Post-Partum Depression: My story

I mentioned in our 2010 letter that I had experienced post-partum depression. I'd like to share a little more in depth about those months, mostly so that if someone else out there is going through something similar, or you know someone who might be, maybe my experience can be of some help.

To start, I have always known that post-partum depression can affect anyone, and that help is available. What I didn't know was that it can set in anytime within 12 months after the birth of a baby. For the most part, I felt good for the first couple months after Peter was born. At the standard 6 week post-partum check-up my doctor had me fill out a questionnaire related to depression and asked me how I was doing. I passed with flying colors. It seemed that, considering the huge adjustment to having a second child, I was doing great. I remember even thinking to myself, "This is going really well!" Maybe pride was about to get the better of me.

In January, when Peter was just over 3 months old, he stopped sleeping for long periods at night and also started taking short naps of 30-45 minutes rather than his previously longer 1.5-2 hours naps. Maybe you recall my moaning and groaning about this on the blog? At the same time I felt something in me change. I had a horrible sense of dread and "I've been here before and I don't want to go back here" because Cora had done the short nap thing too for a few months as a baby and it was no fun. I guess sleep schedules are something that I don't like to "just go with the flow" with. I allowed myself to fret about Peter's sleep habits and worry over what I had done or was doing wrong, or what I wasn't doing and should be, and if this was going to last forever and how was I going to handle it and what if he become sleep deprived and won't that affect him negatively for the rest of his life...and on and on. This is partly my disposition, but it was way out of control.

As the days turned into weeks, I started feeling the desire, and then the need, to escape. I wanted to run away - but just for a few days. Brad and I talked about how to make a getaway weekend for me, but nursing a hungry boy full-time, financial constraints and the plain busyness of that season of the ministry allowed for the idea to remain barren. Nothing came of it. No getaway. No break.

Then some days I just wanted to hide under my covers in my bed. I didn't want to face my responsibilities and it took every ounce of my will to get out of bed and take care of my kids and the house. Laundry became my nemesis. The floors were always dirty and seemed to scream at me of my incompetence. Planning meals every night was overwhelming. I remember standing in my kitchen knowing that we had plenty of food and I couldn't come up with how to put it together into a satisfying meal. I became inpatient with Cora when I used to be a cool-headed patient mom.

Weeks turned into months. Some days I felt good. Strong and able to handle anything. Those were usually days that we had plans to get out of the house and see friends. On days when I didn't have any plans and all that faced me were dirty diapers, chores and a whining 3 year old, I felt awful. When Peter cried, my blood pressure went through the roof. If Cora did anything slightly annoying I felt like something in me snapped. I would describe myself as having been anxious, angry, discontent, unsatisfiable, empty, gasping for breath. I wasn't usually just "sad" so I didn't think it was depession.

I remember crying often on Monday mornings as I drove back to the house after having early morning coffee with a few close girlfriends. The day lying ahead of me seemed like forced manual labor in a prison camp. I would tell myself, "I just had a great hour with friends. I should be refreshed and rejuvenated but instead I'm dreading the rest of my day and it's only 8 am? What's wrong with me?"

What's wrong with me? became a recurring question in my head. I answered it for myself this way: I'm a lousy mom, ungrateful woman, undeserving wife. I kept telling myself that I had every reason to be happy and thankful and to be loving my life. I reasoned with myself that I should not be feeling the way I was feeling, but it did no good. That only made me feel worse about myself.  I had friends dealing with infertility at the time and knew they would give anything to be in my shoes. I didn't dare tell them that most days I wanted to give my kids away or trade them in for a job.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my kids and didn't want to do anything to harm them. But I felt myself becoming someone different than who I thought I was. I tried to find my own solutions to feel happy again. "If only..." statements ran through my head. If only we had a bigger house, maybe Peter would be undisturbed and sleep better; if only we didn't have a dog who made my floors dirty and was more work; if only I had a job so I could have a break from the kids; if only...

I used to be happy. This wasn't me. I remembered just a year earlier how I was so thankful to be a mom, and to get to stay at home with Cora. I loved it! What had changed? Why was I now wishing I could find a job and pay someone else to raise my kids? Why did I resent staying home with my kids?

I knew I needed help. I knew I should ask someone to take the kids once in a while for me so I could have some time to myself. But that sounded so selfish! It sounded so weak! It sounded like something I didn't deserve! It sounded like something that would take too much energy to conjure up the nerve to actually ask for help, and then to coordinate all the details to make it happen. I could come up with obvious excuses for everyone that I considered asking, so it was no good to even ask. Or I would feel too guilty for someone to sacrifice something for me. One time I actually had my phone in my hand ready to call for help, but I was sobbing and I thought, "What am I even going to say to her? 'Help, I think I'm dying'?" So I just curled up in a ball and cried and cried until one of the kids needed me to do something and it forced me to pull together.

But together, I was not! Unfortunately, I didn't give the opportunity to anyone to help me. I didn't let anyone who was in a position to help (nearby friends or family) know that I was having such a hard time. I had a hard time even asking Brad for help. When I did share my frustrations with anyone I tried to make it sound like it was common to all mothers, nothing out of the ordinary. I asked my small group to pray for patience with my kids and that Peter would start sleeping better. I tried not to talk about it in a "poor me, isn't my life so hard" way because no one likes to hear that. And I truly believed that this was just the way it was.It was in the realm of normal and I just had to figure out how to deal with it better. I had to get out of my slump and adjust my attitude and plow through the next 5 years of life till Peter was in kindergarten.

