Author and mother Sarah Hoover opens up about the hidden emotional toll of new motherhood and the urgent need for honest postpartum conversations.
In your writing, you talk a lot about the misconceptions and pressures that society places on new mothers. Can you discuss what those misconceptions and pressures are, and how you felt that stigma when you first gave birth?
Before I had my first kid, I remembered feeling that, as a woman, I should be a natural fit for motherhood, that maternal instinct would kick in the minute my baby was born, and I would fall madly in love with him. No one had hidden from me that motherhood was arduous, but I thought that if I were a good enough woman, it would feel natural and fulfilling, and the joy I got from loving this little creature so grandly would make up for how hard it is. I had a very traumatic birth, and was depressed when I was pregnant, because none of it felt natural to me. When my kid came out and they put him on my body, I felt nothing for him. I thought there was going to be some hormonal fireworks display, and I would feel so connected and madly in love, but I felt totally empty. It felt like the rest of my life, I was just going to be tethered to this creature that I felt nothing for. Every aspect of my life was so brutally impacted, including my identity, that I couldn’t believe that I had like gone through all of it and didn’t even have any maternal instincts for the kid.
If you had asked me one month in how it was going, I would have lied to you very convincingly, because I was also lying to myself. I had internalized so much of this messaging about what it means to be a good woman and mother, and I felt like part of my duty as a woman was to sell this version of motherhood that’s hopeful and exciting.
Why do you think more people aren’t talking about the disconnect that new mothers might feel?
The cultural narrative is so entrenched in this vision of what a mother is, going all the way back to the Virgin Mary. She’s selfless, devoted, and she puts her son first in every way. I felt like the total opposite of that. If you had asked me one month in how it was going, I would have lied to you, because I was also lying to myself. I had internalized so much of this messaging about what it means to be a good woman and mother, and it convinced me that part of my duty as a woman was to sell this version of motherhood that’s hopeful and exciting. I told myself that if I faked it long enough, eventually I would make it, and the trauma part would go away and make room for the joy and the fulfillment, but it didn’t happen.
What was your turning point when you realized you needed help?
I remember sitting in my kitchen and looking out the window, and thinking “How bad would it be for my family if I stepped off this ledge?” and then thinking about how unusually daring that thought was for me. I went to my annual GP appointment, and she just asked all the right questions. I let my guard down a little bit, and I’ll never forget that she looked right at me and said, “I think you’re in crisis, and if you don’t get it together, you’re going to blow up your life.” No one had spoken to me that directly, and that, in combination with the suicidal thoughts just two days apart, was so startling. She wrote me a prescription for a low-dose SSRI, but I had all these misconceptions about them. In three days, I felt a lift.
What made you want to speak out and share your story?
I wrote the book that I wish I had had during that time. It’s obviously all my personal experience, so I wrote the things that I felt could have been the most helpful to me while I was going through it myself. I felt so deeply alone when I was going through my dark days, and I thought I was a total anomaly and a complete freak. But it turns out so many other mothers feel the same way! I remember thinking I needed to write my truth in case it would help make other women feel less alone. Because if just one person had said to me, “When your baby comes out, you may not love them right away, and that’s OK. They’ll come out a stranger, your relationship will grow, and you’ll find your path to love, fulfillment, and motherhood,” it would have normalized my feelings, and I think my trajectory would have been so different.
How do you think postpartum depression affects children’s health?
When you’re disconnected and you hate your life, obviously, that impacts your ability to parent, even if you’re the most well-intentioned person. Kids sense that, and I think it’s very difficult to raise children who know how to connect and be loving if you’re not modeling any of that behavior for them. Postpartum depression is a topic of real urgency — it’s not rare. It’s particularly pernicious for women who don’t have money or resources, who don’t have the support that I did.
What values are you hoping to instill in your own children?
I want them to understand how important it is to follow your joy, and if you don’t feel joy, be inquisitive and understand why that might be. I want them to know that they own their story and that they own their truth. For so long, I was so dishonest with myself. I was the weirdo for complaining; I wasn’t a good enough woman to be a mother. I spent so much of my life trying to be polite and take up less space, ashamed of so many things about myself, like I didn’t deserve to have a voice. I don’t want that for my children. I want them to learn how to be their own advocates.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to new mothers?
Even though these phases seem so long and impossible when you’re in them, they end. And hey, it all ends, some day. So you owe it to yourself and to those little beings to really explore why you feel the way you do, to really be honest with yourself. There is incredible growth that comes from demanding more for yourself and learning to advocate for what you need to be a connected and fulfilled parent. You must have the perspective that these phases are short in retrospect, and you have to assure yourself that there’s light at the end of the tunnel if you do the work to find it.
