It tears me up inside!! PostPartum Depression

It tears me up inside, when I can’t reach all the women who I know need help with postpartum depression. To see such a beautiful person struggle to find the new and improved them literally brings tears to my eyes. As I look at all the women I have helped in the past four years, I still think this thing called PPD is very hard, it is not seldomly spoken about and women are having a hard time. It is enough that we have the outside world tearing us down, tossing us each and every way they can with new laws, taxes, low paying jobs, high daycare expense etc. To go through all of this and tend to a child can be overwhelming, give you a sense of hopelessness, and can bring a women down. It tears me up inside that not only we as women are natural caregivers to others, but most times we forget to care for ourselves, which then leads us down a path of destruction.

It tears me up inside when we as women try to express ourselves, but can’t get the right words out. The feeling of being tormented by oneself is not a great feeling at all. The feeling of letting someone you love down can kill you. I am here to let all women know that I can see right passed that smile, that choice of words of “ Yes, Im ok”. The truth is YOU ARE NOT OK!! Well what do I know? I know that I too went through a very hard time with my first time being a mom, and to make matters worst, yes I did have support! I had my husband who supported me with the baby, but I don’t understand what I was going through. To make matters even worse, I thought I was losing my mind, I lost who I was four months down the line of motherhood, it took me nearly a year later to learn what it is that I had. I was in denial. I faked smile at family and friends,when deep down inside my heart at sunken so deep down I couldnt dig it out myself. My husband went back to work, that was the worst day of my life. I remember looking back when he put his work uniform on, I smiled at him, he asked was I going to be ok, I said “yes, of course”. With my smile so wide, but my heart had died in that moment. As he walked passed me, I could barely speak because if I did, I knew I would have cried so hard, for so long. Well guess what?! HE LEFT!! He left me, and as he closed the front door behind him, I cried so hard silently, I cried till my heart started to hurt, I looked at my daughter as she slept and I cried even more. Can you imagine that? I cried for at least forty minutes because I had been holding this in for a while now. I pretended to me something that I am not, I am not super mom, I pretended that I knew what I was doing because that’s what women are born to do. We are natural caregivers! That day I would never forget me having to calm myself down, while taking care of my daughter. To make matters worse, my husband was on permanent night shift. Every night he left me, and he always asked was I ok, and I always lied because I thought he felt I would be deemed a nut job. As I continued to go throughout my journey of motherhood, I didn’t know what I was going through at all. I started to get sick, my body ached and I would just say I’m sore, but not realizing that I did this to myself. If I would have just expressed what it is I was feeling, then maybe I could have been a better person sooner. A year into my journey of motherhood had gone by, a year of crying, not knowing, a year of me staying in the house because I just wasn’t myself and didn’t want anyone to see me like this. A year into it, I told my husband I need to see a therapist, I sat him down, I cried my heart out to him, with relief because in that moment I realized that that’s what he was there for, all my other family members who are knew something was wrong, but until I had recognized it for myself there was nothing that they could do!

So we started at Melange Healthcare Solutions, I did assessments, I was deemed so many things, I tried to talk to the therapist, but we had no connection at all. I continued to go because I wanted to get better, I remember having a break down in my car while in my mother’s neighborhood, I hit a parked car, was not shocked at all. I was so depressed that nothing clicked inside of me, I drove off, called my husband and had him take me to my therapist. She wanted to put me in Presbyterian Medical Center at the time, I refused because I could not leave my baby, even through my breakdown, the only thing I knew I could do was take care of her. My husband took me home, I got some rest that day. I told him I didn’t want to go back to her, that it just didn’t seem right! We searched for more therapist in the area, after trying two others I found my savior, Mrs. Gina. She assessed me, looked at how well put I was, how I smiles when we met, how I held on to Mya in the room andas soon as she closed the door, she asked me one thing. So what is wrong with you? I cried, so hard in that moment because she read me so fast, she asked me “ Why are you crying, you look fine”?

She told me that I had postpartum depression that day, she told me that she too had postpartum depression. In that moment, wwe connected, why? Because she went through it, she seen the signs in me that she had in herself. From there she taught me how to deal with postpartum depression, what things I can do to get better, and when I’m feeling down

At that moment that, I need to be concious of my thoughts so that I can see what I can do, or if it is possible to change it. If I can change it then do it, If it’s out of my control then let it go. Ladies I want you to know that postpartum depression can develop from baby blues, that 1 and 4 women will experience some sort of feeling or emotion.

Here are some statistics regarding postpartum depression rates in the United States alone:

• Approximately 70%- 80% of women will experience, at a minimum, the baby blues and many more will experience the more severe condition of postpartum depression and its other subtypes.

• It is estimated that the reported rate of clinical postpartum depression among women is between 10%-20% of all live births.

• One recent study found that 1 in 7 women can expect to experience depression in the year following giving birth.

• With approximately 4 million live births occurring each year in the United States, this equates to approximately 600,000 individual postpartum depression diagnoses.Check it out at https://www.postpartumdepression.org/resources/statistics/When we take into consideration the possibility that postpartum depression can occur in women who have miscarried or have had a stillbirth,

• the number is much greater – at around 900,000 individuals annually.