Filed under: Life | Tags: baby, depression, Happiness, life, pills, pnd, Squidge
When I started on anti depressants for severe PND 14 months ago, I certainly needed them. Hormonally linked depression hit me hard and fast, and at the time, there was no other way out. Well, there was, but not a good one. They balanced me to the extent that I was no longer crying at EVERYTHING, I no longer wanted to run away and hide. I can’t say that they made me happy, though.
Over the months, symptoms came and went. The most apparent was the feeling of complete disconnection. It was as if someone had cut off the connection from my brain to my body. I KNEW that feeling sad, happy or affectionate was appropriate for certain situations, but my body just didn’t react. It got to the point where I barely smiled, never cried, I didn’t even get angry. I wasn’t a person anymore. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to have proper feelings.
Bit by bit, they came, as I decreased my dosage. I started to smile, to relax. I finally felt that rush, the fabled overwhelming feeling of love that some mothers experience after birth. I had known for a while that I loved my Squidge, but because my body hadn’t felt it, there was a part of me missing.
I’m sure my husband is enjoying the effects of the reduced dosage, too. Nobody likes living with a zombie.
I’ve wanted to get better for so long, but I didn’t know how, I didn’t realise for a long time that something was missing. It took some very sad events to make me realise that the only way to find myself again, was to take away the veil of the medication. I did it against medical advice from my psychiatrist, against the opinion of he health visitor. They all said it was a sign of desperation, a symptom. Nobody believed that I may just know myself better than they do.
As soon as a week after beginning to wean myself off, I felt much more human. People remarked that my eyes had regain a glimmer, as opposed to the dull, blank stare from before.y face had expression.
The medication might have made the postnatal depression bearable, but in the end, they were keeping me in this place of disconnection.
I am whole again.
Filed under: Life | Tags: Babies, depression, guilt, life, pnd, ponderings, postnatal depression
PND is…
Like being lost in a thick fog. Sometimes you can’t see your hand in front of your eyes and take every step blindly. It seeps through every pore, though your skin, your eyes, your mouth. It settles in your head as well, slowing your thoughts. Every noise seems too much, it’s hard to focus on anything through the fog. It’s cold and lonely. You can’t see others around you, sometimes you don’t even know they are there. The fog covers everything, confuses, makes you uncertain of everything you ever knew.
Sometimes you can almost see something in the distance, or from the corner of your eye, but no matter how hard you try, it slips away into the fog. It can be frightening when you are all alone, lost, stumbling along; you might get jumpy at every noise, angry at yourself for feeling the way you do, or fall into a blind panic. Maybe you become desensitised, just putting one foot in front of the other, like a machine.
Like being in the middle of a raging storm. Only you don’t know if the storm is all around you, or inside of you. Maybe it is both. The jumble around you is overwhelming, and you don’t know where to start. The jumble inside you is overwhelming, and you have nowhere to hide. Breathing can be difficult, every breath you take in seemingly making the storm inside worse. The raging wind is making your eyes water, and things get blown around you that you had kept nice and tidy at the bottom of a long-forgotten pile, hoping to never see it again.
Like suddenly being left in charge of a litter of newborn puppies by someone, when you don’t actually like dogs that much. You have no idea what to do, but you know you need to keep these puppies alive. So you feed them, keep them clean, and tickle their bottoms with cotton wool, day and night. They are blind, reliant on you, and you might dutifully do all these things, but actually want to run away. Or maybe put them all in a sack and throw them in the river. At the same time you don’t dare to tell anyone how you are feeling, because puppies are cute. They are little living creatures. And so very foreign to you.
Like that time you broke your mother’s favourite jar as a child because you wanted to put a present for her inside it. The feeling of guilt is all consuming, you only wanted to do something nice, but instead you ruined everything.
PND can be all of these things, or none of them.
It’s important to know that whatever you feel, it is not your fault. Not now, not ever. And there is no shame in any of it. PND isn’t anyone’s fault, and it can’t be made to go away by shrugging it off, pulling yourself together or ignoring it. If you know someone who is lost in the fog, or the storm, go and look for them. Stretch out a hand, pick up one of the puppies, or buy a new jar, without judgment. Hold that hand tightly, take the steps together. Fog dissipates. Storms quieten and puppies grow older, you grow more confident.
Reach out, you are not alone.
This, too, shall pass.
true tales from the gates of the underworld 