My Postpartum Journey
We need to do a better job at taking care of our new mommas’ mental health.
It’s late November, 2020, and I’ve just recently had a beautiful, happy and healthy baby boy. I am eight days postpartum and baby and I are thriving physically. He is my second baby making our family a unit of four including his dad Dillon and his four-year-old big sister Sloan. We are overjoyed to welcome baby Gordon into our home and our hearts. He is only eight days old but I can already see that he is a sweet soul who loves nothing more than to snuggle and sleep. Lucky me! With a four-year-old running around and a shift-working health care employee for a husband, I am feeling beyond blessed to have such an easygoing and peaceful baby as we continue to navigate the transition from a family of three to a family of four.
I am blessed to have the support of a caring community of ladies and family members who have been nothing short of amazing as they help care for our little family by making freshly cooked meals, washing endless loads of laundry, inviting big sister Sloan on playdates and holding baby Gord so that Mommy can take a shower. I reflect on the past eight days and I recognize that I am extremely lucky. I am in awe of how this community has come together to care and love us during this special but chaotic time. I’m humbled and speechless—I’m not even sure how to begin to thank the many people who have opened their hearts to support us. I hope these words can act as a start in expressing my immense gratitude.
Over the past few years, I have learned a lesson that is reflective of my current situation in this life: things can be sweet and salty at the same time. While the past eight days have been filled with sweetness, love, and community, it has also been salty and extremely difficult.
I’ve had my struggles in the past with anxiety and depression. Like many, I struggled as a teenager and a young adult, trying to figure out who I was while balancing poor mental health. I dealt with severe anxiety when I had my first child four years ago and I had another slip into darkness about two years ago. All of these times, I was able to persevere, get better and come out on the other side.
I am not someone who is shy to ask for help. After living with mental health struggles on and off for most of my life, I am educated and know what works for me and what doesn't. When I feel like I’m slipping, I immediately dig in and come up with a game plan to get myself feeling mentally well. These plans consist of techniques and supports I’ve learned over the years:
cut out anxiety-inducing foods like caffeine and sugar,
seek counselling support,
reach out to my doctors to evaluate my medications,
meditate,
write in my gratitude journal,
talk it out with friends,
introduce exercise,
and force myself to do little things every day like take a shower or make my bed.
I have become an expert at getting myself better. I am tenacious, and I don’t accept that bad feelings will be my normal. But even though I am this expert, it never gets easier when I find myself falling. Yet the opposite; it is still the most terrifying experience. It is absolutely brutal. It’s like I can’t breathe. Even though I know it will pass, that I will come out the other side, hopelessness settles into the pit of my stomach. Every time.
I was optimistic that I wouldn’t have any mental health struggles after my baby boy was born. I have been symptom-free for almost two years, the pregnancy was a breeze, and I felt that since this was my second baby, I would be more in control. I was wrong.
I am little more than a week postpartum and unwelcomed companions have paid me a visit: anxiety and depression. It is debilitating. I can’t eat, I am unable to feel joy, and feelings of vast sadness have overtaken me. But I know what to do. I know I can get better and I desperately want to so that I can enjoy what is supposed to be a happy time at home with my family.
First step is to ask for help. I reach out to my OB/GYN (who had previously stated that he would help if any old mental health issues arose postpartum) via phone and email. I then reach out to my nurse practitioner and leave her a message to call me as soon as possible. I immediately stop drinking coffee, vow to shower every day, and force myself to eat my three meals a day even though I have no appetite and the thought of food makes me sick. I continue to take care of my newborn, waking up with him every three hours to breastfeed, change diapers, snuggle him and love him. I am lucky to have my husband and mother-in-law home with me, who take care of household chores and meal prep. On top of all of this, we are driving two hours every other day for baby’s doctor appointments.
I feel I have done all I can do; I’ve reached out for help. I am in indescribable emotional pain as I wait for a response from my OB/GYN and/or nurse practitioner. It is an emergency—I know I need help fast. But I keep telling myself that I just have to hold on; it will get better. I wait for days in pain with no helpful responses when what I need is immediate action from my health care team.
I call the doctor’s office multiple times with no answer, so I leave a message. Radio silence. So I send an email explaining my situation and plead to speak with someone. I hear back via email! I am so relieved: finally, someone. I am informed that the doctor isn’t in the office but that they’ll try to contact him for me. I am also instructed to reach out to my nurse practitioner (which I already have).
Again I am left waiting for someone to get back to me. All the while I am trying to be strong and keep it together at home. Limiting caffeine, eating my meals, changing diapers, feeding baby, entertaining my four-year-old, repeat. On the outside I probably look like a zombie or a robot. On the inside I am a heaping, crippled mess of fear, self-hatred, and pain.
