In her new memoir, The Motherload: Episodes From the Brink of Motherhood, author Sarah Hoover writes about her scary motherhood journey. The book explores women’s journey starting from pregnancy through labor and motherhood.
The essayist’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, among other publications. She also co-founded the Accelerator Committee at American Ballet Theater and sits on the board of Art Production Fund.
The writer opened up about her traumatic experiences
People recently published an exclusive with excerpts of Sarah’s novel, which describe in detail the first time she went into labor.
“It’s not news that childbirth is inherently dangerous in the United States, but when I was in labor, what broke me wasn’t a hemorrhage from undiagnosed preeclampsia,” she writes. “It was fear, and the feeling that I had no control over what was happening to my body.” Recalling that no one at the hospital was caring or kind, she left depressed and determined not to be treated that way ever again.
“For years, the idea of another pregnancy was as appealing as a daily bikini wax,” she writes. “People would casually ask me, ‘So … when are you having another?’ and I would shut down inside, fake smile and laugh it off, making jokes like ‘as soon as I forgive my husband for eating a hot dog while I was in labor.’”
Her reluctance was due to the pain of a doctor breaking her water and the lack of empathy that followed. “She never told me it might hurt or mentioned it might be scary,” Sarah writes. “And she never offered me anesthesia, or even a kind word.”
Sarah recalls this spurred a yearlong battle with postpartum depression. It became so overwhelming at one point that she considered taking her own life.
A year after her child was born, Sarah sat at the kitchen table. As she sipped her tea looking out the window, she wondered “what it would be like to jump.” “The sudden thought terrified me, mostly because I knew it wasn’t fleeting,” she writes. “Considering my own death became the moment I understood that something was deeply wrong.” Sarah sought help. started medication and “stopped using therapy to complain about small domestic irritations” while “finally confronted trauma I’d spent my life avoiding.”
Sarah’s memoir is now available in paperback.
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