Well, I am Latin. I am from Colombia. So Latin cultures [are] very renowned for their chancla- the flip flop. And that’s like a weapon of mass destruction for mothers and stuff because they rule the roost with the flip flop and children are supposed to be deathly afraid and it’s like [a] come to Jesus moment when they see the flip flop in the hand- ready to fly.
And so it seemed very acceptable for spanking, maybe some corporal punishment along the way. I had it when I was a kid, so, I mean, I had everything from the flip flop and one time (which my mother didn’t know until I was in my 40s) that my aunt one time hit me with an electric cord and I still have the scar behind my knee.
Obviously I didn’t tell her because why am I going to tell my mom? I felt like I was going to get in trouble. So when I told her in my 40s, she’s like, “what?!” Even though my mom also spanked us and yelled at us and all this stuff. But that was above and beyond. It’s a very acceptable thing.
So it was almost automatic with me. And I didn’t even question it. Even though my husband was not as much, his family is not as much. I mean, it’s very rare on a very executive decision type of thing where you have to use it to control a kid, but not as commonly used [as] in my family. Oh, yes.
And so I have three children. My oldest is 19, a 17 and now a 10. And so when my youngest one, my ten, was born, we had just moved to another state. We’re originally from Florida. Hot, wonderful weather and then we go to Connecticut- cold. She was born in the winter. My husband was traveling.
I was basically by myself those first couple of months, which it was a wave of just desperation mixed with anger mixed with exhaustion. It’s like a huge cocktail of emotions. And I was just hitting everything that came in sight and I was yelling and yelling at the last littlest thing. I was just tired. And I’m like another me looking myself from the outside in.
I could see myself and I’m like, you’re like becoming this monster. I would be afraid of you. And so I took it out of my oldest at the time, she was nine. And so I would just scream at everything because I was breastfeeding and I had mastitis. And mastitis is like the evil cousin of a flu. I mean, you feel all the symptoms of a flu, but it’s not a flu, it’s just an infection in your breasts while you’re breastfeeding. It hurts a lot.
So I’m supposed to function and take care of a household and a newborn and stuff. So I don’t exactly know what happened. I know that Carlos, my husband, was not there. He was in Argentina somewhere. So nowhere near.
Something happened, I went into her room. Something about the laundry, I think. I don’t know. And I just whammed into her again. So this was not the first time, but this was the first time when she stopped me in my tracks. She looked at me straight in the eye. Like, you can imagine a little nine year old looking up at you because she’s little. And she’s like, “stop!”
And she put her hand up like that. At first, I’m like, “who do you think you are?” And then, a split second later, I’m like whoa… she stood up to me.
I’m like, “Damn!” it’s like, “sit your ass down!” I remember I was just shocked. And then I don’t know if I said I’m sorry or not, but I know that I left the room and I locked myself in the bathroom, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried, and I was just banging at the walls and everything.
“Mommy, why are you always hitting me?” I remember that part, “why you always have to hit me? This is the last time you’re going to hit me.”
Then Sarah, the little one, she was maybe three or four months old, and she started crying. She’s crying, I’m crying. My oldest is… I don’t know where she is. And after that, I really had to check myself out and say, ‘okay, you need to stop.’
For the first time, I had to see a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist wanted to put me on medication. But then she said, “but you’re breastfeeding, so what you need to do is just hang on for dear life and just check yourself, and check yourself and check yourself until you’re done breastfeeding. And then you can start taking your antidepressant.”
And it’s like a wave of just like I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not frustration. It’s more like you’re hurting. You’re not quite enjoying this motherhood thing. It’s not all butterflies and lovey dovey and ‘aww my little baby.’
No, you want to kill those little things. But then again, you’re like, shocked that you’re even thinking about it. You get this wave of guilt, of embarrassment, like, how can I be feeling this way?
And then, how can I be reacting this way physically? I just wanted to hit anything. My kid just happened to be there, and so I wanted to hit anything and anybody. And then I would call my husband, FaceTime him and say, “this is your child crying. And I would put the phone on the baby.” Like, “look, this is the shit I have to deal with every day. Blah, blah, blah.” He’s like, “what can I do from Argentina?”
