So its taken me a while to bring myself to write about this topic. I decided that the best way to begin the new year is to dust out my emotional closet and just put it out there.
PPD... post pardum depression... is a very hush hush topic in the motherhood community. You see signs on the Dr's doors, there are pamphlets every time you turn around and I think I filled out a survey at the pediatrician when Dylan was 3 weeks old. Right, like any of us are going to confess our deepest emotions to a 10 item survey on a clip board in a pediatrician office. Its an understatement to say that Dr's could be doing a little more to not only prepare new mothers for this possible aftermath of having a baby. I honestly feel like at least one check up with a counselor or therapist should be part of the treatment plan post pardum. Really because if we don't want to admit it to ourselves, then at least a professional trained in the symptoms can have the chance to diagnose it early one. But I am getting ahead of myself here...
Lets start with this shining bright fact...the CDC has reported that 15% of women suffer from post pardum. What a gem. Lets compute this into brain of every soon to be pregnant, pregnant or brand new mom "only 15% of women get it, which means if I do get it then I won't be in the majority of mothers who don't, which means I am not normal and if I am not normal I am not a good mom" -- so what do you think most women then do if they get it or think they are getting it? Ignore it, say nothing and try to make it go away? So what does that mean? That 15% only reflects the number of women who ADMIT they have it. This is only the number of women who have come forth, said they need help and were formally diagnosed. I don't think its a stretch to say that most women are not that willing to admit they are not the perfect mother. So what do we do instead... we keep it to ourselves.
At least that is what I did. My main point in this blog is to make other mothers out there feel less alone, less like they are terrible for thinking thoughts no one admits to & that they are going to be ok. Which is why I have to share my store of PPD in order to be fully truthful. Its not easy to do, because it means going back and revisiting a time where I was sad, even though I should have been happy. Actually, if I go back through my blog - I can pick up on the sadness I was going through in the early entries.
So I remember first holding my baby. I remember being overcome with love, a new love, and just tears falling out of my face of sheer happiness. I remember being in the hospital it being this time trapped in a little bubble of newness and joy. It was, if I look back on it, like a little mini vacation. I had nurses bringing me pain medicine every few hours, I had people I love coming to visit and being totally attentive to me, I had breakfast, lunch & dinner in bed... it was great. But I was ready to get home. I wanted my new life to go ahead and get started - I was ready.
I can't pinpoint when or what suddenly changed. I never stopped loving my baby - so I think that single fact kept me in denial about what was happening to me emotionally. As vain as it may sound, I think for me the hardest part to accept was my new body. My horrible, flabby, fat - new body. I could not look in the mirror - literally. I had to keep myself and my eyes away from it. If I happened to have to look nice for something, it was an emotional roller coaster. Its these times, that I had to break out of Jons (yes Jons) pajamas that I think set me into a tail spin. I would deflect of course. We'd get in the car, I'd be feeling horrible about myself, and find something to be upset with Jon about. I think we spent an entire drive to the beach with me going over my checklist of complaints about him. Which ended up with me breaking down and admitting that I just felt horrible about myself... thankfully I at least admitted I really didn't truly think he was the worst husband that ever walked the earth.
Mostly, instead of direct emotions or specific times, I feel like what I went through was a combination of timelessness. A day gone by without me having done anything I viewed at the time as productive. I felt in a way worthless. I couldn't keep the house clean, I couldn't keep my hair brushed, I didn't have a single profound thought in a day. It just totally revolved around the baby. What I know now, that I didnt' know then, is that being a new mom, in its early stages, is the hardest job in the world. No you aren't lifting heavy equipment, you aren't standing on your feet all day, you aren't spending hours on projects or paperwork. Something about going from career women, to spending all the days in the home - is such a dramatic change - that you feel like you are worthless. What you don't allow yourself to realize is that being sleep deprived, learning how to be a mom, spending every second of every day completely devoted to another human - is emotionally exhausting. Being emotionally exhausted, physically drained & still managing to spend the day smiling, playing, feeding, cleaning and loving someone so selflessly - is the most challenging thing a person can do. It takes a person with nerves of steel & lots and lots of support. But at the end of the day, you don't allow yourself to see that. Because while your focus is 100% on the baby, your natural reaction of self reflection kicks in and you realize you have done nothing for yourself. When you spend a day doing nothing for yourself, you end the day feeling worthless.
So I would sit in my chair, holding the baby while he napped, looking straight into thin air for hours. Like a total zombie. When I say this, I will tell you with 100% confidence that this will not be the case with my next baby. I know better now, but at the time you just don't know better. You are figuring it all out one minute at a time. So I would just sit there, mostly because I was afraid to fall asleep but at the same time had only slept maybe... possibly... stretching it... 2 hours that night. Even when I did sleep, I slept with one eye open. I bet to those of you who have never been there, this sounds like chinese torture. But here is the tricky thing, the odd part about it, I did it all because I was overflowing with love. I felt so horrible because I had this new love that had totally overtaken me and I was the happiest I had ever been.
