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When my husband and I first decided we wanted to start our family back in 2008, it wasn't actually a major decision. Being a mom had been my dream since I was a little girl, and I had worked in daycare all four of my college years. I was very familiar with babies and very comfortable with what would be required as a mom. I had completed my degree but had quit my job for unrelated reasons. It seemed like a good time to start a family, especially because it had taken my mother six years to conceive me and I wanted to give myself plenty of time. When I didn't get pregnant immediately in the first month, I just assumed I was headed along the same path, and that was what I had expected. It wasn't until the pregnancy test came back positive after the second month of trying that I panicked.
I knew something was wrong immediately. I looked at that positive pregnancy test and instead of feeling elated, my heart sank. I called my parents and they asked me what was wrong, so I tried to inject some enthusiasm into my voice. My beloved Hubby was over the moon, so I had to fake it, but things didn't get any better.
I was extremely sick in the first trimester. I couldn't eat anything except raw vegetables, and I felt nauseous constantly. Every single food smell sent me to the bathroom all day long. I lost a fair bit of weight. When the second trimester began and my "morning sickness" did not dissipate at all, I began having anxiety attacks, waking up at night in a cold sweat. I didn't want to leave the house or do anything besides lie on the couch watching TV. My husband was very worried about me, but accepted that I was feeling very sick and tried to cater to whatever I wanted to do or could eat. My OB also believed my sadness was related to my sickness, and sort of brushed it off. I hadn't lost enough weight, I guess, because she never offered me any sort of medicinal help with my nausea.
At about 20 weeks, my nausea finally began to wane, but my feelings that something was dreadfully wrong did not. That was when we went in to learn the gender of the baby. It was a boy. I had never really decided I wanted a girl, but I was absolutely crushed. I felt like my life was over. I didn't know anything about boys (not true, by the way - all my favorite kids in daycare had been boys. This was just the depression taking over my mind). I wouldn't be able to go out to dinner any more, my mother reminded me. My dogs would no longer be the center of my world, my husband joked. Everything was changing, and I felt that getting pregnant was probably the worst decision I had ever made. Somewhere, somehow, I had made a terrible mistake. I wasn't meant to be a mother; not now, in any case.
I tried to explain my nerves to my husband, but he was a bit frightened. This was what I had wanted! I tried to tell my mother and she was horrified. She said it was too late to go back now. When my OB asked how I was feeling, I tried to tell her. I mentioned that I was worried (I didn't know the term "anxiety attack" yet), that it was hard to feel happy, that I was completely exhausted all the time. She totally brushed it off, telling me it was first-time mom jitters. It was clear to me that what I was feeling was wrong, and that no one could understand it but me. No one else felt this way. Pregnancy was supposed to make you glow with happiness, and I was the problem. When people gave me congratulations, I had to force a smile and a thanks. I hid myself away so I would confront as few people as possible. My husband and I began to fight a lot. We had some of the worst fights of our lives, screaming and sobbing fights that left me feeling even more despondent. I know now that my husband felt helpless and responded to my strange behavior with anger out of frustration and fear. He had tried catering to me and that didn't help, so he tried to snap me out of it. That didn't work either. It was a very scary time for him.
The birth of my first-born did not go very well, but that is a story for another posting. However, I do want to say that he was absolutely perfect. I remember my first night in the hospital, lying on the hospital bed with him in my arms, just staring. There had surely never been as beautiful a person in all of history, and somehow, despite everything the last nine months had put me through, I had created him. I was in a cloud of euphoria for the first 24 hours, and in that time I fell in love with my son with a love unlike anything I had ever felt before. He instantly became the center of my entire life.
My challenges were not over, however. My anxiety continued. I was worried about my dogs being home alone. Every time my son cried, I felt a bit sick. I had suffered third-degree tearing during the birth, and moving around was extremely difficult and very painful. My son and I struggled with breast-feeding from the very beginning. I wanted desperately to go home, and I remember crying uncontrollably when the pediatrician decided to keep us in the hospital another night due to my son's jaundice. When we did get home, however, things just got worse.
