Postpartum depression Archives

Escape, Part 2

April 5, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

[See part 1 of this story here.]

Checking into a hotel is normally a fairly simple process. Except when your brain has had a spaz and screws you over in the process.

This night in a hotel was courtesy a gift card I got for Christmas 2009 and hadn’t used yet. (I know, dumb. You’re welcome to slap me.) I looked at two websites in trying to find the hotel’s reservation number – the first was a hotel booking site and the second – the one I wanted – was the hotel’s site. I found the number and called to book the room, giving the friendly man on the other end of the line my credit card number when he asked for it to hold the room. At no time during this conversation did he say he was going to charge the card or that it was non-refundable. <Insert ominous music here>

I discovered my brain spaz when I told the woman at reception I’d be paying with the gift card. She informed me the room was prepaid through another company so I couldn’t use it.

I distinctly remember looking at the hotel booking site and discarding it. I distinctly remember looking at the hotel’s site – the branding, the hotel features, the drop-down menu with the property I was looking for. I have no idea how I screwed it up but this was absolutely the last thing I needed. I didn’t want to have to argue about it. I didn’t want to have to sort it out. And I didn’t want to suck it up and just pay for the room and use the gift card later.

I called the company and informed them I didn’t realize I was booking through another company, that I never agreed to have my card charged and that I certainly didn’t agree to – in fact, wasn’t informed about – a non-refundable booking. The oh-so-helpful response? “But it’s non-refundable.”

Force down panic, repeat story. Demonstrate full will of a mama struggling to hold her shit together instead of completely losing it in a hotel lobby: “I DON’T CARE. FIX IT NOW.”

Last weekend was just too much. What was originally intended to be a nice break had become, truly, an escape. I need to go somewhere and close the door behind me and not talk to anyone. I need to figure out what’s going on in my head that’s allowing these waves to keep crashing over me, totally unexpectedly. I need him to fix it.

He fixes it.

The woman at reception must sense I’m on the edge, because she upgrades me to a room with a king bed and a harbour view. And then, embarrassingly, I do start to cry.

Once I get into the room things are better. I drink Coke with ice in a wine glass and that alone makes me feel like I’m somewhere else. I read a bit, write a bit, breathe a bit. I listen to music. When I’m feeling more calm, I throw on my workout gear and get sweaty. I pull up one workout on my computer and when that’s done I do another one. Exercise is a sure thing, every time, and when I’m done I feel like me again.

The rest of the night was heaven – a carpet picnic, a hot shower, pajamas and cozy socks. A conversation with a dear friend who called to make sure I was okay on my own. A delicious chocolate dessert while I sat at the desk looking out at the lights coming on around the harbour. A solid sleep in a bed with fluffy covers and puffy pillows.

I am grateful for this. I am. I can afford to do this for a night and I have a husband who is not only supportive, he tells me to go. I have a laptop I can take so I can read and write and stay connected.

I sat there that night and took deep breaths and felt that gratitude wash over me. But behind it the usual tension was still there – a tightness in my shoulders, a twitchy foot and a brow that remained furrowed so that in the morning I woke up with what appeared to be a permanent crease in my forehead.

The events of Saturday, including a call to the psychiatrist at 10 at night, led me to what I sincerely hope is rock bottom. Things cannot continue like this – it’s been over two years. Almost three. I’ve taken so many steps that seem like the right ones and it doesn’t feel like it’s getting better.

Maybe this new medication will kick in (please oh please) and things will start to improve. But it’s clear to me now that I need to take charge of this. I need to do something different. I need to do something more.

So that’s what I’m going to do. As of this morning, the wheels are in motion. Stay tuned.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: admissions, depression, meltdown, weekends

I’ve moved!

April 4, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

I moved this blog to a self-hosted WordPress platform at the end of February and based on some questions lately I gather not everyone caught on. I tried to get in touch with those of you who subscribed but apparently I either missed a few or it didn’t go through. Mea culpa.

