The Return of Myself: My triumph over my brain.

How do you tell someone you love your baby, but you feel like dying?

One morning in April 1998 as I sat on my porch sipping coffee, my four week old baby girl slept peacefully, unaware her mother was falling apart. I knew I had to tell my husband. He had the right to know he was living with a maternal imposter. When I turned my face was blank, lifeless, my voice emotionless, almost robotic.

A mother for the first time, I was overcome with the usual new parent emotions, gratitude, joy and exhaustion. But wrapped inside these feelings was a deep sadness. Most people would never notice. I hid my despair behind smiles and polite conversation.

I remember when my emotional damn broke. It was the night I sobbed uncontrollably to my sister on the phone, heaving into the receiver in a desperate voice she’d never heard. Slowly an intruder named post-partum depression had taken over. The hormonal horror tangled my emotions into a murky mess of confusion and ambivalence.

That morning on the porch I had no sense that what I was about to tell my husband would be so disturbing, that he wouldn’t know how to react, or even if he should. In a flash he wouldn’t recognize the woman he married. He wouldn’t be able grasp how I could lovingly rock our baby girl to sleep, smile at her so sweetly, and still feel as if I were sinking into a black hole.

None of it made sense.

And yet as I look back to moments across my life, I recall times when I’d sink into private sadness. And when I went back to read my dark poems from childhood, my despair began to make sense. My brain had waited patiently for the Perfect Storm: a long, hard childbirth, drastic hormonal shifts, sleep deprivation, baby stress and an enormous life change. When it all came together at once, the mood monster jumped out from behind the shadows.

“I have to tell you,” staring my husband directly in the eye, “I want to be dead. I mean I really don’t want to kill myself. I just don’t want to be here anymore. To feel this. But I know I’m supposed to be here to take care of our baby. So I won’t do anything stupid. I promise.” With a look of sick panic, he managed to utter something supportive, soft words to quiet my fear and perhaps his own, words I still can’t remember.

It was as if I’d told him I didn’t feel like breathing anymore, but because I probably should — I would. For two months, in between growing love for my child, the motions of motherhood felt like a joyless obligation I maintained out of polite promises and daily survival instinct.

People can’t understand this kind of emotional pain unless they’ve loved a child so much it hurts, unless they’ve hated motherhood so much it hurts. Post-partum depression did that to me. It told me I was a bad mother even though I wasn’t.

I remember one morning when my baby daughter finally fell asleep for her nap. For weeks acid reflux kept her from resting peacefully during the day. After only a few minutes my stolen moment was interrupted by a cry. Without a thought I walked to the kitchen cabinet, picked out a small plate and threw it as hard as I could on the floor. The pieces shattered at my feet as I screamed across the house.

In a rage I opened and slammed my daughter’s door; the noise made her scream louder. A second later I walked into her room, sobbing quietly into her soft chest, telling her in a quiet voice how truly sorry I was. Who was this monster I thought? Who could love her baby so deeply and still react with such ferocious anger? My mind couldn’t make peace with the mixed messages. I was lost until I realized this wasn’t me, it was the disease.

When I was pregnant I never imagined parenting would be easy or filled with only idyllic baby moments. My chaotic childhood stripped away wishful thinking. But I expected motherhood would bring mostly joy, not mostly sorrow. My daughter was wanted, planned and conceived with great hope and effort. Because at 19 an endocrinologist explained I had a benign pituitary disorder and would have to undergo fertility intervention if I wanted children.

At 31, happily married, my husband and I decided we were ready. And although he passed his fertility tests, as expected, I did not. Next came painful dye x-rays, surgery and expensive super ovulation hormones that my husband patiently injected into me. We were allies in our dream to have a child until the moment he told me he didn’t want to do intra-uterine insemination, a procedure the doctor said would greatly increase our chances. He was worried, my husband explained, that if he handed over a sperm sample, the lab would mistakenly switch vials and we’d end up with another man’s baby.

What began as our mutual pact to start a family, soon turned into baby warfare. “No matter what” I told him, “As long as it’s legal, I’ll get pregnant by whatever it takes.” Failure wasn’t an option. This is what I believe when I want something so badly I can feel it. My husband finally surrendered, realizing I was determined to have my own biological child.

I was relentless because I was adopted and had never met my biological mother and father. And although my adopted parents clearly loved me, I still craved at least one human being in my life who was a part of me.

After one month of shots, ultrasounds and blood tests; my husband and I received the good news. And while my pregnancy was healthy and I felt good, childbirth was dangerous, long, and and excruciating. With pre-eclampsia, two days of a failed test dilation drug, horrific pain, a mistake during my epidural, and a forceps and vacuum delivery, my beautiful baby girl finally came into the world loud and perfect. I was however, quietly a mess.

