Medicated Mommy

...oh this Mommy is medicated!

That was my response to a gal pal asking me if I had struggled with the "baby blues" after the birth of my daughter. Everyone at the table laughed and so did I. I have no shame in admitting I pop a few pills every morning just to get thru a day in my life as a Mom...I have no shame now, one year and counting into my journey thru Post Partum Depression and Anxiety. I can just now say the shame has disappeared. If you'd come to me this time last year and asked if I struggled with baby blues, I'd have smiled and said "sure I've had some ups and downs, but nothing major". And that would have been a major lie.

If looking your six month old square in the eyes as asking her to "shut up" while she shivers and cries as you're dressing her after bath time, if that is nothing more then a little case of baby blues, then I suppose I was a-OK. But for me, when my husband kindly looked at me and asked, "please never tell our daughter to shut up when she is crying, again" and I snapped back with a comment oozing with the attitude of someone just caught with her hand in the PPD cookie jar and couldn't admit it....then I guess I didn't have a problem. I remember SO vividly walking out of Emily's room and in my head thinking "crap, he knows I have a problem too". I had been questioning myself for weeks, wondering if the down and out feelings and the anger towards Emily I had every time she cried for no reason, was the big ‘D’ I’d heard about or if I was just reacting to life and it's general toughness. I called my Doctor the day after Brandon asked me to never scold our daughter like the bratty teenager we were praying she wouldn’t be, and said "Doc, I think I have problem".

The questions the nurse on the other line had for me caught me off guard; "have you had thoughts of suicide? have you had thoughts of harming your baby? are you alone or do you have the support of a spouse or partner? do you feel you may act out irrationally and cause harm to yourself or your child? do you feel out of control and unable to get out of bed, eat, or bathe yourself?" I said no to each question because, truly I didn't have any of those thoughts at all. I was able to bathe and the scale was pretty clear every week at Weight Watchers that I was not missing any meals! After I scheduled my appointment to see the Doctor the following week, I felt like I may have made a mistake. I wasn’t suicidal, I never felt I wanted to hurt Emily, and I didn’t think I was totally off the reservation. I just felt a little off and didn't think how I was reacting to the everyday life of Motherhood was entirely how it was suppose to be. "Suppose to be"...I hate that phrase and will defiantly 'go there' later....

When my Doctor walked into the exam room a week later, I started to bawl. When I turned on the table and saw her face I felt like I could let out everything I'd been feeling and holding in, for months. I knew she could help me. I hadn't felt like anyone else could help. None of my girlfriends seemed to be struggleing with motherhood. They all seemed to have a handle on the new life of parenthood we were all now living. There was noone offering me anything that would help me understand the feelings I'd been having and nothing anyone could seem to do to help me get thru it (obviously I see now that had I only opened my big mouth and talked to those around me, they would not only have understood and been able to relate, but also encouraged me to ask for help). I truly didn’t know what IT was, but I was deeply dreading the reality of it. After a half hour of release in the form of blubbering my eyes out telling my Doctor the many emotions I was having and explaining the many scenarios in which these emotions were played out, she then asked me to fill out a survey rating my emotions and feelings about motherhood. Not about my baby, but about motherhood. At the time I didn’t know it, but this was HUGE for me. The fact that in reality, PPD for me, was about Motherhood and how I was handling Motherhood and not about Emily and my relationship with her.

My biggest fear before I became a Mother was that I'd be a terrible one. That I wouldn’t have a kind, gentile, friendly relationship with my daughter but a hard, judgmental, and abrasive one. That I wouldn’t know how to be an accepting Mother and a Mother who taught my daughter vs. demanded of her. When I began my road down "post partum lane" I was in such fear that the feelings I was having toward Emily were defining the relationship she and I would have indefinitely. My feelings of frustration when she would cry non-stop or the anxiety I would get before a big event that I knew would over stimulate her, then causing me to resent Emily for making things more difficult. I thought that because I was feeling such deep resentment and such inability to understand her and meet her needs, that I was destined to a broken relationship with her. It was not until much later that I realized that my PPD was not about Emily at all; it was and is about my ability to be a Mother and to cope with motherhood and the challenges every mother faces. Motherhood is hard, overwhelming, over stimulating, frustrating, miss understood, and a constant battle against ourselves. My expectations of myself as a Mother was the reason my baby blues turned into a battle with PPD…I was unwilling to allow myself to admit I was overwhelmed, needed help coping, and was at times, unable to understand why I felt this way. It was ME standing in the way of myself that brought my initial “baby blues” to the point of escalation.

My PPD is back with vengeance now that Gavin is here. I was not fully recovered when I got pregnant with him and I was naive to think the same treatment path that brought me back to myself after Emily’s birth, would work the same way this time around. I’m still battling the PPD demons and trying to figure out how to get thru. The same meds that worked before aren’t working as well this time around and some of the emotions and obstacles I had overcome last year are back and I’m having a hard time figuring out how to conquer them now. It’s a new battle and a new journey and one I know I can get thru, even on the days when I feel completely defeated by myself, I can find some comfort in knowing that this is just a season and I will overcome not just because I have in the past, but because there is an amazing number of mother’s who have overcome this before me. Motherhood is such a different journey for everyone, but for me…if I could just get out of my own head and out of my own way, I’d see that Motherhood will always have a learning curve and what I’m feeling now doesn’t not have to define the kind of mother I grow to become. I’m taking one day at a time and reminding myself that I’m a great Mom, I know my children better then I think I do, and the relationship I’m building with them is what will remain past the PPD, not the moments of the day that I’m short tempered or broken down by my emotions. Those moments are not defining my relationships with them, but they are teaching me and helping me grow as I continue to walk in my calling of Motherhood.