I was struggling as a new mother. Finding my mom group made me realize I wasn't alone

When I was vii months pregnant, my married man strike down away a shelf while trail running and sustained life-altering injuries. The final weeks of my pregnancy were spent visiting the hospital and preparing our home for his return. He was cleared to walk again the week before I went into labour. Life felt fragile and I clung to a vision of the future where we were happy again with our new baby in our arms.

The day our daughter was born, I felt everything people say you’re supposed to feel. I felt a love so intense it was like my soul had ruptured and taken shape in my arms. She was perfect.

The love stayed but something else crept in after we brought her home. It was a swirl of sadness, fear, rage and loneliness. At night, my husband and I rocked our baby to sleep. She and I cried until it felt like I might drown in our tears. My husband tried to pull me out of my despair but I felt myself floating away.

My anxiety made leaving the house feel treacherous but I pushed through to go for library story time and baby yoga. It was good for her, I told myself. Crossing the bridge into downtown, I gripped the stroller tightly, terrified that I might somehow push her over the edge. Every passing car felt like a threat and I questioned every stranger’s glance.

At one baby group, I met Cecily. When she shared her experiences with motherhood, I recognized something in her I felt in myself: a fierce love for her baby paired with a self-imposed pressure to do everything perfectly. 

I awkwardly asked if she liked coffee and our friendship began. We spent hours in coffee shops talking about our unfamiliar postpartum bodies and how impossible everything felt.

We quickly started meeting with the rest of our mom group: Arleigh, Alexandra, Caoimhe, Jemma and Sarah.

One day, Sarah invited us back to her condo for a playdate. Sitting on the floor with our babies, I felt immense relief. These women were strong, capable and deeply devoted to their babies. They reflected my worries back to me and made them feel survivable. I realized I wasn’t alone, and over the next year, we raised our babies side by side.

As my community expanded, my mental health declined. Sleep deprivation and a difficult physical recovery wore me down. I had moved to Vancouver Island shortly before I got pregnant and my support system lived far away. On the phone with family and friends, I talked about the tasks of mothering but glossed over my experience with motherhood. It felt easier to pretend everything was OK.

Thoughts of suicide began to creep in. I loved my daughter more than anything, yet just five months after she was born, I believed she would be better off without me. I was confused and too afraid to say anything out loud, even as my husband urged me to talk about what was wrong. I shut everyone out and clung to my daughter for fear that if I let go, I would never come back.

As the months passed, the women in my mom group shared more openly. They too were navigating postpartum alongside their own grief, relationship strain and mental illness. They spoke honestly about how hard motherhood could be. Slowly, their honesty made space for my own.

One day, walking home from a mom group playdate, Cecily said, “I think you might have postpartum depression.” It was the first time someone had said those words to me and I started to consider that I might be sick instead of broken.

I eventually reached out for help. My counsellor encouraged me to speak with my nurse practitioner, who diagnosed me with postpartum depression. The cumulative trauma of my husband’s accident, combined with my unwell postpartum brain, had made me very sick. 

With therapy and medication, the intrusive thoughts around suicide quieted and I started to feel like myself again.

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That summer, we celebrated seven babies turning one and seven women surviving a year of motherhood. 

We have since returned to work and one of our beloved members has moved away from Vancouver Island, but we still try to see each other often. Our playdates look different now, with toddlers running around instead of infants dozing in our arms, but some things remain the same. We still gripe about our weird postpartum bodies and the challenges of motherhood, just with a little more wisdom and a little less wide-eyed panic.

It's hard to find the right words to thank someone for saving your life. 

To my mom group, thank you for saving mine. There is no greater gift to a mother than more time with her child, and you gave me that. 

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Freelance contributor

Emily Wagner lives in Victoria with her husband and daughter. She works in emergency management, supporting communities recovering from disasters.

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