As much as I thought my first blog was hard to write digging in to my past, I think this one is harder because I’m in the throes of it.
If you read my first blog, you know that I struggled with depression in my early adolescent years. Well that’s not exact something that just goes away but is maintained. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any problems, but of course with the change in hormones from pregnancy and postpartum that changes.
With my first-born I definitely had the 2-week postpartum “baby blues” but that’s all I thought I had - according to my husband he had concerns here and there after those two weeks. He’s probably right, but I think a lot of it had to do with whatever was going on that day with our son (good days and bad days right?).
With baby number two, I knew things were different before she was born.
About 3 weeks after we found out we were pregnant the world shut down because of Covid-19. At first I didn’t really know what that would mean, I was just happy I wasn’t going to have to hide my pregnancy at work because I was feeling quite sick this time. I remember people asking me how I felt about it all and I remember thinking I didn’t feel anything. I felt really numb like I had no emotions. Initially, I thought I just didn’t know what to think because of the pandemic but now I realize I think I was starting to suffer from a form or prenatal depression.
I told my doctor at about 32 weeks that I think I might be struggling mentally already simply with the idea of the adjustment to two kids and my unhappiness with work. Being predisposed to depression, she said she would flag my chart to ensure a little extra follow up post birth. The rest of my pregnancy was good, delivery went great no problems, now it was time to adjust to a new baby and a 3 year old all while not being able to join any mom groups or have support in person from friends and family..
I’ve heard that your hormones can fluctuate worse with girls, due to the competing estrogen - they were right. Every emotion I felt I felt it at 1,000%. One afternoon after the boys had gone out to play, my husband found me in the nursery tears running down my cheeks, rocking a sleeping baby. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son with all my heart but in that moment I had never felt more in love than I did with that baby and it brought me to tears and I just couldn’t stop. I continued crying knowing that the fact I was crying and couldn’t stop meant I needed to talk to my doctor.
I should note that in the beginning we had some feeding struggles this time around. She was eating, but for short periods and often. She was also sleeping a lot (I know don’t complain about a sleeping baby! But something just didn’t feel right). Because she was nursing so often my nipples became raw and cracked and I found myself often using a bottle because it just hurt so much. So I was trying to breastfeed as much as I could handle, plus pumping and bottle-feeding. Some times I would get up in the night and feed the baby while pumping at the same time. I became utterly exhausted and I was feeling some serious mom guilt that things weren’t working right.
F*ck mom guilt is a mom’s worst enemy.
I knew I could breastfeed since I’d done it once before and I knew I had the supply because I’m an over producer and I could see the ounces rolling in from pumping. But I still felt like I couldn’t give my baby what she needed naturally. I have no idea how first time moms’ get through that especially when supply is an issue.
I was starting to get worried something was wrong. My sister’s a nurse so I asked her what she thought. She gave me a list of things to look for and test. I was still feeling worried so I made the decision to get in to the doctor right away. Because of my daughters’ age, they squeezed us in between regular appointments. I was waiting for 45 minutes to have my name called. The anticipation started to get me; I started working myself up so much that I almost threw up. Health-wise she was fine, she wasn’t loosing weight and the doctor did the same tests but having more knowledge concluded there was no internal infection we needed to be worried about. So that lead us to believe there was an issue with feeding and she had a tongue-tie. It took a few visits to the doctor to finally conclude that’s what it was, since my supply was so high and there was so much pressure essentially force feeding her, the tongue-tie was being masked and she was still able to gain weight just slowly. I was waiting to get in to see the breastfeeding specialist so the doctor told me while waiting we should see if we could figure it out naturally since we had seen a bit of progress since the last appointment. I kept track over the next week how often I was feeding. I was feeding my daughter up to 20+ times a day - I. Couldn’t. Do. It.
When I got in to the specialist she concluded it was a tongue-tie and asked if I wanted it clipped, I didn’t even hesitate and agreed to it. From that time on the stress of feeding at feeling like a failure was done. We were on the up swing now!
When I had my 6-week check-up (same appointment the doctor told me to try and get our feeding sorted out naturally) we increased my prescription. I wasn’t living in some kind of dream world thinking that once the feeding issues were solved all my depression and anxiety symptoms would just go away. Some days it felt like it helped and other days it didn’t. The crying dried up, but it was replaced by another emotion, a worse emotion - I was experiencing postpartum rage. Yes it’s a thing, but one no one really talks about and I have a feeling it’s because you feel so ashamed when it happens that you don’t want to admit it or tell anyone about it.
It literally can stem from anything and just set you off so you explode. I do notice that it is worse when it’s been a rough night and I’m tired, I just can’t deal.
When I noticed these out bursts happening more I went online to do some reading, I needed to know that someone out there had experienced this too, so that it wasn’t just me being a terrible mom. The following is an excerpt of what I found
“To start with, I generally tell moms that I don't believe that anger is a feeling. I know as a therapist that's kind of a weird thing for me to say, but let me explain. I believe that anger is a sign post, a big old red flag alerting us to a difficult feeling. A feeling that we really, really don't want to feel or deal with, so we push it away and “feel" anger instead. The more intense the anger, the more intense the underlying feeling.
In the case of postpartum rage, I often find that the anger is alerting us to feelings of being overwhelmed, resentment at not being appreciated or acknowledged by those close to us, isolation from our usual social supports, uncertainty about acclimating to our new life as a mom, and guilt related to our perceived failures in mothering.”
That right there, yep that’s me!
Feeling overwhelmed- ✔
Resentment at not being appreciated ✔
Not being acknowledged ✔
Isolation from social supports ✔✔✔
Uncertainty at now mothering two kids ✔
Guilt that I’m failing as a mom (especially when it comes to me taking my anger out on my son..) there’s not a check mark big enough for this one!
Lately, I feel like I am the gatekeeper of everyone’s emotions. That it is my responsibility to control and regulate them and make them feel better. Problem is I can’t seem to take care of my own emotions so how am I supposed to take care of everyone else’s?
I’m at a loss. I know my husband is doing everything he is able to do and I don’t feel like I can ask for more help but I’m drowning. I just keep taking on more and more. I will explode again and then I will submerge in to a pool of guilt and self hate only to be ok and take on everything until I am drowning once again.
I started writing this a month ago; knowing full well the last option for help is asking for it and making an appointment with someone to talk to. But honestly I didn’t want to. I was overwhelmed with day to day that I didn’t feel like I could take on one more appointment even though that appointment would help me with all the feelings of being overwhelmed. But I’ve finally made an appointment; unfortunately it’s a week and a half away. There’s something to be said about going in to an appointment with the negative feeling versus being on the upswing of it.
Here’s hoping it will help.
Note: I am not looking for a wave of people sending me messages of “are you ok is there anything I can do to help?” That’s not what this is. This is for the mom or dad in the back nodding their head thinking yes I’ve felt like that, maybe I’m not a terrible parent and there’s hope.
If you are interested in the rest of the article I read you can access it here https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.mother.ly/amp/we-need-to-talk-about-postpartum-rageand-why-it-happens-2559513215