Last year we began The Warrior Mom Book Club – a partnership between Beyond Postpartum and Postpartum Progress.  Katherine Stone and I (Amber) have learned over the years of providing peer support that a key force in many women’s recovery experiences has been literature as a resource.  Because one can read at one’s own leisure and pace, books and articles are a steady source of encouragement and education for many women.  

We began the Book Club by reading Adrienne Martini’s Hillbilly Gothic.  Next came Tracy Thompson’s The Ghost in the House, which is a book I read nearly five years ago, right as I turned the corner of wellness in my recovery from postpartum depression & anxiety.  Because I had so many risk factors that I hadn’t been aware of, learning more about the impact of family history and childhood trauma on maternal mental health was incredibly enlightening and freeing for me.

The third of the four books we have read in the first year of the WMBC, and the one we will be reviewing now, is Sleepless Days by Susan Resnick.  This book is an account of a woman, a mom, that is one that strikes me most because of the way that her story, her lifestyle, and her circumstances are seemingly everyday.  Unlike Hillbilly Gothic, which captured us with the sarcasm, extreme circumstances, and wit that accompany Martini’s family history and her PPD story, Sleepless Days engaged me because of its simplicity and ease in relating to her situation.

I hope you’ll enjoy the following review, posted in three parts, which represents an online discussion by a half a dozen or so of the 50+ women who have now joined the book club.  Whether you’ve yet read this book or not, may Susan’s story, and the stories of the women who share so openly below, remind you that you are not alone.

~Amber

Amber: At the beginning of the book, just after the Acknowledgements, the author of Sleepless Days quotes Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Yellow Wallpaper, as having said, “The only physical pain I ever knew, besides dentistry and one sore finger was having the baby, and I would have had a baby every week than suffer as I suffered in my mind.”  Have you read The Yellow Wallpaper?  Does this quote resonate with you?

AC: I have not read The Yellow Wallpaper, but I do resonate with the quote itself. Having intrusive thoughts regarding the birth of my child has been the most torturous experience of my life. Describing this torture can be torturous. You become trapped in a place you thought you could trust, your mind. A person can feel very alone while this is occurring, and even as I continuously work to recover, and know it is how my anxiety has manifested itself, I still have a hard time really “understanding” it.

KC: My feelings differ from the quote because I have experienced many kinds of physical pain, some which seemed worse than my most recent birth experience. I had an amazing birth the second time, and I would choose to do it again over suffering PPD because it was positive, not just less painful.  I do admit that I feel more insecure and helpless about my mental health struggles than I have felt during my physical struggles.  I feel as if I my system has been hacked, my previously secure and personal emotions tampered with, and now the consequences are playing out in my life.  For me, physical pain seems to keep to a slightly more compact realm, and is even a trifle predictable, but PPD/A spills over, saturates, smothers, and suffocates me from the inside out. So, yes, I would choose to relive physical pain over postpartum depression.

APR: I have not read the book either, but the quote does resonate with me. I’m not sure I’d rather have a baby every week, but the acute experience of birth was much easier to deal with and in many ways and I felt I was much better equipped to deal with it than the chronic months-long suffering with anxiety, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, and depression.

BR: I read the Yellow Wallpaper the day after I finished Sleepless Days. I knew that the Yellow Wallpaper was about a woman with depression, but I did not know it was postpartum. This statement rings so true for me. I had never and hope to never again experience the mental anguish of the anxiety and intrusive thoughts that characterized my PPD. It was worse than any physical pain (even the contractions and my daughter’s unmedicated birth) that I have ever experienced.

Amber: The introduction of Sleepless Days begins by stating that the author kept reading in books that “it” was temporary. Did you read this when/before you had a baby? Did people tell you that? Did you convince yourself what you were experiencing would go away on it’s own?

AC: Because I had GAD (general anxiety disorder) for years before the birth of my baby, I joked with everyone around me that I was, “for sure getting PPD”, because that is what I do, I assume the worst. But, I had no idea what PPD was really about, and I had no idea postpartum anxiety existed. I wish someone told me something about the reality of what I was saying.