If you wish to still follow along, I’d love to have you join me at http://farewellstranger.com.

[Apologies to those of you already here – just making sure everyone else finds their way.]

Filed Under: Postpartum depression ·

Escape, Part 1

April 3, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

He knows I’m leaving. And what’s worse, he knows something’s wrong even though he hasn’t seen the meltdowns. And he’s not going to let me just pack my things and leave.

He pulls cotton balls out of my cosmetic case and when I take them back he reaches into my drawer and tries to grab a handful of Q-tips. He’s got that runner’s stance – feet planted, knees bent, ready to take off as soon as his chubby little hands have a firm grasp on the paper sticks.

“Please, honey, be helpful. I’m trying to pack.”

I can actually see him prepare to crank the defiance up a notch.

“Why don’t you go see Daddy for a minute?”

Please. PLEASE. I need to leave. It’s just for one night and I need to leave because yesterday was awful and I’m crashing and I just…need to leave. Please.

“I don’t want to see Daddy! I want Mummy!”

Tears stream down his sweet baby cheeks. His arms stretch up towards me.

I pick him up and he hugs me tight. His head is tucked snugly into me and he’s holding on like a baby monkey whose survival depends on staying close to his mother. I pause, overwhelmed with love for him, and wonder how something so beautiful could have turned my whole world inside out over the last couple of years.

Having heard his wailing, my husband comes in.

“Why don’t you go with Daddy?”

“I DON’T WANT DADDY!”

He’s breaking my heart, but Daddy, ever resourceful, can fix this.

“Why don’t we go have a peanut butter snack?”

He agrees and I hand my baby monkey to his daddy. I take a deep breath and finish packing, all the things I need for a night in a hotel. Alone. I’ve got workout gear and cozy socks. Healthy snacks and Coke. A decadent, completely self-indulgent dessert. I intend to do nothing. Not go out for dinner, not walk along the harbour, not go to a movie by myself. I intend to lock myself in the hotel room and ~~never come out~~ think. Write. Figure out what to do next. I can’t get there fast enough.

With my bags in my car I head down the highway. The hotel isn’t far – maybe 15 minutes from where we live. The Sunday afternoon traffic is light, but every car is an obstacle. I keep missing lights – they change from green to yellow, taunting me. You’re not free yet.

A white van is plodding along at 10 kilometres an hour below the speed limit. Come ON! I change lanes and pass him.

Just two more blocks, across the bridge and I’ll be there. And then I see it. A sign, its yellow lights flashing: “Lights flash when bridge is up.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I round the bend and see that the railway side of the bridge is going up, but the vehicle lane is still open. Maybe I’ll make it.

The light goes red.

I can feel every nerve in my body twitching with the need to get into a quiet room with a door that locks behind me. I can see the hotel from here – mere metres from the end of the bridge. It’s so close. I’m so close. But I wait. I have no choice.

So close

I manage to breathe long enough to realize I’ve never actually been this close to the bridge as it’s going up, even in over 30 years of living here. It’s interesting to watch, actually.

And luckily it’s fast. Bridge goes up, boat goes through, bridge comes down.

About 300 metres past the bridge is the entrance to the hotel property. The lane curves left through a narrow driveway that’s surrounded by cherry trees in full bloom. I see lights wrapped around the trees trunks and wonder if it’s a de-Christmas-ing oversight or twinkle lights for nightly ambiance. Probably the latter.

I made it. All I have to do is park my car and talk to another human long enough to hand over a card in exchange for a room key. A simple conversation that will lead me to the silence and solitude I long for.

Unfortunately the conversation isn’t so simple after all, and I have another, potentially challenging, hurdle to jump before I find peace.

To be continued…

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: meltdown

Labels and Lightbulbs

April 1, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

[Warning: some pieces of this post might be triggers for some people. Good idea not to read if that might be the case for you.]

The vocabulary associated with postpartum depression is vast. There are so many facets to this illness I never knew about, even after I accepted this as what I was dealing with and started to learn more.

