Narrating and Disrupting Postnatal Depression

If becoming a mother involves a reworking of a woman’s sense of self, then becoming a depressed mother requires double the amount of ‘self-work.’ This chapter explores the accounts of 19 women who identified as having experienced postnatal depression (PND). It examines how the women spoke of early maternal distress and how they related such distress to maternal subjectivities. In particular, it considers the tensions between what could be narrated and what exceeded, or interrupted, narration. The authors locate the accounts within a genre of recovery narratives, suggesting that they allowed women to ‘narrate away’ feelings of maternal inadequacy or impairment. Furthermore, the authors extend their analysis beyond the discursive realm, inferring non-verbal, indeed non-narratable, cadences in the narrative performance. Finally, they reflect on how such cadences might articulate with the heightened relationality of early maternity.