Trigger warning: The following blog posts are heavy with describing details of Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Anxiety and Postpartum OCD, also including suicidal ideation, intrusive thoughts and various medical procedures/complications during pregnancy and delivery. Please use caution while reading Under the Dome posts if they might trigger you.
July 2014 was the turning point of what would become an ongoing battle with MMH (maternal mental health) the next 4 years of my life. A local morning show was playing on the TV while I cleaned up the livingroom and my daughter played on the floor. A local woman named Becky Schroeder was talking about maternal mental health and she said something that I had never before heard.
Postpartum Anxiety.
Post
Partum
Anxiety.
I immediately googled the term and although it wasn't as easy to find, I finally found a webpage describing the symptoms of PPA. Every single word spoke to me. It said, here you are. I finally felt justified in what I was feeling. I picked up the phone and called my midwife and talked to the nurse. I told her something wasn't right with what I was feeling. She asked for specifics and it didn't sound like she agreed at first. Then I told her of my thought about dying being my only escape from the overwhelming fear. She put me on hold while she talked to the midwife and I was so relieved.
"Ok, we will send in a prescription for medication*."
...ok, and then what?
"Just take the medication, you should feel better."
In all of my years of counseling and all of the hard work that I had done with my PTSD, this felt like only a fraction of a solution. That's it... magic pill. I filled the prescription at the pharmacy and began taking it. Now, in addition to my mind attacking me, so was my body. The medication made me feel very physically ill and I could barely care for my daughter which only envoked more fear. I stopped taking it. It was then that Becky inadvertantly graced me with her presence a second time. She posted a link to her news segment in a local mom support group I had once attended in hopes to find some answers about how I had been feeling. I immediately messaged her filling her in on the last few months of my postpartum experience and how sick the medication had made me.
She helped me.
She brought me into this amazing group of women who knew how I felt and made me feel less alone. And even moreso, they gave me voice when I didn't have one. They called doctors for me and helped me find the more specific help that I needed. When I hit walls, they gave me a boost over them.
In the early years of my experience, there wasn't any urgency in the medical community to help moms. I wouldn't actually see a therapist or psychiatrist until several months later. Thankfully, the support group had advised me to seek help from my family doctor who gave me a different prescription that I didn't get ill from.
On the right dose of medication I became less and less anxious and started to enjoy my baby with less fear. I was able to leave the house and trust that she was in good care and even took a job in the career field that I had just graduated with a degree for.
I flourished.
I specifically remember those blissful months when I finally felt whole again. So filled with life and love and joyful anticipation for the future. I can see myself, standing on the lawn outside of my workplace, soaking in the sunshine with a smile on my face.
That's the last time I remember being truly happy.
I flourished
and then all hell came crashing down on me.
A month later we discovered my brother had a drug addiction.
A month after that my dad got diagnosed with cancer.
And two months later I got pregnant with my second child.
All before my daughter even turned 1 year old.
*Specific names of medications are omitted in order to not divert people away from taking them. Every mom is different and every medication works differently for every mom. What worked or didn't work for me may or may not work for you.
Becky Schroeder is now the co-founder of Mom's Mental Health Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping moms navigate pregnancy and postpartum depression and anxiety by sharing information, connecting them to resources, and providing peer-driven support.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Under the Dome [Part 2]: Fear itself
Trigger warning: The following blog posts are heavy with describing details of Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Anxiety and Postpartum OCD, also including suicidal ideation, intrusive thoughts and various medical procedures/complications during pregnancy and delivery. Please use caution while reading Under the Dome posts if they might trigger you.
It wasn't until my 28th week that I was finally cleared from all testing following my baby's thickened nuchal fold. They wanted to be prepared when my baby arrived if she ended up needing special care and still warned me that the "reason" may present once she was here.
By the end of the 29th week I went into an anxiety induced preterm labor in which I began to dilate and was taken to Froedtert by ambulance to prepare for a preterm baby who would need a lot of care.
In all the times I had been hospitalized over the years during my pregnancies (which was a few times for each child), no one ever asked me what I was doing prior to my contractions. No one asked me how I was feeling emotionally on any level. Would it had made a difference? I'm not sure... but I would hope it could have.
I eventually got to go home on strict bed rest with the exception of doctor appointments I had to attend 3x weekly. I went from actively working 3 jobs (one full time, two part time) to not even being able to take care of any household chores myself.