As I came across many of these issues I thought, “That doesn’t apply to me.”

Anxiety

When I was a teenager, our house was broken into. Whoever it was came in through the garage and, as I remember it, only rummaged around the lower floor. Took a few things they came across and some stuff, including a small amount of cash, from my brother’s bedroom.

It freaked me out.

My room at the time was on the top floor of our house, and my bed was positioned under a window. Lying on my pillow, I could look straight up and see the window behind my curtains. Each night for months (years?) I lay there for a long time before falling asleep, breath held, staring at that window expecting someone to climb through it. (One night my cat came in the window on the other side of my room. Between the time I saw the curtains move and the moment her padded feet hit the floor, I think I just about overdosed from panic-induced adrenaline.)

A couple of months ago, when talking about medication because what I was on wasn’t working, my counsellor warned that one of the other options is typically associated with an increase in anxiety.

“That’s fine. Anxiety is not a problem for me,” I said.

The lightbulb hadn’t come on yet.

Intrusive thoughts

We moved into our current house eight years ago. As soon as you walk in the door there’s a staircase leading to the upper floor. More nights than I can count I’ve lain in bed, paralyzed with fear that someone would come up the stairs and kill us. I can picture it – a dark shape, illuminated by the street lights from outside, walking quietly up the stairs. In my head I can actually picture this happening.

These thoughts got worse after Connor was born because his room is the first you come to at the top of the stairs. Anyone coming up the stairs would get to him before us. When he first started sleeping with us at night, I breathed more easily knowing he was at least somewhere I could see him.

I recently read a post at The Lorix Chronicles about intrusive thoughts. I sat in front of my computer in stunned silence.

Oh.

OCD

I’m not a neat freak by anyone’s standards, but I like to putter. It calms me. When the house is filled with noisy, bouncy toddler and my brain is filled with, “I can’t do this. It’s too much. I’m not cut out for this. It’s never going to get better,” I vacuum. Methodically, back and forth, the vacuum forming faint lines in the carpet.

I don’t know if this can actually be categorized as OCD. It’s not an obsession that’s relieved by a compulsion – something repetitive and, to a degree, uncontrollable. But it is about control. The stuff I can’t control takes over my brain and I fight back by tackling something I can control, even if that something is crumbs.

Depression

I’ve never struggled with depression.

Except… Oh wait. There was that time in the last semester of my first year of university when I spent a lot of time in bed. A LOT. I stayed there and didn’t want to get up, though I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Then when I was in my 20s, I got sick of feeling sad and hopeless all the time and started logging things. What I ate, exercise, weather – you name it, I put it into a carefully crafted spreadsheet, and it was all mapped against my mood. Eventually the sum of the things that made me feel better – getting enough exercise, sunlight, eating well – led me to feel better overall.

Until I sought help for PPD I’d never been diagnosed with depression. Never even had a conversation with a doctor about it. I always hated that label. Oddly, though, I remember being asked to fill out a self-identification form for a previous job. “Are you a visible minority?” No. “Are you Aboriginal?” No. “Do you have a disability?” A very small voice in my head piped up. “Does depression count?” I knew it was there, though I was never willing to admit it. (I checked no.)

The light bulb about anxiety and OCD-like tendencies switched on a couple of weeks ago in the middle of a meltdown. I told my husband it’s dawned on me that I’ve been dealing with this stuff almost as long as I can remember.

His response: “No shit.”

He’s always considered me sort of OCD, apparently. Well. How do you like that? I wish someone had told me.

I’ve recently started to acknowledge my past episodes of depression in conversations with doctors and counsellors, but it wasn’t until I talked about it with the psychiatrist a couple of weeks ago that I really began to accept this as a part of who I am.

The realization about intrusive thoughts was a lightning bolt that just hit me last weekend.

