Post-Partum Depression

At the beginning of the pandemic, I decided to certify to become a Doula. In addition to supporting others during their birth, I thought becoming a Doula would give me knowledge and a glimpse into a human experience I, and most around me, knew nothing about.

  Instead, what it did was fuel my failure fire when I couldn’t figure out what I helped all of my clients do, and I spent a lot of time feeling like an imposter as a Doula. Had I really been of any help to people considering I didn’t know how to help myself?

  Day after day constantly trying to figure out the solution to a problem I couldn’t quite grasp. Any time I tried it was like my brain would go dark and turn off. And yet, even with all of my resources, privilege, and experience – I never stood a chance against pregnancy, birth, and postpartum depression. And while in community with other birthing people, each person’s experience is unique. This was mine…

 When my daughter was born, I was overtaken with emotion. Pride, joy, aches, pure exhaustion, a rebirth, both ours and hers. Partners to parents, our little family. Every single cliché I’d heard was true, and I was delighted. Excited to be out of pregnancy, to be a mother, basking in the afterglow, my soul cracked open. In that initial moment when I saw my greatest creation, I felt a feeling I’ve been longing for my whole life. I felt GOOD!

The surge of oxytocin brought on a happiness and euphoria I have always wondered, was the norm for others as a daily thing they get to enjoy and experience. I finally felt what I’ve been desperate for. Contentment. The delusion that it would stay, when I think back to that first week, I feel sad for her, for me. How could I have been so naïve? I thought ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’, and I did almost die, a few times. After that week I have spent the last 423 days kicking and screaming under water. Desperate and in the deepest, darkest depression I have ever experienced.

It might be of interest to note how I entered postpartum.

 Depression has been my companion in varying degrees since before I can remember. Sometimes it’s been an acquaintance and sometimes my most beloved confidant. I’ve spent a lifetime mastering the art of masking and pretending I’m ok. What it did was fuel my failure fire when I couldn’t figure out what I helped all of my clients do, and I spent a lot of time feeling like an imposter as a Doula. Had I really been of any help to people considering I didn’t know how to help myself? Day after day constantly trying to figure out the solution to a problem I couldn’t quite grasp. Any time I tried it was like my brain would go dark and turn off.

 In 2021 while I was supporting a birth downtown, I began to miscarry. We had just found out a week earlier. Our life already flushed out in my mind. Full, rich, vibrant, our little Poppy. While still honoring clients and attending births I sunk. I would take breaks and call my best friend in Toronto, sometimes at 3 am from the hospital lobby once a client had fallen asleep.

 I became pregnant with my first born a few months after our loss. I went to a walk-in appointment, because I was convinced this one was ectopic and needed reassurance that there was something viable in my uterus. The OB called me back into her office before I left with my black and white picture of our tiny 6-week blob of cells. She told me in a very matter of fact way, that I should prepare for another miscarriage because she saw what could be a clot near the baby blob.

 I walked out crying and defeated already fearing the worst. It was two minutes after this conversation in the doctor’s office that I started to throw up nonstop for the next 7 months.

 I would in fact not miscarry.  I was terrified for my entire pregnancy, exasperated by what this OB had said.  What I would have instead is called Hyperemesis Gravidarum.

 If you don’t know what this is, it only effects 3% of pregnant people, has had little funding for studies up until recently, and I would not wish it on anyone. But as debilitating it was, as sick as I was, as much as some days I really didn’t think I’d make it, and to be honest I thought about an abortion more than a few times; it gave me hope that the tiny blob was still growing. I don’t think it was a huge surprise to anyone on my birth team that I would transition into postpartum with my constant life partner - depression. The only person who was surprised, was me…

 The weeks that followed are a complete blur of sticky breastmilk that never came in, tears…so many tears, guilt, rage, sweat like I’ve never experienced just pouring out from all of my pores and an insurmountable urge to run away.

 I had always told birth clients that we need to normalize having mixed feelings about birth. But here I was having intense mixed feelings and I was scared. Scared of my own thoughts, hurt by the thoughts and opinions of others quickly and easily, not wanting my daughter to see me cry every minute of the day but then I spent too much time away crying in different small spaces of our NYC apartment. Radiators blasting, so sweaty, so many tears. And so, I would push through the day as best I could which was not much. Bottle washing, water boiling, cooling, mixing, naps, facetimes, crying in the bathroom.  

My dad made the comment to me when he came to visit that I did not in fact have postpartum depression due to the fact that he could tell I wanted to be around my daughter. I saw my husband’s eyes dart to mine to see if I registered what he said and if I believed it - that I didn’t have it. I spent the rest of that evening thinking about what we do know and what we don’t talk about in postpartum mood disorders.

 We have not come that far from Tom Cruise telling Brooke Shields to exercise her postpartum depression away. As a society, we don’t even know the spectrum of signs. A 6-week checkup postpartum is not enough for us to mentally survive this. It doesn’t just look like a mom who wants to hurt herself and her baby. I did want to be around my daughter, but not as I was.

 What my dad didn’t know, and no one knew, was that my brain told me if I closed my eyes to sleep, she’d die. So, I stayed awake.

 Then I started to see things that weren’t there. Actually, seeing my intrusive thoughts playing out in front of my eyes. Psychosis is something I have known about from doula work but had never encountered personally.

