PPD survivor: my story (very long)

Ladies,

I found this board very useful when I was deep in the throes of PPD/PPA. I wanted to tell my story and I hope it helps others to not be ashamed to get help IMMEDIATELY if you think you may be heading down the same kind of path I did. 

I'll start of by saying that I'm a licensed Psychotherapist.  I work with others dealing with depression for a living. I have no prior history of depression (though I do have tendencies toward anxiety). I lost my mother to cancer when I was 14 and suffered panic attacks daily for several years afterward.  Not having my mother around when my DS was born affected me more than I ever could have anticipated.

My beautiful son, Liam, was born on October 12th 2009, at a healthy 8lb8oz. I had a scheduled c/s due to the fact that he was transverse.  I was a little nervous on the morning of the surgery, but my excitement overtook my fears.  When he arrived, I was awestruck by this little person that I housed for 9 months but in turn barely knew or recognized.  I was overwhelmed/flooded with emotions of both happiness and fear (for hurting his delicate, albeit hefty body). I couldn't allow him to leave my sight. I even co-slept with him in my hospital bed and refused to send him to the nursery at night (which was literally 100ft away from my room). In fact, I forced myself out of bed constantly, whenever he had to go to the nursery for a bath, weigh-in or check-up. There was something about other people touching him that made me uneasy. Looking back on it, I was borderline obsessed with my new son.

I was very intent on breastfeeding and didn't anticipate that my son would have an extremely short frenulum which made latching difficult and painful. By day 2 my nipples were deep purple and every lactaction consultant was pretty horrified that I wasn't complaining much. I figured my nipples were supposed to look like that and the extreme pain was just part of the process (my friends and family warned me that BFing at first was no walk in the park). I was immediately prescribed numbing cream and brought in a hospital grade pump (big mistake) to switch over to pumping with the occasional BFing. I didn't know any better so that is what I did.

I was up the entire first night due to hormones, anxiety, pain from the C/s, BFing, crying baby, excitement, fear, you name it. I didn't sleep for one second. I was running solely on adrenalin by the next day. The next night, when my body wanted to crash hard from the lack of sleep, I was still up feeding my newborn, dealing with my milk supply coming in full force. By day 3, I was miserable, in a lot of pain, and scared. This is when my OB said she was going to discharge me, and I begged her to give me another day. She definitely gave me the side-eye, like why on earth would I want to be hospitalized another day when I could be home in my own bed.  Going home was this big scary unknown, and if I was told I could live at the hospital, I would have gladly accepted. 

By the time we did leave the hospital, after 4 nights, I had come to terms with the fact that we were going to have to manage on our own. I was looking forward to the quality time that we were going to have as our new family of 3 - DH had taken 3 weeks off, and I had planned about 3 months of leave (I am self-employed so I knew that was flexible).  As soon as we got home, something went horribly wrong. 

After being somewhat obsessed with my newborn, I started to feel very distant and afraid of him. I felt completely inadequate (I'm an only child with no real experience with kids) and rather quickly, wanted nothing to do with him. I started to feel very weepy and overly emotional (when I'm typically very much the opposite).  We started off bed-sharing but I felt like he was keeping me up all night with his loud grunts. I wanted him to move to his own room, but DH thought that was a bit early.  So DH volunteered to sleep downstairs with DS in his swing, while I slept upstairs. At this point I was pretty much exclusively pumping with maybe 1 or 2 BFing sessions a day.  I would set my alarm for every 2 hours through the night and bring my bottles of milk downstairs for DH to feed to DS. Even at week 1, DS was sleeping pretty well only getting up 2 or 3 times a night for feeding. I was up 4-5x pumping, and producing a ridiculous amount of milk, as it felt like the ONE thing I could do right.

We had a decent routine going for about 2 weeks with the sleeping schedule. I had days where I felt almost "normal" and then the next day I would be a weeping, sobbing mess.  A good day meant no crying.  As it started to get closer to the time that DH had to go back to work, I realized there was absolutely no way, no how I could handle DS on my own.  I sucked up my pride and called my MIL and practically begged her to come down from NY and move in with us indefinitely.  MIL and I have a decent relationship but she has her share of issues which DH and I don't deal with too well.  She agreed and she planned to head down the day before DH was scheduled to go back to work.

When she arrived, she disapproved of two things - our sleeping arrangements, and my EPing instead of BFing. She said that the baby needed to sleep in his crib, and DH and I needed to sleep in our own bed, and I needed to wake to feed him so DH would be well rested for work. My downward spiral took a fast plunge to rock bottom. 

I was already sleep deprived waking up every 2 hours to pump. Now I was getting up to double feed - pump AND bottle-feed. I was awake for most of the night, and after a few nights of this, I lost the ability to be able to sleep at all.  During the day, I couldn't even think. I couldn't eat, I didn't want to shower, and half the time, I didn't want to exist. I lost all of my pregnancy weight and an additional ten pounds. I started drinking Ensures and oatmeal to keep up my supply.  At the peak, I was producing about 70oz a day.   When bad becomes worse...

From all the pumping and trying to BF fairly unsuccessfully, I developed a raging case of antibiotic-resistant mastitis. The 2nd round of antibiotics I was on were unsafe for BFing, so I started pumping and dumping which made me feel like a total loser. Now I couldn't even feed my baby. Oh, but I still had to pump! I went for an ultrasound to make sure I didn't have an abscess in one of my boobs which would have required surgery.  At that point in time, I probably should have given up pumping/BFing (like my OB and midwife begged me to do) but I persevered.  I should also mention that I had several appts with the midwife at my practice and I asked her for SSRI meds for what to me was clearly Post Partum Depression. She kept chalking it up to "Baby blues" but I knew something was much more wrong. She said I need to give it 6 weeks and then come back and see her.