It was that time that my anxiety grew from a nagging worry to a full blown constant panic. I spent my days researching how to prevent all things that could kill my baby. I obsessively researched SIDS, sleep accidents, car accidents/car seat safety, common illnesses that could kill newborn and infants, babies being left in a car, postpartum depression and various other things that I would catch from a story or show. I know everyone may do this... but the extent to which I delved into these topics was beyond what I wanted to. My anxiety reared it's ugly head and made me suddenly completely too anxious to have anyone over. A few people offered company or help but I couldn't allow it. I couldn't pinpoint why, but I felt like I was going to internally combust.
It wasn’t who I was. I was normally social with a small group of longtime friends and should have wanted some company in my long hours of sitting in one spot but my mind and body told me otherwise.
7 weeks later, after a sometimes stressful and scary delivery, my daughter was here.
I was IN LOVE. I felt all of those beautiful things people try to describe about how loving your child supersedes any love you’ve ever experienced.
My anxiety stayed true and strong even in the hospital. One minor fever in my baby and the doctors had me overly paranoid about keeping her as germ free and healthy as I could. Every person who came to visit us made me more and more anxious. I wanted them to lock us in a quarantine. I didn’t even want my own family there. I just wanted to be left alone with my new baby. Love and fear battled inside of me.
When I went home it was more of the same. My daughter was jaundice and required a UV blanket. Feeding her was a battle that I felt like I was failing and no one was there to tell me otherwise.
I felt immense sadness watching my husband bond with and take care of her. I felt like he was keeping her from me. I felt like he might take her from me. I knew that felt like a irrational thought process but I felt like he hated me and just wanted our baby.
The days and nights were long. I didn’t cherish the newborn days like people had repeatedly told me to. Instead I wished and prayed for time to fast forward a year or two so she wasn’t so helpless and dependent on me. Maybe if she was older then less could go wrong. Instead of celebrating milestones as she grew, I instead only felt relief that I was closer to her growing up - lessening the chances of things like SIDS. My baby being so helpless and dependent on me was overwhelming.
As the months went on I researched postpartum depression more and more. First once or twice a week and then on a daily basis. I went to doctor appointments with the mindset of answering the postpartum questions honestly, hoping to prompt a discussion from my doctor. I stared at the questionnaire but nothing it asked ever fit me and even when I lied (to prompt discussion), no one ever mentioned my answers or asked about my mood.
I wasn’t depressed.
I was happy.
I was happy and fear was swallowing me whole.I hardly slept.
When I did sleep, I woke up several times in a panic to check on the baby. Fear was keeping me up at night... not my baby who had started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. I put her to bed and then made sure her things were in pristine condition. If I felt like her bottles on the drying rack may have been contaminated, I rewashed them. If I washed them and still felt anxious then I sterilized them. I washed her clothes and dried them and folded them. If I folded them and set them on something that I then thought might be dirty then I would rewash them and wash a sheet or towel with them that I could then set on the ground to set them on.
One night, when my daughter was 4 months old, I laid down in bed at 2am to hopefully get some sleep and as I shut my eyes and tried to will my fearful thoughts away I thought "This will never ever stop. I'm always going to be this afraid of losing her."
That thought swallowed me whole.
"I will be fearful my whole life... until I am dead. If I died, I wouldn't have to be afraid anymore."
And with that thought, came peace. And for the first time since I got pregnant, my body relaxed and I fell asleep.
It wasn't until my 28th week that I was finally cleared from all testing following my baby's thickened nuchal fold. They wanted to be prepared when my baby arrived if she ended up needing special care and still warned me that the "reason" may present once she was here.
By the end of the 29th week I went into an anxiety induced preterm labor in which I began to dilate and was taken to Froedtert by ambulance to prepare for a preterm baby who would need a lot of care.
In all the times I had been hospitalized over the years during my pregnancies (which was a few times for each child), no one ever asked me what I was doing prior to my contractions. No one asked me how I was feeling emotionally on any level. Would it had made a difference? I'm not sure... but I would hope it could have.
I eventually got to go home on strict bed rest with the exception of doctor appointments I had to attend 3x weekly. I went from actively working 3 jobs (one full time, two part time) to not even being able to take care of any household chores myself.
