Better Late Than Never

He sat down directly in front of me, his face only inches away from my own. He grabbed my hands, which had been in my lap. I had been staring down at them for the past ten minutes as I talked—words spilling out of my mouth so fast, and yet, so monotone. In my head, I marveled at the quality of my voice, detached as I was. I often felt detached. I finally got the courage to look up to his face when he made it virtually impossible not to do so. He was the best type of family physician. “Sarah,” he said, “If you do not let me help you, I am almost certain that something very bad will actually happen to you or your son.”

                                         

It was in this month, fourteen years ago, where someone told me that I wasn’t a bad mother. I wasn’t failing. I wasn’t going insane. I was actually holding it together in a way that was unfathomable, given the circumstances. But I was suffering from postpartum depression, and possibly postpartum psychosis. And I needed to let people help me through this.

I’m sure that there is some sort of awareness month where all other media and blogging outlets discuss PPD. December, in part, and January, for sure, has always been the month when I think about my own experiences. This, combined with Jesse’s post about her own experiences the other day, has made me realize that we can no longer afford to only speak of PPD one month out of the year. Jesse is right—we never talk about it when it is occurring. I didn’t talk about it then. I don’t often talk about it now. Even while Jesse struggles with what may be PPD at this very moment, I still don’t tell her everything about the thoughts, the feelings, the struggles I had back then.

I don’t want you to think of postpartum psychosis in the way that equates it to Susan Smith or Andrea Yates. I was in no way following the path of the family annihilator, and very few women ever follow that path. Instead, I wasn’t capable of sleeping. I wasn’t capable of eating. I was suffering panic attacks so severe that I thought I was dying of a heart attack, every day. I was paranoid—literally. I envisioned people breaking into the house and stealing my son, I imagined that if I fell asleep that he would stop breathing in the night. I couldn’t take him anywhere in the car for the fear that we would be killed in a crash. If I ever did doze off, I had nightmares that I won’t even begin to describe.

My family had doctor prescribed me the lowest dose of Paxil in the weeks immediately following my son’s birth, but my blood pressure was so low that this miniscule dose was enough to give me tunnel vision. If I didn’t sit down as soon as the world started to gray in my peripheral vision, I would pass out. I stopped taking it after less than two weeks. I was failing at motherhood, they were going to take my child away—I was certain of that. I was even failing at Paxil. I didn’t tell my doctor that I stopped taking the drug—so then I was suffering from PPP and antidepressant withdrawal.

It took so much courage—sheer force of will-- to walk into the doctor’s office and tell him everything that was going on nearly six months after the birth of my first child. Once I did, however, he swooped in. New meds, counseling, checkups, exercise plans, foods to eat. It took another six months to really feel like myself once more, for the nightmares to stop, but in that time I started to actually sleep again, to eat again, to be able to engage with the world once more.  Knowing what was going on—that was the key for me. Knowing that it wasn’t me failing; it was a simple failing of chemistry in my body.

When I was pregnant with Ant, I knew what to expect. J knew what to expect. My new doctor even knew what to expect. I talked about it a lot to the both of them, but not to any others. I was on the meds two weeks before I gave birth to him. I was already implementing the program my old family doctor had developed years before. Still, I got postpartum depression.

Two or three weeks after a pseudo-emergency c-section with Ant I was once again on my own-- family having returned home and pain meds for my incision forsaken in order to drive a vehicle—taking care of a newborn the size of a toddler and trying to do everything I had done before with a kindergartener as well. I remember the morning where I struggled with the car—it was completely iced over, and I couldn’t even open a door—and two kids in the parking lot. I was only trying to get K to school. I ended up slipping on the icy parking lot, falling right on my ass. I called J (already at work) on my phone, crying. I couldn’t do this! What were we thinking? I was failing all over again!

J chuckled as I wailed. He’s the only man in the history of humankind to ever get away with chuckling at his distraught wife. “Sarah, I think you need to talk to the doctor again. I think it’s time to bump up your dosage! And for the love of God, stay home! Go back inside, climb into bed with the boys.” He was right. I wouldn’t have been able to accept this if it had been the way it was when K was an infant.  This time, though, I knew what was going on. This time it was not psychosis, it was strictly depression—and that was because I had talked and asked for help. I could handle this with help—it could be managed. And better yet- I knew that it wouldn’t last forever.

That’s what I consider to be the takeaway message: Talk about it—talk about it before it happens, during, and after it happens. We should all talk about it, whether we experienced it or not. We should talk about it with someone that we are worried might be experiencing it.

For those who think that they may be suffering from PPD: get help. You are not failing, and you are not admitting failure if you ask for help. It can get better, if you accept help. Every mother of a newborn—no matter if they have postpartum depression or not—have episodes of feeling alienated and overwhelmed. It happens even under the best of circumstances. But, if you cannot stop crying or berating yourself, if you ever think of harming yourself or your child,  or you find that you cannot do the simplest things for yourself (like eating or sleeping on a semi-consistent basis), you are not alone, and you deserve to be helped. Tell your spouse, tell your mom, tell your doctor.

You deserve to feel better. Your baby deserves to have a mom who is on the upswing. Our society deserves to be able to discuss postpartum depression and psychosis without fear of stigma. So I ask you—if you think you may have postpartum depression—take the opportunity this holiday to tell a trusted loved one or a professional that you think there is a problem. Take this opportunity to ask for help.