In the End, It Was Not the Summer of Postpartum Depression

I just finished cleaning the car from summer, taking out beach toys and swimsuits, dozens of granola bar wrappers and an air-dried Jack In The Box cheeseburger remnant. Now I’m prepping for muddy fields. I’m checking our umbrella count and fleece supplies. I’m washing the sand and caked-on peanut butter from picnic blankets.

One week ago we were here.

I took this piece of sea glass from the ocean’s dance.

I’ve been rubbing it softly between my fingers, and it takes me right back to the cool air of the coast blowing in off the infinite sea.

I had been worried about summer. Summer could have been a fire lookout far out in the forest in need of repairs—timber beams creaking, a stair on every case rotted, nails coming loose from the freeze and thaw cycle of postpartum depression.

Instead we enacted my get-into-nature plan. We bolstered the lookout with steel and replaced the old nails and the softened steps. We had a nanny with us four days a week; we kept the car ready for the beach at a moment’s notice; we didn’t coordinate much, we just went.

And I made sure I was never alone at the top of the tower.

We headed out from base camp and toward water wherever we could find it within a two-hour radius.

We didn’t do a single camp.

I look at our checklist and feel proud.

We captured summer and held it in our arms and rode on its back through the sand of what seemed like a thousand beaches.

I want to draw our treasure map again and mark all its special spots. I want to go out with passion and purpose.

But it’s time to focus on fall and school and soccer. Autumn feels crisp and dead to me: Its smell makes me nauseous.

I have to change the way my senses respond—to look for how routine can ground and nourish us. Somewhere in me fall’s small ember burns. I have hope for early bedtimes and good books and hot baths and getting my body stretched out and my muscles strong. I have soccer practices to help run, I have freelance work that’s exciting and scary.

Summer wasn’t drowned by postpartum depression. It’s time to find oxygen to blow into fall.

This Is What It Feels Like #ppd

I know. I’m talking about it again.

I just have to write about postpartum depression. The beautiful waves of amnesia are coming.They’re going to wear down the sharp edges of this difficult time. And when the sea glass of parenting young children is eroded to a luminescent, pocket-sized amulet, I’ll be left with hundreds of tender photos and a feeling of nostalgia that will fill my chest.

I will cherish that soft piece of glass: I love this fiery baby and her creative, independent brothers.

In thinking about the future, I’m finding I have a deep desire to make sure I remember that the postpartum depression was real, and that I wasn’t just a complainer with a penchant for hyperbole. No. I was an amazing mother who faced exhaustion and hopelessness, and who felt like raising a surprise baby shoved her soul against a brick wall and put a knife to its throat.

So I share these snippets with immense love and compassion toward my future self, who will say things to other parents like, “Someday when you look back, you will actually miss these moments,” and think that it’s kind and not callous. One or two of those parents might come here and realize that in that moment I simply forgot how hard it was.

This Is What It’s Like #ppd

1

I have a constant yearning for connection. I used to be an extrovert, but now I’ve swung to the other side. One morning, back in May, when I realized that my best friend was bringing her daughters with her to visit me, I started to shut down. I don’t like to be around kids right now, even though I love my best friend’s daughters almost like my own. They were my favorite girls until the Fairy Pig was born. Here they are picking flowers in my garden.

But these days I have to work myself up to talking to children, pausing for their constant interruptions, mollifying their basic needs. The baby had just gone down for a nap, and I felt like I could breathe for a few moments. I wasn’t prepared to have more kids around, even though my friend had surely told me they were coming and I had simply forgotten.

I sat in a chair in our living room and stared at the wall, swaying back and forth. I tried to call my friend back to cancel twice. My brain hits a wall and shuts down these days, making we want to cancel everything.

But my friend arrived, sent her girls outside to pick wild strawberries and build block houses, and then she hugged me and let me cry. After I stopped crying, she helped me clean my kitchen and sweep the floors. Then we sat down to a bottle of sparkling cider she had brought over because this whole morning was supposed to be a celebration for her.

2

About a month ago I went back to Baby Boot Camp to exercise—a place that makes me feel strong and energized during the day. Exercise is critical for my mental health, and I had gone to Baby Boot Camp for two years with K-Pants and Boy Woww.

At class, the Fairy Pig was fine, but other babies were crying. The crying short-circuited my brain and made my hands shake. I had to fight the urge to race to my car and leave. At the end of class toddlers were having meltdowns over toys and snacks. Most were fine, but all I could hear were the one or two who were loudly losing their marbles.

The crying and fussing and constant needs of other kids are too much for me right now. I can’t go back. I don’t think I could get my body to drive there.

3

On Friday afternoon my husband was off from work, and I pulled into the garage from an appointment. I was hungry and I needed to use the bathroom. I knew that he had put the kids down for naps, but the door from the garage into the house is very close to the baby’s room. She often wakes up when someone walks by her door. Not always. But enough that I’m paranoid, often hiding away in my room with my laptop and not leaving even if I need food or water.

Nap time used to be a time when I could count on an hour or two to feed myself, get some work done, and take some deep breaths. But last Friday I couldn’t work myself up to come inside from the garage. If I made it inside without the Fairy Pig waking up, she would surely wake up when I was using the bathroom, and if she didn’t wake up when I left the bathroom, she would surely wake up when I was making my lunch, and definitely by the time I sat down to eat.

It sucked the life out of me thinking about all the ways she would wake up and start crying and need things right away. So I sat in the garage for 45 minutes, until my husband found me and helped me make a step-by-step plan to come back inside.

