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Postpartum Voice of the Week: Please Don’t Take My Sunshine Away: My PPD Experience

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Earlier this week, a fellow member of Twitter messaged a group of us to say she had recently written her story as part of her recovery. She wanted to share it but did not know where to start. I responded and offered her space at my blog. Later that morning, I had her story in my email. Then my week happened. Pediatric appointment with my 4 year old, my 6 year old coming home from school two days in a row and then insomnia hit. I finally got to reading her story and immediately wanted to publish it. I did not want to wait until Thursday. I love the way she breaks down lyrics from “Please don’t take my sunshine away” and writes her story. The story unfolds and unfurls as you feel her frustration, her desperate need to heal. I found myself nodding my head and cheering along with her once life begins to return.

If these words touch you as much as they have touched me and you would like to reach out to her, please leave a message in the comments. I’ll make sure she gets them.

She has asked to remain anonymous for this post and I am respecting this request.

Without further ado, I will step aside and let you read her words.

Update: The author of this post has left a comment and I have verified her desire to share her identity. Her name is Sarah. If you want to reach her, you can do so by sending her mail here: sem55(@)georgetown(dot)edu

She left the following in the comments:

I am the author of this story… what a difference a few months makes. When I wrote this I felt stronger, but still ashamed. My name is Sarah and I have PPD and I AM a great Mom! Thank you to all of the courageous women out there who have reached out to me to share their strength. I only hope I can return a fraction of the support I have received to someone who stumbles upon my story. Thank you Lauren for the opportunity to share, and for all you do for moms!

Thank YOU, Sarah, for revealing yourself. And Kudos to you for taking such a huge step in owning your experience. It’s a HUGE step.

And now, here are SARAH’S words.

 

You are my sunshine

The second you become a mother you are transformed. Your purpose, your dreams and your complete identity change. My son has taught me how to live, love and grow in ways I could have never understood before. His very being keeps me going and give me purpose. It is a love like no other.

My only sunshine

After nearly three years of trying to get pregnant, including an ectopic pregnancy, surgery and infertility, in June of 2009 I successfully conceived. I didn’t allow myself to get too excited or attached while I went for weekly blood draws and ultrasounds to monitor my early pregnancy. As the first trimester passed and we saw our tiny bean grow into a perfectly formed tiny baby, the hope in me stirred and I began letting myself feel joy. Anxiety continued, however, as I underwent frequent fetal echocardiograms to evaluate the baby for a heart condition he was at risk of developing. The second trimester came and went and his heart remained perfect; we were in the clear. At 32 weeks, I started having contractions, thus followed two hospital visits for pre-term labor. At home, I remained on bedrest, and luckily made it to the 37th week. My labor was quick and my beautiful baby boy A .N. was born perfect and healthy at 6 lb 1 oz. I felt the biggest relief in my life when I saw my newborn baby. This joy dissolved quickly when the OB began the repairs. I began feeling very funny. I was trying to communicate how weird I was feeling when I found I was unable to speak. Ringing in my ears drowned out the sounds and I began to slip into unconsciousness. This is it, I thought. My baby was born healthy, but the price I am paying for it is to die in childbirth. The next thing I knew I was waking up on the Mother-Baby Unit. The nurses there cheerfully told me I had experienced lidocaine toxicity and my baby was with my husband in the nursery. I ached to see his face and hold his perfect body. When they returned, I instantly felt a jolt of joy and energy as I acquainted myself with my new family.

Two days later we were discharged and sent home as a new family of three. Our families had camped out at our house but we sent them home to have the space and room to figure out what we were doing. The next few days were quiet, but things did not feel right with the baby. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with him. My milk came in late and A became dehydrated and difficult to arouse. After that crisis resolved, we received a concerned call from the pediatrician. The results from A’s metabolic screen were positive for a rare but potentially fatal disease. They cautioned us that there are many cases of false positives, but I went into panic mode. We stayed on alert night and day to watch him breathe at all times. We had to wait for a week for the news that it was an error, A was fine.