KC: I repeatedly read that up to two weeks of “baby blues” is normal. My practitioner also passed out a bulleted handout with “baby blues lasting more than two weeks” as being one concern that can be discussed at a postpartum checkup. I, however, was not “blue,” I was irritable, angry, and felt like hiding away from everyone. I found joy in nothing. I blamed myself for not yet reaching the “right” amount of sunshine, exercise, nutrition, sleep, etc. I thought I could find an ideal combination of self-care that would free me from my mental trap. Yet the weeks drew on, blow after blow. I added meds and counseling and a babysitter, oh what relief! And then, after another string of crummy days, and I realized that I was doing all I could possibly do, following all the “formulas,” and I STILL felt miserable. Waiting, having faith, I tell myself, “keep going to therapy, keep taking your meds, keep walking, keep your babysitter…just keep going!” I have found that there is an ebb and flow in healing, irrespective of the clock. As much I read about PPD before and after childbirth, I found no mention of how long it could last, treated or untreated. It has been through treatment that I have begun to hear the voices of bloggers, my doctor, and therapist that sing the refrain that “it” is temporary. Hooray!

TM: I thought it was baby blues and would go away. The baby was a month old at this point.

APR: I also (like the author) have struggled all my life with low-level depression. And like one of the previous moms mentioned I was on the lookout for PPD myself, but it manifested much more on the anxiety/anger/irritation side of the spectrum.  I convinced myself it was just sleep deprivation, SAD, vitamin D deficiency, etc. When I brought it up with my midwife at five months postpartum, she suggested I just needed to get more exercise and more time away from the baby and with my spouse. Although all that was true, I was far too sick at that point to do any of that. Seven weeks later, I hit rock bottom and saw a different midwife who understood me much better. I finally started meds and got more support from my husband and started to climb out of it.

BR: I too have been challenged by depression and anxiety prior to PPD. I actually expected that I would suffer from some depression following my daughter’s birth and I wasn’t scared by that, as I thought I had the skills to get through it. What I did not expect was the intrusive thoughts and the severe anxiety. I knew I needed help even during the first two weeks after my daughter was born. This was not the depression I was used to.

Amber: BR, it is amazing how many women describe PPD as completely different than the depression they had previously experienced.  In fact, depression isn’t the only thing that can change dramatically postpartum.  For some of us, our personalities, our points of view, and the way we look at the world may shift.  At the bottom of page 16 Resnick writes, “I do not see it yet, but I am as rigid a woman as they come. I am also fairly self-righteous, passing silent judgment on others and myself about personal decisions like breastfeeding and taking antidepressants. PPD will break me of this rigidity.”

There are so many ways I could word the questions I have around this quote, but I am fearful the wording could create bias in the answers. So, please just respond to your thoughts and feelings about it.

AC: I do not think I am as rigid as Susan describes herself, but I have learned that I am more of a controlling person in some regards and more of a perfectionist than I ever thought before. I am now trying to learn not to be as much.

APR: I am very similar to Susan. I read a ton of books on pregnancy, breastfeeding, and attachment parenting while pregnant and had everything planned out how things would go. Sleep issues are a good example of my rigidity. Well, needless to say, DD had colic, was a terrible sleeper, and all of a sudden it had been eight months and I hadn’t slept more than 3.5 hours in a row. I said I would NEVER sleep train. I read everything I could about sleep and became obsessed by her wake and sleep times, and tried to prevent her from getting overtired.

I hit bottom at eight months postpartum and my midwife said I had to sleep 4+ hours (in a row). So my husband and I did shifts so we wouldn’t have to let her cry and I could still get my sleep. We also tried all the tips from the No-Cry Sleep Solution. This went on for a few weeks and in the meantime I started on Zoloft. My husband went away on business, and on the second night, after being up with her four times already that night, I had the clarity (finally) to realize that my baby needed to sleep and so did I. So I finally let her cry, something that would have turned me inside out and upside down only weeks before. It was awful, but I checked on her so that she knew she was safe. Finally over the course of a few days, I was getting the sleep I desperately needed, and eating lots of crow.

I also judged women for choosing pain relief or a c-section in labor, not breastfeeding, using disposable diapers, putting their children in daycare.  ALL of these opinions got blown out of the water by real experience as the parent of an infant.

BR: Addressing the rigidity in my life has been one of the greatest components of the therapeutic work I have done in my journey to recovery from PPD. I have worked to accept all of the elements of life that I can’t be in complete control, and know that life will still be ok. The rigidity still comes up fairly often, but not nearly as much as before PPD. The awareness and work to lessen its hold me on is an outcome of my experience with PPD that I am thankful for.