  I knew that it was very real and dangerous if left untreated. I felt completely unworthy of being her mom. My brain also told me this many times a day, and I believed it. It told me that she would be better without me. I felt like a huge disappointment and knew she deserved better and my husband deserved a partner who could show up, not hide. The solution to this problem kept revealing itself to me. I started to lose my empathy convinced they would be much better to live the lives they deserved if my sadness was out of equation. The George Washington Bridge just around the corner, how could I go on like this forever?

  In these thoughts and cycles, the angrier and angrier I get and honestly, I scared myself. I have never in my life not trusted myself. Was I a monster? Do I go to the 34th precinct and say I’m scared, and they should take me away from my family before I did something?

One morning I told my husband I was going to get a coffee across the street. He looked back at me and I knew he thought I might not come back. He said that I needed to text my midwife and tell her what I’m feeling, or he would call her today.

I went to the coffee shop, opened my phone to text before I even ordered my coffee so I wouldn’t chicken out and told Sarah that I was not doing ok, and I was scared. She replied in 1 minute with “I’m so sorry, friend. I’d love to know more about this. Can I call you?”

 I just cried with relief that no one wanted to lock me away, and I felt for a minute that it could maybe not be like this forever. I knew I couldn’t talk in real time or I might not get it all out so I asked if we could just text for now, and of course, that was just fine with Sarah. I wrote out everything and hit send.

 I took walks, the only thing that got me out of the house and into the sun. Surveying the park trails for another sad mom I might be able to talk to. But it seemed that whenever I tried to chat with other moms the minute, I started to talk about how hard this was I almost always got the look of ‘we don’t talk about that’.

So, I listened to podcasts where it felt like I was with friends listening to their views on life and hard things.  Sun was my saving grace. One morning Cover Me In Sunshine by P!nk and her daughter came on at random and it quickly became my rally cry.

 Everything felt a little more manageable in the light, but it was never an easy feat getting out the door. We walked every day, found new stores, libraries, parks, farmer’s markets…  But every day our walks took us past the hospital uptown. Just in case I knew it was the day I needed to go in and be safe. To keep my daughter safe.

 The meds I was taking were helping a little I thought, but I still knew I needed more help. I started to get overwhelmed with trying to heal myself while trying to care for a little one with a provider who took my insurance, what a nightmare.

 My mom found a talk therapy space online with providers who specialize in mood disorders and postpartum mood disorders in particular. I scheduled my first appointment and felt hope, I waited online for my new psychiatrist but after 10 minutes she still hadn’t appeared.

I began to lose hope again. If this person didn’t come online I don’t know what I would do, why was this so hard to find a way to get better. I started to become desperate, tears welling up again and she finally appeared on my screen.

 Now, when I say this person saved me, I don’t say that lightly.

Within two sessions she was able to diagnose a new layer to this that came as a very big surprise to me, at first. I had been living with undiagnosed Bipolar 2 for who knows how long. What I would come to learn is that a lot of women get their diagnosis after they become a parent because all of their lifelong coping mechanisms no longer work. I was stunned and ashamed, looking back at my whole life and connecting the dots. It made so much sense, but with this realization came more sadness, joy that never had a chance with the intense irritability I’ve felt my whole life.

When would it end?

Dread flooded over me every minute of my day, even 7 months in. Weekly therapy, Lexapro, Lamictal. The lack of sleep didn’t help anything though my brain was no longer telling me she would surely die if I closed my eyes. My nervous system jolted me awake with every breath she took.  I had so many thoughts of divorce. He couldn’t understand, I felt pity grow and grow every time he would look at me. He looked at me like this was forever, disappointed.  At our wedding we vowed to love not only the people we were then but the people we would become. What had I become… I began comparing myself with the women in his family. Women who carried their family on their backs across the desert for better lives. I couldn’t even get out of bed most days without a weight of dread on my chest.

I’ve never felt lonelier or more awake to the world than I have in motherhood.

Those who have been here before me don’t remember the trauma the first year can bring.

Those who haven’t experienced it just can’t understand fully how you’re in between worlds drowning as a new parent.

  I’ve also never felt angrier as I have in parenthood. And not just because of my bipolar. Though it would be easy for anyone to peg my feelings on that one detail.

 The loss, the life, the everything in between that we carry. And what do we get? Not a village, not healthcare, not resources, not compassionate providers, not laws protecting our own bodies, not safety, not access to affordable housing.

 To the parents who are alone, and forgotten, I am sorry. To the parents who cannot find the means to heal themselves or their children, I am sorry. To the mothers burying their children, broken by war, famine, I am so sorry. We all deserve so much more. You deserve the world and yet the world turns its back on us and waits for us to figure it out, as usual. Where did we go wrong…

I wish I could wrap this up with a walk into the sunset moment for me and my family but, I’m still lost at sea. I take my meds, I talk to my therapist, I try and get some good rest, I take nightly baths, I reach out more to family and friends even if I’ve been crying or struggling.  I see the backlight on the porch that my loved ones left on for me in the distance. I never left myself, I’ve just been away for a while.

During the week of my daughter’s first birthday, I was talking to my therapist about the past year and she asked me what I was most proud of. I said that I was alive and I’m trying every day. To make my daughter proud of me, to be proud of myself. To just keep swimming.