My Journey Through Postpartum Anxiety and Depression

The first time I held my fisrtborn son it was in a brightly-lit crowded NICU. He was asleep in a plastic isolette and we were not allowed to do anything more than reach our sanitized hand through the portal hole in the side and gently stroke his foot. He was a mass of wires with a thin tube down his throat to aid him in breathing and constantly-beeping monitors all around him. He was the last baby in row B, right beside a baby in an isolette who weighed barely a pound. My fiance and I both knew that that other baby was dying, though we never spoke those words. It was too terrifying to have our son in the same room as a dying child.The could-have-beens caused us not to utter the possibilities aloud. It did not matter that we were at one of the top women and infant hospitals in the world, that people from other countries travelled here for first rate medical care..... For us it was simply fear that clung to us. This was not how it was supposed to be.

Zane was born after 48 scary and painful hours of labor, all being back labor. There had been countless medical interventions that then had required thier own interventions to counteract the side effects of the original interventions. I never even got to HOLD my son before they whisked him away to intubate him. He was 24 hours old before I ever got to touch him. He remained in the NICU for nine days. I was sent home on day three but refused to leave so they found me a room at the Ronald Mcdonald House down the road and every four hours I trudged through the snow back to the hospital to nurse him once they finally allowed me to hold him. Around the clock I made those trips and was left exhausted and physically hurting. But I did not care. My baby needed me and it was all I had to offer. My fiance left Providence to return to work in West Warwick the same day that they discharged me from the hospital. With no car of our own at the time he had no way to make the trip everyday and I was left alone. I hid in my room when not at the hospital as I could not bear to hear the sad tales from the other parents there with sick children. Children who were dying of cancer, newborns who could not breathe on thier own and could simply cease living with any last breath......

With this being my introduction to motherhood it is no wonder that I fell into a downward spiral of depression and anxiety. One of the major risk factors of Postpartum mental illness is a pregnancy and/or labor filled with interventions and struggles. When a woman has expectations for how she desires her child's birth to go and it ends up taking a completly different route, that reality can hurt emotionally for many years following. That lack of peace, that feeling of failing can haunt a woman for a lifetime. My grandmother still speaks with clarity of her regrets and fears from births she went thorugh over 40 years ago.

Back at home my fiance worked 12 to 15 hours a day doing construction. When he was home he was too tired to help at all. Lonliness took over my life and wrapped me in a cloak of isolation. Everything began to scare me. I woudl be holding my infant son while walking down the stairs and suddenly have a terrifying vision of him flying out of my arms and smashing violently down the stairs, landing in a puddle of blood at the bottom. I would be crossing the street while pushing him in his stroller and have a vision of a mack truck barreling at us and my sons limp little body flying through the air..... This was my life. I was positive something awful was going to happen. To him. To me. To my fiance. That looming gray cloud of impending doom followed me everywhere. I could not focus on living life any longer, on any of the things I once loved. I could not laugh at funny movies. I could not bring myself to enjoy sex, or even want to be TOUCHED by my fiance. I did not want to spend tiem with anyone, not even family. I just wanted to lock myslef in a room with my son. I wished the world to leave me alone.

Then the anxiety attacks began. The first one that occured left me thinking I must be dying. My chest was tight and hurt so bad I was convinced I was having a heart attack. I told this to my then-husband and he laughed and said I was being melodramatic. If you have never had an anxiety attack you cannot begin to understand. The next one came two nights later. In my bedroom putting on sweats for bed I began to tremble, shake as if the temperature had suddenly dropped to 20 degrees. My lips and hands tingled, then went numb. My thoughts were foggy and al I could really focus on was one thought over and over "I'm dying. This is what it feels like to die....." I could not rationalize WHY I was thinking this, only that I swore it to be true with every fiber of my being. Medical books describe it as impending doom. I tried to will it away. I made my way to the bathrom and brushed my teeth. I don't know why. It would not stop so I finally went out to the livingroom and stood still and silent in the doorway. My husband was sitting on the couch watching a movie and when he finally heard the screaming in my mind he turned and saw me there , pale faced and wild-eyed. He came to me then and pulled me against him, whispered soothing words and held me firm until te storm subsided bit by bit.

I lived like this for 4 years. My days a blend of depression and anxiety. I obsessed over everything. I fought with my husband and yelled at him because I hated him for not feeling the way I did, for getting to live him life, for not trying to understand. He grew tired of trying, grew impatient and angry at me when I could not just shake it off and he went on with his life and left me behind. I shut down and stopped having friends, stopped caring about anything except my children. I became a shell of a person. Until my husband left me with our three children to raise and another on teh way. At this point I finally relented and went on a prescription antidepressant. had avoided help up until now as I was afraid of the stigma, the admittance of needing help, of failing on some level as a mother because it all hadn't turned out to be roses like I had expected way back when. And yes, those pills took the edge off, gave me the courage to stand on my own without fear for the first time in many years. But I worried about the impact they were having on this new child growing within me so I weaned off of them and instead began to focus on me. The me I had tucked away deep inside directly after the birth of my first child. I found God again. Out on my balcony with the sun rising over the mountains. Peace. In the pages of psalms that I pored over every night in bed. Joy. I began to dance once again. Something I had not done since I was a little girl. I taught the nieghbor girl how to do plies and pirouttes in my livingroom. I picked up a microphone again and began to sing at church once more. I rearranged all of the furniture in my home to make a fresh start. I ventured out beyond my front door and began to make friends, began to discover I was someone others would want to know and love. I found a beautiful young woman there within myself, one I myself desired to get to know and befriend. I found freedom.

Postpartum illness is a very real thing that countless women suffer with every day, many go months or even years suffering in silence for fear of being labelled a failure. Perfection should not be the goal here as a mother, rather, love should be. Love for our children, our families, ourselves. To the point that we are willing to seek any help needed so that that love is uncompromised. I pray that my story will speak to other women who may be there right now. There is a way beyond the shadows to joy. Claim your journey. Find your love. Go in peace.