Hi! My name is Lorie, and I have the privilege of being a mom to three beautiful children. I love them with everything I have, but the years after their births were anything but smooth sailing. I experienced post-partem depression (PPD for the purposes of this post) with all of them. Each one was different, but significant. Through those times, I remember not being able to effectively articulate how I felt or what I was experiencing. This made it difficult for my husband to help me. Now that I’m 5 years removed from my last PPD and I’ve done extensive work with psychologists on healing the scars of those periods of time, I thought that I would create a list of what my experiences were like. The list below is based on my experiences and my experiences only. This list is not intended to be a substitute for medical intervention, nor is it a diagnostic tool. My hope is that this will give you some insight into what it’s like to be living with PPD so that you can better understand yourself and/or your partner.
Timing:
First, I want people to understand that PPD does not have a definitive time frame. It’s not a cookie cutter diagnosis, but there seems to be a cultural connotation, at least here in the USA, that PPD should be something that comes and goes within the child’s first three months of life. While that might be the case for some women, most to do not experience it that way. In my first PPD, I wasn’t diagnosed until I was almost 6 months post-partum, and it took several more months of consistently working with a psychologist and my PCP to start feeling like myself again. After going through my first experience, I was able to recognize the signs and symptoms much more quickly in my subsequent two post-partum phases and begin treatment much sooner. This means that if your partner had a child two years ago and she hasn’t been the same since, it might be time to consult a mental health professional. Untreated depression does not always resolve on its own, especially when the catalyst for it were all of the hormonal variances that come with growing and birthing a child. Now that we’ve covered the timeline, let’s get into what it feels like to have PPD.
Fatigue:
PPD comes with fatigue that is bone deep. Take the most tired you have ever been and multiply it by a million. When you spend your days feeling like a zombie, everything that you do feels like it takes gargantuan effort. Unfortunately, this symptom is likely to be dismissed as people around you write it off as being a normal consequence of having a new baby. It is very different, though. In the case of PPD, no amount of rest is ever enough and and every task that you do feels too heavy. I never felt rested or even alert. While that zombie persona can skate by while you’re on maternity leave, it becomes a huge problem when it’s time to return to work. At the time, I had a very physically and emotionally demanding job. Sometimes, it felt like I wasn’t going to make it through my workday, but, like most women do, I just kept pushing, trying to meet the expectations of whatever environment I was in. The issue with doing that is that your relationship with yourself and your relationship with your partner are likely to be the first casualties of trying to survive this period of time. Imagine that you have COVID, a stomach bug, and the flu at the same time and your healthy and chipper partner tells you that they want to have sex. How excited would you be about that? It’s likely that you would look at him/her like he/she was nuts! Physical intimacy is an important part of relationships; this is just one area where PPD can fracture the connection with your partner.
Irrational Thinking:
Your brain is not necessarily rational while you’re going through PPD. For example, during my second PPD, we moved from a small townhouse to our current home. Our oldest son immediately got into the local sports scene. One of the obligations of being a sports parent is volunteer work. My husband brought up volunteering at the snack bar at the baseball fields to me, thinking that I could easily fulfill this obligation and we’d be done. Instead, what he got was me having a full-scale panic attack. I remember my mind racing—how was I going to interact with strangers? I’m already an introvert and I’m using all of my social battery to get through the work week. What if they don’t’ have caluclators? I’m horrible at mental math! What if I make a complete idiot of myself not being able to make change? The list went on and on. Looking back on it now, I can see how irrational it is. Would I have survived making pleasant small talk with whoever was with me? Most likely. No calculator? No problem, there’s one on my phone and no one cares if I use it or not! But, at the time, I felt like I was drowning and that one suggestion, that one volunteer shift, felt like the weight that was keeping me under water. Is that irrational? Yes! Did that change how the fear, overwhelm, or panic impacted me at the time? No! So, if you find yourself arguing with your partner over things that seem like “no big deal” to you, keep in mind that it might be a huge deal to her.