You make me happy when skies are grey

The weeks after were full of relief, bliss and love. I managed through the marathon feedings and fell more in love with my son each day. Parenting seemed to come naturally to my husband. I finally had everything I dreamed of. Then at 11 weeks, A did a remarkable thing, he slept through the night. Usually a cause for celebration, this milestone marked the beginning of my downfall. I felt as though this gift I had dreamed of for so long was somehow a mirage and could be taken from me at any moment. The lines between fear and reality became blurred. First I stopped being able to sleep, feeling the need to rest my hand on the baby’s chest feeling it’s reassuring rise and fall. I started having the most disturbing images in my head. These horrifying images tortured me relentlessly. I felt constantly nervous and on edge. I felt so agitated I couldn’t keep my body still, when I lay in bed to rest my legs wouldn’t stop moving. I had the most intense feeling that sometime terrible was about to happen to A. Something that I had to stop. Soon I was having stomach problems, not being able to keep anything down and then being unable to force myself to eat. I started going days straight without sleeping. I stopped eating solid foods, losing over 20 lbs. in a month. I became weak and fragile. I began having the images coupled with horrifying phrases in my head. All involved seeing my baby harmed. I started having urges to do things like bang my head on the shower wall to stop them. These urges were like the most intense itch you know you should not scratch. I felt if I didn’t give in to them, I would jump out of my skin or
explode. During the day, I was having panic attacks where I would feel as though I was dying; my arms would go numb, my heart would race, I would become sick to my stomach and feel paralyzed. At night, with the baby and my husband tucked safely in bed, I began having urges to disappear. I wondered how fast I could pack everything up and drive off before they awoke. I thought if I disappeared, my baby would be able to grow and thrive and would be better off without me. My husband did not understand at all what was going on and became very angry at me. We began constantly fighting. I had to ask him to stay home from work or leave work numerous times because I didn’t feel safe alone with the baby. June came and his birthday and father’s day came and went and I found myself unable to get out of bed. I wondered if I was dying or losing my mind. I didn’t want to live anymore. I pictured milestones in A’s life without me present. I became obsessed with planning A’s birthday party because I had the distinct feeling that I wouldn’t be around by then. The day came when I couldn’t take another second. That was when I reached out to my Mom.

You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you

I always wanted to get better. For A, for our family. But help seemed so hard to find. Living in X, I had isolated myself. I didn’t want anyone to know what a bad mother I was so I tried to stop visitors and kept phone calls brief. I had been refusing to take the medications I needed because they were not compatible with nursing. Having to suddenly wean my baby was like a final blow of failure to me. After my urgent phone call to my Mom, she left work in the middle of the day without packing a thing, got on 95 and talked to me on the phone until she arrived 3 hours later. She took me to the midwife, who sent me to the ER to be admitted. Because I told them I had no imminent plans to kill myself, they wouldn’t admit me. They gave me sleeping pills and the address of an urgent care psych center. It turns out the place was a partial-hospitalization program, which my insurance did not cover and would require me
to be away from A during the day. I felt helpless and desperate. I didn’t have any hope of anyone being able to help me. I was taking the medication, but it didn’t seem to be doing
anything for me. Things escalated at home with my husband and I really feared hurting myself, so I packed our stuff and we left for Y.

After my Mom and my sister helped me get settled in Y with A, things started to turn around. I moved in with my sister who was a huge support to me. There was family and friends around me constantly. I had the help I needed to care for A while taking care of myself. I sought help at a local center devoted to post partum mood disorders and began to see a psychiatrist and therapist regularly. I was given a name for what I was going through: Post-Partum OCD. I joined a local support group that meets monthly and I met the most amazing and inspiring women who really get it and have been there. Their strength was contagious. I starting believing that I could get better. The thoughts in my head became more fleeting. I felt more connected with my son. I still had some panic attacks where I felt myself regressing. Dark thoughts would again invade my brain. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t getting better at all and there was no point to struggling through this. But I learned to reach out to those who cared about me when I felt this way. During my darkest days the phrase “this will not end well” would repeat itself in my head, this mantra was now replaced by “this too shall pass.”

