Simone's Conversation Starter: A simple interaction that triggers a flashback

Flashbacks send us sifting through a bank of memories. To be exact, this bank has 2.5 million gigabytes of digital memory.

Feb 26, 2024

By Anna and Elena Balbusso ~ Italian Surrealist illustrators

The Conversation Starter

Today’s conversation starter is about simple interactions that trigger flashbacks. Flashbacks send us sifting through a bank of memories. To be exact, this bank has 2.5 million gigabytes of digital memory as cited by Scientific American.

To back into this topic, I start off with an essay called ‘Nobody Talks About This’ that I wrote right around the time Teddy started to sleep through the night. This essay depicts a simple interaction that triggers a flashback. In my experience, when flashbacks happen, it can feel one of two ways—
(1) Empowering, because we are able to recognize how far we have come.
(2) Intrusive, if we are still in the process of healing.

Let’s back into this conversation with a personal essay titled, Nobody Talks About This

At the local consignor store I spotted a Doona stroller and I knew a newborn and mama had to be nearby. There they were! It was the shop manager and her 3 week old baby boy. I caught them on her first day back to work. Despite not really knowing this woman except for seeing her a few times when frequenting the store, I was happy for her and curious about her experience. She looked the same and that surprised me as I expected to see some noticeable change. Perhaps I was projecting because I couldn’t totally recognize myself after giving birth to Teddy and it took me some time to realize that at the end of the day, it was an absolutely new and eventually improved version of me.
“Don’t mind the outfit…my fiancé dressed him!” she said. Her infant was wearing a cute onesie with printed hamburgers layered with corduroy overalls. Everyone around us was asking about the baby but I felt the urge to ask about the mama. “How are you doing?” It felt like such a simple but loaded question and I immediately felt sort of bad for asking it. Of course she is adjusting. Of course she is recovering. Of course she is sleep deprived. She is pretty much surviving. But I still felt compelled to give her the space to share if she wanted to.
I remember when Teddy was about 3 weeks old and it was also my first day back to my office. As I was walking to the mailroom, I could see the building’s custodian who had not seen me since I was pregnant. He was such a sweet man but as soon as I heard his keys clanging, I wanted to become invisible. I was already overwhelmed by leaving the house to begin with. “Simone!” he said. “You finally had your baby!” I explained how I ultimately had to be induced (even though I did not want to) and that things were going well! My response was as sparknotes as it gets but I didn’t necessarily want to invite him into my web of angst regarding my labor & delivery. He pressed on and asked— “but how are you doing?” followed by a statement on how no one ever asks how the mother is doing. I could tell he had a wife or a sister. He seemed way too tuned into postpartum. I felt like he could see through the vagueness of my answer and recognize the emotional instability I was trying to suppress. I was plagued with postpartum depression and he figured it out. On the verge of crying, I quickly composed myself and collected my mail.

The Conversation

The essay leaves off with me feeling extremely overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by a seemingly simple interaction with a few harmless questions. But the truth is, postpartum was interfering with my mental health and causing me to withdraw and feel shame. So to me, these questions felt intrusive.

I will be touching on Postpartum throughout this newsletter and feel like this is good moment to introduce it — especially since the essay is called Nobody Talks About This. I hope to peel back the layers of it and lift that veil, if you will, over time. It is a veil that so many of us sadly wear for varying amounts of time. As it pertains to this essay, I will start off by describing what it can do to moms shortly after they have given birth.

Postpartum depression (PPD), the onset of depressive episodes after childbirth, is the most common postnatal neuropsychiatric complication (source: NCBI). It is debilitating and creeps in during the fourth trimester like an unwanted guest. The fourth trimester is the 12 weeks following the birth of your baby. Not everyone has heard of it, but every parent and their newborn baby will surely experience it. It is a time of great physical and emotional change as your baby adjusts to being outside the womb, and you adjust to your new life as a parent (source: pregnancybirth&baby).

Progesterone is the most abundant hormone in pregnancy and after you give birth, there is a dramatic drop in it. This, along with all the other changes that occur naturally, induces a variety of powerful emotions. Most new moms (and dads!) experience postpartum "baby blues" after childbirth. This commonly includes mood swings, crying spells, anxiety and difficulty sleeping. Baby blues usually begin within the first 2 to 3 days after delivery and may last for up to two weeks (source: mayo clinic).