And so that’s when he was traveling a good half time of the year- two, three weeks out of the month, he was gone. We had just moved, so we’re new in this little town. Very northern, very tiny town. I didn’t know anyone. We were renting a home. That was one of the worst homes I’ve ever been [to] in my life. It was tick infested and stuff. The guy just rented us this house as is, and it was disgusting, but it was the fastest thing we could get. And then we said, okay, one year, one year only, and we’re out of here.
So for one year since the moment she was born until the following year, we had to deal with [it]. And I hated that house. So I guess it was just an accumulation of that. The house, newborn baby, mastitis, breastfeeding, being by myself, the cold. I had been in tropical weather my entire life, and we’re in here in the smackdab middle winter, January with snow and where it gets dark at 3:45 in the afternoon.
I think the summer when we finally left the house and it was warmer, starting to get like a routine going. And again, what my psychiatrist said [was], you need to check yourself- if you need to sleep, if you need to get help from your oldest. Because I didn’t have any friends. I was literally by myself. My mother in law stayed with me until the first month of my daughter’s life, and then she had to go. So then after that, I was by myself. I didn’t have a group of mother friends or a village, mom village, nothing.
My older two were in third and second grade, so there were little ones, but then I had the littlest one, which was the diapers and the feedings, and she didn’t want to eat, and she wasn’t growing. And later I find out that there was some medical problems with her. So all that just piling up alongside what was already inside of me, which is the depression.
Depression runs in my family, as far as I know. My mom has it, I have it. But I was able always to control it with exercise, good health and everything. But okay. Mount Everest doesn’t even come close. It’s kind of like all the planets aligned of things happening.
Because the move was planned, the pregnancy was not. That was just an added bonus because we had planned to move to New York because my husband was transferred, and I was supposed to transfer with my company where I was working. I was supposed to just transfer over to the New York office. And then in the middle of the move time, I get knocked up.
We always joke as a sailor in port type of thing, he came home for the weekend because he was already in New York and I was still in Florida. He came home for his birthday and then, “oh shit, I’m pregnant now. Great.” Emotionally, yeah, I was like, bummed because literally at that time, that’s when my career ended, kind of… if I’m honestly speaking. Yeah, because I never went back to work full time. Really, I haven’t since she was since I was pregnant with her. I left part of me back there.
So looking back, I’m thinking, yeah, that’s kind of like part of the situation for me personally. And then you add on being a mom and then all the responsibilities of adulting and stuff, because the other two times that I was pregnant, I had a lot of support. I had family, and I continued working. So it wasn’t that horrible. Yes, it was hard the first couple of months, it’s the usual, but I was with people. I was with my mom, my sister, my friends and all that stuff. But then here I was completely by myself. And I think that finally, the depression that I already had, that always controlled, quote- unquote, the dam just broke open.
Can’t ignore me now. I knew what to do. I knew how I felt and when I felt those downs and everything, because it’s kind of like waves. You knew what to do, and I knew what to say, and my husband knew me, and he’s like, “okay, you need to go to bed and take a nap, and I’ll take over from here.”
But I couldn’t do that if I was by myself. So then the old monster depression just said, “oh, I got you now, baby. You’re all mine now!”
The best thing that I’ve done my entire life is exercise. I’m a runner. That’s my drug. That’s pretty much what saves me. When I find myself that I am not running on a consistent schedule, I feel it like that exhaustion- that just when you run, and I guess the toxins come out and you sweat them out and [I] truly believe that’s the best drug, because I don’t know if the medicine did anything for me. So I took them for about a year, and I just said, “okay, I’m just going to discontinue because I really don’t feel anything.”
I started walking with my daughter. I took on the stroller, and I went walking 2, 3 miles. It was nice because the one thing about Connecticut changing from Florida is that you had seasons and you had cool weather, and the summers were not as horrible. So I was able to walk with her, and then when she was a little bit bigger, I would put her on the bike seat, and so I would go with her. And that helped me… exercise, helped.
It helped me when I finally got a grip of things, and I started doing, like, a schedule of, ‘okay, after I drop off the two older ones at school, I do my morning walk with the dogs and everything, every day routinely.’ And it was fresh air, vitamin D, sunshine, movement. I’m a movement person. I cannot stay still.
{Are you able to recognize this in other people? What does it look like?}
I saw that. Yes, I saw your tiredness. I saw bitterness. You would never say shitty things about your children, but you would because you’re so tired and you love your children, but you’re so damn tired. “Please take them. Please take them.”