Please don’t take my sunshine away

Time, therapy and medication have given me my life back. My recovery has been full of ups and downs, good and bad days. I am still working on mending relationships. But as the Autumn came, I felt my old self emerge. I will never be the person I was before I had a child, but I am a stronger, wiser woman. I have found I am strong enough to make it on my own, but that the support of others is essential. I am learning to enjoy the moments without obsessing about what will come next. I am learning to let go of complete control and let my son explore and experience with my guidance. It’s a new way of living, and it’s very freeing. I am able to enjoy every day with A. He amazes me on a daily basis. I don’t know what challenges or heartaches I might face in the future, but now I am healthy and strong enough to face them head-on. And if I’m not, I will still be ok because of the support system I have. And in February, I will be at my son’s first birthday party, celebrating his year of thriving and mine of survival.

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Just Talking Tuesday: Depression, Super Glue, and Bonding

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All too often we are shown over and over and over again those scenes in movies where a mother, who has just given birth, lies in bed in beautiful nightgown complete with a bed jacket. Her hair is perfectly coiffed as she is handed her baby. She instantly knows how to hold this perfectly quiet and peaceful infant. Her face softens as she oooohs and ahhhs as the camera goes all vaseline and fuzzy while sappy music swells in the background.

I don’t know how your births went, but mine were nothing like that. My hair was everything but perfectly coifed, I was wearing a frumpy hospital gown, and I had no clue what to do with this squirming thing now in my arms who was screaming at me like some sort of pissed off Banshee. The second time around, I knew what to do with the little one but she could not cooperate because she was physically unable to do so. The third time around went much much better despite the persistent lack of perfectly coiffed hair and no sappy music.

No one tells new mothers at their baby showers just how hard birth and those first few weeks will be on us. It’s all fun and games, cute frilly or frocky clothes in blue, pink, or some other pastel. Even if we do know what to expect, depression can still slam into us after birth. It is not something we choose. Not something we can turn off at the drop of a hat or just because you want us to be happy again. It takes time to heal.

One of the biggest things depression or a mood disorder affects is a mother’s ability to bond with her infant. The best way to describe this feeling to someone who did not have a problem bonding with their infant is this:

Let’s say you hate cats. You don’t know why but you do. You visit a home with a cat. Said cat decides that YOU are a brand new BFF and relies on you for everything. Meows at you constantly, purrs, wraps itself around your legs, curls up on your lap, and wants you to pet it every second you are there. This interferes with your ability to have an adult conversation with the friend you came to visit. Suddenly your thoughts are sliced in half, then in quarters. You’re distracted, frustrated, your blood pressure rises, you may even begin to itch or manifest physical symptoms as you try to detangle yourself from the cat.

The difference between someone who hates cats and a mom who is depressed and doesn’t bond with her child is that somewhere, deep inside, that woman LOVES her child. She does. Even if she is not showing it, she does. She wants to bond to that child and is desperate to try anything.

Motherhood is something we add to our sense of selves though, not something which should overtake our sense of self. We should not superglue the baby to ourselves and miss out on life because we are a Mother. There needs to be a balance, a sense of old and new. It is a hard line to walk. A hard line to find. An almost invisible line to find if you are a mother with a Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorder. But it’s there. You just have to be patient and wait for it to slowly reveal itself.

I struggled with bonding with our first two daughters. Our first because I had not a clue what to do with her, even apologized to her at 7 days old because I did not know how to talk to her. Our second because she was physically separated from me at less than 24 hours old and sent to a NICU in another city over an hour away. I would later find myself wailing that I wanted to leave her at the hospital. We did not bond until she was nearly three years old and back at the same hospital in which she spent time in the NICU.

I bonded well with my third though but I did not struggle with Postpartum OCD or Depression that time around. We had all the warm fuzzies and after a few weeks if you listened closely enough, you could hear sappy music in the background.

