My Story: Overcoming Postpartum Depression & Anxiety
I want to share this story, not as a pat on the back or for self-promotion, but as a means to normalize these experiences. If we normalize these thoughts and feelings, we have the opportunity to help other parents realize that they’re not alone. If we remove the stigma, the shame and guilt, that surrounds mental health issues, we open the door for growth and healing for so many, not just those with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are significantly underreported and therefore significantly under-diagnosed. This means we don’t have a real understanding of the number of parents who experience them, just an approximation. It’s estimated that up to 20% of birthing parents will experience a PMAD either during pregnancy or within the first year postpartum. While they are typically attributed to birthing parents, non-birthing parents can also experience some of these mental health challenges.
In August of 2018 my husband and I found out I was pregnant. We were ecstatic. My husband always dreamed of being a father and, while I never had an overwhelming desire to be a mom, I was excited to grow our family and enter into this new chapter. I had an easy pregnancy and loved being pregnant. I had minimal complications with the only (very slight) concern being my fluid levels in the third trimester. A few days before my due date I went into labor and after 12 hours of laboring, I delivered our daughter. I don’t have a traumatic birth story. Everything seemed to align for a positive transition into motherhood. However, after giving birth, I had a number of experiences that filled me with guilt, shame, and pushed me towards depression.
As moms, we are sold this idea that we will immediately fall in love with our babies the moment we give birth to them. While many moms do get to experience that immediate bliss, there are a number of us who don’t, which brings about a world of disappointment and guilt. I was in the latter group. I didn’t experience fireworks; there was no instant bond.
Then, I struggled with breastfeeding. The hospital’s lactation consultant didn’t seem interested in helping me truly achieve a latch. She was short with me and made me feel uncomfortable with the fact that it didn’t seem to be easy. While she shared a couple of different positions, she didn’t provide additional tips to help the baby latch on and feed successfully. It was painful and I began to get frustrated that it wasn’t working. They scared me into supplementing since breastfeeding didn’t seem to be going well. While I never put pressure on myself to exclusively breastfeed, there was still a sense of disappointment that I couldn’t do another thing that was supposed to be natural to me as a mom. Unbeknownst to us, our daughter had severe lip ties on her upper lip which caused the challenges we were having with breastfeeding. No one at the hospital told us this was even an something we should be aware of. We were off to a rocky start before we even left the hospital.
When we got home I started to experience symptoms of the baby blues. I got emotional over family and friends visiting, feeling overwhelmed with the additional noise, questions, and activity. I cried often, which was scary because I was never a really emotional person. I struggled to uncover my maternal instincts or understand my daughter’s cues. Anxiety began to creep in with concerns about whether she was eating enough, the fact that she refused most naps, or accidentally waking her up after she finally did go to sleep. It was all adding up and coupled with the exhaustion and huge life change, I was beginning to drown.
My husband encouraged me to go to a support group offered by the hospital where we delivered. One evening I decided to go. I was anxious to leave my daughter for the first time, anxious to be vulnerable with strangers, and anxious about what I would learn about myself from listening or sharing. The meeting was led by two nurses and a few other moms attended with their babies. The women went around the circle and shared what they were currently struggling with. I felt ridiculous as many of them had traumatic births or other challenges that seemed more dire than my own. Then it was my turn to share and I almost immediately broke down crying as I shared that I wasn’t in love with my daughter. One of the nurses looked at me with a gentle smile and asked, “did you love your husband when you first met him?” To which I replied, “no.” She reassured me stating that sometimes it takes time and that’s okay.
Those baby blues morphed into depression and anxiety. At my six week postpartum visit, I was given the questionnaire asking about my mental health. I responded honestly and was given some information about resources, but that was it. At the time, I didn’t know what I was really going through. I had never experienced depression before. I didn’t know what warning signs to look for that would shout out to me, “HEY, YOU’RE DEPRESSED AND NEED HELP.” Even if I did know the warning signs, I felt like I was in this constant fog and thinking clearly was a struggle on its own. I just felt like I wasn’t good at being a mom and didn’t deserve to have the supportive husband and beautiful child I was blessed with. I felt like a fraud, a failure.
I looked forward to returning to work. At work I was validated by the fact that I was good at my job. I was good at it and I was confident that I was good at it. At home, I didn’t feel like I was good at being a mom. I wasn’t confident in my role at all. My husband on the other hand loved being a dad and he was so good at it. From my perspective, he was better at being a dad than I was at being a mom.
When struggling with a PMAD, its easy for our minds to play tricks on us; to make up lies and make us believe them. Everything I had told myself until this point was a lie. I was a great mom. I was attentive. I worried about all the right things. I nurtured my daughter, loved on her, fed her, snuggled her, even when I didn’t feel well myself. I was (and am) exactly the mom that my daughter needed.
The depression came in waves. There would be times when I was happy and things seemed to be going well and then times when it would hit me like a ton of bricks and knock the wind from my lungs. When it hit it was debilitating and it took a toll on my relationship. I had not clearly communicated with my husband what I was feeling or what I thought I was going through. We had a very difficult conversation about our future as a family that forced me to take a deeper look at what was causing me to be so sad. It was at that point that I started going to therapy.
Therapy was such an incredible resource for helping me to get better. It allowed me to share how I was feeling with someone who wasn’t emotionally attached to my situation. It allowed me to vent struggles to someone who could provide realistic exercises to help turn things around. It’s something that I still do regularly to keep me on a positive trajectory. I started exercising again, increasing my vitamin D, going to therapy regularly, journaling, reading, and even changed careers. All of these things put me on a positive path to getting better. And eventually I did get better.
Overall, my postpartum depression and anxiety lasted just over eight months. Going through that experience taught me so much about myself, about being a mom, about communication, and about getting help. It also showed me that I can help others who are going through a similar experience. The more we share these stories, talk about our thoughts and feelings, make resources more widely known and available, the more successful we can be in battling maternal mental health issues. If the stigma is gone and parents feel empowered to talk about how they’re feeling, they can receive a diagnosis and get the help they need, and deserve to receive.