My counsellor and I spent most of my session this week talking about all this and she gave me some resources to deal with it. Only a few days later, I can now catch these thoughts. “Why are you thinking that? Do you think that’s true?” The answers aren’t right yet: “I don’t know. No, I guess not, not really. ~~But what if… And maybe it is true. And I’m just not good at… I CAN’T TAKE THE CRUMBS ANYMORE!~~” It’s a work in progress.

One thing that helps is that I’ve named these things now. I’ve allowed themselves to attach them to me. No, better – I’ve attached them to myself.

I don’t know what it means, exactly, but it feels like a step in the right direction.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: admissions, depression, perspective

The Power of #PPDChat

March 30, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Most Monday evenings, I play my disengaged mother card, turn on Dora, and surf Twitter while we eat dinner. It’s not that I’m so addicted I can’t set it aside for an hour. It’s that Monday night is when #ppdchat happens.

I discovered this community fairly early on in my mama-tweeting days (which is to say January of this year) and it’s incredible. I’m never surprised at the support strangers are willing to provide each other, but there is something about this community that is extra special.

One thing in particular that makes it so is the way the hash tag pops up outside the chat. Sometimes it’s used to draw the PPD community’s attention to a recent blog post. Sometimes it’s used to share a moment in the life of a PPD mom. And sometimes it’s a rallying cry.

That happened the other day when I saw a post from a mom of three, whose newest is about three weeks old. She’s having a rough time and her blog post was clearly a brain dump of desperation and a cry for help at the same time. I commented and then tweeted it using the #ppdchat hash tag and encouraged others to have her back. And they did.

Within minutes, several other people had commented. It was retweeted a number of times too. It made my heart swell to see moms who know what it’s like jumping in to provide a little virtual support. I could just imagine her reaction to getting a bunch of new comments on a post that was a couple of days old. At the end of the night I looked at the blog again and she had commented. She, clearly, was overwhelmed by the support. Sometimes all it takes to survive another day is knowing you’re not the only one who feels that way.

Mission accomplished. (And then today, the very lovely Leighann from Multitasking Mumma took up the call and posted another, quite heartbreaking, post from this same blogger. The love is spreading.)

I love the strength in that hash tag, but the real power comes from the chat itself. Led by Lauren from My Postpartum Voice, it happens twice on Mondays. Sometimes I feel like I need it. Sometimes I feel like it’s just a nice little prop of support. And sometimes I start tweeting away and end up crying.

This past Monday, we got into a discussion about being perfect and both how hard that is and how hard it is to let it go. I struggle with that every day. Not in attempting to be perfect, because lord knows I’m good at avoiding all sorts of things I should do, but beating myself up because I’m not. I really need to embrace the idea of “good enough”. (What is good enough, anyway?)

There were three of us that really got into this line of thinking and we all admitted to it being an issue. Then one very beautiful mama tweeted this:

“I’ve been where you are, to the point of thinking that if I can’t be perfect I should die.”

Oh, honey. I’ve been there. Am there still, sometimes. More often than I care to admit, actually. I know that place – every street, every alley, every park bench. I moved in a couple of years ago and when I realized all my mail was being forwarded I tried to get out. But I can’t. I’m still a year-round resident and I can’t seem to figure out how to get home.

Now, lest anyone freak out, I’m not actually suicidal. But I’m going to be frank: sometimes, still, I don’t know what the point of this whole life thing is.

But at the end of every #ppdchat, Lauren tweets this:

“Don’t forget that help is only a tweet away these days – you are not alone in this. #ppdchat”

Which is, sometimes, the most helpful tweet of all. Because being where I am, in What’s the Point World, can be a scary place to be. I have talked to very, very few people about this. Two, maybe. And while I think they understand, it’s not the same as knowing I’m not the only one who feels this way.

I’ve heard other PPD survivors say that “X” (which is usually something beyond their normal support system) saved their lives. I’ve never been that close to the edge, but if I were I know that X = #ppdchat for me. I might not need it to save my life, but it’s definitely saving my sanity.