Postpartum Depression

Jennifer: On Having A Baby, Postpartum Psychosis And Bipolar Disorder

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 10 Comments

Dear New Mama,

My son was four weeks old and I was manic out of my mind in October of 2008.

I was somehow able to hide it so well from everyone close to me, my parents, my best friend, my therapist, even my husband. No one knew but me. But who was I kidding? I couldn’t go on like this, and I knew it. The week after he was born I had broken down crying to my mom, handing her my cell phone pleading with her to call my OB to ask her what I could take to help me sleep. I had been off all medication (except pain meds from the C-section) since October of 2007. A full year with no medication at all: a recipe for disaster for anyone diagnosed as having bipolar disorder two years prior. But I was doing it for the baby. My husband and I both wanted a medication-free pregnancy, and then I wanted to breastfeed and did not want to expose the baby to medications that would come through in the breastmilk.

The first month, I had slept maybe 2-4 hours a night and it was catching up with me fast. I’d take two Tylenol PM and would get a few hours of sleep, but woke up, as I usually did since the baby was born, in a sweaty panic – I just knew he needed to be fed even though he was usually sound asleep at the time. I was trying desperately to make breastfeeding work, but we were struggling. He had lost weight since we left the hospital and the pediatrician forced us to supplement with formula but I was determined. I was so afraid of failing.

My best friend was my cheerleader, urging me to keep going, visiting when she could to offer helpful tips and encouragement. My husband was also supportive and we knew it was risky being off medication in order to breastfeed, but we had decided to try it. My parents had arrived two days after the baby was born and were planning on staying a week before heading back down to Florida. When they realized how little sleep I was getting, they were worried and my mom pushed out her return trip by five days. After nearly two weeks of help from my parents, my husband’s parents, friends cooking dinners for us, and my husband being off from work, I had to learn to do it on my own. It is so foggy, those first four weeks, but we took pictures so I could remember. I did it on my own for two weeks, three days. Then the shit hit the fan. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 12:00 pm Filed Under: Postpartum Depression

Fadra Nally: On Not Admitting She Had Postpartum Depression

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 12 Comments

Dear New Mom:

If you’re anything like me, you know you can handle a baby. You’ve had a successful career. You’ve worked hard. You’re ambitious, determined, reliable, dependable, diligent, and you always have a sense of humor. Plus you’ve raised a few puppies and it can’t be much different, right?

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nobody tells you (and if they do, you probably don’t believe them) that life changes forever when you have a baby. And nobody tells you that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.

I got the blues after I brought my son home. That first night, I sat at the table and it just felt all wrong. I wasn’t happy or excited. I felt completely out of my comfort zone. And when I tried to take a bite of the delicately prepared filet mignon that my husband cooked as a celebratory dinner, I burst into tears. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 11:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression

Jill Williams Krause: On The Impending Doom of Postpartum Anxiety

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 10 Comments

Dear New Momma,

Wow. Are you tired, or what?

This mom thing, it is not for the weak… or those who can’t stomach coffee. I mean, I think eventually we all end up chugging a pot at some point, even if we hate the stuff.

If you’re feeling exhausted, fuzzy, sore, and, generally, like a truck hit you, please know that’s pretty normal when it comes to life with a new baby. Unfortunately.

What I want to tell you, though, is there are some things you may be feeling, hearing or seeing that are not so “normal.” I say this because it’s SO hard to decipher between what is and isn’t just a typical response to the 180 shift of your life once you become a mom when you are in the trenches.

See, I went for a really long time thinking what I was experiencing was just me being a mom… and really sucking at it. I thought what I was going through was a result of my inability to adapt. Instead, what I was experiencing was postpartum anxiety. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 10:00 am Filed Under: Postpartum Anxiety, Postpartum Anxiety Symptoms, Postpartum Depression

Miranda Wicker: On Bad Moments Not Making You A Bad Mother

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 13 Comments

Dear Mamas,

I was still pregnant with my second baby when Katherine asked me to write to you today. I was so excited to have been asked. And then, as the final weeks of my pregnancy passed and I began to think of what my life would soon be like, fear and doubt crept in and I thought “Who am I to give advice? What can I possibly say that will make any difference?”

But here I sit, two days shy of my daughter being one month old, and the advice that I have for you is the same advice that I have for me, even now.

These are the words I have held onto for the past three years and onto which I continue to cling. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 9:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression

Alexandra Rosas: On The Fat Hot Tears of Postpartum Depression

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 12 Comments

Dearest Brave New Mom:

The first thing I want you to know is that I love you already. I think of how much you are doing, and tears fill my eyes when I see the determined warrior that you are.

Nothing stops you from being the best for your little one.

I have always felt, and will always feel, that mothers who suffer — and survive — postpartum depression are those that TRY so hard, to do their best, to give their baby the best. We set the bar so high and we compare ourselves to all the other moms around us and we want to be that best mom on the planet.

We work ourselves hard and push on with such fury, that our bodies have no choice but to say, “No more.” We have no more to give. Our minds cry, “Stop, rest and think about all that we think we’re supposed to be.”

The other moms around you aren’t sweating out every single decision and choice they make. They do what they can, and they’re fine with it. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 8:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression

Victoria Costello: On Why Postpartum Depression Treatment Is Important

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 18 Comments

To Every Mom and Mom-to-be on Mother’s Day:

My story is not unusual. My message is not complicated.

You have to take care of yourself so you can be there for your children.

What’s not simple is how someone who’s in the depths of postpartum depression, and enduring sleepless nights for months on end, can lift herself up far enough and for long enough to understand what must be done to get out of this place. I share my story because I waited far too long to get help.