KC: I would consider my previous self to be rigid, someone who felt there were few “right” ways to live, work, love, etc. I definitely kept in my mind what should be possible, holding myself up often to unattainable standards, and feeling pressure and dislike when others made different choices from me.  PPD brought me to the end of myself, the end of what I can do and handle.  I have slowly, and with much repetition, been able to practice being gentle with myself and applying various strategies for managing myself and my household.  Finding a technique, meal, schedule, or solution that works for my family, my health, my goals, and my recovery is a process, a relief, and an exciting personal victory.  Now, when I meet or observe other mothers and families in action, I eagerly try to pick up on something that might work for me, too.  When I see a mom who nourishes her baby in a different way than I do, I am honestly glad that she has found something that works for her and her family, and I remember how hard it can be to make such decisions.

Amber: In that same paragraph, on page 17, Susan continues on by stating that the disease will take a brittle woman and break and then rebuild her. What are your thoughts about that? Were you a brittle woman who was vulnerable to breaking or a strong, hardened woman that PPD simply overpowered, regardless of your strength? Who are you now? Are you the same person as “before”? Are you different? How do you feel about the “new you”?

KC:  I was a strong woman, hardened by childhood trauma, whose life bucket finally overflowed past what I could carry.  I have been broken, surveyed the damage, and am rebuilding.  I am not the same person as before, as the way I was before did not allow me much room to grow. I don’t love the new me yet, but I am looking forward to the updated and fully functioning model.

AC: I definitely do not think I am “new” yet…still working on it, but hoping this “new” me will come soon. I am also learning that I am brittle in the sense of self-confidence and I am hoping the “new” me will be more confident and stronger.

APR: AC, I don’t know if I was brittle…maybe. I was so rigid…an interesting thought. The whole experience of motherhood was just so profound, overwhelming, and truly not what I expected it to be. It just bowled me over. I remember feeling more helpless than the tiny baby in the beginning in that I knew, with all my heart, that my goals, life, relationships, free time, and so many other things would be forever changed, and that some of them would go away, for a long time. I am strong in a lot of ways, especially physically, powering through life until I can’t do it any more. So it may have been a bit of both. I was strong, but not strong enough. I am just recently ok with that.

I have no idea who I am now, 19 months later. I am really struggling with this. I gave up my career to stay at home, which wasn’t the plan. But I also couldn’t see doing anything else up to now. I was also planning to change careers and begin nursing school. I have also back-burnered that for another few years. My husband and I are thinking about having another baby, but I am scared of 1) PPD again 2) who the hell I will be with two kids.

AC: APR, I think about who I am (supposed) to be, now, after baby. It blows my mind sometimes in trying to define it. Maybe it can’t be defined.  I had a hard time pre-baby really figuring “me” out and working on me so post-baby has been quite a trip. I always wonder, what is a mom supposed to think about all the time, just the baby?

APR: Thanks, AC. I remember Oprah saying one time that it is natural for women to lose themselves for a while when they have a baby. My Birthing From Within birth class also said it takes three years to get back to yourself after you have a baby, and that the journey is like a labyrinth. The journey into the center is the pregnancy, in the center, you meet your baby, and the journey out is that three-year period. I think we definitely think about other things besides baby, but in the beginning we may not think of much else. I gradually have more and more interests outside of my daughter. How old is your baby?

AC: APR, my son is six months and it has been a difficult six months. But with small moments of happiness. I also started yoga again and going to the gym. Those moments of “just me” have helped.

APR: Hang in there AC, what a great step the ‘me time’ is! Yoga is awesome. There is research that has shown that meditation and yoga ‘rewire’ the brain. I know it has helped me.

BR: I thought I was a strong and hardened woman, but I know now that I was very brittle and vulnerable. I look back and it completely makes sense that PPD took hold of me. I didn’t care for myself well enough while I was pregnant, I had many misconceptions about becoming a parent and thought I would feel tired for a couple weeks and then we’d settle into a lovely happy family. My experience with PPD and the work I continue to do to get well have transformed me. I don’t think I’m hardened yet, but I know I’m stronger and have much greater self-awareness about what I need to live a healthy life.

Amber: Thank you so much for sharing so openly and honestly, especially as it relates to the very personal topic of our self-images.  Tomorrow we’ll be talking about some very common symptoms of PPD- anxiety, insomnia, and obsessions.