***

These kinds of things happen pretty often right now. Normal situations that I could have rolled with before suddenly become overstimulating tangles of logistics and thwarted opportunities.

I love thinking of our family a few years from now, because I know this time of dreadful anxiety is related directly to baby-raising. And so I sit with the incongruous ideas: Now is hard. Later will be hard, but there won’t be a baby. You’ll forget everything and remember now as a magical time. I’m looking forward to it all.

Let’s Talk About Postpartum Depression, Six Years Down the Road

Recently I told a friend that if I don’t write my mental health goes downhill and she said thoughtfully, “I didn’t know that about you—your mental health looks superb from the outside.”

I’m doing really well, and it’s because I’m six years in and my husband and I attack my mental health like it’s a full-contact sport. I’m guilty of posting adorable pictures on Facebook, showering every day, and wearing cute clothes I feel good about because I like to see myself as a happy, put-together person. But I struggled with anxiety during pregnancy and can smell the symptoms of a panic attack hours before it starts. I know the darkness, and I’ve written about it here before.

Postpartum depression is not a stigma in my circles—it’s something we talk about. But there’s this idea that you magically grow out of it. You go into a dark cave, you imagine terrible thoughts, you give up self-care, and then someone—your spouse, a parent, a support group—helps to drag you into the light. You’re exhausted and changed by the experience, but slowly you start to do cartwheels in a wildflower-filled meadow with your newly functional child.

That’s not true.

[Note: As I write, in this moment, the Fairy Pig wakes up and starts crying. I’ve finally moved away the clutter of my space and mind to sit and do my special thing, and she’s crying. It fills me with a sinking feeling and resentment.]

Maybe for some the darkness leaves just a faint scar. But for me it’s an open wound that needs to be carefully tended—always there, always trying to suck in more light. A friend whose wife died shared this metaphor with me and it fit perfectly into my soul place.

[Note: She’s still crying, but I’m going to write.]

I want to open up my first-aid kit and show you the tools I use to tend my wound.

I challenge you to change from thinking “How could she struggle when she gets so much support?” to “How can I care for myself better?” Our culture of parenting martyrdom encourages us to thrive on the least amount of support possible, and to see others with more tools as lucky and indulgent.

I see these tools as the spoils of a hard-fought battle, and the golden eggs that will hopefully take me deep into adulthood. They are long-term investments in myself and my marriage and my family.*

My Postpartum Depression First Aid Kit

1. Here’s my therapist. She was recommended by my midwife. Sometimes I go to her once a week. Sometimes I go to her every few months. I know where to find her when things get bad. That was the most brilliant idea I had: asking someone I trust for a recommendation.

2. Here are my friends who have intense kids and who don’t try to be perfect. They are funny and incredibly empathetic. They have no dignity. They are free some days after bedtime and they like ice cream. Sometimes we have play dates and our kids fight while we try to say full sentences. I can count on them to take my kids or help me out in an emergency.

3. Here are my friends who don’t have kids. They are free on evenings and weekends, and I can talk to them about things that are not children. They love me and they love my kids. They like to hike. When I’m out with them, they always hold the baby. They can’t get enough of her. It’s weird.

4. Here’s the doctor who did my physical a few years ago. He said, “Are you getting four to eight hours of time for yourself every week?”

5. Here’s my Saturday free time. I hung on to the idea that we should do meaningful family activities on Saturdays for a long time. After a few activities were crushed under the weight of my expectations, my husband shoved me out the door. I’m a much, much better mom during the week if I get away on the weekend.

6. Here’s my extended family. A big reason we moved to Oregon was to be closer to family. Someone is at my house or my kids are at their house or I’m talking to them every day. It’s really awesome to have a big family because three kids six-and-under is a lot to handle and they all help out in different ways.

7. Here’s my naturopath. She is dogged about helping me figure out solutions to ongoing health issues like bronchitis, fatigue, allergies—whatever I bring in.

8. Here’s my acupuncturist. I started going to her when I was mentally in a good place. Then when I had prenatal anxiety, I went to her once or twice a week. Now I go to her and she holds the Fairy Pig while I get my treatment. It really helps to build relationships with your practitioners.

9. Here’s my blog. And here’s my Facebook page. When I write and reach out, I get support back. And when I publish a post, I feel really happy. I look back over the last five years and I think, “I kept something meaningful to me going.” I’m proud of that.

10. Here’s the Montessori school where Boy Woww goes to preschool four full days per week. We changed schools so that he would be in school longer because we knew that having the baby and Boy Woww at home all the time–in theory–would be a magical kid wonderland, but in reality would be a lot of yelling and tons of TV.

11. Here’s the list of babysitters we use for date nights and daytime relief. We like the babysitters list to be at least three or four deep. Any less and I start shaking.

12. Here’s our housekeeper who comes every two weeks.

13. Here’s the income that we use to pay for the Montessori school and the babysitters and the housekeeper.

14. Here’s my husband. He’s collaborative and willing to make calls to insurance or set up babysitters. He doesn’t think I’m crazy. He handles logistics. He gets the kids ready in the mornings and puts them to bed at night. In exchange I feed people, fix stuff, coach soccer, handle homework, and all the other things.

15. Here’s Baby Blues Connection, a free support network that has a hotline, a Facebook group, and in-person support groups in the Portland metro area. Check them out for resources even if you’re not in Portland.

*I also know that for many of these tools, ample income and good healthcare create a privileged base to work from, and that in our country meaningful support for postpartum and mental health care is difficult to come by. I’ll be signing every change.org petition I can get my hands on regarding these issues. I may even call a congressperson. But I have a phone phobia. Letter-writing it is.