Postpartum depression can be a tricky thing to identify.
“Is this postpartum depression? Postpartum anxiety? Is this postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder? A classic case of the ‘baby blues’ that will clear up on it’s own or is this simply the result of chronic sleep deprivation and the shock of all my body and mind have been through as of late? Or, is this just parenthood?”
These thoughts tumbled around in my mind over and over again within the first few months of my postpartum journey.
It was true, things had not turned out as I had hoped they would. In spite of my efforts, breastfeeding had not worked out. And though I was relieved when I finally ditched the pump and embraced solely bottle feeding my baby I had a deep sense of guilt and failure about my inability to provide “enough” for my baby. That sense of lacking was still so raw and palpable and I just happened to be surrounded by a great number of other new moms who “everything” seemed to be working out for. This, of course, was from my limited perspective obviously. At least, breastfeeding was working out and somehow, each time I witnessed them successfully breastfeeding their babies, it struck me like a searing prod of inadequacy.
It stuck in my mental craw you could say, the fact that my supply had been so low and that it didn’t seem to respond the way lactation consultant after lactation consultant encouraged me it could and should.
Also, though my daughter was actually already sleeping through the night, for some reason, I could not fall asleep to save my life!
The injustice of this was infuriating all on it’s own… here I am now, with a baby that is actually sleeping through the night; I know longer need to worry about leaky boobs or getting up to feed her every time she wants to feed (because Dad can thankfully participate) but I cannot for the life of me fall asleep!!!!!
“What is going on?!?” I would fret as I lay awake night after night struggling to fall asleep sometimes because a hot flash would wash over me but most of the time because my racing mind just simply would not quiet no matter what desperate attempt I made to try to still the seemingly ever churning wordy waters of my restless mind.
It was maddening.
I could not sleep at night but was desperately tired during the days when my child was awake, alert and eagerly awaiting the stimulation, love and care of her totally overwhelmed and confused mother.
In desperation, I did what one might expect, guzzled coffee in the mornings and grasped at other stimulants, like chocolate, to keep me going throughout the days which often times felt endless. I felt like I was moving through molasses all — day — long. At any given moment, I felt like I could have fallen asleep and slept for several hours during the day.
But, then night would come, that blessed, night time darkness and stillness. The thing I had been waiting for, craving, longing to make it to all day long would finally come. My baby would be sleeping sweetly but when I laid down my head to rest, behind the darkness of closed eyelids my mind would clamor. My thoughts would race incessantly; torturously loud.
“Why am I SO tired all day long but when it’s time to sleep, my body betrays me?!? Sleep eludes me?!? Why God?” I would pray. I would pray and would plead constantly wondering, constantly sinking deeper and deeper into this sleep deprived hole that I could not, for the life of me, seem to get out of.
Looking back, I was extremely anxious during the day, which is understandable when I consider the degree of sleep deprivation I was dealing with.
There were times when I would call my husband and beg him to come home from work early because I felt so completely overwhelmed by the demands of parenthood; so completely incapable of managing the stress, of meeting my baby’s needs. I felt overwhelmed, anxious and often times, infuriated.
I sometimes felt mad at my baby, often times felt mad at myself, and definitely felt mad at what seemed like a situation completely out of my control with the development of this debilitating insomnia.
“Is this postpartum depression?” It was a conversation we had over and over again. And, truth be told, I’m not entirely convinced that this isn’t an accurate description of what I experienced.
The problem for me was, aside from the mental turmoil I was experiencing, I was also having a lot of physical symptoms that I did not think would come along with postpartum depression… hot flashes, racing thoughts, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, daytime fatigue that sometimes felt absolutely crushing and, my periods, they had come back about six weeks after I stopped pumping but they were totally erratic arriving sometimes 40 days, sometimes 60 some-odd days apart. That wasn’t “normal.”
To be fair to the many medical providers I would eventually cycle through once my journey got underway, it is true, so many of these symptoms could easily be explained away as textbook postpartum symptoms. Hot flashes could be due to the hormonal fluctuations common in the postpartum period as your body tries to re-regulate back to “normal.” Insomnia, depression, racing thoughts, anxiety… all of these could easily be explained away as postpartum depression.
