Tag Archives: mental health

@EllieAdorn shares: An email from inside PPD

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The response to my post yesterday, “Seeking Guest Contributors,” has been absolutely astounding. So much love and generosity. Today’s post comes from Cristi Comes over at Motherhood Unadorned. You can find her on Twitter as @EllieAdorn. There are so many more guest posts to come – I can’t wait to share them with you!

“Cristi Comes, Mom of 2, My 3rd Baby: EllieAdorn Mom Support Site focusing on often taboo issues such as mental health, postpartum mood disorders, suicide prevention, infertility, etc. and challenging parenting topics like breastfeeding and attachment parenting.”

Without further ado, here is the first part Christi’s post in her own words. You’ll have to go to her place to read the rest of it. Trust me, you want to read the rest of it.

Postpartum Depression (PPD) can happen to anyone, even someone like me who already has mental illness and is medicated and treated for depression. With my first child, I thought “I’m cool,” my meds will protect me from PPD, and I think for the most part they did. BUT I wasn’t so lucky when I had Ellie. Perhaps it was because I changed meds in between kids. Or maybe it was the stress of managing 2 children. I’m sure it was all of that and more.

I hate pregnancy, or more to the point I hate the way my body and brain feel during pregnancy. The aches, the pains, the anxiety. So having the baby is blissful relief to me. I get my body and stamina back. But the first few months with 2 kids was really really hard.

My son, who was just over 2, had been a completely attached child. Mommy and Daddy were his whole world and he was the center of the universe. Now the universe had two center points and one needed mommy 24/7 for breastfeeding and care. His jealousy was BAD. Our sweet little boy was acting out so terribly I was losing it. I felt like I was on the defense protecting Ellie every minute of every day…besides the typical lack of sleep and general stress of caring for a newborn.

PPD was creeping up and I didn’t even realize it. My husband had suspicions when I started talking about desperately needing to get a tattoo, like yesterday. I also decided I needed a hobby, and got to work finding one by buying up the fabric store and sketching a million clothing appliqué designs. And I don’t even own a seeing machine, much less know how to use one.

I finally hit a breaking point, and started to realize what was going on. I do have some experience in this are afterall. I’m surprised I didn’t see the signs sooner. I FINALLY wrote my husband the below email asking for help. Here is my voice from inside of PPD.

Head on over to Motherhood Unadorned to read the rest of this amazing post.

Postpartum Voice of the Week: @MammyWoo’s “Radio Silence”

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Earlier this week, @MammyWoo messaged me to let me know she submitted a blog post for consideration this week. I could not wait to read it! Then life happened and I did not read her post until this morning but my sense of anticipation was dead on because the post is amazing.

In it, Lexy is amazingly honest about her experience with Postnatal Depression. She describes waking up to discover that indeed, morning has arrived and is not two weeks away as she wishes. Her 1 year old pokes and prods her to play, but she is unable to respond.

Once again, she’s stuck in Radio Silence, unable to talk, communicate, play, reach out. She’s trapped. “All the little men that live inside my body making things work (I was never very good at biology) have gone on strike and normal service delivery is brought to a complete halt.”

I especially love her reference to being a Postnatal Zombie. It’s so true that when you are in the depths of a Postpartum Mood Disorder one feels like a Zombie. Mindless, numb, drifting dangerously toward nothingness. For some, that numbness is solace. For others, it is a tailspin toward panic. If you feel you are trapped in Postpartum Zombieville, there are some tips for you here.

I remember that numbness. It did not hit me after the birth of our first daughter but it slammed into me during my second pregnancy. There were so many days when I would lock my daughter and I into her room, get her toys out, and then lay on the couch against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. Our 18 month old daughter excelled at independent play not because she was independent but because I was incapable of playing with her. I lacked the motivation to drag myself out of bed and certainly lacked the capacity to be imaginative enough to get down in the floor and pretend a bunch of blocks were involved in a tea party with Princesses. So many days spent on that couch without energy to do anything. Scared that if I did get up and do something it would end tragically. So I stayed. On the damned couch.

All I wanted to do, all I could do, was lay there. Listlessly. Mindlessly. Hopelessly. I did just enough to get by but not enough to thrive. She seemed happy enough. I justified my actions with her increased independence. It’s good for a kid to learn independence at such a young age, right?

Once I had our son though, and managed to have a pregnancy and postpartum without mental health issues, I became angry. I realized that all my “Radio Silence” had done was distance me from my daughters. To this day, I have a closer bond with my son than with his sisters. It is certainly not because I love them any less. It has nothing to do with their abilities as daughters but rather, everything to do with my illness after giving birth and during my pregnancy with our second daughter. I failed them. I failed myself. I failed my husband. I failed. (Hello, Postpartum Guilt. How you doin?)

Turns out these days that I did not really fail them. Both our daughters are brilliantly independent, wickedly smart, and hilarious little girls. They are full of sass, spunk, and determination. I don’t know that my issues with mental health affected the development of those skills or not. I like to think they would be the same way even if I had been a happy healthy mom when they were brand new to the world. Bottom line though, eventually I got help and got well. I may not have bonded with them when I should have but we are bonded now. I cannot change the past but with every new moment and opportunity I can change my future. I can change their future. It is a fine line to walk though because it is very easy to want to over-do it and make up for my past failures which is a dangerous slope down which to slide.