I know my issues with depression and OCD interfered in my ability to bond with my babies. But today, I try so hard not too look back and be sad. Instead I try my best to bond in the here and now because that’s what matters. I cannot change the past. I can only work to improve the present and make the future even better. (Believe me, it’s taken me almost 6 years to be able to say that!)

Did your PMAD affect your bonding? How? What was your experience?

Let’s get to just talking.

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Just Talking Tuesday: Through the eyes of another

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It’s dark. You are both collapsed into heaps, this time, you managed to make it to bed. You sigh, close your yes and mutter goodnight into your pillow.

It’s 234 a.m., your wife notes.

“Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

You lift your head and glare at the clock.

It’s 315 a.m.

You shove your face back into your pillow and silently scream.

Really? 46 minutes?

Sighing, you get out of bed to get the baby. Check the diaper. A little wet so you change it. Rock, sing, soothe. Nothing works.

Time to get mommy. She’s got the food.

You walk into the bedroom to wake her up. She sighs, shifts, and snuggles closer to the bed. When you do manage to wake her up, she snaps at you.

“But I JUST nursed! Did you check the diaper? Try to put him back down? I’m tired. I don’t want to…. ”

“Yes. Gimme a little credit. I’m not an idiot. I’ve tried everything. Clearly he’s hungry. You’re nursing so…”

“Dammit. I’ll be there in a minute.” She snuggles back into the bed.

You sigh, loudly, frustrated, knowing it will be a good 30 minutes before she even attempts to get out of bed. She will fall back asleep and you will have this conversation all over again before she finally gets out of bed, cursing you under her breath for interrupting her sleep.

She won’t mean it. She’s exhausted, just like you. And yes, you have work in the morning and should be sleeping but she won’t get to sleep much during the day either. Oh, she may rest, but it won’t be restorative. She’ll nod off while nursing, try to snooze when the baby does, but if the baby is up, she is up. And then there are chores. Dishes. Laundry. Cleaning. Cooking. Possibly other children to care for. Errands. Her job? Never.friggin.ends.

Your job never ends either. It’s hard for her to see that though. What SHE sees is you, walking out the front door toward other adults. Toward freedom. Toward conversation that involves more than a few garbled syllabic words at a time. What SHE sees is you, showered, shaved, dressed in something other than the same pajamas she’s now lived in for two weeks. What SHE feels is jealousy, hatred, sadness, grief. For the most part she knows it’s not rational. Somewhere, deep down, she tries hard not to feel this way. But she’s been moody for weeks now. Snapping at you for the simplest comment or action.

You bring home dinner. It’s not what she wanted but she loudly sighs and announces “It’ll have to do.” You pick up the baby and she watches your every move with him like a hawk, waiting for you to falter. You begin to falter yourself. Are you built for fatherhood? Are you doing things wrong? What if you’re screwing up your kid for life at just 3 months old? What if she never lets you really be a father? How will you ever learn what to do? Will your marriage survive? Where the hell are you?

What she doesn’t know is that as you walk out the front door every morning, your heart hurts. YOU are filled with jealousy because she gets to enjoy every moment with your son. She gets to watch him grow, change, and do new things every day. You mourn your fatherhood as you shower, dress for work. You fumble under her judgmental stares, worrying that your fathering skills are not up to par with her expectations. You’ve asked  a million times but you can’t for the life of you get her to tell you what her expectations are for you as a father. What are the rules to this ball game? If you only knew, life would be so much easier. After all, you’re not a mind reader.

___________________________

Today’s Just Talking Tuesday is cross-posted with The Postpartum Dads Project. If you’re a mom, please go visit the Postpartum Dads Project and share what you wish your husband had known about Postpartum Mood Disorders and parenting. What would have best helped you when you were suffering? If you’re a dad, share here. What got you and your wife through those dark days? How did you keep communication open if you managed to do so?

(Note: The Postpartum Dads Project site is down for the moment. Let’s all just share here for now and I will cross post when the site is back up! Thanks for understanding.)

Social support is key for recovery from a Postpartum Mood Disorder. The best social support starts at home with your partner. Get them involved and you’ve zoomed forward a zillion spaces on your recovery path.

