I have an appointment with my doctor today to talk about treatment for postpartum depression.
There's a sentence I never wanted to say. It's a club I don't want to be a part of, one I've been inducted into against my will. I recognize now I'm a repeat member, though the first time I didn't seek treatment. I did attend therapy, albeit briefly, but I mostly just powered through. It was hard on me and on those around me. Now I'm just tired of feeling this way. My spirit feels battered. I miss feeling more feelings than just shitty ones.
My PPD mostly presents as postpartum rage. It's not really fun to be me or to be around me right now. It's not my kids that trigger me, it's everyone and everything else. I feel like my dial is stuck on overstimulated.
I hate to feel I don't have control, especially over something to do with my body or my mind. I fucking hate it. Who doesn't, though? It's wild how my body can handle pregnancy pretty well, but postpartum completely wrecks me. I mean, absolutely removes any remnants of who I am. I like to think I'm kind, and funny, and strong. I am none of those things right now. I'm mostly just a walking meat bag with an attitude problem. I mean, I do have some legitimate feelings about some legitimate things, but these are mere droplets in a body of water compromised of anxiety and hormones - not exactly easily extractable. Even when I am justifiably upset, I can't really explain the things I feel because they're drowned out by everything else.
I also hate is to be told something about myself like I can't decipher myself. I'm not even really sure if that makes sense. I just hate to be told things about myself, under the guise that it's not a thing I already know. I exist in this body. I know myself better than anyone. For someone to come to me and tell me that I have postpartum depression, it really fucking chaps me. I'm not going to lie, it makes me resentful and it makes me feel embarrassed. It makes me feel like people think I don't know myself as well as they know me, like my truth isn't a truth that I can see clearly. Obviously that's very silly because outsiders looking in have a perspective and can see signs that I can't see sitting at the wheel. It doesn't make it feel any better or honestly any less judgmental. It feels very judgmental when someone else tells me what is going on with me. It probably goes back to that I feel weaker for having PPD. I don't see it as a weak point for literally anyone else but me.
Maybe it's that It's just really not talked about a lot. I've known a ton of people to have babies and I've literally only ever heard from one other person that they've dealt with postpartum depression, and that's not even somebody that I'm close with, it's just somebody that I went to high school with that made a post about it on Instagram. And I really applauded their bravery for doing that.
Nobody acknowledges the reality of what happens to your fucking brain after having a kid. There's no way that your body could go from literally creating and supporting a life to pushing that life out and it no longer being in your body, like the difference between those two things is 24 hours, and your brain doesn't just crash from the hormone changes. I was recently talking to somebody that has multiple children and I was trying to open up, admittedly difficult for me to do. I was skirting around saying that I have postpartum depression but I was talking about a lot of my postpartum anxiety and how ragey I feel. This person said that they had never had any kind of PPD or anxiety after they had their kids. They had multiple fucking kids - way more than me. Honestly, that made me feel broken. Do I think this person was trying to make me feel broken? No. I don't. Does that change how it made me feel? No. It doesn't. Hearing that somebody could have multiple children and not struggle like I'm struggling. It's hard to hear. It does make me feel weak. How does that person have their shit together and they have had more than two kids, and I've only had two, and my shit is definitely not together? I don't understand it.
According to the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, at least 10% of women are affected by PPD. That seems REAL fucking low to me. If that's accurate, that's shocking to me. Guess I'm part of the special ten percenters who are blessed with this mess.
I think I've always felt a little bit broken. It's probably why hearing that somebody else is not as broken as me in this manner was hard to take. It was, for some weird fucking reason, offensive to me to hear that they could pop out more kids than I have and be totally fucking fine, and I've had two, and I'm totally not fucking fine. I just really don't understand how science can say this many women or this percentage of women have struggled with this once they have a child or will struggle with this at some point in their life, but I couldn't tell you a single person that I actually talked to in real life that has admitted to struggling with this. I guess I'm going to be that person.
I am definitely struggling with postpartum depression presenting as postpartum rage.
I'm not mad at my kids though. Not in the slightest. They don't irritate me. They don't make me mad. RB definitely tries (he's learning boundaries and he doesn't care for them), but I don't actually get mad at him. I mostly feel frustrated at a situation or at myself. He's never actually made me mad. Now, everybody else around me? They make me mad. They don't even have to do anything. They can just fucking be existing, and I'm just, to put it lightly, irked.
I miss feeling like I was a person worthwhile to talk to. I don't want to talk to me right now. I don't typically want to seek out assholes and talk to them, so I can't blame anyone else for not wanting to spend time with this version of me. Most people don't like to talk to grumpy people or spend time with grumpy people.
What I'm going to do now is something I haven't done since I was 15 - I'm going to seek out medication to deal with my mental health issues because I just don't have the capacity to figure out another way to deal with it at this point. Transparently, therapy has not really been a super effective approach for me for the last few years. Now, I haven't really found a therapist that I feel actually gives a shit or that I emotionally connect to. I did have a therapist when I was younger, her name is Linda, and she, I truly believe, gave a shit about me, and she would listen, not just because it was her job, but because she wanted to. I really would like to find another relationship with a therapist like that if I was going to go back to therapy, but I just haven't. In the meantime, medication it is.
I hope it doesn't turn me into a zombie. I hope it doesn't turn me into a worse version of myself than I already am right now. I truly hope that it helps. I spent a lot of time the last few days looking at other women's stories online and their experience with what I'm going through and being on medication. It sounds like a lot of people have a really positive experience once they do decide to seek help. I'm hopeful that I will fall into that category. If I can get a prescription filled today, I should have or be experiencing some kind of change or positive impact in the next 2 weeks. I just want to feel like a human again, and like I am a positive and productive member of our family. I just want to be a good mom. I think this will help me to do that.
What's the point of this post? I don't fucking know. I guess part of it is I'm getting it off my chest. Another part of it is that this is my blog and when I started it I promised myself that I would be as honest as I felt I could be here. That's what I'm doing. I guess I'm going to be the person that somebody someday says nobody in their real life is honest about their experience with PPD except for that one girl that I went to high school with, she posted online about it. You never know how sharing your experience can be positively impactful to others.
留言