Enough about me though.

Lexy, oh sweet Lexy. I know you feel alone there in your Radio Silence. So many of us have been where you are now. We know how unquietly quiet it is there. We’re there with you, ready to listen. You’re not worthless. All you have to do is let us know you need us and we’ll be right there. Ready to listen, encourage, support, whatever you need from us, we’ll be there. You are not alone.

Go leave her some love and support.

Postpartum Voice of the Week: Nuclear Winter

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Meet Selena. She blogs over at Because Motherhood Sucks. Selena submitted this story a few weeks ago and I have been dying to share it with you. I’ve been busy with sick kids among other things. I’m thrilled to finally share her words with you here as the Postpartum Voice of the Week. I hope you’ll find her words and story as powerful as I do.

 

I was no stranger to depression. I had my first experience with being hospitalized when I was 13 and was treated and released only to succumb again and again and again  throughout my teens and into adulthood.

I was on Prozac when I found out I was pregnant and for some reason this didn’t interest my obstetrician in the least. She basically told me to taper down if I wanted, but that she was completely comfortable with Prozac during pregnancy. I stayed on a low dosage and had a relatively uneventful pregnancy. I say “relatively” because although my health and the development of the baby were totally fine, I was exhausted, nauseous and miserable throughout. So much so that I remember having other mothers ask me if people were always touching my belly and I realized that NO ONE had EVER approached me to touch my belly. Of course, I suppose I wasn’t completely approachable.

I just ASSUMED I would experience Post-Partum Depression. I read up on it. I knew the symptoms. I decided that I didn’t care about the type of birth I had or whether or not I breastfed. The goal was always a natural birth and breastfeeding, but if it didn’t work out that way, I was not going to be disappointed or hard on myself because I didn’t want any added stressors to get depressed over. My mother would be there to help me for 5 weeks and could stay longer if I needed the help.

As far as I was concerned, I was perfectly okay with depression. It was an old friend who overstayed her welcome. It was annoying, but familiar. I would deal with it and move on. No problem.

Until it happened.

I woke up to the sound of the baby crying and was overwhelmed with a sense of utter terror and panic. I was alone in the house with her. Her father had gone back to work and my mother had left the day before. In the 5 weeks that my mother had been there, I had experienced a mild case of “baby blues” and gotten over it. I had no idea how I was going to handle this gigantic task that was ahead of me. I had to get her up and feed her and change her and dress her and find time to eat something myself and keep her calm and happy and get her to nap and on and on and on. And I would have to do this every day for the rest of my life.

My kid had severe colic. She screamed non-stop for about 12 hours a day. And the doctors just told me she’d grow out of it. I knew I couldn’t do it. I had made a terrible mistake. This was all my fault. What was I thinking when I assumed that I knew the first thing about being a mother? And what kind of a failure was I? My ONLY job in the whole world is to keep her comfortable and alive and she hates me. She never stops crying and she hardly sleeps. How could I do this?

I called her father. “Please come home.”

He told me he couldn’t come immediately but he would be home when he could. And when he came home he found a sleeping baby and a complete mess of a mommy. I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to leave. I had made a terrible mistake. I hated this baby. She didn’t even like me.

He took over and I tried to sleep.

He stayed home for the next few days. I tried to sleep when I could but I heard her crying all the time. I got earplugs and ran a fan and I heard her screaming all day long. I got mad and wondered if he hadn’t left her alone, and I stomped out into the living room only to find a sleeping baby and daddy on the couch. I was hearing things.

I was terrified. I didn’t want to touch her. I decided that I was going crazy and would have to leave her for her own good so she should get used to her father taking care of her. I didn’t want to hold her. And yet, I wanted nothing more than to nuzzle her and love her and have her little head on my shoulder and hear her breathing in my ear. In the middle of the night, I would go get her to hold her and I would cry because I didn’t understand why I wanted to leave her so badly. But I did. I wanted to run.

I had an older friend come over to let me shower one day and the baby didn’t cry for her at all. For her, it was fun to hold the baby. It was easy and enjoyable. I marveled at the way she handled the baby and how she seemed to entertain her by doing nothing. I cried because it was so hard for me. I didn’t know what to do with a baby. I didn’t want to hold her and I didn’t know where to put her down and when I did, she just screamed anyway so I got a sling and she hated that. She hated her bassinet and she hated the floor and she hated the couch. I hated this kid.

Again, I called her father at work. “I think you can take a baby to the fire department and leave them, no questions asked. I am going to take her there, okay?” He told me that was crazy talk. He said the words, Post Partum Depression.

THIS was not depression. This was something else. I knew depression. I could handle depression. This was horror. This was terror. This was pure guilt and anger and infinite regret. This was like depression’s more evil, less apathetic twin. Depression was like a cold, heavy, wet blanket of fog. This was a nuclear winter.