I never made it to 6 weeks. 

By week 5, I had completely lost it. I was sleep deprived beyond belief - I had insomnia on top of being up all night with the baby. At one point, I had literally 1 hour of sleep over the course of 3 days. I was delirious - seeing and hearing things. I was absolutely certain that the baby was screaming when he was sound asleep in his crib.  I would crawl into bed, hold my hands over my head and beg to not exist anymore. 

*GRAPHIC WARNING*

I never wanted to hurt my son intentionally, but I had extremely vivid images of us being hurt together - there was one scene that I couldn't get out of my mind. I was walking with him in a baby carriage and we crossed over some railroad tracks, and a speeding train came through and demolished us both. Or, we were in a car, and a drunk driver sped through a stop sign and caused a fatal wreck. Things like this occupied my thoughts non-stop.  I thought I was the worst mother on the face of the earth for having these thoughts, even though they were out of my control. As soon as they would pop into my mind, I used every meditation, relaxation, and thought stopping technique I had in my vast repertoire of cognitive behavior skills. Nothing seemed to help. I felt defeated, isolated, and wanted to give up.

I very quickly became suicidal. I decided that my son would be much better off without a mother who wanted nothing to do with him, clearly was inept at caring for him, and had lots of thoughts of him being killed and didn't even feel bad about it. I had convinced a Psychiatrist friend of mine to prescribe me anti-depressants and sleeping pills as I thought I was at the end of my rope. She of course warned me that the SSRI's would take several weeks to make any kind of difference, but the sleeping pills should work immediately.  I took my first dose of Ambien and was still up all night. She told me to double the dose the following night - nothing. I then asked her for some rescue meds to get the anxiety under control - nothing helped. I was utterly hopeless and dreaming of never waking up again (that is, if I ever got to sleep).  

DH was seriously scared and worried at this point. MIL still thought I had baby blues and that I would "snap out of it."  I think the one thing that I really had going for me is my knowledge of mental health and knowing that something was very wrong with me, and I needed major help.  I didn't actually want to go through with killing myself (which I never actually wanted to do, I just didn't want to exist in the world I was living). 

My best friend from back home came to visit me. She has known me for 17 years and when she saw me, she was scared. I was not the person I once was, and she saw me slipping further into the depression over the span of just 2 days. I talked with her about checking into the hospital, and she warned me that it wouldn't be a walk in the park and it would likely make me feel more alone, but it might be a good idea to get the meds under control.  My only fear was that my DH was still going to work during the day, and MIL was convinced that more exposure/time with DS was going to "cure" me. I was genuinely afraid of being around DS, because I didn't trust myself on such a lack of sleep, and I just wasn't myself anymore.  I didn't want to be one of those scary Andrea Yates stories. I didn't want anything bad to happen to DS. 

After a few more days of misery, I decided to voluntarily check myself into the hospital, in the middle of the night, on Thanksgiving day. It was the best decision I've ever made. 

I stayed for 5 long nights, and while my medication never got under control fully, I was headed in the right direction. I got some much needed sleep.  I brought my breast pump with me and continued to pump around the clock to keep up my supply.  When I got released, I was on Celexa for the depression, Trazodone for sleeping, and Ativan for anxiety (as needed). That combination of meds (and therapy) was the key to getting out of the black hole.  I decided to do a depression treatment program (at the suggestion of a colleague who was familiar with the program) for a month. I spent all day at a hospital working through my post-partum issues as well as doing fairly intense Psychotherapy.   I was no stranger to therapy, but this time felt different. I had to work on issues that I thought were healed, such as the grief of losing my mother at a young age, and what it meant to me to now have a child, and know what it feels like to be able to put my self in my mother's shoes, knowing she was going to be leaving me.  The pain was insurmountable. I cried and cried and cried, until I couldn't any more. I needed to get it out... and it brought me one step closer to feeling whole again.

By the end of 2009, I started to have many more good days than bad. I *wanted* to be around my son. I felt that I was now a safe person for him. I relearned how to take care of him.  I ultimately weaned off pumping as I was on a combo of meds that were not safe. I exclusively pumped for 3 months and had enough milk in the freezer to last him almost another month. I switched to formula with a few regrets at the beginning (and NONE today).

I continued weekly therapy until February, when I was basically off the sleeping meds (I could actually sleep when my son slept) and waking up in the middle of the night was not a dreaded, scary thing. I no longer needed the meds by March and I also started weaning down on the Celexa (from 30mg to 20mg and today I am down to 10mg). 

It was literally like a light switch had been turned on. I was HAPPY again.  I felt HEALTHY and ALIVE and EXCITED to be with my son. I no longer dreaded the future but I welcomed it with open arms and HOPE.

I know I am not "cured" but I consider myself a PPD survivor.  Of course I am scared to have more children and potentially have a reoccurrence.  However, just the fact that I want more children tells me I'm in such a better place.  I truly thought PPD would overtake me, and I would not live to tell my story, but I honestly can say that I am here to tell you that YOU WILL GET BETTER. I promise you. If you take the necessary steps (medication, counseling or both) you will get through this.

I have a healthy, happy 7 month old baby boy to show for all this. He is amazing and I feel incredibly fortunate to call myself his Mother. 

Please contact me any time. PM me here or e-mail me at useonfire@aol.com. I will give my cell phone number to anyone who needs to talk, day or night.  PPD is a serious but treatable illness. And, most importantly, you are not alone.  

Thanks for taking the time to read my story.