Postpartum Depression
Shame, guilt, eternal sadness, inexplicable anger, thoughts of suicide, thoughts of homicide, anxiety. These are all some of the more severe symptoms of postpartum depression and not a single one of these symptoms is a reason to feel like something is wrong with YOU. Nothing is wrong with you, specifically, but rather, your hormones are out of whack. I denied I had it for a long time.
Let me tell you about my experience with it and hopefully it opens you up to want to get help too. Do not suffer in silence longer than you need to. I did for nearly six months.
My “perfect” baby L had colic. If you are unfamiliar with that, it is classified as three hours or more of crying for three days a week for three weeks. We surpassed this classification like the overachievers we are! She would cry for hours on hours. She would softly whimper while she nursed and cried until she finally, finally fell asleep for a whole four hours before waking to do so again. This caused a lot of fights with my other half. The lack of sleep made us hate each other it seemed. He didn’t understand how I was so tired because he was somehow much more tired than I, a nursing mother who had given birth just a month prior, could ever be. He cried more than I ever did. He would cry when she cried and he would go lay in bed and just tell me he wanted to die. I was busy caring for him and his spawn, both of them crying, and I was slowly losing my mind without even knowing it.
To “cure” L, so to speak, involved a lot of exercise. Right, how does an infant exercise? We did tummy time, bicycle legs, baby squats… all to get out the gas that was causing her belly to swell, giving her colic. We would nurse it out and she would toot the entire time. She got better and I was happy with that, but my other half was still suffering. He told me he felt like he was a horrible father and how we would be better off without him. I don’t know if he knows how much this broke my heart. I loved him as deeply as I loved our newborn. I stressed, all the time, about how to keep him happy.
We got into some pretty gnarly fights. He threw things, I yelled, he broke a few things, I yelled more. I could only yell. I’m not a physical being, I’m a person of words. My words will hurt as bad as anything he could throw at me. All this stress continued and my milk supply slowly dwindled to a measly little ounce every two hours. I was drying up and I was failing my daughter. More on this in another post.
I didn’t think anything was wrong with me until I started dreaming about murdering my significant other. I call it dreaming because I didn’t wake up in tears or scared, I woke up happy. I was happy at the thought of my boyfriend being dead. That escalated to me thinking about killing him, our daughter, and myself one night. We had gotten in a really bad fight and I said, “That’s fine, I’ll just kill us all,” in the most nonchalant tone, like it was something normal. I didn’t think I was wrong at the time, but he did. He confided in my mother who thought I needed help. I lashed out. I didn’t get help for a few more months.
In those few months, our sex life dwindled to nothing. We barely talked. I hated him. I hated being a mother. I wanted to die. I wanted him to die. I wanted to give away our child to someone who would be good enough because neither of us were deserving.
I had a friend who I confided in and she had told me that she thought it was normal to want to drive off the highway with her infant in the car until she did it one day and she was told by doctors that was not normal thinking.
I’m glad I never acted on my thoughts, but what if I had? What if I acted before I decided to put my pride aside and get help? I may have done something I really regretted and been ripped from my child and put in jail for attempted murder or something horrible along those lines. I told myself I would never have postpartum depression because I love my boyfriend and I love L. Postpartum depression does not discriminate. Anyone can have it, even some men get it, supposedly.
So I was put on Lexapro in March. It is July 1st and I feel normal except around the time I get my period. I tend to get a little emotional and have angry outbursts. I lack patience and yell at L or at my other half. I don’t mean to because I love them but I know they will forgive me. My name is Kara. I am a mother. I am 23. And I have postpartum depression. I am not alone and neither are you.
Love,
The Honest Mom