Here We Go Again

I was awake at 4 this morning feeding Gerry.  It was still dark out and Scott was snoring (softly, for once), having just fallen back to sleep after making Gerry's bottle for me.  Bailey was snoozing down the hall and if I listened carefully I could hear the lullaby music playing softly on her radio.  The morning news was on quietly so I didn't feel so alone and Gerry was drinking his bottle while still half asleep.  I felt his little body quiver and looked down to find him silently laughing in his sleep.  He is beautiful.  He took one deep breath, gave a quiet little sigh, smiled up at me with oh-so-sleepy eyes, and fell asleep again.  I laid him gently down in the cradle next to our bed and tip-toed away and back under the warm duvet.  And I thought to myself, I can't believe I' m here again.

I started back on my PPD meds again last week. And I haven't told anyone.

I've been feeling the "emotions" creeping up on me the last few weeks but I ignored them.  At my 6-week postpartum check-up there was a little voice in my head shouting "I think it's happening again, ask for help"  But I didn't.  I smiled and chatted with the doctor and his nurse and bragged about how adorable my baby is and what a wonderful big sister Bailey has been.  I talked about how much I love wearing Gerry and what a great deal I got on a Moby wrap that I found on Craigslist.  I smiled demurely and brushed off his compliment when my doctor told me that I was amazing for going back to work only a week after giving birth, and I compared the levels of "diva" that our daughters share with the nurse, Veronica.

I did not talk about how sad I am that I'm not breastfeeding...again.  I didn't talk about how disgusted I am with my postpartum body these days and how I feel like I'll never be able to look in a mirror again without cringing.  I didn't talk about the all-consuming and irrational fears that I have now that I've got a second child to worry about.

I didn't talk about it.

I thought I was prepared for the emotions this time around.  I really thought that I had a handle on things.  Actually, I thought that I had come out this time unscathed.  Gerry was here and he was amazing.  Bailey loved him to pieces and didn't seem the least bit jealous of him.  Going back to work a week after he was born, while not 100% ideal, was probably the best thing I could have done because I was so busy that I didn't have time to do anything other than go, go, go. I couldn't allow myself to sit around in my pajamas all day with my teeth unbrushed because I had families bringing their kids to daycare.  I had to wake up and get myself ready for the day, even if that meant only throwing on sweatpants and brushing my teeth and my hair.  Physically, I had recovered pretty quickly.  At one week postpartum, I was feeling mostly like myself and was able to move around mostly pain-free and with ease.  Gerry was a wonderfully easy baby and he made "going back to work" such an easy and seamless transition all around that it felt like he had been a part of our group forever.  I felt good.  I felt fine.  I felt like I had this.

And then I started having nightmares.

I had a dream one night about 3 weeks after Gerry was born that our house was on fire.  For whatever reason, in the dream I was all alone and Scott wasn't there, and it was up to me to save both kids and myself from this fire.  In my dream, I scooped Gerry up and ran down the hall to Bailey's room.  I threw open her door and the room was filled with smoke.  I could hear her coughing and coughing and calling for me but I couldn't get to her.  In the dream, Gerry was a heavy weight in my arms.  I ran through the smoke looking for Bailey and worried about what damage the smoke had done to her lungs and what damage it was now doing to Gerry's.  I tripped over something on the floor and my last thought before I woke up was, I couldn't save them.

When I woke up I felt such a complete heaviness in my body.  I felt like I had actually lived it, like I really had run down the hall and tried to save my kids from a fire.  My body was tired and my heart was sad and I had a hard time falling asleep again that night.
 
Three nights later I had a similar dream.  Again, I was all alone and Bailey and Gerry were in danger.  This time they were dangling from the side of a building and I was standing on the roof looking down at them.  I had one piece of rope in my hand and could save one of them with it, but only one.  I remember trying to think of ways to save them both with that one piece of rope and feeling such a sense of loss and devastation that I could only save one of my children.

The night after that, I dreamt that Scott and I both died in a car accident and our children were left with no parents.  Realistically, I know that if (God forbid) that were to happen our kids would be well taken care of.  Both my family and Scott's love them to pieces and would step in and raise them in a heart beat.  But we had died and I remember, in my dream, being so sad that I wouldn't get to see my kids grow up and that I'd never know what amazing people they turned out to be.  I was so, so sad that they would grow up not knowing how much Scott and I loved them and how they were our whole world.

