How I Survive A Day With Postpartum Depression
There’s nothing quite like the emotions of meeting your little baby at the hospital. You just experienced labor which comes with all of its own emotions. Then you look at this little person’s face for the first time. You realize you made this little person. This little person now owns your heart completely.
Then you go home and you start to experience true sleep deprivation. Your baby can be as cute as can be, but once that sleep deprivation hits... oh boy. You start running with your gas tank half empty and things get a little crazy.
You learn how to do things even though you’re exhausted. You fall into a new rhythm and routine and things start to get a little easier. Once you establish your new life, the postpartum emotions hit. This could be a case of the baby blues or it could be something bigger.
When I had my second son I started experiencing what I thought were the baby blues.
I just didn’t feel like myself. Everything felt off for me and I couldn’t quite get into my new routine. I’ll never forget one day in particular. My husband and I were fighting over something and I don’t even remember what it was at this point. We were both incredibly young and hardly knew anything about postpartum depression or the symptoms to look out for. Instead we just went at it. My husband finally looked at me one day after I had yelled at him for who knows what and told me I was acting crazy.
I instantly broke. The floodgates opened and all I could do was cry. My husband instantly realized something was wrong and this wasn’t normal. The very next day I called my doctor and told her I thought I may be dealing with some depression.
Admitting to something like experience and depression was so much harder than I realized it would be. It felt so vulnerable and defeating.
I watched for the same symptoms after I had my third son, but was happy to realize they weren’t there. I thought I was in the clear when I had my baby girl. I still needed to look out for them, but I wasn’t really worried. I figure they'd passed me on just like they had the last time.
Things have been wild since the day I had Emelia. She was slow to gain weight, they found a heart murmur, and we found ourselves at constant doctor's appointments. My stress was definitely high because I felt like I could never truly relax with her. I was always watching for something.
Then the coronavirus happened.
Now things weren’t just overwhelming at home, but they were overwhelming just to go in public. A simple trip to the grocery store became some thing to dread. You walked in to see everyone wearing masks or to find out everything on your grocery list was out of stock. That was supposed to be the easy part of your day.
We all know it just got crazier because then they added stay at home orders. I think we all started to feel a little off when this happened. At first it was nice to let go of so many responsibilities. I wasn’t going back-and-forth between school drop off’s or overloading my schedule with too many things. In the beginning, it started to feel OK. It quickly changed and the lack of a schedule turned into feeling completely cut off from the world
It was around the time that I went in to the OB to have my six week appointment. It was a few weeks late, but I still made it. They always have you take a postpartum depression quiz when you get there. I've taken them before and typically am just fine. Even with Levi I hadn’t started experiencing postpartum yet.
As I started it to check off all my answers on the postpartum quiz I started to see a trend...
I had a feeling of what the doctor would say when she got in. My OB is seriously amazing. She has been my favorite one so far because she truly cares about her patients at an entirely different level. When she came in she gave me a big air hug, told me I’m doing an amazing job, and asked how I was doing. I started telling her about my highs and lows and just how I’ve been feeling and she said that I scored pretty high on my postpartum quiz so wasn’t surprised.
I called Joel on the way home and told him all about it and I could tell he wasn’t surprised either. I think he already had his suspicions seeing as how it’s been the last couple weeks. We sat down and talked for a couple hours about what he can do to help me, things that I can start trying in my daily routine, and overall excepting the emotions I was having instead of feeling ashamed of them. My husband is seriously the best. He was so encouraging because I felt like such a failure.
This is my fourth kid and I felt like I should’ve been able to “skip “postpartum depression.
I know how crazy that sounds. I know no one just skips depression. But I felt like I should’ve been able to and the shame was so overwhelming.
Since then my goal has been to take it one day at a time. Postpartum depression this time around has been much more difficult. My lows have felt much more overwhelming. The positive thing is that it’s not every day. Some days I feel great and I am super excited to go hang out the kids and my husband. Other days are hard. Some days I just wanna lay in bed all day and it takes so much energy to get myself up.
Then shame starts to hit you. You feel ashamed that you’re experiencing postpartum depression. You feel shamed that you can’t turn it off. I’ve had days where I’ve cried and had no clue why I was crying. My husband would ask me what's wrong and I would have no true reason, simply the overwhelming need to cry.
If you are experiencing this or have in the past you know exactly what I mean. My husband constantly reminds me that it’s OK. It seems like such a little thing to say but it is so much heavier than that.
It’s OK to struggle with postpartum depression.
It’s OK to cry.
It’s OK that everything is hard.
It’s OK that you’re having ups and downs.
Postpartum depression isn't a simple thing. It's complex and you can't deal with it on your own.
You need to talk to your doctor and come up with a plan. My doctor recommended anti-depressants and I said I wanted to try and handle it on my own first. She was open to that as long as I am surrounding myself with a strong support system and would be honest with her if it got worse.
My go to response with postpartum depression is to keep it all to myself. I don't like talking about these things to people. However, I made a promise to myself that I would be transparent and share about my journey with postpartum depression. I talk about it openly with all of you on Instagram and on my Youtube Channel because I don't want to pretend with you guys. This season of my life is hard and I know that's the same for many of you. We need to talk about it. We can't isolate ourselves and take the burden on alone. Even in the midst of COVID-19 we can talk to friends, ask for help, and get support from those around us.