Let’s get to just talking.

This week’s Postpartum Voice: Miranda of Not Super Just Mom

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Miranda of Not Super Just Mom, is sharing as this week’s Postpartum Voice. She’s been hosting guest bloggers on the topic of  PPD/PPA over at her place this week as part of Mental Health Month and the D-Listed Blog Hop. Miranda and I met via #PPDChat at Twitter (I’ve been meeting SO many new moms there lately!) and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know her.

Miranda’s story starts out with disappointment after delivery didn’t quite go the way she had planned. I’ll let her tell her story in her voice now….

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you one thing. I am an over-achiever. I expect my best from myself in all things. I do not settle. I never have. Slowly, however, I’m learning to accept that sometimes my “best” has to be “good enough.”

I began battling depression in late high school. I fought with anxiety and depression off and on for years.  Once I got to college, I had pressure to keep my scholarships, to not disappoint my parents, to make sure I paid my mortgage and car payments and insurance and utility bills on time. To maintain a social life and find the person with whom I was going to spend the rest of my life.

I finally got help during my junior year of college when I broke down and realized I couldn’t continue to live the way I’d been living. What I was facing was something bigger than me. The clinicians and psychiatrist who helped me were amazing and I owe them a debt of gratitude for teaching me how to “deal.” While I was in treatment, I met a wonderful guy, got married, and set out to suburbia. Eventually, we decided to expand our family.

I knew I was meant to be a mother.  I knew that I would be good at this.  It was my destiny.  How could I not be a natural?

So imagine my shock when, two days after having my beautiful plans of a natural, vaginal, med-free delivery shot down due to “failure to progress,” I found myself crying into my meatloaf.  Apparently, someone having an “inappropriate response to meatloaf” has become code-language in my doctor’s office for “watch out for this one.  She’s on the fast-track to medication.” Or something like that.  But see, that wasn’t normal.  And I didn’t know it.

And when I wrote that post, the anger over my C-section was definitely present.  I was angry.  I am angry.  Even now, 14 months later.

And that’s how my PPD/PPA started.  With anger.  And bitterness.  And resentment.

And then the anger and bitterness and resentment turned into sadness over how things didn’t go the way I planned.

And then I heard the words “you’ll have to supplement” at my son’s first newborn visit after being discharged and that’s where the no-no “F” word started creeping in.

FAILURE.

I had only been a mom for five days and already I was a failure.  I’d failed to get him here the way I’d envisioned.  I’d failed to keep him from losing 10% of his birth weight because my stress and anxiety over the surgery (and the pain! Sweet baby Jesus in a manger the pain) kept my milk from coming in.

And I just KNEW that supplementing would be doom for breastfeeding for us.

And then I’d be failing at yet ANOTHER thing and I was BARELY EVEN A MOTHER YET AND HOW CAN I ALREADY BE SO BAD AT THIS?!?!?

When my one-week postpartum check-up came around, Peggy-the-PA and Dan and I discussed my “inappropriate response to meatloaf” in the hospital while Joshua, ever the little stinker he is, slept peacefully in his carseat.  A carseat that he HATED for the first four months of his life (which effectively trapped me in the house because the sound of him screaming would send me into what I now think were mild panic attacks…WHILE DRIVING).

While we were at that visit, Peggy wrote me a prescription for an anti-depressant.  She thought it’d be a good idea for me to go ahead and start taking them.

But I didn’t.  Because I wanted to believe that I was stronger than that.  I wanted to believe that this was just the “Baby Blues” and that they’d go away and I’d realize that I was a natural at this.  That I was a PERFECT mother.

But I wasn’t.  I’m still not.  And the “Baby Blues” didn’t just evaporate.

It didn’t help that a mere seven days after giving birth, I was flying solo with this tiny bundle of lungs and poop.  I couldn’t drive because it still hurt to sneeze, so I still needed to take pain medication. But I couldn’t take pain medication and be home all day with the baby because what if he needed me and the medication made me drowsy and I was sent a baby who wouldn’t sleep so there was no “sleep when baby is sleeping” in this house for at least three weeks.