My mother came back out to help. She took charge. She sent Ben back to work and got me an appointment with a doctor. She kept the baby busy and let me take a shower. She forced me to eat. My mother, not for the first time I am sure, saved my life.

After a few weeks of medication and 4 or 5 sessions of therapy, I was feeling a bit more steady. One morning, I was finished feeding the baby and talking to her on the bed and she looked up at me and smiled. I loved her right then. I knew without a doubt that I loved her and I never wanted to leave her. I told my mom it was safe for her to go home. I made some plans to go to a Post Partum group and began to reach out to my friends.

I would be lying if I said that I was okay right away. Being a stay at home mom requires a lot of planning your days and staying busy and it took me a really long time to find places to go to break up the day. I decided to work part time so that I had a life outside of the baby and that helped. I joined a Mommy Meet-Up group and that helped too. Mostly, I went easy on myself and realized that babies can cry and it is not an indication of my skills as a parent.

Three years later, the colic has stopped and the depression is under control but if I said I was completely thrilled with motherhood I would be lying. It has been a really difficult road for me and as a bit of a control freak, motherhood is a HUGE adjustment.

The thing that has helped me the most though, is being okay with the idea that I am simply NOT one of those women who believes motherhood is the most wonderful and thrilling experience that anyone can have. I started to blog about it and learned (mostly by anonymous comments) that there are many mothers out there who feel the same way. Motherhood is work. It is a job!

But I continue to work on it and try to find the happy moments among all the day to day drudgery. And when my three year old turns into a total monster and I have that moment of thinking how I wish I could run away, I remember how it was when I REALLY wanted to run away and that helps me to know that it’s going to be okay.

It will be okay.

……………………..

BIO:

Selena is a reader, a book person, and a self-affirmed pessimist. She lives in Upstate NY, has her hands full with her diva-esque preschooler and hopes to one day be able to write full time.

Find out more about her love of motherhood at Becausemotherhoodsucks.blogspot.com.

Important questions don’t always have answers

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I’ve been teaching high school English for 5 years, and in those 5 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to build relationships with many of my students.  Many of these students often come back to me after they are no longer in my class to ask for help with assignments or to talk. It’s sometimes tough for some of them to talk to parents or other adults, so when they feel comfortable talking to me, I want them to know that I’m here and available should they need me. Occasionally, building this trust requires that I open up a little bit with them, and while I teach from my heart, freely sharing my life with my students, there are parts that I keep close to the chest.

Last week a student came to me during his lunch period, which also happens to be my lunch period, and asked if he could use my classroom computer to print off some things for one of his classes. This student went through a particularly rough patch of bad decisions last year, and I helped guide him as best I could during that time and in the time after. He knows I’m a safe adult. I won’t judge. I may criticize, but I’ll listen first.

I gave him my permission and he sat down at the computer on the other side of my desk. I was editing a post and having trouble finding the right words, grumbling and complaining and muttering under my breath because I just could not figure out why the coding was messing up. (After switching to WordPress, I now blame Blogger :) )

He asked what had me so irritated and I told him about the post I was writing and the coding issues and he goes “Mrs. W. You have a website??” And without thinking, I said “Yes, I write a blog.”

And immediately I panicked and thought about that teacher who recently lost her job for blogging about her job. And Dooce. And and and. Panic!

“C, please, please don’t tell anyone!”

“I won’t Mrs. W. What’s it about?”

And then I realized that I had two choices. I could make something up, or I could be honest with him. In light of our relationship, I chose the latter.

“Well, C, it’s about being a mom, mostly. But it’s also about my battle with postpartum depression.”

“Postpartum depression? You’re depressed? Really? Why’d you get that?”

I’ve taught my students that “why” is the most important question we can ever ask when reading a piece of literature. Or when questioning anything.

And yet, there I sat, unable to answer.

I mean, why me, indeed? Why anyone?

Thanks to modern medicine and some superior coping skills, I’ve been able to mask my battles, I guess. And he was in my classroom when I was in the thick of things. Or maybe it’s that I’m less affected and most myself when I’m in the classroom. I feel comfortable in my classroom. I know what I’m doing in my classroom. My classroom is ME.

Motherhood is the great unknown. It feels like constant turmoil and chaos and uncertainty and discomfort.

Or, at least it did.

I tried to explain to him as best I could that what I’d gone through was normal but was not the norm.  That millions of women have gone and are going through what I’ve gone through and have (and will) come out okay.

And that, as will most mental illnesses, you may never know who is suffering. And, as with most mental illnesses, we just don’t talk about them openly, even though we should.

I was happy to end the conversation with him by saying that I thought my war was coming to an end. That I have more good days than bad, and that I know that I’m stronger for having gone through this. That he didn’t need to worry about me.

That maybe that’s why this happened to me. To make me stronger. To make me better somehow. More compassionate toward others.

I don’t know. And for now? I’m learning to be okay with not knowing. I’m learning to accept this as something that has become a part of my life, for better AND for worse, and to use it for good. Maybe DOING is the answer.