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My Journey Through Postpartum Depression and Anxiety - Part 2

 
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So now that you've got the background of my delivery and the first few days, I'm going to get into the real stuff. 

The first two weeks with B were great - my husband was home from school, we had help from our family, we had a lot of visitors, B was starting to eat a little better since I decided to exclusively pump (this way we knew how much he was getting) - what more could we ask for? But after those two weeks when everyone went back to their normal lives, mine changed dramatically. 

On Tim's first day of the school year, he was up at 5 and out the door at 6. I cried so much and begged him not to go. I wasn't ready to be on my own with B for an entire day; I didn't want to be home alone with him. I had a lot of my family check up on me for my first day and I did okay but I certainly cried a lot. As the days went by being home alone with B didn't get better - I had good days where I was just okay and bad days where I just stare at the wall while he was crying. I couldn't eat while he was awake because I was afraid to leave the room to make myself something because I was so afraid he'd get hurt. I now know that he couldn't hurt himself because he wasn't mobile yet. There wasn't anything around him that he could grab, he was safe in a bassinet. At the time, I didn't realize that. They say you should sleep when the baby sleeps, but again, I was so afraid he'd get hurt or because I was so tired I'd fall asleep and not hear him. For weeks I barely slept and I barely ate. This hurt my milk supply - I couldn't keep up with B so I had to switch to formula. 

Switching to formula at 6 weeks was probably one of the best decisions I could have made. It made nighttime feedings easier because now Tim and I could take shifts. Because he was working I would get up at night during the week and he would get up on the weekends to let me sleep. But later we realized that just sleeping on the weekends wasn't enough. This was one of the causes of my postpartum depression (at this point I still hadn't seen anyone for my mood and behavior). 

Let me back up a little bit though and talk about when I knew something was wrong.

Tim not only was teaching, but he was also working at a brewpub part-time - craft beer was a hobby of his and this was just something fun for him to do. He worked there just one or two days a week and that worked out just fine for us. The first night that he worked an evening shift at the brewpub after school meant I was going to be alone all day and all evening with B. I will never forget that night. 

*Trigger Warning*
B was crying hysterically at one point that evening and I couldn't understand why he was inconsolable. He had a clean diaper, I had fed him a bottle, I put socks on him, he had a binky, etc. I just couldn't soothe him. I felt awful because I was running out of things to do and I couldn't get him to stop crying. I was so frustrated all I did was scream at him to stop crying. He was in a Fisher-Price Rock n Play (this was years before they said they weren't safe), I picked it up with him in it and banged it on the floor and screamed, and I mean screamed, "stop f*ng crying". He got so scared and I got scared. I immediately picked him up, cried my eyes out, hugged him, and told him I was sorry. At this point, I didn't think I was fit to be a mother. I knew I hated being a mother and I didn't want to do it anymore. 

When Tim came home, I had finally gotten B to stop crying and he was sleeping. I was staring at the wall contemplating life. I told Tim that I'm not myself and something is wrong.

But it took me a few weeks to admit it to anyone else...







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