I resented my husband.  I resented the fact that he got to leave every day and go to work.  He got to get out.  He got to see people.  If I tried to leave, even to go to Target, I’d have the baby screaming his tiny baby lungs out the whole way there.  The whole time we walked around the store.  The whole time we drove home.  It just wasn’t worth it.  So I didn’t leave.  And when Dan left for work, I’d cry.

And because I was so mired up in my own grief, I didn’t feel connected to my son.  I’d read blogs written by women who would gush and gush about how when they saw their baby it was love at first sight and they knew instinctively what to do and what their baby needed and part of me screamed “THAT IS BULLSHIT” and then part of me cried.

Because that’s what I wanted.  I wanted that instant bond.  That connection.  That look from my baby that said “You are my mommy and I know this because I have heard your heart for 40 weeks and 5 days and it is the greatest sound in the world and I love you, Mommy.  And I promise to sleep all night long and save all the poop-splosions for Daddy.”

And I didn’t get that.  Even close to a year out, I still didn’t feel that.  Even now, there are times where I look at my son and go “WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM!?!?” because he and I just don’t seem to understand each other very well.

The times that I felt most at peace were the times when my mother came down to spend the day with me.  She’d get here early in the morning and do a load of laundry or dishes or sweep my floor.  And then?  Then she’d hold Joshua while I napped in the bed.  It was glorious.  But it was brief.  My reprieves from the resentment were short-lived.  I knew she’d leave soon, so when it would be time for her to leave, I’d get all anxious in the pit of my stomach and I’d feel the lump forming in my throat.  And then she’d walk out the door and I’d be choking back tears and trying to hold it together.

And in the midst of all of this, Joshua was diagnosed with reflux and a milk protein allergy.  Which meant mixing up little packets of Zegerid twice a day and me cutting out all yummy dairy goodness for as long as I planned to breastfeed.  Me and Oreos became BFFs because they are totally, completely dairy free.  And some days, I’d eat Oreos.  All day long.  That’s almost all I’d have to eat.  Maybe I’d sneak in a graham cracker and some peanut butter.  But I didn’t have much of an appetite, despite the fact that I was a dairy-free dairy cow.

(I think the fact that we finally got breastfeeding worked out is the only thing that helped me keep it together.  It’s the only thing I knew I didn’t totally suck at, even though it had its own set of drawbacks…like growth spurts, and nursing every hour, on the hour, all.night.long. AND GIVING UP CHEESE AND COFFEE CREAMER.)

At my six week postpartum visit, I finally admitted to Peggy, and my husband, and my mom, and myself, that I needed to fill the prescription she’d written me six weeks earlier.  I knew that this was not something I could do alone.  So, I drove to the pharmacy, filled the prescription, and started taking them that night.

And I didn’t feel instantly better.  I still have days where I don’t feel better.  I have days where I just want to cry.  Or where it physically hurts to move my body because I’m just so weighed down with my thoughts.  And there are times when Joshua screams (um..hello…he’s a Tiny Terrorist.  That’s pretty much all he does is scream) and I feel my heart start to beat faster and I kind of lose my train of thought and I become robotic.  GET.DIAPER.ON.NOW.PICK.UP.BABY.NOW. And I just sort of “do” it.

One of the things I’ve come to realize through my battle with PPD/PPA is that I have to take every day as it comes.  I’ve also had to abandon the quest for “perfection.”  Nothing is perfect.  Especially not me.  Which is the purpose behind this blog.  I’m not perfect.  I’m never going to BE perfect.

I’ll have perfect moments, and moments where I go “Hey, I don’t suck at this!” but I’m not going to have those moments all the time.  The “perfect” world of mommyhood that I envisioned for myself prior to actually being a mom doesn’t exist.

And slowly…slowly, I’m becoming more and more okay with the lack of perfection in my life.  And I’m finding something kind of perfect in the imperfection.  I’m finding me.

Miranda can be found at Not Super…Just Mom. She’d like everyone to know that she is not, in fact, a Supermom. But with a cape and a tiara she could probably save the world.