I come from at least three generations of depression, and I grew up with all the messy, painful self-medication that people do to avoid dealing with it. When depression hit me hard in my teens and twenties, I didn’t want to use psychiatric medication. After all, I felt I could usually work around it—and I did…that is, until I gave birth to each of my sons. Because I’d heard about the “baby blues” I took it to mean that every new mother gets depressed. Therefore, awful as I felt, I believed that terrible state of postpartum depression to be normal. The worst bout of depression I ever experienced came after an abortion I had at age 41, perhaps because that time there was no baby to distract me. I now understand that the same hormones pushed me into severe postpartum depression after each pregnancy. And yet I still avoided treatment. After my divorce at age 39, I made things worse by starting to drink alcohol, mostly wine, but increasingly too much of it, and eventually, on a daily basis. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 7:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression

Sandra Sutherland: On Not Bottling Up Postpartum Depression

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 15 Comments

Dear Mama,

Motherhood sure isn’t what you thought it would be is it? Sure, the logistics aren’t all that surprising. You knew you’d have a long stint of sleepless nights and never-ending days. The constant diaper changes and mountains of laundry are seemingly endless but you’d been warned of such things. You’d gone into this with your eyes open and you were as prepared as you could possibly be.

But somehow, you just don’t feel….right. Something is off. You feed and change and smile and rock your little one but your heart just isn’t in it.

You wonder if this feeling will ever go away. You’re pretty sure that normal moms don’t feel like this but part of you wonders if they do. You want to find out if others feel the same way but the idea of saying any of your feelings out loud is petrifying. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 6:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression

Ilina Ewen: On Hearing the Words “Postpartum Depression” Too Late

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 12 Comments

Dear New Mom (or 2nd or 3rd time Mom…):

I never heard the words “postpartum depression” until it was too late. I had no idea such a thing existed except in extreme cases of mothers drowning their children that the media covered in National Enquirer-style reporting. My pregnancies were easy. My deliveries were easy. Seriously, childbirth was easier than bunion surgery. True story. But still, something wasn’t right.

When my first son was born, life was a blissful adjustment. My baby nestled and snoozled and cuddled. He was a great eater and an even better sleeper. My husband and I had adjusted. Baby weight melted off (though the skin didn’t necessarily go back to its original taut condition). Life was happy, complete, loving. We thought we had this parenting thing down and we patted each other on the back for making our way. It’s not that having a baby didn’t turn our world upside down and every which way; it’s that we made it work. We were a family. I was a mother.

My husband and I wanted to round out our family so we had our second baby, a son. Again my pregnancy and delivery were easy. The baby was always on my person, and he slept and ate and cuddled and giggled. My boys are 22 months apart, meaning they were both in diapers for a short while. Adjusting to life with two children was not so easy. I was feeling harried and strung out and was not experiencing the same bliss I had the first time around. I kept searching for this bliss and worried my baby wasn’t experiencing the same happy bond as my older son had in his infancy. Then I feared that I compensated for this worry by focusing on the baby and neglecting my older son who hardly had a chance to be an only child who was coddled and lovingly spoiled. I was running amok on a hamster wheel fraught with traps of guilt and shame and weakness. I was agitated and sleepless. I couldn’t breastfeed due to some serious medical issues, and even the lactation consultant told me to carry on with bottle feeding to nourish my baby. I felt guilty and judged and like less of a mother. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 5:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression

Amber Koter-Puline: On Struggling With Motherhood After Postpartum Depression

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 15 Comments

Dear Mama,

A little more than four-and-a-half years ago this guy ROCKED. MY. WORLD.

From the moment the second pink line appeared I knew that my life was gonna change. I didn’t know why or how back then, but boy did the gut instinct that I was in for the ride of my life immediately strike me. I didn’t speak for a few hours after that positive pregnancy test. In fact, I sat in silence on the couch, pretty much in shock all night.

I’m not sure what happened inside my head and heart next, but over the course of the following weeks and months I began to love the baby inside me. We didn’t choose to learn the gender at the ultrasound, but I knew he was a boy in my heart of hearts all along. I didn’t know what he would look like, but I knew a very old soul with a hearty head of hair and a Y chromosome was growing inside me. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 4:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression

Mary McCarthy: On the Mombie Apocalypse

By Katherine Stone May 13, 2012 4 Comments

Dear New Moms,

You sweet, poor things. If I could sit next to you right now and hold your baby while handing you a chocolate martini, I would (after a brief lecture about how one martini will not make the baby drunk but it may make the baby NAP, so go for it!). Without being a fucking annoying ‘you just wait’ veteran mom, I’d also drool over your baby, because you’re too exhausted to realize how quickly time flies and you’ll wish for these precious, short days when your kid could neither talk, walk, drive, date, or refuse to clean their shithole of a bedroom.

You are in a zone where you go from hour to hour (forget day to day) just trying to deal with what the baby needs and you don’t know what day of the week it is or when the last time you took a shower was. Trust me on this: in motherhood, the days are long, but the years are short.

I come to you from your future to tell you there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

There’s a proud, long history of mental illness in my family. I actually went 35+ years of my life believing I had escaped it, then surprisingly found myself riddled with a massive case of postpartum depression after the birth of my 4^th child six years ago. Postpartum depression is no joking matter (I say this as a humor writer, so please forgive my tendency to observe the humor in the situation; though they’re often close, I find laughing preferable to crying).

I gave birth to three girls (now 18, 14 and 9) without experiencing the crashing, crushing lows or moments of sheer, gripping anxiety of postpartum depression, so I didn’t recognize the symptoms when they initially happened to me. The birth of my son was such a joyous occasion (last try for the boy!) I assumed I would be happier than a bug in a rug, not crazy as a bedbug. But I remember the exact moment that sent me running to the nearest medical professional for help. [Read more...]

May 13, 2012 3:00 am Filed Under: Mother's Day Rally for Mental Health, Postpartum Depression