It was that time that my anxiety grew from a nagging worry to a full blown constant panic. I spent my days researching how to prevent all things that could kill my baby. I obsessively researched SIDS, sleep accidents, car accidents/car seat safety, common illnesses that could kill newborn and infants, babies being left in a car, postpartum depression and various other things that I would catch from a story or show. I know everyone may do this... but the extent to which I delved into these topics was beyond what I wanted to. My anxiety reared it's ugly head and made me suddenly completely too anxious to have anyone over. A few people offered company or help but I couldn't allow it. I couldn't pinpoint why, but I felt like I was going to internally combust.
It wasn’t who I was. I was normally social with a small group of longtime friends and should have wanted some company in my long hours of sitting in one spot but my mind and body told me otherwise.
7 weeks later, after a sometimes stressful and scary delivery, my daughter was here.
I was IN LOVE. I felt all of those beautiful things people try to describe about how loving your child supersedes any love you’ve ever experienced.
My anxiety stayed true and strong even in the hospital. One minor fever in my baby and the doctors had me overly paranoid about keeping her as germ free and healthy as I could. Every person who came to visit us made me more and more anxious. I wanted them to lock us in a quarantine. I didn’t even want my own family there. I just wanted to be left alone with my new baby. Love and fear battled inside of me.
When I went home it was more of the same. My daughter was jaundice and required a UV blanket. Feeding her was a battle that I felt like I was failing and no one was there to tell me otherwise.
I felt immense sadness watching my husband bond with and take care of her. I felt like he was keeping her from me. I felt like he might take her from me. I knew that felt like a irrational thought process but I felt like he hated me and just wanted our baby.
The days and nights were long. I didn’t cherish the newborn days like people had repeatedly told me to. Instead I wished and prayed for time to fast forward a year or two so she wasn’t so helpless and dependent on me. Maybe if she was older then less could go wrong. Instead of celebrating milestones as she grew, I instead only felt relief that I was closer to her growing up - lessening the chances of things like SIDS. My baby being so helpless and dependent on me was overwhelming.
As the months went on I researched postpartum depression more and more. First once or twice a week and then on a daily basis. I went to doctor appointments with the mindset of answering the postpartum questions honestly, hoping to prompt a discussion from my doctor. I stared at the questionnaire but nothing it asked ever fit me and even when I lied (to prompt discussion), no one ever mentioned my answers or asked about my mood.
I wasn’t depressed.
I was happy.
I was happy and fear was swallowing me whole.I hardly slept.
When I did sleep, I woke up several times in a panic to check on the baby. Fear was keeping me up at night... not my baby who had started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. I put her to bed and then made sure her things were in pristine condition. If I felt like her bottles on the drying rack may have been contaminated, I rewashed them. If I washed them and still felt anxious then I sterilized them. I washed her clothes and dried them and folded them. If I folded them and set them on something that I then thought might be dirty then I would rewash them and wash a sheet or towel with them that I could then set on the ground to set them on.
One night, when my daughter was 4 months old, I laid down in bed at 2am to hopefully get some sleep and as I shut my eyes and tried to will my fearful thoughts away I thought "This will never ever stop. I'm always going to be this afraid of losing her."
That thought swallowed me whole.
"I will be fearful my whole life... until I am dead. If I died, I wouldn't have to be afraid anymore."
And with that thought, came peace. And for the first time since I got pregnant, my body relaxed and I fell asleep.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Under the Dome [Part 1]: 1614 days
Trigger warning: The following blog posts are heavy with describing details of Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Anxiety and Postpartum OCD, also including suicidal ideation, intrusive thoughts and various medical procedures/complications during pregnancy and delivery. Please use caution while reading Under the Dome posts if they might trigger you.
I thought long and hard about how to describe what it feels like to be stuck in the battle of maternal mental health and it wasn't until I was freed that I could come up with that analogy.
You know how some people believe that there is good and evil in all of us? How we make daily choices that make us either good or bad?
Maternal mental health struggles are like that. You get split into two different people. Imagine that the "good" part... the part that helps you flourish in joy, that is made up of a million tiny things that make you "you", gets locked into one of those old style outdoor cellars with the two wooden doors. The wooden doors are old enough to see the world in slots of light and dark. To watch the broken parts of yourself carrying on with a life you had dreamed about since you were young.
One thousand six hundred fourteen days I was trapped in that cellar.
I feel like I owe it to every other mother who suffers any form of maternal mental health struggle to share my story - in it's entirety - with every shameful, heart wrenching, fearful truth that I never wanted to share. I didn't want to, but I have to. With my third baby came this new wave of struggles... to admit to a happy, blissful, and (nearly) perfect postpartum experience and be even closer to knowing why my story needed to be told. If version #3 was how everyone else experienced postpartum and motherhood then they really didn't understand what the rest of us had been going through.
