Proxy Mom: My Experience with Postpartum Depression

By Karol Kovalovich Weaver

     Proxy Mom: My Experience with Postpartum Depression traces a new mother’s postpartum depression. The main character, Marietta, narrates her pregnancy and birth experience, parenting a newborn, and her return to work. In the book’s acknowledgements, the author Sophie Adriansen and illustrator Mathou share that Marietta’s story is similar to what they faced after the births of their infants. Adriansen reveals that she experienced “a long period of postpartum depression” and Mathou confesses that, after her daughter’s birth, “it wasn’t exactly love at first sight and I didn’t exactly experience the most beautiful day of my life” (144, 145). Mathou writes, “This story is a bit like your [Adriansen’s] own story, as well as my story, and the story of all mothers” (145). Marietta, in other words, symbolizes every mother, not the ideal mother. Adriansen and Mathou explore postpartum depression in relation to cultural expectations about mothering and mothers. By focusing on the mother, the book upends social and cultural narratives that privilege the baby in the mother-and-child relationship.

After falling in love, Marietta and her partner Chuck decide to have a baby. Her joy-filled pregnancy ends with several weeks of pain due to Braxton-Hicks contractions. Her labor, delivery, and early attempts at breastfeeding also bring pain. Hoping for flowers and rest, Marietta receives bland hospital food and visitors who coo and fuss over the baby. Marietta feels little connection to her daughter, Zoe, and regrets wanting and having her. Once home, and despite care and concern from her capable and loving partner, she continues to struggle, emotionally vulnerable because of hormones and sleep-deprived from late-night feedings and diaper changes. Tired and despairing, she wishes for a Proxy Mom, a supermom who would know what to do and would be happy doing it. Proxy Mom, a red outline of a woman and a mother, is sweet, loving, and sexy; she is never tired, frustrated, or in pain. Unsure about her parenting, Marietta’s thoughts turn dark. Next to an open window, she thinks about getting rid of the baby or hurling herself from it. After finding a good child caretaker, she returns to work.

To explore the experience and impact of postpartum depression, the author and illustrator situate Marietta’s story in relation to larger narratives about mothering and mothers. When Marietta finally reveals the extent of her pain to a nurse, the nurse asks why she had not told anyone sooner. Reflecting on societal expectations ascribed to women, Marietta thinks, “WHY?! Because I was taught not to complain…Because what matters is my baby, because suffering is part of giving birth, because being a woman means pretending, it’s no big deal. Because nobody asked me” (47).  To show how ideas about birth and parenting differ depending on one’s culture, the creators of the graphic novel show Marietta thinking about how different cultures and nations (China, Turkey, Mexico) assist new mothers: “In Turkey, they say it takes forty days for a woman’s body to close back up. Hence, a young mother is never left alone during that time, for fear a jinn will sneak through the opening.” Learning this information, Marietta asks “Why am I all alone?” (83). The expectations placed on new mothers make seeking help for postpartum depression difficult. Adriansen and Mathou share, “Every year in the US, one in seven new mothers suffer mental health issues that require psychiatric treatment that can last from a few weeks to a few months. As so many get it, it is a public health matter.” They conclude, “Women are expected to be thrilled by the arrival of their newborn and to give them unconditional love. That expectation only increases the anxiety in those who don’t feel overwhelmed with joy. They will be all the more reluctant to seek…professional help…and will suffer” (122).

Throughout the book, Adriansen and Mathou focus on Marietta instead of baby Zoe. Text and images center Marietta’s emotions and bodily experiences; Zoe is an afterthought. This decision by the creators was likely meant to communicate the disconnect that Marietta experienced in relation to her daughter. It also contests social and cultural narratives about mothering. Most often, Zoe does not appear in the images or is placed away from Marietta. For example, multiple images show Marietta standing at a kitchen island or sitting at a kitchen table with Zoe in a bouncer on the floor. Marietta’s expression conveys despair; in several images, she looks inward, and her body is turned away from Zoe. The images in which Zoe is the focus replicate the Instagram trend of placing a baby near an object with a number designating the baby’s age. However, Adriansen and Mathou use this social media trend to chart Marietta’s ongoing postpartum depression as well as the small victories she feels about being a mother. With the support of medical caregivers, her understanding and helpful partner, and childcare providers and the passage of time, Marietta improves: “If my baby is six months, six days, or six minutes old, my birth as a mother finally happened. It’s never too late. There is no diploma for motherhood. We all just do the best we can. I did my best” (140).

Proxy Mom is a needed and timely book. In addition to high rates of postpartum depression, mothers face limited time in the hospital after giving birth, the lack of affordable and available childcare, the picture-perfect parenting and mommy influencers on social media, and the diminution of pregnant persons’ bodily autonomy. The book should be required reading in medical schools and in medical humanities courses. Finally, expectant parents and their friends and family should read it too.

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Karol Kovalovich Weaver is a professor of history at Susquehanna University. She teaches US history and the history of medicine. Her research focuses on the history of medical caregiving. She is the author of two books, Medical Revolutionaries: The Enslaved Healers of Eighteenth-Century Saint Domingue (University of Illinois Press) and Medical Caregiving and Identity in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region, 1880-2000 (Penn State Press).