We've all heard the trite, (see also played out,) jokes about women's hormones when they're pregnant. We supposedly all turned into raging psychos eating ice cream and pickles and attacking husbands with knives over nothing. And the truth is, that's not really how it happens. Yes, some women get pika during pregnancy. Pika is a rare disorder where a person craves eating non-edible foods. And it does happen. And does happen to healthy women. Rarely.

This friend of mine got it and wanted to eat handfuls of dirt and drink gasoline. Cross my heart and hope to have more babies. She didn't do these things, but she thought about it. Her baby daddy pumped the gas for that pregnancy. Smart dude, that guy.

But its rare. So are the mood swings that mean that we for no reason freak out. Mostly when we get emotional, its something that would have made us mad/sad/striken with beauty, anyways. It just might be more pronounced. As in, when I was pregnant, I started watching Grey's Anatomy. Which is trash. I knew it was trash. And if I'm really telling it all, I would be slightly touched by parts of that show when not pregnant. Which is embarrassing. But true. Because that show is completely unrealistic drama trash. But while pregnant I loved it and cried to it and held on their every trashy dramatization.

And everyone's heard these stories. What everyone maybe hasn't heard, is that after you have the baby you cry. You're shedding hormones that you've needed for 9 months and built up a stock of and your body just sheds some of them out your eye holes. Apparently. This is science. Or something.

I knew about the "baby blues" and about actual postpartum depression. Some of the reason I wanted natural childbirth (and mind you this was what I chose to do, and does not reflect what everyone should do. Each family is different and has different needs for how to do the deed,) anyways, the reason I chose natural childbirth is because I had read that you had less of a chance of having postpartum depression if you did it sans drugs.

What no one told me, was there's baby blues, there's depression, and then there's this crying that happens because your hormones are all haywire and trying to regulate themselves out. I started crying because someone was late to lunch. Seriously.

I've worked in some of the most emotionally taxing jobs that exist. I've worked with abused kids for most of the last 10 years. I don't cry because someone's late to lunch.

Bawling.

Its not the baby blues. Or depression. I literally look at my life at least every other day and think "someday when I look back on my life, I will think of this as the best time of my life." But there's crying.

Then, there are some women who have more than crying. They're crying, and their crying comes with the feeling of wanting to crawl under the covers and have the baby go away forever and not caring that the baby's crying or just wanting it to go away. And that's a horrible feeling. Because you're supposed to get to feel like this is the best time of your life. And when you don't, you know something's wrong. And because we're women, we feel we should be able to fix it. And when we can't, we're ashamed. We feel like we're being ungrateful for the gift of this wonderful new life. But really its hormones. And we deserve help for this sort of awful thing that's happening instead of the wonderful thing we were supposed to get. So please, get help if this happens. Don't be ashamed. You didn't do anything wrong.

And go to the village you've been building. And make sure it didn't happen there. Because we need to help a girl out when she's down. Treat her like a queen who deserves to be treated when there's a problem. Swoop in. Sweep out the shame.

And if you or she are just a little extra teary now and again, that's normal. As it turns out, its just some shit no one told me about.