Well, it has been a VERY long time since I have written anything here. There has been a while that I have felt the need to write something, but have not had the courage. I knew, however, that a day would come that I would feel less afraid of what I wanted to put out there. Apparently, that day is today. I’m going to put this out here right now. In this post, I am going to outline a lot of my deepest thoughts and feelings. These are things I am working through on my own. I am not putting this out there trying to find people to fix me. I am not looking for advice or sympathy. I just needed to tell my story, my whole story.
Did you know…
- A mother can be struck with postpartum depression any time within the first year after the baby is born? It doesn’t always strike right away.
- There is more than just postpartum depression to be worried about? You could also suffer from postpartum anxiety or postpartum psychosis or postpartum post traumatic stress disorder or postpartum obsessive disorder, just to name a few, I’m sure there are many more.
- Postpartum depression is often blamed for postpartum psychosis symptoms and events in the media?
- Postpartum depression can manifest itself very differently in different people – for example some women suffering from postpartum depression may want to sleep all the time while other women suffering from postpartum depression just can’t sleep no matter how hard they try.
So, I’m sure you have figured out by now that my reason for taking a break from writing, aside from being ridiculously busy with three young children, is that I am a mother who suffers from one of these scary things I have listed above. I am a mother who is dealing with postpartum depression. I am a mother who had thought she had gotten through the darkness but can’t seem to find the end. I am a mother who carries on in spite of this. But, I am also a woman who was scared to admit this, to herself, to her loved ones and to medical professionals. I am a person who thought that it was too far after the baby was born for it to be postpartum anything. I am a mother and a woman who is here to give women like me a voice. I am here to, if nothing else, let those women know that they are not alone and, maybe, help some women get the help they need.
Here is my story:
At about 6 months postpartum, I was driving my three beautiful children around. The spinning of becoming a mom of three was just beginning to slow. Then something bizarre occurred to me. This was something I had likely thought of before but it never bothered me, not like it did in this moment. I came to the realization that every person is born to suffer. We all go through our pregnancies thinking how wonderful it is that we are creating this life inside us, but why? Once that life is no longer inside of us, it is dying. We are all dying. What kind of a monster brings an infant into a world where it will spend its life dying and watching those around it die? Now, you may think that I came to this realization after someone close to me had passed or after a “near-death experience” – I put this in quotes because for each individual this could look very different. However, this is not the case. This thought simply hit me, in the way that many thoughts hit all of us throughout the day. I used to get these thoughts often and while sometimes it would unsettle me a bit, it was never quite like this. In the past, before all of this, I would think: ‘I wonder what would happen if I just turned off this bridge…”; or ‘what if this plane doesn’t make it to our destination…’; or ‘how would I escape from my car if I ended up in that lake…’ But these were simple, fleeting thoughts. While these thoughts were dark, sure, they never lasted more than a moment and were all more hypothetical thoughts. So, I have this thought, that I am a terrible human being for creating small human beings with the knowledge that they will inevitably die. I understand that animals continue to procreate because they don’t understand the inevitability of their demise, but humans, we all know that in the end, we are going to die, so why do we keep doing this? Obviously, this thought still haunts me a bit, but not like it did that day. For the rest of that day, I walked around in a bit of a haze. Sort of unsure how I should continue. As if there were any question in the matter, do I carry on with life or do I find a way to fix this terrible thing that I have done? But, how would one attempt to correct this? It is not as if I could go back in time and stop myself from creating these beautiful tiny humans. And, even if I could, knowing how much love I have for them, and how adorable they are, would I succeed in stopping myself if I were able to return to a time when I was clear headed?