One thing that I did not have was someone say, “I’ll take your kids. Give me a couple of hours with them, and so you can go take a nap, take a bath, take whatever.” I didn’t get that. And so when I see that in someone and they’re just, like, desperately need to have those kids unloaded to someone else so they can just breathe, maybe not drink wine, but drink something like a little fruit cocktail or something, just to feel like an adult woman, just for a couple of hours. And that’s it. Not like a sherpa taking care of everything.
I almost can see it and hear it in the voice and in the face. It’s kind of like the face is hardened, and it’s like, “oh, my God.” And it’s just like my heart goes out to them. Because you want to help, but you just don’t know.
Because the problem with that and I’ve found out in a lot of cases that it’s so private, you don’t know a lot of the things that are going on, and so you don’t want to meddle, and you don’t want to go into their business because you don’t know what’s going on. And sometimes you should, because you see a lot of the cases of some moms that just went off the deep end and committed the worst of the worst crimes. And so you wish you could have been there for them, because they must have been in some deep, deep, dark space for them to go as far as they did. ‘These are the things that are causing me hurt, pain, exhaustion. I must get rid of them.’ I’m pointing to the children that are supposedly causing her all this hurt and pain.
And maybe the family just saw this wonderful family with her husband and everything from the outside in and thought, well, you know, we can’t go into people’s business. You know, right now everybody’s judging and and putting their opinion on how people raise their kids. So how do you know the difference between, should I put my business in there and tell her, look, you’re doing this thing wrong, or back off and mind your own business?
And that’s the scary part, because you never know what’s going on behind closed doors in the family and everything. You have no idea. Kids were, like, very off, very scared. They were almost too cautious and everything, and they were not children. They were not curious or getting dirty or anything. It was almost like they were afraid to get dirty. They were afraid to misbehave. They were afraid to do any of the things that kids do. They were like, deathly afraid because they kept looking back at the parents and especially the mom. I’m wondering if they just got scared the hell out of them, and I’m wondering if that’s the way she could keep control. But we never saw them anymore. And it was like one of the situations where you have a working friend and you’re friends because you work together, but then if you’re not working together, you kind of lose touch and everything. That’s how it was.
I remember as they were growing up, my daughter would get into everything. She was like mud. That’s her best friend. This kid was like, he would stay still. He would not get dirty. He would eat very cautiously. My daughter would be throwing stuff at the wall and getting dirty and stuff. I wanted her to get dirty and this kid was just way too cautious. You don’t have to be like a banshee kid, but you also have to be like a normal kid. Kids are not that clean.
And she was always very stressed. Her husband, again, would travel a lot. She was by herself, and she was always stressed. She was always bemoaning. And she would drink just a little bit too much, just a lot more wine, and always bemoaning. It’s like, “oh, I could have been this and I could have been that.” And I don’t know if that had anything to do with her kid being the way he was. I have no idea. Again, do you go into people’s business or not? Or do you go in there and try to question them or not?
It’s just such a very fragile situation. Finally moved to Texas and finally found that village that I was looking for of the moms. Between the three schools and my three kids, and especially my youngest one, I found that group of moms that we could rely on each other for help, for picking up for this dropping off, or like I just picked up one of my other mom’s friends three days in one week. And she’s like, “oh, my God, thank you.” Well, you have no idea how many times you saved my butt! So yeah, it’s okay.
I would tell myself: get friends, or just give myself some grace. Like, I wanted to make sure the laundry was done and make sure that the food was done and make sure that the homework was done. I was just putting so much pressure and weight on myself to try to get all those things done. And sometimes I would just tell myself, maybe if they don’t get done, they will live. They will not fail school. They’re not going to fail third grade.
I had this thing where every Sunday that the laundry must be done. Otherwise it’s like, I don’t know, the world will explode. It’s like, for some reason, it’s like if I didn’t keep that schedule going, like a ship schedule, oh my god, I would go crazy.
Maybe one thing that I would tell myself like, chillax girl. It will be fine if you skip a laundry day. It will be fine if you don’t happen to help them in their schoolwork as you planned- the spelling drills and the math homework and everything. You must do it at this time or your schedule is going to fall off the wheels or something. Maybe that because other than that, I didn’t have anything else.
I don’t know other than that… just hang on. This too shall pass. They will grow. You forget that you have a lot of blessings when you’re in that postpartum [haze]. Things feel blown out of proportion. It’s like everything is just enlarged. Like it’s bigger than they are, like worse than they are.