I was having dreams like this two or three nights a week.  And then I started feeling panicky throughout the day, running different scenarios through my mind about how I'd save my kids if I ever needed to.  I'd be in the middle of making lunch for all the kids and start freaking out about how I'd get Bailey and Gerry out of the house if an intruder ever broke in.  I'd put Gerry down for a nap and start running through the steps for infant CPR in my mind in case he stopped breathing while he slept.  I'd be giving Bailey a bath and see these images in my head of her somehow hitting her head on the faucet and passing out and drowning in the bath tub.  When I put them both to bed at night I'd picture the layout of our house in my mind and run through all the different ways I could run out of here with both of them in my arms if I ever needed to.

Sometimes I would get myself so worked up thinking about all the danger scenarios and how to save Bailey and Gerry that I'd have to force myself to sit down, take deep breaths, and remember that, at that moment, they were both okay.  I swear, it felt sometimes like I was actually living the danger instead of just projecting it in my mind.   It was suffocating and I felt like I was going crazy.  So different from last time, but still sort of the same.

The "sad" part of my PPA/PPD had taken a backseat to anxiety this time around.  I was expecting the depression.  The loneliness and the sadness and the feeling that I was walking all alone down a long dark hallway with no one around but my baby.  That, I was prepared for.  The anxiety and the fear were an unexpected and unwelcome bonus.  Because I wasn't feeling exactly the same way that I had after Bailey was born, I was hesitant to think that it was postpartum depression again.  But then I started a new daycare baby and I knew that if I didn't talk to my doctor it was a pretty sure bet that things were going to spiral out of control all over again.

It's no secret that I wanted to breastfeed both Bailey and Gerry.  And I did, for a couple of weeks before I had to stop.  Ironically enough, nursing triggers my PPD according to my OB.  I was devastated when I stopped breastfeeding Bailey and felt like the worst kind of failure.  When I was pregnant with Gerry I promised myself that I wasn't going to beat myself up over it if nursing didn't work out.  When I decided to stop with him, I had a good cry and moved on.  I was bummed and disappointed, but I was okay with it.  I'd given it my best shot and, even though I wasn't nursing him anymore, he was happy and healthy and growing, and what more could I ask for?  I really thought that I was okay.

And then this past week a new baby started.  His mother is both a "client" and a friend of mine and I knew that she was breastfeeding him. Before he started, we had emailed back and forth about what she should send for him, so I knew he was coming with diapers, a bottle, and milk that would be stored in my freezer.  But I hadn't thought about it beyond that.  The day the baby first started, his mom dropped him off with everything we had talked about, and pointed out the insulated bag with the milk inside.  After she left, I carried that bag into the kitchen, took the milk out to put in the freezer, and cried.

Those tears were totally unexpected, but I couldn't help it.  And, creepy as it sounds, I couldn't stop staring at those five ounces of milk.  And right then and there, I stopped being okay with the fact that I couldn't nurse my baby.  It was like that part of my brain switched itself off and I fell back into the "how come she can do it and I couldn't?" cycle of thinking.  I'd killed myself to pump for Gerry and was never able to get more than two ounces in a sitting...and that was in a 45 minute to an hour-long session.  I felt like a failure all over again.  And I felt guilty.  And I felt like less of a woman for not being able to do it.  Right then and there, with the freezer door open and a bag of another woman's breast milk in my hand, all the control that I'd built up over the last few weeks crumbled and I turned into a crying mess.  I realized that, not only was I not as okay as I'd thought, but that I was also going to have to deal with this for quite some time.  The baby would be starting full-time soon and I couldn't sit around crying every time I fed him.  And I couldn't keep avoiding the freezer and that milk, either.

That night I had another dream that I couldn't save Bailey and Gerry.  I woke up exhausted and sad, and I knew that this wasn't something I could just coast through until it went away.  Luckily, Gerry had his two-month well visit that same day.  I mentioned how I was feeling to his doctor and he called in a prescription for me.  And the rest, as they say, is history. 

I hate that I'm back on medicine.  And I hate the part of me that can't just let go, the part of me that needs the meds.  And I really, REALLY hate that there's a part of me that will never talk about it out loud with someone.  Not even, really, with Scott.  I just can't do it.  I can barely write about it, though I think I've done a pretty good job taking up all this space here.  I'm not ashamed.  And I know I'm not alone.  I just hate the stigma that goes along with the term "depression".  Like we're all crazies just waiting to blow.  While I'm on the subject of things I hate, I also really hate that I've gone through this, not once, but twice now.  It sucks.  And it pisses me off because I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of important things when I'm "stuck in the haze".  If I have to find a positive, though, it would be that I was prepared and sought help sooner this time.  So, well...there's that.

And there's also the fact that I got another beautiful baby out of everything.  And, oh my lord, is he beautiful!  So I'll take the meds and I'll get back on track again because, depression be damned, I don't want to miss a single second with my babies.