So, I spent some time in this fog. I carried on with the things that needed to be done, but a lot of things just fell to the back. I got up in the morning because I had an infant that needed to be fed and I had a preschooler who had to get to dance or gymnastics or to the pool and I had a toddler who would likely kill himself if someone wasn’t there to at least say, ‘Hey! Don’t do that!’ Life was quite scheduled for me, and for that I am grateful, had it not been for all the places we needed to be, I likely would have fallen much deeper into the darkness, and I might still be drowning in it. I spent as much time out of the house as possible because outside of the house I could strap my three children into car seats without being called a bad mother. I could strap my two boys into a stroller and not be considered a bad mother. I could breathe. I could go for hours without feeling like I wanted to yell at my children. But, as soon as we set foot in our house it was a much different story. I turned into a completely different person like Jekyll and Hyde. My stress level would shoot through the roof the second I opened the door and remembered the extent of housework that needed to be done. Each child I let out of the car was a child I had to wrangle in the disaster area that I now called a home. I no longer had a way to keep my children contained – strapping your children into car seats in your home is frowned upon. I kept pushing through. But, I kept getting these terrible thoughts, that in my right mind, my usual happy state, I would simply shrug off, but I couldn’t, not in this haze.
Let me tell you about these thoughts:
I was putting away the dishes. We have these beautiful Jamie Oliver knives, a lot of people have them, they were giving them away at Sobey’s for the holidays last year. They make this lovely swishing sound when you take them out of the block. They have a really nice weight to them as well. And, they are definitely the sharpest knives I have ever owned. So, this being said, I was putting away the dishes. I was putting away one of the larger Jamie Oliver knives. I looked at the blade. It was very sharp, smooth. So, I thought this would be a good way to go. It would get me out of the way. Everyone else would certainly be better off without me. In all seriousness, I serve no purpose. However, there would be a lot of blood. That would likely be an image that would traumatize my three young children for the rest of their lives. While my not being there would certainly improve their existence, this would not be the right way as it would be too traumatizing for them. I put the knife in the block.
I was driving my three children to the doctor’s office. Our doctor’s office is quite a drive for us as I now live very far from where I grew up but I still go to the same doctor because I don’t like change. I have to bring all three children with me to the doctor’s office because I am a stay at home mom, which essentially means they are stay at home kids. So, the baby was due for his 6 month needles, I suppose, so we were headed to the doctor’s office for that. Between our home and the doctor’s office there is a bridge. We were on the bridge. There was quite a lot of traffic on the bridge that day. It was not as heavy as rush hour, but there was a steady stream of cars and trucks in both directions. There were about three or four 18-wheelers on the other side of the road. As the first one approached, it dawned on me that the knives were a bad idea because of all the blood, and because I would actually have to inflict that upon myself. But these trucks, they would be much better choice. If I could just veer slightly to the left, at just the right moment, just get my seat over the line as the got to me. It would be an accident. The force would surely be enough to kill me on impact, but my children behind me, they should be okay. We are on a busy road so there would be lots of people who could get them out of the car and make sure they are okay, make sure they get to the hospital. This terrified me. Every time before this that I had ever thought about harming myself my children were the reason that I didn’t. I couldn’t leave my children alone. But here, here I had rationalized it to the point that I was certain they would be fine. Knowing that I was able to do that, to take away the one thing that holds me back, that terrified me. So, I decided on that bridge that while I was there I needed to talk to my doctor.
This is the first time I have said all of that. I have started to tell people about those thoughts, the ones that made me realize I had a problem, but I have never been able to tell the whole story. As a mom, I need to worry about my health and well-being so I can be the best mom I can be for my children. But, as a mom, the worst possible thing I can think of would be losing my children. And, those thoughts, these things that I couldn’t shake in this foggy state that I was in, I was sure would be enough to have my children taken away. I was terrified to talk to my doctor. I didn’t even want to admit to myself that I may have postpartum depression. I mean, really, the only time anyone ever hears about postpartum depression is when you hear about the mothers who drowned their newborn babies in the bathtub or other equally horrific stories. I wasn’t one of those, but I knew this had to be postpartum depression.