This is pretty standard for all women as the body is undergoing rapid physical and hormonal changes — the uterus shrinking back to its normal size and producing breastmilk, just to name a few. But some new moms experience a more severe, long-lasting form of depression known as postpartum depression. This is completely involuntarily and an invisible yet serious complication after birth. There is no way to predict how long it will persist.

While PPD is chemical and needs to run its course, there are certain things you can do immediately after birth that could prevent the baby blues from turning into PPD. I plan to dedicate a piece to this topic but here are just a few things that I wish I did sooner—

Getting breastfeeding help early on. I was set on nursing and pumping and it is definitely a skill you need to finetune. I learned this the hard way. You do not just bring baby to your chest and voila! Latching requires practice and if you have no knowledge you will likely cause yourself significant discomfort or even injury. With pumping, not knowing the intervals/cadence you should be incorporating early on, not knowing your flange size, and utilizing the wrong pumps — are just a few things that will stifle your production. That being said, get help EARLY on. This will set you up to be able to nurse/pump for as long as you want and help you feel like you have a handle on it.
If you’re not up for something, say no. You do not need to force yourself to immediately re-enter society. I felt so obligated to return to normalcy that I neglected what I really needed in the 4th trimester—to nest and to physically and emotionally heal. Resuming regular programming too soon is physically dangerous. After childbirth, the placenta leaves behind a wound the size of a dinner plate inside of your uterus. You may have postpartum contractions, stitches from tearing or from the incision if you had a c-section, bleeding, hemorrhoids, engorgement, cracked/sore nipples, night sweats…just to a name a few. You need time to heal. Be kind to yourself and give yourself this time.
Accept your fluctuating hormones. Your hormones are chemical messengers in your body and have a mind of their own. Crying spells, feeling apathy or general malaise, extreme fatigue — all of this will likely happen. Let yourself feel the feels! And surround yourself will people who understand and let you be (or help you if that’s what you need!)
Don’t want visitors? Don’t have them over. You have just met your baby! It is a special time and you want to have that space and privacy to bond. If there’s one thing you and your baby have in common right after the birth, it’s fragility. This fragility can trigger postpartum anxiety and may make you feel incapable of saying no. Consider sharing in advance that you will be limiting visitors to keep the baby safe, and that you will let them know when you will feel comfortable having visitors. Elisa Cincelli perfectly captures my sentiment in her article in the newsletter, Parents:
I was completely unprepared for the physical recovery following childbirth after I had my first. I had no idea I’d be bleeding over a period of weeks, and I found it difficult to get the rest I was being told to get. Even when relatives came over to help, I still felt the physical strain of having to be up and getting the house together.
This time around, I treated myself like a person recovering from a major physical event. That meant allowing myself to rest for as long and as often as I wanted, and reducing any mental or physical stress. For that to happen, we knew we had to limit visits.
Often adults or older children can pass on a virus, even if they don’t have any symptoms. The newborn is more vulnerable to getting sick, and isn’t yet inoculated. We decided it was safer to keep the germs away.

Why did I start this conversation?

When that interaction took place at the consignment store, my postpartum depression had more or less subsided. I find it so interesting but telling that it triggered a flashback to a conversation with my office building’s custodian. In many ways, it was history repeating itself expect that now I was the custodian in the scenario asking the same simple yet piercing questions to a mother in her fourth trimester. I wonder if I overwhelmed her. I probably did. But it took me having a flashback to gain full empathy and understanding with how delicate the fourth trimester can be for women.

Awareness and sensitivity is so key. It is important to recognize how someone may be feeling by reflecting on our own past experiences. I guess life experience automatically doles this out but reflection, self-awareness, a good listening ear, and the willingness to be vulnerable gets us there much faster. So I say, welcome those flashbacks! Those moments will force you to ask yourself “have I come full circle” or “is there more healing to be done?”

If you know a mom who is in the 4th trimester, my recommendation is to give her grace and space. Do not overwhelm her. Just let her be. Questions like “how are you doing” feel intrusive and counterproductive. Instead, you could alleviate the difficulty of that time for her with a simple kind gesture, even from afar.

If this post brought up any feelings for you, please feel free to share.