I receive another email from my OB/GYN’s office. My doctor is going to attempt to call me in the evening, after his work day. I feel I can finally breathe a little easier. I just have to wait an hour or two and I can talk to someone who’ll assist me and my recovery efforts. I wait an hour, then another, then another. I tell myself maybe he’s running late, just be patient, he will call, he knows how urgent this is. He never calls. I am devastated. I go to bed feeling the deep, deep all-consuming emotional heaviness, with no end in sight.
The next morning I follow up with an email. Will the doctor be calling me today? I am told that he is in the operating room all day but that he will contact me as soon as he can. Again, I am instructed to reach out to my nurse practitioner as well. At this point it makes me feel like they are trying to pass me off as someone else’s problem.
I can’t wait any longer for my nurse practitioner or OB/GYN. My mental health state is not improving, and each minute that goes by feeling this way is too much. I google after hours clinics. I find one located forty minutes away. I call and I am able to get an appointment the next day. YES!
After acquiring my appointment at the after hours clinic, I receive a phone call from my OB/GYN’s assistant which leaves me feeling worthless and dejected. I am informed that the doctor won’t be calling me, that he doesn’t usually deal with these types of matters, that his job ends once he’s delivered his patients’ babies. The lady on the phone again encourages me to reach out to my nurse practitioner (who still hasn’t called me back). I let her know that I called a local clinic and I have an appointment the next day. She seems thrilled for me. She asks me to document everything I have done up to this point and the outcome of tomorrow’s appointment in an email so that the doctor can “be kept in the loop.” I feel deflated. I feel hurt. I feel betrayed. My main focus is to get better and I realize then that he isn’t going to help me with that. (I never did write that documentation email. Maybe I should have. But I couldn’t be bothered to help that doctor cover his ass.)
I talk to the doctor at the after hours clinic, he listens, and together we come up with a recovery strategy. He increases my medications slightly and introduces medication to take as needed if things get too bad. We talk about my counselling options and he asks me to follow up with him in three weeks.
Finally, I’ve gotten what I need from the medical community: a doctor who responded to my urgent healthcare need in a timely manner, who listened and recognised my pain, who included me in creating my recovery plan and who promised to follow up. Hallelujah.
Throughout my pregnancy, up until we left the hospital with our baby boy and before my anxiety and depression started, I was told that the baby blues were normal. That's what I kept hearing over and over again. It’s normal to feel sad. Then the emotional turmoil started, and those words did nothing to comfort me. The postpartum depression/postpartum anxiety literature sent home with me in my hospital bag, the countless experts in the maternity ward reminding me of the potential threat of the baby blues, then the reassurance and reiteration that my feelings were normal at the mommy and baby clinic, they were just empty words. Empty words wouldn’t help me recover, wouldn’t allow me to feel joy again, wouldn’t drag me out of this hell. But words were all I got for a long time.
There wasn’t easily available help. I had to reach out to multiple healthcare professionals until I found someone who was interested in helping me. If I had a broken arm, a cast would be put on immediately. Why are mental health issues treated so differently? I was failed. But I realize it could have been much, much worse. What if I was too shy to ask for help? What if this was the first time I had ever felt this way and I didn’t know who to reach out to? What if I let the bad feelings take over and I gave up? It should not have been this hard to get help.
I am now able to provide an update on my mental health state. I have been on my new dosages of medications long enough to see improvements and I have connected with my new counsellor. I have seen my NP (she never did actually call me back) at my son’s post-birth checks and she is up-to-date and following my journey. How am I feeling? Every day is a struggle but it is so much better than it was in those early days. The bad feelings are duller, allowing me to focus on the other things that will help me to heal: fresh air, counselling, proper sleep, healthy foods and my caring community. I have reached out to my closest family and friends to share with them my struggles and they have wrapped me in love. I am on my way to recovery. The recovery road was dark and lonely for so long, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I believe we can improve the health care system to support new mothers and their mental health. I don’t have all the answers, but I am interested in finding those answers. I believe a logical place to start is by making it easier to access mental health services for new moms. I hope that by sharing my story, it can start a conversation. In my work, we like to use curiosity to flip problems into opportunities for solutions. So here I will do that:
How Might We Support New Mothers and their Mental Health?
I will be continuing to explore this problem and possible solutions on my maternity leave. Anyone who would like to discuss or has interest in this topic please reach out! The biggest lesson I've taken from this whole experience is that a caring community is a powerful thing.
