Postpartum Progress

Guest Author: Sarah Pond of mama2mama

Sarah Pond, co-founder of mama2mama in Canada, was kind enough to share with us her story of postpartum depression.  This is a beautifully written story, and a very comprehensive one in which she lists all of her various symptoms.  I don't normally post something this lengthy on Postpartum Progress because I like everything to be easily digestible, but this is worth it.

"The third day after my daughter's birth, a vortex of dark, deafening, and terminally sinister energy swallowed me whole. It sounds dramatic and it was. It overcame me in the car on the way home from the hospital. My baby slept soundly in her carseat, blissfully unaware that her primary caregiver was beginning a freefall into a churning turmoil. I remember commenting to my husband that I was suddenly not feeling too well. An understatement, to be sure.

Every moment after that, I struggled in the teeth of a malevolent beast, while desperately attempting to keep up the appearance of a happy, serene mommy. It felt like a struggle of life and death proportions. I suppose it was.

At the 5 month mark, when sleep deprivation was becoming debilitating, I made an appointment with my (former) family doctor. She gave me the following advice: Get some rest, eat more fatty foods and don't spoil the baby. She neither mentioned PPD nor asked me any relevant questions, nor suggested any resources. The appointment lasted all of six minutes. I timed it.

I kept on going, not following the doctor's advice. At last, on a Saturday afternoon, when my daughter was 7 months old, I crashed hard and ended up at the medical clinic trembling, pale and unable to form a cohesive thought. I hadn't slept at all for three days and nights. I hadn't had more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep for half a year. My husband took our baby to his mother's, drove me to the clinic and insisted that we see somebody NOW. A short time later, I was sitting in front of a very kind, compassionate and helpful doctor, asking him for immediate help. Looking back, I know that I was very close to being hospitalized. Instead, the doctor, bless him, sent me home with three prescriptions: one for an antidepressant, another for a sleep aid, and a final one to do whatever it takes to get some decent sleep.

That night, with a lot of support from my husband and some pumping of milk, I slept for five hours straight. The next night it was six. After an entire week of sleeping "through the night", I was on the road to healing. By the time my baby was 10 months old, I was a new woman.

Recovery has been a path of ups and downs, of good days and bad. But no days have ever come close to the darkest days of all, when my perceptions were distorted by anxiety, fear and sleeplessness. When the primary emotion I felt toward my beautiful child was pity, for having such an inadequate mother. When I felt the hot breath of those notorious black dogs of despair on my throat, heard their hungry snarling, and knew that I was their weakening prey.  These days, pretty much every day is good. Great, even.

I have found a new balance. All the balls I juggle as a mother, a wife, an employee, friend, family member and upstanding citizen are staying miraculously aloft (WooHoo!). I practice self-care and I make it a priority. Most of all I enjoy mothering my little girl as I have never enjoyed anything else. I look at her now and I know that she has a good mother – one who loves her and nurtures her as best she can.

During the worst of it, I tried natural therapies, such as herbal remedies and homeopathy. While these took the edge off the most severe symptoms, it was the antidepressants that ended up saving me. The journey through PPD is unique for each of us and so are the ways we heal. I don't advocate any particular method of finding balance; I simply share my own passage. Until this experience, I was resistant to pharmaceuticals such as antidepressants. Now, I feel fortunate that such drugs are available and that they worked so effectively for me.

The best and most important therapy for me, was reaching out for help. Finding the guts to talk to other mothers about what I was going through opened the doors that lead me to health. It was other mamas who inspired and guided my way.

Now my wish is to do the same.

Some of the symptoms of my postpartum experience were:

Physical

       • Insomnia

       • Jittery, shaky

       • No appetite

       • Weight loss

       • Low milk supply

       • Adrenalin surging constantly

       • "Fight or flight" mode all the time

Mental

       • Inability to turn off my mommy-brain, which was running at 1000 RPM. Like an engine revving way too high in the lowest gear

       • Loud clamoring noise in my head at all times, especially at night when everyone else was asleep

       • Uncontrollable intrusive thoughts of harm coming to my baby (from earthquakes, wild animals, disease, car accidents, intruders, electrocution, drowning, choking, SIDS, etc, etc, etc)

       • Difficulty concentrating or focusing

       • mental fogginess, sluggishness

       • Nightmares

Emotional

       • Anxiety about everything to do with my baby

       • Terrible, awful apprehension when the baby cried

       • Extreme discomfort when I was separated from my baby

       • Feeling certain that I was a terrible mother

       • Fear of harm coming to my baby

       • Fear of dying and my baby being left motherless

       • Exhausting mood swings between the elation and joy of loving my child and despair and anxiety over my perceived inability to care properly for her

       • Anger and resentment towards my husband

       • Guilt, guilt, and more guilt

       • Dread

       • Rage

       • Heartfelt desire to live in a secluded cave with only me and my baby

Behavioral

       • Crying fits

       • Micro-managing everything

       • Not allowing anyone else to care for my baby

       • Not taking any breaks

       • Unable to relax

       • Raging at my husband, up to and including threatening divorce

       • Obsessive coping behaviors, such as counting to 500 while soothing my crying baby

       • Clinging inflexibly to routines

       • Insisting that things to do with the baby be done EXACTLY SO and freaking out when it wasn't

Please reach out for help if you think that you need it. And if you think you MIGHT need it, too.

