Dark Days- My Struggle with Depression in Pregnancy

Today is grey and rainy. Watery light softly filters in through the glass windowpane directly to my left, and the lack of fabric barrier on the window adds a distinct chill to the air. I’m wearing an olive green knit hat and a thin grey hoodie (and I’m honestly second guessing that decision now due to said chill). I love days like this, but lately they’ve taken me back to some darker times I had all but forgotten.

The Netherlands is rainy and cold for about 9 months of the year. For most women, pregnancy usually isn’t super easy or comfortable, and the two pregnancies I experienced while living in that little Dutch village on the outskirts of Amsterdam were no different. Extreme motion-sickness/nausea combined with emetophobia (the fear of throwing up), along with intense-and-growing anxiety produced some pretty paralyzing effects. In this moment, sitting by this window with the chill of this rainy December afternoon seeping through my too-thin hoodie, I remember those things so vividly I might as well be living it.

Shaking hands clutched the water bottle tightly, eyes were closed, breaths pulled deeply in through the nose, out the mouth, through the nose, out the mouth. Heart galloped and palms were clammy as the tram heading to the city center jerked and shuttered around curves, lurching violently at each stop. Snacks were packed in bag sitting on the floor between those shaking legs, but to eat them meant to risk throwing up between stops. And waiting too long to eat them held the same risk.

My second pregnancy in the Netherlands was around this same time of year, and though it ended in miscarriage shortly after Christmas, I still remember those ten weeks of viable pregnancy plus four weeks waiting for the end. Sometimes the motion sickness was so intense that the scroll of a phone, the movement of actors on a screen, and reading lines on a page was impossible. I also struggled with Antinatal Depression (basically postpartum on the front end of pregnancy), and that greatly contributed to my inability to cope with the physical aspects of each pregnancy.

This weather, so like the weather in The Netherlands, takes me back to that tiny apartment. I can feel the depth of the panic, the sickness, the tiredness, the fear, and the numbness. I can feel the hopelessness that seemed to wrap around me like a blanket when I woke up each morning.

These days it’s just an echo. A memory. A photo I can pull out of a box and turn over in my hands, hold close to my eyes to trace the details, and return to the box when I’m done.

I say all that to say this: if you’re in the middle of the story I just recounted, have hope. There will come a day where you will be able to take the memories out, turn them over in your hands, and return them to the box without feeling every whisper of difficulty.

This afternoon, in this place, with this weather, and these clothes, it feels exactly the same as it did this day 6 years ago, but I know it’s not. Those days made me into who I am now. And these days are making me into who I will be later. And one day, at the end of it all, I’ll be able to turn each memory over, examine it, and put it back, knowing that each saturated or faded, glossy or matte, colorful or black & white photo are just pieces that make up who I was meant to be.