That last part is the part that I think kept me and keeps most women in denial. I was the happiest I had ever been. Jon and I were the best we had ever been. We had this new little light in our lives that made us smile all the time, that was our total focus and just filled us with a joy we never have ever known. So if I was that happy - then it was impossible for me to be that sad too right?
Its the part about PPD that for me just made me think I didn't have it. I guess part of me ignored the way I was feeling about myself. Becoming a mom one of the first things that happens is that you become selfless immediately. Anything that has to do with yourself, you ignore, its not important. The only thing that is important is the baby - not you. So if you think you feel sad, you ignore it. You focus on the baby and that makes you happy. I remember thinking "I love my baby, people with PPD don't love their babies...since I love my baby then I don't have it"
I think thats a HUGE misconception. Even as I write this and am researching symptoms I find... well here...
Depressed mood-tearfulness, hopelessness, and feeling empty inside, with or without severe anxiety.
Loss of pleasure in either all or almost all of your daily activities.
Appetite and weight change-usually a drop in appetite and weight, but sometimes the opposite.
Sleep problems-usually trouble with sleeping, even when your baby is sleeping.
Noticeable change in how you walk and talk-usually restlessness, but sometimes sluggishness.
Extreme fatigue or loss of energy.
Feelings of worthlessness or guilt, with no reasonable cause.
Difficulty concentrating and making decisions.
Thoughts about death or suicide. Some women with PPD have fleeting, frightening thoughts of harming their babies: these thoughts tend to be fearful thoughts, rather than urges to harm.
Feeling removed from your baby, other people, and your surroundings (depersonalization).
Disturbed sleep, even when your baby is sleeping.
Extremely confused and disorganized thinking, increasing your risk of harming yourself, your baby, or another person.2
Drastically changing moods and bizarre behavior.
Extreme agitation or restlessness.
Unusual hallucinations, often involving sight, smell, hearing, or touch.
Delusional thinking that isn't based in reality.
Disturbed sleep? Extremely confused? Fatigue???? Hilarious... clearly a mother did not come up with these symptoms... my personal favorite "appetite & weight change" hahahahahilarious...
This list just had described (well lets say 80% of it) every single new mom that has ever lived. Which is why I say, we should ALL seek help after having a baby. We ALL suffer from these symptoms. Not sure about hallucinations - but I can say I had some wacked out dreams that felt really really really real. Feeling removed from the baby.... sure sometimes... other people - most definitely. I did not want to see people. At all... primarily, because I felt so fat and ugly. And I felt like my brain was mush. All these people were dropping by to see the baby, all of them just as skinny as they have been in years, brains filled with interesting things that happened to them in the day... looking at me and I am total mush. "yeah, I changed 3 poopy diapers today"--- who cares right? I did not want to be around people at all.
Loss of pleasure in daily activities? I mean who could not find pleasure in filling up bottles, changing diaper, burping, cleaning up puke, repeat. Seriously? I love change in how you walk or talk, how would you walk or talk after 6 weeks of no sleep??? Sluggish maybe? Come on...
I can tell you that I never contemplated suicide or harming my baby... BUT I remember a time when I thought about those stories on Oprah, of women going to such extremes when they did have PPD... and I remember thinking "I would never come close to that action, but I get it"
My point is, ladies, your body has just been through the ringer and back. Stretched physically to its ultimate limit, then the labor-- its like running a 10k 15 times in a straight... it will take WEEKS just to recover from that... and lets not forget the hormones. Your body went from normal, to double the amount of hormones to total and complete shock when the hormones decrease again. How in the world could you not feel some kind of aftermath from this?
For me, it was the physical change and then, I also made the choice to leave a successful career to stay at home. Which was a wonderful choice and yet, drastic change. I identified myself as an independent woman, with taste & ability to buy as many shoes as I damn well pleased... husband or no husband and he was not going to say a word because it was my hard earned money. To... nothing. No paychecks with my name on them. No reason to dress nice. No feeling of independence. It was a total shock I was not prepared for. And it weighed on me heavily. It was... and still is at times... I major adjustment. But it was the direct result of a choice I made... and honestly, I wouldn't go back and change a thing about it. I love my life... but for many months... I felt like I was floating in lost time and space. Just not sure of my place anymore.
