Judgement Day

This news story just makes me so sad:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25431081-5001021,00.html

I wish people could just lay off with the judgey advicey bullshit when someone becomes a mother, and I wish women who have been through this stuff could be honest about how entirely shit it can be. Why is it that it takes five weeks of new parents group before a mum feels she can safely, and secretly, confide to another mum that the first few weeks of parenthood weren't all that she hoped? In fact that she had really wished that someone would knock on the door and declare that it was all a big administrative error, so sorry for the inconvenience, we need to take the baby back to its real parents.

Where's the reality? Why can't we say how it really is? Why didn't anyone tell me what those first few weeks were like?

I don't mind saying that about a week or so into the experience all I wanted to do was get in the car and drive very fast, far far away. From the baby. From the claustrophobia of those four walls. From my ruined body. From the relentless responsibility.

And I don't mind telling you that I am glad as hell I stopped breastfeeding when it became too painful and traumatic to deal with anymore. And to the people who have since suggested that I "just didn't try hard enough" - tell that to the blisters you wankers. And tell it to the delirium of postnatal depression that cleared up as soon as the breastfeeding hormones left my system.

There's just no reason why a woman should have to suffer like this or why a woman like Katy Isden should feel so alone and miserable that the only way out she can see is suicide.