It all started shortly after I had my first daughter Louisa Mae in May of 2014. When I was pregnant I felt pretty good physically but emotionally I was quite a mess. My husband had just been out of rehab for about 3 months when I found out I was pregnant. I was terrified about what I was going to do for work, for money how I was going to pay for our vehicles and all that stuff, along with the fear and worry of becoming a mother. During my labor with her I felt very calm, up until it was time to push and I really realized that there was going to be a baby on my chest. I hid my panic and pushed away until she was born. I feel like part of me was in a state of shock for a while until i breastfed and got used to holding her. I had a hard time sleeping because I was worried that something was going to happen to her. I remember having moments of just crying and feeling overwhelmed and then feeling fine the baby blues which is so normally.
I remember the first outing I went on with just her and me and the whole time I was thinking this world we live in is not made for new mothers or babies. Everything was so rushed and people seemed so mean and rude to me. I could not believe I never noticed this before but it was probably because I was one of them. After she was a few weeks old I just felt off, I had these intrusive thoughts of things happening to the baby, or that I was going to hurt her. I never wanted to hurt her or have anything happen to her. I did my best to ignore these thoughts and feelings that came with them and I went up on my medication ( I was on Celexa at the time, and took it during my pregnancy).
After going up on the meds I felt much better, but I still had feelings of being alone, and secluded. I felt like I didn’t really have much support and friends around to connect with. Of course I had my family but I wanted to have friends with kids and I missed working and getting out the house. Our income was much lower than it was when I was working so we had a really tight budget which made it hard for me to get out of the house much and do much for myself. I got a super part time job doing demos at whole foods ( which I still do!) when Louisa was 6 months old and it was great! I felt like I was part of the real world again and we had some extra money. I never really addressed the issue of postpartum depression and it never really went away just was lingering there.
We moved into a bigger rental house that had a yard and was cheaper. I thought this was going to help me with not feeling so depressed, and doing more since we had more money. It didn’t and I still struggled a lot with trying to connect to others and make friends with kids. I got pregnant with my second in December of 2015, after having had 2 miscarriages. I was worried I would lose this baby again so I stopped breastfeeding and took some supplements. I felt pretty great during this pregnancy and I joined a moms club which really helped me to connect to other moms and I made some pretty good friends too. I was worried about having some postpartum depression after this baby but I thought if it was like the first time, I can handle it and didn’t think
much more past that.
Lilly was born in September of 2016. I think a lot of the postpartum issues I had after her had to do with the emotional trauma from her birth. My labor started really slow and it wasn’t very consistent. I am a labor and birth doula so I know what to look out for and this was not promising that much was going to happen in a few hours. Things did pick up though to my and my midwives surprise. I barely made it to the hospital, and when I got there I was in transition and things were moving just too fast for me, I couldn’t get a handle on my contractions or myself and I didn’t have time to get my doula there to have the support. The midwife barely made it to the room in time and I felt like things were just out of control. She was born within 45 minutes of us making it to the hospital, about 20 minutes after we got into a room. After she was born I felt so much relief as if I was high.
This feeling lasted for about 3 weeks. I had the baby blues and I was expecting that but I felt great for weeks. It wasn’t until my hormones started to drop that I felt bad. I had terrible intrusive thoughts,I was afraid to be alone with the kids. I felt like I hated my oldest. I wanted to die. I went to my trusted naturopath and she helped me tremendously. I used flower essences, homeopathy and supplements. I also had numerous forms of energy work done. I knew the answers to heal were within myself but I needed help to get there. I prayed a lot, I spent a lot of time at the church and went to pray in front of the sacrament. I did novena and read books. I felt alone still. I was ignoring my intuition because I didn’t want to see what it had to say. I tried to go up on my meds and it made me worse we switched around with medications for months with no help. I went to Pine Rest the mother baby program and my medication was switched again. I learned how to cope with things and realized that I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t handling the transition very well, and I was still healing from having given birth twice, and had miscarriages. I was a mess, but I was starting to heal. After being on the new medication for a few months I realized it wasn’t doing the trick. I finally gave in to my intuition and went back on Paxil ( a medication I was on for many years before I got married). It worked I was started to feel like me again. This was in April of 2017, I was able to work without having panic attacks and sleep
better. I was able to get off the xanax and ativan.
I was healing and making progress. I started to listen to Louise Hay on youtube, her free books and affirmations. I started to do these affirmations and mirror work and I started to see a difference even more. I was really starting to see what the cause was and how I can fix myself and heal myself. I am still working on myself and I am still healing. I was never expecting this to
happen to me, but I am glad it did. If this didn’t happen I wouldn’t have ever worked on myself and got in touch with my spirituality. I am still doing all this work, but I am myself again. In Fact I
feel better than I ever have before and deep down I know this is the way it was supposed to be all along.