Truth: 40% of women experience maternal mental health struggles starting in pregnancy.
I wish I had known that. It actually wasn't something I came to know until I was pregnant with my 3rd, believe it or not.
The first 12 weeks of my first pregnancy were filled with a lot of obsessive reading about everything and anything that could go wrong. While this is probably what happens with lot of people, with me it was a bit different since I suffered from PTSD. PTSD never allowed me to truly envision a future - especially not one where I could be a mother - so I was pretty certain that something was going to happen to crush any dreams of normalcy that I had.
In the beginning I called my new OB/GYN and asked her nurse about medications I was currently taking for my PTSD that I had been on for over 10 years. "Stop them immediately" she told me. I asked if she was sure. I told her that I feared that the stress of not being medicated was going to be far more harmful than the medications were. She told me that wasn't correct. I asked her to ask the doctor if I needed to wean off of any of them, she said no.
I sat and stared at a wall before then calling back and requesting to be switched to a midwife.
My midwife listened to everything I had to say and said she would call me back. When she did call back she agreed with my feelings about stress>medication harm and told me that she would support my staying on them. She also suggested that I inform my mental health prescriber before my first doctor appointment.
My mental health prescriber was an AODA specialist since I was taking a low dose of an AODA medication for my PTSD. My reasons for taking the medication had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol but my doctor was unable to ever get out of that mode of thinking.
"You can stay on the drugs if you can research them and prove they are safe. You also need to bring the father in and I need his permission to prescribe to you since this is his child too" he told me.
So, I went home and researched and actually found out that the medication had been used in various other countries as a fertility drug and that the people who took it had stayed on it after conceiving with a lesser outcome of miscarriage while taking it. My husband (then boyfriend) came with me to the next appointment where I made my case and then listened to my doctor explain that he was unaware of what the medications would do to me and needed his permission to prescribe them.
"I trust her" Kevin said with a unwavering stare.
Everyone seems to be in charge of my life except for me.
My worry kept me up at night.
My worry paralyzed me.
My worry had me obsessively scouring the internet.
My worry made my body hum with anxiety so vicious that once, during an argument with my husband, I told him I wished we hadn't gotten pregnant so we could instead get to the point of complete understanding of each other before bringing another life into the world.
I worried about miscarriage...
and sometimes I wished it would just happen already so I could be put out of my worried misery. So I could start over and do things the right way.
My worry caused me to over analyze every pregnancy symptom I had which led to many worried calls to my midwife and then scans and tests to make sure that the symptoms were not a result of a real, sometimes life threatening, problem.
At week 11 I got a call back from the doctor regarding a scan I had to make sure bleeding hadn't been a result of a bigger issue. Thankfully, it wasn't but unfortunately they had found something else. They had seen that the nuchal fold was thicker than it should be and wanted me to see a specialist who would be able to measure properly to confirm. They made me an appointment right away and I hung up to then search what nuchal fold measurements had meant.
Down syndrome.
I talked it over with my husband and did all the research I could before my next appointment. We were going to love a baby no matter what challenges it brought us. I wrote entries about my appointments in more detail but here's the truths I left out:
My doctor never told me that there was an option of "everything is fine". In every option there was going to be a high risk of a mental disability, shortened life, or no life beyond the womb at all. In order to find out "which one" I was going to be doomed with my doctor told me I could either have a blood test done (which would take weeks for the results and not be as specific) or I could have a CVS done (which was going to be done immediately, a sample taken from the placenta via needle through my stomach going in and out of it over a dozen times to collect the needed amount).
"If you take the blood test route you will be further into your pregnancy and by then if we abort due to possible complications we would have to take your baby out in pieces since it will be larger."
I excused myself to the bathroom to sob in private.
That is the moment that my fear went silent. That all of my previous worries had lost their voice and instead caused a constant hum throughout my body that simply said "run".
I thought long and hard about how to describe what it feels like to be stuck in the battle of maternal mental health and it wasn't until I was freed that I could come up with that analogy.
You know how some people believe that there is good and evil in all of us? How we make daily choices that make us either good or bad?
Maternal mental health struggles are like that. You get split into two different people. Imagine that the "good" part... the part that helps you flourish in joy, that is made up of a million tiny things that make you "you", gets locked into one of those old style outdoor cellars with the two wooden doors. The wooden doors are old enough to see the world in slots of light and dark. To watch the broken parts of yourself carrying on with a life you had dreamed about since you were young.
