First off, I am sick, sick, sick. Josh looked up bronchitis in wikipedia (don’t look at me like that; my doctor diagnosed me long before we thought to doublecheck with Dr. Wiki!) and I am a classic case of it - the fatigue and malaise - oh yes. I napped today, for the first time in ages, and while it felt good, I still feel like a truck ran me over, backed up, and did it again. I hope tomorrow is better, I really do. Agh.

Meanwhile, the bearer of our illnesses seems to be on the mend. He came home smiling and clutching a banana. He’s gotten so talkative lately and the neurons are firing appropriately - he saunters into the kitchen and says to Josh, “Hi dere!” It is beyond cute.

***

My dirty little internet secret - I don’t really like Dooce’s blog. I’m sure she’s a very nice person, but her style is just not something I prefer. However, her entry recently on depression gave me pause. I padlocked the following information behind layers of friends-only entries at my livejournal, but looking back - I have nothing to be ashamed about. I don’t padlock information about my diabetes, I won’t about this.

A few months after Matthew was born, things started going wrong. I was getting more and more short with Josh - and I am being overly nice to myself and the situation by just saying “short”; I was downright nasty and rude. Before I went back to work, it was fairly easy to get extra sleep in - Josh had taken over all cooking and cleaning duties. All I had to do was mind Matthew and rest. And I napped pretty much daily - either with Matthew curled up at my side or when Josh got off work I’d hide away and sleep a little.

I started back to work when Matthew was 12 weeks old. I admit, I was more than ready to go back to a structured environment that at least for a few hours each day didn’t revolve around dirty diapers and latching on and latching off - of course, I traded that for a new set of issues, like pumping and the most important, lack of sleep.

Everyone tells you that you essentially stop sleeping once the baby arrives, so stock up before the baby gets there! Of course, it never quite works that way. When you go back to work, it just stops. You are on the go immediately from 4, 5, 6 am, whenever the baby gets up, until whenever you can drop yourself into bed, completely exhausted. I couldn’t find time to exercise (still struggle with that) and it was just a bad scene, all around. I fell asleep on the El, all the time, and I had to stop listening to podcasts because those would help me fall asleep and I couldn’t concentrate on them, anyway, so why bother? I fell asleep once on the El and missed my stop by two extra stops. I had no idea what was going on outside of my daily life of wake up-commute-work-commute-baby-sleep. I fell asleep standing up, a feat I’d only previously managed to accomplish when in college, during the week before finals my junior year, when I got 7 hours of sleep total. I lived on cigarettes and Coke back then.

November 11, 2006 (just about a month after I’d returned to work; edited from my livejournal)

Everything came to a head two nights ago. I’d not gone to sleep until midnight, woke up an hour later and was awake for about an hour with Matthew. I cried after he fell back asleep. I cried in my boss’ office yesterday. I cried when I got home, and cried some more. This morning, more of the same.

I called my OB’s office and talked to a nurse, who told me to call a post-partum depression (PPD) hotline, after I cried on the phone with her, and she made me promise to call Dr. K today. The PPD hotline gave me some referrals to psychiatrists in the area.

This morning, while I took Ava out for a walk, I called my OB’s office and talked to another nurse, the one who I’ve been with throughout the duration of my pregnancy, Lynn. I tried explaining to her what was going on - and there’s never really a good way to talk about these things, I am beginning to realize, and burst into tears again. I couldn’t decide whether or not I should go in and talk to him or not, when Dr. K came onto the phone and said in the way that he does, “Why don’t you come in, you don’t need an appointment, and we’ll just check in.”

I bundled Matthew up after his nap and we went in. Lynn saw me and ushered me in, sat me down and handed me Kleenex. I didn’t know how to start (I never do), and she said, “Say whatever you want. It’ll be okay. You’re with family now.” So I cried, talked about everything - how incredibly exhausted I am, how going back to work was eagerly awaited and the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and how I feel like I’m letting both Josh and Matthew down, Matthew more so, that he’s relying on me and I can’t do good by him. Just talking to Lynn did wonders, I think.