Just Talkin’ Tuesday 05.04.10: Did your Postpartum influence your decision about Breast or Bottle?

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A lot of bloggers have been talking about mom guilt lately. I even threw my hat in the ring.

Anyone who has talked with me for any amount of time knows full well I am fully supportive of moms no matter what decisions they have made in their own lives. As mothers, it is part of our job to make the best decisions we are capable of making for our family. And we should absolutely not be judged for these decisions. It’s a shame that we have to put a disclaimer before discussing any aspect of motherhood for fear of offending a mother who may have made a different choice.

Growing up, I remember my mom nursing my brothers. Breastfeeding is how I was raised. I knew no different. For me, breastfeeding was akin to breathing. It was just something you did when you had a baby. When I got pregnant, I would breastfeed my daughter too. Failure never occurred to me as a possibility. The first full day after birth, she wouldn’t latch. We went home without having gotten it right. I gave formula the first night. I was failing. Scared, failing, what the hell? My mom had made everything look so easy. It was supposed to be easy! Why was I having such a hard time??? The next morning we got up and I was determined to get her to latch. She did and off we went into the breastfeeding sunset. 16 whole months of nursing with self-weaning two weeks before discovery of our second pregnancy. I had done it right! It had been one of the few things I had felt I had managed to get right about Motherhood.

Fast forward to 36 and a half weeks pregnant later. After a long labor, our second daughter was born. She too, would not latch. I thought her mouth didn’t look right but I was tired. Blamed it on the exhaustion. This time around I asked for an IBCLC. She immediately swept baby’s mouth with a gloved finger and diagnosed a cleft palate. My world turned upside down. I met a hospital grade pump that night. Barely got anything. Wondered why I was bothering to pump. But I kept with it, pumping at home, at the hospital, stashing breastmilk in the freezer, the fridge, feeding it to my daughter through her Kangaroo pump. Managed to keep it up for seven whole months before it came down to my daughter receiving breastmilk or my family and my mental health. I bought formula and cried the whole way home from the store. But that decision saved me, saved my relationship with my family. I was grateful formula existed.

A little over a year later would find me surprised and pregnant once again. I was scared. But I now knew formula was ok. I still tried to breastfeed. Our son latched on like a champ right after delivery. Nursed wonderfully, even through three bouts of thrush. But at 6 months, he was diagnosed as failure to thrive. He was born at 8lbs 15oz and had barely gained 3 lbs in the first six months of life. Our well-meaning pediatrician suggested I pump. I wanted to laugh. I was SO not going back down that road! After a day of contemplation, off I went to buy formula. He switched rather easily and was completely on formula by the end of the week, gaining weight, happy, not fussy, and we were all much healthier mentally as well.

There are women out there who will tell you that breastfeeding protects against depression because of the production of Oxytocin, the “cuddle” hormone. Then there are those who will tell you formula feeding will help you get more rest. So will pumping and having enough in the fridge/freezer for a bottle in the middle of the night. But then you risk not nursing at that time and killing your supply. But I say if you can do it and not risk your supply – go for it.

Bottom line here?

YOU have to do what is best for you. And if that means a balance of breastmilk and formula or only one or the other then SO be it. If someone giving baby a bottle of formula at night helps you sleep and recover, then go for it. If breastfeeding makes you smile and helps you feel like more of a mother, then so be it. No apologies, no looking back. Be bold, make the decision, and go with it. It is possible to continue to nurse with anti-depressants. If you choose to do so, make sure your prescribing doctor knows you are nursing and let your pediatrician know as well so both doctors can minimize any potential side effects. Ask questions. Get answers. Make an educated decision.

Now that I’ve stepped off my soap box, it’s your turn. Did your Postpartum Mood Disorder change your plans for feeding your infant? Did you give formula instead of nurse? Choose to nurse instead of formula to help ward off Postpartum Depression? Why? Would you do things any differently knowing what you know now? Why? Why not?Do you regret your decision?

Let’s get to Just Talkin’ Tuesday.