So, I made myself say it out loud to people. At first, it was hard, I mostly looked at people and said, I’m not doing well – I did not actually say, hey, I have postpartum depression and it sucks! I was so vague in fact that when I tried to hint to my own husband that I was struggling he didn’t even understand what I was trying to tell him. I slowly went from vague to minimalist – oh, you noticed that I was looking a little sad there, did you? Well, I guess that because I might be, maybe, dealing with just a little bit of postpartum, you know. And, while each time I mentioned it was a little easier than the time before I still had a hard time saying it. I never wanted to bring it up to anyone, but I so needed to just be able to tell someone how I was feeling. Just to say, you know, I’m just in this really dark place right now, I’m having a hard time finding my way through it, and I’m just sad, for no good reason. But, even now, coming up with the words to even explain how I was, and even am, feeling is near impossible. I would spend an entire day trying to come up with the right words to tell my husband that I felt that we were drifting apart because of this, and then not say anything to him at all because the thought of saying it out loud was almost enough to bring me to tears. The fact is, that when I was deep in this darkness, I was so sure he was on the verge of leaving me, because I serve no purpose. Whether or not he believed that didn’t matter because from where I was standing everyone believed that, and anyone that tried to tell me otherwise was simply trying to make me feel better. I was in the impossible place where I wanted to feel better but for some reason I just wouldn’t let myself.
At that first doctor’s appointment, I told the doctor that I was struggling a bit. I told her that I was getting a little worried because of the thoughts I had been having. She told me to try to exercise more and she sent a request in to the Women’s and Children’s hospital for reproductive mental health. I smiled and nodded and pretended like I would try to leave my house after putting my children to bed to go for a walk when I knew that would never happen. I knew that every night after 8pm whenever the kids were finally all in bed I would sit my butt down on the couch and watch tv with my husband in silence until I fell asleep. The idea of leaving the house after the rigmarole of getting those kids to bed I would have no energy or desire to do anything else. But, I figured I would get over it, that eventually I would just start to feel like myself again.
Maybe a month later I started having trouble breathing. I still don’t know why. I think it was likely related to the postpartum depression, it may have been postpartum anxiety, I don’t really know. But, at that time I went back to the doctor. This time, though, I went to see a different doctor because my doctor was not in. This other doctor, the minute I said I felt I was struggling with postpartum she asked me to come back another day without my children, and she asked if I would be willing to go on some medication. I left that appointment feeling a little torn: I felt a little worse because it was all becoming so real; but I felt a little better because someone was finally hearing me. The day of my next appointment came and I got a phone call from the doctor’s office telling me I would need to reschedule as that doctor was out sick. This threw me. I had no idea how much stock I had put into this appointment. I had so much riding on this, I finally felt like someone was listening to me, but I was so scared to talk about it. There were so many mixed emotions and being told it had to wait one more day, I just couldn’t handle that news.
Enter most terrifying thought:
After discovering that I would need to reschedule, I take my three beautiful children to the grocery store. Even in my memory I can feel the fog I was in that day. It was a very dark day. I take the children out of the car and put them into the stroller, or the shopping cart, I don’t even remember which at this point. We start toward the grocery store. We are in the parking lot, it is not very busy, but there are people coming and going. I just remember moving very slowly and thinking that it would be nice to just stop in the middle of the road and let someone hit us all, take us all out. Prior to that day, all I cared about was making sure my children were safe and cared for. I didn’t want to be there, because I was useless, I was worthless and I was a burden on everyone. But my children were everything, I never wanted anything to happen to them, until this day when I just wanted it all to be over for all of us.