She bounced Matthew on her knee and talked to him about how often she saw me during my pregnancy and that he was a “regular” around the office. And she pointed to him and said to me, “Does this baby look like you’re doing bad by him? Look at him.” Matthew smiled as if on cue. “This guilt thing - we are going to check it at the door.”

Lynn took Matthew around to the other women in the office so Dr. K and I could have some alone time, and we talked (and I cried - see the theme?). He asked about Josh (and called the people who write nasty things in obituary guestbooks bastards. Heh.), my schedule, his schedule, and recommended that I join a PPD support group and regular therapy. He also gave me a prescription and samples of Lexapro, and wants to see me in two weeks. As he left, he told me, “We’re going to get you through this.” And I believe him, somehow. Lynn came back in with some info sheets and said that she’d call me on Tuesday if she hadn’t heard from me on Tuesday morning. I go back to see Dr. K in two weeks.

I know this happens to lots of new and seasoned moms, but I thought somehow I’d be immune, because I could see the signs! I am clairvoyant! Fuck, in my line of work, I am trained to see the signs of depression and refer people to counseling. I have a degree in Counseling Psychology, for crying out loud. And here I am. I’ve cried a lot more since I’ve come home. I feel alternately relieved that I reached out, and that Dr. K told me that I will definitely feel better and he and Lynn would make sure I would (and Josh too - he has been so wonderful in this whole mess), and alternately horrified and ashamed that I would need help at all. I suppose feeling better about that will come in time.

November 28, 2006
So, still tired, but doing much, much better than when I last posted. I saw a therapist before Thanksgiving and have an appointment to see her again tomorrow. It was a decent visit - nice to talk to someone, but I don’t know if I’m entirely sold. One thing she said toward the end was that it was normal to have mixed emotions as a new mom and that doesn’t mean I’m a bad mother.

I smiled bitterly. “I wish I could believe you.”

She smiled kindly back at me. “That’s what we’ll work on.”

I also made an appointment with my OB to follow up and that’s next week - a bit longer than the 2 weeks he asked me to come back to see him, but again, Thanksgiving. I was talking to Josh last night and I told him that I was trying to come up with the answer to the inevitable question of, “How are you feeling?” and I am coming up dry. I think I’m feeling better… but I don’t know for certain. I don’t know if I’m waiting for a magical day when these happy little pills will make me dance from the rooftops and sing from bad musicals. I’m thinking I might feel like my old self… but I don’t know what my old self feels like.

I do know that I don’t feel like crying all of the time anymore. I don’t look at my life situation with quite that sense of doom and dread and panic and fear that I did before. I’m not picking fights with Josh because I’ve got some huge bottled up secret inside of me and I’m not looking at weekends with Matthew with doom.

I’m trying so hard to be easy on myself. That is a weird sentence, but it’s the best way to describe it, I think.

Anyway, with regards to the improvements - I don’t know if I can attribute it to the Lexapro, to the increased levels of sleep, to the simple act of reaching out for help, or what. It’s probably a little of everything, and I’m okay with that.

Things are better now. I was on Lexapro from November through February, working with my OB and my therapist, whom I’d been seeing once a week or every other week. I quit taking Lexapro in February.

I still have bad days - but they’re just that - bad days. They aren’t overwhelming me to the point of not being able to function. They aren’t sending me sobbing into the corner, staring blankly into space, hoping for an end to a feeling that is not unlike pain and emptiness all wrapped up into one. This is the thing - those stupid pregnancy hormones, the ones that created your precious muffin baby, are the same hormones causing your head to go into a tailspin. It is perfectly normal to not only have the baby blues but to have some lasting issues that need to be addressed. It is okay and perfectly normal. It happens to the best and worst of us.

So, there. I said it. I don’t feel like a freakshow. And if this helps just one person make that call, then it’s worth it. Ask for help - you deserve it, and so does your kid. Ask your OB for help, your midwife, your general practitioner - someone who can look at you, give you a strong and hard hug, and help you take a course of action to enjoy your life again. It doesn’t have to be shitty. I promise.