My constant prayer was, “Lord, please show me! Is this primarily physiological, psychological, spiritual or a combination of all three?”
I was desperate for solutions; desperate for answers but something deep inside me seemed to say that it wasn’t “just” postpartum depression; it wasn’t just “in my head,” (not that I believe postpartum depression is “just in your head” but I’ll touch more on that later).
Some very real, wise, determined part of me wanted to really understand what was happening to me and why. In this season that I had thought would be full of so much joy, so much satisfaction, so much delight and sweetness, I mostly felt overwhelmed with exhaustion, despair, desperation and debilitation and this grieved me deeply.
I needed answers, so my O.B.’s office was the first place I turned.
My O.B.’s office was the first place I turned.
“It sounds like postpartum depression to me,” quipped the scrub-clad male doctor.
“Could it be anything else?” I pried… “Hormone imbalance? Anything like that?” I just couldn’t believe that all of the things I was experiencing were really caused by postpartum depression.
“The mind is a powerful thing,” he said, “but, we can do some blood work if you like to check the state of your hormones. If something is out of whack there, we can deal with that.”
“What would we do if that is a part of the problem?” I asked.
“Our next step would be to get you on an anti-depressant and put you on birth control,” he replied.
His response was not surprising to me.
Mine, however, was.
Upon hearing his response, this great inner swelling rose up within me. It was a mixture of anger and incredulity. Some deep, inner, visceral part of me knew that this diagnosis and that treatment was wrong for me. He was wrong! And something more needed to be done.
But what?
In part, I suppose I was offended at the simplicity of this solution. This wasn’t an answer to what I was experiencing. I mean, I guess it was… I could have simply accepted the idea that everything I was going through was due to depression brought on by the craziness of pregnancy, child birth and the intensity of being thrust into this insane world of parenthood. But, some part of me rejected the idea that what I was experiencing was only a case of postpartum depression.
I walked out of the office with a lab slip in hand to have a routine hormone blood panel drawn. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. I could go through the process my O.B. had outlined but I already knew two things for sure: one, I did NOT want to go on birth control. It had never agreed with me, no matter how many different brands I’d tried and I wasn’t about to go through that nonsense again especially when, I reasoned, if it didn’t agree with me before, how was that going to “fix” the problem I was dealing with now? And two, I knew, somehow, in spite of this doctors’ many years of experience and credentials, that there was something more going on with me. I knew it but I didn’t know what other questions to ask or who else’s help to seek. This was uncharted territory and I had to figure out what to do next all while still dealing with a brain that constantly felt like it was working at minimum capacity and a body that felt sluggish and sapped on my good days.
told my doctor insomnia got way worse after weaned from breastfeeding.
link to different disorders — ppd, ppanxiety, ppocd, etc.
link for if you need help… not saying I’m anti, anti-anxiety meds.
Upon the gentle, consistent and convincing nudging of my sweet husband I stopped pumping to try to increase my minuscule milk supply when my firstborn daughter was about 9 weeks old. At this point, she had been primarily formula fed for about 6 weeks, was gaining weight beautifully, her once fluffy cheeks regaining their cherub-like plump, and was sleeping as well as any new momma could ever hope for.
To say that I was relieved to stop pumping is a gross understatement.
I was also very grieved that breastfeeding had not worked out.
It was the first of Life’s many curveballs I simply just did not see coming.
Following the cessation of breastfeeding, I developed debilitating insomnia.
At present (now some four or so years later) I don’t remember exactly how long it took before the insomnia was full on, hard core horrible but it began close enough to when I dried up entirely for me to think that there had to be some correlation between the hormones produced while breastfeeding and good sleep. This notion — the idea that somehow my insomnia was at all related to breastfeeding, or quitting breastfeeding was poo-pooed over and over and over again by my O.B., G.P. and a reproductive endocrinologist. When the same thing happened again, in almost the exact same way after the birth of my second daughter my then O.B. (different from the previously mentioned) (upon my adamant persistent arguing) acknowledged that, “oxytocin can have a mitigating effect on cortisol.” Now, if that sounds like, medical speak, mumbo jumbo to you what that means is, quitting breastfeeding can be connected to an increase in insomnia. by my doctors over and over again proved