It seems that as time passes things get better. It's a great feeling until all of the sudden the feelings and thoughts all hit you again at once. Things can be going perfectly fine and then...bam...it feels like I'm back to square one! Ugh!
I meet with my psychiatrist at least once a month. He makes some medication changes and we hope for the best. I've seen the psychiatrist twelve times now and it gets pretty discouraging when things start getting bad all over again. Thankfully for the past 2 weeks it seems that I'm doing better. My husband has noticed a change as well so I'm hoping that we have finally found the correct medication and dosage! Sometimes I have felt like a lab rat while going through all of this! My doctor would say that it's a matter of trial and error until we get the right medication and the right dose...ummmm...that's not what I wanted to hear!! I wanted to hear that there was going to be some miracle drug that was going to give me immediate results. No one wants to hear that it could be months before you start feeling like yourself again! In my case, it was around 9 months before I really felt like there was still a part of me in this body! A few days ago my husband and I were driving somewhere and we started singing songs from back in the day and we were cracking up! This laughter is the first "true" and heartfelt laughter that I can recall since having Seth. I'm very thankful that I'm starting to feel like myself again, but it has been a very long road.
I really feel like one of the hardest things to deal with daily is trying to remember the first few months of Seth's life. This should be a fun and joyous thing to do, but for me it causes panic sometimes and sometimes I can't even remember anything. It's very difficult to deal with these "memories". I want to look back and remember good times and laugh and smile, but instead I typically just feel some type of panic, and that makes me sad. On my page, "The Seemingly Endless Cycle of Guilt", I talk about how it's very difficult to overcome all of this when the guilt just won't stop! No matter what you do there is always some reason to feel guilty. It is very tough to break this cycle, but you have to in order to start feeling better. You have to realize that PPD is the cause for most of the reasons why you feel guilty.
The other day I was at work and was on my way to a home visit. Things had been going pretty well and I felt like I was actually happy. All of a sudden a sadness came over me that I just cannot explain. At the same time, I began thinking about all of Seth's needs and whether or not we were doing everything we were supposed to be doing. I started to worry about switching him over to table food and whether or not we were giving him enough "floor time". I became overwhelmed and thought I was going to have a panic attack. I had to try my hardest to change my way of thinking. Thankfully, I did not have a panic attack, but I was not far from it. These patterns of thinking are very dangerous. I do not want to live life in fear of being depressed and having panic attacks. Although PPD effects your mind and body in several ways, there are still some things that we have to do to help ourselves. It's easy to just sit and dwell on everything that has gone wrong, but in order to help your situation, you have to try to start dwelling on good things. It's important to see the progress that you have made and try to see the good in your situation. I have had the opportunity to speak to a few people dealing with depression and it felt good to actually encourage someone else. It felt good to know that I could relate to their feelings and that I could help! Over the past almost 10 months, I have felt so helpless. At times I thought that I was never going to get better and that I would never be of help to anyone else because I was so consumed by my own situation. It felt great to actually GIVE something back for once!!
Don't be discouraged! Know that this is a process and that you WILL make it through. Know that God is beside you each and every step of the way and He promised that He would never leave us nor forsake us. Although at times it may feel that He is nowhere to be found, but trust me, He is there with you and wants nothing more than to be the One you run to!
