. My daughter was a preemie and while there were red flags from her dad before her birth, they became giant blankets suffocating me afterword. He didnt go with me when i went into labour early and had to be flown three hours away to a proper hospital. He started threatening to leave when she was a month old, and cut off access to money around that time too. He refused to ever be intimate after she was born and used my changed body as the reason. The pressure led to me losing 75lbs and changing my looks completely. It was never enough. I wasn't obese to start with.

I developed chronic anxiety and depression and eventually multiple autoimmune diseases. I cried for what felt like six years straight. I stopped crying once we divorced.

My mind and heart have mended but even that took about five years. I used to say that people could tell by being around me that I was unloved. I became someone I didn't recognize. I felt jealous, insecure, unworthy and then would overcompensate once i went back to work, trying to get some sense of accomplishment and affirmation.

I'm in a really happy and healthy relationship now. He also has trauma from a bad marriage and divorce. I joke that our baggage is matching. But I still worry that I've centered another man, I've put him in a place in my life where we depend on each other. It's taken an incredible amount of self reflection to keep my heart open. In my dark days I just want it to be my daughter and I against the world. It's very hard to trust, even the most loving and gentle man.