Cheers for Actually Showing the Tears

Although LOOONG overdue (but when do I have time to watch prime-time TV?) I want to say a big CHEERS to "Scrubs". I just started watching the 6th season on DVD (Thanks Dad!) and within the first few episodes, there's a very happily expected birth. One of the main female characters, Carla, gives birth, and for once the event doesn't include cute little huffs and puffs followed by a perfectly clean, healthy pink (aprox. 3 month-old) bundle being passed around while mommy sits back and glows, her lipstick still looking fresh. Carla instead labors for hours only to be given a C-section - a little nod to the harsh reality that the act of birthing NEVER goes the way you wish and plan for it to go.

In later episodes the male characters gradually piece together that Carla is showing signs of early postpartum depression. It's the big kicker at the end of a particularly great episode - remember, this a commedy - but as a woman watching the episode, a MOMMY, that is, I was practically yelling at the screen "Carla has PPD, duh!"

And it's not just cute little baby-blues sniffles. She's bawling uncontrollably. She's sobbing because she can't get her baby to latch on (Oh! What's this? Breastfeeding isn't perfectly easy and natural? But it looks so easy on TV! When they actually dare to mention it on TV, that is...) She's a depressed, panicked, sleep-deprived, desperate mess. She feels like she can't do it, has to get a break from the baby, isn't a fit mother. She was lying in bed holding a tiny, beautiful newborn, sobbing her brains out.

And I watched this silly-stupid sitcom that usually could make me snort coffee through my nose, and said, "oh my God...that was me."

It is awful, it's never the same mommy to mommy, and of course, it does eventually go away, and life seems absolutely beautiful a year later. I think I was lucky. But yeah, I remember it well.

Cheers to for showing that sad, scary-ass side of new mommyhood.