Nada's enduring insistence on delusion

[Guest guest]

When I was born my nada developed post partum psychosis.She was never treated

for it (as far as I know/she said) and it resolved itself when I was about ten

months old.From what I have read about post partum psychosis that can and does

happen although obviously it's much better for all concerned if the mother is

actually treated.

I didn't even know about it until I was twenty two years old and nada

started telling me some bizarre stuff during a conversation we were having,more

like a sort of confession.She was sure I would understand what she was talking

about,she said--and she had never told anyone else about what had happened when

I was a baby.

She told me that as a *newborn* I had purposefully put thoughts into her

head,such as ordering her to get into the car and drive it into something " going

fast " .I had also had the ability to make myself disappear within days of

arriving home from the hospital and that by the time I was six months old had

fine honed this skill into being able to turn myself into a series of floating

dots that would appear and dissolve: somtimes my whole body,sometimes just my

face.Or I could immerse us both in an otherwordly glowing light while she was

nursing me--something I did at times to reassure her and at other times to

torment her.

Among other clearly impossible feats. " I always knew you weren't like

anybody else " ,she said that day--while I was thinking: Ok,I always knew you were

insane and here's real proof...

I went to the library that evening and looked up her

symptoms.Unfortunately I didn't happen across BPD but did find information about

post partum psychosis.What I couldn't figure out was why she continued to be

delusional,although not to that extreme degree,afterward.

Since then I have read stories and testimonies from women who had post

partum psychosis.An interesting distinction between women who had been mentally

healthy prior to having post partum psychosis and women who had been mentally

ill prior and/or were psychotic in addition to the post partum psychosis is that

the mentally healthy women were able to recognize to varying degrees that

something was very wrong with them in the days/weeks/months after having their

babies while the mentally ill women uniformly took the post partum psychosis

literally even when it was causing them distress.The other thing that struck me

is that the mentally healthy women all knew for a fact after their post partum

psychosis had subsided that the thoughts and ideas they had been having about

their babies were abnormal products of the psychosis they had been suffering

from.None of the mentally healthy women tried to justify having had any of those

thoughts or to " normalize " them: they fully understood that they had been

mentally ill at the time and across the board they thanked god that they hadn't

harmed their babies.

The mentally ill mothers,on the other hand,had to have this explained

to them *even once they were no longer experiencing post partum psychosis*.

All of these women had had symptoms quite similar to nada's.So,although

my nada no longer actively believed when I was twenty two that I was " putting

thoughts " into her head--nor had she continued to believe this after the post

partum psychosis itself had abated--she continued to believe that all of it had

actually happened.

I'm talking about a high functioning person who had a career,was a well

respected " pillar of the community " ; who from all outward public appearances was

as sane as anybody else--and who was walking around thinking that a newborn had

ordered her to go and crash her car.

She had had twenty two years to figure out that it would be impossible

for a newborn who can't even talk to formulate coherent thought " sentences "

and/or to figure out that since a newborn cannot possibly have any conception of

what a car is or does (let alone know that people drive them and can crash

them),that there is no way *I* could have ordered her go kill herself with the

family car.

But none of that had occurred to her.Even though she could function so

well out in the " world " that she was widely admired and respected,her inner

thoughts about me were based on delusions that a mentally healthy person would

know were false.

Yet she was canny enough to know that she would be seen as insane if she

told anyone what she really believed about me as a baby.So she only told me, " the

guilty party " in her mind.She was canny enough to pretend to everyone else that

I had merely been a high strung baby who had colic and recurrent ear

infections,portraying herself as an exhausted first time mother.I think this is

what she did even while she was actually in the grip of post partum psychosis.

In the stories I read by mentally healthy mothers who had post partum

psychosis they all asked themselves while it was happening: What is wrong with

*me*? And it was when they caught themselves verging into blaming their babies

and wanting to hurt them that they knew they needed help.None of them,of

course,blamed their babies afterward for " causing " their post partum psychosis.

But my nada did,continued to blame me years after the fact.Continued to

hold me responsible.Continued to see *herself* as my innocent,hapless

victim.Continued to believe that she had " always " known there was something

" wrong " with *me*! And she had proof: even as a newborn I had been otherwordly

weird and had intentionally terrorized her.

All of this while being able to function in her outward life and never

*getting* how bizarre her beliefs about me were.