My Post-Partum Story Because I Don’t Think I’ve Shared it

This doesn't look like postpartum depression, does it?

I’m going to be on my local FOX station (FOX-13) this morning to talk about my experience with post-partum depression.

It’s not something that’s easy for me to talk about and I’d say partially because when you say that you’ve had it you open yourself up to some criticism and people don’t really believe you. However, when you say you’ve had it, all the women in your life miraculously come forward to say, “me too.”

The topic is very much in the news here because a local woman in our area is accused of killing her son and deputies say that she suffered from post-partum depression.

See, we talk about post-partum depression all the time and we know so many people who go through it, and we are always shocked when something terrible happens because of it.

Even worse, many people still don’t believe it is real. That it’s perhaps, “just an excuse.”

But I can assure you it is a very real thing.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have actually known it unless my doctor told me because I didn’t believe it either. That’s the funny thing about post-partum depression.

You feel sad and depressed, yes. But you don’t actually feel like anything’s wrong, you are still very much you, you just feel like it is just a sort of bad mood you’re in. A really long, drawn out bad mood. Sort of.

It’s a funk but it’s a funk in which you can’t tell that there is something actually wrong. I cannot explain this except to show you what I mean through my own experience 4 years ago, with my 2nd son.

For me there were some feelings of claustrophobia, like I needed to escape my house for some reason, like the walls were closing in on me.

And it felt like I couldn’t get a grip on anything. Anything at all, no matter how simple it was, was overwhelming.

Making yams for a Christmas dinner side dish.

Finding an outfit to wear.

None of these seemingly simple tasks were easy. But if you told me it was post-partum depression, I would have said, no, I just haven’t had much sleep and I am pissed.

When my son was about 4 weeks old, it was Christmas day and I had a 19-month old too and we were getting ready to go to my mom’s house for dinner. I was running back and forth trying on clothes that were sort of dressy and festive and I say running back and forth because there was a full-length mirror in the guest bedroom and I would try the clothes on in my room and run across the house to see what they looked like.

It wasn’t good.

I was more than 50 pounds overweight and I was lumpy and nothing fit. The more I tried on clothes, the sweatier I got. The sweatier I got trying to stuff myself in festive Christmaswear, the more upset I got. Meantime, I was trying to make the yams that I said I would bring. We are now rushing around because it is almost time to leave and I haven’t found anything to wear and I read the directions wrong on my yams recipe on the back of the can. Also, I was trying to double the recipe, so I did the math wrong too.

My husband yells from the kitchen stove after checking them: “ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WATERY STILL?”

They had been in there for a 1/2 hour.

Shoot. No. They’re not. I don’t know what to do I ruined the yams I don’t know what to wear I have to get the kids dressed we have to leave I can’t take this anymore I’m sweating and nothing fits!

I begin to cry.

I cry all the way to my mom’s house which is an hour drive while wearing the red maternity shirt which was the only thing festive(ish) and the only thing that fit.

I spend most of Christmas in my mom’s guest bedroom nursing the baby and crying in between.

I couldn’t get it together.

If you would have told me it was post-partum, I would have said, no, I am just having a rough day.

The thing is, they all just feel like “rough days.”

A few days after Christmas, my husband’s friend came to visit.

I couldn’t pull myself out of the bedroom to say hello. I couldn’t stop crying.

I didn’t know what was wrong, I was just having a rough day.

The next day, I felt so claustrophobic I couldn’t sit in the house for another second. The walls closed in on me, I couldn’t breathe right, all I knew was that I had to leave.

I didn’t know where, I didn’t know why, I just had to go and no one was going to stop me.

And so I packed.

I couldn’t leave my baby who I was nursing so I packed up his things too, his bassinet, his clothes, his blankets and diapers and I loaded up the car while my husband protested in sort of this state of disbelief and I left. I just drove off.

I sat in a parking lot a few blocks away and I cried.

Where on earth was I going? What was I doing?

I had no idea.

I was sitting near a really nice hotel where I had gotten a massage done once and some manis and pedis too and so I called to see if they had any rooms available. Their rooms usually go for $200 or more a night. On this night, it was $99.

I’ll take it.

I made up a name to the bellboy and lied and told him I was from Georgia and I was here visiting friends.

He was helping me carry my bags and my bassinet. I wondered what he would have thought if I told him the truth.