Two days later I had to return to the hospital so the doctors could reverse an epidural headache. Six months later I was diagnosed with Fibromylagia, caused the doctor guessed, from my traumatic childbirth. Motherhood hadn’t come without a physical cost, something I later read can contribute to post-partum depression.

The first night at home my daughter screamed for hours after I fed her formula from a fast flowing bottle. When I called the hospital’s new mother hotline, through tears I explained to the nurse that I was trying to breast and bottle feed. The stern voice scolded me, telling me I had to choose a feeding method because I was “confusing” my baby. I had already failed my daughter and she was barely three days old. For the first few weeks exhaustion and post-partum depression tricked me into thinking I had made a terrible mistake. Why was I a mother to this beautiful, dependent little being? I couldn’t do it. I wanted to go back to in time.

After two months I confessed to my fertility doctor and he immediately put me back on hormone replacement therapy. Soon the deep sadness and feelings of being totally overwhelmed lifted. But depression can linger for years, and it doesn’t always show up as despair. Over the next few years, I was never completely myself. Post partum depression and its cousin maternal depression isn’t just a disease of the brain, it’s also affected by circumstances and societal attitudes.

Being at home full time didn’t fit me like it did for so many mothers I knew. And although I was grateful for the choice, I felt guilty because I was unhappy. This conflict added fuel to my mood changes. For a three to five days every month I’d have such severe mood changes that this would affect the balance in my family. I’d verbally rage and carry on in a voice scary to me, terrifying to my child.

Even when I promised myself I’d be more patient during those days, there were plenty of times I’d lose emotional control and go into a verbal rampage. If my daughter melted down and wouldn’t stop or if she got out of her bed for the 3rd time at night, eventually I would snap.

She would would sob, sometimes looking up at me with her big, blue eyes begging, “Mommy can you be nice now?” It was clear I needed to be the person my daughter not only loved but someone she could trust every day of the month, not just 25.

During those episodes my husband could only cringe. I could only apologize, again, and try to explain my mood swings to my daughter. But I’d had enough. My family deserved better and so did I, not perfect, not emotionless, just better. Post-partum and maternal depression, (and later PMDD, premenstrual dysphonic disorder) had stripped away layers of my happiness for too long.

So I read every book, article, research document I could find on PMDD, neurotransmitters, hormone balancing, nutrition and alternative medicine. I talked to a therapist, exercised five days a week, balanced my nutrition, and replaced my synthetic hormones with natural bio-identical ones. I tested my levels with a hormone/neuro specialist and tracked my monthly symptoms.

I continued with whatever worked and adjusted whatever didn’t. I talked to my family, to friends, to hundreds of mothers over the years, telling my story to whoever would listen. I wrote pages, articles and essays about the disease, about the real emotional affect of the motherhood transition.

I took handfuls of vitamins and supplements. I joined a bible study class and prayed, cried and laughed. Every day, every week, every month, every year until my mood changes were never, ever quite as scary.

My prescription for happiness is my own mosaic of chemistry, choices and changes, and every mother has her own. I had to work on my mind, body and spirit. All of it, at the same time. I had to persist in the belief that I was a good mother, even though sometimes I felt I wasn’t. I had to apologize to my family, and to forgive myself. And when I spoke my own truth to others mothers, they spoke their truth to me.

There’s no shame in admitting you have post-partum depression. There’s no dirty little secret to confessing to the mood monster. We don’t injure or kill our children; we love them as much as any loving mother could. We are not Andrea Yates.

We are not Susan Smith. We’re Brooke Shields, your mother, your neighbor, your best friend, the lady with the sad smile in your playgroup, the woman at the gym who seems like she wants to open up but somehow holds back. Our shame only exists in the dark silence, within the judgment, inside the places we think we’re all alone.

My story is mine alone, but it’s also for the one out of ten women who suffer from post-partum depression and the many hundreds of thousands more who suffer from severe, life changing mood swings.

From time to time the mood monster makes a surprise attack. But today I’m armed to conquer. One day in December I suddenly felt more sad, irritable, and anxious than I’d felt for years.

I panicked.

Then I thought about what might be off-balance. I took off my estrogen hormone patch; swallowed a handful of my vitamins and hopped on my bike for a ten mile ride.

When I returned and looked in the mirror, the monster was gone. In it’s place I saw a mother whose daughter was happy and thriving. I saw a woman whose husband loved her and never called her “crazy,” even when she called herself so much worse. I saw the reflection of someone who controlled the strings of happiness in her life because she knew even if she lost her grip for a moment, that she, not the mood monster, would be the one to grab them back.

I am stronger than the mood monster who stole moments of my life. I am stronger than the creature who turned me into a person who never existed in the first place.