Irrational Fears:
With this idea of irrational mindsets, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention irrational fears. This is another symptom of PPD that can present differently for women. For me, I had irrational fears of my babies being hurt/injured either by my negligence or by things that were out of my control. This was by far the worst after having my first child. I remember one evening in particular, I fell asleep rocking my son and was startled awake by a nightmare of his head being crushed by the rocking chair. The relief I felt when I woke up, realizing that he was still sleeping peacefully in my arms, supported by the Boppy Pillow, was palpable. Still, I berated myself for falling asleep and putting him at risk. I would often have nightmares similar to this, and it was terrifying and exhausting. So, partners, keep in mind that this is yet another factor disrupting mom’s sleep patterns and thought processes. A lot of helicopter parenting started to kick in here as well, constantly fueled by the thoughts of needing to keep your baby safe and prove to yourself that you’re a competent mother. Again, it’s not logical, but logic leaves the building with PPD, so don’t try to be the voice of reason.
Memory lapses:
When I look back at each of my PPD time frames, a lot of those memories are very blurry, or just not there at all. My working memory was completely overloaded. I used what I had to function at work and to meet the baby’s needs, but appointments? Nope! Remembering what groceries to pick up? Nope! Remembering the name of a person three seconds after I met them? Definitely not! Remembering stories that my husband told me about his day? Not a chance! While those might not seem like that big of a deal, it does wreak havoc on your psyche. This is another factor that makes you feel like you’re going insane. When my husband would ask me, “Do you remember how I was telling you about x, y, and z yesterday?” I didn’t. I had no idea what he was talking about. To the partner, when that’s happening all of the time, it is easy to feel like you’re being ignored. Or, when you were depending on me to bring home eggs and milk after work and I forgot, now we can’t have the dinner that was planned, that’s frustrating. These irritations build up over time and can cause some serious disruptions in relationships. You can help your partner by writing things down, reducing distractions when you’re trying to talk, helping them set alarms on their phones, and by keeping your conversations simple (use fewer words) and slow down the rate of at which you talk. This gives your partner’s brain increased time to process what you’re saying, increasing the likelihood of them remembering what you said.
Connection to your baby:
PPD does not mean that you are a bad mother or that you don’t love your child. My experience with this was quite different than what most people would think of from the stereotypical portrayals of PPD in media. I did not want to hurt my child, nor did I fear hurting myself. However, just because I didn’t have that experience doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. It has become a stereotype for a reason and such symptoms should be taken very seriously. For me, I swung to the opposite end of the pendulum. I never wanted to be separated from my babies and I had an incredibly difficult time with it. This made going back to work after maternity leave downright gut wrenching. In fact, I threw up at work on my first day back from having my first baby. I can’t count how many times I drove to work with tears streaming down my face because I had to leave my baby behind—whether that was at daycare or with my parents—didn’t matter. I had children because I wanted to raise them and the idea that someone else might witness their first crawl, steps, words, etc. was devasting. To compensate, when I was with them, they had all of my attention. Again, this isn’t great for taking care of oneself or nurturing a partnership. As a partner, you might feel resentment that all of mom’s attention is diverted to the baby and you are missing your best friend. Despite your best efforts, though, you can’t get mom to leave the baby with a sitter so you can go to dinner together or out for ice cream. Before you know it, there’s a chiasm in your relationship that you don’t know how to bridge.
In Summary
PPD is an incredibly difficult condition that impacts every aspect of how your brain and body functions. It is a real and valid medical condition and you need real help to get through it. I, personally, needed weekly therapy with a psychologist who specialized in PPD and I also needed medication management, which I did through my PCP. Your course of treatment might look different—there’s no right or wrong way. The most important thing is that you get help from a credentialed healthcare professional. It would also be helpful to complete a course of counseling or therapy with your partner. One of the biggest mistakes that I made was thinking that my PPD only impacted me. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your mental state impacts everyone around you and for most of us, our partners will take the brunt of our physical and mental changes. As a partner living with a woman with PPD, you have a right to your feelings. If you’re hurt, frustrated, or resentful, those are all valid. The good news is, things don’t have to stay that way. Recognizing that I had a problem and seeking help was the best decision that I’ve ever made for myself and my family.
This post is not indented to be a substitute for treatment and/or diagnosis from a doctor. However, I hope that it provides insight on where to start your healing journey and doing so from a place of better understanding. Start with a call or email to your doctor’s office, do a web search for PPD treatment in your area, or sit down with your partner and have a no-holds-barred conversation and come up with a plan together. The bottom line is, when you’re living through PPD, your brain isn’t working right. The good news is: there is help out there, take advantage of it. I’m wishing you all peaceful minds and healing.