So here I was, fat, exhausted, completely dependent on my husband, anti-social... and guess what... I was freakin depressed! Sounds depressing doesnt it? Did I seek help? Nope. Well not a first. I didnt' admit a thing, even though I saw it in the faces of my husband and family. I saw what they were thinking but didn't want to say, afraid of my reaction. I knew they thought I was suffering from PPD, which only made me more determined to prove them wrong. Why that became important, I am not really sure. I think it all revolved around the "If you have PPD that means you don't love your baby" --- thats all I could think it meant. And I was damn sure not falling into that category.
Then.... then the dreams started. I guess I was in such denial during the day, my dreams started to be the release of my inner emotions. I actually sit here and can't really remember them anymore. Which is great, because I remember I would fall asleep for maybe an hour and wake up suddenly in tears. Or really really afraid. Or angry. They were vivid and a lot of times involved death of some sort. Then I found myself during the day scared to leave the house, afraid that if I did something bad would happen. I would call jon at 5:31 if he wasn't home yet, afraid he had gotten into an accident. That when I decided to do something.
I went to the nurse practioner that my sister suggested. She wasn't a therapist, I discovered after spilling my heart out to her for an hour, but she did presribe me an anti depressant. I have never been the kind of person who wanted to rely on pills, so I took one... and then never took another one. A bit of a set back.
I decided I needed an outlet... and so this blog was born. It was my diary and sometimes it was the only thing that gave me a sense of self worth. From there, I started working out with a trainer... which ended up being my saving grace. I dived into my dream of Photography & new passion for cooking. Before I knew it was looking around at a whole new world, one with my baby THAT I ALWAYS LOVED and with a new me.
See that is the thing that happens, we go through pregnancy thinking that after the baby is born life will change, but also go back to normal. And even after the baby is born, you keep wondering when life will get back to normal. After all the visitors stop coming by, after baby sleeps through the night, after you get back to work, after you loose a few pounds, after you get the house set up exactly right, after you have a few girls nights.... so this search keeps going and you end up short handed. Which I guess makes you feel like you aren't be successful at something & then you just wake up and realize - life has changed, normal has changed. Before you say to yourself that this may make you think twice about having a baby because you like your normal... let me tell you... you have no idea how amazing this new wonderful can be until you embrace it.
I've made many posts about my new life, the new me, finding peace... once all the chips fell into place and I opened my eyes I embraced it, and it has been like floating on a cloud. It reminds me of the first 3 weeks... my good friend Megan had her baby a few weeks before I had mine. I remember talking to her a week or so before I went into labor and she told me she was on cloud 99... I loved that. And that is so true, the first three weeks you have this natural high and its just like a new beautiful planet... a little slice of heaven. And then three weeks pass and reality hits... you are tired, you need to get your hair done, you have no breaks and thats when for me the depression kicked in.
Its been a gradual process of self reflection, acceptance & letting go. I am so eternally grateful to my true friends & family that walked me through this last year and a half. Mostly, I am so thankful to the universe for giving me the opportunity to have what I have now. Love, happiness, peace... a family. It truly is a blessing and I am so thankful for my life, for the place I am in today. To me when you go through pregnancy - there are two parts to it. There is the obvious, having a baby part... but then the mother goes through a second part that is her own little secret (except all other mothers know) where you transform into a new person. Becoming a MOM is becoming a new person, almost a person of a higher existence and it isn't easy... which is why I think so many mothers fail... or bail... but really... nothing worth having is ever easy. Thats why only the people who have faith and strength achieve great things, motherhood is a mighty great thing to achieve. It just doesn't happen overnight. I mean you become a mother literally overnight, but being a mother takes a while... if that makes sense?
My main point in writing this is to basically say... PPD is as natural as childbirth if you ask me, in my experience. Way too many of us feel like we are expected to put forth this "glowing new mother" image from pregnancy and then especially after having the baby. So we live up to that expectation come hell or high water, because we don't want to ever be perceived as a bad mother, or that we don't love our baby. Girls, having a baby is an emotional roller coaster... our hormone levels jump from highest high to lowest low... it is chemically impossible to ignore what is going on internally. And it makes us worse. And guess what, you don't have to admit it to anyone else - but yourself.
I am not suggesting that if you experience this yourself, you go and write a blog about it and share it with everyone you know. I am suggesting, that you admit it to yourself. Unless you yourself admits you are feeling signs of PPD (which if you refer to the symptoms - all new mothers are going to experience this on some level) - allow yourself to get help. I strongly believe that everyone should factor in a post pardum visit to a counselor or therapist. If its something you have planned on from beginning, your mom or husband won't ask any questions as to why you are going. And trust me, answering those questions is the very thing that keeps you from going. Lets just say that its better to be prepared since you really don't know what will happen after you have the baby - what could it really hurt to allow yourself the peace of mind well in advance that IF you should find yourself in similar shoes as me, you have a plan of action from the get go.
Here is a great website that has helpful information and offers support :
http://ivppdboard.tripod.com/
