...continued from last post "Back to the Future - Here I go again"
Let me start at the beginning.
My son is almost 1 year old, and it has been the best and the worst and the most joyful and the hardest year of my life. Everything I am, have done, want to do, attempted, not attempted, my entire being, all of my dreams, my guts and glory, came into question as I exited from years of various procedures, operations and treatments, braces after age 30 that resulted in a whole new smile, plus the 10 months of pregnancy which ended via C-section and emerged as a person I knew I wanted to be, but could hardly recognize. Figuratively and literally.
“Give it time,” people would say. “Ask for help,” the shows would advise, but ask for help from whom? Help with what, exactly? Going to the bathroom for me? Since there were days I was glued to the couch for over 4 hours and had to hold my bladder...Make me produce more milk so that nursing my little baby wasn't such a horribly difficult process with medications and vitamins and creams?
Trusting that I had come out on top of bad times, fought depression and the like before, I felt I could, would beat this too on my own, so I trudged on, doing my best or half of my best, or all the best I could for that day, just to make it to dinner, or see the other side of yet another restless night. All the while I was slowly and steadily worsening from the inside out, sleep deprived, alone a lot of the time with this new person I had created, desolate.
It has been a fight with myself for endless months, and every layer of the battle are so intertwined that I was beginning to think it might be possible that my life would just never become what I dreamed it would be. I wondered if it was just time to accept that that was the case, and that I had ruined all I ever wanted – my new little family, the loves of my life, my health…my ability to get things done, to write and to be happy. Maybe my glass had never been full and I have been a fool all along?
The irony is that my life already is my dreams. I am living my dreams. Sure there are goals yet to reach and parts that are missing, faded away or have been edited entirely, but all in all, so far my life has unfolded how I always hoped it would. I am exactly perfectly where I need to be, with my partner/prince and our miracle baby boy. I am alive. I am writing. I have a home and food and abilities and talents and people that care about me. I am so very blessed.
(http://www.youtube.com/user/JKForfait)
That is the thing with postpartum depression. At least it was in my case. A lot of the darkness comes from nowhere and it doesn't make sense. Everything just hurst and requires too much energy. Whilst I fell completely-head-over-heels-madly-all-consuming in love with my son the instant he was conceived, and it has only grown stronger every minute since he was born, everything else in my world felt as though it were hanging by a thread.
I wasn’t diagnosed until close to 7or 8 months in, and even then the label didn’t seem right. I love my son and love being a mom. We had tried for years and years so clearly he was very much wanted and I didn't miss my pre-mom life at all. I never imagined or wanted anything to ever come between us, and I have not once felt disconnected from him or that he wasn't/isn't the brightest light I have ever seen (like many women do suffering from PPD do,)...so how could this be PPD?
But it was. It still is. And facing it as such did start to bring together the strewn pieces of this new puzzle. I had already admitted to having the blues, but that was normal for me every year, seasonally affected by the shortened, colder, cooped up days of winter.
It was different this year though.
Far gloomier, sadder and deeper. I still felt like I couldn’t clear the fog in my head, my heart hurt and my shoulders carried the weight of it all. My postpartum was finally diagnosed after repeatedly scoring alarmingly high results on symptom quizzes with my Public Health Nurse.
Like it or not, I could no longer deny that I was suffering from depression. Albeit giving my symptoms the name postpartum felt shameful and disappointing, and in some ways only added more to my guilt and angsts, it helped me understand why I had to try so hard to find my positivity within, why everything seemed ultra hard and overwhelming, why nothing made me laugh (except my son) the way it use to. Ultimately, thankfully, it has been a major stone in my foundation to recovery and taking back my life.
It gave my puzzle a name. On more days than not, just getting a shower, or typing an email, planning dinners or going for a walk seemed nearly impossible. Justifying and defending myself to myself, or to my spouse only triggered more of the same dark emotions, endless crying, utter exhaustion, etc.
Depression really does hurt, a bitter pill to swallow (no pun intended) and there is no shame in it. But left ignored or untreated can really destroy a person, shattering their world around them.
...read more, next post...
PLG ~ JKF
