“Should I jump now?”
I push the stroller down the 12th-floor hallway. The elevator pauses, and through the window the avenue glints like a blade. I’m not carrying the baby. He’s inside, cradled by my husband. My hands are free. One step—just one step onto the railing and it would be over.
My smartwatch vibrates. A parenting-app alert.
“Time for the baby’s cry!”
A photo pops up, sent by my husband. The baby isn’t crying. Instead, my husband smiles—blurred, out of focus. In the picture his hand strokes the baby’s head, and I can’t remember the last time those fingers touched my body.
Giving birth didn’t seal me inside a tomb
Day 212 postpartum, and I still dream the same dream every night. Someone’s fingertips graze my skin; when I wake, the baby is latched to my breast. My underwear is damp—not from milk, but from the tears I’ve shed.
During my maternity leave my husband bragged he was a “reservist dad.” After work he’d dangle a toy above the crib; on weekends he’d take charge of one bottle. And he started calling me “our baby’s mom.” Once, I was “honey.” Now I’m “Mom.” The name is my indictment. Mom must not run away.
“I still want you.”
The last lie I told my husband.
I haven’t spoken since.
Why didn’t they run?
Ji-young, mid-thirties, left her house in Bupyeong a month after her daughter was born. She took a taxi, circled the neighborhood, then stood again at her own gate. She told me, “The moment I touched the doorknob, I realized it wasn’t me—my baby—walking back in. So I couldn’t.”
She remained outside for two hours. A security guard approached, worried. “Should I call the baby’s father?” She dialed the number and was home in twenty seconds. The baby had been crying, hungry for milk. The baby needed Mom. Mom could not run.
Second vignette: the woman in the photo
A post I saw in a mom-café. Title: Cozy moment with hubby~ In the picture the woman kisses her husband’s cheek while holding their baby. Her eyes glisten—tears or exhaustion, I can’t tell. The odd detail: the photo was taken by her mother-in-law. A family portrait courtesy of her mother-in-law. She commented, “So thankful she took it for us~♡”
I stared at that image for a long time. The angle of her forced smile, the tremor in her lips against his cheek, the way the baby is cropped out yet she is still holding him. The baby is outside the frame, but she is already trapped inside it.
Why does wanting to leave make us criminals?
Postpartum depression is not curiosity—it is evidence. The moment a woman becomes a mother, she is summoned under the name “Mother.” That name is a graveyard of desire. When the baby’s eyes meet mine, I cease to be “me.” I become nipple, bottle, diaper, my husband’s “our baby’s mom.”
So the yearning to escape feels like treason. My husband says, “The baby can’t do without you.” It’s true. The baby needs Mom. Yet I don’t know whether I am needed, or whether the baby simply needs the function called Mom.
A final question
To you who are falling asleep beside your husband right now, ears tuned to your baby’s breathing, eyes suddenly drawn to the window: You gave birth to a child. But when will you be born again?