My beautiful baby had his days and nights confused, and was up all night screaming. I had had a difficult birth and hadn't slept in several days. This put me over the edge. I had had the fear of all sorts of different things put into me over the course of my pregnancy: no pacifiers for several weeks, no co-sleeping, no formula! I felt like I had no tools to cope with my screaming child. I developed a fearful reaction to his cries. When he cried, my heart would race and I would break out in a sweat and shut down, emotionally. I couldn't shower because the running water sounded like crying. My son nursed constantly and when he couldn't nurse he would cry, and my breasts were so painful and bleeding from overuse. I still couldn't walk well because of the tearing. I just sat in a chair nursing and watching TV until my brain felt rotten. I cried a lot. I didn't want to eat and I was terrified of being alone with my child. When my husband went back to work, I had a total breakdown, and so he called my mother to come down and stay with us for a week. She didn't know what was wrong with me. Neither did my friends on Facebook, who scolded me for my posts complaining about dealing with baby crying, but I couldn't fake it anymore. I had been faking it for nine months, and was just too worn out to continue.
I had had plenty of talks with doctors and hospital staff about Postpartum depression, but everything I felt was so similar to what I had felt before the birth that I didn't notice anything particularly wrong. Instead, it just felt like a continuation of who I was now. I wasn't cut out to be a mother - I had known that for months. This had been a mistake from the beginning, only now I had the guilt because this beautiful baby boy deserved better than I could give him. I didn't want to hold him anymore, I didn't want to be with him, but I couldn't leave him alone when he cried, either. I began passing him to my husband, who is an amazing father, but he had had enough. He made me an appointment with my family doctor, since my OB had been so unsupportive, and insisted I go in and tell them how I was feeling. I did. I wasn't able to verbalize it well, but I began sobbing in the middle of the appointment, and that seemed to get the point across in a way that words had not. I was prescribed Prozac, although I was warned that it could take up to six weeks to kick in. In the meantime, I was given permission by my doctor to begin supplementing with formula and give my child a pacifier.
I can tell you to almost the day when that Prozac kicked in. I woke up one day, and everything had just started to fall away: my anxiety was better, I had more energy, and I just felt happier than I had in a long, long time. Happier than I had been not in the eight weeks since my son had been born; a YEAR of sadness started to fall away that morning. I quit breastfeeding and began just pumping, as contrary to all the advice I'd gotten from nursing consultants, I knew the breastfeeding interfered with my bonding with my baby. I was right; I saw immediate improvement in my mood. My cousin sent me a Baby Bjorn, and wearing my child freed up my hands and my life, which also took helped. It took a few more weeks for my mood to reach pre-pregnancy levels of normalcy, but I got there. And feeling better motivated me to try harder to make things better. I made an effort to get out of house with my sweetie, even if it was just to the front yard. Things continued to improve.
By this point, I knew for certain that I had not only had PPD, something had definitely been wrong during the pregnancy, too. I began doing online research and found a fairly new article (at the time) about antenatal depression, or depression during pregnancy. The article stated that the pregnancy hormones that are often attributed to that pregnancy glow of happiness can cause depression and anxiety in a small subset of women, and that women who do suffer from antenatal depression are considerably more likely to suffer from postpartum depression as well. Suddenly, everything I had been through had a name, had an explanation! My amazing son was not a mistake, and I am an awesome mom, but hormones and ignorance had kept me in a very dark place for almost a year.
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I am now expecting my third child. My second pregnancy went off without a hitch - almost no morning sickness, one anxiety attack, and an easy delivery. My third pregnancy has closer resembled my first. There has been one distinctive difference, though. This time, I know what's wrong. I know why I feel that sinking in the pit of my stomach, I know why I am actually anxious, and even if the depression brings me to tears, I know it's not because this baby is a mistake or I regret this pregnancy. This baby is much-loved, and I am ready to be her mother. I just have a couple of hurdles to get through, first. The knowledge doesn't keep the depression away, but it does keep me from losing myself within it. Not only that, but I am preparing myself for the possibility of PPD after birth, so that I can keep myself engaged for my baby. Knowledge really is power, and since I was feeling particularly sad today, I had to write this to remind myself that I may not be in control of my hormones and thus my emotions, but I am strong and I know why this is happening. I can get through it, and motherhood is on the other side - and that is my favorite place to be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/we-need-to-talk-about-depression-during-pregnancy_us_56be2c43e4b08ffac125180f