Guest Author: Aliza Sherman of Babyfruit

Below is a blog post about experiencing postpartum depression that first appeared in Aliza Sherman's Babyfruit blog:

When It Hit Me, It Hit Hard

     I ended up with knock down drag out post partum depression around 4 months [postpartum] but even before that, there were signs.
     Maybe the time I threw a dirty plate from the dinner table up in the air because I was so angry could have been a clue. Or when I screamed at my husband to "give me the baby, you can't keep her from me!" then ran through the house slamming doors and cursing at him to leave me alone. Or the time I ran from the house screaming with the car keys, thinking I'd drive away (where? somewhere, anywhere) and he had to chase after me, wrap his arms around me tightly, lead me back into the house.
     When it hit hard, it wasn't depression in the way I had thought about depression. I wasn't sad. I was angry. I was seething. I was absolutely furious. Everything set me off. In my mind, as long as I didn't want to hurt my baby, then I would be okay. But I didn't think twice about wanting to hurt myself.
     When it looked like I was going to be put on anti-depressants, I couldn't go there. I had heard too many stories about people who went on them and then committed suicide and knowing how sensitive I am to anything I put into my body, I feared that they'd send me over the edge.
     So I turned to a naturopath and in one 2 hour visit, she pinpointed exactly what I needed. She said that the hormone imbalance I was feeling included large amounts of adrenaline and epinephrine pumping into my system sending me into "fight or flight" mode. This definitely explained my state of constant panic. The only way I could describe it was that I was screaming inside, constantly.
     She gave me supplements to help my adrenal glands to not overproduce adrenaline and an amino acid to spray under my tongue when I would start to feel panicky. Within a few days, I felt...as normal as one can feel after having a life changing and body changing event happen at age 41 (having a baby, of course).
     I can't say normal because I'm not who I was before baby. I'm another person, totally changed, and half the time I'm not sure who I am. I've seen a therapist a few times to explore this aspect of motherhood. Nobody told me I would lose my identity and have an identity crisis that would only add to my PPD.
     In the 2 months since I started getting treatments for my PPD, I haven't had any out of control, irrational outbursts. And I'm not screaming inside. When I feel something creeping in, I spray the amino acid under my tongue a few times and then take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I have only had to do that one time in the last 3 weeks.
     I still don't know who I am, although when I went to a friend's birthday party last month with my husband and baby, we had to wear name tags. I put my name, then under it, I wrote "NG's Mom." After the party, I stuck it on the inside of my coat and it is still there, a little worn around the edges, but there to remind me at least who I am in part. I need that reminder.

And here is Aliza's update, as of this month:

     About 5 months after I wrote this blog post, my naturopath sent me to a colleague - a nurse practitioner - who muscle tested me for an antidepressant. She determined that Effexor would be right for me. I started on the lowest dose - 37.5 mg - and immediately - and I mean immediately - felt different. I slept soundly and deeply the first night and woke up the next day refreshed. Within a few days, I felt calmer. The jagged edges of anxiety were smoothing out. Within a week, I felt...like me. Like the me I remembered me to be.
     Because the effects were so immediate and positive, I have remained on the lowest dose and am only supposed to take it for 3 months. Life at home is so much more calm. I feel capable of coping with everything, including being a mom. I'm trying not to worry too much right now about getting off the medication. I'm just enjoying having a normal life, something that I thought I'd never have again.

Guest Author: MommaSteph of MomSquawk

Following is a very honest piece about intrusive thoughts and postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder, written by MommaSteph, a blogger at Mom Squawk.

I would never put my baby in the dishwasher.

But I've thought about it.

I've thought about putting the baby in all sorts of major household appliances: the washer, dryer, fridge, microwave, oven. I don't have a trash compacter, but if I did, well, that probably would have occurred to me, too.

And I'm not particularly unusual in this regard.

I remember the first time I had a violent intrusive thought about my first baby. It happened shortly after I had brought him home. My brother and his children were just leaving from a visit. I stood at the window holding Henry up and waving goodbye. My brother turned to wave and smile back. And suddenly I thought, "What if I dashed Henry's head against the radiator? How quickly would what happened register on David's face? How quickly could he get in here to get the baby away from me? When would his kids realize what had happened?"