So, when they called me the next day to reschedule again, they simply scheduled me in with another doctor because I could not handle waiting another day. So, now I am going in to see a third doctor, one I have never met before, to tell them that I am struggling with postpartum and need help, again. She prescribes me sertraline. I make another appointment for a follow up. And, at some point through all of this I get a call from reproductive mental health. I love that I live in a country where I have access to free health care. But, there are some serious flaws in our system, and mental health is a big one. It seems that unless you know that you will try to harm yourself or someone else, you can wait. The problem with that is, if you know you will try to harm yourself or someone else, chances are you are doing that, not looking for help. So, I talk to this woman from reproductive mental health. It is great, I am on my way to finding the path out of the darkness. Until the end of our conversation when she asks how old my children are. The baby, by this point was about 8 months old, by the time they would have been able to see me, he would have been 9 months old. When the patients they see are at about 9 months postpartum they start figuring out where they will go to continue treatment. So, my son was too old for me to be able to go to reproductive mental health. I could call community mental health, but the wait for them will be just as long if not longer. Seems pointless. I weigh my options and eventually call, but I never get a call back. All these appointments all get mixed up, but I ended up seeing a fourth doctor for a follow up, just to check in on how I am doing. Then, I get hives, and my nursing infant gets a rash, too. So, I stop taking the meds after only two weeks. I make another appointment, with my family doctor again, so back to doctor number one. She tells me that the mood stabilizing drugs are all related so it would be hard to find one that I would not react to, and I would have to wait until the allergic reaction subsides before starting a new drug, so that is the end of that. She does put in a request to community mental health for me to try to get that going again. I get a call from the doctor’s office shortly after that appointment that I need to call community mental health again so I can put myself on the wait list. I call the number I was given from reproductive mental health. After a couple of days of no response I assume that I will not hear from them, the same as before. I find this all very discouraging which makes me wish I had never started talking about it in the first place. I finally get the call from community mental health only to find out that they had given me the wrong number. I get an intake appointment, not an appointment, just an intake, an appointment where they will decide whether or not I actually need their help, for September 26, 2016 – my son’s first birthday. It took more than six months for me to go from realizing that I needed help to actually having an appointment for the professionals to determine whether or not I actually need help. Now, that day came, and I was on a high, three days prior to that I was on a low. Three days prior to my intake I held one of our Jamie Oliver knives and had an urge to stab my infant son, not because he was crying or because I felt that I couldn’t deal with him, just because it seemed like the thing I should do. I did not, I put the knife away. My heart broke a little. I felt scared to hold him that evening, I felt like I shouldn’t hold him because I didn’t deserve to hold him. I hugged him a little extra that evening, he didn’t really like it, but I needed it, I needed to apologize to him for the thought I had. But, this didn’t matter, I was on a string of good days and was told I would not need the help as I was already doing what I needed to do to get through this on my own. Inside I wanted to cry, I wanted to tell her that I was scared those dark days would come back and be worse, but on the outside I just blindly agreed with her because I wanted to believe it to be true. And, maybe it was true, maybe I am getting better. I certainly don’t have those terrifying thoughts anymore. But, there is so much more to this than those thoughts, the thoughts were just what opened my eyes to what was happening.
Over those six months, I felt like the worst mother ever. I would lose my temper with my children over the smallest things. I would rarely sit with my children as they played. I would leave them to entertain themselves, usually sitting the older two in front of the television, while I laid on the couch or sat in front of my computer trying to feel like a human being. I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of what I was feeling, but I missed out a lot on time with my children. The chores around the house seemed overly daunting, as if any chore would take more time than I have in a day to complete. I would look around my home and feel the stress build up inside as I thought about all the things I needed to do and tried to calculate a way to get them done.
I am a mother who struggles. I don’t struggle for any obvious reason. I am a stay at home mom of three beautiful children. I am a mother who just can’t get it together. I can’t find the motivation to do what I need to do. I will spend all day trying to figure out the best plan of action to accomplish the most I can in that day only to find that the day has passed me by with nothing getting done. I am a mom who wants to spend time with her children, who wants to be present in the moment with her children, but can’t seem to find the motivation to get to their level and work with them. I am a mother who adores her children to the point that I almost cry just from looking at them but lose my patience with them so easily. Maybe these things are just normal, maybe I am simply drowning in a sea of everyday chaos; or maybe the postpartum is still poisoning me slowly, just enough so no one else will notice.
I have probably left out some details of my story, and there will likely be more to my story. But, I believe that I am walking away from that darkness. Even though I still have not figured out how to keep up with my three children, I do feel like there is less darkness in my life everyday.
I would also like to add, to anyone living in Nova Scotia, Canada dealing with mental health issues. Call the mental health crisis line if you don’t feel like you are being heard. After I already had my intake appointment set, it was pointed out to me that although I did not feel that I was in a crisis, maybe the fact that I had such a difficult time finding help was the crisis.
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