I left my house with my baby because I had to leave.

I got to the room, I called my husband and told him I was nearby and I was safe, that I was just going to stay there for the night and I’d call in the morning. He still can’t believe he let me go that day but I think I shocked the hell out of him and he didn’t know what on earth to do.

The thing is, he couldn’t have stopped me from leaving. No one could have.

As my partner in life, he had almost no control over the situation. I was gone with the baby and that was all he knew. I didn’t want to tell him where because I didn’t want him to come get me.

As much as I loved him and we were doing fine as a couple, I just needed to not be near anyone. Except my baby.

I ordered a steak and fries. I ordered Dream Girls. I loved Jennifer Hudson in it. I fell asleep.

The baby woke up every 2 hours and I nursed and fell back to sleep in between in my huge bed with very comfortable pillows and white sheets and the tray with my leftover steak on it near the foot of the bed.

I woke up in the morning feeling as tired and as claustrophobic as I did at home and decided if I was going to feel claustrophobic it would be better to feel that way in my own home surrounded by people who love me rather than somewhere strange and I decided that fleeing didn’t work.

I made it back. My husband still didn’t know what to think. I try to put myself in his shoes even now and that must have been torture for him.

A week or so later, I had my 6 week check-up and the doctor asked me how I was feeling. I said in my chipper voice, “Fine!” (Of course.) And then added, for no reason, really, “I had to leave and go to a hotel room with the baby one night but otherwise I’m fine.”

And she stopped and looked at me with a question mark.

“That’s not normal,” she said.

And she talked to me about post-partum depression, which I was still not convinced that I had. She gave me a prescription for Zoloft that I didn’t think I needed or would take. She gave me a business card for a therapist that I knew I wouldn’t call.

No one could really help me because I didn’t think I needed it.

I did end up taking the anti-depressant, though. I don’t know why but I think I thought I was sick of being sad and maybe this would help.

And then one day a couple weeks later, I woke up and things were clear.

I can’t explain this to you except to say that literally, one day I woke up and the fog had lifted.

The birds were chirping, the sky was blue and I felt like Snow White.

It was almost right at the 3 month mark (about a month and a half on Zoloft) and almost about the time he started sleeping through the night too. We had also had a terrible start to nursing (bleeding, cracked  nippies and PAIN) and that was getting better too.

I don’t know what was different, all I knew was that I was back.

Was it the pill? Was it that I was getting sleep now? Was it both?

I still don’t know.

But waking up that day, I mean truly waking up that day was the only clear sign to me that what I went through was most definitely not me.

For three months, I was not myself.

And now I know that’s ok.

You see, this happens. It happens to mommies every day. And while you’re going through it, you as a mom for sure know that post-partum depression exists but it most definitely is not happening to you. Or so you think.

That’s the funny thing about post-partum depression.

Sometimes you don’t know you’re in it until you’re OUT of it.

I know now that I did have post-partum depression. That the chemicals coursing through my body made me feel as if my reality was real, when it fact, it wasn’t.

Now, what I am NOT saying is that you should take a pill for it. I cannot make any recommendations on that at all whatsoever. I can’t tell you if you need it or if you don’t or when you should take it or when you shouldn’t.

All I can say is that if you are ever feeling like something is just not right, if you can’t get out from under a cloud that hangs over you every day that tries to convince you that this is the way life is and that there’s nothing wrong, ask someone. Ask your doctor. Ask your family. Ask yourself.

Because it doesn’t have to be that way.

I am not proud to say that I did exactly the opposite of what most people are recommended to do, when I felt better I just went right off the pill. I did not wean. Luckily, it was fine and I continued on my merry way. But some people need longer than that or the results can be devastating, like for the woman in Lakeland. I think it’s important to note that I’m not giving excuses for what happens when a woman suffers from postpartum depression, I am saying it’s a very real problem.  

Even now my heart breaks for women who go through post-partum depression because it feels like a terrible road to nowhere, yet like in my case, you may not even see that you’re on it. No one wants to believe that that’s what they’re going through and there are still people who believe that it’s not even a real thing. It is a very lonely place.

But it does exist and it is very real.

I know.

And I know that you find yourself doing things you wouldn’t normally do. Like in my case, picking up and leaving.

Did you go through post-partum depression? Do you feel like you’re going through it now?

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