I only care about books where women go insane. That's primarily what I read, and what I want to read, and what I write and want to write. This is because I have always wanted to go insane. 

Since becoming a mother in January, I've realized that all I needed to do to go insane was have a baby. 

A baby is a little unit of madness. There is no reasoning with a baby. They are thoroughly dysregulated — digestion, sleep, limb control. They rely on you to shepherd them into the realm of the living. This is how we eat. And this is how we sleep. And this is how we distinguish between day and night. And this is how we receive comfort when we are upset. And this is how we come to know and depend on one another. 

Onboarding someone to human existence would be a tough job if I were in peak condition. But I did it as most mothers do: my brain demented by lack of sleep, my taint in tatters.

Delivery was my first taste of the madness.

After pushing for a couple hours to no avail, the OBGYN on call informed me that my baby was “massive.” This news startled me. At the advice of my OBGYN (who wasn't on call and therefore not present), I hadn't done a third trimester ultrasound because my pregnancy was progressing normally without complications. Up until this moment everything indicated my baby was of average size. 

The doctor added that my baby’s shoulder was stuck on my pelvic bone (this is called “shoulder dystocia” if you want to look it up on TikTok and freak yourself out – no judgment here, it's one of my favorite pastimes). To get the baby out, I’d need either an episiotomy or a C-section, and my pushes in the next ten minutes would determine which. 

Suddenly, the room flooded with people in scrubs. In my memory, I blink and there they were, cluttering the previously empty room. I don't know what their jobs were and how they could help me. They just quietly watched me.

As I mustered all of my energy into each push, my doula, OB and nurse insisted over and over and over with unfailing enthusiasm: “You can do this!” 

Why are you saying that? I thought. What evidence do you have that I can do this? I didn't dare say this out loud.

Now I understand that this is the unhinged contradiction at the heart of motherhood: You are given an impossible task. You are told over and over that you can do it. When you express doubt or anxiety or despair, you risk being pathologized.

My plan was to enter the first weeks of motherhood on the lookout for anxiety and depression. I was determined to scan myself frequently for unrecognizable thoughts and behavior.

As soon as I was thrust into early motherhood, I found this understanding of postpartum anxiety and depression absurd. You know what was insane? The idea that anyone would not feel anxious or depressed in these circumstances. 

My vulva and butthole alternated between aching and burning. Even laughing sent a jolt of pain through my anus. When I told a lactation consultant that I found breastfeeding painful, she cocked her head and asked if I had especially sensitive nipples. I slept in mercilessly short bursts, awoken either by imaginary cries or real cries. My body seemed unable to refresh on this little sleep. To be awake meant brimming with sluggish confusion and dread.

I fantasized constantly about abandoning my life. How would I do it? I pictured jumping in my car and driving far, far away. But I wanted to bring my baby, whom I felt an opioid-level attachment to. I'd bring my baby with me, yes, but, somehow, when I was far, far away from my home, I wouldn't have to breastfeed or stay up all night, and I'd have an entirely new body. 

I can't even come up with a competent fucking fantasy, I seethed to myself.

I was absolutely certain I could not go on. I could not tolerate having milk sucked out of me every 2-3 hours – neither the physical discomfort nor the constricting schedule. I could not spend another hour rocking my baby with no guarantee of relief. I could not function on so little sleep. 

"I'm shocked more babies don't die," I told a friend when he called to check in.

"I mean, that does happen," he said with a nervous laugh.

"Not nearly as often as makes sense to me now," I replied.

Reading the book Matrescence by Lucy Jones was one of my sole comforts.

In it, she writes: "As a society, we just don't seem to be very interested in the actual flesh and bones of the maternal experience. Maternal subjectivity has, until very recently, been almost entirely absent from Western philosophy, literature and culture. I hadn't read about it in any of the core texts in my English literature degree."

I got a MFA in creative writing. None of our assigned short stories or novels addressed motherhood in depth. We were always talking about finding the universal in the specific. Mining life for magical moments that unexpectedly sparked empathy and revealed profound emotional truths. 

None of my life experience from before held a fucking candle to these raw months. I will never be done processing it. I could write about it forever. How has anyone kept silent about this?

I had a friend whose newborn was deemed underweight at one of her first pediatrician appointments. The pediatrician informed her that she'd need to "triple feed" her baby, which means breastfeed the infant every two hours, then bottle feed the baby formula and then pump to encourage her breasts to produce more milk. 

By my estimation, it would take two hours to do all of this – nurse, then give the baby a bottle and then pump – meaning this schedule effectively guaranteed no sleep. It demanded round-the-clock physical and mental labor.  

At the same appointment, my friend had to fill out the Edinburgh survey. I know because I had to at my baby's appointments too. We were asked to rank how much we identified with the following sentences:

I look forward with enjoyment to things. What should I look forward to? I alternated between changing my diaper and the baby's diaper. Nobody could give me a clear answer on when this would change.

I have been so unhappy that I've had trouble sleeping. I wasn't sleeping because my baby wouldn't sleep, and that made me unhappy. My sleep-deprived mind couldn't sort out the causal relationship here. Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The unhappiness or the lack of sleep?

I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong. This baby depended on me for food, sleep, hygiene, comfort. Was it irrational to have a pronounced sense of culpability? 

I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. Sorry, what was funny about all of this? (I actually did find many moments hysterical, like watching my baby stare in amazement at an illustration of just a white circle on a black background, but I blame delirium.)

In Matrescence, Lucy Jones writes, "Why are we sending a high-risk group off the spend an unknown period of time at home alone, where they must look after vulnerable infants and recover from the trauma of giving birth, while burdened with loneliness, lack of sleep, and a shedload of impossible cultural expectations, including the imperative to enjoy every minute of it? Are these the actions of a responsible or functional society?"

When they tell you, “You can do this!”, what they actually mean is, “You have to do this." 

What they should say is, "You have no choice but to reconfigure yourself in such a way that you can do this.” 

I would have told myself, "You're right. You cannot do this. What's being asked of you is unfeasible. Your despair is normal. You have every right to question platitudes, doctors, reality itself. And also, little by little, your brain and body will transform and adapt. The process is unprecedentedly painful and gradual. It will render you unrecognizable. You will run yourself dry of your resilience. You will continue somehow. This is insanity."

It’s not insane that mothers think they can’t do it. What’s insane is that mothers do do it.