I did often wonder, if it's this hard for other moms having two kids, why in the world do people have more than two (on purpose)? I'm obviously not cut out for this. Two kids must be my limit. Poor Brad - he always wanted a big family! I always wanted three kids. I never thought I'd stop after two. I'm kind of disappointed! No, I'm really disappointed...in myself. This isn't who I thought I was! I used to think I would one day supplement our income by doing daycare from our home, but if I can only barely handle my two kids, there's no way that will happen. What's happened to me? I used to teach 100+ high school students and that was stressful, but I was good at it and juggled all those responsibilities well. Is being a stay-at-home-mom with only 2 kids really that much more difficult? I feel pathetic. This isn't who I thought I was.

That thought, This isn't who I thought I was, starting evolving into the truth that This isn't me. I need help! By then it was early May. I'd renamed myself as "Monster Mommy" and lightly joked about myself this way with my friends to see if they thought I was as horrible as I thought I was, but they seemed to respond with similar sentiments, only reaffirming my suspicion that I was normal and other young moms struggled as much with "mommyhood" as I was. But the notion that I didn't think it had to be this way, that it could be better and enjoyable like it had been previously, just wouldn't go away.  I didn't want to be this way.

A God-send: a Christian counselor sought coalition with our church. After Brad met her, he very kindly and gently suggested that I talk with her. Now, mind you, a few others that I had shared openly with had suggested that maybe I go talk to my doctor and that maybe I had post-partum depression and that medication would help. I was afraid of this and didn't want to hear it at the time. I always quickly assured them that that wasn't necessary, because some days I felt great and "normal", and that I had felt fine initially after Peter's birth, so it must not be post-partum depression. I must just be hopeless, is how I felt.

I do remember feeling hopeless. A lot. I thought I might never be really happy again. I thought that maybe my family was better off with out me. I thought that God might never answer my prayers and would just leave me in this darkness. I understood, briefly, why people who feel no hope in their situations turn to drugs or alcohol or whatever, just to stop feeling that way. Better to feel nothing at all. I understood, briefly, why people find suicide tempting. I praise God that, by His grace, those moments were brief and scared me more than tempted me.

The weekend before meeting with the counselor we took drastic action with Peter. He was now almost 8 months old and his sleep habits were getting worse, not better. One night he woke up shortly after eleven o'clock, shortly after I had fallen asleep. I went to his room to sooth him, which was unsuccessful, and returned to our bed and I said to Brad, in all seriousness, "I hate him." Can a mother really say that? Really think that? I did. I was done. Empty. Dry. I hated myself for thinking it, and for letting the truth slip from my lips into the world.  I am ashamed, even now, as I write about it. How had it come to this? And what did this mean for the rest of my life? For our family? How do you go forward after such ugliness is revealed?

Brad quickly moved into crisis remediation mode. He offered a number of immediate and viable options, and we chose this: I slept outside in our Tahoe so I wouldn't hear Peter cry (because, like I mentioned earlier, I simply couldn't take it, it made my blood boil) and Brad would stay awake, listening until Peter finally stopped crying and went back to sleep. It seemed so silly, but drastic times call for drastic measures. Now I see that night as covered in grace. The peace and quiet of the garage (plus earplugs) was heavenly for my bone-weary soul. In the morning Brad reported that Peter had cried for 2 hours straight and then slept the rest of the night through. I felt a sick blend of guilt - that we had let him cry for 2 hours - and jubilation that he had survived it (!) and then slept for the entire rest of the night. It was an awful milestone, but a necessary one. After that night Peter slept straight through consistently.

A day or two later I met with Dee, the counselor. After listening to me optimistically describe my situation she saw right through it and called a spade a spade. She said to me, "You have a classic case of sleep deprivation and post-partum depression." I felt like I had been stabbed in the stomach because I didn't want to hear those words. And then an amazing sense of relief followed. This meant that there WAS hope for me. That what I had been feeling was NOT normal or just what I had to accept as the lot of a mother. This meant that maybe I wouldn't always feel this way! There was a reason for all of this, and it wasn't just that I was a bad, ungrateful, undeserving mom. There was hope and an answer. Amen!

What happened next is another story all together. The short of it is that she prescribed a diet change and intense nutritional supplements, starting with a Vitamin B complex. If that didn't help she recommended antidepressant medication. And the healing began.

Within less than two weeks I was beginning to recognize myself again. The best part was that I felt like a shell had been broken off of my heart; I had been loving my family in my head. I knew I loved them, but now I was feeling that love again. I felt like my eyes had had scales removed and I saw how adorable my little son was and my heart just melted at the sight of him. My heart bursted with warmth when I nursed or held him, rather than just feeling like I was going through the motions. I was back.

Then I grieved, oh, how I grieved, the time that I had lost. That I had missed out on those months of cherishing my son. I felt like my heart had been in chains but not known it; and now it was free and I could look back and see the imprisonment I had been in. How good it felt to be free, to be me again!  Happiness, joy, contentment, peace, confidence all slowly began filling me again.

This is not the end of the story, but it is the beginning of the end. It was not a quick fix back to 100%, although the initial improvement was drastic and quick. It has been a process of healing and rejuvenating physically, realigning emotionally and mentally, changing habits, expectations, communication. I can confidently say that the post-partum depression is gone.

I am humbly thankful that, by God's grace, we have come out on the other side of this, that I didn't harm my children, that Brad has stood by me and helped me through this. I can't imagine how hard it was for him and I don't pretend to think that Cora and Peter weren't affected either. I pray that we will be much wiser in the future; that I will listen to those who know me best and are brave enough to speak truth and wisdom to me; and that if depression rears its ugly head again we will recognize it immediately and promptly seek help. I have learned so much through this, so I know this is not all for naught, but I pray that by sharing this someone else might gain wisdom from my folly and be spared the same experience.