Category Archives: Postpartum Depression

Everybody knows you transition into babyland.  Pregnancy and having a baby usher in a whole new phase and style of life.

What no one tells you is about the transition from that phase into the next.  Where you are done having babies, no more nursing babies…they are becoming kids.

Now you are hard core getting them to brush their teeth and hair before school.  And looking through homework folders.  And letting them play outside, gasp, alone!

No one tells you how much you can miss the baby phase.  How many times your heart can break thinking of baby days.

Dear God, no one tells you.

I am really struggling with this transition.  I don’t want any more kids.  I love our family the way it is, but at the same time, I cannot fathom life without a baby to cuddle and nurse.

This transition is really messing with me.

The doctor says it is not abnormal to have a lot of anxiety, boy do I ever, during transitions, particularly with the depression and bipolar disorder.  I want to know how long it will last, he, of course, says we can’t really know that.

Sigh.

Have you had any major life transitions?  Which one has been the hardest?  How did you deal with it?  Are you still dealing with it?

A friend brought up an old fable the other day as we talked about a good day with my mood and outlook on life.  She said, “leave yourself bread crumbs so you can find your way back when it gets dark again.”

Hantsel and Gretel as a story, is not something I will read to my children anytime soon.  The story being their stepmother sent them into the forest to die and their father allowed it is just too gruesome and horrible, but there is value in the tale.

Hantsel and Gretel were aware they were headed into uncharted territory when they went into the woods, so they thought to leave themselves a trail to find their way back home.  They used bread crumbs one time to mark a path home, but the birds found them a tasty treat instead; but when the children used little stone pebbles, they were able to make their way home.

Depression is it’s own uncharted territory.  It’s hard to know when and where you’ll go in and even harder to know when and where you’ll come out.  It can easily, and  often, leave you far away from the self you used to know and make you feel very removed from those people most important to you.  How to get back?

That’s where Hantsel and Gretel come into play.  They mark their way in the darkness and I can too.  I love the imagery of leaving myself a trail to find my way.  It is fitting.

Leaving bread crumbs that can be scattered about and destroyed won’t get me there, but stones, in all their durability, will.

Here is the beginning of my stone collection for finding my way home:

Stone 1–my family and those who love me

Stone 2–the online community, twitter and blogging

Stone 3–doctors who are working so hard to help me get better

Stone 4–love of God

Stone5–memories of where I have been

With these stones, and more that I will find along the way, I can find my way back home when the depression leads me astray, just as Hantsel and Gretel ultimately found their way home.

Such it is with depression.

Patrice will be 20 months old next Saturday.  Crazy to think of that.  It is so fun watching her learn and grow.

But I’ve been missing something–feeling Normal.  I’ve been waiting for me to get to normal with the depression medication and then had plans to stop taking the medications and still be normal.

It doesn’t seem to be happening.  Most days normal seems further and further away.  I haven’t been okay with that fact.

Until yesterday.

The lovely and brilliant A’Driane, or AddyeB on Twitter, of Butterfly Confessions, was talking me through the most recent turn of events in my walk with depression and I lamented not knowing when or if I would be normal…

“Feels like I’ll never find normal again.”

“I’m learning the thing with mental illness is that we have to redefine what normal means for us.  It’s frustrating but kinda freeing to think that my normal doesn’t have to be like other peoples’,”  A’Driane replied.

“I like that perspective.  I think I’m going to claim as normal anything that isn’t anxiety, suicide or uncontrollable.  Screw whether or not it takes meds to be normal.”

“Exactly!  That’s a healthy and attainable perspective.  Takes the pressure off of  you, yanno?  Allows you to work with your illness, not fight against it in that sense,” A’Driane said.

…

“You’ve given me a gift that no one’s been able to help me with, real hope of being okay,” I told her.

Reread that last sentence.  Let it sink in.

I let the whole conversation wash over me.  And felt healing come.  I am not there consistently, but I can get to that there.  I can be happy in that there.  I can be healthy in that there.

It all came with a change in perspective.  Where could you change your perspective to be healthier and stronger?  Could healing come with a new perspective?