It all occurred to me in a flash. I started to sweat, my heart started to beat quickly, and I moved away from the radiator. I was horrified, ashamed, disgusted, and scared. Was I one of those crazy women? How could I have such an awful thought? And how could I protect my baby?

From there, it just got worse. And I told no one -- how could I? What if they took my baby away?

For the rest of this EXCELLENT article, click here to go to Momsquawk!

Guest Author: Theresa Borchard of Beliefnet

Therese Borchard, who writes the Beyond Blue blog at Beliefnet, shares her postpartum anxiety story with Postpartum Progress today:

   Although I can’t remember a time in my childhood or adolescence that I lived without depression and anxiety, I guess you could say that I officially joined the elite mentally ill club in 1989, my freshman year at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, when I went by the Counseling and Career Development Center to inquire about local support groups (I was just a few months sober). One of the therapists politely invited me back.

   A few months later she rattled off a handful of diagnoses: obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorder, anxiety disorder, and depression. She strongly suggested antidepressants, but I resisted. Like fellow twelve-steppers, I thought they would compromise my sobriety. And with my Catholic friends and mentors, I regarded them as a crutch and a short cut from the pain that was necessary for spiritual growth.

    “Life doesn’t have to be this hard,” my counselor told me, giving me a copy of Colette Dowling’s book, You Mean I Don’t Have to Feel This Way. A year and a half later, when I was experiencing suicidal thoughts, I finally cried uncle, clinging to the lifeboat (or prescription) God sent me. After a few trial and error experiments, my doctor and I stumbled on the combination of Prozac and Zoloft, which allowed me to concentrate enough to study, and relax enough to tell a dirty joke (one of my favorite things to do).

   Then I got married, in 1996, and made small people (David and Katherine are now 6 and 4). After the two births, my hormones huddled together to ask each other what the hell they were supposed to be doing now that no baby was in the womb or on the breast. My neurotransmitters (the good guys responsible for feelings of well-being) caught an express train to another brain (the one content with instant oatmeal). Brain cells began to shrink (and I suspect croak) in my prefrontal cortex. A tumor grew in my pituitary gland (also in the brain). And I had a bona fide, genuine mental breakdown. There was nothing mini about it.

   I lost twenty 23 pounds (I could wear an Ann Taylor size 2! That was the only perk.) because I had no appetite (this alone signaled a serious crisis, given my love of all things edible), I contracted one urinary tract infection after another because my immune system was breaking down, I breathed into a paper bag every morning during a panic attack, and I trembled and flailed like Linda Blair in the “Exorcist” because my anxiety was so acute.

   Oh yeah, and the endless sobbing: in the deli line at the grocery (“No, it’s not the chicken salad, I just got my period”), in the waiting room at my gynecologist-obstetrician’s office (“I’m sorry, pictures of babies make me cry”), on the hayride at David’s class trip to the pumpkin patch (“I’m allergic to hay”), at Eric’s company dinners (“Please give him a raise”), at Katherine’s physical therapy sessions (“Will she ever walk?”), during sex (“Are you almost done? I have to blow my nose”), in church (twice as hard if we sang “On Eagle’s Wings” or “Be Not Afraid”), and yada yada yada.

   It took two trips to the psych ward, seven different psychiatrists, one endocrinologist, 23 different medication combinations, and several MRIs over two years’  time to get me well again. In other words, I upgraded to the platinum club membership in Club D. Diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder, I graduated beyond the casual, my-primary-care-physician-can-prescribe-me-my-meds to the critical, regular check-ins with a head doctor.

   Although I have cussed out God too many times to count, asking him what kind of marijuana he was smoking the day he designed my brain, I agree with Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind, that “tumultuousness, if coupled with discipline and a cool mind, is not such a bad sort of thing. That unless one wants to live a stunningly boring life, one ought to be on good terms with one's darker side and one's darker energies.”

Surviving Moms, Send Me Your Pics!

The Surviving & Thriving Mothers Photo Album is an online photo album of strong, competent, fabulous mothers who have recovered from postpartum mood disorders.  The women pictured in this album show countless others that you can recover and live a vibrant and happy life.  I am so indebted to all of the moms who have added their pictures, including the most recent mom, Samantha G.  Ladies, if you want to add yourself, please email me a jpeg of you and your child or children to stonecallis@msn.com!!

More Moms Join The Surviving & Thriving Photo Album

I am completely gleeful to let you know that I've posted two more photos in the Surviving & Thriving Mothers Photo Album -- Melissa N. and Kristin G.  The album is getting bigger, which is fabulous because it means there are more and more happy faces to show those who are suffering that you CAN get through this and become a fullfilled, happy and healthy mom.  I know you don't believe it's possible, but just look at all these beautiful, shining faces who are living proof!!!!!!!  If you want to be part of the album, email me at stonecallis@msn.com.