When you feel that cornered, almost like an instinct, basic instinct of an animal being cornered and you’re like with your claws out and stuff. That’s how I think postpartum feels. You as a human have to go into this fight or flight thing, self preservation, self protection type of thing. Even though you’re a mom. And most moms will lay their lives down for their kids. But somehow human instincts kick in and maybe they block your reasoning or rationality and you start doing weird stuff, keep your brain from not exploding.
So you kind of toggle through being a mom, serving these other little three humans or being a human woman, trying to keep it together from not having a meltdown. Which one do you do? And they fight against each other. Those instincts fight against each other.
If you’re a normal mom and maybe you don’t have these postpartum things, yes, you’re going to dedicate your life to these little humans. And that’s how it is. Supposedly you have no problem with that. But when this depression is in there, it becomes like the little devil on your shoulder and the little angel on your other shoulder and they’re like talking to you through both ears and stuff. Maybe that’s the best way I can describe that postpartum depression is it’s like fighting each other.
You feel like you’re exhausted and just emotionally and mentally exhausted. Now I can understand if you’re looking from the outside in how people might say, “oh, get it together woman. I mean, come on, you’re not the first mom on this earth. You’re not going to be the last one.” But maybe just they don’t quite understand what the hell is going on in your brain right now. And they don’t feel it, so they don’t empathize. And that’s the other part that’s hard to explain because then you feel so embarrassed because “how dare you feel like this?”
You’re supposed to be a mom and you’re supposed to be like all this flowers and lovey dovey, whatever. But it’s not really like that. For some of us, that postpartum is something not in all of us. It’s not an outside thing. It’s an inside thing. It hits some of us and it doesn’t hit the others. It’s just a thing that God says, you shall have it, you shall not. Then you go back into yourself and say, I need to ask somebody. And not be embarrassed, too embarrassed to ask somebody.
On top of that, they need to have at least one person, one that could be a family member, a mother, a sister, a best friend, anyone that they can go to and say, “have I been acting weird?” Great to have someone in person and look at you and see you like your state of physical state. Like you’re tired, you’re exhausted, you’re not eating well, you’re pale. So you need someone to tell somebody, be brave enough to ask for help and everything.
Yeah, that’s easy to say, but a lot of times you don’t even realize it. You’re just going with whatever your body’s telling you. Those are the people that need to come in and step in. Your mom, your aunt, your sister, your friend. Anybody that has enough confidence in their relationship with you that can say they can order you and say, bitch slap you and say, “get back into your room over there and close the door and I’ll take care of it.”
And like I said, you’re just going with it and you’re fighting all your instincts at the same time. And it’s horrible. It’s scary, actually. It’s very scary.
I wonder what would have happened if my daughter had not intervened, even though she doesn’t even realize it. She was only nine. I mean, good Lord, you know that little girl from New York who’s stopping the bull just like that? Maybe she was scared out of her mind, but then she had enough strength and courage to stop her mom who was yelling.
But I don’t want to be this Godzilla type of mom that they have to be afraid of. I don’t want them to be afraid. I want them to trust me. I want them to ask for, I don’t know, advice or whatever, but not be afraid of me. That’s how they were. And since they were born and so for her have done that to get the courage to stand up to me and put her hand in front of my face and just say, “hey, stop!” with our hands raised and yell at me. My brain went like, “what? What did just happen?”
I don’t even know if she realized that. I think if I would have asked her now she’s 19, a freshman in college- do you remember this time when you yelled at me and told me to stop hitting you?
I would be afraid to ask her that because that’s just heartbreaking. I don’t know if I want her to remember or I would just bring up a really sad moment. Now you have me thinking, should I ask her again? Do you remember that time? Blah, blah, blah? I don’t know if she’ll cry or…
I will definitely cry. She did save me, and she doesn’t even know it, because God knows what would have been the relationship, like, after that if I have kept going on that rampage, because it was literally a rampage, was just on a rampage. There’s no other way to describe it. I was just going crazy. And I’m embarrassed. I’m so embarrassed. Just because it’s like, oh, my God. Who does that to their kid?
Postpartum depression does that to their kids. That’s what it does.
Latinx Parenting’s mission includes education on chancla culture; to see examples of a chancla, Click Here.
La Leche League explains more about Mastitis here.
If you or someone you know is suffering from Postpartum Depression, there are resources to help.
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