One thousand six hundred fourteen days I was trapped in that cellar.
I feel like I owe it to every other mother who suffers any form of maternal mental health struggle to share my story - in it's entirety - with every shameful, heart wrenching, fearful truth that I never wanted to share. I didn't want to, but I have to. With my third baby came this new wave of struggles... to admit to a happy, blissful, and (nearly) perfect postpartum experience and be even closer to knowing why my story needed to be told. If version #3 was how everyone else experienced postpartum and motherhood then they really didn't understand what the rest of us had been going through.
Truth: 40% of women experience maternal mental health struggles starting in pregnancy.
I wish I had known that. It actually wasn't something I came to know until I was pregnant with my 3rd, believe it or not.
The first 12 weeks of my first pregnancy were filled with a lot of obsessive reading about everything and anything that could go wrong. While this is probably what happens with lot of people, with me it was a bit different since I suffered from PTSD. PTSD never allowed me to truly envision a future - especially not one where I could be a mother - so I was pretty certain that something was going to happen to crush any dreams of normalcy that I had.
In the beginning I called my new OB/GYN and asked her nurse about medications I was currently taking for my PTSD that I had been on for over 10 years. "Stop them immediately" she told me. I asked if she was sure. I told her that I feared that the stress of not being medicated was going to be far more harmful than the medications were. She told me that wasn't correct. I asked her to ask the doctor if I needed to wean off of any of them, she said no.
I sat and stared at a wall before then calling back and requesting to be switched to a midwife.
My midwife listened to everything I had to say and said she would call me back. When she did call back she agreed with my feelings about stress>medication harm and told me that she would support my staying on them. She also suggested that I inform my mental health prescriber before my first doctor appointment.
My mental health prescriber was an AODA specialist since I was taking a low dose of an AODA medication for my PTSD. My reasons for taking the medication had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol but my doctor was unable to ever get out of that mode of thinking.
"You can stay on the drugs if you can research them and prove they are safe. You also need to bring the father in and I need his permission to prescribe to you since this is his child too" he told me.
So, I went home and researched and actually found out that the medication had been used in various other countries as a fertility drug and that the people who took it had stayed on it after conceiving with a lesser outcome of miscarriage while taking it. My husband (then boyfriend) came with me to the next appointment where I made my case and then listened to my doctor explain that he was unaware of what the medications would do to me and needed his permission to prescribe them.
"I trust her" Kevin said with a unwavering stare.
Everyone seems to be in charge of my life except for me.
My worry kept me up at night.
My worry paralyzed me.
My worry had me obsessively scouring the internet.
My worry made my body hum with anxiety so vicious that once, during an argument with my husband, I told him I wished we hadn't gotten pregnant so we could instead get to the point of complete understanding of each other before bringing another life into the world.
I worried about miscarriage...
and sometimes I wished it would just happen already so I could be put out of my worried misery. So I could start over and do things the right way.
My worry caused me to over analyze every pregnancy symptom I had which led to many worried calls to my midwife and then scans and tests to make sure that the symptoms were not a result of a real, sometimes life threatening, problem.
At week 11 I got a call back from the doctor regarding a scan I had to make sure bleeding hadn't been a result of a bigger issue. Thankfully, it wasn't but unfortunately they had found something else. They had seen that the nuchal fold was thicker than it should be and wanted me to see a specialist who would be able to measure properly to confirm. They made me an appointment right away and I hung up to then search what nuchal fold measurements had meant.
Down syndrome.
I talked it over with my husband and did all the research I could before my next appointment. We were going to love a baby no matter what challenges it brought us. I wrote entries about my appointments in more detail but here's the truths I left out:
My doctor never told me that there was an option of "everything is fine". In every option there was going to be a high risk of a mental disability, shortened life, or no life beyond the womb at all. In order to find out "which one" I was going to be doomed with my doctor told me I could either have a blood test done (which would take weeks for the results and not be as specific) or I could have a CVS done (which was going to be done immediately, a sample taken from the placenta via needle through my stomach going in and out of it over a dozen times to collect the needed amount).
"If you take the blood test route you will be further into your pregnancy and by then if we abort due to possible complications we would have to take your baby out in pieces since it will be larger."
I excused myself to the bathroom to sob in private.
That is the moment that my fear went silent. That all of my previous worries had lost their voice and instead caused a constant hum throughout my body that simply said "run".
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